Try to imagine this scenario: what if every pizza joint in your city was owned by the State, and the majority of profits (beyond operating costs and payroll) went to the government. How good do you think their food would be? From my perspective, it’d be safe to say that the product would eventually be degraded to sub-standard at best because there is no incentive to outdo the competition. [Remember, John D. Rockefeller once said, “Competition is a sin.” That’s why a handful of competing banks in the early 1900’s formed a cartel called the Federal Reserve.]

Likewise, what if every waitress at these various pizzerias had to pool their tips together, then split them evenly at night’s end. How good do you think their service would be? I’d wager it’d be atrocious because there’s no motivation to go above and beyond the call of duty. They’d simply throw the plates on your table and not give a damn because they’d only have to divide their gratuities with those who did a lousy job anyway. [Either that, or the System would prompt them to dishonesty – i.e. pocketing their extra tips on the sly.]

Finally, the same applies to drivers at these pizza palaces. If all the deliverers had to split their tips, what incentive would anyone have to be efficient if they ultimately had to divvy up their earnings with the slackers?

These examples (and many more) constitute the major problems with collectivism which are the fundamental building blocks of socialism and communism. If the interests of the whole take on more importance than that of the individual (as Hegel suggested); then individuals lose their drive to excel and simply become cogs in the wheel, or undifferentiated parts of the whole. Thus, if you replace the pizza shop in my above example with government, is it any wonder why the people in these systems become complacent, stagnant, and nihilistic, especially when their impetus to move beyond the herd has been removed?

Tomorrow: The dangers of irresponsible capitalism