This incident was narrated to be by a friend of mine and I, in-turn am narrating it in my own words:
There was this economics professor at a local college who one day made a strange statement in front of his students that he had never failed a single student before because he was too kind to break the heart of any of his students but had to fail an entire class because of a project that he had given to his students.
The project was to debate whether socialism was the way to go for nations to become better and prosper. Almost the entire class was in favor of socialism since the class insisted that socialism works on all levels and is a great equalizer. It makes all the people equal by eliminating the rich from the rich and by eliminating the poor from the poor.
The professor did not agree with this notion and said, "OK, let’s have an experiment on socialism. From now on I will grade every student based on average i.e. all grades would be averaged so that no one fails, but no one will receive an A either. The class agreed and went on with their business.
After the first test, the professor averaged the grades everyone got a B. But this was very upsetting for the students who had studied very hard in hopes of getting an A and the same B was very uplifting for the students who studied little.
As the time of the second test came, the back row students who weren’t into studying to begin with, studies even less and the students who were previously studying hard decided that they too need to blow off some steam instead of studying. As a result of this, the second test average was a D! Every student was left with a long face.
Time came for the third and worst test of them all and it resulted in an average of F. The grades never got better since everyone was busy bickering, blaming and name-calling. All the students had hard feelings and none of them was willing to study to benefit the other students.
The professor then told them that this is why socialism would never succeed as a system. It is not because of something wrong with the system but it has to do with a lot of wrongs in the people. When the reward is great, the effort to succeed should be great too but, when the government takes on itself to take the reward away or reward everyone equally, no one tries to succeed because everyone is banking on someone else to try hard for him.
In short you cannot end poverty by taking the wealth away from the wealthy. What one person receives without working, could never be equal to a person working for it and not receiving it. In order for the government to give something it has to first take the same thing from someone else. When the majority of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the minority is doing it for them, it results in anarchy. And when the minority decides to stop working for the majority it results in chaos. And that is end of any Nation, no matter how great their past was or how superb their present is. Unfortunately, nature did not provide us with any formula where we can multiply wealth by dividing it.
