One of former President Ronald Reagan's favorite Soviet Union jokes involved a government official, a farmer, and potatoes. The Russian commissar visits the collective farms to examine the state of the harvest. The farmer tells the man, "Oh, comrade commissar! If we took all the potatoes, they would reach the foot of God." The commissar reprimands the farmer, "Comrade farmer, this is the Soviet Union. There is no God." The farmer replies, "That's OK. There are no potatoes, either."
An Unequal Food Crisis
Liberty Nation recently reported about the coming food crisis around the world, from rising prices to shortages. Over the next 12 to 18 months, some nations will have it worse than others, but the overall theme is that your dinner plate will either become more expensive or have nothing at all. At the height of the pandemic, the United States witnessed what it is like in socialist countries that have outlawed private property, introduced price controls, or slapped production quotas on manufacturers. Because the demand went through the roof due to panic buying, supermarket shelves became bare as swarms of shoppers grabbed anything they could get. Grocery stores have recovered since then, and you can now get your pork, vegetables, and coffee – albeit at a higher cost due to price inflation and ballooning consumer demand.
Why Does Socialism Fail?
Mao Zedong's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Fidel Castro's Cuba, Nicolas Maduro's Venezuela, the Soviet Union, and so many others – why does socialism lead to shortages or famines? Legendary economist Ludwig von Mises answered this 100 years ago in an article titled "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth." He explained that the pricing mechanism in socialist economies was inadequate because nationalizing the means of production fails to provide a rational pricing system. Mises added that without market prices reflecting the scarcity of capital goods, the economic decision-makers in government could not make rational calculations. In his classic 1951 essay “Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism,” Mises further explained that states travel these devastating paths by adopting nostrums that do nothing but add to a nation's woes. He brilliantly stated:"The impact of this state of affairs is that practically very little is done to preserve the system of private enterprise. There are only middle-of-the-roaders who think they have been successful when they have delayed for some time an especially ruinous measure. They are always in retreat. They put up today with measures which only ten or twenty years ago they would have considered as undiscussable. They will, in a few years, acquiesce in other measures which they today consider as simply out of the question. What can prevent the coming of totalitarian socialism is only a thorough change in ideologies."Any time somebody starts advocating interventionism, no matter how benign, it is time to start stockpiling food.




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