I am watching the Argentina vs. Switzerland match, and an idea just occurred to me that perfectly illustrates how ridiculous the communist utopia is. There are only 70,000 seats in the stadium. Some seats are better than others. Someone will sit on the fifty-yard line, someone else behind a concrete pillar. Someone will be close enough to hear the players talk, while another person will watch through binoculars. How do you decide who gets what? In a market economy, the people who value those seats the most pay for them. It may not produce equal outcomes, but it provides a clear and voluntary mechanism for allocating scarcity. An egalitarian system has a much harder problem. If everyone is equal, why should one person sit in the front row while another sits in the upper deck? Should everyone enter a lottery? If so, should the winner be allowed to win again? Should families be treated differently from individuals? Should people who contribute more to society receive priority? If they do, equality has already disappeared. If they don’t, incentives begin to disappear. Scarcity creates hierarchy. The same problem appears everywhere. There are only so many beachfront homes. Only so many tables by the window in a restaurant. Only so many appointments with the best surgeon. Only so many parking spaces close to the entrance. Only so many tickets to a sold-out concert. Only so many places at the country’s best universities. Every society must answer the same question: who gets the scarce resource? Markets answer through voluntary exchange. Bureaucracies answer through rules. Political systems answer through power. Lotteries answer through chance. Egalitarian utopias constantly collide with reality. Human beings differ in talent, effort, preferences, luck, ambition, and the value they place on particular goods. Scarcity ensures that not everyone can have everything they want. The irony is that societies built in the name of equality rarely eliminate hierarchy. They merely change who sits in the front row. Instead of customers choosing with their own money, officials choose through political influence, connections, or administrative power. The privileged class does not disappear; it simply changes its name. The front row always exists. The only question is who decides who gets to sit there.