Which system is more conducive to human flourishing, capitalism or socialism? If you want people 50 years from now to live better, longer and happier lives, which of those two systems would you advise them to embrace?<\/p>\n
Capitalism wins hands down. By encouraging work, innovation, entrepreneurship and customer service, it prompts creative people to produce the wealth that allows us to live better, longer and happier lives. Socialism, on the other hand, is not concerned about wealth creation; it wallows in redistribution and consumption, fueled often by envy and revenge. Socialists are most animated when they use political power to punish somebody (like the \u201crich\u201d) and they are typically less interested in helping somebody. Socialists are far more generous with other people\u2019s money than with their own.<\/p>\n
From history we learn that socialism is the economics equivalent of the Hindenburg dirigible \u2014 puffed up with pomp and promise before crashing and burning. Then rather than learn from the experience, most socialists figure that if they just pull an all-nighter, they can get it right the next time.<\/p>\n
What I really want the reader to know is the revealing story of two nations from recent times \u2014 Venezuela and Poland. In broad terms, one chose socialism, the other chose capitalism. The outcomes couldn\u2019t be more starkly instructive.<\/p>\n
Take gross domestic product per capita. In the early 1930s, the two countries were virtually the same by this measure. For the next 60 years, Venezuela\u2019s mixed economy outperformed Poland\u2019s heavily socialized one.<\/p>\n
Then in 1989, a liberated Poland turned decisively in a capitalist direction \u2014 prices were freed; regulations, taxes and bureaucracy were slashed; private property, investment both domestic and foreign were encouraged; entrepreneurship was unleashed; and state enterprises were privatized.<\/p>\n
In 1998, Hugo Chavez came to power promising a full-blown, unadulterated socialist program. \u201cPower to the people!\u201d he declared, as he socialized just about everything. Hollywood leftists proclaimed the dawn of a new society in which, for the first time, socialism would work.<\/p>\n
Poland\u2019s per capita GDP today is between six and seven times higher than Venezuela\u2019s. Annual personal income after taxes is more than four times higher in Poland than it is in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
The market capitalization of Polish companies stands at $197 billion. Venezuela\u2019s domestic companies, by contrast, are worth a measly $3.98 billion. That\u2019s barely 2 percent of Poland\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Socialists will take comfort in the fact that Venezuela is home to only a single billionaire (probably Nicholas Maduro pre-January 2026 or one of his friends), while Poland boasts 10.<\/p>\n
Life expectancy in Poland (at 79.2) is more than six years higher than Venezuela\u2019s 73.<\/p>\n
Inflation is one of the very few measures in which Venezuela\u2019s number is higher \u2014 a whopping 618 percent vs. Poland\u2019s 2.2 percent. Another is national debt: Venezuela\u2019s is 216 percent of GDP, while Poland\u2019s is merely 64 percent.<\/p>\n
Tourism tells a similar tale. In the most recent year for which figures are available, 429,000 foreigners visited the workers\u2019 paradise of Chavez\/ Maduro. In the same year, an astonishing 88.5 million visited Poland.<\/p>\n
The natives are restless too. Since 1998, about eight million Venezuelans fled their country, fueling one of the largest diasporas since World War II. Nobody speaks of \u201cPolish refugees\u201d today.<\/p>\n
Only socialists can look at Poland and Venezuela and arrive at the wrong conclusion. For everybody else, which system works and which does not is as certain as where the sun rises and where it sets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Which system is more conducive to human flourishing, capitalism or socialism? If you want people 50 years from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2557,2556,9],"class_list":["post-3127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-columnists","tag-opinion","tag-poland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}