The Economics Class Socialist Experiment

As I'm sure many of us have read already, there's a continually circulating tale on the internet about an economics professor failing an entire class through an experiment in socialism.  Just in case you haven't read it (and because I'm not going to transcribe the whole story here), here's a link to several variations: Social Injustice.  Take a second and read through it again so it's fresh in your mind.

Now, I know you may be worried that this post may become a long-winded diatribe about socialism (or capitalism), or even advocating for one economic system over another, but I hope to write this as neither.  This is to be simply my reaction to what I see as an over-simplification of complex systems.

In the story, the professor takes all the students grades and averages them together and provides each student the same grade, regardless of effort.  If he were a true economist, wouldn't he recognize that in any system, at least at the onset, each individual arrives at various levels?  Think for a minute of the ten people with whom you most associate.  Your friends, colleagues, etc.  Are you all on an even keel regarding income?  Home-ownership? Equity?  Net value?  Educational level?  I would image that if this was to be an effective lesson, the professor would have noted that every society has certain systemic inequalities - whether those be income, ethnicity, gender, heritage, and so on.  Should these not be factors in any experiment?  In setting it up, then, I believe the instructor should have provided some students "A"s before class even began because their parents earned really good grades in school already.

I also wonder how he would have constructed this experiment to reflect the benefits of capitalism.  Since capitalism is, essentially, one person selling their labor to another person, would this new experiment consist of 80% of the class studying really hard then providing crib sheets to 20%.  That 20% then gets an "A" and the other 80% gets "C"s.  Now some of those 80% may also study really really hard and eventually get a "B", sure, and more power to them.  But don't forget that because half of that 20% are going to get an "A" anyway because of their parent's really good grades, so it really doesn't matter if some people don't want to study for him/her (although, let's face it, it's pretty much "him").  Oh, and if we want to exalt the American system, for every score of 100% a male student gets, we should certainly award an even proportion of female students who studied just as hard a 81%.  Right? (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, page 55)

I believe this to be an incredibly vast oversimplification of a societal system - both mine and theirs - to the extent that the story serves little more than a McCarthyist legend, the same propaganda that has shaded American beliefs of anything other than republic governments and capitalist mentalities.

Am I saying one is better than the other?  I am not.

Do I regardless recognize that any economic system and governmental structure has flaws?  Of course.

But if we are to begin falling behind anecdotes as arguments, then our partisanship surely has completely left the harbor (pun intended).  It's stories such as these that erode our ability to maintain civilized dialogue and empathetic listening.