Have you ever wondered how countries such as Cuba, North Korea, and China became completely socialist? It’s really not a mystery. Government officials, most of whom suffer from an insatiable thirst for power, seize upon some human tragedy or disaster and tell the people, “If you will just give us power over your lives and fortunes, we will take care of you and protect you from harm.” The citizenry, many of whom live lives of fear and insecurity, cannot pass up the bargain. What could be better than to be take care of by a paternalistic state and protected from the bad things that life presents?
Of course, it’s all a scam, one in which people surrender their freedom in the hope of achieving a feeling of safety and security, only to find that they are just as insecure as ever, if not more so, given the brutal methods that government resorts to in order to maintain its control.
As government wields increasing control over the lives and fortunes of the citizenry, the tendency to blame government itself for the problems dissipates. Like children who are scared of antagonizing their parents, who wield life or death power over them, adults in a socialist society are scared to death to upset the entity in charge of taking care of them.
I had a first-hand experience with this phenomenon when I visited Cuba several years ago. A young cab driver and his wife told me why Cubans must be very careful about criticizing the government or its socialist system. It’s not just the nonexistence of civil liberties but also because of Cuba’s socialist economic system.
Keep in mind that in a purely socialist system, the government is the owner of everything. In Cuba, while there were a few small exceptions when I was there, for all practical purposes the state was the sole employer. Let that sink in: Virtually everyone in Cuba works for the state. Thus, if an employee gets fired, he has no other employer with whom to go to work. If the state wants to get nasty by refusing to rehire a person, it can mean death by starvation.
The cab driver told me that the state never uses that power in such a brutal way. Instead, it simply transfers independent-minded employees to divisions of the “company” in other towns and cities. Thus, the cab driver told me that the state could separate him and his wife by transferring him to a city hundreds of miles away while retaining his wife in Havana.
Now, you might say, “But America still has features of a free-market system and so it’s not like in Cuba. Here, private businesses still exist, people are still free to trade, and workers are free to quit their jobs and go to others.”
That’s true but the problem we’re facing is that unless the American people put a stop to it, the inexorable trend is toward a pure socialist system. Ever since the 1920s, each new socialist and interventionist program has brought new crises, which then have been used as the excuse for new socialist and interventionist programs.
Everywhere you look today here in the United States, there is a crisis: Social Security, the drug war, Medicare, Medicaid, the monetary system, the banking system, the financial system, FDIC, welfare, terrorism, immigration. There is obviously a common denominator in all this: the federal government, and specifically its socialist and interventionist (and imperialist) programs.
But we’re not supposed to say that. Instead, we’re expected to repeat the official mantras that everyone is taught in public school and in state-supported universities: The reasons for all these crises and failures is deregulation, insufficient regulation, the wrong people in office, speculators, greed, OPEC, terrorists, Muslims, illegal aliens, or whatever. We’re simply not supposed to even suggest that it’s the system itself that is the problem.
In Cuba, this mindset is manifested by a steadfast insistence that Cuba’s economic misery is due solely to the U.S. embargo, not Cuba’s socialist system. In the United States, it’s manifested by a steadfast insistence that the Great Depression was caused by free enterprise and greed and saved by Roosevelt’s socialist and interventionist programs. For that matter, just pointing out that Roosevelt’s programs were socialistic and fascistic in nature is practically considered an act of heresy, given the idol status that the paternalistic state has achieved for many Americans.
As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the never-ending series of interventions ultimately leads to a complete nationalization of everything. Thus, it’s no surprise that U.S. statists are now calling for a complete government takeover of the banking industry, just like in the socialist paradise of Cuba. What next — a nationalization of the oil industry, just like in Venezuela and Mexico?
That’s the road America is headed down and has been heading down for several decades—the road to socialism, the road to serfdom. The only issue is whether freedom-loving Americans will put a stop to it before it’s too late.