The Trouble With Bernie

“The State is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

Frédéric Bastiat, 1801-1850

Socialism has become de rigueur once again, accounting for the popularity of politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Several recent polls have shown young people, most particularly, open to socialist ideas. As summarized by CNBC, “According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively.”

This should come as no surprise. Support for socialist ideas is inversely related to one’s sense of confidence. That is, as people feel less confident in their ability to negotiate the world, their attraction to socialist ideas increases. And while the economy is booming (in spite of a currently volatile stock market), we are faced with great technology-driven disruptions. Artificial intelligence and automation are already devouring routine jobs and promise to consume even more. In the not too long run, Uber drivers and over-the-road truckers will be supplanted by robots.

In light of such uncertainties, it is reasonable for young people to ask “how will I support myself?” 

While learned professors have written millions of words detailing socialist concepts, let’s try to boil it down to the bare essentials: individual effort and private property.

Imagine a slide switch which, when moved fully to the left represents complete collectivism. In this extreme, there is no such thing as private property. The state, that is the collective, owns all assets and individuals own nothing. The result of one’s labor is added to the collective pool and you have no right to any part of it individually. Food, clothing, and shelter are doled out at as the collective wills.

Now we move the switch all the way to the right. This is complete individualism and represents no collective ownership of anything. All assets are completely owned by individuals and food, clothing, and shelter are acquired only to the extent that each individual can provide for themselves.

Now, each of these extremes is highly unlikely to ever exist as long as more than one human populates the planet. In fact, the switch hovers near the middle, perhaps a bit left in Scandinavian countries and a bit right in the United States, but all productive economies in the world both respect private property rights while providing collective support. Good examples of collective efforts include military defense, roadways, and certain government programs such as welfare and social security.

Another major aspect of the slider switch is this: when moved all the way to the left (collectivism), there is no incentive for individual effort. You may work as hard as you can or as little as you like and your personal outcome is the same. When the switch is all the way to the right, your survival is completely dependent on your individual effort and success – work or die.

Looping back to the increasing allure of socialism, young people, fearing for their future, want to nudge the switch to the left. They are willing to exchange opportunity for safety, liberty for security, achievement for guarantees. This is understandable as they have not yet grown confident of their own abilities.

But unfortunately, due to human nature, socialism reduces the incentive to excel. So while all can share in the collective pot, that pot itself will tend to suffer.

A good example of this is the early travails and then triumphs of the Pilgrims, as chronicled by Nathaniel Philbrick in his book “Mayflower.”

“The fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth’s debilitating food shortages. For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally – the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done.”

“In April, [William] Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. ‘The women now went willingly into the field,’ Bradford wrote, ‘and took their little ones with them to set the corn.’ The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.”

A good lesson for us all.

Finally, regarding private property rights, remember that even ardent socialists lock their doors.