Week-07 Reflection: The Current Realities of Socialism around the World

Image
After watching the OSU Free Enterprise Society Video "Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World" I have gained sincere respect and appreciation of the speaker for his ability to convey a controversial opinion in an educational manner without making the audience feel demeaned. I valued how he was pointing out an honest misunderstanding of socialism in American media, where the general public truly does not understand the definition and the effects of socialism. His lecture even opened my eyes, a person who already is not pro true socialistic systems, on how easily misconstrued the American media portrays socialism is a positive light of how it can increase equality and general human life. Instead, he talked about how capitalism and all economic systems can improve those things but that is not their main focus. Socialism is an economic plan that almost always, if not restricted, degrades into a totalitarian government because of the lack of economic abilities and basic needs the general public no longer holds in order to maintain their political voice.
Obviously, I am biased when it comes to the views of how socialism has affected Venezuela, but it was beneficial for me to see an even deeper explanation of how democratic socialism degraded into totalitarian socialism. While I slightly disagree with the statement that Chavez was legally and democratically elected because there has always been speculation of him illegally filling ballot boxes, it is true that in the beginning, the general public viewed Chavez as a potential economic savior. Venezuela was only successful in its beginning years as a democratic socialistic country because of its geographic location that gave them access to oil. If they had never had connections to such a strong economic market, we as a world would have realized much sooner that the country was on the verge of collapse.
I also valued his explanation that Sweden and the other Nether countries while many view them as socialistic countries, they are in fact heavily reliant on capitalism to this day. We as a country and the younger generations need to realize that socialism is not a human right or political argument or solution but instead, it is an economic sidestep that can lead to catastrophic futures. While having some socialistic programs in a capitalistic society can actually be very beneficial, as whole socialism leaves an opening for the centralized ruling party to claim complete control over the country such as how the Venezuelan government took advantage of people's hunger to sway their voting. In America, we need to realize that our problems with capitalism do not stem from capitalism itself but instead from the monopolies that we as a society allow to emerge. If we would like to fix the imbalance in our American economic system, we need to turn towards editing our current preferences on purchasing from large businesses to instead buying from small, not completely reconstruct our system and potentially being the downfall of our beloved country.