A study about socialism

[SacRedMan]

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said okay, we will have an experiment in this
class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone
would receive the same grade, so no one would fail and no one
would receive an ‘A’.
After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a ‘B’.
The students who studied hard were upset and the students who
studied little were happy.
But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little
had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they
wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The second test
average was a ‘D’!
No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an ‘F’.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name-calling all
resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that
socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is
great, the effort to succeed is great;
But when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.

[The Idler]

u6XAPnuFjJc

[graymouser]

There are so many problems with this that there is simply nothing to speak of merit to it. Students taking a series of tests is totally disconnected from workers running production.

What I think is ironic is that the "socialist" example was done without allowing the students to socialize the activity of studying for the test. That is, each student had to completely master the entire material. Had they actually socialized the test-taking, the students could have broken up into study groups, each of which would study one chapter, and then on the day of the test the whole class would discuss each problem and come to an answer. Instead, the professor isolated each student during the test - that is, private test-taking but socialized grades. The students, if they were smarter, could have demanded socialized test-taking. They would have humiliated the fool professor, since leveraging their strengths would have ensured that everyone got 100s.

[ZeroNowhere]

Hm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm)?

[Ballyfornia]

Socialism is an Economic doctrine. Thats just adding the averages of a score and giving the class it.

[Kotze]

:mad: In b4 restriction!

I guess OP doesn't really believe that story and wants help phrasing a concise rebuttal.


when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is greatThat's right, little variation in individual wealth destroys productivity. For example, if you tax land ownership too much, not only will land production go down, but also — whether it's legal or not — people will put their land in bags and leave for countries where landlords get more respect.

Another example: A slacker friend tells you how much she hates her job. She says, "I only do as much as I have to get by. I want to concentrate on studying." If the wage is raised, she should be willing to work longer. If not, her university should be informed and make her fail economics.

Seriously, capitalism is not all about rewarding productivity, capitalism rewards ownership of certain assets, though it's usually other people doing productive stuff with it. This kind of reward is unneccessary, hurtful even, irrespective of whether small or big material incentives for actual work are needed. Socialists want to abolish that privilege, and they do not have a consensus on the proper strength of material work incentives.

[ar734]

The Texas Tech professor is paid with money taken from the people of Texas; the school operates with money from the same source. The government also tells the professor and his school that they have to let women and African-Americans attend. The prof is obviously ok with some types of government interference.

He also forgot to mention a university policy that says if an entire class fails a course the professor gets fired.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I think this and variations on this theme were listed as an urban myth with no basis in reality on snopes.com.

Which isn't exactly surprising judging by how stupid the premise is.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

The students were understandably upset that they had all gotten an F: after all, in any given classroom, if nobody did their homework the average would still not be an F. Moreover, since the professor had never given an F before it was statistically impossible that this class as a whole would be worse, on average, than any other individual student the professor had ever taught, study or not, considering the number of students who never crack their books in any class at any given time. So the students hired a hot-shot lawyer to sue the professor, arguing that the professor had flunked them for their political beliefs, viz. Socialism.

On cross-examination the professor admitted that in every other course he had taught he had graded "on a curve," meaning that students were not graded according to their success or failure in meeting an abstract ideal of competency, but rather so that the grades, once turned in, would match a median or average grade of B or C+. This was the only way he might avoid handing out an F here or there. Why, then, did the professor not grade this particular class on a curve as well, and hand them all a B or a C+? In other terms, why had he punished the class as a "class" (in the legal sense)? Why except that this 'class' had decided to declare itself Socialist?

The university lost its case, the professor was denied tenure, and went on to a fruitful career making up stories on the Tea-bagger rubber-chicken circuit.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

"I did not," said the professor, fail the students because they were socialists, I simply showed that their decision to chose Socialism would inevitably lead to failure.

- This was based, then, on your assumption, that the grading mechanism in the classroom is the equivalent of the grading mechanism for countries, then?

- Correct. Consider me the Classroom Government. Each class I teach produces a certain amount of "gradiness" - Gross Classroom Product, if you wish, which I am charged with redistributing among all students/citizens. My point, then, was that the GCP for this particular "socialist" course was so much lower than the average GCP in any previous class, I had to grade the People's Socialist Republic of Classroom below any grade I'd ever given.

- Well, Professor, when you grade a capitalist classroom, do all your evaluations rest on the grade alone? Or do you factor in attendance, participation in class discussions, and so forth?

- Obviously, all of these are taken into account.

- So why did you not factor those in, for this particular course? Or if you did factor them in, why do you believe that the activity of discussing Socialism in the classroom also merits an F? Aren't you playing the role of the IMF here, rather than the Government, factoring in only those criteria that you know in advance are going to determine your conclusion, which is that a particular society "flunks," not for the vibrancy of its intellectual life, for instance, but for the capacity of its citizens to perform trite, pointless and mind-numbing tasks? Having set up your classroom to mirror many aspects of capitalism (arbitrariness of rewards, competitiveness as a goal in itself, etc), had you not pre-determined the students would fail from the very fact that they chose to oppose these criteria?"

[fishontuesday]

Do I even need to explain why this is so ridiculous! I mean really. Let me quote a famous American Socialist Eugene Debs. This was said at the famous anti war speech in Canton Ohio: We Socialists say: “Take possession of the mines; call the miner to work and return to him the equivalent of the value of his product.” He can then build himself a comfortable home; live in it; enjoy it with his family. He can provide himself and his wife and children with clothes—good clothes—not shoddy; wholesome food in abundance, education for the children, and the chance to live the lives of civilized human beings, while at the same time the people will get coal at just what it costs to mine it.

From Marxists.org debs archive:marx:

[Comrade J]

The teacher is trying to suggest that in socialism, everyone will try get a free ride and society as a whole will fail, which is utter nonsense, I think greymouser's post is a good analysis of the test.

Actually, if we are to stick with this test-score/socialism comparison (which in itself is a stupid analogy to attempt) then it seems to me the test he tried is more akin to capitalism than socialism, where some students work extremely hard whilst others don't, yet everyone gets a shit grade that doesn't correlate with the effort they put into it.

[Sam_b]

I just wanted to ass that there really shouldn't be polls in theory, it pretty much dilutes things and is a complete distraction from real argument.

[Kuppo Shakur]

I just wanted to ass
:thumbup1:

[ZeroNowhere]

:thumbup1:Speaking of things which shouldn't be in theory...