Socialism Explained - Not Rocket Science
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once 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 socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. The Class agreed!
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 little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. 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.
All failed, to their great surprise, 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 reward and shares it with those not earning it, no one will try or want to succeed. Socialism takes away the need for initiative, accountability, and sacrifice to become successful.
It just doesn't get any simpler than this
Human behavior almost always gravitates toward the mean. When a person discovers that they are below average in an area, they work to compensate. When they discover that they are above average they usually slack back down to the average. This has been proven time and time again in a large number of very repeatable experiments. The end result of this story would actually have been a B average or maybe a C, but not failure.
It's certainly a good story, it seems plausible and it makes the point very well -- unfortunately the point it makes is incorrect. People believe it because stories are more meaningful to us than statistics. The brain responds vigorously to a good story, whereas it only vaguely notices actual information when it's presented statistically. End result is that you can get people to believe all kinds of nonsense if you're a good storyteller. What this story leaves out in particular is the talks the students have once the grade starts slipping down. They start to ask each other how much they're studying. The students who aren't studying very much are identified. Some of them may not have even realized they were the slackers, but the sudden realization and the intense peer pressure from the other students in their class does indeed bring them in line with the class average. But the students who initially studied hard had also slacked off and they never really go back to studying hard because it's easier for them to just fit in as well. The lack of competition took away their motivation.
Is this a great ending to the story? I don't think so... because the students who excelled originally ultimately slacked off. So there's not incentive for people to excel, only for them to be average. But it's not the utter dismal failure predicted in the original story. I for one would much rather excel than settle for mediocrity.