A lesson on sociology

I got this from my father.

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 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 socialism.

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 the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.


"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

~~~~ Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931


Abraham Lincoln said the same as Dr. Rodgers when he proclaimed -

"You cannot make the weak strong by making the strong weak!"


I kinda thought about this before. I was thinking, there are people in the world who have more money than they need, and people in the world who don't have enough money. If everything were shared, everyone would have enough.

So I thought of an "ideal" world, where everything is shared - no monetary system, but everyone doing their own job, for whoever needs it (those who plant vegetables would share their crops, those who fish would share their catch, etc). But right away we can see a glaring flaw: would people do these things? Would someone go out to catch more fish than they need, if it were just to give it out to whoever wants it? No, they wouldn't. They would want something in return. And that is why, once possession was defined, nothing is free any longer. You've got to work for what you want.

(Which is why humanity has progressed so much, I guess. If possession had never been defined, we'd probably still be catching/plucking our own food or snatching them away from someone else (think animals))