Socialist experiments have failed no matter when and where they have been tried. Instead of tranquility and prosperity, they have resulted in strife and impoverishment.
Yet socialism keeps on reappearing — albeit in different guises — throughout the world.
From Venezuela since the early 2000s to the strong support for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign on American college campuses today, socialism continues to enjoy a surprising degree of popularity. What accounts for that?
Are soci...
Socialist experiments have failed no matter when and where they have been tried. Instead of tranquility and prosperity, they have resulted in strife and impoverishment.
Yet socialism keeps on reappearing — albeit in different guises — throughout the world.
From Venezuela since the early 2000s to the strong support for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign on American college campuses today, socialism continues to enjoy a surprising degree of popularity. What accounts for that?
Are socialist instincts, including zero-sum thinking and egalitarian sharing, parts of human nature that evolved in our premodern ancestors thousands of years ago? And if they are inherent to the design of the human brain, can they be overridden so that it is possible to more effectively explain the benefits of free markets?
Please join Jonathan Haidt (Professor of Ethical Leadership, NYU Stern School of Business), John Tooby (Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Barbara), Leda Cosmides (Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, UC Santa Barbara), and Marian L. Tupy (Editor, HumanProgress.org) for a timely discussion of the origins and staying power of socialism.
REGISTER: http://www.cato.org/events/socialism-human-nature
If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch it live online at www.cato.org/live and join the conversation on Twitter using #CatoEvents.
