What is this current fascination with socialist candidates?  I simply cannot wrap my head around this.  Surveys and election results indicate that an increasing number of Americans view socialism very positively these days.  However, that support is mostly confined to young adults, college students, progressive democrats, and lower-income Americans, which should tell us something.

I believe younger Americans view socialism quite differently than I did when I was younger.  I also believe that rather than advocating for traditional socialism, the current trend is more about what I refer to as “Hollywood chic socialism” that serves as shorthand for universal healthcare, subsidized college, and expanded social welfare programs – in other words, more free stuff from government.

But just as fish are unaware of the water they depend upon for their very survival, the vast majority of American socialists have lived in the United States their entire lives and have never experienced the dire results of a socialist economy.

Socialism’s appeal lies in its promise of greater fairness and security.  However, the problem is that the historical record paints a very different picture, begging the question, why has no socialistic economy in history ever succeeded on a large scale, over an extended period of time?   That’s the very straightforward question that always seems to remain unanswered.

The Left tells us, “No, no, no, we don’t want THAT kind of socialism.  We just want a little bit—free healthcare, free college,  guaranteed wages and generous social benefits – you know, more like Sweden.”

But “a little bit” of socialism is akin to being a little bit pregnant.  Sweden has a population of roughly 10 million people – the U.S. population is 340 million.  Gimme a break!  One may as well compare managing a three-table bodega in Santa Fe to managing the Ford Motor company.

Scale changes everything.  QuickBooks may work well for the bodega, but it would be hopelessly inadequate for the accounting needs of a Fortune 500 company.  Likewise, policies that may function in a nation of ten million people do not necessarily translate to a nation of 340 million that is larger, more diverse, and more complex than all of Western Europe combined.

Moreover, the reality is that Sweden—which never embraced full socialism—along with countries such as China, India, Vietnam, and the former Soviet bloc nations, learned the hard way that market-oriented reforms were necessary to revive their foundering economies and generate sustained growth.

Socialists like Mamdani, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez focus on the low hanging fruit, i.e., the common visible symptoms of economic concern that have existed in every nation on earth except the Confederated Kingdom of Utopia, a kingdom that is known only to socialists.

In case you’re wondering, this kingdom lies in the middle ground between what people desire and what reality permits.  A very special place, somewhere beyond history and just this side of reality.  It’s a place where resources are infinite, human nature is malleable, and consequences never arrive.  Few have visited and none have stayed, yet every generation produces travelers convinced they’ve finally found the road there.

But back to the real world for a moment; a socialist will expend enormous amounts of energy (and other people’s money) devising ways to divide the pie while paying little or no attention to how pies are baked in the first place.  They will spend days figuring out how to divide a single 12-inch, one-topping pizza into equal shares, while a market capitalist will focus on creating enough prosperity to bring home three 18-inch pizzas with a variety of toppings so that everyone has more to choose from and more to enjoy.

Why is it that whenever we hear about policies such as free buses or city owned grocery stores, we never hear the second half of the equation:

• Where is the hard evidence that the policy will be effective?
• How much will it cost?
• And who will ultimately pay for it?

And demanding that the eight hundred or so existing American billionaires pay for them is beyond childlike in its naivete.  And to paraphrase my favorite conservative author, the sad reality is that the history of socialism since the early 19th century has been one of replacing what worked, with what sounded good.

Quote of the day:  “What everyone wants is more than what is.” – Thomas Sowell