Prof. Thomas Sowell on Socialist centrally planned economies (run by the elite government few in a command-and-control) (emphasis mine):
The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence, and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine.
In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the Left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao.
Milder versions of socialism, with central planning of national economies, took root in India and in various European democracies.
If the preconceptions of the Left were correct, central planning by educated elites who had vast amounts of statistical data at their fingertips and expertise readily available, and were backed by the power of government, should have been more successful than market economies where millions of individuals pursued their own individual interests willy-nilly.
But, by the end of the 20th century, even socialist and communist governments began abandoning central planning and allowing more market competition. Yet this quiet capitulation to inescapable realities did not end the noisy claims of the Left.
In the United States, those claims and policies have reached new heights, epitomized by government takeovers of whole sectors of the economy and unprecedented intrusions into the lives of Americans, of which Obamacare has been only the most obvious example.
I put up a joke a few years ago that said that while the heads of the Democrat Socialists in Europe had finally given up and were flying across the Atlantic to see how America ran its economy. Sadly, Hillary and Obama were flying to Europe to learn how to screw things up. In other words, Hunger Games is what Statists want; after all, they’re the ones at the top and don’t have to suffer the consequences of their mistakes. And make no mistake, Socialists like Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and many other Democrats think this is a Great Idea even after all of last century’s examples that they just didn’t work. And look at what has happened to Venezuela this century.
But even with those in-you-face examples, what was it that Bernie Sanders said, showing his disdain for people making their own decisions (both in producing and in consuming)? Yeah – the primary Progressive “tell”:
You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.
You Don’t Need That – that isn’t just a comment, for if these micro-totalitarians had their way, ANYthing that they deemed non-essential would be gone in a heartbeat – no Choice for you! But what would you expect from a guy that honeymooned in Moscow during the height of the Cold War?
Sadly, so do a lot of Establishment Republicans. After all, they want to be part of the Smart People crowd, too.
(H/T: National Review)
