Socialism is a machine for consuming capital while pretending to create it.
Every socialist program starts the same way: a politician identifies something people want, promises to deliver it without a visible price tag, and taxes or prints the money to fund it. Venezuela had this down to an art form by 2015. Price controls on food, nationalized oil revenues redistributed as subsidies, Maduro declaring the supermarket shelves would stay full. By 2017, Venezuelans lost an average of 11 kilograms of body weight from hunger. The machine ate the capital, then ate the people.
Prices carry information. When a government fixes the price of bread below market, bakers stop baking. When it taxes productive capital to fund consumption, the capital stock shrinks. Ludwig von Mises called this the calculation problem: without genuine price signals, central planners are flying blind, allocating resources based on political pressure rather than actual scarcity. Chronic shortage sits underneath their rhetoric of abundance.
Rent is higher because zoning boards and rent stabilization laws choked off housing supply in cities like San Francisco for decades. Your healthcare costs more because Medicare and Medicaid inflate demand while regulatory capture insulates hospitals from competition. Specific politicians passed specific laws that produced specific shortages, then campaigned for re-election by blaming the market.
Voting for a slightly less interventionist candidate while holding your savings in dollars is rearranging furniture on a sinking ship. Hard assets held outside the banking system, particularly bitcoin, gold, property, and stocks, remove your stored labor from the reach of the printing press. This is a basic act of self-preservation in a system designed to extract your productivity under the guise of compassion.
Stop waiting for permission to opt out.
EconomistaAustriaco / Economista Austriaco
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2026-10-12 12:29:00 UTC
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"content": "Socialism is a machine for consuming capital while pretending to create it.\n\nEvery socialist program starts the same way: a politician identifies something people want, promises to deliver it without a visible price tag, and taxes or prints the money to fund it. Venezuela had this down to an art form by 2015. Price controls on food, nationalized oil revenues redistributed as subsidies, Maduro declaring the supermarket shelves would stay full. By 2017, Venezuelans lost an average of 11 kilograms of body weight from hunger. The machine ate the capital, then ate the people.\n\nPrices carry information. When a government fixes the price of bread below market, bakers stop baking. When it taxes productive capital to fund consumption, the capital stock shrinks. Ludwig von Mises called this the calculation problem: without genuine price signals, central planners are flying blind, allocating resources based on political pressure rather than actual scarcity. Chronic shortage sits underneath their rhetoric of abundance.\n\nRent is higher because zoning boards and rent stabilization laws choked off housing supply in cities like San Francisco for decades. Your healthcare costs more because Medicare and Medicaid inflate demand while regulatory capture insulates hospitals from competition. Specific politicians passed specific laws that produced specific shortages, then campaigned for re-election by blaming the market.\n\nVoting for a slightly less interventionist candidate while holding your savings in dollars is rearranging furniture on a sinking ship. Hard assets held outside the banking system, particularly bitcoin, gold, property, and stocks, remove your stored labor from the reach of the printing press. This is a basic act of self-preservation in a system designed to extract your productivity under the guise of compassion.\n\nStop waiting for permission to opt out.",
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