When has socialism worked? Tell me if you can, because I don’t know.
Here, pulled from Wolfgang Ramsay’s article for notthebee.com, is an interesting attempt to make it work by a sincere believer, Minneapolis restaurateur Dylan Alverson – owner of Modern Times restaurant – and how it turned out.
When immigration enforcement ramped up in Minneapolis earlier this year, owner Dylan Alverson rebranded the restaurant as “Post Modern Times.” He took prices off the menu and declared he would feed anyone who walked in the door, whether they could pay or not.
Well, almost anyone. Federal agents were explicitly unwelcome.
The stunt made national news. Donations poured in from around the world.
For six months, the restaurant operated as a pay-what-you-can (or pay-nothing-at-all) sanctuary in Minneapolis. But as it turns out, people are greedy, and the comrade who pays $10 for a hipster sandwich starts wondering why they are shelling out $10 while someone else pays $1, and the comrade who pays $1 is wondering why others are getting the sandwich for free.
Are you surprised by this turn of events? I would hope not.
And here is the result of this reality, in Mr. Alverson’s own words:
Bottom line? Mr. Alverson’s socialist-experiment restaurant concept existed this long only because donations subsidizing its money-loser status kept it going. Eventually even that wasn’t enough.
With the above in mind, let me ask again what I asked at the beginning of this blog: when has socialism worked? Not this time. When?
I’ll end with the classic explanation of socialism’s failure that was spoken by the UK’s great Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”
