As ObamaCare continues to train-wreck, I expect we will hear, nestled in among the litany and cacophony of excuses, misinformation, lies, historical revisions and assurances of future success the eternal excuse of statists – that the theory is good but the implementation was poor. Watch as we’re told that insuring millions of previously uninsured is a noble goal and that government action and involvement in health insurance is the proper path towards achieving that goal. We’ll be told that the failures to date are either inconsequential growing pains that’ll soon be forgotten or that they’re the result of obstructionism from the opposition party. Either way, the blame will be laid at the feet of implementation rather than on the back of the theory.
It is the perpetual whine of communists, socialists, economic interventionists, mixed-market advocates, central planners and their ilk that the reason nirvana hasn’t been achieved in the past is because the people in charge were either not up to the task or were corrupt in their interpretations or visions. Setting aside a discussion of whether that nirvana is achievable at all, let alone via statism, two questions come to mind: why the people who continue to claim that statism can be “gotten right” won’t let it go, and why they are so adamant in their refusal to recognize that the mountains of evidence that statism has caused enormous and irreparable harm to the world and to billions of its inhabitants are a repudiation of the theory itself.
The first is easy – it’s a notion I’ve addressed elsewhere. Many people have a predilection towards consistency, even at the expense of truth and intellectual honesty. It’s hard to admit error, it’s even harder to accept error after years or decades of “true belief.”
The latter is an offshoot of the first, of course, but it is the repudiation that is of greater interest. Socialism has been tried in rich countries. Socialism has been tried in poor countries. Socialism has been tried in hot countries. Socialism has been tried in cold countries. Socialism has been tried in wet countries. Socialism has been tried in dry countries. Socialism has been tried in old countries. Socialism has been tried in new countries. It has failed every single time.
Socialists, of course, will vehemently disagree. They will offer up a range of examples from around the globe as their evidence, cherry picking and amalgamating successes drawn from different nations and different implementations. The economic stagnation of those nations is ignored. The accrual of public debt, the lag in improvement of living standards relative to less statist nations, the loss of individual liberty, the loss of economic mobility – all ignored or deemed a small price to pay for the perceived benefits. Yet even the ‘successful’ social democracies live off budget deficits and ever-increasing national debt. As Stein’s Law tells us, if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Perpetual borrowing and printing of money cannot go on forever, and if the only way that socialism can work via government deficit, how can it be considered a successful theory? Here in the USA, the growth of government has correlated with the growth of the national debt. That debt is dwarfed by the unfunded obligations of the “successful” social programs Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. By what measure can this be a validation of the theory?
The alternate to cherry-picking successes out of a mass of failure is to acknowledge all past implementations as failures, but to insist that somehow, somewhere, there will be a successful future implementation. Better understanding and evolving social attitudes will combine to enable future leaders effecting a successful socialist state, if only given the opportunity. The promise of such a state is sufficient to validate its pursuit, to dismiss challenges regarding the validity of the theory itself.
The death toll due to statism – communism, socialism, fascism, and the other -isms whose distinctions people quibble over – is itself the subject of much debate, but it’s beyond challenge that the number easily exceeds 100 million in the 20th century alone. Add that death toll to the massive human suffering, the hundreds of millions who’ve been kept in poverty, the premature deaths from that poverty, the oppression of billions in places such as Communist China, the USSR, Nazi Germany, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Southeast Asia, the Iron Curtain and parts of Africa and South America, and the question arises – how many chances should statism be given? How many bites at the apple? How long until we say “enough, no more?”
I’ve written elsewhere about how I don’t believe that communism can be reconciled with human nature. Some will disagree, and it is to these people I pose the question – how much further harm to humanity are you willing to tolerate before conceding that socialism has had its chance and failed?
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