philbryson@gmail.com - Socialism's Issues Revealed

January 25, 2019December 13, 2021

The Open Borders of American Socialists

Conservatives are generally convinced that Democrats do not love open borders because of their great love for the Statue of Liberty. Socialists are seen as anxious for a continuous stream of illegal immigrants into the United States, especially into the state of California. Democrats assume that nearly all immigrants will vote democratic and in the state of California no ID is required to vote. Residents can register to vote on the basis of simply declaring citizenship on line and showing a paycheck or utility bill. One reads of voting officials soliciting votes from non-citizens as well as Democrats.

Our unsecured border is the source of many serious social problems. As I write this, the opioid crisis continues in unprecedented severity with deaths from overdose increasing each year. Our nation is currently locked in disagreement about national values. Many wish to establish security on our southern border. But the Democrats currently ignore the hundreds of thousands of drug-related deaths and untold agony among the citizenry stemming from the massive inflow of illegal drugs through the porous southern border. They deny any border crisis.

While the border crisis produced deaths, they studied Russian collusion carefully.

President Trump seeks a physical barrier on the border because the security measures of previous administrations have remained incomplete. Democrats have called the wall President Trump insists on “immoral.” But we remember clearly how Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi promised their base on national television when President Trump won the election that they would resist everything he tried to do. Thus, they resist a barrier on the border, although a few years earlier they stated unequivocally that we must have a border. They have not labeled the wall constructed by President Clinton immoral, nor have they sought to have it removed. Their obstruction and resistance at this point has descended to the level of childishness.

The open border encourages illegal entry into the United States. The peoples of the nations south of us understandably seek a better life. They learn of the many loopholes in our immigration laws and receive help from those who prey on potential immigrants to game those loopholes. Beginning In 2019, Caravan after caravan has organized to march off for the states. They know that under current law when they arrive at the border they need only claim they want asylum and they will be given a court date, then they will be released into the American populace. Naturally, when their court date arrives they will not report and will simply wait as “undocumented immigrants” for the next amnesty, remaining in the United States illegally. One can count on the democrats continuing to resist any restraints on illegal entry. Indeed, the heroes among them, including California’s new governor, will strive to increase the magnetic effect of our open borders by offering sanctuary (and welfare benefits) to all who seek them. These open border socialists do their best to protect criminals from both Mexican and American criminal law by attracting them with sanctuary policies. Socialists presume this Democrat position on immigration demonstrates their socialistic compassion. In fact it demonstrates contempt for the hundreds of thousands of American victims of immigrant crime.

California Governor Gavin Newsom (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Socialists look at crime probabilistically. They spread the myth that immigrants are better citizens than non-immigrants. They rationalize that crime exists anyway and moderately higher crime rates are merely a statistic that doesn’t concern them. (It especially doesn’t concern those more elite personalities who protect their personal wealth and security by building walls around their residences.) But for those who fall victim to the crimes of illegal aliens, losing loved ones and being victimized by gang members, such crimes are not mere abstract realities.

Honduran migrants in a caravan Photo by PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images)

The socialists also spread the absolutely false belief that President Trump’s insistence on a wall makes him a racist. It is false that he has ever decried law-abiding Mexicans or other Latinos as criminals. He has described criminal illegal immigrants as criminals, mentioning from time to time his respect and appreciation for those who are not criminals. He has made the statement that we want legal immigrants in the United States, especially since there is a labor demand for them, but you will not learn of his reasonable statements in the propaganda media. The socialistic tactic of labeling every individual and every policy they dislike as being racist is just the modern extension of a durable policy of refusing to argue the merits of policies, settling instead on simple name calling. They persist in believing that if you call a person evil long enough, you will be believed. Given the fact that the great majority of media outlets are propaganda distributors for the Democrat Party they are far too often correct in this belief.

Let us not forget that we have too many criminals crossing our open borders, and that the normal variety are supplemented by human traffickers, drug dealers, people crowding the lists of our security agencies as potential terrorists and gang members thriving on violence. These lowlifes are a threat not only to us who are citizens, but to the would-be illegal immigrants on whom they prey. Many women among the aspiring illegal immigrants are subject to rape and/or sexual abuse during their long journey north, and many children are simply sent off unaccompanied for our border. Many others are in the custody of individuals who are not their parents.

There has been a huge American outcry about the safety of children and “families” coming into the country illegally, with special concern about the separation of children from their families. If children may not be separated from their parents, one wonders when the democrats will propose filling American prisons with the children of inmates who have been separated from their criminal parents. All of the children at our borders, whether accompanied by parents or not, are victims of their parents’ decision to violate our immigration laws. Unfortunately, these future “dreamers” are also subject to predators who do much worse.

REVIEW AND UPDATE (December, 2021)

Since this was published in January 2019, I.P. Joe Biden was installed as President of the United States and has demonstrated that open border policies are indeed the preference of socialists. At one point, it could only be said that open borders was a democratic preference. Now, however, that the party has been turned over peacefully to the socialists, it can be designated a socialist preference.

The Biden Administration open border policies have been implemented not by law, but by presidential executive order. The President of the United States is designated as the chief officer for the implementation of our country’s laws. Currently, Biden has clearly discarded the immigration laws of the United States and has written his own laws opening the borders of our country to anyone who seeks to flee poverty and service new markets in our country. Except where they have been blocked by courts, the Biden administration has reversed all the immigration policies of President Trump, cancelled the building of a wall along the border, and made it clear to the interested people of all nations that the United States is now open to all who would choose to be residents here.

The magnet effect of administration announcements has helped produce all-time record numbers of illegal immigrants. The magnetic attraction of Biden’s policies are particularly strong on criminals — what better place can a criminal find than the United States, where police are defunded and denigrated in any attempt to perform their duties? I.V.P. Harris has warned people not to expect an end to Antifa and BLM looting, burning, and destroying public and private property, and she also announced such lawlessness should not end! The magnetic effect is also strong for drug dealers, whose work continues to extend the epidemic of American drug overdose deaths. It is strong as well for sex traffickers who bring many children to the border without their parents. These children may meet the future demands of pedophiles as the socialists and democrats increase their political advocacy for decriminalization of pedophilia. Further, promises of government welfare program expansion, e.g., free higher education, free healthcare, child care, and other welfare benefits, are promised by the administration for all who will come. This December (2021) U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials announced that 1.8 million illegal immigrants had entered our borders this past year. This is the number of illegals we know about because they were apprehended; we can only guess at how many were not apprehended by border agents as they were entering the country.

We have witnessed the magnet effects of socialist/democrat policy announcements and policy advocacy in the form of well-published congressional efforts in preparing “build back better” legislation. Never has there been such an onslaught of our southern border. For the socialists, it is not worth mentioning how many people actually die on the hazardous journey northward or how many suffer sexual abuse on the way.

The socialists/democrats do not publicize how many enter our borders infected with Covid. Many of these are flown from the border to some of numerous cities who receive these individuals, criminals, drug dealers, pandemic afflicted victims of the socialist magnet. Most Americans want serious and desirable border policies to control immigration, admitting the numerous legal immigrants that can successfully be assimilated according to reason and compassion. But it would also sort out the criminals, drug dealers, and violent gang members. What the Biden Administration has accomplished is simply sadistic criminality.

January 24, 2019June 14, 2019

The Ideal Solution

There Is a Solution to the Problem of Socialism

There can be light and hope ahead for humanity

After having posted many essays on this site, I was recently pondering on some eternal principles and timeless values. It occurred to me that all of these essays have been essentially negative in tone. They had to be, of course, since my goal is to make our world safer and healthier by helping it avoid a seductive social order that would prove as deleterious to us as it has to all previous societies which have attempted to establish and maintain a socialistic system. My blogs have been negative because socialism threatens to be a devastating negative for our future.

A Favorable Prospect. Implicit in all my work has been the assumption that a society is best ordered to be productive when it is based on the market, free enterprise system. In order to function properly, that system requires commercial and personal freedoms, and those will also be attended by religious and cultural freedoms for the individual. In that environment the economy can function efficiently and the market’s inherent incentive structures will open paths to individual and collective success. People will be motivated to care for each other through healthy institutions so that the less productive and viable individuals, whether from misfortune or incapacity, will not fail to prosper. This favorable prospect assumes that society is able to avoid the toxic trap of socialism in any of the historical forms thoroughly analyzed in the book Socialism.

The American dream is based on the freedom of the individual.

Whether a successful market system can be restored and maintained is an open question. The book just mentioned reviewed the effort pursued by the Obama administration to revive socialism in the United States and thereby weaken or eliminate the institutions of free enterprise. Since the arrival of the Trump administration there has been a struggle for the restoration of market institutions; the outcome of that struggle remains highly uncertain as of this writing. If many of the Obama initiatives can in fact be reversed, the favorable prospect can be realized.

A Utopian Solution. What I wish to introduce in this essay is the notion that there exists in concept a solution, even a panacea for the problem of socialism. This utopian solution is in some quarters well known, but given little heed in contemporary life. After having written numerous negative chapters on socialism and its hazards, I wanted here to write a positive one on that utopian solution. I am hopeful, of course, that the favorable prospect discussed above can be realized. I am not really optimistic that the utopian or ideal prospect can be achieved in our time. Imperfect man in imperfect society will not even attempt the solution, although many individuals in the world might be willing to do so.

If the attempt were supported and promoted by a significantly large proportion of the population, the aggregate effect might bring us closer to a bright future. I remain pessimistic, but wish nevertheless to describe in the most succinct terms this utopian prospect. It involves religious principles, so if you are one of the modern sophisticates who reject religion out of hand, there is no purpose in your reading further. But I would invite you to read the last paragraph of this blog to realize that the appropriate secular philosophy expresses the same principles in non-religious terms.

I have now written hundreds of pages on the problem of socialism, so I believe I can express the core dilemma concisely. Socialists wish to achieve utopia by dividing society, declaring war and eliminating those who stand in the way of social justice. The core of Marxian analysis is constructed on the notion of class struggle. We in America don’t understand the class struggle as Europeans do; although classes are much weaker today than in Marx’s time, their informal influence remains apparent in most parts of Europe. Those who study Marxism are exposed to it, are immersed in it, and have it enmeshed with their internal organs. They see the class enemy in racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and in all the other social divisions they wish to denounce, exploit, and promote.

Karl Marx, spiritual father of socialism

Socialism wishes to divide society as Marx did with his proletarians (workers) and bourgeoisie (property holders). These constitute the working class and the ruling class. His answer was to organize and begin the revolution. The bourgeoisie was to be destroyed and when only the oppressed class remains to live and rule, social problems disappear. It will be essential, of course, to establish the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to crush any remnants of private property or control over any of the means of production. The ruling class will be anxious to conduct some sort of counter-revolution to have their property and privileges restored after the revolution; socialists are determined not to permit that.

Socialism has sought to eliminate personal and commercial freedoms to keep power in the hands of the victorious working class and to eliminate all vestiges of the ruling class, thus unifying society. The motive of achieving unity and love is pursued by the destruction of the opposing class. Today, socialists use identity politics to divide society into groups or classes with the objective of uniting the oppressed ones to achieve victory over the wealthy, the white supremacists, the racists, the oppressors, the discriminators, the misogynists, and all the others. After, or in lieu of the victory, there must be a thorough-going redistribution of incomes in favor of the poor and in pursuit of social equality. In a 900 page book I have shown the numerous failures of societies which have attempted through Marxian principles to collectivize the effort to achieve personal and social economic success.

Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline, and the Attempted Revival in the United States

The utopian or ideal prospect comes through the teachings of the first individual to teach the counter-intuitive answer to the social dilemma at the root of poverty. Rather than teaching that man’s happiness must be based on the possession of this world’s goods, on commanding influence or power over other people, and on receiving recognition for the achievement of social standing, he taught an altogether different doctrine. Rather than dividing society into deplorables and acceptables, he taught the unity of men. Each and every individual born on this planet could call its creator “Father.”

All men are in fact brothers; our first parents were created in the image of the creator. Various commandments were supplied for those willing to accept this counter-intuitive doctrine of the brotherhood of all men. The commandments were a road map to the happy and productive life; the first was that we should love God, the Creator of all. The second was that we were to love our fellow men as we love ourselves. We were to be united in this love and to devote our lives to caring for those around us who require assistance. Although many who have pursued this counter-intuitive path to happiness testify that this doctrine really does bring happiness, too few are willing to give it a try to achieve the longed for social utopia. However, this was written just subsequent to the natural disasters of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and others. The overwhelming outpouring of humanitarian assistance and concern manifest in that period made one wonder whether private-sector contributions might not be able to move us beyond sole reliance on big-brother government to meet all our social needs and lift the poor among us.

What promotes happiness more than money? Being rescued, but especially doing the rescuing!

With the freedom and incentives of the free enterprise system in place, enough would be produced to provide abundance for humankind. Even without complete, universal acceptance of the unifying principles of fraternal love and social harmony, society’s diverse interests could coexist and people could pursue their personal lives with tolerance and respect for others’ freedoms. This utopian or ideal prospect could be spelled out, of course, in much greater detail, although this is not the place for that. I can also suggest where additional information on the ideal prospect can be found, but here I wanted merely to indicate that the dark side of socialism need not depress us. It is not necessary to take violence to the streets either to impose or to free ourselves from the lowering tyranny socialism threatens for our future.

The principles of the free market as explicated by Adam Smith are completely compatible with the “religious” principles I have mentioned above. Adam Smith expressed that compatibility in his famous book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. As a philosopher and moralist, Smith simply applied Christian values to the economic system he analyzed in his later masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations. So if you are against religion or biased against Christianity, you should realize that you need not believe in Christ’s divinity. You should simply be aware that his teachings make clear that the pursuit of either wealth, influence, fame, or power (not to mention all of the above) will not bring happiness. But loving and serving those around you are the counter-intuitive secrets that you can discover only through your own personal experimentation.

Adam Smith knew whereof he spoke. Upon his death he could have been expected to be affluent, if only on the basis of the publication of his books. But as they investigated the affairs of the deceased they discovered that he really had nothing more than to sustain his modest existence. He had given almost everything away.

January 24, 2019June 14, 2019

The Failure of the American Welfare State

The Failed Welfare Policies of Socialism

We are seeing the storm clouds of the American welfare state.

Two Princeton economists recently shocked many of us by revealing the devastating welfare situation in the United States . Although death rates have been systematically declining in the advanced countries as well-being and longevity increased in many past decades, the white middle class in America has recently seen this sign of national well-being reversed. And nothing in the economic policy of President Obama’s “transformative” (changing to socialism) years countered the trend of declining well-being for American non-Hispanic whites over the age of 25. Black non-Hispanics and Hispanics at midlife, and those aged 25 and above in every racial and ethnic group, continued to see mortality rates fall, but not America’s white population with high school education or less.

The numbers of the middle-aged in unemployment greatly increased. Part-time employment increased because Obama Care mandated that employers must provide full-time employees with health care insurance, so they immediately began to hire only part-time workers. How often have lawmakers been unable to avoid devastating unforeseen consequences! The millions on food stamps and the millions in poverty increased under Mr. Obama’s policies, and millions took advantage of more lax requirements for recipients of disability insurance.

In the meantime, the tacit social attack on marriage resulted in less stable families as “partnerships” replaced many marriages, children born out of wedlock, less stable families, as well as the growing opioid epidemic and increasing alcoholism. Incomes for these groups have not increased for decades as manufacturing has declined and jobs have been outsourced. There were marked increases in ‘deaths of despair’— “increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings, and an overall increase in external cause mortality, those with less education saw the most marked increases.” (See the Abstract, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112 no. 49.) Individuals in this population reported declines in their health, mental health, and in their ability to conduct normal daily activities. They had increases in chronic pain and a resultant decline in their ability to work, obviously affecting their desire to remain involved in the labor force.

I addressed some of these issues in chapter 18 of my book, Socialism, entitled “Socialism and the Welfare State”. In a number of city centers there are far too many one-parent families where teen-age sons drop out of school, find no employment, join gangs and become involved in drugs. As I pointed out there, minimum wage laws condemn young people to unemployment, especially those looking for their first employment experience. This is because small businesses find it unprofitable to add to the employment rolls when new workers add less to business revenues than to costs.

In sum, welfare programs that don’t lead minorities to better educational solutions produce only counterproductive outcomes. Poverty, ill health, drug addiction and peddling, gang activity and violence should not be the dead-end destiny of any youth, let alone the number of people affected in some of our city centers. The Welfare State has largely failed in the United States. Socialists will say it is because too few resources go into it. They will repeat that until the financial failure of the nation state, but they will not solve the problem of poverty with traditional welfare policies.

January 22, 2019June 14, 2019

The American Taxpayer and the Opioid Crisis

In later versions of the replacement healthcare plan of the Senate GOP Caucus, billions of dollars’ worth of assistance were to be allocated to states struggling with the opioid crisis. An earlier blog I wrote discussed the origins and scope of this catastrophic problem. We all ache for those who are caught in the grip of horrible addiction and they certainly deserve help.

Who is it that should bear the billions of dollars the planned assistance will cost? Of course it will actually be borne by us, the taxpayers, and future generations of Americans currently being mercilessly burdened by the federal budget’s profligacy and the ever-growing national debt. You, your children and your grandchildren are receiving this burden from our generous congress.

Who will pay? Those who produce, prescribe, or consume? Probably not…probably taxpayers.

But what about the rich pharmaceutical industry and the rich physicians who are actually responsible for the problem? My previous blog placed some rather direct blame on the individuals from these groups of wealthy and culpable parties who originally argued in medical journals that opioids don’t cause addictions, who cavalierly wrote the prescriptions, and who sold the opioids to victims of pain. Has anyone considered a tax on them? They have not received even mild public censure for bringing this plague upon our fellow citizens.

Part of the problem, of course, arises from the failure of the U.S. Congress to secure our borders. Billions of dollars worth of opioids and “entertainment drugs” are brought in through our borders. People die by the many hundreds of thousands and socialists say there is no crisis on our border. I heard on a leftist radio station the question asked what exactly would constitute a national crisis, to which the announcer answered without hesitation that a good example was the crisis of polluted water in Flint, Michigan! How many people died in Flint? More than die from the opioid crisis?

On July 24th, a column by Gerard Baker, Editor of the Wall Street Journal, observed that states are likely very soon to begin suing pharmaceutical companies for helping spark the opioid addiction crisis. They are alleged to have misrepresented the benefits and risks of opioid painkillers. A leading attorney in the cigarette litigation of a few years back, Mike Moore, has encouraged Mississippi and Ohio to sue drugmakers and is assisting in the preparation of lawsuits.

Hopefully, the passage of any healthcare legislation will not occur before the GOP senators recognize that the addicted victims needing assistance need not be aided at the expense of the taxpayers. The senate’s instincts in this regard seem quite in line with socialist sentiment. Anyone in financial need should, according to the socialist view, receive financial help from the taxpayer. And the greater the number of financial transfers that can be conceived of the better. As for adding the caveat “as much as we can afford,” there is no consideration at all, since socialists have no notion of a budget constraint. During one’s term as mayor, legislator, or elected official one can give away money as freely as one wishes, since the politician reasons “the financial disaster will come after my term is up and I am no longer in office.”

As I write this, the opioid crisis continues in unprecedented severity with deaths from overdose increasing each year, Our nation is currently locked in disagreement about national values. Many wish to establish security on our southern border. But the democrats currently ignore the hundreds of thousands of drug-related deaths and untold agony among the citizenry stemming from the massive inflow of illegal drugs through the porous southern border. President Trump seeks a barrier on the border because the security project of previous administrations did not get completed, democrats have called the wall President Trump insists on “immoral.” They have not labeled the portion of the wall constructed by President Clinton immoral, nor have they sought to have it removed. Only the national buffoon and computer hacker, Robert Francis O’Rourke, would like to see the wall removed.

January 17, 2019June 20, 2019

Democratic Socialists: “We Need Swedish and Scandinavian Socialism,” Part II

Swedish Capitalism Today

In the 1970s and 1980s the Swedish economy resembled socialism — big government, state-owned firms, high taxes and heavy spending. [1] Ultimately, however, crisis conditions arrived with inflation reaching 10% and at one point interest rates reached about 500 percent. That was enough for the Swedish population. Public spending was cut, the national rail network was privatized and other government monopolies were broken up and state-owned businesses were sold off. Inheritance taxes were eliminated, and a school voucher system was adopted. The large welfare state remained, so the necessity of high taxation did not go away, but thereafter the Swedes emphasized their free markets and the prevalence of strong competition and free trade. “Sweden is actually more free market.”

Why Does the System Work as Well as It Does?

Sweden, like other Scandinavia countries has enjoyed a high degree of social cohesion. Although things may be changing gradually under fairly heavy immigration, especially in Sweden, these countries are inhabited by hard-working, responsible people with high levels of “social trust.”[2] Scandinavia enjoyed high life expectancy and other positive health indicators and rather egalitarian societies even before it expanded its welfare states.

Sweden dropped socialism and now calls its system “Swedish capitalism.”

These countries compensate for their high taxes and the rigidities in their labor markets by following market-oriented policies in other areas. They value a high degree of business freedom and openness to trade. Denmark ranks 11^th in the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom, which is one place higher than that occupied by the United States. The American economy is still thought of as a strong, market-oriented economy, although we, too, sustain high expenditures for welfare state programs. And, of course, one major political party in the United States advocates open borders and hopes all the citizens of countries to the south will come to join American citizens, enjoy voting rights and receive welfare benefits. At the same time, there are quite a few Americans who still believe in the existence of budget constraints.

Swedes are hard-working and industrious. The trains run on time.

Economic and Social Implications of Recent Immigration Trends

The Swedish population of only 10 million has been asked by political leadership under pressure from forces in the EU to absorb a large number of immigrants from the Middle East in the last couple years. Currently, 1.6 million residents of the country were born elsewhere. Even many favoring the admission of generous numbers of immigrants now believe that increased pressure on the schools and on Swedish society in general suggest a pause in the acceptance of additional immigrants. Many still believe that if the latest influx can be taught Swedish, they can benefit the labor market and the economy. But politics have been affected by the growing numbers of non-Swedes. The Democrat Party, Swedish Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD) is a social conservative and right-wing populist political party which is likely to have an impact in elections in the near future.

There is some fear currently of losing social welfare benefits, but no evidence to this point of such losses. Housing has become a serious problem with the strong increase of demand for the current housing stock. Some young people are forced to continue living with parents at home, but unlike millennials in the United States, their problem is not so much a financial one as a housing supply problem.

Housing is good, but with many recent immigrants is in short supply

There have been some serious difficulties in integrating immigrants into the work force and the society. Gang-related crime is on the rise and fast-growing groups of outsiders threaten to break down societal cohesion and well-being.

[1] See https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/10/23/stossel-sweden-not-a-socialist-success

[2] See https://nypost.com/2015/10/19/sorry-bernie-scandinavia-is-no-socialist-paradise-after-all/

January 17, 2019June 20, 2019

Democratic Socialists: “We Need Swedish and Scandinavian ‘Socialism’!” Part I

The Democratic Socialists in the United States are advocating the adoption of a socialistic system like that prevalent in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. With that objective, they insist that we wouldn’t have to worry about having a socialist country like the Soviet Union, Cuba, or Venezuela. Scandinavian economies, they point out, are high-income, growth economies with a high degree of economic equality. We should follow that model and we can achieve positive outcomes while enjoying free education, health care, child care, vacations, guaranteed pensions, and a universal income (paid by the state to every human who escapes abortion for the duration of life independent of whether one is employed or not).

It would be wonderful to live in such a state, it is assumed, since one could spend one’s entire life playing video games and snorting cocaine. But before joining the Democratic Socialists or moving to Sweden, one should learn a little bit more about Sweden, Scandinavia, and the nature of their economies. One might be surprised, for example, that Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries are characterized by the Swedes and Scandinavians as “capitalist,” market countries.

Stockholm, home of a capitalist, market economy! But yes, it is a welfare state.

And these countries are economically successful precisely because a preponderance of their citizens are not interested in dedicating their lives to their devices and their drugs. In 2016, in the whole of the country there were 590 drug-induced deaths, which was down from previous years. The mean age of the majority of victims was less than 34 years, and opioids were involved in the vast majority of those deaths. On a per capita basis those deaths are substantially fewer than the 72,000 deaths (2017) from opioids in the United States.

Old Town in Stockholm, producer of tourist revenues.

To obtain a reasonably thorough overview of the Swedish economy, however, let us consider now the origins and decline of socialism in Sweden, then we will consider the nature of Swedish and Scandinavian capitalism in the present.

The Scandinavian Economic Model

The Scandinavian or Nordic economic model, according to the Swedish evaluation, is one of capitalism, not socialism. The economic policies that are characteristic of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Sweden can be referred to as Nordic capitalism. True, these countries share commonality through their status as welfare states. It is also true that collective bargaining is carried out at the national level with a high percentage of the workforce unionized, but the economic foundation is still free market capitalism. See footnote [1] below.

Sweden is older than capitalism. Having tried socialism, Sweden has become a welfare state, but remains a capitalist country.

The Nordic model is one of free market capitalism based on a high degree of private ownership. Norway is an exception to this in that Norway includes many state-owned enterprises and there is substantive state ownership among the stockholders in publicly listed firms. But the Nordic states support a “universalist” welfare state system designed to achieve individual autonomy and stimulate social mobility for their citizens. In these countries representatives of labor meet with employers to negotiate wages and labor market policies, a process which is mediated by the government. There is a general commitment to private ownership, a mixed economy, and free trade.

Sweden has a few high-profile international corporations, e.g., Volvo automobiles.

These national economies are small and sustain public spending at around half of the Gross Domestic Product. One reason for this is that there are large numbers of public employees in the fields of education, healthcare, and government service. The private economies are limited in scope with the benefit of producing raw materials in demand internationally. A large share of welfare benefits include transfers such as unemployment benefits (at around 70-90% of the wage, as compared to 60% in Germany).

How Did This Come to Be? The Advent and Decline of Swedish Socialism

The early socialists in Sweden were also Marxists, but unlike those in the Communist Party, they hoped for a ballot-box victory to ascend to national power rather than to sweep out the bourgeois political opposition with a revolution. As they were becoming influential enough to gain electoral power, the socialist party, the Social Democrats (SAP), willingly entered into alliances with other, non-proletarian parties. In forming blocs with other middle-class parties they gave concessions that were not in the interest of its working class base.[2] They compromised away many of the foundation principles of Marxism so that no thorough-going socialist system was ever implemented. Elements, of course, remained, but these were also eliminated later as shown below.

Of course the Swedish social democrats never officially abandoned their original Marxism (i.e., the theory of the exploitation of labor and the demand for state ownership and control of all of the means of production), they failed to present any plans for institutional reform: the state machinery was to continue unchanged under the monarchy and there were to be no nationalizations. It was at this time that the SAP established its ‘corporative’ structure for negotiations between employers, trade unions and government on social and labour market policies.[3]

In 1932, during the Great Depression, the Swedish SAP organized the first socialist government in Sweden, having achieved a majority in parliament. It accomplished this after eliminating from its 1932 electoral platform all references to socialism and to socialization of the means of production. A social consensus was achieved in which the unions accepted the rights of management to manage and the government recognized the right of the unions to represent the workers.

**Sweden** has the **third**-highest employment rate (76.2%) among all countries in the world. The top 10 countries by employment rate are: Iceland, Switzerland, **Sweden**, New Zealand, United Kingdom, China, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Norway. So three of the top ten employment rates are in Scandinavia. The sun has not set on employment in welfare state Sweden.

Thus, Socialism in Sweden failed to survive, although “socialists” did. But Sweden considers and calls itself unabashedly a capitalist economy and a welfare state, based on its considerable income redistribution.[4] A very important difference between the American and Swedish welfare state systems is that in Sweden, high taxes are not considered the responsibility of the very rich, top 1% or so of income earners. In the United States vast numbers of citizens of lower income pay no taxes at all. In Sweden, high taxes are the responsibility of everyone. Even lower income families can afford tax on their small incomes, since they receive government subsidies in many areas to cover their needs.

[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

[2] See https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-swedish-socialism-failed/

[3] See Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century, p. 44.

[4] Ibid., p. 44.

January 15, 2019May 10, 2019

Science, Religion, and the Future of Mankind

Part I: Socialism and Science

As a PhD who spent over 40 years in the academy, I would be the last to deny the great and enduring benefits to society of man’s successful application of the scientific method. What mankind has achieved through science and technology has been truly awesome. There is, of course, still much to learn and anyone who knows anything about science is aware that our scientific efforts are hardly perfect. Our knowledge, growing admirably, is still limited. Our methods of gaining and applying knowledge still need time to grow.

Interestingly, some are ambiguous about the potentialities of science. Many of us are fond of the scientific method without being willing to see it as more than a very human technique for seeking knowledge and understanding. We see nothing magic about it. Others, who have adopted science as their personal religion, nevertheless seem willing to doubt the power of science when doubt is convenient. For example, at this writing the country is locked in a struggle about the usefulness of a barrier on the southern border of the U.S. While the political left makes science its religion, it still insists that all the forces that science can muster do not render science capable of building a wall that, combined with available technologies, will make the border more secure.

Returning, however, to the above observation of the role of science, it has been noted that over the past century and more, many in society have bartered their trust in religion for an academic hope in science. In doing so, they may have lost for themselves and for mankind more than they have gained. I wish to address this issue and examine its relation to socialism. To do so, I shall review four cases in which science failed us miserably. I want to address some of the implications of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth, the science of climatology’s early annunciation of an ice age, some of the facets of global warming or “climate change,” and the very current opioid crisis.

The Impact of Politics on Science

Case I: Limits to Growth.

The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 to address problems of our planet’s resources and their use. In 1970 a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology undertook an analysis of the implications of continued worldwide economic growth. They examined the basic factors determining and limiting growth on our planet: growing population, agricultural production, depletion of nonrenewable resources, industrial output and pollution. They concluded that numerous of our vitally necessary raw materials were about to disappear. Extrapolating from the known quantities and deposits of vital resources and the rates at which they were disappearing, they were able to calculate with their computer models that on some given date, say 1985, we would pull our last pound of copper from the ground. I was impressed when reading these findings approaching fifty years ago, so I don’t remember the exact dates of the disappearance of critical resources, but the format was as shown with copper. And on July 17, as a second example, at 2:36 pm in 1988 we would pull our last aluminum out of some mine. The disappearance of petroleum would follow on the heels of other precious resources at a very specific time that has now long since passed, of course.

Can you guess that as time passed their dire predictions did not prove accurate? Since they consulted with no economists, apparently, they could not deal with some imponderable, awesome complexities such as the following: As the use of gasoline begins to deplete the total quantity of crude oil available, the price of gas rises. As the price rises, suppliers are motivated to search the world for new sources of supply and develop new technologies to get oil harvested and marketed. Buyers look for substitute products when the price of an important one begins to rise. In this case, they would look for alternative sources of energy and they would carefully conserve energy by trying to get more mileage out of each gallon of gasoline. We see from the failure of the MIT scientists even to come close to the reality of resource depletion in this example that scientists, who are also just people, don’t always successfully manage an analysis of problems through time. This is especially true when extant market forces drive production, sales and consumption of scarce products and the physical and computational scientists involved know little if anything, apparently, about the economics pertaining to this issue.

Case II: Predicting an Ice Age

In an article by Betty Friedan, “The Coming Ice Age,” Harper’s Magazine announced in its September, 1958 issue that the onset of a new ice age had been predicted by climate scientists. Geophysicist Maurice Ewing, Director of Columbia University’s Lamont Geological Observatory, and geologist-meteorologist William Donn claimed to have found why the giant glaciers had advanced and retreated over the earth in the last million years. It was their conclusion that the world was heading into another Ice Age as part of a process that had already begun.

Contemporary climatologists assure us that this is now well understood as a forgivable mistake. The science of climatology was young then and more work needed to be done. But here were two leading scientists of the time making claims that were published widely for a short period of time.

Part II: Science Politicized

As mentioned above, the past century or so has seen many barter their trust in religion for an academic hope in science. Many have shown a proclivity to reject religion out of hand and seek for humanity’s redemption from ignorance and incapacity in the realm of science. I wish to relate the issue of secularism to socialism. To do so, I have reviewed two cases in which science failed us miserably. I addressed above some of the implications of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth and the science of climatology’s early annunciation of an ice age. In this part I want first to discuss some of the facets of global warming or “climate change,” then I shall turn to the very current opioid crisis.

Case III: Global Warming

We are informed that the debate over global warming is over. Scientists now agree uniformly, it is alleged, that man’s carbon footprint has irrevocably changed our climate and will play an ever-more-debilitating role in the future. Since I am not a physical scientist I am not in a position to evaluate the science underlying these predictions or forecasts. As an economist, however, I am convinced that regardless of the rate of warming, previous policies in the United States have been shortsighted. Specific economic policy measures undertaken in response to an actual crisis of global warming would need to be subjected to formal and more realistic benefit/cost analyses. If global warming is in fact occurring, the U.S. will have a far less negative impact on it than will China and India. If those countries were to continue to industrialize with the same environmental serenity that the U.S. did when we were at their stage of industrial development, there is nothing we could do to avert some of the disasters that have been predicted. Nevertheless, such a scenario would call for a policy of accommodation rather than panic.

What I wish to address here, however, is how to develop a skeptical view of the science that drives the panic in our country. As I indicated at the outset, science is wonderful, and science is great. But science is a crowd of people that are still learning and changing long-held perspectives and beliefs as they do. The objectivity science is supposed to display suggests the necessity of finding reasons to revise our perspectives as research discovers new facts and principles. But some perspectives and scientific beliefs bring classes of people windfall gains that they do not wish to relinquish to changing views. In current science, we have thousands of professors at universities who gain their living and their reputations by their published findings. Many of these are full of integrity; others would sell their mother’s soul to increase the likelihood of future income and prestige. They are perfectly willing to do what they feel they must do to gain tenure and promotion, income, and prestige. That includes getting grants to do research. They insist in their research applications that they are going to bring new light to the current dogma, which gradually takes on all the glitter rendered by the politically correct interpretation of current scientific dogma. They learn quickly that “climate change deniers” generally do not receive grants.

Notification of Cold, Dispassionate Science

Some university scientists promote global warming just as liberal political indoctrination is promoted by their non-scientific colleagues. There are some scientists with excellent reputations who have been attacked by their more orthodox colleagues because they were not in line with the official doctrine. One of the two smartest individuals I have ever known personally in a long academy career is a nuclear physicist. His research has been on physics rather than climate science, but he has taken time to review the literature and the mathematical models underlying the conclusions of global warming science. Those models, he insists, are simply flawed and he doesn’t buy their conclusions at all. We have seen from the history of the Club of Rome as well as from the viewpoint of climate scientists back in the 1970s that scientists can be dead wrong, especially those who have been dead for a while.

Part III: A Medical Science Tragedy

Case IV: The Current Opioid Crisis

The opioid crisis (or epidemic) refers to the rapid increase in the use of prescription and non-prescription opioids in the United States. Overdose deaths, especially from prescription drugs and heroin, have reached epidemic levels. In 2015 of the total of 52,000 American deaths from all drug overdoses, two thirds (33,000) were from opioids. In 2017 there were more than 72,000 deaths from opioids. Those deaths exceeded the total number of deaths in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined. The New Yorker writes that by 2010 the U.S., with around five per cent of the world’s population, consumed 99 per cent of the world’s hydrocodone (the narcotic in Vicodin), eighty per cent of the oxycodone (in Percocet and OxyContin), and sixty-five per cent of the hydromorphone (in Dilaudid).

How did doctors, who pledge to do their patients no harm, let the use of prescription narcotics get so out of hand? Traditionally, American doctors have prescribed narcotics almost exclusively for short-term pain (to recover from surgery, or for cancer victims soon to become terminal). But some time ago medical journals published two short accounts that helped promote an expanded role for prescription narcotics. The first of these, a 1980 report in the New England Journal of Medicine, claimed that less than one per cent of patients at Boston University Medical Center who received narcotics in hospitals became addicted. The second, a 1986 study in the journal Pain found that for non-cancer pain, narcotics can be prescribed “with relatively little risk of . . . opioid abuse.” The authors advised caution, and called for longer-term studies of patients on narcotics. In a follow-up report, the New Yorker pointedly observed that they hadn’t found any such studies.

“Relatively little risk of opioid abuse”

The main manufacturers of narcotics –Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and Endo Pharmaceuticals thereafter aggressively marketed their products through ads in highly regarded publications, and through medical continuing-education courses. Once doctors knew that other doctors were supplying opioids to about anyone requesting help for pain, the use of these prescription drugs skyrocketed. Today, thousands are dying from overdose every month. It is now more dangerous to ask a doctor for pain relief than to travel on our highways.

Part IV: Socialism and Science Today

Without trying to take time to build a logical case for the beneficial contributions of religion in a world captivated with the potential of science, permit me to close with just a few thoughts about religion and its past role in the modern world. The enemies of religion will not be particularly receptive, but one would hope reason would suggest that an adversarial position against religious thought really isn’t appropriate.

Back around the First World War, the western world and its culture, especially in large urban centers, began quite rapidly to reject the Christian religion and to promote a purely secular society. Karl Marx and his socialist followers had already rejected belief in God and their atheism was seen as “scientific,” just as Marx’s socialism was deemed to be “scientific socialism.” Academic and urban types were anxious to replace religion with science.

On the farms and in many families back in those days, Bible reading was a daily practice of believers. Many believed the Bible can open people’s eyes to the natural and spiritual realities of our lives and some of us still do. When one does not open one’s eyes to the many miraculous things around us, one can begin to see life as a sequence of random happenings that can’t be explained well. The presence of “scientific theories” relieves us of the necessity to think about what the purpose of our lives might be. The New Testament gospels, written by honest, sincere, and intelligent people, report that many of their contemporaries were eyewitnesses of the living Savior, Jesus Christ, after he was resurrected. Historically, that fact caused people to stop and think, but Bible reading gradually ceased.

Such reading and study was not replaced, of course, by the primitive theories of Darwin. The world didn’t read his Origin of Species, so nobody seemed to notice an issue that Darwin knew could destroy his theory. The slow process of evolution, from the providential, or rather, fortunate mutation through the survival of the fittest species, failed to litter the planet with billions of skeletal remains of intermediate species between mutations and new species. Some of those who notice this are nevertheless unwilling to give up the rationale it provides for being an atheist. Thus, one simply doesn’t discuss this problem, or several other major issues with the theory of evolution, in the public realm.

Part V: Weltanschauung, the New World View

Science gradually became the new deity for the human race, and scientists sometimes feel obliged to sustain the belief that we need no God to live happily. There were many fine philosophers both before and after the onset of the renaissance, but none of their philosophies has served as a general philosophy of life or as a world view to serve as the foundation of our post-religious era. It would take much space and some expertise I lack to document properly the gradual evolution of our contemporary attitudes and culture in post-modern or other philosophical terms. But it is quite apparent that the philosophy that has served the role of underpinning much of our culture’s biases was the work of an economist philosopher, Karl Marx. He was the driving force of socialism, which has prevailed since the time of Marx, although people have ceased to read the holy writings of Capital.

We have ceased to understand most of the elements of Marx’s philosophy, which are treated at length in my book, Socialism. The world’s greatest minds on that topic would make it easy for us to reject socialism root and branch. I reviewed in detail their analysis and cited their conclusions in the book. In spite of the flaws and inadequacies in theoretical Marxist economics, many have nevertheless retained Marx’s hatred for capitalists, corporations, markets, and the freedom that undergirds all of the institutions of the market system. Anger that some have less of life’s material goods than more fortunate individuals, whether that results from lack of education, lack of motivation, lack of creativity, lack of persistence, lack of health, or just simply lack of good fortune, is the heritage of Marx’s hatred.

The persistent pursuit of socialist solutions has spawned social experimentation, social tyrannies, and perverse social outcomes that divide societies and generate new hostilities. We have failed to understand the natural benefits of market systems, as explicated by Adam Smith. Nor are we cognizant of the developments of science and technology which have enhanced market developments where they are not choked out by socialist ideology. And because of socialist suspicions and animus we have lost much of the spiritual and humane side of life.

A previous blog showed that modern societies are in the secular, very long-term process of disappearing. That can occur quite naturally as population growth ceases and as birth rates fall below replacement levels. Socialists, who teach women they have value only in competition with men in the work force and in management positions, seem to leave the future of humanity in the hands of the diminishing number of people who love children and families. Those are usually religious families. Thus, from the standpoint of humanity as a whole, the religious groups of the earth have definitely lost culture battles, but are certainly in a position to win the cultural war of survival as their adversary group strives diligently in the long term to become extinct.

January 14, 2019May 10, 2019

Combating the Bureaucratic Regulations of Socialism

During the greater part of his tenure, President Obama was addressing some important issues that to some extent diverted his attention away from “transforming completely” our economic system. But he was affecting important public policy issues and causing problems that President Trump wanted to overcome by setting aside the many of the executive orders President Obama had introduced.

During the presidential election campaign already well underway in 2019, democratic candidates, some among the self-proclaimed socialists and some strongly under their influence, made it clear that their objective was to further the socialist agenda of President Obama. The direction the country takes will become evident by 2022.

Why Does President Trump Want to Deregulate the U.S. Economy?

By Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13286526

President Trump launched a deregulation initiative in his first days in office. Why? Because as a successful businessman he had lived with the commercial regulations of government bureaucracies and their costly intervention in the nation’s business life.

Those who have studied bureaucracies and those who have had to respond to bureaucratic demands are aware of the nature of this problem. Many creative agents populate bureaucracies; although many are well educated few have any significant experience in business. Their job is to think of ways to control businesses and their environment so that corporations won’t exploit their workers or their consumers. They can implement regulations with the force of law, although their abilities to generate such commercial regulations are usually in violation of constitutional principles, which mandate division of governmental powers.

The legislature, not the bureaucratic agencies, is responsible for the creation of laws. We have developed a huge bureaucracy of federal agencies in this country and they are responsible to the president, who is responsible for the implementation – not the creation – of law. Unfortunately the agencies have come to gain power not only in administering laws, but also in creating the rules and regulations they wish to impose. But they also adjudicate the implementation of their laws. Affected parties needing to litigate problems arising through the implementation of regulations discover that the agencies themselves, rather than just the courts, can issue judgments and sanctions, etc. Thus, all the powers of governance are wielded by the departmental bureaucrats despite the constitution’s mandate for a division of powers among the branches of government.

Cutting the Red Tape – Deregulation

The government agencies aspire to cut pollution, manage problems of human resources, promote product quality and safety, affect the prices of products and services, and have an impact on about every conceivable aspect of economic life. The cost of implementing the endless stream of ideas with which the bureaucrats hope to control every aspect of our commercial lives is excessively high. It is estimated to be about two trillion dollars, or about 12% of the entire economy spent every year on dealing with regulations. The Office of Management and Budget found that President Trump had reduced regulatory costs in his first two years by $33 billion. The report indicated he cut 12 rules for each new rule adopted. President Obama added in excess of 22,000 new regulations.

But Isn’t Some Regulation Necessary?

The answer to this question is straightforward. Of course it is! As long as human imperfection exists in the economy, there must be rules and oversight to insure honest and competent performance of a nation’s productive forces. But such oversight can very soon become excessive. The answer is that there should be competition to force producers to bring quality products to the market without negative secondary effects. When government protects competition by thwarting monopolistic forces – opening markets to foreign competition, reducing barriers to entry in all markets, and refusing to grant special favors to would-be monopolists – the economy will require less regulatory intervention. Promoting competition is better than drowning the economy in regulations.

The Culture of Bureaucracy

Bureaucracies, which often make mistakes, develop a culture that attempts to protect them from taking responsibility for those mistakes. They develop practices to protect themselves from being discovered by the public in their mistakes. They develop job protections through their relationships with legislators so that they cannot be fired. The objective of the bureaucratic leader in government is to grow the bureaucracy, take on more tasks and projects, and to gain power and influence. Salaries are not related to performance, since performance is difficult to measure. Governmental salaries are thus related to seniority.

Bureaucratic regulations cloud the future of enterprise.

January 12, 2019March 10, 2020

Bureaucracy in Market and Socialist Economies, Part II

The Nature of Agency Functioning

Governmental bureaucracies generally pursue more or less specific projects or goals. Business bureaucracies have projects too, but all of them relate to making profits. Since profits are generated through sales, the business bureaucracy must think of its customers. If it fails to be productive and relevant, the business itself will fail and the organization will become extinct.

Big spending legislators tend to ignore the effects of incentives. Bureaucracies do the same.

The government bureaucracy, is inclined to think more of tasks than of people. They aren’t interested in sales, efficiency, or profitability and the branches of government that should manage and oversee the administrative agencies are usually too busy or disinterested to monitor their activities effectively. The IRS, for example, thinks of the revenues derived from taxes. People who hold the money even become like the enemy, since the IRS has to take the funds from them. The EPA has the project of protecting the environment; since people mess up the environment, an adversarial relationship quickly develops between the government bureaucracy and all us polluters in the private sector and citizenry.

The IRS and Lois Lerner were weaponized by the Obama administration against political opponents.
Government agencies can become a swamp of political opposition in “deep state” activities in Washington, D.C.

Parliaments are rather inept at analyzing short- and long-term benefits and costs of industrial regulation.

Imagine several thousand clever and educated minds thinking about environmental forces that they aspire to manage. They have never had experience with a real world and its problems, but instead wish merely to create new rules which the actors in the real world must follow. Such rules may be of benefit to the public, but may also be strictly for the benefit of the bureaucrats themselves. In any case, they will be implemented at a cost. It will cost the firm and its customers, not the bureaucrats, scarce resources to apply the rules. Firms have to hire lawyers to help them understand and implement the bureaucratic regulations produced by the thousands of pages. Those regulations demand compliance with the force of law. Such regulations have the effect of driving up production costs, driving down profits, and sometimes rendering the firm unable to compete effectively. Sometimes agencies are so focused on the benefits of an operation that they ignore the concomitant costs thereof.

Combine this business regulatory syndrome with the socialistic preference for extensive government participation in normal life, which also is costly and persuades socialists to support high taxes. The regulation and the taxes make firms look abroad for a new home, so that they can stay viable in the international business arena. Firms will take their jobs and go elsewhere.

Bureaucracy vultures in organizational hierarchy

President Trump, formerly a businessman, knows this world from the compliance side very well. He knows his colleagues are being regulated into high-cost oblivion. He sees them pull up and leave the United States and says we must do something about it if our workers are to retain their jobs and incomes. He sees the job of governmental regulation as a balance of keeping those regulations necessary to promote responsible corporate performance and of discarding regulations which add far more to public costs than to benefits.

Bureaucracies Can Affect Both Socialistic and Market Economies

My book, Socialism, has a full chapter on the nature of bureaucracies. The study of bureaucracy should be a part of every citizen’s curriculum. I address the organizational costs and benefits of the government agencies and also document throughout the book the fact that once a bureaucracy is installed, it lobbies vigorously for continually expanding its share of governance and government control of the economy and of society generally.

Once bureaucracies were installed in the centrally planned economies like the Soviet Union, economic reform became impossible. It became impossible to scale back the layers of government economic agencies and enhance the functioning of market-like activity to achieve the minimal efficiency necessary for the economy’s survival. The red tape and the government planning system imposed ever greater inefficiencies until the economic system simply collapsed. President Trump and his successors will find that it will be an awful challenge to inhibit further growth of the government agencies in the United States.

The book Socialism, reviews the organizational characteristics of governmental agencies, showing the forces driving the continual expansion of bureaucracies and clarifying their regulatory impact on the firms that produce the nation’s goods and services. Of course the government must perform functions which require organization, but the tendency of such organizations is to continue to grow even after the original problems requiring such organization no longer exist.

The negative characteristics and tendencies of bureaucracies have been known for a couple centuries, but socialists ignore them because they have been indoctrinated to distrust private firms and they put their faith in government to accomplish every essential task. They do so only because they have not personally experienced life under the ultimate bureaucracies of socialist regimes.

January 12, 2019March 10, 2020

Bureaucracy in Market and Socialist Economies, Part I

The Difference between Corporate and Governmental Bureaucracy

Because liberals/progressives/socialists believe that corporations create most of the evil in the world and that government is the source of salvation for humankind, one can expect that with the growth of government involvement in the economy, the government bureaucracy will generally be in growth mode.

In a private sector economy, every firm and every consumer household will have its own economic plan. In socialism, the objective is to remove planning from the private sector and turn it over to a single, gigantic government plan designed and implemented by oversized agencies. In a true socialist economy, this is by definition what will be in process as long as socialists retain power.

Unfortunately, a study of bureaucracy must reveal to the objective mind and to human experience that overgrown human organizations unavoidably take on dangerous preferences, proclivities and powers. Such organizations work against the positive incentives of market systems, against the creativity of the private sector, against the productivity of the society’s workers, against the implementation of technical improvements, against the social harmony of diverse groups in the country, against the freedom and honesty of the press, and against human freedoms in general.

When confronted with complaints about the performance of bureaucratic agencies, socialists tend to assert that a little inefficiency is normal in the functioning of government agencies. They also inevitably aver that large business firms also have their own bureaucracies, so one should not fret about a little governmental red tape. But there is a world of difference between governmental and corporate bureaucracies. The latter are paid to perform tasks related to profit making. Inefficiencies of the corporate bureaucracy impinge on profits, which is the driving force of firms that must compete in the market place. The governmental bureaucracy is not interested in profits or efficiency, but merely in achieving the tasks suggested by organizational goals. They are interested in creating new ideas and methods to control the environment which they are involved in managing.