Socialism: The flipside of get-rich-quick schemes

Think of it as a get-poor-quick scheme

Photo by Brock Wegner on Unsplash

Recently, I’ve been doing the groundwork for a new project. I’ve been looking at get-rich-quick schemes.

No, not favorably.

Looking at the marketing for these things, though, it’s not difficult to imagine how people get sucked in. Folks showing glamorous lifestyles, expensive cars, boats, beautiful women, it’s easy to see how people get sucked in.

Yet I couldn’t help but notice something. You see, get-rich-quick schemes are just the flipside of the coin of socialism.

Now, hear me out for a moment. Socialism and get-rich-quick appear to be so polar opposite that they can’t be related at all. One is an effort to capitalize on, well, capitalism while the other is, well, socialism. It’s the opposite of capitalism and is pretty proud of that fact.

Yet these aren’t actually as opposite as some might think.

The biggest similarity? Both are rooted not in sound practices, better living for all, or anything else.

They’re rooted in envy.

You see, get-rich-quick schemes use things like Instagram or YouTube to portray the ultimate rich-guy life. Guys hop into Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Bugatis, McLarens, and a host of other flashy cars, only to step out at high-end nightclubs with gorgeous women. Then they’re on a yacht, different beautiful women lounging in bikinis as the guy and his friend sip champagne.

This is the lifestyle you’re not living. They don’t have to tell you that because, unless you’re delusional, you already know.

They hold it up as something you don’t have and ask you if you want it. If you do, they can take you to the promised land.

Everything they do and say is predicated on you not just not living that lifestyle, but you being jealous of it, of wanting it while knowing you haven’t done anything to earn it.

They’re banking on that jealousy.

In a similar vein, socialism does the same thing. They hold up the wealth some have and single it out. This person, they say, has so much and you have so little. They look at the Lambos and Ferraris and make sure you see what cars the rich and powerful drive. They single people out, the most extravagant purchases or the most concentration of power in one hand.

There are differences, though.

Where get-rich-quick schemes try to trick you into blowing your money to accumulate that wealth for yourself, socialism is more of a “get-poor-quick” scheme. Rather than try to use that envious desire to raise yourself up to those levels of financial bliss, it instead wants to tear everyone and everything down so that there are no wealthy people anymore.

While those selling instantaneous wealth will often pretend to be richer than they actually are—renting exotic sportscars for photo shoots so they can post them on Instagram and pretend they’re their cars, as an example—many of those pushing socialism are hiding their own wealthy roots and pretending to be among the poor and downtrodden.

Yet through both, a small group actually gets wealth and power. They’re the people selling these ideas, though, not those buying.

They’re the center of the coin, those who are going to make bank no matter what. In socialism, they’re the guys with all the power, all the authority, and with that, they gain a measure of wealth that literally no one else in their society can have.

They’re both scams, but for all of the sins of get-rich-quick scammers, they’re at least trying to trade on optimism and hope. They’re at least selling that anyone can achieve financial independence and wealth.

Socialism tells you that you simply can’t unless you’re a terrible human being.

You know something is wrong with your ideology when you make scam artists trying to profit off of desperate people look good by comparison.

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