By Anthony Trevlac
- May 6, 2024
- 6-min read
If socialism ever officially ends up on the ash heap of history, where it certainly belongs, it will be because it is based at least one fundamental error. There is a fatal flaw in its basic approach that no amount of misdirection, finger-pointing, or excuse-making can overcome.
The problem is that socialism/Marxism/Democratic Socialism are all based on the assumption that groups are the dominant and fundamental operating units in a society. That notion is wrong. The embrace of it undermines everything on which it is based.
The individual is the building block of society, here and in every other nation. This has been true from the moment the first primordial sign of life appeared on the planet. This was billions of years ago, even before Keith Richards was born.
To recognize the primacy of the individual is not to say what government wants to be true: it is a statement about what is true. Opinions have no more impact on this than they do on determining the freezing temperature of water.
Putin or Xi or Biden can develop policies, tactics, and strategies that try to force groups to do something. But the people those policies affect react as individuals, not groups.
They may give an order to share food equally. But lots of people will disobey it given half a chance. They will care more about their own child than about another’s. They will care more about themselves than their neighbor. They may disobey any and every directive if they disagree with it, think ignoring it will help them, and are unlikely to be punished for their recalcitrance.
Lots of individuals will disobey an order if they can do it without getting shot or otherwise sanctioned. The fact that people don’t act in unison, without fail, every time, means that disparate outcomes are a certainty.
The exercise of executive fiat at the state and national levels led to disastrous policies during. Certainly, millions of people just said “ok” when told to wear a mask or stay home, but millions also told authorities to take a long walk on a short pier. This historical exercise should have told our government that trying to herd these cats is a pointless effort and doomed to fail.
One is astonished at time at how many people seem to just love to follow rules. They can’t want to be told what to do. And huge swaths of them don’t even give it a second thought. The feds say we have to wear yellow shirts, walk backwards, and yell “Spongebob rules” incessantly. Let’s do it! Don’t ask questions. Have they ever lied to us before?
Well, yes, they have.
