Socialism vs Capitalism an Email Exchange
This was a little email exchange I thought I'd share, with my coworker who always is arguing his extreme fiscal conservative capitalist agenda.
From: John
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:56 AM
To: Richard Mathis
Subject: Econ wisdom
I imagine this story is a hoax, but the moral is accurate. Made me think of Anna and the other professors you talked about. - JWM
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. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
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 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.
This reply is to the email down below
My Response
There should be another story where the econ professor gives a limited number of grades of each type (As,Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs) and doing certain activities can allow a student to rack up more than 1 A on an exam.
Then watch how certain students will get multiple As “just in case”, preventing some other students from ever getting a single A, requiring them to work ever harder to get multiple Bs to equal a single A, which makes it even harder for the next set of students to even get a single B by getting multiple Cs, let alone working hard enough to get the equivalent of an A. Which leaves half the class unable to get anything more than a high D or even an F.
Which would illustrate that a system based on competition without adequate safeguards will always result in a system where certain members of society will always get far more than what they need and keep it for no other reason than to have it, resulting in other members of society working harder for less and less.
The point of all of which would hopefully tell the readers of the two stories that only some form of moderation between the two is a viable means of creating a productive society that benefits the majority if not all of its members.
Richard M Mathis
Application Development Lead