Dear Socialists,
I have a proposal for you. I often see your activists present their vision for a more just and prosperous society. You have a vision to take all of the means of economic production and place this under collective community ownership. Rather than having businesses owned by free individuals, you argue that the businesses should be owned by the community and run by the government. You argue for free housing, free healthcare, free college, and free love.
So here is my proposal. Buy a plot of land or an island somewhere. You can set up a community where people are free to join you and free to leave. Anyone who believes in your vision can join you on their own free terms, but no one is forced to be a part of it. Remember not to have any border enforcement and to keep elections open to all.
I suggest producing electricity as one of your first products and as a potential export. After all, you keep telling people that wind and solar are free. As I said in a previous article, energy is the real currency of an economy, not “money.”
Since wind and solar electricity are “free,” you can sell energy to the people for less than half of what the free-market capitalists are selling it for, or just give it away!
In terms of money, you could print your own currency, or create a form of crypto that is distributed as people have need, rather than based on productivity or value creation. You could readily print all of the paper with big numbers on it as you want to make everyone a millionaire without making anyone a billionaire.
There are already a multitude of celebrities who hold to your views, along with rich elites such as those in the World Economic Forum. According to The Claremont Institute, organizations related to Black Lives Matter, have raised nearly $100 million in donations. So where did all of that money go?
To be fair, it is not clear how much of that money was actually received by BLM and related organizations, however, it is clear that socialist organizations are far from underfunded.
Decades ago, Hong Kong was set up as a free market zone next to Communist China. South Korea and Singapore likewise have adopted free market principles.
You could do the same with your form of Socialism. A land without police, with signs explaining that it is a gun-free zone (which will prevent crime and war), without border walls, and where housing, food, education, and Healthcare are guaranteed to all.
In order to practice your form of voluntary Socialism in a just society, you will have to recognize the evils committed by various socialist philosophies in history. When you do your Socialist experiment, I ask that you not violate the rights of the individual in the process, including individuals who happen to be a part of a demographic that you do not like.
As someone who has studied history, I especially ask for you to allow minorities to freely leave your land. I’ve noticed that Socialist movements tend to put individual human beings into special categories based on demographic. Despite those who want to claim that the National Socialists in Germany were “far right,” the NAZIs got their ideas about eugenics from American progressives.
Various brands of Socialism, be it that of the Soviet Union, National Socialist Germany, or various Communist states, have resulted in the murder of hundreds of millions of people. At the end of the day, your religion has resulted in more bloodshed than any philosophy in all of history. In order not to repeat the sins of the past, you will need to recognize the facts of history.
On one hand, I see Angry Atheists giving Christians a hard time about vague “crusades” and “witch hunts” without substantive historical details. On the other hand, these same Atheists want to brush away the history of the 20th Century by saying “That wasn’t real Communism/Socialism.” In other words, they think they know something about history, but all they have is a cartoon characacture running through their heads.
In light of that history, I ask for you to not force your religion on me or on anyone else. Instead of dictating your vision over Russia, Africa, Europe, or The United States of America, I ask for you to create your own Collectivist Market Zone in a similar way in which Hong Kong was created as a zone of free market Capitalism.
This way you can run your economic and social experiments without force, and if you create something amazing, then the rest of the world can take note. You can show the fruit of your ideology on a small scale without forcing anyone to participate.
