There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole,’ because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done.

~ F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944)

The remarkable thing about the socialist idea that “income inequality” can be cured is that to “equalize” incomes requires creating an inequity of power.

Welcome to the Berning Man Festival.

“And let us be clear. That situation is worse today,” he said, taking up one of his main campaign themes. “In the year 2016, the top 1 percent of the people on this planet own more wealth than the bottom 99 percent…At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.”

In a Berning world, power and influence replace money as the medium of exchange and once one assumes that they can make decisions for others, then that person has power over those whom he makes decisions for. Natural law (or at least a Pavlovian response) informs that humans understand a reward response. People will naturally understand that if the person holding the power is pleased, that person is far more likely to act favorability toward them than he is toward people who displease him.

To be fair, the ‪#‎feeltheberners‬ actually believe that socialism creates a totally free society where each individual is entirely and completely equal – because they all work for the betterment of the collective. It is a beautiful concept – but unfortunately a fatally flawed one. It is also a fact that a direct democratic vote in a country of 320 million people is a functional impossibility. We can’t agree in a Senate with only 100 members, so can you imagine a national referendum on national highway funding and how those funds are to be distributed and used?

Total chaos.

This is why I maintain that collectivism can only be successful when it is voluntary and in small groups (this is identified this as being the “cooperative”) – any form of collectivism is simply not scalable to large numbers.

That’s also why collectivists always propose that the “workaround” for this fatal flaw is the creation of an all-encompassing government. The fact of the matter is that there simply can’t be a total dictatorship of the proletariat because there has to be some entity that is created to plan, manage and distribute national output for the imagined “worker’s paradise” to exist.

Once such a governing structure is established, the body politic swings into action – since there must be a prioritization of work based on some criteria, the politics of influence begins as the “needs” of each area are determined…and since one man’s wants are another man’s needs, influence peddling begins. This is why I say that currency is not eliminated in a collectivist society; it just changes from a medium of exchange to a medium of influence. We have spoken of how this works as we quoted F.A. Hayek’s explanation of why the worst get on top in socialist/collectivist socioeconomic systems.

Once the collective attains power through the granting of wishes based on influence, the need for it to be responsive to the proletariat is no more and totalitarianism and autocracy is born.

Say no to the Berning Man and any who promote his progressive Utopia.