Collectivism? No Such Thing.

Extreme radical leftist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in (and sworn at) as Mayor of NYC yesterday.  His notable statement was that he would “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectism”.  Mamdani is most notable for being raised in a wealthy family that achieved that wealth in a free market economy and for doing absolutely nothing with his life other than spouting socialist platitudes.  I view his election as a good thing; it will give people, especially young people, a dose of reality as his policies fail one after the other.  New Yorkers will learn that it takes money to provide services and money is movable.

But what is most notable is this idea that there is a reality that is “collectivism”.  This is a made-up concept.  It is like when people blame “corporations” for certain actions.  A corporation is a legal fiction, it is always individuals who are making and executing decisions.  And so it is with “collectivism”; it is just replacing one set of decision-making individuals with another.  And the collectivist decision-makers tend to be quite authoritarian in insisting that everyone must live their lives according to their dictates.  Notable collectivists include Stalin and Mao, each of whom murdered tens of millions of people.  The warmth of collectivism is not so warm it turns out.

No where has any collectivist economic or political philosophy been successful.  China has achieved astounding progress only because it allowed private enterprise and individual achievement to flourish.  The United States has the world’s most powerful economy because it married democracy and liberty with a private market economy.  The evidence is plain which economic system is best for individuals’ quality of life, but the collectivist mindset continues to rear its ugly head periodically.  Why?  Because there are individuals determined to tell all of us how we must live; who don’t care if they drag everyone down to a subsidence quality of life as long as they have power.  And they will tell any lie, make an unachievable promise to attain that power.

Collectivist economics fail because they are contrary to human nature.  Humans evolved in an environment in which they either worked hard or they starved.  And if they were competing with other tribes or individuals for the same resources, they needed to be the hardest worker, the innovator, or the strongest.  When people have no incentive to work, because they literally cannot keep the fruits of their labor, they don’t work, they don’t innovate.  I don’t know how many times we will have to see the devastation wrought by collectivist philosophies before we finally rid ourselves of this pernicious idea.

And because their policies will inevitably make people worse off and they will lose power, the collectivists also inevitably become authoritarians, using force and violence to keep themselves in power.  We see that in our own country where the far left radical extremists (i.e., the mainstream Dem party) have called for conservatives and anyone else who opposes them to be jailed or put in concentration camps.

So whenever you hear the words “collectivism” or “socialism” or “equity” or similar euphemisms employed by the whackos, say to yourself what they really mean is that some individual or group of people is trying to seize power so they can take away everything I earn for themselves or the favored group, to take away all my freedoms and to tell me how I must live my life.   And fight against that with every fibre of your being.