I've long thought of free-market capitalism as the best system for delivering goods and services in an economy. It seems obvious that any system that rewards productivity and innovation while discouraging inefficiency will necessarily produce more goods and services for its participants.

Until recently, however, I hadn't thought much about why Marxism and other leftwing economic systems like National Socialism (AKA Nazism or Fascism) always have brutality and/or oppression as their chief "side effect." Why has there never existed a benign collective state? Why are capitalist states often forced to limit immigration, while collective states universally must deny emigration?

Consider this WorldNetDaily article:

In total, Marxist regimes murdered nearly 110 million people from 1917 to 1987. For perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the 20th century killed around 35 million. That is, when Marxists control states, Marxism is more deadly then all the wars of the 20th century, including World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

The article goes on to opine that it is the concentration of unlimited power that causes such atrocities. It seems to me, however, that power is simply the tool by which people are oppressed. Oppression, on the other hand is built-in systemically to any form of collectivism right from the start.

Consider for a moment Hillary Clinton's attempt at designing a collective system for the delivery of health care in America, analyzed extensively here. Take a moment to read the whole thing. One of the hallmarks of her plan was that both a doctor providing, and a patient receiving, health care outside of her system would be guilty of a crime. And, one imagines, subject to arrest and imprisonment. Here's a collective economic system, designed by a panel of Americans, that had oppression of dissent anticipated even before its implementation; indeed as an integral part of its implementation.

And therein lies the nugget of why collectivism must, almost by definition, be oppressive. Anyone acting outside the economic collective necessarily undermines it and must be stopped. It is not such a stretch to imagine how this systemic demand for oppression coupled with the tool of unchecked power easily creates atrocities like the Soviet gulag, the Cambodian killing fields, or gassing of the Kurds in Saddam's Iraq.

I know I am not treading any virgin soil here, nor coming to any particularly subtle or nuanced conclusions, but I started this blog chiefly to challenge myself to think about a wider array of things rather than to inform the world, so blog I shall.