A Case Study in Socialism

I received this as an e-mail the other day and have been researching to determine if it was factual or not. Snopes says it is not, but many bloggers are using it around the country.

"As the late Adrian Rogers said, 'you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.'

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.--------------------------------------------

That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that."


Let’s look at this study in detail not caring if Texas Tech was really the location and whether or not the professor made the study.

First, let us go back to the USSR in it’s hay day and some of the factors involved in it’s demise.

Central planning. Not one of he multi-year plans produced in accordance with the plan.

The guns and butter programs never worked and the citizens were miserable. Alcoholism was prevalent in the military as well as in society in general. During the first part of every month, the military got all of the raw materials used in manufacturing. The last part of the month was reserved for the “butter” for the people. People never got their "butter".

When Soviet citizens were allowed a small portion of land to use for themselves—a victory garden of sorts—they could use this produce as they wanted. The black market thrived as a system of barter developed to ease the suffering of the people.

In order to vent the system while keeping the lid on the pressure cooker, the black market was allowed to prevent general mass uprisings as some goods became available through this unofficial system. People worked for themselves and for their families--let us call that capitalism. The only way socialsim worked was when there was capitalism to fall back on to pick up the slack.

Some blog entrees argued that the average grade everyone receives must be a “C” therefore the story is false. Another entry says it is false because socialism is about collective ownership.

Idiots. The professor can determine what the grade will be based on his arbitrary determination. I had a class in physiology while a sophomore at Utah State. I was in the mid 95 percentile on every test and lab and ended up getting a B. When I went in to complain about my end of class grade, his explanation was that he looked for a point in which there was a clear divide after totaling up all the scores for the quarter. In front of me were several scores in which only one person got that total score. With my total score, there were four of us. He therefore determined that since we began a “new grouping” we received a B and not an A for the 5 hour course.

I use this only as an example of what a professor decides, then grades are what they are and one has no choice other than to reluctantly accept them. For example, if the determination is made that 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B, etc. then that is how the grades are determined.

Collective ownership comes into play when all scores are totaled and then divided by the number of students in the class. The class is then given the grade, not the individual based on his personal achievement. By the way, I hated pass/fail classes in college. I wanted to graduate with a 3.0 or better and ended up with a 2.98. The 5-hour B in physiology and/or 15 hours pass/fail for student teaching killed my opportunity.

Bottom line is: when there is no incentive, people do not perform at their best—it is that simple. This can be argued, but in the end, results tell the story.