For the past 50 years or so, America has been engaged in a massive socioeconomic experiment.
So, if you have ever felt like a rat in a maze that's probably why.
It has been a test of two systems, communist and capitalist. The test involves how much of one can be implemented before the other fails - and we are almost to the point of knowing.
The American system, from justice down to economic mobility, is based on the individual freedom created through capitalist roots, the idea that creating value and selling that value in an open market to others who want, need or desire that value is the best way to create actual progress - and as a theory of government, creating a system of governance that protects the ability of every individual to do just that.
So, the social engineers decided to stress test that system by infecting it with progressively larger doses of anti-capitalism, namely collectivism, in the form of socialized medicine and increased levels of welfare and taxation.
Capitalism proved it could withstand a high viral load of these infections.
Class warfare based on economics was not able to end capitalism due to the wide distribution of prosperity and economic mobility. The ability of individuals to change economic class through their own efforts of innovation or selling their skills and experience to the highest bidder prevented people from being locked into a specific class and when people can move upward, it is impossible to convince them to make war on a class they aspire to joining.
Collectivists are nothing if not resilient, recognizing the capitalist system was too resilient to be dealt a death blow through manipulation of economic classes, they engaged in gain of function experiments and found that race might work as the dividing line between classes - but after failing to make race an issue that in an age when America was transitioning out of seeing color rather than merit, they found identity.
Identity was the perfect pathogen, the Marburg virus of socioeconomic and governing systems.
It was a virus that mutated upon demand. Classes could change on a whim to keep the fever going. Men could become women, people could "identify" as needed as any race they wanted and join any other "oppressed" class when they were not part of that class - that's why wealthy whites, particularly white women, joined BLM protests. It's why non-Arab college kids march with antisemitic Hamas supporters. Identity also allows oppression to be invented where no oppression exists, simply by classifying anything as oppression and never requiring the "oppressed" to define their "oppression" in rational terms.
It is interesting to note that even though no vaccine for Marburg exists, it doesn't have a 100% fatality rate. Even the deadliest virus on the face of the earth has a twelve percent survivability rate.
An anecdotal perspective to be sure, but I have always been fascinated by how much of one the other can withstand, for example, how much collectivism can capitalism withstand before collapsing and vice versa.
I think that observation gives an indication of which system is stronger and more resilient.
America has shown that capitalism can handle a high viral load of collectivism. Collectivism can't be said to possess the same resilience. Failed communist states always turn to capitalism - in the case of China, it adopted a form of state-run capitalism to prosper and survive. The very fact that a nation-state can operate as a single corporation in a global economy proves that capitalism is scalable while collectivism is not. China didn’t force the world to buy their goods and services, they were simply less expensive and that made them attractive in a competitive world.
The CCP lovers always tout China for how it raised the standard of living for its people but willfully ignore the fact that it was capitalism that enabled them to do it. Without capitalism, China would just be the largest third-world country in the world.
If collectivism is Marburg, even if nothing is done, twelve percent of capitalism will survive – but unlike Marburg, there is a vaccine for collectivism. It is a constitution of a free people. The degree to which the fever is allowed to rise is entirely under the control of the people and how sick America becomes is entirely dependent on how much suffering people are willing to allow.
History seems to indicate capitalism can handle a large collectivist viral load; collectivism cannot withstand even a very low viral load of capitalism.
And that is why collectivism will never win.
Thank you.
I'm saving this one to reread at least once a week for the next 13 months. We're heading for a really rocky ride and I'll need to be reminded...
Capitalism, to succeed, requires men with chests. (cf. C.S. Lewis)