Millennials — the generation now entering young adulthood — have an inconceivable attitude toward socialism. They keep using that word. We do not think it means what they think it means.

“Millennials don’t know what socialism is, but they think it sounds nice,” The Atlantic reported last year. “Forty-two percent of millennials think socialism is preferable to capitalism, but only 16 percent of millennials could accurately define socialism in the survey.”

At the same time, millennials are enthusiastically entrepreneurial.

“In the 15 years I’ve been teaching MBA students, their career plans have changed dramatically,” writes business professor Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Prenuzic for the Fast Company business reporting website. “Until the early 2000s they aspired to work in traditional corporate jobs for companies like Deloitte, JPMorgan and GE. After that, the top destinations became tech giants such as Apple, Google and Facebook. In the past few years, however, a new favorite career choice has emerged, which eclipses any other form of traditional employment — working for themselves or launching their own business.”

Socialism, of course, is incompatible with entrepreneurship for the simple fact that socialism means government control of the means of production. Millennials say they’re drawn to owning their own business because they want to be the main beneficiary of their own hard work.

Under socialism, however, the state gets the first fruits of everyone’s labors. The central tenet is “from each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need.” That sounds wonderful, in a perfect world, but it’s no way to drive an economy. When people aren’t rewarded for their hard work, they no longer work hard.

But that Atlantic article makes it clear that millennials have a poor grasp of economics and public policy.

“Millennial politics is simple, really,” the magazine explains. “Young people support big government, unless it costs any more money. They’re for smaller government, unless budget cuts scratch a program they’ve heard of. They’d like Washington to fix everything, just so long as it doesn’t run anything. That’s all from a new Reason Foundation poll surveying 2,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. Millennials’ political views are, at best, in a stage of constant metamorphosis and, at worst, ‘totally incoherent,’ as Dylan Matthews puts it.”

Sure, they appear to be more liberal than most previous generations.

“First, they’re young and poor, and young, poor people are historically more liberal,” The Atlantic adds. “Second, they’re historically non-white. Non-white Americans are historically liberal, too. Third, their white demo is historically liberal compared to older white voters, as Jon Chait has pointed out. It all adds up to one cresting blue wave. For now. But something interesting happens when millennials start making serious dough. They start getting much more squeamish about giving it away.”

Really, they’re not very different from other Americans.

“Overall, millennials offer the murky impression of a generation that doesn’t really understand basic economics,” The Atlantic says. “To be fair, neither do most Americans. … Economics is hard.”

Socialism isn’t that hard to understand, though. Millennials will learn that soon enough.