VIDEO: Why Beer Sucks in Socialist Countries

The trend of younger voters allegedly becoming more favorable to socialism has alarmed and chagrined many observers recently, from eye-rolling members of the New York Post editorial board (“Socialism’s millennial fans don’t even know what it is”) to a deal-making Arizona Republic columnist writing in USA Today (“If millennials choose socialism, fine. Just don’t make this mistake”). Advocates for a free economy have been wracking their brains trying to find ways to dissuade Millennial and Gen Z Americans from cozying up to big government control of the economy (“How to Talk to Millennials about Socialism”), with mixed results.

Enter economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell and their new book, “Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way through the Unfree World.” The Cato Institute recently hosted the authors (along with Free the People President Matt Kibbe) for a lively and irreverent discussion of the superiority of a free economy. Their first-hand observations from travels around the world give the program an immediacy that theoretical discussions of economic theory often lack.

Kibbe also hosted Lawson and Powell for an interview of his own, which features more observations on the book—and actual beer drinking.

For more on the intoxicating allure of free markets, see the Competitive Enterprise Institute short film “I, Whiskey: The Human Spirit.”