Socialism vs. Capitalism: One Clear Winner

by Kay Coles James,

The evidence is hard to refute.

There’s a reason that Amazon gives plenty of space for customer reviews on its site: People naturally want to make sure a product is good before they buy it.

Well, if that’s the case when it comes to books, stereos, refrigerators and thousands of other items, shouldn’t it also apply to something as important as your form of government?

I can’t help but think about that whenever I read about some poll indicating that a large number of Americans prefer socialism to capitalism. To me, it begs the question: Do they really know the “product” they’re touting, or have they been fooled by some vapid slogans?

Take Venezuela. I’m curious, for example, how many of the pro-socialism crowd are familiar with what’s happened to that oil-rich nation over the last two decades.

So what happened? According to The Atlantic:

“The experiment with ’21st-century socialism’ as introduced by the late President Hugo Chavez, a self-described champion of the poor who vowed to distribute the country’s wealth among the masses, and instead steered the nation toward the catastrophe the world is witnessing under his handpicked successor (Nicolas) Maduro, has been a cruel failure.”

That’s putting it mildly. And the track record elsewhere isn’t much better. From Albania and Angola to Vietnam and Yemen, socialism has produced little but violence, starvation and misery.

Economies rated “free” or “mostly free” in the latest edition enjoy incomes more than double the average levels in other countries, and more than five times higher than the incomes of people living in “repressed” economies such as Venezuela and Cuba.

The evidence is hard to refute. Consider what Bono, humanitarian and rock singer, says he’s learned in the course of spearheading numerous anti-poverty initiatives over the years:

“As a person who’s spent nearly 30 years fighting to get people out of poverty, it was somewhat humbling to realize that commerce played a bigger job than development. I’d say that’s my biggest transformation in 10 years: understanding the power of commerce to make or break lives.”

By “power of commerce,” of course, he means capitalism.

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