Socialist Fallacies - Granite Grok

Socialist Fallacies

Socialist Fallacies is a book written by Yves Guyot and readily available in the public domain as a pdf.  If you have not read it, I highly recommend it.  Every page (so far) is loaded with observations about socialism that are as relevant today as they were in the early 1900’s.  Guyot relates the problems in simple terms that even a Democrat could understand–if they were actually open-minded enough to absorb it instead of responding with the programmed, knee-jerk, overreaction and denial.

Here’s an example of just how simple Guyot makes the arguments.

In 1893, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, as Commissioner of Public Works, arranged to pull down a part of Millbank Prison by means of the unemployed. When these men worked with the knowledge that their pay would vary according to the work done, they did twice as much as when they knew that whether they worked or idled their pay would be 6½d. an hour.

The prospect of gain does not exercise its influence only upon the wage-earner, it reacts upon all men, financiers, employers of labour, and investors, because it admits of an immediate and certain sanction, that of gain or loss.

A private employer will make profits where the State suffers loss. While individuals make profits and save, governments are wasteful and run into debt. Statesmen and local officials are free from direct responsibility, and know that they will not go bankrupt and that the taxpayers will foot the bill.

It does not get much simpler than that.  Profit motivates production.  Production is what creates wealth, savings, and furthers investment growth and wealth creation.  State regulated or state run entities do the opposite.  They drain resources, restrict production, and spend what does not exist to further their ends.  You do not have to scour history for examples.  You are living an example of this now.

The state, under the  Obamacrats, have regulated, confiscated, and spent our economy into stagnation.  We are idling on a hill with over-regulation and uncertainty blocking the way forward, and the massive weight of growing debt pulling us back.   At this point, backward is the only direction for us to travel.  And the only solution they have is to spend more; to let the state control more production; to tax private investment and savings to speed our descent toward economic ruin.

The lefts response to our objections is class struggle, the socialist response to everything.

The minority rises up to intimidate everyone else into following them back down the hill, where they promise an equality that  is nothing more than a parity of shared misery beneath the regulatory jack-boot of bureaucrats and central planners of the socialist state.

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