In The Road to Serfdom F.A. Hayek explained that under socialist government “planning” the following scenario will occur: The plans inevitably fail, after which the planners respond by granting themselves even more power, which means less freedom and more oppression. They become more and more dictatorial, and more and more willing to throw morals out the door. Democracy is destroyed, step by step.
The latest example of this phenomenon is democratic socialist Venezuela, where the government first completely ruined its economy with socialism — the stores are empty and middle-class people who used to have good jobs are literally rooting through garbage in the streets looking for food to eat. The Venezuelan government is now ordering citizens to work on farms for at least sixty days to avert a starvation crisis. Forced labor is always and everywhere a key feature of socialism and welfarism. (Under the latter, the productive class is forced to work for months out of each year just to pay taxes that are used to subsidize others — a good definition of “slavery”).
9:57 am on July 30, 2016
