Ken’s Take: This story has been making the email rounds. Even if it’s just an internet legend, it makes common sense. Project it into current political rhetoric…
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An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class.
That class consensus was that socialism worked — no one is poor and no one is rich, a great equalizer.
The professor proposed an experiment on socialism for this class: All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade.
After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.
But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little for the first test studied even less, and the ones who studied hard on the first test decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
The average on the 3rd test was an F. Ouch. To the students great surprise, all failed.
Test scores plummeted as bickering, blame, name calling caused hard feelings. Finally, no one wanted to study for the benefit of anyone else.
The lesson: socialism ultimately fails because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but, when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.
Not very complicated, at all …
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Thanks to Sammie A. for forwarding …
The Homa Files 
July 10, 2009 at 11:39 am |
Prof,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that experiment so extreme that it goes way beyond socialism and instead becomes communism?
July 10, 2009 at 1:13 pm |
Interesting story…thanks for posting!
July 11, 2009 at 3:22 am |
Total fabricated urban myth by a conservative that wants to poke fun at “socialist” democrats. Read Made to Stick by Stanford business school professor Chip Heath and his brother Dan.
August 11, 2009 at 9:34 pm |
Even if this is not true, it makes absolute sense. Just look at Cuba, Russia, and other communist / socialist countries success rate!!!
February 4, 2010 at 12:42 pm |
Sam, no, this is exactly what socialism is about. Nobody owns anything. Everybody owns everything as a collective. Socialism is about eliminating the “unfairness” of a system that rewards people for working harder than other and insuring that everyone does just as well in life as everyone else. Nobody get more than anyone else.
Marxism, true marxism, combines socialism with a system that does not have a government and has also eliminated religion.