Many of us who remember when eastern Europeans were imprisoned behind an Iron Curtain – and who rejoiced when that Curtain crashed in 1989, soon to be followed by the demise of the USSR in 1991 – look with a combination of befuddlement and contempt at young people who today clamor for socialism. While hardly a hot take, this report of befuddlement and contempt raises a question to which a good answer has yet to be given – namely, Why? Whyare so many people today ga-ga for government direction of the economy? More generally, whytoday do so many people – on the political left and right – wish to replace free commercial markets with a system of bureaucratic diktats?
What, precisely, do such people not know?