by Raymond Blacketer

Created on: April 21, 2008   Last Updated: July 26, 2009

Does Socialism work? To find out the answer to this question, all we have to do is visit the nearest Native American reservation. While it is fashionable to blame high unemployment rates, economic stagnation and ill-health on the effects of being a conquered peoples, I maintain that it is due to Native peoples adherence to the socialistic tribal structure, both culturally and economically.

I am always amazed with people who advocate socialism as a solution to the problems facing us. I would venture to say that those individuals have never lived or worked in a socialistic society. If they had, they would see that socialism only can work on a very limited and small scale.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand tells a story about a motor company in which the credo, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need", was applied. In this story, it shows how the company deteriorates because people soon learn that to get what they want, they have to prove how needy they are. Each person has to show that "their" need is greater than another's, and those with ability end up working more and more to provide for the "needs" of others. In other words, they were slaves to the "collective".

Aguste Comte, in his Catechisme Positiviste, said that "[the] social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service.... This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, who we are entirely."

"The social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of rights'. This sentence needs to be burned into our souls.

Altruism also has been defined as, "serving others through placing their interests above one's own."

When the state decides to put altruism into practice the method used is socialism.

I was raised in what Indian's call the "dominant" society of the 1950's and 1960's in a little logging town in Oregon. At one time I asked my father why we did not live by the old reservation around other Indian's and he replied, "I didn't want you kids raised with the belief that somebody owed you something". He also was adamant that we work for whatever

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