{"id":10528,"date":"2015-07-29T18:26:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T23:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10528"},"modified":"2015-07-29T18:26:18","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T23:26:18","slug":"todays-anti-capitalists-ignore-the-fundamental-problems-of-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10528","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Anti-Capitalists Ignore the Fundamental Problems of Socialism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Anti-Capitalists Ignore the Fundamental Problems of Socialism<\/a><\/h3>\n

Anti-market and pro-socialist rhetoric is surging in\u00a0headlines<\/a>\u00a0(see also\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>, and\u00a0here<\/a>) and popping up more and more on\u00a0social media feeds<\/a>. Much of the time, these opponents of markets can\u2019t tell the difference between\u00a0state-sponsored organizations like the International Monetary Fund<\/a>\u00a0and actual markets. But, that doesn\u2019t matter because the articles and memes are often populist and vaguely worded \u2014 intentionally framed in such a way to easily deflect uninformed attacks and honest descriptions of what they are actually saying. In the end, they can all be boiled down to one message: socialism works and is better than capitalism.<\/p>\n

While most of it comes from the Left, the Right is not innocent, since the Right appears to be primarily concerned with promoting its own version of populism, which apparently does not involve a defense of markets. \u201cBuild bigger walls at the border,\u201d for example, is not a sufficient response to \u201cAll profits are evil!\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of stooping to this level or simply resorting to \u201cRead Mises<\/a>!\u201d (a more fitting response), we must show, yet again, that socialism \u2014 even under well-meaning political leaders \u2014 is impossible and leads to disastrous consequences.<\/p>\n

The Necessity of Profits, Prices, and Entrepreneurs<\/h4>\n

Socialism is the collective ownership (i.e., a state monopoly) of the means of production. It calls for the abolition of private ownership of factors of production. Wages and profits are two parts of the same pie, and socialism says the profit slice should be zero.<\/p>\n

The inherent theoretical problems of socialism all emanate from its definition, and not the particulars of its application. However, the supporters of socialism define \u201ccollective,\u201d as no exchange of the factors of production. And without exchange, there can be no prices, and without prices there is no way to measure the costs of production.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Anti-Capitalists Ignore the Fundamental Problems of Socialism Anti-market and pro-socialist rhetoric is surging in\u00a0headlines\u00a0(see also\u00a0here,\u00a0here, and\u00a0here) and popping up more and more on\u00a0social media feeds. Much of the time, these opponents of markets can\u2019t tell the difference between\u00a0state-sponsored organizations like the International Monetary Fund\u00a0and actual markets. But, that doesn\u2019t matter because the articles and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5116,7645,366,418,7644,7646,2799,6308,7643],"class_list":["post-10528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-anti-capitalism","tag-anti-market","tag-global-economy","tag-imf","tag-political-theory","tag-pro-socialist","tag-socialism","tag-von-mises","tag-world-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10529,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10528\/revisions\/10529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}