See? Even the GOOLAG thinks so

The results of a new study regarding Millennial opinions about economic systems and policies have been circulating throughout teh Innerwebz, and the results are not particularly encouraging for Generation MeMeMe:

More than 40 percent of millennials in the United States said they would rather live in a socialist society than a capitalist one, a new survey shows. 

The annual report from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation used YouGov polling data to assess American attitudes toward socialism and communism.

The survey found that among millennials, 42 percent would prefer to live in a capitalist society, while 44 percent said they would rather live in a socialist society.

Seven percent of people would choose to live in a communist society. That same number of people said they would choose to live in a fascist society.

There is some charty goodness, as our good friend Captain Capitalism would say, to go along with that article:

So let’s get this straight:

Forty-four percent of Millennials are, in fact, IDIOTIC enough to think that socialism is better than capitalism as an economic system, but roughly a third of them have no idea what the difference is between the two systems?

LOSE. HOPE.

This “latest poll” actually isn’t telling us anything particularly new, by the way. I saw the results of a similar YouGov poll a year ago, and engaged in some splenetic commentary on the subject in the blog post linked above.

What the results do prove (yet again) is that the Millennialtards are effectively a lost generation at this point.

The most pampered, coddled, and praised generation in history is demonstrating in very clear fashion what happens when work is put after success, outside of the dictionary.

There does need to be a distinction made here between Millennials in advanced nations- and here I include countries like Singapore and Japan in with the usual Western countries like the USA, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, etc.- and Millennials who grew up dirt-poor and struggling in Third World Africa, Asia, or (most of) Eastern Europe.

From what I can see, those Millennials have profoundly different attitudes toward freedom of association and trade than spoiled Western Millennials do.

I also have to take pains to point out that quite a few of the readers of my writing are Millennials. I am relieved to note that these Millennials are the exceptions that prove the rule about our fellows within our generation. They wouldn’t be reading my work, or that of grumpy old farts like me, if they didn’t think quite differently from the rest of their misbegotten cohort.

The broader lesson remains nonetheless: when you give a generation everything except the things that really matter, and when you remove the possibility and consequences of failure to the maximum extent possible, you end up creating a generation of narcissistic little asswipes who do not understand where their material comforts come from, and who do not value freedom because they have never had to pay the price for this most wonderful of all gifts.

The results of that survey are more than a mere shameful indictment of the appalling ignorance of Western Millennials. They serve as a warning from history- one that has been repeated all too many times in the history of our species.

That lesson is simple: when people have virtually complete freedom to live as they please, and are not required to face the consequences for their actions, the result is the destruction of a once-mighty society.

Millennials, like their Boomer predecessors, do not quite seem to understand that freedom is not the right to do as you please.

Freedom- that most divine and priceless of all gifts, given to us by a loving but stern Creator- is in fact the substitution of discipline from within for discipline from without.

Western Millennials do not understand this. They have lived with near-complete freedom to do whatever they want, free of the consequences for making terribly stupid choices, for most of their lives. The problem is that one cannot hide from the results of one’s actions and decisions forever; eventually, reality always catches up.

And so it is in the modern day, where Millennials completely lose their minds whenever one of their own generation, wiser and more reasonable than them, comes along and ever-so-gently attempts to show them a wider reality.

Millennials turn to socialism over capitalism because they have reaped the wonderful fruits of a free and open society that encourages peaceful, voluntary trade- but have never had to work particularly hard to build upon what they were given.

To paraphrase the line from The Master’s work: they are indeed lesser sons of greater sires.

That is why I tend to say that the Millennials, at least in the West, are a lost generation. Fortunately, however, the cohort coming up after them- Generation Z, as they are quite clumsily named- appear to be significantly more conservative and reactionary than the Millennials were.

It is at this point that I must admit that I, personally, appear to have made a severe error of judgement about Generation Z.

A bit over a year ago, I answered a query from longtime reader Kapios about the generation after us Millennials, and my opinion on the subject at the time was that, if you think Millennials are an utter disaster, just wait until you see the bunch of morons AFTER us.

Evidently I was quite wrong about this. What I am seeing in everyday life and in the alternative media that I consume tells me that, in fact, Gen-Z is growing up to be the most conservative cohort since, quite possibly, the Greatest Generation.

I could be wrong about that too. Only time will tell. But there is at least one faint ray of hope out there. Millennials may be complete morons when it comes to understanding the difference between an economic system that actually, y’know, works, and one that inflicts virtually infinite misery and poverty upon the people unfortunate enough to be stuck with it.

But Generation Z appears as though it will avoid making that same catastrophically stupid error in judgement.

And that, if nothing else, should give us reason enough to be thankful for small mercies.