Free! Free! Free! – How socialism’s free things requires ownership over the means of production

Recently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a professed Democratic Socialist, appeared on Colbert. She made a couple of statements that are pure anti-human, and the crowd, unaware of the consequences of her comments, applauded. Colbert, seemingly enamored (not by her good looks mind you but by his past opinions on the virtues of communism), said nothing of any consequence. None of this, of course, should surprise anyone that is paying attention. 

She stated that she believes education and health are basic human rights. So, since, they are basic human rights, they must be freely accessible to anyone that wants them. 

Colbert didn’t even ask her, “Well, Alexandria, how exactly are you going to pay for this?” This is because democracies as a whole believe that the outcome of the vote is a moral truth and whatever costs created by the so-called elected officials, is a required condition of participation. If the state requires the users to pay for everything, then the users (slaves) will pay for everything. No one asks why or how things will be paid for not because they don’t think of it, but because it would be considered uncouth – beneath the obvious – to even broach the subject. 

But there is a more dangerous and devastating problem with this communism: the loss of independent, individual self-identity by the act of controlling the means of production. 

Let us start with this communist eutopia of free education. 

It would not take long before the schools were flooded with people intent on jobs that pay the most money. Everyone would via for doctor, lawyer, dentist and any other so-called professional position where the potential income greatly outweighed the cost of living. Oh, did I forget to mention that even people choosing professions do so inside the law of Supply and Demand? 

What then of the students whose education leading up to college was sub-par? Would it be fair to suggest that someone with a 2.2 grade average could not go on to become a heart surgeon? After all, if the nature of ‘free education’ is to imply that anyone is allowed to pursue an education based on some standard other than their ability to achieve it, wouldn’t they be allowed to become whatever profession they wanted to be? A free education system would require, in order for it to be free, that sub-standard students be allowed to graduate as doctors, lawyers, and whatever they wanted to. In a system of supply and demand, a sub-standard student would have to take on the responsibility of debt their own personal survival which would outweigh the benefit of trying to become a brain surgeon. 

Then what of the fact that everyone wants to be a professional, who would be left to sweep the hallways in these schools? Who would be left to pick out a shopping cart for these new doctors and lawyers at wall-mart? Who would fill the millions upon millions of positions that do not require any kind of formal education? 

The only answer, of course, is that the communists in charge would be forced to start making considerations about who gets to become a doctor and when that wasn’t enough, they would be compelled to use force to make people take the menial jobs that fill up human society. 

All the act of offering something for free does is move the responsibility of the means of production from the individual to the agent offering the free item. A socialist never uses the word free correctly. They are not capable of using it by its correct definition, because, after all, a socialist holds a value of forced interaction by a construct called ‘society’. Society is the anthesis of free. 

Now if we add in this idea that health care is free, then this new education system might find itself in want of doctors. Because if health care is free, how exactly does the doctor determine the worth of his work? He has no say in the outcome. A student entering free schooling who is already smart enough to want to be a doctor might also be smart enough to do the math and by doing, realize that his potential self-worth is greatly diminished by spending all of those years learning a skill that will pay so little. He might instead decide to be a lawyer. What would be left then is sub-par students without the intellect to see too far into their own futures, and by this natural myopia, might not be the best people to look too far into a patients history and make good choices for the welfare of others. 

This will mean that some agency of government will be forced to look into making some people with higher mental skills become doctors, even against their own will. The socialists will say to these individuals, “don’t you see, you NEED to be a doctor. We have a shortage of qualified doctors.” 

At first, the socialists will play to the individual's emotions. When that fails they will appeal to the individual's wallet by creating a million more lines of the special tax code to protect the new special status of specific industries the socialist education system requires. When that fails, they will use violence. 

And it always, every time, ends in violence.