"It’s free stuff until the bills come due."

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https://fee.org/articles/six-ways-socialism-is-anti-social/

TLDR rant: Throw away the economics and socio readings at NLUs and replace with pro-free market literature like this, along with classical free market literature like Hayek, Friedman and Bhagwati.

Longer rant below:

This article needs to be compulsory reading in all NLUs in India. The current economics and sociology courses are a joke. Students from science backgrounds are not exposed to sociology and economics at all and the courses at NLUs are their first exposure. Instead of providing easy to understand and practically relevant readings, students are provided with readings that are obsolete and written in obscurantist language. Most importantly, these readings are out of touch with reality and ideologically biased. Thus, students come out with half-baked knowledge and the gullible ones are brainwashed into supporting socialism.

At my law school (a top NLU) our profs were openly leftist. We were given readings by Marx, Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, never Jagdish Bhagwati or Milton Friedman -- two of the greatest economists in the world! As far as Marx is concerned, the collapse of the Soviet Union and East Germany, and ruin of Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela are living proof that Marxism is a failure. Marx-influenced thinkers in India ruined the country's economy during the licence raj years. And look at West Bengal: the #1 state in industry until the late 1960s, now an economic wasteland.

Coming to the others, even if I accept the specious argument that Sen is better than Bhagwati, Bhagwati is certainly better than Dreze ffs!! Dreze is more a far-left polemicist than an economist. He irreparably harmed the economy during his tenure in Sonia Gandhi's National Advisory Council.

I would also really question Sen and the validity of his Nobel. His theory of "GDP-mediated growth", which suggests that GDP is a mere tool to increase social welfare, is bunkum. GDP is the ONLY way to grow an economy, and rather the purpose of any welfare spending like education should be to hike GDP. Look at where China, ASEAN and South Korea are today.

Let's also look at Sen's favourite state, Kerala. He regards it as a model state. LMAO. The economy basically thrives on remittances from the Gulf. Ask any well-educated Keralite about the reality. Also, Kerala has now realised its mistake and is welcoming private capital. Adani is developing multiple airports in Kerala. So why should we take Sen seriously?

Which modern nation in this world is following a 'free-market economy' exactly? All the governments pick and choose policies to benefit their countrymen over outsiders and their cronies over others. As for GDP growth, that looks great in reports, but sadly, does not often make any difference to the bulk of the populace, because the benefits are mostly taken by the haves and not the have nots. For an economy to truly grow and benefit everyone, the government should increase planned and focused expenditure on health, education and creation of employment opportunities. That will always require taxing the haves more, especially corporates. Trickle down economics does not work in reality, just like communism does not.

This article is basically the same old redundant argument that clearly misses out on understanding Marxism and is premised on the poor assumption of State Capitalism as Socialism. Basically as a Marxist, I can infer this article screaming: "I don't know what Socialism is, but let me tell you why it is wrong!".

I can rebut this complete article, right from its head to foot, but honestly, I don't need to cause this is not really intended to illuminate its readers, rather, on the contrary attempts to keep them in dark from understanding Marxism as Marx had it. At best I can recommend reading some actual Marxist stuff, Philosophy Tube videos is a good start.

First of all, lol. Second, what? I dont think you understand either marxism, neoliberal economics, or even austrian economics (hayek lol) you either have read none of the prevailing economic literature or are not aware the 2008 crisis even happened. Which btw was the exact cause of the policies friedman and hayek championed. Even despite this, just reading basic class 11th and 12th economics would've given you an idea of why neoliberal policies so often fail (think market failures) and despite this, you can observe the effects of neoliberalism all around you, the planet is warming, global inequality is reaching an all time high and the wages of the poorest strata of society can purchase only a fraction of what they were able to before.