I’ve reached the age where I should be grumbling about how the younger generation will be the ruin of the country.

As a libertarian conservative, I should especially be succumbing to the sentiment, given the growing preference among young Americans for socialism over capitalism.

That I’m not is partially, and perhaps mostly, attributable to finding considerable truth in an adage of H.L. Mencken’s: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

If young Americans survey the world and come to the conclusion that the answer is more government and greater control by politicians, so be it. They are the ones who will reap the consequences of that misjudgment.

Besides, it’s not as though my generation, the baby-boomers, have been good stewards of our patrimony. The march of millennials toward European-style social democracy will be inhibited by the massive government debt and insolvent public pension programs we will be bequeathing them. Baby-boomers aren’t really in a position to be tut-tutting other generations, irrespective of how old we become.

Want to be more like Europe? Have at it

But if young Americans want the United States to become more like Europe, they can get there over time.

Young Americans wanting to make that march are unlikely to take the advice of a long-in-the-tooth libertarian conservative. But here it goes anyway.

There is one mistake that would be much more serious than the others and potentially fatal to the entire enterprise.

While the term “democratic socialism” is in vogue, that’s not really what’s in prospect. If the term “socialism” is to retain any useful meaning, it refers to government ownership of strategic commercial enterprises. “Democratic” socialism is distinguished from communism in that the body politic gets to choose who mismanages the enterprises.

But not all social democracies are equal

Europe abandoned socialism decades ago. The countries there have various iterations of democratic capitalism that can loosely be denoted as “social democracy.”

There are two aspects of social democracy as practiced in Europe that distinguish it from the form of democratic capitalism that currently prevails in the United States.

The first is a much more extensive social welfare state. Health care is almost universally treated as a public good in Europe, the responsibility of government to provide in one way or another. There are generally broader safety net programs for the poor and even the middle class.

The second is greater regulation of capital and especially labor markets. Pursuing that is the potentially fatal mistake.

There is perhaps no clearer lesson from history than that markets produce greater material well-being for a society, including for the poor. And markets work best when there is free movement of capital and labor.

Just don't make this mistake

Governmental attempts to direct or inhibit the free flow of capital and labor lead to sluggish economic growth and the calcification of economic opportunity. One of the paradoxes of young Americans wanting to emulate Europe is that a common characteristic of European economies is sky-high unemployment among young adults.

Of course, by the time European-style social democracy is fully instituted in this country, today’s young adults will be the protected incumbents in the work force. It will be their children locked out of a calcified job market.

The superior course is not to turn corporations into social welfare organizations. Leave private business free to do the job of creating greater material well-being and wealth. Then skim off a hunk of that wealth for the expanded social welfare programs.

That’s the course taken by a few small Northern European countries for several decades. Their performance can reasonably be called a success. They have certainly outperformed their European counterparts whose governments more tightly control capital and labor markets.

A bigger government with a relatively free private-sector economy might be sustainable, if not optimal.

A bigger government with a hamstrung private-sector economy won’t be.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com.