Why Socialists Need Capitalism

... and since they invariably destroy it soon after taking power, it is why it invariably fails, at least once they've run out of other people's money.

From the Oleg Atbashian at People's Cube:

Have you heard of the shocking and terrifying diaper gap that is now dividing this nation? It is said to be so dire that the White House is urging immediate government assistance to buy baby diapers. Philosophically, this puts disposable plastic consumer products in the category of inalienable rights guaranteed by the government: among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Diapers.

When I lived in the USSR, our Soviet Constitution also guaranteed that our basic needs be provided to us by the caring socialist government. As a result, most basic items were in shortage, let alone such luxury items as coffee or toilet paper. Needless to say, we never even heard of disposable diapers. For our three children, we used pieces of cloth which we washed regularly. We didn't complain or feel disadvantaged because -- I repeat -- we had no idea there was such a thing as disposable diapers. Those only existed in the decadent West, where greedy corporations created such a product to boost their capitalist profits. But we were blocked from this information by the Iron Curtain, and what we didn't know couldn't hurt us.

Now I live in America, where the decadent capitalist diapers are about to become a basic "human right" guaranteed by the federal government.

About twenty years ago no one used cell phones because they hadn't yet been created by greedy capitalist corporations, who have since covered the planet with a network of cellular towers. Now free cell phones -- known as Obamaphones -- have become a "human right" guaranteed by the government.

Internet service didn't exist either, until greedy capitalist corporations surrounded the world with cables and satellites. Now Internet service has become a "human right" provided by the U.S. government to the needy.

Condoms, birth control pills, and other modern contraceptives also didn't exist until they were invented, researched, and mass-produced by greedy capitalist corporations. Now they have become a basic "human right" guaranteed and provided by the government.

Vaccines for Ebola and other exotic diseases didn't exist until they were developed by greedy capitalist corporations and almost immediately declared a "human right" for anyone in the Third World. 

Healthcare with all its modern diagnostic equipment, appliances, treatments, and a vast array of pharmaceuticals, from Tylenol to Viagra, also didn't exist until greedy capitalist corporations...

And so on and so forth.

Capitalism just keeps churning out all these new products, which our increasingly socialist government then declares "human rights" and taxes these very producers in order to provide their products to the people for free.

Some call it harmonious coexistence, but there's a catch. The more the socialist government expands its functions by guaranteeing an ever expanding number of "human rights," the more it needs to tax capitalist producers, which undercuts their ability to develop, manufacture, and market new products. Once they reach a tipping point when capitalism is no longer viable, this will also end the propagation of "human rights" in the form of new goods and services.

Read the rest here:
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