Tea at Trianon: The 5 Reasons Socialism Doesn’t Work

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 13, 2025

The 5 Reasons Socialism Doesn’t Work

From Culturcidal:

In fact, the only time socialism ever looks viable at all is when a thriving capitalist system is built and socialism is layered on top of it, without being so overdone that it immediately destroys the whole economy. It’s like a world class sprinter that is forced to wear a weight vest. It immediately slows him down, gets worse as the weight is increased and can eventually become so heavy he can’t even move.
Why? Well…
1) Economic centralization just doesn’t work: There was a time in human history when the most brilliant minds could essentially “know everything” or pretty close. For example, I asked ChatGPT for a list of things Leonardo Da Vinci was an “expert” at. Among other things, it told me, "Anatomy, Physics, Mechanics, Engineering, Invention, Hydraulics, Art, Painting, Drawing, Perspective and Composition, Mathematics and Geometry, Proportion and Symmetry, Golden Ratio Studies, Natural Sciences, Botany, Geology, Zoology, Flight Dynamics, Architectural Design, Urban Planning, Fortification Design, Writing and Thought and Scientific Observation." Granted, Da Vinci had an amazing mind, but the world was also much simpler, and the base level of knowledge was a tiny fraction of what it is today.
On the other hand, today, the world is highly technical, deeply complex, and rapidly shifting. Even if you were the greatest genius on earth in, say, quantum physics or rocket science, that wouldn’t mean you’d have even the most basic understanding of something like farming, brain surgery or, social media marketing.
So, when politicians and bureaucrats, who are frequently no smarter than even the average person, are asked to make decisions about a wide variety of jobs, resources, policies, and regulations, the results are inevitably going to be disastrous.
It’s tricky enough for even true experts in a field to figure out the best way to use their resources or what the market will want in a couple of years, so when you move almost all of those sorts of decisions into the hands of people with outside agendas, who don’t understand what they’re doing, it’s going to get extremely dysfunctional, extremely fast.
Capitalism deals with this by leaving as many decisions as possible in the hands of the market, while socialism deals with it by failing over and over and over again and shifting the blame to non-socialists, businesses, and capitalism. (Read more.)