Capitalism Isn’t Bad Because You Suck at Life

Technically, Bill Maher is supposed to be Libertarian, but in recent years, he has struck me as one of the last few semi-sane liberals. In any case, during a conversation with one of his guests about Zohran Mamdani, the Socialist (cough cough, Communist) Mayor of New York, this gem was dropped,

Bill Maher: “Humans need to be incentivized by selfishness. It is nature to be selfish. Animals are selfish. Watch them.”

Rob Riggle: “Yeah. I heard a song the other day, and it was… basically, ‘Capitalism isn’t bad because you suck at life.’”

First of all, before we dig into that quote, it’s worth noting that although socialism and its big brother Communism are looked down on by a majority of Americans, they still have a lot of support in our country.

In fact, not very long ago, noted left-wing streamer (and open America hater) Hasan Piker along with a number of other left-wing quasi-celebrities decided to show their support for Cuba by going on a cruise there. It was just as ridiculous as you’d expect,

This kind of thing is actually nothing new. In fact, way back in 1982, P.J. O’Rourke went on a similar junket to the Soviet Union with a bunch of aging hippies so he could write an article about it. The best line from it was,

America is not a socialist nation. It never has been and God willing, it never will be. If you really think socialism is so great, you don’t need to change America to get it, you can just leave. Personally? I thought America was a terrible place to live and there were much better economic opportunities elsewhere, I’d sell everything I owned and move there (Legally, illegal aliens! Legally!) That’s probably the attitude most people have about it, which is why, for example, the Soviets needed a wall to keep East Germans from ESCAPING to capitalism and freedom.

Yet, what do we see in America? Almost nobody leaves our country. We have 341 million people who live here, yet here are the number of people that renounced their citizenship over the last few years.

Not only do the people that live here not want to leave, even the people that are here illegally don’t want to leave and we’re the top destination for immigrants on the entire planet. If we were so inclined, which we SHOULD BE, we could bring the Crème de la crème of immigrants on the entire planet here instead of allowing Somali welfare queens, fruit pickers and radical Islamists who sign their name with an X to come to our country (but, that’s a different column).

If socialism is so great and we’re not socialist, why do they want to come here?

Because we have the biggest economy in the world, the strongest military in the world and the most opportunity in the world. If you could only pick one country on earth to go to in order to make a good life yourself and your family, America is #1 and we’re so far ahead of everywhere else, there is no number 2.

So, what’s supposed to be appealing about socialism?

Well, socialism looks great to people who are lazy, failures or living in a world of delusion along with the sort of people who try to appeal to people like that, usually to get political power or even more ironically, to make massive amounts of dirty, capitalist cash (See Hasan, Bernie Sanders, Noam Chomsky, Rage Against the Machine, etc, etc).

Americans who love socialism are always some variation of the sort of people who….

* Imagine themselves permanently sitting on the couch, smoking weed and playing videos games while other people pay for it.

* Falsely convince themselves people somewhere are playing on easy mode because of some “free” something they get without realizing that there is no free lunch, and those people pay for it elsewhere.

* Know nothing about history, economics or the world, but do know that they heard a college professor say, “socialism is good.”

* Hopelessly screw up their own lives and like to imagine that they wouldn’t have the same problems in a different economic system.

* Live in text books where they conclude socialism “theoretically” looks great, without ever paying any attention to the results it produces in the real world (“The right people just haven’t tried it yet!”)

* Think they deserve to have all the same things their parents have at 60 when they’re 20.

* Just can’t hack it at life and blame everybody and everything except the person they see looking at them in the mirror every morning.

Nobody can tell you that capitalism is perfect or that some generations have challenges that other generations don’t. For example, a lot of people in Generation Z have been throwing pity parties for themselves because houses are so expensive right now, but how tough is that compared to fighting WW1, WW2 or Vietnam? What about going through a Depression? Even setting all that aside, contrary to the revisionist history you hear from people, Americans today are four times richer today in constant dollars than they were in 1960.

Additionally, once you get past the tiny countries to the bigger nations with 10 million plus people, Americans have more disposable income than any other nation in the world.

In other words, yes, our country has things to work on. We always have and always will, but there’s no “magic” in socialism. There is poverty though and sometimes people eating their pets to survive, but no “magic.”

Unfortunately, there is no “easy mode” in life (other than maybe being born a Bush or Kennedy), but the truth is that the closet you’re going to get to it on planet earth right now is under capitalism in America. If you still can’t cut it, socialism isn’t going to fix it, because the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s you.