Saturday, October 16, 2010

Probably Not True: These are Excellent Illustrations of Socialism



First Illustration of Socialism:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.  That class had insisted that socialism worked and that if enacted, no one would be poor and no one would be rich. It would be a great equalizer.  The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class”

The Professor decided that all grades would be averaged together and everyone would receive the same grade. No one would fail, but no one would receive an A either.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone received a B.
The students who studied hard were upset, but the students who studied little were happy.
As a result of the averaged grade, both the students who studied hard as well as the students who studied little decided to study even less for the second exam.
The average score this time was a D and no one was happy.
When the 3rd exam rolled around, the average score was an F.
The scores never increased and students blamed each other for the overall poor performance of the class. No one wanted to study hard for the benefit of another student.
To their great surprise, all students failed the course. The professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when the government takes all of the reward away, no one will try hard or want to succeed.

Second Illustration of Socialism:
This reminds me of the story about how The Pilgrims first arranged their society upon arriving in The New World.
Everything was put into a "common store" which anyone could take from as he or she saw fit.
It wasn't long before people realized there were able-bodied men who didn't lift a finger to produce anything but didn't hesitate to take from the store.
They eventually decided that every family would get a plot of land and whatever was produced on that land could be dispensed as the producer saw fit.
Long story short; problem fixed.

No comments: