Socialism with all of its egalitarian promises is perennially appealing.  But it is a lie that needs to be exposed for the disaster that it is.

Ludwig von Mises put it this way: “To abolish private property in the means of production, to make the means of production the property of the community, that is the whole aim of Socialism.”

In order to abolish private property it has to be confiscated by the government and only then can it become the property of the community. At this point redistribution of wealth takes place – usually to those at the top.  Indeed, this is what the Socialists are always trying to accomplish.

Once the market system has been broken it is left to planners in the government to decide how much of which items that need to be produced.  Of course, this does not and cannot work.  Consider someone trying to plan how many bagels of which type to produce and distribute to every bagel store in New York City every day that customers want.

Inevitably, the leader decides that their people, their community members, are responsible for this failure of the economy. If only they worked harder, contributed more or were not enemies of the state, then the system would run smoothly.  The people will need to be shown that they must sacrifice for the state.  They must be shot, jailed, starved, put in labor camps or suffer in any number of inhuman ways.  And they did:

• Mao – 40 million killed
• Stalin- 20 million killed
• Hitler – 12 million killed
• Pol Pot – 2 million killed

The Stalin estimate maybe low, (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, thinks 60 million is closer) but even at the 20 million number that is 1,820 people a day or 12,740 a week killed, every week for 30 years. His own people.

Socialism will always lead to results like this.