Who here have watched crash landing
with you? Did you remember the scene
there where North Korean soldiers saw what
it's like in South Korea and they were so
amazed seeing how much the outside world
has been developing? There, you can see
how much South Korea has developed in
contrast with North Korea; a capitalist and a
communist state.
Now before I begin, to those who don't know,
capitalism is an economic and political system
in which a country’s trade and industry are
controlled by private owners for profit rather
than the state, whereas socialism is a political
and economic theory of social organization
which advocates that the means of production,
distribution, and exchange should be owned or
regulated by the community as a whole.
Most people, especially teenager, are attracted
to Karl Marx for his ideologies such as equality,
a classless society, and basically, he wanted
to eradicate hierarchy through socialism.
Because of this, one might think that socialism is
the better choice, but I'm telling you, it sounds
better than it works, while capitalism,
works better than it sounds.
Take a look at the facts, these are the
countries used Marx's model of socialism
because "socialism is the best economic
system there is." Yugoslavia, USSR,
Democratic Kampuchea, and East
Germany, those countries no longer exist.
Laos and Vietnam? they have widespread
famine, poverty, and political oppression.
Now what about the countries that have
been oppressed by the "greedy
bourgeoisie"? USA is now the world's
largest economy, Japan, the 3rd largest
economy, Germany the 4th largest
economy, and so on.
Moving on, Venezuela is a prime example
of how much damage socialism could do to
a country. Venezuela was once the
wealthiest country in South America, and
after using socialism as their model system,
their economy had a steep economic
decline.
People were lining up for the most basic
needs like tissue. They can only buy a
certain amount of food per week. The
average Venezuelan actually lost 24
pounds. Leftists activists actually celebrated
Venezuela's reform as a great success---
right up until it wasn't.
What about other European countries, they have
free healthcare, free college, free etc. but the
truth is, they are just as capitalist as the US,
they just offer more benefits. Only a free market
capitalist economy could produce enough wealth
to sustain these "free stuff" because if your
country produces enough wealth, it would
generate enough tax revenue to fund these "free
stuff". Point is, without capitalism, you will not
get these "free stuff"
 You don't need to be an economist to
understand these well-established facts, that's
why it's so frustrating that young people are
praising Karl Marx's ideologies while criticizing
capitalism saying nonsense like "kapitalismo
Ibagsak" to get clout on Twitter. Inequality, no
doubt, has always been, and will always be a
problem, but it is also essential in running a very
complex economy.
Hierarchy is nature's way for controlling chaos,
but compared to a system that makes people
equal? equally poor? I'd choose the former. With
that, I would like to end my speech with a quote
from Winston Churchill, "The inherent drawback
of capitalism is the unequal distribution of
wealth, the inherent dignity of socialism is the
equal distribution of poverty."