This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, June 26, 2017:
The Coat of arms of Venezuela
Thanks to Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the lessons being taught by the on-going destruction of Venezuela have been codified. It’s called “10 Biggest Lies of Socialism” and seven of them apply directly to the once-prosperous oil-rich South American country. First the lie is stated and then the reality:
- Under socialism there will be income equality, as everyone will contribute what they can and receive what they need. But, says AFP, the system instead guarantees that everyone (except the elites in charge) will be equally poor.
- Under socialism private companies will be forced by the government to charge what it determines to be “reasonable” prices through price fixing. Rationing follows when goods previously available disappear from the market. All that these mandates do, says AFP, is guarantee bread lines and shortages as producers cannot produce under such strictures without going bankrupt.
- Under socialism, the economy, having eliminated the overhead cost of “profits” needed under a free market capitalist system, is touted as being able to make the economy grow. In Venezuela, however, the oil-rich nation is unable to feed itself, thanks to bureaucratic miscues and massive corruption among government officials doing the rationing of goods and services.
- Socialism is sold as guaranteeing a class-free society that turns out, according to AFP, to be a society where “everyone is equal in their misery.”
- Socialism guarantees free college educations and free healthcare for everyone but without asking, and answering, the key question: at whose expense? The myth that everyone can live at the expense of everyone else has been exposed in Venezuela.
- Socialism claims that everyone is entitled to material goods (see 5 above) but fails as instead it favors those at the top at the expense of everyone else, leaving the population destitute.
- Socialism promises that workers will be “liberated” from their capitalist slave masters, but discover that they are now slaves of the state, subject to the orders of the state and having their earnings taken from them and distributed to the state for distribution to others.
The sad forced transition of Venezuela into a backward, third-world country whose starving citizens are forced to barter has been tracked extensively. Starting in April,
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