The question that is brought to my attention is the matter of who benefits when incentives disappear? In my opinion, I believe that the government and those in higher up positions benefit from taking away prosperity among their people. For example, Venezuela was a booming country in the 70s, but when their government was highly exclusive to elite powers, they ultimately drove their country into economic ruin. Now, Venezuela is in horrible condition. It is such a sad thing to know that a beautiful country such as Venezuela, could be driven into a down fall of ruin. What makes America different from socialist countries is that we have private entities that create products or services to consumers. There is economic freedom. Without economic freedom, political freedom is also lost. Those in socialist countries don't have a voice, but the elite do. The elite benefit in that way, because if there is an election, the people don't necessarily have the say in who becomes elected. The elite make that decision themselves. The people they choose to be in power could be corrupt. This way, those in power, stay in power. To sum up socialism, it is when the government controls aspects of production, distribution, and exchange. The people have no right over any of that. The companies that are controlled by the government also benefit when incentives are taken away, but the people who are hurt by this, are the citizens. This is a reason as to why the citizens of a country like Venezuela or Cuba are poor, and the elite live lavish lives. I also think that since the government has a say on most everything, technology in these countries is not improved. It's almost as if the country is frozen in time. For example, Cuba hasn't received new cars, and many of their cars are decades old. An interesting thing that the speaker mentioned was that in Venezuela, the stores on the street don't have signs. No one would know that there are stores since they don't have advertising. This is very different than living in the United States, or even the UK. Advertising is everywhere. In fact, there are even specific jobs that focus on advertising. If the government controls everything in socialist countries, then there isn't really a point in having signage. Socialism sucks because the elite benefit while the citizens are being hurt.
