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Aug. 30, 2019 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
18:17
Delusions of Grandeur: Socialism Is A Fool's Errand

It's hard enough to plan and manage one's own individual life, is it not? It's foolish to think you can even plan the life of another single individual...You can't!...But to believe that you can plan the lives of hundreds of millions of people? This is a complete fantasy!

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Time Text
Why Socialism Fails 00:10:23
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
Good morning.
Great to be with you again, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We want to talk a little bit about socialism and I guess our viewers won't be surprised, but we don't think a whole lot about socialism.
We think nothing positive about it anyway.
Unless it's totally voluntary, which is permissible in a libertarian society, but that's not what these clowns are advocating now.
You know, all the candidates for president, they're trying to outdo everybody on socialism.
But socialism, you know, and some of these principles have been known all the way back to Plato, and there's been this argument about people following the dominance of a government and telling people what to do versus liberty, which has been certainly tested well and successfully in many ways in our country with our Constitution.
But I like to remind people by a story of our beginning, and that is what happened at Plymouth Colony in 1620.
When that was settled, I guess they were a little bit nervous, so they decided to have a commune.
Everybody would work.
Everybody would put it into the same hopper, and then the governor would divvy it up and pass it out, and everybody would be happy.
And they even understood this.
That's what they actually believed in before they came over.
But I guess they were a bit nervous and decided, well, we better be careful and make sure everybody's taken care of, make sure this experiment works.
But lo and behold, total surprise or shock or disappointment, it didn't work.
They kept it for two and a half years and people starved to death.
There was no incentive to work.
The families didn't cooperate and the people were unhappy.
And finally, Governor Bradford decided, you know, this commune stuff isn't working.
And they knew about the other.
So he says, everybody gets private property.
We're going to give people plots of land.
It's going to be your land.
And amazingly, production went way up and the people had excesses.
They were able to even trade with outsiders.
It became very prosperous.
And that was the introduction, really, to capitalism to our country with a lot of ups and downs since then.
But I think this story has been told so often by libertarians and free market people.
But the interesting thing is this story used to be in our textbooks for the kids to read in school.
But as the years moved along and the progressives took over the school system, you don't read that.
You have to go somewhere else, you know, to find out about this story because you don't want to be encouraged to be self-reliant.
So, Chris, that's what our country initially was born into was a socialist system in competition with an incentive system of private property.
And that argument goes on right now.
And look at what's happening right now.
There's people actually getting a lot of credibility from our media.
I'm a socialist now.
Used to be, people wouldn't say that.
That was not a good word.
But the media says it's good.
So I guess the conditioning of our universities and our media and all has made it so that socialism is something you have to give serious consideration to.
But I wish they would learn the lesson of Plymouth Colony.
No, they never learned, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, I was watching Elizabeth Warren.
She put out some tweet bragging about how she has a plan for everything.
And, you know, people make fun of her that she has a plan for this, plan for that.
And she goes, yeah, I do.
You know, that's a good thing.
I have plans for everything.
You know, give me a break.
You know, I'm just one person out of 300 million Americans.
And even in my own simple life, with all the moving parts, I can't even imagine trying to plan my neighbor's life, let alone the lives of 300 million Americans.
I mean, for the socialists, is your life not enough for you?
The only life that you can control, you have to con people into believing that you can move everything around like it's a game board.
It's a total fantasy, but it sells.
And that's why it still lives, this bad idea.
And, you know, the 1900s was the socialist century of mankind.
Socialism ruined Britain.
It ruined China.
It ruined Russia.
They had hundreds of millions dead in the most extreme cases, not even from wars, just from starvation.
But, you know, like I said, it's a siren song.
People love to hear that something's going to be given them for free.
We just have to continue to counter it.
Right.
And as you were talking about Warren and all her plans and papers and trying to manage the world, what people should do and eat and what they can say and where they can go and what we should do around the world.
It just dawned on me that it's exactly the opposite of what a libertarian society is all about.
Because the libertarian philosophy doesn't need a thousand pages of plans.
It means, though, that you have a method where there are more plans and there's more diversity by letting individuals do their own planning.
Now, that's what you call diversity and freedom and choices that people can make.
But when one individual who's running for president had all these plans, what a threat.
Because somebody might think that sounds like a good idea.
And obviously, there's a few people doing this because there's a lot of people at least pretending that they support the people who are promoting communism.
Well, they don't call it communism, but communism, socialism, fascism, it's all the same thing.
It's authoritarianism, which covers all the bases where the government controls us.
But if you truly want a good plan, have a government to protect liberty, which is our Constitution.
It would and could have done a much better job.
But the warning by the founders that it won't work if you don't have a moral society.
So we've drifted away from that morality that encouraged self-reliance, you know, and taking care of oneself and getting satisfaction from that.
So we've moved away from that, and therefore they need more and more plans.
I think the least amount of written plans and rules and regulations, the better.
But when you think of our Declaration of Independence, one of the biggest beef was all the government agents and all the regulators and the bureaucrats that were coming in and telling the colonists exactly what to do and taxing without representation.
So the goal was to let everybody make their own decisions, but there was no authority where those individuals could use force against each other.
And of course it was implied, but not loudly and clearly enough, the government shouldn't be able to use force either.
And that's what the problem is, is with Warren's program, all these regulations that say it sounds good.
Yeah, this would be good if we do this.
But they don't say, well, how do we do this?
Well, we have a bureaucrat and we have politicians and we have guns and we have to tax people and regulate people.
So they don't talk about that.
They just say, well, we have a plan to make sure everybody has free education.
And the gullible are motivated to accept that.
And it is that temptation that has existed all the way back throughout history.
And it's only been gradual that there's been confidence built in the system that emphasizes the independence of an individual.
And this whole thing about, you know, it is only the collectivists that will give us diversity and choices.
I think exactly the opposite.
They are authoritarians and they want everybody to be rigid and follow their rules.
That's where the problem is.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
And not only are they kidding themselves that they can plan everybody's life and change everybody's life, but they can't even change Washington, even if they tried.
You know, President Trump had a lot of plans, most of which we don't agree with because they involve increasing the size and scope of government.
But one that we did agree with was bringing the troops home from Syria and Afghanistan.
And, you know, he could do this without asking anyone.
It's his constitutional authority to just bring the troops home.
He doesn't have to tell or ask anybody.
But, you know, what happened?
His advisors, people under him that he hired, came out in public and said, no, he's not going to do that.
And that was the end of it.
So Washington is entrenched with millions of bureaucrats.
And they have the major levers of communication with the media.
And as Dr. Paul said, the schools, they're very entrenched and they'll block any changes.
But the good thing is this, and it's a sad good thing, is they're going the way of all empires, which is bankruptcy.
It doesn't have to be changed by somebody sneaking in and making everything better.
They're bankrupting themselves, and that will provide an opening for the ideas of liberty.
You know, I think the understanding of economics has advanced since even the writing of the Constitution.
In monetary policy, I think there's a better understanding.
And I think the free market, modern-day economists have a better understanding of the downside of tariffs.
But there is a provision in the Constitution that says the government can have place tariffs.
But it was never meant to be multiple punitive tariffs and part of the foreign policy and on and on.
That is not what was meant, and what is it meant to be.
And it was never meant to be that it could be a political foreign policy weapon where the president has total control.
Because those who use the tariff argument in the Constitution say, well, very early on in our history, the Congress got together and they wrote this tariff law.
But the Congress wrote the law.
And today, the president just writes an executive order up and down and all over the place.
So it's economic planning in a negative way by the authority that has been usurped by the executive branch of government and a wimpish type of Congress that never pays much attention.
Power Over Others 00:07:34
We've mentioned it so often.
The Congress just goes along with the wars the executive branch starts and they finance the war and they're talked into believing that, well, if we don't support the war, we're un-American and we don't support the troops and all that nonsense.
So this is something that's been going on for a long time, but I think we're in better shape now to show that we actually have an advancement in the understanding of liberty, but it doesn't show up yet because right now, if they're looking towards socialism, they're just going back again.
And I'd like to just mention a couple things that I think motivate some people, because that fascinates me.
Why would people say all of a sudden socialism is okay?
Well, the propaganda is one thing.
The university professors and everything that we hear about.
So it's propaganda, it's education.
But there are other motivations.
Some of these people that call themselves socialists and they're very aggressive, I think they want power.
I think power is a motivation, sometimes more than their own personal benefits, you know, financial benefits.
They both come together usually, but some people just love power and they're not worried about, you know, big mansions and all the cash they're going to get.
They love and live off the idea that they have power over others.
But there's a lot of people who accept socialism, and you have to give them a little bit of leeway.
I think it's wrong-headed, but a lot of people are bleeding hearts because I've met them.
I don't think they want power, and they don't want to think that they control everything.
They really feel sorry for people that have a tough time, and they cannot understand that the freer the society, the less poverty you have.
They won't accept that, and they won't look into it.
So they have sympathies, so they go along with it.
And it has led over the many years now in this country and around the world.
It's no, we don't want socialism, but what we want is pseudo-socialism, a little bit here and a little bit there, until it grows and becomes a social system.
And that's what we're on the verge of.
We're on the verge of starting off with minor interventions to help those who need it, but gave up 100% of the principle: who's responsible for the poor people?
You know, it should be families, local communities, churches, voluntary organization.
But you sacrifice the principle of who's responsible and turn it over to the politicians.
So the bleeding hearts are motivated and they contribute to it.
And they're harder to somebody who wants to, you know, attack them because I give them the benefit of the doubt.
But then there's also the people on the receiving end.
And there's a group that love a free lunch.
I think that is human nature because if somebody can get by a little bit and get something and it's offered out there, oh, it's part of the law.
You know, I don't really endorse that program, but this is a law and we have to do it.
So we have to take it.
We have to participate.
So the free lunch, but it's also addicting.
And that's what happens.
It finally is addicted by society.
And you have a welfare state and it goes along with the warfare state.
And what happens then to our personal liberties and our constitutional rights?
They can't do anything other than be diminished.
Correct, Dr. Paul.
And I will finish by saying, you know, as Washington bankrupts itself, all the important work happens outside of Washington, like what Dr. Paul does.
He drives to the studio every day to wake people up that nobody is coming to live your life for you.
We're all individual sovereigns.
We are in charge of our own individual choices and the consequences of them.
And individuality does not mean that we all go into a cocoon and we don't need each other.
We need each other desperately, but it's how we interact with each other that libertarianism focuses on.
You know, if we have 300 million sovereigns in this country, the only rational, logical, and moral way for us to deal with each other is voluntarily.
No aggression, no using force to get what you want, and no using government to get what you want.
You know, and a society of liberty does not mean a society of perfection.
Absolutely not.
None of us are omniscient.
We're not all knowing.
We're all going to make mistakes all the time.
But we'll avoid the mistakes of socialism.
Hundreds of millions dead.
Mass starvation.
That's worth avoiding.
And like we even have historical evidence that just what our founders just set up in this last 200 years, that some great things happen when you're free.
You know, I think it's universal.
It's been throughout history, except for the very few.
People seek to be happy.
They'd like to be happy and satisfied and comfortable.
And that's sometimes the reason they drift over to authoritarianism because they're not happy and they're convinced it's because the government's not doing enough for them.
But I think that happiness is a legitimate thing.
But so often, this gets confused with equality.
You only can be happy if you have equal distribution of wealth like they did at the commune in Plymouth.
And it didn't work.
So yes, the goal may be right.
But I think it's satisfaction.
I think people should be satisfied with what they do.
And I think self-reliance gives true satisfaction for people, no matter what level they are, whether it's small income, low income, or wealthy income.
People get satisfied for their accomplishments.
And I think that is what a lot of people don't realize is that the satisfaction comes from that.
I think in a free society, responsibility goes to the individuals.
It isn't built on greed and hate like it's what's happening now.
But people are then free to pick and choose how they want to live and what it is that produces this happiness.
And I think it's seeking excellence, trying to do a better job.
I think this is great.
When I watch some of my grandkids, even when our kids were swimming, and this happens, you know, they might not win the race, but your time is better than last time.
You know, and it's satisfying.
You know, that people, no, they didn't get the blue ribbon, but I did better than I did last week.
It's that satisfaction of working for excellence.
And involved in this also, if you accept these principles, I think this is what the nature of virtue is all about, is the self-reliance.
You say, yes, but there's still going to be poor people.
Yeah, there's going to be some poor people and difficulties.
But I tell you one thing that I'm convinced of.
There's a lot of things I give leeway and give people a path.
But one thing that I am absolutely convinced of, that if you want more people taken care of more fairly and happier in a society, the freer the society has to be.
I think if there's no other lesson that we learned in our early history, that we had the freest society ever and the most productive and we're still benefiting by it, but we're consuming our wealth quickly.
We're consuming the value of our currency.
We're consuming the benefits of our liberties.
So that is going to disappear unless we restore these basic principles that I think are so important.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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