I got this as an e-mail. It is a good lesson on how socialism does not work.
An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.
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> All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
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> But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.
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> The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.
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> Could not be any simpler than that....
The incentive argument is a
The incentive argument is a good one, however, there are crazy socialist/marxists that believe that socialism will create a "new man" unbeset by their own petty aims... *barf*
The argument that totally destroys socialism once and for all is the socialism calculation problem.
Taken from wikipedia:
Ludwig von Mises argued in a famous 1920 article "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" that the pricing systems in socialist economies were necessarily deficient because if government owned the means of production, then no prices could be obtained for capital goods as they were merely internal transfers of goods in a socialist system and not "objects of exchange," unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced and hence the system would be necessarily inefficient since the central planners would not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently.[3] This led him to declare "...that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth."
In other words, without a price system, there will be mass dislocation and chaos in the economic system. Think shortages, unused farm space, bread-lines, famines, over-production of unwanted goods etc... All of these things are 100% inevitable in a socialist system - this is why it cannot work!
"My theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline."
- Ludwig Von Mises
"My theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline."
- Ludwig Von Mises
I find these "incentive" explanations too simplistic
It is often stated that the lack of incentive is what drives socialistic societies to fail, but while there is some truth, it seems to me in true socialist societies there are still some forms of "incentive" to get ahead. It just is a different sort of incentive. In some cases, it is just to stay alive. However, in all historically socialist societies, the cronyism that develops is evidence that ways to "get ahead" still exist even if those ways are unethical and littered (not necessarily figuratively) with the corpses of rivals.
Ultimately, it seems to me that the real downfall of socialism consists of two big factors with any number of minor contributors. As I see it the big problems are:
1. it distorts the true markets and prevents efficient investment for thins like production and distribution.
2. probably the bigger factor is that the state consumes so much in the process only those in power can possibly make any headway.
good story
We see that it doesn't work on a small scale every day.
It could happen
I imagine that's exactly what would happen if a college professor did conduct such an experiment. But this has the look of an urban legend. The only detail is "Texas Tech." Why no name for the professor? If it had happened, I would expect it to be in the newspapers. The professor himself would write and lecture about it. Yet the email contains no reference or citation. Finally, having been an associate professor myself, I cannot imagine that the department would allow something like that to go down. For most undergrad classes, I was told how many students I could pass - information that I duly passed on to my classes. There was a limited amount of space in the follow-on classes. By telling my students how many would pass, I allowed the ones who were not doing well to make an informed decision about dropping out before the last day to do so without receiving a grade. I would have gotten a load of grief if I failed the entire class, because precious seats at the higher levels would go empty. In fact, it's virtually certain that I would have been told to contact all my students (not easy) and accommodate their schedules to give new final exams in order to meet a quota for passing grades.
If it's urban legend or not.
This is a good example of how socialism does not work.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
AKA GIVE ME FREEDOM
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
AKA GIVE ME FREEDOM
Thank you, I just copied and
Thank you, I just copied and pasted it.
Great argument against socialism.
“Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value - zero”. Voltaire-1729
www.4HUTS.com
“Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value - zero”. Voltaire-1729
www.4HUTS.com
Just copied
and sent it out. Good story.
Colchester, New London County, Connecticut
I got that too
a while back. Passed it all around. Hard to argue with. I had 1 person try to argue about health care and just explained how that is the mess it is now because of government intervention.
I agree that government intervention has been a huge problem
to Health Care, but I don't think more government intervention will improve anything.
Socializing US health care would be like Israel giving the Palestinians nuclear weapons because they have too many weapons.
Now go see this thread....
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/88449
They wonder what will spark the revolution?
I think you just nailed it.
It's when enough people realize they've been had and there's no way out.
I may not know the truth, but I know when I'm being lied to...
I may not know the truth, but I know when I'm being lied to...
The thing that I fear is
The thing that I fear is that people will let this happen, because they have been so brain washed by the media and government.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
AKA GIVE ME FREEDOM
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
AKA GIVE ME FREEDOM
Wow, this is
such a great example and so true. Big Bump
Prepare & Share the Message of Freedom through Positive-Peaceful-Activism.
It is a great illustration, but I can't
imagine a college professor being against socialism. :)
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
-Alexis de Tocqueville
There are a few.
Most economic professors are against socialism. They realize that with a socialistic society you have a less productive society. Take China for example they are a productive, but you need to look at why. China has a barrel of a gun pointed at the people at all times, thus they are forced to be productive.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
AKA GIVE ME FREEDOM
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
AKA GIVE ME FREEDOM
I would have dropped the class
I can't imagine this being real...
WE ARE GOING TO WIN!
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Personally
I believe it could happen. Back in the 60s I had a teacher that graded our class according to rows; two rows got Bs, two rows got Cs, and two rows got Ds. The next semester he switched the rows but didn't tell anyone beforehand how he was going to grade. Oh, and if you ever disagreed with Communism, he flunked you (I had to retake the course again in the summer).
That's when you report the
That's when you report the teacher. He should grade you based on what you've learned.
Yes, I have and will report a teacher that pulls any BS like that.