As someone who escaped socialism to find opportunity in a nation built on centuries of capitalist principles, I find it troubling to see growing support for socialism among people who have never endured its true horrors.

According to a recent Gallup poll, support for capitalism has slipped to 54% among young Americans, while support for socialism has increased by three points.

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CAPITALISM FAVORABILITY ON THE DECLINE: POLL

After living through socialist regimes, I can gladly say the ideology is not what it seems. Socialism is not a system of handouts and wealth distribution; it is a system of an overreaching government that refuses to share power or resources.

Unlike capitalism, socialism doesn’t give everyone the equal opportunity to start from scratch and build a name for themselves. Instead, it forces everyone to abide by rules that rulemakers do not abide by.

Socialism limits people’s capabilities personally and professionally and forces them to give up private ownership of property and resources.

Let’s take my birth country, Venezuela, for example. Socialist regimes in the country forced people to hand over their land to the government in exchange for nothing. Former President Hugo Chavez promised Venezuelans freedom and prosperity in his 1999 revolution. Today, Venezuelan’s scour the trash for food and use the paper currency as toilet paper because hyperinflation has made it worthless.

In my father’s home country, Argentina, the socialist government in 2008 froze people’s access to their money at state-controlled banks to stop the circulation of capital in the country’s economy and reduce hyperinflation, a direct consequence of increased government spending.

In my mother’s home country, Brazil, illegitimate leader Lula da Silva created government spending programs in the mid-2000s to reduce poverty. Years later, poverty levels are as bad or worse in the country, while inflation has increased significantly.

In Puerto Rico, a semicapitalist country I lived in for 12 years, the only electricity company allowed on the island, owned by an immensely corrupt narco government, led the diaspora to a blackout that lasted a year after Category 4 Hurricane Maria hit in 2017.

These examples don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the true horrors of socialism. I haven’t even touched on crime, chaos, the extremely high taxation, the massive barriers to entry for entrepreneurs, the degradation of religion, lack of medicine and education, and other personal freedoms that are virtually nonexistent in those countries.

But the most astonishing part of all is that socialism never campaigned on those outcomes or championed those promises.

Instead, socialism rose to power because it championed the words “free,” “equality,” and “fair distribution,” and people bought it.

Americans who have never experienced socialism are hypnotized by those words, the same way Venezuelans were.

Argentina, Puerto Rico, and nearly every country in the world, except the United States, at one point experienced socialism. However, the difference is that the people of those countries didn’t really know any better. Their countries were under cruel dictatorships or colonial rule, out of their control. They have never experienced either side of the ideological coin.

OUR CONSTITUTION WAS MADE FOR CAPITALISM, NOT SOCIALISM 

However, the U.S. has every necessary testimony from the survivors of socialism and over 200 years of experience in a capitalist society, which has made it the superpower it is today, to reject socialism, but it chose not to. Socialism is a slippery slope. 

Socialism’s uprising happens fast, and Americans are going to regret being caught in the middle of it.