The New York Times' Thanksgiving Day report on Venezuela, "Hungry Venezuelans Flee in Boats to Escape Economic Collapse". Of course, the headline should read, "Hungry Venezuelans Flee in Boats to Escape Socialism."
Now, where have we seen this, before? Oh, I remember, this Floating Truck is an image, one of thousands, of Cubans desperate to escape their Workers Paradise, abandoning free health care and everything.
As I have written before, more than a few times, the great mystery in my mind is how anyone can be a socialist today. Several friends recently provided some insight.
I had long assumed that modern Westerners simply were ignorant of the horrors of the Iron Curtain. Frankly, I still suspect this. Oh, they may have some sense that all was not well under communism (shortages of Xboxes and whatnot), but I still doubt they know the Chinese were eating babies during "The Great Leap Forward". And no, that is not a joke. Not a joke. Not a joke. The Chinese were eating babies when 50 MMMillion people starved to death. Just as Cubans were starving before reforms. Just as Venezuelans are starving now.
Socialism fabricates shortages. For some reason, this a big joke when people have to queue up, for hours, for toilet paper. It's a lot less funny when there is no food in the stores and no medicine in the hospitals.
It turns out that my socialistically-inclined friends do not see a connection between policies and results. Two of my friends specifically asserted that they see no analogy between the proposed policies of the Democrats, especially people like Barack and Bernie Sanders, and what had transpired behind the Iron Curtain or what is transpiring in Venezuela today. It cannot happen here, they say, and I do not know why. Is it the air we breath? The water we drink? Does the sun shine differently in the U.S.? The socialists do not believe in American Exceptionalism, and yet they do. For some magical reason, the same policies that have yielded destruction there, will work out gloriously here. We are exceptional after all.
Another friend outright dismissed socialism as the cause of Venezuela's agony. Corruption, she says, is the explanation. Her explanation sent chills down my spine, and let me say why.
It has been long explained that the essential element of the scientific method is model building. You build a model of how the world works, and you make predictions based on that model, and the better the predictions the better the model. This is a plainly inadequate description of the scientific method. Everybody builds models of the world. Religions build models of the world, and there is the Christian model, the Hindu model, the Muslim model, etc.
It was Karl Popper who explained that the key ingredient in model building is falsifiability. That is, are there certain phenomena that, if observed, would cause you to reject your model of the world? Scientific models have it, religious models do not. Since religion begins with faith---belief based on inadequate evidence---naturally there are no criteria of falsifiability. With rare exception, there is nothing you can tell a True Believer to make him stop believing.
On the other hand, there is the famous example of Albert Einstein who, when he published his theory of General Relativity, was first in the line of skeptics. Einstein asserted that he could not believe his own theory until certain tests were performed. Those tests were performed, and only then did Einstein believe. Many other tests were performed, and Relativity Theory went on to become one of the most thoroughly tested theories of the Cosmos.
So, does socialism look more like science or more like religion? Socialism looks more like religion, and we have the evidence to prove that.
Deep down in the marrow of their bones, socialists Know how to organize society for the Greater Good. And they have had 100 years (the centennial of the Russian Revolution is next year) and several billion people to prove it. Each time they implemented socialism, it did not work out well. In fact, it worked out very badly, indeed. In fact, it failed catastrophically. So, when things failed to work out as their model of the world predicted, the socialists had a choice: they could revise or reject their theory, or they could suppose that some especially evil-minded individuals---Enemies of the People---were conspiring to sabotage socialism. For a socialist, rejecting socialism is never an option.
Well! If you are working against the welfare of millions of your fellow citizens, you are a very evil person committing a very heinous crime. You deserve death. And the socialists started killing, and killing, and killing. That is why Lenin murdered more people in his first six months in power than the Tsars killed in the previous 100 years, why Stalin murdered more Russians during peace-time than Hitler murdered during wartime, why Mao murdered more Chinese during peace-time than the Japanese murdered during wartime, why Pol Pot murdered a quarter of the entire Cambodian population, etc., etc., etc.
That is why Venezuelans are launching themselves into dangerous waters in dangerous boats. And that is why my dear friend's comment, that "It's the corruption, stupid," sent chills down my spine. We have seen this all before.
Socialism is the problem. And if you do not see the connection between socialism and death, then you are the problem.
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