The real end goal of Socialism through Scarcity

When I was a child, my grandfather would sometimes solemnly intone at the dinner table: “The purpose of socialism is to organize scarcity.”

As a kid it sort-of didn’t register in my brain as meaning anything beyond “socialism bad”, but eventually when I was 12 or something, I… https://t.co/3Ao22FnYE4

— Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (@pegobry_en) July 2, 2026

When I was a child, my grandfather would sometimes solemnly intone at the dinner table: “The purpose of socialism is to organize scarcity.”

As a kid it sort-of didn’t register in my brain as meaning anything beyond “socialism bad”, but eventually when I was 12 or something, I did ask what he meant by those specific words.

And he said: socialists establish control of valuable resources and then create an artificial scarcity of these resources, so that they can then use them as a tool of control by deciding who gets and doesn’t get those resources.

And I thought that was wrong. I mean, are socialists misguided? Sure. But to claim that they deliberately create scarcity as a means of political control? That seemed far-fetched.

But, of course, he was entirely correct.