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Socialism at its most basic is a nice idea with only a single major flaw. Unfortunately, that flaw is a complete inability to work in the real world. Think about it from the point of view of the desired outcome. Everyone contributes what they can to society and then everyone takes what they need. No one is hungry or poor, the sick are taken care of and everyone is happy.

So why can't socialism succeed? It works against human nature. Fighting with those who live in the society rather than using their basic natures to succeed. These basic pieces of human nature that it fails on are those of risk and reward, empathy and momentum.

Risk and reward is the most basic part of the human decision structure. Every decision anyone makes is put through this filter whether they think about it or not. How much will I get and how much risk or cost is there to getting it. The answer in a capitalistic society is one of great complexity. Work hard and you might succeed or you might fail, don't work and you'll risk hunger. Yet in a socialist society the answer is quite simple. Risk remains similar, hard work and possible danger but there is no reward. In a true socialistic society hard work gives you no more than not working meaning that the correct decision is to do as little as possible.

To counteract this it is required for there to be some other reward. This reward in a socialist society is supposed to be feeling good about helping other people and feeling good about it. The general improvement of society. But human empathy doesn't work on the society scale. Human empathy works on a one on one scale. This means that I can convince my friends to help me move, and I can probably convince a stranger to help me change a tire on the side of the road, but it is nearly impossible to convince anyone to spend all day changing tires for people they never meet for the good of society. Another way of saying this is that a single death is a tragedy and a million deaths is a statistic.

Where all of this leads is societal momentum. Socialism can succeed for a short while because each person sees the rewards and societal momentum will move it forward, but as soon as a single person begins to slow down others will see that and slow down as well. This leads to more people slowing down and eventually the momentum slows and the government no choice but to admit the failure of the socialist system or try to change human nature.

In order to do this the socialistic government much change the risk to reward ratio. Because the reward must stay the same in order to remain socialism though the only choice is to change the risk. It is because of this that the government must create enforcers of work. And as the momentum of society changes the risk must be continually increased and soon the good intentions of the original founders of the society are gone and all that are left are the police, the prisons and a totalitarian government trying to understand why it is no longer socialist.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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