Prager U has a new video Socialism Makes people selfish talking about what socialist ideas do to a culture. Their claim is that it creates a culture of entitlement. I can agree with Socialism creates a culture of entitlement, but not to his defense of Capitalism. He makes the same mistake many conservatives have made in the past. Prager tries to defend Capitalism as the better system of altruism; one that supports service to others. This is a weak position because Capitalism promotes rational self interest and helping others is a natural byproduct of the division of labor society. Socialism will always win in a contest of sacrificing the individual to the group. Instead, I agree with Harry Browne’s stronger observation; That the Price of Liberty is personal responsibility. To highlight that Socialism promotes other people being responsible for you vs. Capitalism promoting Personal Responsibility is much more effective. So let's follow the psychological conclusions of each idea. Socialism - other people are responsible for you- leads to others owe you something - leads to not much value put on those people because after all, they owe you something (entitlement mentality). Capitalism - leads to taking your own life into your hands- leads to high self esteem and personal responsibility - leads to respecting other people who work hard and are responsible for themselves (Individual rights mentality).
The flip side of the entitlement culture are the personally responsible people that feel that they should offer their life of servitude to pay for those that are not responsible for themselves. Many people are brought up to believe that their main purpose in life is to sacrifice their life to something bigger than themselves (ie. society, government, god/gods, etc). So many of those people grow up conflicted because a successful life requires you to be concerned with your rational self interest and to understand that your life belongs to no one else. However, subconsciously they feel the need to be responsible for the irresponsible by any means necessary; including forcing other people into servitude. This leads to the observation of hard working rational individuals supporting socialism, fascism, communism and other statists governments.
