The Class That Failed — A socialist allegory updated for Obamanomics

August 11th, 2009 Aaron Leave a comment Go to comments

Here’s an Obama spam mak­ing its rounds among us neo­cons.  It reminds me of A les­son in eco­nom­ics using beer. These alle­gories are always a bit over­sim­pli­fied, but they are impor­tant in that they:

  • Com­mu­ni­cate the essence of the pro­posed plans in a sim­ple to under­stand analogy
  • Com­mu­ni­cate the clear and sim­ple prob­lems of the pro­posed plans
  • Com­mu­ni­cate the real con­cerns, fears, and anger of the opposition
  • Involve ridicule from the minor­ity, which should be viewed as a warn­ing that fail­ing to heed the con­cerns will lead to the next step — pub­lic defi­ance (can you say “Town Hall meetings”?)

What such alle­gories lack in sophis­ti­ca­tion they eas­ily make up for in clar­ity, some­thing most polit­i­cal plans, includ­ing Obama’s, lack.

THE CLASS THAT FAILED

An eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor at a local col­lege made a state­ment that he had never failed a sin­gle stu­dent  before, but had once failed an entire class.  This is the story of that class.

——————————————

The class had insisted that Obama’s social­ist eco­nom­ics worked, and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich — great equal­izer and instru­ment of justice.

The pro­fes­sor then said, “OK, we will have an exper­i­ment in this class on Obama’s plan”.

“All grades will be aver­aged and every­one will receive the same grade, so no one will fail — and no one would receive an A (an accept­able down­side in order to save the failing).

After the first test, the grades were aver­aged and every­one got a B.
The stu­dents who stud­ied hard were upset and the stu­dents who stud­ied lit­tle were happy.

As the sec­ond test rolled around, the stu­dents who stud­ied lit­tle had stud­ied even less and the ones who stud­ied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they stud­ied very lit­tle.
The sec­ond test aver­age was a D!
No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the aver­age was an F.

The scores never increased as bick­er­ing, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feel­ings and no one would study for the ben­e­fit of any­one else.

All failed, to their great sur­prise, and the pro­fes­sor told them that social­ism would also ulti­mately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to suc­ceed is great but when gov­ern­ment takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any sim­pler than that. 

————–

MY EPILOGUE:  Who is miss­ing from this tale?  Quite a few impor­tant archetypes:

  1. The Hard Worker.  Where is the stu­dent who had enough char­ac­ter to real­ize that, even if his reward was dimin­ished by the sys­tem, it was his duty to do what was right and work hard?  Does remov­ing reward totally demor­al­ize every­one?  Look­ing at Soviet Rus­sia, the answer is, it demor­al­izes enough peo­ple that the few that might have enough char­ac­ter to con­tinue to work hard, be they lib­eral ide­o­logues or those devoted to per­sonal excel­lence, make no dif­fer­ence, and the sys­tem fails.
  2. The Con­ser­v­a­tive Con­trar­ian.  Where is the per­son who objects to the plan from the begin­ning as mis­be­got­ten?  Surely not all stu­dents were raised to be daft enough to believe that eco­nomic social­ism and lib­er­al­ism are worth pur­su­ing?  The stead­fast Con­ser­v­a­tive is the miss­ing hero from this story, hold­ing the course on time­less prin­ci­ples that honor human­ity, virtue, and God.
  3. The Neo-Conservative Con­trar­ian.  Where is the per­son who wakes up mid­way and real­izes that the plan is fool­ish?  You know, the ‘lib­eral mugged by reality’ turned Con­ser­v­a­tive?  Surely not all social lib­er­als are lem­mings that can’t switch at least to an Inde­pen­dent posi­tion — there are many in the cur­rent real world sit­u­a­tion, I am sure.  Such peo­ple are the mod­er­at­ing voices of the NEXT admin­is­tra­tion, which tends to be at the oppo­site end of the pen­du­lum swing when the power shifts away from social­is­tic catastrophe.
  4. The Die Hard Social­ist.  Where is the stu­dent who says “it failed because we did not imple­ment it cor­rectly!  There is still merit in social­ism!”  They claim that they deserve an A, even if they failed to study because the prob­lem wasn’t with THEM, it was with the SYSTEM.
  5. The Sui­ci­dal Dis­il­lu­sioned Social­ist.  Where is the poor per­son whose hopes are dashed by the fail­ure of the exper­i­ment, who, hav­ing lost every­thing in such a social exper­i­ment, becomes depressed, a sub­stance abuser, and sui­ci­dal?  This is the real cost of social­is­tic exper­i­ments — they offer hope, and when they inevitably fail, they take with them the hopes of thou­sands or mil­lions, and leave them destitute.

Regard­ing the inevitable depress­ing out­comes of social­ism, not only do they take people’s hope away after get­ting it so high, it offers no hope after it comes crash­ing down.  It reminds me of D’Souza’s ques­tion, “Where is athe­ism when bad things hap­pen?” (Answer: Absent). Since it can offer no hope beyond the mate­r­ial world, it leaves peo­ple worse off than before, demor­al­ized, beaten, and with­out answers.

Categories: Economics, Humor, Obama, Spam
  1. Louis
    August 11th, 2009 at 10:07 | #1
    Reply | Quote

    Involve ridicule from the minor­ity, which should be viewed as a warn­ing that fail­ing to heed the con­cerns will lead to the next step — pub­lic defi­ance (can you say “Town Hall meet­ings”?)
    And what will hap­pen when this demand that the rest of us (ie, the “major­ity”) doesn’t heed the “con­cerns” of the rad­i­cal right for an over­sim­pli­fied ver­sion of Amer­ica? See here for one exam­ple: guns and implicit threats of violence.

  2. danielg
    August 11th, 2009 at 15:46 | #2
    Reply | Quote

    » LOUIS: And what will hap­pen when this demand that the rest of us (ie, the “major­ity”) doesn’t heed the “con­cerns” of the rad­i­cal right for an over­sim­pli­fied ver­sion of Amer­ica?
    What do gay rights advo­cates do?

  3. keith john­son
    August 12th, 2009 at 01:10 | #3
    Reply | Quote

    Hi Daniel:
    An equiv­a­lent cap­i­tal­ist alle­gory: the pro­fes­sor offers to SELL grades for what­ever the mar­ket will bear! Dumb alle­gories cut both ways, my friend.
    your friend
    Keith

  4. Louis
    August 12th, 2009 at 02:30 | #4
    Reply | Quote

    What do gay rights advo­cates do?
    1. There are no “gay rights advo­cates” under­stood as a group mind. Gay rights advo­cates advo­cate for gay equal­ity under the law. Some­times they get out of hand and I con­demn that. Non-violent, peace­ful protest is per­fectly legit­i­mate (as long as one is ready to accept the con­se­quences). The only par­al­lel I can think of would be if gays orga­nized on a national level to pack evan­gel­i­cal and fun­da­men­tal­ist (and RC) churches and scream and yell for the entire ser­vice to halt the free exer­cise of reli­gion. They would raise signs depict­ing the Pope or Jesus as Hitler, with graph­ics depict­ing the cross as a swastika. They would imply vio­lence as a nec­es­sary step. Beyond a few iso­lated instances here and there, I have not seen this hap­pen on a mass, orga­nized level. Can you pro­vide evi­dence that it has?
    2. I’m not aware of gay rights pro­test­ers car­ry­ing weapons openly along with signs imply­ing vio­lence. Usu­ally it’s the other way around. Vio­lence, or the threat of vio­lence, is a con­stant pres­ence in our lives. This is one way we are intim­i­dated into silence.
    3. The pro­test­ers we have been see­ing at Demo­c­ra­tic func­tions aren’t there for com­mu­ni­ca­tion but to dis­rupt and destroy the polit­i­cal process. They aren’t amenable to rea­son. Their tac­tics are anti-democratic and un-American. They may be frus­trated and angry, but they have no right to do what they are doing. btw: they make great adver­tise­ments against their cause. Maybe we should thank them!

  5. danielg
    August 12th, 2009 at 02:38 | #5
    Reply | Quote

    No anal­ogy is per­fect, but this one applies in as far as the rel­e­vant crit­i­cism — that social­ism removes the reward for hard work, and serves as a dis-incentive for the virtues of hard work and hon­esty. The prob­lems with the Obama solu­tion is pre­cisely the same prob­lem as with a purely cap­i­tal­is­tic one — it does not com­pen­sate for it’s weak­nesses.
    I think that you are right about a PURELY mar­ket dri­ven health care sys­tem in one sense, and that is, the per­son with the most money could buy the best ‘grades’ — but that’s not really entirely cor­rect.
    We are not argu­ing for a purely cap­i­tal­is­tic market-driven health care sys­tem, but rather, a lightly REGULATED sys­tem. The advan­tages of this are that it gives us the best of both worlds, i.e.
    – reg­u­la­tion pre­vents the abuses of a purely cap­i­tal­is­tic ven­ture
    – free mar­kets allow for choice and com­pe­ti­tion to drive down cost and drive up qual­ity
    What we ARE say­ing is that the Obama plan, while it pre­tends to just come along­side the exist­ing mar­ket plans, it struc­tured in such a way that it will REPLACE the free-market sys­tem, and will end in an ENTIRELY GOVERNMENT run health sys­tem, which, lack­ing free mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion, will
    – be fraught with waste and fraud
    – encour­age employ­ers to dump their employ­ees into the pub­lic sys­tem, thereby essen­tially elim­i­nat­ing pri­vate options (I know that libs argue against this, but I think they are being totally naive, if not blind and disin­gen­u­ous)
    – seri­ously reduce our choices and free­dom (see the CNN arti­cle I posted yes­ter­day)
    – lack com­pe­ti­tion, thereby dri­ving UP costs (to the tax­payer) and DOWN qual­ity. To dis­pute this is almost beyond belief, since that is the com­mon expe­ri­ence world­wide (again, oil-rich Nether­lands pro­grams are an anom­aly, not the rule), and any­one famil­iar with Canada or Britain’s sys­tems can see this in spades.
    I lis­tened to Obama’s highly con­trolled Town Hall meet­ing yes­ter­day, and his answer to the ‘Repub­li­can’ was the same old weaseled answer he always give — he doesn’t DENY that we are head­ing towards a single-payer sys­tem, he just says ‘such a rapid tran­si­tion would be too difficult.’

  6. James
    August 12th, 2009 at 05:42 | #6
    Reply | Quote

    Louis said:
    ” I’m not aware of gay rights pro­test­ers car­ry­ing weapons openly along with signs imply­ing vio­lence“
    Is this close enough?
    http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=...
    I’m glad you also said:
    “Some­times they get out of hand and I con­demn that“
    But I’m won­der­ing, how does one nutty A-hole, who has been widely con­demned by con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits and gun rights activist reflect sud­denly on that whole group?
    You say that peo­ple are at Demo­c­ra­tic func­tions… not the first time you’ve said that… I didn’t real­ized they were check­ing for party affil­i­a­tion at the door. Are (D) Rep­re­sen­ta­tives only sup­posed to rep­re­sent (D) peo­ple, or are they sup­posed to be avail­able and account­able to every con­stituent in their dis­trict?
    Tac­tics are unde­mo­c­ra­tic and unAmer­i­can? I thought dis­sent was the high­est form of patri­o­tism. It was under Bush. Just ask Keith Olber­mann. UnAmer­i­can, like what Nancy Pelosi said about peo­ple drown­ing out oppos­ing voices? What about when the SEIU says that’s their exact intent in attend­ing town­halls?
    They have no right to do what they are doing? Re: 1st Amend­ment.
    Fac­ing vio­lence? I won­der what Ken­neth Glad­ney has to say about that. The Oba­macare sup­port­ers cer­tainly had some­thing to say.
    As for your final clos­ing thoughts, you’re clearly not the first to think about it. In fact, it seems like some aren’t sat­is­fied with real Oba­macare oppo­nents anger, and are try­ing to invent some. Enjoy:
    http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2009/08/busted-ob...

  7. Louis
    August 12th, 2009 at 07:48 | #7
    Reply | Quote

    The link you posted quoted a few blog­gers and com­menters, but did not show any gays car­ry­ing weapons and signs threat­en­ing vio­lence (my quote). Why are you dis­tort­ing what I said? And how does your com­men­tary address my points about the threat and real­ity of vio­lence gays live under every sin­gle day.
    You say that peo­ple are at Demo­c­ra­tic func­tions… not the first time you’ve said that… I didn’t real­ized they were check­ing for party affil­i­a­tion at the door.
    They aren’t at Repub­li­can forums. Duh.
    I was care­ful to dis­cuss dis­sent I think is fine. I sup­pose you think it’s okay to dis­rupt and intim­i­date and stop the demo­c­ra­tic process as legit­i­mate dis­sent. I don’t. “Peace­ably assem­ble to peti­tion the gov­ern­ment” this isn’t.
    What­ever. I don’t expect con­ser­v­a­tives to be fair.

  8. Louis
    August 12th, 2009 at 08:16 | #8
    Reply | Quote

    daniel likes to post comix here. Since I don’t have access, here and here are links to funny examples.

  9. danielg
    August 12th, 2009 at 08:19 | #9
    Reply | Quote

    » LOUIS: I sup­pose you think it’s okay to dis­rupt and intim­i­date and stop the demo­c­ra­tic process as legit­i­mate dis­sent. I don’t. “Peace­ably assem­ble to peti­tion the gov­ern­ment” this isn’t.
    I agree Louis, shout­ing and chant­ing is not really ‘civil dis­course’ — but the real prob­lem is that peo­ple need a legit­i­mate forum at which they can air their dis­ap­proval and griev­ances. I think that they blew their chance when they started get­ting out of hand at the ini­tial Town Halls.
    How­ever, peo­ple ARE rea­son­ably scared and con­cerned, and not just because of the ‘scare tac­tics’ of right wing orga­ni­za­tions. There are plenty of rea­sons to be alarmed at the rate of spend­ing, the unread ram­rod­ded porku­lous bills, and this health­care bill is being ram­rod­ded too — thou­sands of pages that Obama wanted to push through in a week?
    And the prob­lems with this leg­is­la­tion, now that we have time to vet it, are myr­iad, from abor­tion fund­ing to race quo­tas for med­ical schools (“no doc­tor, i don’t care if you weren’t the best qual­i­fied, as long as you are a minor­ity”).
    Obama doesn’t seem inter­ested in a national con­ver­sa­tion on this mat­ter that might lengthen the time it gets for him to accom­plish HIS goals. There is plenty of oppo­si­tion to this bill, and not just from uncar­ing cap­i­tal­ists. Peo­ple are push­ing back against his heavy-handed leg­isla­tive and spend­ing style. Lib­er­als are giddy with power right now, and seem to think that this is their oppor­tu­nity to ram their ide­o­log­i­cal ideas through Con­gress with­out dis­cus­sion. That’s BS.
    And please don’t say ‘that’s what the repub­li­cans did’ because (1) that wasn’t true, and (2)two wrongs don’t make a right.

  10. danielg
    August 12th, 2009 at 09:20 | #10
    Reply | Quote
  11. Louis
    August 12th, 2009 at 09:26 | #11
    Reply | Quote

    What­ever. Every­thing you say reminds me of how I felt under Bush.

  12. James
    August 12th, 2009 at 22:41 | #12
    Reply | Quote

    Louis said:
    “Why are you dis­tort­ing what I said?“
    Did I mis­quote you? Or do you fail to under­stand that “close enough” (my words) are a tacit recog­ni­tion that it’s not a com­plete one to one, and the “?” fol­low­ing it is ask­ing you whether you think it’s a fair com­par­i­son. You accuse me of some­thing I did not do. Will you both with­draw the accu­sa­tion and address what I actu­ally did say? (Based on his­tory, I sus­pect not.)
    “the threat and real­ity of vio­lence gays live under every sin­gle day“
    Can you pro­vide sourc­ing for this? You claim vic­tim sta­tus a lot, but I’m not sure it exists out­side your head. Our cul­ture on the whole ven­er­ates gay cul­ture. Are there recent sto­ries of gay hate vio­lence I’m unaware of? Please sub­stan­ti­ate.
    “They aren’t at Repub­li­can forums. Duh.“
    OH RLY?
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/0...
    “I sup­pose you think it’s okay to dis­rupt and intim­i­date and stop the demo­c­ra­tic process as legit­i­mate dis­sent. I don’t. “Peace­ably assem­ble to peti­tion the gov­ern­ment” this isn’t. “
    And there’s the money shot. Can you read? You cer­tainly have felt free to cor­rect other’s spelling before, so I assume so. Not only have I repeat­edly stated on this blog that I think drown­ing peo­ple out is unhelp­ful and unpro­duc­tive, but I also gave no indi­ca­tion that I think it’s okay to be dis­rup­tive.
    What I did point out and what you ignored and failed to address, is that you have a “they” are doing this stance, but it’s “your” peo­ple who are at least par­tic­i­pat­ing, if not dri­ving this behav­ior.
    So, care to be fair, since you’re not a con­ser­v­a­tive, and address what I have actu­ally said, instead of dis­tort­ing and ignor­ing? (again, I doubt it based on past expe­ri­ence, but I’d be happy to be wrong about that).

  13. Louis
    August 13th, 2009 at 01:52 | #13
    Reply | Quote

    Okay, so one Repub­li­can con­gress­man got booed by the same crowd of brown shirt nutjobs — and for sug­gest­ing turn­ing off brown shirt nutjob Glen Beck! Good for him! But, nat­u­rally, it was the brown shirt nutjobs doing the dirty work all around. F*ck ‘em!
    And it’s not “play­ing the vic­tim” to rec­og­nize that gays live under a threat of vio­lence straights never even con­sider. If you can’t under­stand or rec­og­nize this, you’re either stu­pid or crazy or a con­ser­v­a­tive chris­tian­ist (same thing). Even if I link to exam­ples, you’ll just brush them off like daniel and Aaron and the rest of your ilk as iso­lated exam­ples, so what’s the use. Look it up for your­self.
    Okay, no, it’s not close enough. And if “my” peo­ple are par­tic­i­pat­ing, it’s in reac­tion to the right wing brown shirts try­ing to shut down the debate and intim­i­date the rest of us. “We” are fight­ing back. So, shove it.

  14. James
    August 13th, 2009 at 03:01 | #14
    Reply | Quote

    I said, “Will you both with­draw the accu­sa­tion and address what I actu­ally did say? (Based on his­tory, I sus­pect not.)“
    And I thank you for sup­port­ing my points, yet again.
    You’re swell!

You must be logged in to post a comment.