This means that politicians like Bernie Sanders feed and thrive off of stupidity, laziness and ignorance. Without the stupidity, laziness and ignorance of the modern North American voter, politicians like Bernie Sanders wouldn't even get 1% of the popular vote. You'll hear politicians like Sanders and his supporters call Trump supporters and conservatives stupid, yet they're the ones deliberately leaving out important facts in order to trick their lazy, stupid and ignorant supporters into voting for them.

Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries are not socialist. Those are just the facts.

With all of its gas, oil and natural resource production and extraction under the control of the government, Venezuela is a true and legitimate socialist country. If you watch the news, you'll know exactly what is happening there right now.

Last Spring, Venezuelans had to resort to eating rats and dogs. A video even surfaced of starving Venezuelans killing a live cow and ripping it to shreds. It was like a zombie apocalypse, but it's the exact policies of Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez that caused it. It's the kind of policies that Bernie Sanders and Jagmeet Singh call for in North America. However, if you ask them about it, they would either dodge the question or try to tell you that it's socialism being “done the wrong way”.

In a diverse, free-market economy, competitors fill in the blank spaces in a market when their competitors fail or collapse. In socialist economies, however, the government monopolizes the resources and much of the distribution, so when things go sideways, there are no competitors or other producers, distributors, manufacturers and farmers to meet the demand for supplies, resources and food.

Some socialists may also blame the collapse in global oil prices for Venezuela's epic collapse and failure. It's partly true, but the problem with that argument is that places like Alberta and Finland didn't see their citizens eating rats and dogs and rioting in the streets. Alberta's economy depends heavily on oil and gas, but the province's diverse, free-market economy was able to sustain the global collapse in oil and remain civilized and prosperous. Despite massive job losses, bankruptcies and insolvency, Albertans haven't had to resort to beating dead cows to death or cooking up rodents and family pets.

If oil prices didn't collapse, Venezuela might be doing fine right now. However, global commodity prices fluctuate. When you monopolize and nationalize an entire industry that fuels your economy, shit hits the fan when prices collapse. To make matters worse, Venezuela's government implements price controls and various other socialistic policies which have made it impossible for farmers to grow crops, feed livestock and supply food.

The Washington Post:





Having attempted for years to defy conventional economics, the country now faces a painful reckoning with basic arithmetic. “Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.” Several of his cavernous henhouses sit empty because, Escobar said, he can’t afford to buy more chicks or feed. Government price controls have made his business unprofitable, and armed gangs have been squeezing him for extortion payments and stealing his eggs. Venezuela’s latest public health indicators confirm that the country is facing a dietary calamity. With medicines scarce and malnutrition cases soaring, more than 11,000 babies died last year, sending the infant mortality rate up 30 percent, according to Venezuela’s Health Ministry. The head of the ministry was fired by President Nicolás Maduro two days after she released those statistics.





The socialist fantasies swirling around in the heads of people like Jagmeet Singh and Bernie Sanders are not only unattainable, they've been tried more times than we should be proud of. Humans have tried so many times to achieve social and economic equality through force that any extraterrestrial civilization would consider us insane. Repeating the same mistake and always experiencing the same result is not only a sign of insanity, it's a sign of stupidity.

When Bernie Sanders tries to tell you that we should be more like Denmark or Finland, tell him he's right. Their free-market economies have been so successful that they can afford massive social safety nets and handouts for all of their citizens. On top of that, Denmark has no minimum wage. That inconvenient fact should be rubbed in every socialist's face whenever they talk about Denmark being a successful “socialist” country. Denmark is such a successful capitalist country, its people have completely rejected a government-mandated minimum wage.

Imagine that.

It's time to start learning from our mistakes, not pointing to red-herrings like Denmark as examples. None of the places socialists like to talk about are true, socialist places. However, until media and journalists start correcting them, their lies will continue to spread and the myth of “successful socialism” will persist as a reason to give socialism another try in places like America and Canada.