I met someone the other day who knew about my book, Why Socialism Struggles, and wanted to talk to me about Socialism. She seemed to be pushing me to acknowledge that some forms of Socialism were workable, but she wasn't very specific. Also, she blamed Capitalism for many things that were actually failures of government. One example she used was slavery. In her view, capitalists were responsible for slavery because they traded in human beings. I explained that some capitalists, like people in every walk of life, were prone to do bad things, but that it was the government's job to stop such behavior. It took a while, but the government eventually banned slavery, but not before a great deal of harm was done. But the point was that when people do bad things, it is the government's responsibility to stop them, and it is wrong to blame an entire group, in this case, capitalists, for the wrongdoing of some of its members. I really enjoyed our conversation, but it was cut short. I later sort of replayed it in my head, and I think I understand better where she was heading. It was the mention of the Kibbutz that went by too quickly for me to think through at the time. I think she was thinking of some sort of collectivism. I think what she really wanted to discuss was some sort of Socialism, collectivist in nature, without a dictator or a strong central government that could work for the benefit of the people. If you've been reading my articles for some time, you know what I'm going to ask: "What does the evidence say?" First, let's look at the track record of the Israeli Kibbutzim, the collectivist enterprise she alluded to. The results have been mixed, at best. According to 'What Exactly is a Kibbutz?'-->, Kibbutzim have between 100 and 1000 members each and include a total of 125,000 people, about 1 and a fourth percent of the Israeli population (the article says 3 percent, but the population it cites, divided by the population of Israel, about 10 million, yields 1.25 percent). Either way, we are talking about a very small percentage of the Israeli population. Here lies the first difficulty associated with collectivist enterprises: there are no examples of successfully 'scaling up' to the size of a city or a country. Why is that? In the original Kibbutz model, Kibbutzim were composed of a few extended families who agreed to work together and share resources equally. The heads of extended families 'policed' their own family members. If a family member wasn't working hard enough or wasn't sufficiently productive, the family head would be responsible for disciplining them. Some were exiled from the group. This model has a reasonable chance of success. Since it is composed of extended families, the family structure and religious practice help foster unanimity that is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in other circumstances. This model can be effective at this small scale, provided a structure is in place that ensures real supervision of everyone in the group. The first American colonies in Jamestown and Plymouth lacked the extended family structure of the Kibbutzim and failed. For more on that, please see my article 'Colonial Socialism'-->. This is one of the problems of collectivism. Another problem is the human ego. As many of you know, I am a musician and have played in folk, jazz, and rock-and-roll bands since I was 12. Every group eventually broke up. We all have different ideas about how the group should proceed, what music we should play, whose parts should be prominent, who should sing the lead vocal, and so on. The Beatles effectively solved many of these problems. The general rule was that whoever wrote the song sang the lead vocal, and every one of the four members had an unusually strong ethic: the song was the most important thing, and each member did their best, not to do what was best for them, but what was best for the song. That resulted in an amazing body of work that sixty years later has still not been equaled. But conflicting egos eventually lead to the group's dissolution. Satisfying the conflicting desires of even people who love each other is difficult, ask any married couple. It's not a matter of right or wrong; although it's often seen that way, it's about different people having different wants, needs, and dreams. Imagine a couple in love, no matter how much they love each other, no matter how well they know each other, neither is qualified to unilaterally decide how the other should live their life. Yet another problem is in the implementation. Collectivism usually stresses 'pure' democracy. That is absolute majority rule with no protection for minorities. Marx called it the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. The majority (50%+1) has absolute control over the minority (50%-1). This situation may function adequately in a smaller group, like a Kibbutz, where everyone knows everyone else and is in a position to care about the fate of the minority, but on a larger scale, it fails. A glance at social media in the US today reveals utter hatred and contempt on each side for the other. Whoever loses is doomed to be governed by people who hate them; that's the hazard of 'majority rule' when applied on a large scale. That's why the Founding Fathers in the US created all the checks and balances they did, but sadly, both 'sides' have worked to try and reduce or eliminate these protections. Finally, the economic reason collectivism cannot work is that it is simply impossible to plan an economy. It doesn't matter if the planning is directed by a dictator, a philosopher king, or a democratically elected bureau. It doesn't matter how benevolently the planners pursue their tasks; the economy is, and always will be, a chaotic system that cannot be predicted and therefore cannot be planned. That's the primary reason it has failed every time it's been tried. Dozens of articles on my website address this problem. Economic freedom is the ultimate freedom. Without economic freedom, there is no freedom at all. Economic freedom means being free to choose how you live. It means freedom to try and create value for others, your way. Some people want to be lawyers, some want to be musicians, some want to be nurses, and others want to be electricians. The community, the collection of all possible consumers, decides by their purchases the value, to them, of each of these skills. That value is unlikely to be equal. Someone may decide they'd like to create elaborately knitted placemats. They invest hundreds of dollars in materials and hundreds of hours in labor only to learn that, to make a profit and earn a living wage, they have to charge far more than consumers are willing to pay, so their business fails. This 'freedom to fail' is an essential freedom not only for the individual but also for the entire economy. After this person fails at creating placemats, their next endeavor might be creating lightweight sweaters that keep one as warm as heavier sweaters and, in doing so, make life better for everyone in the community. In doing so, they may get rich because they created great value for others. Without the freedom to fail, there is no freedom to try, and without the freedom to try, the community is deprived of all the potential life-enhancing products free people might create. Central planners, whether individuals or groups, cannot predict which 'new thing' will prove beneficial to consumers and which will not. Only free consumers are qualified to decide what benefits them and what does not. Without this economic freedom, no one has control over their life; their well-being is determined by economic planners who cannot possibly know the desires, hopes, and dreams of the individuals they are planning for. However well-meaning, it is doomed to fail. This problem is encapsulated in the title of my book, Why Socialism Struggles—Exposing the Economic Errors that Undermine Utopian Ideals. The book examines the problem in depth, in an easily understood, question-and-answer format. You can order it on Amazon today. I hope you do.