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India by definition of the constitution is a socialist county, but it wasn’t so really earlier right after the independence despite Jawaharlal Neheru’s had left economic plays. The word Socialist was inserted into the preamble by Indira Gandhi during the emergency most likely to please the hard lefties and socialists in congress and the CPI who many don’t know were supporting the government and the emergency as Ms. Gandhi as many call it made a deal with the devil, in this case, the communists to come to power. However, instead of repenting the history let’s look at the present scenario. What is socialism, how effective it has been in history and what to make of it in today’s context.
Now Let’s sum up each economic system in one line as they are seen today by the majority of Earth’s population
“Capitalism is based on human greed whereas Socialism is based on human”
If this is something you’ve been believing then it’s wrong and is more wrong than saying Indian administration works faster and better Private Services. In fact it is backwards. Putting pun aside let’s see. If you’ve been to Amazon or flipkart you’ll see hundreds of thousands and possibly millions if not billions of products which represents the work of a group of people who offers us something that they believe something that we need or want. If they’re right they’ll make money and prosper and if not they’ll lose money. That’s exactly how free market works.
It encourages us to improve our lives by satisfying the people’s i.e., our needs. Businesses are started to provide things or services for other not for themselves. Enterprises spend millions of dollars to understand what people want and if customers don’t like something they change the services or product as fast as they can because if they don’t their competitors will overtake them.
Thus, the consumer that’s us, we are the ultimate power and technically speaking we vote with our hard earned money. But in a Socialist economy the government is the ultimate power. It decides what we get from a limited supply that it decides should exist. Thus, instead of “us” making the decisions on what we
want the few government elites decides what the population should get and what not and how much we pay for it. And not surprisingly from India’s experience and around the socialist world they always get it wrong. It is worthy to note that late phase socialist states always run out of the most basic items like in Venezuela the first thing they reported there was a storage of was toilet paper.
Now this wouldn’t be a problem for a chosen few who have connection to the government to get whatever they need, the commoner are just out of luck. For example In India all the bureaucrats before liberalisation with their entitlement and connection would get whatever they wanted from exotic cigars and luxury sedans with a much lesser waiting period. And this applied to even Indian brands like Ambassador and Fiat Padmini (Premier under licence). Take a look at Venezuela once a richest country in South America, is the most recent example of Socialism driving a prosperous country into an economic black hole.
Now, Let’s see, for many years Lefties activists celebrated it as a great economic success right up to it wasn’t. But let’s ignore it and see West European countries aren’t they socialist and doing fine something that I see woke socialist often saying. But a deeper look in these countries reveals their arguments as a farce. West and a few East European countries which are doing well are as capitalist as the United States.
Only difference being they offer more government benefits than the U.S. Analysing the cost benefits they reduce individual initiatives, Thus, doing more harm than good. So, only a free market capitalist economy can produce the wealth necessary to sustain all the supposedly freebies that Europeans enjoy. But in order to get the freebies enough wealth have to generated to generate enough tax revenue to pay for every freebies.
Without Capitalism or in India’s case without liberalisation India would’ve been the Asian Venezuela. In 2015 speech at Harvard Denmark’s prime minister took great pains to make the point that his country’s economic model was not socialist something that woke socialist in India sometimes say, in fact it was a market economy.
None of these factual conclusions require economic degree, it requires common sense. That’s why it’s frustrating to see young people my age craving for socialism. Free market capitalism leads to economic democracy, Socialism leads to the economic dictatorship of the power elite. So, let’s be aware what we ask for.
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