Recent polls show that young people are far more positive about socialism than their older cohorts. This is old news. It’s been said in North America for decades that the older you get, the more you dislike socialism. To older North Americans, socialism is government-managed economy, whereas capitalism is free-market economy. But do young people even understand these terms or how different economic systems can affect each of us at the personal level?
Here’s a story that’s circulating on social media that demonstrates what socialism is and how it affects people’s behaviour.
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class.
This class insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor said, “OK, let’s do an experiment in this class.” He suggested substituting grades for dollars. All grades would be averaged and everyone in the class would receive the same grade for every test. All class members willingly agreed to participate in this experiment for the entire term.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset, and the students who studied little were happy.
For the second test, the students who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride so they studied little, and the ones who studied little studied even less. The second test average was a D. No one was happy.
For the third test, the average was an F. Why? Test after test, bickering, blame and name-calling increased in the class, resulting in hard feelings. Ultimately, no one was willing to study hard to benefit someone else.
At the end of the term, all of the students in the class failed. The professor explained this to the class by saying that:
SOCIALISM (GOVERNMENT-MANAGED ECONOMY) ULTIMATELY FAILS BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE WILL TRY TO SUCCEED WHEN REWARD IS GREAT, BUT NO ONE TRIES TO SUCCEED WHEN ALL REWARD IS TAKEN AWAY.
What specific lessons did the students learn from this experiment?
1. Socialism is driven by the ideal of cooperation, but people are more motivated by competition, one of the key components of capitalism.
2. Governments cannot give to anybody anything that they don’t take from somebody else.
3. Governments cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
4. No nation can prosper for long when some of its people get the idea that they do not have to work because Government is going to take care of them. When that happens, the rest of the people realize that it doesn’t pay to work hard because Government is going to give away what they worked for.
TO PURSUE PERSONAL SUCCESS, IT’S BETTER TO LIVE AND WORK IN A CAPITALISTIC SYSTEM (FREE-MARKET ECONOMY) BECAUSE IT IS DRIVEN BY THE IDEAL THAT HARD WORK WILL BE REWARDED.
No economy in the world is completely socialistic or completely capitalistic. Canada’s economy is certainly a combination of the two systems. But we are more capitalistic than socialistic and, ultimately, that balance will help keep our nation solvent and prosperous for a long time.
