There Is No Reason For Anyone To Support Socialism

Once again, my title is a little obvious, but those words will seem strange to anyone who is not a Christian and/or a conservative. There truly is no reason for anyone to support socialism. The same could be said for communism or fascism, given they all have roots in Marxism anyway.
 
But why am I talking about this now? Well, according to a Fox News report from journalist Hollie McKay, who has looked into and detailed the despicable tragedy that is socialism in Venezuela, girls as young as 14 are selling their own bodies for a little bit of cash. The same goes for straight men who are selling their own bodies on gay markets.
 
But that’s just the tip of the ice berg. There is a whole lot more that’s messed up in this once wealthy country.
 
McKay reports: “Thousands upon thousands of Venezuelans pour into Colombia over the crowd cross-country bridge, their faces gaunt, carrying little more than a backpack. Rail-thin women cradle their tiny babies, and beg along the trash-strewn gutters. Teens hawk everything from cigarettes to sweets and water for small change.”
 
McKay also reports that malnourished and starving females, both girls and women, resort to selling anything they possibly can, including their own bodies, hair, breast milk, etc. in order to survive.
 
According to McKay: “According to several walkers, some women ‘chose’ prostitution as a means to make money and earn rides along the way. And some heterosexual men ‘sell themselves on the gay market’ for a little money.”
 
“Other women are manipulated or forced into giving ‘pimp types’ their documents and identification cards, and are subsequently drawn into prostitution rings. That’s particularly the case in border areas, where many rebel and drug-trafficking groups operate.”
 
“They come from a country they say now resembles a war zone. Their lives have been ripped apart by displacement, starvation, disease, desperation and torment. But now they’re in Colombia, where conditions are far from perfect, but are at least safer, and more stable.”
 
That last paragraph, particularly the first two sentences, is particularly sobering.
 
While not a direct quote, McKay says that these people say Venezuela resembles a war zone. The last war Venezuela had was a civil war between the government and military rebels, in which the government won. That was in 1962.
 
After nearly two entire decades of socialism (Chavez took power in 1999), the country now looks like it’s been through a war. You can’t possibly tell me that this is a good thing and proves socialism works.
 
In doing research for this article, I came across some articles that tried to say that socialism has worked in Venezuela (I literally laughed out loud) or that Venezuela’s situation proved nothing about socialism.
 
I’ll ignore the first one because it’s that ridiculous. All I’ll say is that socialism hasn’t worked, but has been faithfully and fully implemented… which is why it hasn’t worked.
 
But looking towards the second one, tell me, why wouldn’t it prove anything about socialism? Should we also ignore how socialism eventually sank the Soviet Union? Should we ignore how when Lenin tried to fully implement communism, he had to scale it back because it was like dropping a bomb on his own rear? Should we ignore how communism has destroyed North Korea and it has only remained because of China and Russia? Should we ignore how China had to implement more capitalistic policies to boost their economy and actually make it grow?
 
Time and time again, and within the confines of Venezuela, we see just how terrible socialism is and just how much it doesn’t work.
 
It’s sunk nation after nation in relatively quick succession. But before you even get there, millions upon millions die, either by starvation, disease, or by the state killing them for any given reason. And those who are unfortunate enough to survive live in their own slice of Hell. It’s either die or live in misery whenever you’re talking about a socialist country.
 
And the other unfortunate thing about this is that this entire catastrophe could be completely avoided. Like previously mentioned, Venezuela used to be the richest Latin American country before socialism ravaged it. Its rich oil reserves made it a blessed country in terms of natural wealth. They now resort to importing gas instead.
 
The U.S. is sort of similar. We also have rich oil reserves. The difference is that we can choose to take advantage of them (depending on the people in control). We don’t depend on foreign oil anywhere near as much as we used to because we use our own supplies. As a matter of fact, the US is a net oil exporter for the first time in 75 years.
 
Obviously, we were still pretty wealthy and prosperous even without using our own oil reserves, but that’s because of our free-market, or capitalist, economic and government systems.
 
Milton Friedman is often credited for saying the following: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
 
Now, the origins of this quote go back before Friedman and a similar quote can be attributed to William F. Buckley Jr., but the point is not to discuss the origins of that quote. The point is to discuss the relevance of said quote today.
 
Under socialism, the government owns the means of production. Meaning they own what is sold to people, at what price, and how much to make available for sale. The government takes the rest, which usually tends to be a sizable majority.
 
So saying that the federal government would make the Sahara Desert run out of sand is not entirely accurate, but also not entirely inaccurate. There’d be a shortage of sand for the people, not for the government.
 
Nicolas Maduro is not starving. He’s very well-fed. People in the government aren’t starving either. It’s the people outside the government that are suffering, while people within the government live like kings.
 
The reason socialism appeals to people, particularly young people, is that it promises a society in which everyone is equal, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. And that is largely true, just not in any good way.
 
People outside the government are equally MISERABLE while people within the government are perfectly content.
 
Socialists think that the government is the best option for who gets to control the means of production. But this misery is all it ever amounts to. Why? Because man is evil.
 
I could spend another article talking about that, but the main point I’m making here is that socialism does not work in any real circumstance. It relies entirely in people in power being good and selfless and not taking the majority of the supply. The thing about that is that, even if the people in power were actually good and selfless, the government is REQUIRED to own the majority of the supply in order to own the means of production.
 
In order for socialism to work in the way people think it should (or does), it would literally have to be the opposite of socialism.
 
And in this sense, socialism does work… it’s called capitalism. Capitalism does work. We’ve had it here in the States for even longer than we’ve been a nation and it’s worked. Germany, before Nazism rose, was also pretty capitalist and pretty wealthy.
 
Countries that faithfully and fully implement capitalism tend to grow and thrive. Countries that faithfully and fully implement socialism or communism or fascism tend to stagnate at best and collapse at worst.
 
Again, Lenin had to implement SOME level of capitalism in order for his new Soviet Union not to collapse in on itself immediately. China is a similar story.
 
So we learn throughout history that there truly is no reason for anyone to advocate for socialism. It simply doesn’t work. And those who try it come to realize the error of their ways, unless they are in the government, in which case they couldn’t give a rat’s ass because they are not obligated to. Maduro can do whatever he wants with Venezuela because the people are too hungry, tired and downtrodden to do anything about it. He runs elections that are a complete farce.
 
The only thing that keeps him somewhat relatively contained is Russian and U.S. influence basically telling him to behave.
 
Socialism is a disease in this world that brings with it pain and misery. Capitalism is the solution because it's only in a Capitalist society, where the government focuses on protecting life, imparting justice and administering a small amount of resources to support a small government, that private enterprise and people can truly prosper. It's a system marked by equal opportunity, not equal result. Socialism kills innovation and any reason to prosper, given that government takes most of what you produce.  It’s a system in which everyone outside the government is a loser and can never escape that fate (unless they literally escape the country for a better one).
 
With capitalism, you can work towards success because it's the only system in the world where wealth is CREATED pretty much out of nowhere. You can work towards being a success. With socialism, that doesn’t fall on the individual, but on the state to decide a person’s fate. Usually you lose while the elitist ruling class wins. And because the state is the state, they will not want any strong opposition to it, so they are the only winners.
 
Those who advocate for socialism either have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about or have no heart.
 
Here’s hoping people come to realize the horrors of socialism without having to actually experience them.
 
Proverbs 18:15
“An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.