As all good true believers know, the only reason that Socialism has thus far always failed in practice is that real Socialism has never yet been implemented. And thus we have my home town of New York, until now the world capital of capitalism, about to put into office a self-proclaimed Socialist, or maybe Communist, to give Socialism just one more shot.
How could large numbers of seemingly intelligent people believe that this could work? One reason is a remarkable lack of news coverage of the economic status and trajectory of the places that avowedly practice Socialism. My mission here at Manhattan Contrarian is to fix that.
Consider Bolivia. Have you read anything about it lately? They had a presidential election last week, which merited some small interior articles in newspapers I read. The articles I saw before starting to research the topic barely mentioned the current economic situation, and did not mention at all the economic trajectory since the Socialists took power back in 2006.
In the election, which was held on October 20, the nearly 20 year Socialist government has just been voted out by a huge electoral majority. The back story is that the effort to implement Socialism had failed disastrously, as it always does. But just as important is the trajectory followed by the economy under Socialist rule. Here’s the summary: first, an early period of euphoria, where Socialist prescriptions like nationalizations of large businesses (in Bolivia, particularly natural gas sector) funded extensive handouts to government supporters; then a period where the nationalized industries gradually declined until they could not support the handouts any longer; and finally the inevitable economic crisis and collapse.
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