When a Nobel prize winner praises Venezuela, something's way wrong

To win a Nobel in one of the "hard" sciences--chemistry, physics and so on--you have to make some discovery that is both of major significance, and...turns out to be right.  This is one of the reasons that many Nobel winners are only awarded a prize 30 or 40 years after the discovery that eventually wins the prize:  it typically takes years to prove that the announced discovery is right.


Of course there are exceptions:  In the "soft" sciences and non-science, people who praise socialism or communism often win a Nobel for ideas that turn out to be ridiculously, utterly wrong.  Or sometimes for doing nothing at all, as happened with Barack Obama, who was nominated the same week he took office.  Before he'd done anything at all.

Another example: in 2006 Nobel–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz praised the economic policies of... Hugo Chávez??  Yep.  He praised the Chávez government for its vast progress in bringing "education and health benefits to the poor, " and for economic policies the economist said would not only bring higher growth but would also "ensure that the fruits of the growth are more widely shared.”

In October 2007, Stiglitz repeated his praise of Chávez, claiming Venezuela's economic growth rate was “very impressive,” and that “President Chávez appears to have had success in bringing health and education to the people in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas.”

Less than a decade after Stiglitz praised socialist Venezuela's policies, starving Venezuelans were killing zoo animals for food.  A dozen eggs cost a month's salary.

How hard it is it to discern the all-encompassing flaws in Socialism?  The answer is that it is quite easy.  Socialism goes against every positive human trait.  The goal of its proponents is power...over you and me and everyone else who has the temerity to speak up in his own defense and to strive for individual success. How else to explain the socialists' hatred of free markets, which somehow manage to bring vast improvements to human lives--at a fantastic rate--without taking orders from any official.  All done by just paying attention to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." .

Consider the vast improvements in quality of life since the French Revolution (which is a convenient historical point for the beginnings of Socialism).  How many of these fantastic improvements were discovered and implemented by collectivism and the rejection of the individual as the basic unit of society?

I can't think of a single one.

Yet our so-called "elites"--and the Nobel committee--keep praising socialism.

Moronic.  But ooooh, so trendy!