So I’m reading a piece on the economic basketcase that is Venezuela:

The Heiress on the Hill

Since the piece was published by Buzzfeed, it was expected to have a leftist slant. And while it does, I had to laugh out loud at this bit, which goes by without comment or correction by the author, editors or publisher:

According to Aquiles Hopkins, president of the Confederation of Associations of Agricultural Producers of Venezuela, national production currently covers only 15%–20% of the country’s consumption needs. “Socialism is what you have in Norway, in Finland,” said Hopkins during an interview in his office in Caracas. “This is an autocracy.”

No. Wrong. Just… wrong. It is a commonly repeated lie that the Nordic nations have socialism. They don’t. They have welfare states, to be sure, but that’s not socialism. What is socialism?  Simple:

socialism

[ soh-shuh-liz-uh m ]

noun

1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

In short: socialism is communal ownership of the means of production. In practice that means the government owns the farms and factories. Does that describe Norway or Finland? Nope. Those countries are (kinda free) market economies with substantial “social safety nets.” Norways government owns substantial stakes in their oil companies, but owning stock, even a lot of stock, is hardly socialistic… hell, that’s as capitalist as it gets. “Socialist” would be for the government of Norway to own, by law, all the stock. Not just in the one company, or the one industry, but *all* the companies across the entire economy. Claiming that they are socialist is a common tactics among *actual* socialists for a simple and obvious reason: if you can convince the voters that “socialism = the clearly successful Nordic model” you can convince people to vote for actual socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Bubbles Cortez, or the likes of historical socialists like Lenin or Mao or Chavez or Castro, all blood-soaked monsters that many on the American far left lionize as Heroes Of The People.

The guy quoted above wants the success of the Nordic countries with the economic model of Castro and Chavez. He complains of the corruption that Venezuela is struggling under. But the thing is… socialism *breeds* corruption. Corruption follows along with the adoption of socialist policies like night follows day; it is a virtually inevitable development. Socialism puts people in charge of things that they don’t actually care about or necessarily even have any expertise in and institutes the tragedy of the commons as official policy. As anyone who has ever seen “the PJs” up close (or who has rented a car) can attest, when people no longer feel any sense of personal ownership they cease to give a damn and the situation declines. The entire environment goes downhill, and the few people with power and authority slip inevitably into corruption as they realize the power that they wield over The Little People. Even if a socialist economy was run by a divinely programmed uncorruptible perfectly wise AI system, things would still turn to crap due to people not taking ownership of where they work.