A Rasmussen poll last September discovered something Americans once found unthinkable: Fifty-three percent of likely voters aged 18 to 39 want a “democratic socialist” elected president in 2028. And that’s not all. Seventy-six percent of these under-40s believe that major industries “like health care, energy, and big tech should be nationalized to give more control and equity to the people,” Rasmussen wrote. It’s staggering, but a question now arises: Do these voters support socialism — or what they think socialism is? Moreover, does nationalization actually give “the people” control?

Some young voters who aren’t too keen on socialism may be those who ran into one Mark Grannis in 2020. It was that year that Grannis, a history teacher at The Heights School, a Catholic boys’ institution in Potomac, Maryland, instituted something new. For one unit annually for a few years, he decided to implement a socialist-style grading system. What then transpired was interesting, as he related at The Heights Forum in 2025:

The course was mandatory for all juniors that year, and when I announced the socialist LSQs [“low-stakes quizzes”] they simply didn’t believe me. In each of the four sections, we had an interesting discussion about why it was so hard to believe. Why not give everyone the same score? The top students understood correctly that their grade was likely to be lower, but their loss was offset by someone’s gain in the bottom half of the class. If it all evens out, is there anything objectionable about the policy? Isn’t it permissible to design a grading policy that emphasizes the common struggles of all students over the exceptional talents of a few?

Or to put it another way, why is it important to assess individual performance rather than the performance of the group? They all experienced the oppression of being graded all the time; wouldn’t it be nice to be relieved from that? Interestingly, they didn’t think so. They wanted their effort to matter. Perhaps more fundamentally, they knew both that the effort would be good for them and that they needed the pressure of external feedback in order to put forth the effort.

The students assured me they understood the lesson I was teaching, and asked me to end the ruse and go back to individual scoring. But I insisted it was no ruse, and I promised them very solemnly that I would actually give them the average score. They eventually believed me. How could I tell? Because their quiz scores started to go down. Although many continued to read because they wanted to, more and more stopped reading because, well, they didn’t want to. The disappearance of the extrinsic incentive for reading led very predictably to less reading, and that showed in the class averages for all four sections of the course.

Yet while this system was new in Grannis’ class, it’s anything but in the wider world. In fact, in 1825 already, Welsh reformer Robert Owen, a founder of “utopian socialism,” created the collectivist community of New Harmony, Indiana. Owen was dedicated, too, funding this “New Moral World” of happiness and prosperity with a fortune he’d made, via the market, as a textile manufacturer in Scotland. And reminiscent of socialist rhetoric today, he railed against what he called a “trinity of evils”: private property, “irrational systems of religion,” and traditional marriage.

Much as in Grannis’ class, though, Owen encountered problems almost immediately. These only worsened, too, and his New Harmony brainchild failed completely within two years. What went wrong? As Richard Gunderman, Ph.D. informed at LawLiberty.org in 2021:

People turned out to be reluctant to work hard when they saw others who labored little enjoying the same life. Owen’s son, David, wrote that the town had attracted a “heterogeneous” group that included people devoted to principle, “lazy theorists,” and “a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers.”

Know, too, that other Owenite communities likewise failed. The laws of man’s nature, which would manifest in Grannis’ class almost two centuries later, proved insurmountable.

Now, one lesson here is that socialism is older — and has been tried more often — than most think. It’s commonly believed Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels birthed the ideology in their famous 1848 work The Communist Manifesto.The book was, do note, originally to be titled The Socialist Manifesto. But the co-authors rejected the “socialist” label because it had a negative association at the time, being connected with figures such as Owen and their failures.

Socialism’s Enduring Appeal

Despite Owen’s stumbles, he continued advocating his ideas after returning to Britain in 1827 and would become known as the “father of English Socialism.” Likewise, though he delivered no new harmony, many today are still drawn to his socialist dream. But, again, do they truly grasp what it involves? What is “socialism”?

The ostensible idea behind it is encapsulated by the Marxist axiom “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Realize, too, that both Marx and Russian Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin considered socialism the lower/first stage of communist society, which involved government ownership of the means of production. Consequently, it should surprise no one that in the USSR — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — this was precisely what government did. (It thus also isn’t shocking that avowedly socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called “seizing” the means of production his “ultimate goal.”) And controlling these means, the government can distribute a percentage of what wealth there is to the people. The result is that a person isn’t rewarded “according to his ability,” but supposedly is given money “according to his needs.” A question arises, however: How much wealth would exist in the first place under such a system?

Life Is Hard

When pondering this, consider that man’s historical norm is not wealth — it’s grinding poverty. As German economist and statistician Max Roser informed in an Our World in Data essay updated in 2024, in 1820, nearly 80 percent of the world’s population endured “extreme poverty.” “Only a small elite enjoyed higher living standards,” he elaborated. Yet the worldwide standard of living is now the highest it has ever been in man’s history. In fact, though socialism was never generally adopted, “the share of extremely poor people has fallen continuously [since 1820],” Roser wrote. “More and more world regions industrialized and achieved economic growth, which made it possible to lift more people out of poverty. In 1950, about half the world lived in extreme poverty; in 1990, it was still more than a third. By 2019, the share of the world population in extreme poverty had fallen below 10%.” In truth, however, even early-19th-century people were privileged compared to the historical norm. Life was typically short, brutal, and hard, with the average lifespan at birth ranging from approximately 20 to 35 until the late 18th century. There was little wealth.

Today, of course, most Americans can’t even imagine the historical default of hardship and privation. Our average lifespan is 79.4. We may wonder about whether to have Chinese or Italian for dinner, not about starvation. We enjoy supermarkets teeming with an average of 30,000 to 45,000 products from the world over. Just consider me: I have time to sit around penning an essay like this. I enjoy my ice cream (which I indulge in almost daily!). I go on the internet and, admittedly, still fritter away too many hours with frivolity. I can enjoy recreation, such as hitting golf balls. All these products and opportunities, and a million others, simply didn’t exist for virtually all of history.

And how profound is the difference data-wise? According to economic historians at the Maddison Project, the world today is 20 to 40 times richer per person than in pre-1800 times. To the point here, the United States, with its historically high economic-freedom level, is 80 to 150 times richer than that age. Again, too, as Roser pointed out, the world is even quite a bit richer than it was in 1950 or 1990.

This holds an important lesson: Wealth is not a zero-sum game. All the wealth we enjoy and take for granted, and that didn’t exist for our ancestors, was created. More is being created all the time, too. This happens when people take what is in and on the Earth — minerals, timber, and other resources — and combine it in unique ways. That’s how we end up with smartphones, TVs, computers, buildings, refrigerators, tennis racquets, video games, stoves, plates, cookies, fruit pies, supermarkets, and, well, you name it. Yet now another question arises: How is wealth creation best catalyzed? What does a better job at this, a socialist system or a market system offering great economic freedom?

The late economist Walter E. Williams addressed this. After analyzing data, he wrote in 2014 in his syndicated column, “Rank countries according to whether they are closer to being a free market economy or whether they’re closer to having a socialist or planned economy. Then rank countries by per capita income. Doing so, we will find a general, though not perfect, pattern whereby those having a larger measure of economic freedom find their citizens enjoying a higher standard of living.”

Now let’s examine a couple of relevant anecdotes, starting with South Korea (SK) and North Korea (NK). They’re ideal examples because at NK’s birth, 1948, they were both the same racially, ethnically, and culturally. They also were essentially identical economically post-WWII and -Korean War: extremely poor and devastated. Yet SK adopted economic freedom — market reforms were pursued in the 1960s — while NK embraced strict central planning (and describes itself as a “socialist state”).

Despite NK’s initial rapid industrialization and reconstruction with Soviet and Chinese aid, SK has generated orders of magnitude more total wealth (cumulative GDP) than NK — likely 50 to 100-plus times more. The result? Today, SK’s economy is approximately 40 to 80-plus times larger than NK’s in nominal GDP terms; that is, SK’s nominal GDP is approximately $1.7 trillion, NK’s only about $20 to $40 billion. (NK’s data is unreliable, hence the broad estimates.) Put simply, SK went from zero to hero, NK from zero to Nero.

Another example involving racial/ethnic/cultural similarity and identical starting point (post-WWII devastation) is the two Germanys. From the time of socialist East Germany’s (EG’s) founding (1949) to its reunification with market-oriented West Germany (WG) in 1990, the latter created roughly five to 10 times more wealth per person. Consequently, WG’s GDP per capita was approximately $20,000-plus in 1990 (in that year’s dollars); EG’s was about $8,000 to $10,000. Oh, and if you’re wondering why the performance disparity between the two Germanys was not nearly as great as that between the two Koreas, there are multiple reasons. One, though, is that EG was more economically pragmatic, while NK embraced socialism devoutly.

The bottom line, however, is this: Socialism is not about creating wealth; it is about dividing the wealth, which dwindles as the division begins subtracting from incentive. On the other hand, an economic-freedom system involves creating wealth. Under socialism, the total economic pie is reduced, which would result in smaller and smaller pieces even if the wealth truly were shared. Under economic freedom, there is far greater wealth and, consequently, even relatively small pieces will be larger than the ostensibly equal-sized pieces under socialism.

Why “ostensibly”? Well, there’s a difference between socialism in theory and in practice; wherever and whenever it’s applied, socialism is a control-the-wealth program, not a share-the-wealth program. Just consider the aforementioned NK: The ruling Kim family’s controllable assets are estimated to be between $3 billion and $5 billion, and dictator Kim Jong Un enjoys every luxury his heart desires. (“According to his needs”?) Moreover, it’s estimated that the Kim family and close relatives (about 100 people) spend between $600 million and $650 million per year on luxuries. In contrast, actual take-home wages for ordinary NK state workers are often reported to be just tens of dollars or less monthly, at black-market rates. Most households rely heavily on informal markets, side jobs, or private trading to survive.

A Fair Way From Laissez-faire

Yet despite our being unprecedentedly wealthy, critics will lament that we Americans have our problems. They’re right, of course, but two points must be made. First, all civilizations have problems; Heaven is in Heaven, not on Earth, and the insistence it can be cultivated in this material fold has delivered debacles such as the inharmonious New Harmony. Second, many complain that too much economic freedom — what some call “laissez-faire capitalism” — is causing our problems. But we needn’t argue about this, and for a simple reason: We have nowhere near that economic-freedom level, and haven’t ever had “laissez-faire capitalism.” In fact, we haven’t even begun to approach it in more than a century. Illustrating this point, Williams wrote in 2008 in “Are We Sure We Want More Regulation?” citing work by Professor George Reisman:

There are 15 Cabinet departments, nine of which control various aspects of the U.S. economy. They are the Departments of: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce and Interior. In addition, there is the alphabet soup cluster of federal agencies such as: the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, [DHS,] OHSA [sic], CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, [ATF,] DEA, NIH and NASA.

To drive the point home, consider that we don’t even know how many federal, state, and local regulations and mandates exist that control or affect the economy. We do know this: The total is at least several million. As Williams put it, tell “me what a businessman or, for that matter, you, can do that does not involve some kind of government regulation. A businessman must seek government approval for the minutest detail of his operation or face the wrath of some government agency.”

The point here is not that we have full-fledged “socialism,” which should be understood as a specific system involving top-down government control of the economy, but that we have incrementally embraced socialistic elements in our economy. This raises a question anytime a problem is identified: Is it caused by economic freedom — or by government meddling?

Consider a case in point: the 2008 financial crisis, which was triggered by the major mortgage (subprime) debacle. Providing some background, Williams wrote that it’s incorrect saying “free markets are unregulated.” There is in fact ruthless nongovernmental regulation. “Take the mortgage industry,” the economist continued. “In the absence of government interference, it is unlikely that a lender would extend a mortgage to a person with a poor credit history, making no down payment and providing no verifiable employment history. But under the pressure of the government’s Community Reinvestment Act and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying up or guaranteeing such mortgages, a lender will.” This very phenomenon contributed to the financial crisis, too.

Yet an even bigger factor was the “too big to fail” government bailouts of large financial institutions, which began in 1984 with the rescue of the Continental Illinois bank. These actions sent a message: Prudence is no longer required. You can roll the dice on investments with a casino mindset; if it pays off, you win big. If the bottom falls out, no worries: Uncle Sam will bail you out. This bred recklessness and has rightly been called “privatizing profits and socializing losses.” Yet note the obvious: The socializing of losses is a problem of socialism — not of economic freedom. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises famously put it, an economic-freedom-oriented market economy “is a profit and loss system.” If it’s only a profit system, as some incorrectly conceive of it, market determinations have been thwarted. Moreover, just as in socialist North Korea, this (unconstitutional) government meddling favors the powerful few who are connected. And here’s a relevant example: Who was forcibly shuttered during Covid? Businesses “small enough to fail” were; the big-box stores were “allowed” to remain open. This decision was, too, made by the biggest monopoly of all: government. If you don’t like Tractor Supply, you can patronize Rural King; if Coke isn’t your bag, there’s always Pepsi. But what recourse have you when the central government wields the iron fist?

What Breeds Quality?

As for the profit-and-loss system, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of new businesses fail within the first year, and a total of 30 percent within two years. After five years, only 50 percent remain and, after 10 years, only 30 percent still survive. This isn’t just something that should be pondered by those supposing business owners are “rich, greedy capitalists.” It also brings two things to mind. The first is when avowedly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) notably said in 2015, “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.” The second thing is a joke about a notoriously horrible car. “How do you double the value of a Trabant?” it goes. Answer: “Fill up the tank!” The kicker: There was a long waiting list for these vehicles, too — up to 13 years.

This wasn’t because the Trabant had hidden charms. Rather, it was produced by a fully government-controlled operation in East Germany, and, being a state-owned monopoly, didn’t have to meet market demand. (Hence, nationalization gives “the people” less control, not more.) Now, if you’re wondering how this relates to deodorant, it’s not because the Trabant stank. It’s this: The only reason we have even one quality deodorant is because we have a system that allows for 23 (or more). That is, the competition incentive breeds excellence. (In addition, regarding resources for children, we’ve already established that economic-freedom-oriented activity produces more money, not less. Besides, with all our varied tastes, do you really want an economic oligarchy deciding how many ______ we “need”?)

As for the competition factor, it’s readily apparent in sports. The desire to surpass the competition or break records drives athletes to train tirelessly, sculpt their bodies and discipline their minds, and employ high-performance-yielding high tech. Why, in the sport I know best — I’m a long-retired tennis pro — the common line was, “To improve, you must play against better competition.” Think about it: How hard would athletes work if we never, ever kept score and just distributed participation trophies?

This brings us back to Grannis’ socialist-grading experiment. Ask yourself a question, either as a student or someone who once was one: Would I work just as hard in school were I to receive the same grade as everyone else? If you answer yes, you are the exception. But what of your classmates? How many would put their noses to the grindstone the same way under that scenario? Could you envision the class, in the aggregate, performing at close to an equal level as when they enjoyed the grading incentive?

Now imagine this socialist system were applied to the wider society. Would we really do better than Owen’s ill-fated commune? Would we fare much better than East Germany? (We might surpass North Korea; that is, assuming we didn’t so diligently apply socialist principles.) Would we really be immune to the morale loss that afflicted Grannis’ class? Regarding this, we all know that an army with high morale can often best a better-equipped force lacking that quality. But what’s a prerequisite for morale? Having a sense of purpose is — such as a strong desire to defend one’s homeland. What, however, is another term for this or any “desire”?

It’s that word again: incentive.

Little if anything happens in the world without it. Animals seek food owing to the incentive of hunger; remove that, and they’ll starve to death. They mate and perpetuate their species due to the sexual-desire incentive. As for man, many argue that even the most noble charitable endeavor involves incentive: the ego satisfaction of having done good works. This may be overly cynical, of course, but we do certainly know one thing about those who industriously deliver charity: They’re rare. This brings us to a related point: Where would the world be currently if we had to rely on charitable activity for our wealth? I asked artificial intelligence about this. Its answer was that “economists, historians, and development experts overwhelmingly attribute the vast majority of modern wealth to market mechanisms (private property, incentives, trade, innovation, and voluntary exchange).” It further estimated that from 90 percent to 98 percent (or more) of modern wealth creation has been due to “market/incentive-oriented action.”

No one has to explain this to the aforementioned Professor Williams. As he wrote in a different column in 2012:

This winter, Texas ranchers may have to fight the cold of night, perhaps blizzards, to run down, feed and care for stray cattle. They make the personal sacrifice of caring for their animals to ensure that New Yorkers can enjoy beef. Last summer, Idaho potato farmers toiled in blazing sun, in dust and dirt, and maybe being bitten by insects to ensure that New Yorkers had potatoes to go with their beef.

Here’s my question: Do you think that Texas ranchers and Idaho potato farmers make these personal sacrifices because they love or care about the well-being of New Yorkers? The fact is whether they like New Yorkers or not, they make sure that New Yorkers are supplied with beef and potatoes every day of the week. Why? It’s because ranchers and farmers want more for themselves. In a free market system, in order for one to get more for himself, he must serve his fellow man. This is precisely what Adam Smith, the father of economics, meant when he said in his classic “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776), “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” By the way, how much beef and potatoes do you think New Yorkers would enjoy if it all depended upon the politically correct notions of human love and kindness?

Williams also pointed out that prior to the economic-freedom-driven market system’s advent, “the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man.” The market system “made it possible to become wealthy by serving one’s fellow man.”

Man’s Nature for the Win

In light of all the above, do we really think we can strip or reduce monetary incentive from our economy without ill effect? Isn’t it clear that productivity (wealth creation) will decline commensurate with how much we limit incentive? By embracing socialism, would we not be imperiling the goose that laid the golden egg delivering us from historical poverty and into prosperous modernity?

Regarding what happens when incentive disappears, it’s no mystery to writer Carmen Alexe, who grew up in the country calling itself the Socialist Republic of Romania. As she related at the Foundation for Economic Freedom in 2018:

Despite the fact that Romania was a country rich in resources, there were shortages everywhere. Food, electricity, water, and just about every one of life’s necessities were in short supply [so much for “to each according to his needs”]. The apartment building in which we lived provided hot water for showers two hours in the morning and two hours at night.

... When milk, butter, eggs, and yogurt were temporarily available, my mom — like so many others of our neighbors — would wake up at 2:00 a.m. to go stand in line so she’d have the chance to get us these goodies. The store would open at 6:00 a.m., so if she wasn’t early enough in line she’d miss the opportunity.

This is just a small part of Alexe’s staggering firsthand testimonial, too. What she understands is something very simple. Whether it is Robert Owen’s commune or the USSR — socialism on a small scale or a large one (or what many would call “communism”) — it always bumps up against that insurmountable obstacle: human nature. Removing economic incentive from a system ever and always guarantees economic degradation.

Historically, socialists have also apparently understood this: that human nature, being what it is, would render socialism impossible. Their solution was to propose that man’s nature itself could be changed. As Owen wrote in A New View of Society (1813), children possess a “plastic quality” and “may be formed collectively to have any human character” whatsoever; they may, he insisted, “be ultimately molded into the very image of rational wishes and desires.” Karl Marx essentially embraced the same belief. So did the later Soviets with their Lysenkoism, which preached acquired traits’ heritability (e.g., plucking a plant’s leaves will make its descendants leafless). This was, do note, the USSR’s official scientific position through October 1964, deviation from which brought punishment — up to and including execution.

Of course, we’ve now long known that man’s “nature” has, as the word implies, a genetic basis. What, however, does it say about a system when its own originators and proponents tacitly (if not explicitly) confess that man’s nature itself makes it unworkable? Like Charlie Brown attempting to kick that football Lucy has pulled away innumerable times before, should we really give it an umpteenth try?

It’s perhaps not surprising that, over and over, so many have answered yes to that question. As the paraphrase of German philosopher Georg Hegel goes, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” Yet, if we can finally do so, perhaps we may avoid repeating one of history’s most seductive and tragic mistakes.