36. Story: Professor Fails Entire Class After Experiment

This story was circulated back in 2013. While details were shown not to be true the basic principle of the story is sound: communism/socialism doesn’t work. Many people today around the world, not just in the United States, aspire to work for the government. In many cases these are good paying jobs with few incentives for creativity or improvement.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently 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, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on this socialistic plan. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A” He decided to substitute grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all students.

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. 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 less.

The second test average was a D! Needless to say no one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.  As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED 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 rewards or incentives away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that.



Wayne Dupree of the Independent Journal Review outlines the, “5 best sentences you’ll ever read on this experiment”:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.



Something to consider for sure. 
What do you think of socialism? What do you make of the story and 5 points above? Leave a comment!

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