WHEN YOU LIVE IN A PIG-STY ANY SORT OF DREAM WORLD LOOKS PRETTY GOOD.

Sometime in the past week, I stumbled across a post, on a libertarianish site, coming to grips with the seeming love of young people for socialism despite the depressing record of various sorts of actually-existing socialisms.  The argument appeared to be that youngsters equated "capitalism" with government favoritism toward businesses, the financial bailouts (and more recently, the lockdown orders that kept big-box retailers open and slammed boutiques and coffee shops?), and that the inequalities were sufficiently unsatisfactory that something different might be in order.  The authors on that site grumbled that such a view left no room for creative destruction or entrepreneurial activity or all the other manifestations of competitive free enterprise.

It might be that the youngsters' attitudes toward political economy are a manifestation of the pretty pig problem.  That socialist pig-sty can't possibly be messier, can it?  Oh, yes it can, argues Harvards Edward J. Glaeser, at some length.  But he also sees that dream pig-sty.  "Since the status quo seemed to be performing poorly, especially for the young, why not try socialism?"  Or, as Luka Ladan puts it, "If the status quo ain’t sexy, then socialism just might be—or so they hope."

It might be, as Ryan Streeter and Richard Reeves point out, that "The debate we should be having is about what a free-market capitalist society looks like when it is struggling with certain inequities and injustices and trying to remedy those problems."

I doubt that there's widespread understanding among the young about what it means for the owners of the means of production becoming an objectively defined class, with the state serving as the executive committee of the ruling class, which would make sense as a Marxian understanding of those rent-seekers getting favorable lockdown orders and financial bailouts.  It's unlikely, though, that the young are steeped enough in Marxian political economy to be able to make that argument, let alone be in a position to challenge it, or any of the other supporting tenets.

The first reason is simple: All ideas are subject to debate, criticism, and revision. Teaching students how to subject ideas to good-faith critique is a core mission of liberal arts education. Marx relied on many ideas that can be challenged such as the labor theory of value, the idea that there is no human nature beyond historical circumstance and economic system, and the idea that societies naturally evolve bitter class divisions.

By identifying a philosopher’s key ideas, students can learn to critique political arguments of any stripe. Higher education should not be a church of true believers. The college experience should nurture skepticism.

Or, as Professor Glaeser puts it, "The task ahead is to convince today’s young people that society requires liberty as well as compassion."

And you thought working through the implications of critical theory was hard?  I wonder how many of those young people are familiar with even the vulgar manifestations of the Welfare Economics Paradigm, let alone with the structure-conduct-performance approach to entrepreneurship and competition policy, or with the notion of regulatory capture.