Two free-market economists, Robert Lawson of Southern Methodist University and Benjamin Powell of Texas Tech University, have pulled off a marvelous stunt. Their just-published book, Socialism Sucks, is a humorous travelogue about their experiences in various socialist and allegedly socialist countries in the last few years. The book, subtitled “Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World,” is the best in this genre since fellow drinker P.J. O’Rourke’s 1998 book, Eat the Rich. The humor is not quite as good as O’Rourke’s—how could it be?—but the economic insights are better. (Disclosure: I informally mentored Powell when he was an assistant professor 15 years ago.)
Why this book and why now? The reason, the authors note, is that so many people today, especially young people, say they favor socialism. It’s important, therefore, to point out what real socialism is—government ownership of the means of production—and what its effects are: at best, economic stagnation, and at worst, widespread starvation with millions of accompanying deaths. They point out that in 2017 the New York Times did a series on socialism with “little focus on the intentional mass killings carried out by socialist regimes.” That’s like a series on Nazi Germany with only tangential reference to the Holocaust.
These are the opening paragraphs of “Socialism Has Failed. Period.” It was published today at Hoover’s Defining Ideas. It’s my review of Socialism Sucks. As probably will be obvious if you read the review, I highly recommend it. Not only did I find it funny but also I found myself saying while reading each chapter “I didn’t know that.”
READER COMMENTS
Mark Brady
Aug 7 2019 at 7:26pm
David writes, “Not only did I find it funny but also I found myself saying while reading each chapter “I didn’t know that.””
That’s good to know, and suggests that we all have something to learn from the book.
Marc
Aug 7 2019 at 8:34pm
While I know it’s fun to “laugh at the silly young progressives, wishing for state ownership of the means of production,” I think we need to acknowledge that what they tend to prefer is nowhere close to China of the 70s or Brezhnev-era USSR. When they think socialist, they think current Germany or Denmark or Canada, not Cambodia or Bulgaria. To most of them, I would be willing to bet, socialism means social net and less inequality by taxing the uber wealthy, not what the authors are trying to correct them on.
I mean, we can all argue that there is a slippery slope there until we’re blue in the face, but I don’t think even France is anywhere close to gulag slave labor or nationalization of food production communes.
So bottom line: the authors want to argue that the kids don’t know what “real socialism” is. But maybe it is that the kids know exactly what it is that they like and the authors trying to argue otherwise are making a giant strawman worthy of burning man?
Rebes
Aug 7 2019 at 9:31pm
I had a similar reaction. We don’t need proof that life in Venezuela or North Korea sucks, nobody doubts that.
The real comparison is to Canada, Australia and various European countries. Taxes are a price for services provided by the government. Taxes are high there, but they are high here as well. When you compare all these countries to the US and ask what do people pay to the government and what do they get back, I think you will find that people get more bang for their buck in these countries. Somebody should write a book with the title “The US Government Sucks.”
David Henderson
Aug 7 2019 at 10:36pm
I bet that Lawson and Powell would be open to writing a book with the title “The U.S. Government Sucks.” I’ve read a lot of their work and I’m pretty sure they think that.
Christophe Biocca
Aug 7 2019 at 10:04pm
The problem with “Canada/Germany/Denmark/etc” is that the comparison axis no longer is capitalism/socialism, but “Mixed Economy Grab Bag 1” vs “Mixed Economy Grab Bag 2”:
The Nordic countries have no legislated minimum wages (the effective minimum wages you’ll hear quoted sometimes come from more-or-less formal agreements between industry and trade unions).
Canada has had lower corporate tax rates historically (until the latest US cut), lower federal spending as a percentage of GDP, and has been signing free trade agreements with just about every country they can.
Germany aggressively reformed unemployment insurance, lowering benefits, and dropping the unemployment rate from ~10% to ~3% nowadays (better than the US).
France/Italy have more private than public highways.
Japan’s trains and subways are often private, especially in the denser metropolitan regions.
And all of these countries spend less on their “socialized” health care systems than the US spends on just Medicaid/Medicare.
It’s not clear at all that the US is less socialist/dirigiste than these countries nowadays, or that adding a $15 minimum wage (higher than anywhere else) on top of existing laws will make use “closer” to either their policy mix or their outcomes.
David Henderson
Aug 7 2019 at 10:35pm
They answer the kinds of concerns you raise. I recommend that you read the book. You’ll find that they are not dealing with straw men.
Mark Z
Aug 8 2019 at 1:27am
I’m not inclined to take it for granted that, say, Bernie Sanders or Ocascio-Cortez would stop nationalizing, regulating, taxing, and redistributing at a point significantly short of genuine socialism. Look at the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America: they are not social democrats. They’re socialists. Are their members and supporters really so oblivious to their platform?
I don’t think most young American self-identified socialists want Sweden; none of the ones I’ve actually met want it. I don’t think they’re actually so moderate; I think they’re Fabians – even if subconsciously- will pretty much always seem a more nationalized, planned society than what’s given, until they’re stopped and forced to retreat.
And I don’t the western European ‘socialist’ parties are that different. Did Francois Hollande reach a point where he realized France wasn’t capitalist enough? No: he lost an election. That’s the only thing keeps socialism moderate, imo, the prospect of electoral defeat. Iow, socialists are on their best behavior when the most members in society are convinced that socialism is bad.
Mark Z
Aug 8 2019 at 1:29am
*members of society. I’ll blame my phone for the typos.
MG
Aug 8 2019 at 8:03am
Thanks to link previously referenced in this site, I found a few “gems” Casey Mulligan worked on while in his stint on the Council of Economic Advisors. Here is a must read.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-Opportunity-Costs-of-Socialism.pdf
Casey develops a similar case, but develops the why one must always start with the basket cases to get a better picture of how the core inconsistencies of socialism make it very hard to stay a course that leads to the best suburb in Sweden. No matter how hard American Socialists raise the “democratic not totalitarian” or the “social safety net not outright confiscation” caveats…it will be hard producing the “Heaven on Earth”…strawman that our current crop of American Democratic Socialists promise. For example, Casey walks you through the “orthodoxy compromises” true believers will have to make if they want to emulate the more acceptable welfare states, and especially the “financial compromises” (e.g., the depth and breadth of taxation) that are required to deliver in the better of them — which is still far from paradise, even in cultural and demographic settings more favorable to such experimentation than the US writ large. These are some of the realities that American Socialists need to know and acknowledge they know.
Now to Beer. I think this book is still useful, because it does present a lot of the same in a more accessible way. I would encourage the authors to go one step further on the beer allegory in order to address what I postulate would be a typical millennial reaction the author’s “socialism strawman”. “Yeah, of course I want great beer, smart phones, and Netflix, and Uber, etc. and those are “easy” for markets to deliver. But I also want quality and affordable primary and higher education, health care, and – they may throw in broadband, because they hate Comcast — and I can’t see the market leading us there from where we are now. Besides just challenging them with “and neither will socialism” they could also show them this picture
https://fee.org/articles/americas-amazing-beer-renaissance-revealed-in-a-single-chart/
Ask them whether faced with the product landscape we faced in the mid 1970’s, anyone would have bet that we could end up with our current marketplace for beer. And ask them whether they think central planning and an arsenal of government regulations or…markets and an arsenal of consumers and brewers could have produced. Just “could have”, we know which did. And a system that can produce such a transformation, should it not be given a try.
GregP
Aug 8 2019 at 9:56am
Since we’re talking about socialism, you might also be interested in this book:
https://iea.org.uk/publications/socialism-the-failed-idea-that-never-dies/
which I highly recommend, the first and tenth chapters being the most insightful. This book might also be of interests to those that think that the ideas that are argued against here and elsewhere are “a lazy straw men” of socialism, since almost a quarter of the book are quotations from various prominent socialists, and what they believe that socialism is and how what they considered socialism changed with time.
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 8 2019 at 12:49pm
Is the building and maintenance of public schools (including universities) an act of socialism? Is the building and maintenance of public parks an act of socialism?
Answers to both of these questions (and one could pose many more) are generally nuanced and in most cases shaped by the respondent’s own bias. It goes to show that this whole argument is specious and a waste of time. A better use of economists efforts would be to argue for free trade and immigration.
David Henderson
Aug 8 2019 at 1:54pm
You wrote:
Yes on both. Remember that socialism is defined as government ownership of the means of production. When I taught at the Naval Postgraduate School and taught U.S. military officers, I occasionally reminded them that, after 1991, they worked for one of the largest remaining socialist enterprises.
Maybe the answer is sometimes shaped by the respondent’s own bias, but that doesn’t mean that it should be. So no, the argument is neither specious nor a waste of time. You might find it uninteresting; I don’t.
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 8 2019 at 2:05pm
My somewhat tongue in cheek comment was meant to point out that there are a lot of socialistic enterprises/activities in the US. As you point out, indirectly, that you were employed by one of these enterprises for a good number of years. Does that make you a complicit socialist? I think not. What it does point out is that there is a lot of name calling going on by both sides rather than examining issues closely.
I think it was Krugman who pointed out that Iowa might be the most socialistic of all the states in the US given how much their agriculture is being subsidized by the USG in the form of ethanol subsidies and now direct payments to soybean farmers. Who woulda thunk it???
RPLong
Aug 8 2019 at 4:12pm
I haven’t read the book yet, although I plan to. When you read it, Alan, did you find that they generally failed to make the case for free trade and immigration, and instead dwelled too much on non-nuanced discussions of public parks?
Mark Z
Aug 8 2019 at 8:41pm
How is ‘socialism’ name-calling, when they’re using the term to describe people who call themselves socialists? Moreover, do you not recognize the difference between believing that a few exceptional industries are natural public goods that the government can provide them more efficiently than , and believing that most industries ought to be nationalized? Why group anyone who isn’t an an-cap with socialists?
Additionally, I suspect the authors of this book may believe that state-run education is also a bad idea for much the same reason socialism in other industries is a bad idea. I expect they – and many economists, including many economists on the left – would agree that, even if one wants the state to provide some resource for moral reasons, it should do so by taxation and redistribution, not by taking over the production of that good itself.
On education in particular, Bryan Caplan is even half-right, then the US likely wastes more resources on socialized education than it loses through trade restrictions, in which case the former could justifiably take precedence over the latter.
Sam M
Aug 13 2019 at 11:06pm
Someone may call themselves a socialist and be referring to a more conservative version of that classification, they don’t typically mean they are socialist in a traditional sense. Attacking a modern socialist by bringing up seizing the means of production, or attacking other beliefs they don’t hold, is where the name calling comes in. Misrepresentation of revised socialism.
As to recognition of “a few exceptional industries”, again, I think this is where the name calling, or possibly accidental misrepresentation comes in. Most modern socialists see socialism as seizing those few exceptional industries, not all means of production. They believe the current exceptions ought to be expanded upon, in addition to increased taxes on the wealthy. Capping the surplus, if you will.
In regards to that second paragraph where you state “even if one wants the state to provide some resource for moral reasons, it should do so by taxation and redistribution, not by taking over the production of that good itself.”, what are you implying? As opposed to government run schools, we enable privately run schools with funding? If that is what you mean I would agree the idea is compelling, but a possible flaw would be accessibility to education for lower class families; the inherent flaw in several industries, such as healthcare, in the eyes of the American left.
Billy Kaubashine
Aug 9 2019 at 10:27am
Government doesn’t need to own the means of production in order to screw up an economy. Too much taxation and/or regulation (and the inevitable ‘Regime Uncertainty’ that stems from the threat of such) can do as much harm as the central planning mistakes that always occur under communism.
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