Everyone had fun with crazy grandpa Bernie Sanders in 2016, but it’s a little scary how many people seem to take the guy who owns 3 houses ranting against capitalism seriously. More people are overtly talking about how great socialism is, when I assumed that was a debate long ago settled, like that slavery is bad. I have no idea what these people think socialism is — they seem to think it’s some sort of magic word that causes everyone to get everything they want. And I have no idea what they imagine capitalism to be. They keep saying it “hurts the poor” and I’m like, “What? You must be thinking of your face.”

When I hear capitalism, I think of the stats at places like HumanProgress.org where you see this massive increase over the last century in the living standards of the world’s poorest. In wealth, nutrition, life expectancy, it’s been an insane boon. It’s not even remotely debatable; capitalism has been orders and orders of magnitude better at helping people. Debating capitalism against other systems is like debating what’s a better weapon, a gun or different varieties of sticks. So when people say they want to crush capitalism, I take that as they want massive amounts of poor people to starve to death if it means rich people will be a little less rich.

Socialism somehow gets labeled “progressive” despite being a really old, really really failed system of misery and oppression. We have a system that both massively helps people while also respecting people, i.e., giving them freedom to make their own choices. It’s not just dumb to oppose it, it’s wrong. Being a socialist is as cute as those alt-right people playing nazi — who were also socialists. Because in the end, socialism is about controlling people, and what horrible person doesn’t love that?