A recent poll shows that the biggest demographic supporting socialism and communism in the United States are not the “workers” that those communist mayors and politicians are pretending to support but young, college-educated liberal women who have discovered that their expensive degree is totally worthless, and that they are not earning what they think they should be.
Something struck me when I read that: it seems as if the expensive liberal colleges give students an unrealistic idea of how the world works, not just because of their conditioning, but mostly because they were living an extremely wealthy lifestyle: able to do what they want, buy what they want, play around with the courses they want, and all with minimal supervision. And then after graduation reality hits. They don’t get to keep up that lifestyle. Not only is the bill coming due for the loan, but a degree doesn’t get them anything more than an entry level position with an entry level salary with a boss who gets to tell them what to do.
That’s the way it’s always worked — you start out at the bottom and work your way up (unless, of course, you have an inside track). You also have to work, to show up, to put in the hours.
That expensive education also left them with an unrealistic view of the toll communism and socialism has always taken. Some of the members of the so-called democratic socialists have pledged themselves to China. Doesn’t anyone learn history anymore? Multiple millions died in China from starvation because of stupid decrees and because of executions during the cultural revolution and before. And currently there are all sorts of human right abuses. And this is what they support? And want to import? As if we don’t have enough problems.
Another weird thing about this push toward communism is the resurgence of that old “seize the means of production” fallacy. First of all, people who spouted that nonsense have generally been wealthy (you can see that even in the people being elected today — rich folk who never held a job trying to run a major city). So they take over production — then what? How are they going to run businesses when they can’t even run a city?
What might have worked a hundred and fifty years ago, when the population was much smaller, could never work today. (World population in 1900 was 1.6 billion, today it’s 8.3 billion.) Local industry was common back then, so the business might have been easier to take over, but today? How would that even be possible, considering how little of anything is made in the United States? And the companies that are here creating jobs, are often owned by other countries. They would simply pull out. And then there’s the stock market. That’s not local. People all over the world own stocks in major global corporations. They’re not about to let some penny-ante mayor take over their investment. And what about all the retirement funds invested in these companies? Suddenly, they’d all go broke, and then what happens?
I suppose this whole “wealth tax” that’s being touted here in the USA (while it’s being quietly rolled back in every country that has already tried it) could be their idea of seizing the means of production, but still, people in the United States today are not stuck in a tiny village where they have no say. Even if their voice is silenced or their vote ignored, they can move. No one is going to stick around and let what they have worked a lifetime for be taken away by the overeducated who feel underpaid.
Let’s pretend for a minute that they can seize the means of production — who’s going to run everything? The politicians who can’t run what they’re supposed to be running now? Those overeducated twits who feel so put upon? The CEOs and company managers who are currently in charge? No one would accept that kind of pressure if they’re not getting paid any more than the lowest worker, so they’d simply stop doing any work. The workers would, too, because why should they do any more than anyone else — so what you end up with is a competition to the bottom, not to the top.
And so, the world collapses. And why? Because some people think they deserve more than they got, and so other people need to give up what they have simply to satisfy the unsatisfied. The problem is, unsatisfied folk are never satisfied, and so they demand more.
How would that end? I have no idea. I just hope I never have to find out.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
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