Holiday PSA

The holidays are approaching, and that means time together with family.  If you are of a certain age, there is a good chance that you may end up spending time with younger family members - nieces, nephews, or younger cousins - who will be returning to share tales of the first few years of their life in college.  It will be your sad duty, in many cases, to disabuse these poor, misguided souls of the idea that they actually have a clue as to how the world really works.

With that in mind, here's a public service announcement from Lawrence Person that you may want to keep in mind and keep handy, just in case.

Dear Undergraduates: Communism Doesn’t Work In the Real World

Because our great nation is constantly producing new crops of naive undergraduates, it occurs to me that it might be time to explicate what is painfully obvious to even the most casual observers outside the self-delusional circles of college bull sessions, academic Marxists and Occupy Wall Street. Namely:

• Communism does not work.

• Communism has never worked at any point in the past.

• Communism will never work at any point in the future as long as human beings are involved.

• Attempts to implement communism in the real world inevitably lead to failure, misery, and death. (Indeed, some 100 million deaths.)

When capitalism falls short of the platonic libertarian ideal, the result is Switzerland. 

When communism falls short of the wondrous utopia existing in true believers’ heads, the result is Pol Pot’s Cambodia. 

These two failure modes are not identical.

Linked, bookmarked, and noted for my own personal use, Just In Case™.  I consider my family (both sides) to be more or less sane, but there always seems to be that one relative... You know, the one who doesn't just march to the beat of a different drummer, but insists on doing a Czek-fusion performance art version of a traditional Aegean folk dance accompanied by atonal nose flute music.  Every family seems to have at least one, for some reason.

Depending on your family, you might maybe think about having glossy pamphlets printed up... Just In Case™.