Are You Too Selfish for Socialism?

Ocasio Cortez in Action

Tom Sheppard

3/22/2019

There are lots of folks today talking about the wonders of socialism.  OCA and Bernie Sanders are both promising free education and free healthcare.  There seems to be lots of support for their ideas from the so-called Millennials.  But, I am not sure the Millennials, or anyone else, is really selfless enough to live with real-world socialism.

FREE EDUCATION - NO STUDENT DEBT

You won't have to worry about student debt under socialism.  But, it isn't because the education is free.  It is because most people won't be allowed to go to College.  You will take tests along the way from your earliest years.  Based on the tests you will be assigned a job or allowed to further your education in the field that the tests indicate you will succeed at, if the government has need of people with that degree.

If you don't have good enough test scores to convince the government to send you to college, you won't be able to go work in your Uncle's business, because having a business is subversive and illegal.  You won't be able to start your own business either, so you can say goodbye to any dream you might ever had of living a life of abundance.  You will spend the rest of your life leaving the dream of Nietzsche, living a life of quiet desperation.

If you are one of the ones lucky enough to be selected to go to college, you can forget about taking a year off, or even a semester off.  If you don't get good enough grades, you will be removed from college and assigned a job.  Also, you can forget about frat-house parties and college pranks.

Education is a serious government business under socialism.  It is your civic duty to do your best, and to complete your college education as quickly as possible so that you can begin to contribute to the society that paid for your education.

College bacchanals WILL get your thrown out of college.  If you don't end up taking a detour through jail, you will count yourself lucky as you put your dreams of college in the trash and take the job the government assigns you to, even if it is working at a collective farm, picking potatoes in Idaho.

One last point.  As a college student, don't even think about staging a sit-in, or mounting any other kind of protest.  That will get you beaten, thrown out of school, and carted off to a re-education camp in North Dakota, or the Bering Straits of Alaska.  If you survive that, you will never the see the inside of a college again, unless you are assigned to be a janitor there.

Just to recap on the Free Education under socialism:

1. You won't get to go to college unless your test scores in high school were good enough.
2. You won't get to stay in college if your grades don't stay good enough.
3. There won't be any partying at college for you, or anyone else there.
4. If you are thrown out of college for bad behavior, you WILL go to jail.
5. If you flunk out of college, you will work at whatever job the government assigns you to, even if it is manual labor on a farm in Idaho.

Of course, you will be happy to accept all these conditions, because you believe everyone shouldn't be selfish, and you want to be a good citizen, doing your civic duty.

Zero Unemployment

If the socialist government hasn't quite progressed to the point where they assign your job (they haven't yet in Denmark), that is simply because the unemployment problem hasn't gotten bad enough yet.  When it does, they will fix unemployment by guaranteeing everyone a "good paying" government job.  You will take the job they assign you, or you be labeled a subversive and you will go to jail and get re-educated to quit your selfish ways, or it will kill you.

Live Rent Free

You won't have to worry about rent payments or house payments under socialism.  You will live in the apartment that a government official decides is appropriate for you.  Most of them will be very much like the public housing projects of the poverty stricken inner cities of the US today.  They will be cold, gray, lifeless buildings designed for their use, not wasting anything on pleasing aesthetics.

No House Payments Either

Forget about needing to save up to buy a house.  You won't get a house.  Ever.  Unless you manage to become one of the very, very top 1/2 of 1% of government officials.  And when you get to that level, you not only have a house, but you can go to stores that are stocked like an average supermarket here in the US.  Below that level, you won't see anything that even vaguely resembles a Kroger, and certainly not a Wal Mart.

No Big Utility Bills

If the USSR (70+ years of socialism in practice) is a good indicator, although the costs for your electricity will be low, you won't want to leave the water running too long in the shower under socialism either.  No long-hot showers.  And make sure to turn off the lights when you leave your apartment.  Because the state is paying the hot water bill, if you use too much that makes you both selfish and a subversive.  And, if they label you a subversive, your life is pretty much over.  First you will go to jail.  When your trial comes up, they will find you guilty and sentence you to spend some time in a re-education camp where they will beat all the selfishness out of you, or you will die as they try it.

You may think I am painting an overly grim picture here.  However, I am actually doing two things.  First, I am carrying the tenets of socialism to their logic ends.  Second, I am looking at what has actually happened in socialist countries.
Read on for a few tidbits from history.

The Soviet Union was supposed to be “a society of true democracy,” but in many ways it was no less repressive than the czarist autocracy that preceded it. 

From The Fall of the Soviet Union, The History Channel

Housing in the USSR

Communist Era Housing in Russia

"Poverty and privation drove people from the countryside, while Soviet official industrialization campaigns encouraged (and sometimes forced) their movement to cities. From the 1920s into the 1950s, a significant number of Soviet families lived in communal apartments, while many lived in worse conditions in barracks or "dormitories" (mass housing for workers). For many families, gaining a room in a communal apartment represented a step up in their housing, especially if they found themselves in the most desirable cities of Moscow or Leningrad. Like Iraida Yakovlevna from "A Room for Her Daughter," many people without housing, especially people from the rural areas, tried to get work as janitors so as to gain a room in the city.

"In the Soviet Union, housing in cities belonged to the government. It was distributed by municipal authorities or by government departments based on an established number of square meters per person. As a rule, tenants had no choice in the housing they were offered. Rent and payment for communal services like water and electricity did not form a significant part of a family's budget. They did not cover the real costs, and were subsidized by the government.

From Communal Living in Russia

Free Education

"The goal of education policy was to teach the masses how or read and write, and channel talented young people into science and technology. It was oriented more towards meeting the needs of society and the state rather than fostering individual development. Schools were free, compulsory, universal and classless and were used disseminate Communist doctrine as well as educate children. The set of ethics stressed the primacy of the collective over the interests of the individual. Therefore, for both teachers and students, creativity and individualism were discouraged.[Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

"The Soviet system dictated what classes university students would take and decided what jobs they would take after they graduated.

From Education in the Soviet Era

Zero Unemployment

"the right and the duty to work were enshrined in the Constitution of the USSR"

From The Soviet Union Achieving Full Employment

• There were no unemployment benefits.
• If you were out of a job for more than four months you were legally labeled a "parasite" and could go to prison.

Millennials and Socialism

Jessica Litras, a self-confessed Millennial, notes five reasons Millennials are considered selfish.  Along the way, she notes a few points which, although not selfish, will definitely get you on the wrong side of a socialist government.  Her five points are:

1. Glued to their phones - we have adopted the innovative life.
2. Love social media - we like to promote our lives and our accomplishments.
3. Spend lots of money - we are more concerned about living in the present than denying ourselves something so we can have a better future.
4. No rush for marriage or kids - we don't want to share our lives with others or reproduce
5. Put themselves first  - we make decisions based on whether or not it will make us happy.

Here is the rub.  Each of these things won't play well in a socialist world where every act, every word, every thought, must first be about how does this make things better for everyone else?

The innovative life - Innovation is based on creativity and creativity is based on individuality and the opportunity to explore different ways of looking at things.  Looking at things in an unapproved way in a socialist country is how you get to be unemployed and unemployable, if not in jail.

Promoting yourself and your accomplishments is all about you, the individual.  That is about as anti-socialist as you can get.  There is no place in socialism for the needs, wants, or accomplishments of the individual, unless they are for the good of everyone.

Spending lots of money - good luck with that.  Money, as we know it, doesn't exist in socialism.

No rush for marriage or kids - "we don't want to share..."  That pretty much says it all.  Selfish behaviors are frowned on in socialism.

Will it make us happy? - Socialism is not about your individual happiness.  It is all about the happiness of the collective.  If you make decisions because they make you happy, eventually the socialists will throw you in jail for it.

Litras admits that "It’s made millennials open, outspoken and more comfortable with not only what they to say, but the person that they are."

All of this little jaunt through some historical facts entirely avoids the human costs of implementing socialism.  It doesn't speak to the millions who have died because they were 'too selfish' to live a life dedicated to the common good where even their thoughts and every word had to be unoffensive to the government and its officials.

The bottom line here is this.  The propaganda and misinformation about socialism is that it is all about doing what is good and right.  The reality is that socialism is all about doing and thinking what you are told to do.  No more, and no less.  So individualism, all those things that make you who you are, those things that make you standout, they are not tolerated in socialism.  

The only thing tolerated in socialism is blind obedience to the orders of those above you. 

Is that really what Millennials want?  I don't think so.  But, it is what they are working hard to get.

~

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.