Universities are Breeding Grounds for Socialism and other Pathological Ideologies! By James Reed

The Zero Hedge article, "Universities: Dysfunctional Incubators of Socialism," authored by Thomas J. DiLorenzo and published on February 26, 2025:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/universities-dysfunctional-incubators-socialism

presents a scathing critique of modern American universities, and by extension, Australia as well, arguing that they have become breeding grounds for socialist ideology due to their inherent structure and funding. I'll provide a detailed account of its arguments before launching a stinging attack on the modern university system, exposing its failures with a blend of sympathy for its victims, White youth, and unrelenting criticism of its rot.

DiLorenzo begins by invoking Ludwig von Mises, who labelled universities "nurseries of socialism" due to their government-funded nature, which he saw as inherently biased toward collectivist ideals. Mises believed a remnant of students resisted this indoctrination, a group the Mises Institute—where DiLorenzo serves as president—targets with its libertarian teachings. The article asserts that today's universities dwarf Mises' era in their socialist leanings, producing generations steeped in "left-wing platitudes" yet devoid of critical thinking skills. It distinguishes "critical theory"—a Marxist invention focused on attacking Western institutions—from genuine critical inquiry, suggesting universities prioritise ideology over reason.

The piece argues that universities are themselves socialist entities, reliant on taxpayer dollars and governed by convoluted "Rube Goldberg-style incentive systems." These systems, DiLorenzo contends, lack market discipline, leading to inefficiency and ideological conformity. Boards of trustees, composed of "yes men and women," rubber-stamp administrative decisions to safeguard their social status rather than challenge the status quo. This dynamic, he claims, made them easy prey for the "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) agenda—a euphemism for socialism—enforced through threats of racism or sexism accusations. An anecdote from Loyola University Maryland underscores this: when alum Tom Clancy criticised rising tuition, he was sidelined, revealing how dissent is quashed.

DiLorenzo's critique, adapted from a talk at the Mises Circle in Tampa, is a call to recognize universities as dysfunctional, taxpayer-funded monoliths that churn out ideologues rather than thinkers. It's a sympathetic nod to the "remnant" of independent-minded students, but a damning indictment of the system's broader failures.

Now, let's sharpen the blade and carve into the festering corpse of the modern university, drawing on DiLorenzo's foundation and amplifying it with broader evidence. What we have today is not an academy but a grotesque factory—a bloated, overpriced indoctrination mill that betrays students, taxpayers, and the pursuit of knowledge itself, and Australian universities as degree mills, and immigration centres for the Han Chinese and Indian Replacements, well illustrate this.

First, universities have morphed into financial predators, gorging on student debt while delivering diminishing returns. The New York Times (February 23, 2025) reports on the trillion-dollar student loan crisis, a burden that shackles graduates to a lifetime of repayments for degrees that often fail to secure jobs. Tuition has soared—up 8.3 percent annually per Phil Stock World—yet outcomes stagnate. Australia's curriculum debacle (Daily Mail, February 16, 2025) mirrors this: forcing Indigenous storytelling into math classes dilutes rigour for ideological points, leaving students less equipped for a competitive world. Imagine the absurdity—a generation mathematically illiterate but fluent in cultural platitudes, all at a cost that bankrupts their future. This isn't education; it's a Ponzi scheme with diplomas as the payout, as Macrobusiness.com.au argues almost every day.

Second, the intellectual rot is terminal. DiLorenzo's point about "critical theory" over critical thinking is spot-on, but it's worse: universities now peddle conformity under the guise of diversity. A Zero Hedge piece from December 3, 2024, notes public confidence in universities has cratered due to "ideological bias" and "administrative bloat." Take Stanford's Jeff Hancock, cited in the same article, who researches deception yet allegedly fabricated references to back a censorship law—irony so thick it chokes. The Washington Post (January 2020) describes Zero Hedge's shift to conspiracy as a symptom of distrust in institutions like these, where faculty prioritise activism over inquiry. Students aren't taught to question; they're trained to parrot, emerging as drones for a socialist hive mind that despises dissent. This is especially so for the Great Replacement population for the professions in Australia of foreign students who will not buck the system, with even more passive compliance than the dwindling Whites.

Third, the administrative leviathan devours all reason. Boards, as DiLorenzo notes, are spineless, but the bureaucracy beneath them is a cancer. The Epoch Times (February 26, 2025) exposes USAID's waste—$733,000 on Ukrainian fashion trips—mirroring university excess: golden parachutes for executives, lavish facilities, and DEI officers paid six figures to police thought, in both America and Australia. Meanwhile, adjuncts scrape by, and White students shoulder the cost, such as facing classes conducted in Mandarin. This isn't socialism in principle; it's socialism for the elite, a rigged game where taxpayers fund a caste of untouchable overlords who lecture about equity from ivory towers.

Fourth, the human toll is devastating. Brittany Burnette's story (Daily Mail, February 25, 2025) isn't university-related, but it parallels the betrayal: trust in an institution (medicine, here) leads to ruin. Students enter universities expecting enlightenment, only to exit crippled by debt, radicalised by dogma, and unprepared for reality. Parents weep as their children return spouting jargon about "systemic oppression" instead of skills to build a life. The Mises Institute's "remnant" and equivalents in Australia like the IPA fight on, but most are ground down—a generation sacrificed to a machine that cares nothing for their futures.

Finally, the global ripple is a warning unheeded. Ukraine's drone innovations (New York Post, February 26, 2025) show necessity breeds ingenuity; universities, flush with cash, breed complacency. China's AI-driven advancements (Forbes, January 29, 2025) will outpace a West distracted by pronoun wars and interpretive dance in calculus. For example, the article at the blog today on giving an Indigenous focus to mathematics teaching in Australia will dumb down the population even more. The modern university isn't just dysfunctional—it's a national security liability, churning out ideologues while rivals build the future, which will destroy the useful idiots and woke traitors in the end, as the children of the revolution eat the parents.

The modern university is a shambling disgrace—a socialist incubator, yes, but also a predatory, anti-intellectual behemoth that preys on the naive and enriches the cynical, while aiding in the Great White Replacement through acting as immigration magnets from foreign students. View most Australian campuses today and Whites are now an ethnic minority.

DiLorenzo's critique is a starting gun; the evidence screams for a reckoning. It's not enough to reform this beast—it must be razed and rebuilt, lest it drag us all into a dark age of debt, dogma, and decline. Sympathy belongs to its victims, young White people; scorn, to its globalist, communist architects. Let it, metaphorically speaking, burn!

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/universities-dysfunctional-incubators-socialism

"Ludwig von Mises called the universities of his day "nurseries of socialism" because of the inevitable socialist bias of all government-funded universities. He also said that there is always a remnant of students, however, that does not buy into the endless drumbeat about the alleged wonders of socialism and the "imperfections" of free-market capitalism. It is this remnant that the Mises Institute devotes so much effort to educating and inspiring in the Misesian/Rothbardian tradition.

The vast majority of today's American universities have become incubators of socialism to a far greater extent than anything Mises experienced. They have produced generations of students who are well versed in all the left-wing platitudes about just about everything even if they lack the most elementary critical thinking skills. (So-called "critical theory," invented by Marxist law professors, is not about critical thinking but criticizing the critics of socialism and all the institutions of Western civilization). The unique incentive systems in American universities have made this possible.

Almost all universities are either government funded state universities, or private nonprofit sector universities that receive significant amounts of government subsidies, making them de facto state universities. (Remember: He who takes the king's shilling becomes the king's man). As such, they have no real customers in a business sense. Students do not think of themselves as customers in the sense that they are customers of say, Starbucks or a pizza joint. They rarely pay the tuition bills for one thing; mom and dad or the taxpayers do, or the banks that extend to them student loans. Parents may pay the tuition bills but it is the children who receive the primary benefits of higher education, if such benefits even exist. Thus, consumer pressure that leads to consumer sovereignty is very weak.

There are no stockholders in government or private, nonprofit universities, so neither is there stockholder pressure as with private competitive businesses. On top of that there is supercharged rational ignorance. When we acquire information during the course of our lives it is mostly to get through school, get and keep a job, raise a family, buy houses and cars, etc. Private affairs. We spend relatively little informing ourselves about government policy. Besides, government at all levels is so gargantuan that no human mind could possibly comprehend a tiny fraction of one percent of what governments do. We are rationally ignorant of it for the most part. Universities are the same way, but in addition, many people are intimidated by people with Ph.D. degrees in the same sense they are somewhat worshipful and intimidated by medical doctors. So they don't question them very often. Rational ignorance is supercharged when it comes to universities and doctors.

The boards of directors of universities are primarily composed of yes men and women who rubber stamp the decisions of the administrators for the most part. To oppose them might jeopardize the main reasons they are on the board of trustees in the first place: to improve their social lives, local reputations, and business connections. University boards were easily intimidated into acquiescing in the latest synonym for socialism, "diversity, equity, and inclusion," with its threats of calling critics racists or sexists.

At some universities the university president can fire board members rather than the other way around. When yours truly first arrived at Loyola University Maryland in the early 90s a senior faculty member recalled how Loyola alumnus Tom Clancey, the famous author, was not invited back to the board after he complained too much that the son of a mail man like himself could no longer afford the tuition.

So-called peer-reviewed research is not all that it is made out to be. So much university research is government funded, that "peer reviewers" are often very careful not to allow the publication of much literature (if any) that criticizes the state. Try having a career as an environmental scientist who criticizes the EPA, or as an agricultural economist who criticizes the massive interventionism of the Department of Agriculture. Even modern physics is almost entirely devoted to military applications. Economist Larry White published a research article that revealed that almost three fourths of all peer reviewed articles in monetary economics were authored by economists with some connection to the Fed. As Milton Friedman once said, if one wants a career as a monetary economist, it is best not to criticize the major employer in your field.

Let's not forget also that the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci's theory about "the long march through the institutions" to turn a country communist was first spread in universities, and is still metastasizing there. The extreme left-wing bias among university faculty is proof, moreover, that most faculties are enemies of academic freedom despite all their false claims otherwise.

Because of the near absence of customer and stockholder pressures – or even elections as with government – university administrators often behave like dictatorial tyrants who answer to no one. This causes younger conservative or libertarian faculty members to cower in fear that the university administrators might discover that they have politically unacceptable ideas like respect for property rights, the rule of law, or God forbid, free enterprise.

University faculties are mostly paid like government bureaucrats with rigid pay scales that go by seniority rather than merit. Faculty committees are typically controlled by the least scholarly faculty members due to the fact that to the more productive scholars the opportunity cost of spending endless hours sitting in unproductive committee meetings is too high. It's the low opportunity cost faculty who make university policy by committee.

Ever since the American economy moved from being dominated by sole proprietorships to corporations the Left has complained about the separation of ownership from control. In corporations the stockholders are the owners and management is composed of their agents who are entrusted to earn profits for them. Who, but the taxpayers, are the "owners" of a state-funded university? And what control do they have over what goes on?

Universities are incubators of socialism because they are themselves socialist institutions funded by taxpayers with Rube Goldberg style incentive systems."