WEALTH AND SLAVERY

THE SOURCE OF WEALTH

The statists will be stunned to hear this, but they and the government are not the source of wealth, and they sure as hell aren’t the source of anybody’s “fair share.”

The advertisements for the census are driving me nuts – though, to be sure, it’s a very short drive! One of the two that get me the most has been on TV, and shows various American Indians. The theme is that if they don’t participate in the census, they can’t be part of the “community,” and won’t get all they’ve got coming to them. This ad is obscene on several levels. First, it assumes that all American Indians are welfare parasites. Second, it assumes that they will all be moved by a call from “the tribe” – no racism there, eh? Third, it claims that, by filling out a few lines on a form, their membership in the tribe gives them a right to some of my property – their fair share of my property, to be precise.

The other ad has been on the radio. It begins by supposing that if we had 100 children, we’d need 5 teachers. Next year, however, we might have a lot more children, and we’d still only have 5 teachers, and if we don’t fill out the census, how will the government know what is our fair share of someone else’s property? This ad makes assumptions quite similar to the first, with one addition. It also presupposes that education and infrastructure thereunto pertaining can only come from the government.

A very, very interesting common denominator in the two ads is the us-against-them undertone. The “us” is the identified group: American Indians in the first, and some unspecified community in the second. The “them” is other parasites who are apparently competing for shares of the spoils. It is my experience that all statists appeal to a desire they presume to be in all of us to control our neighbors. It’s never, “We will stick a gun in YOUR ribs to get money to give to THEM.” It’s always and ever, “We will stick a gun in THEIR ribs to get money to give YOU.” People who live in planned communities with very strict and oppressive covenants never think about those covenants keeping THEM from doing something. They are always thinking of how the covenants will allow them to stick it to their neighbors. They have a very one-way view of the law, and obviously have never considered this axiom:

RIGHTS THAT ARE NOT UNIVERSALLY PROTECTED
ARE UNIVERSALLY THREATENED.

Individual people can work to earn money, save that money, and invest it. By so doing, they can help in the creation of wealth. A cash investment, added to the genius and hard work of an entrepreneur in a free economy can generate considerably more cash than the original investment.

Government produces only one thing, and it isn’t wealth. The theory of the statists is that cash in the hands of the government is invested far more wisely and justly than that same wealth in the hands of those who created and earned it. This theory also holds that the individual will be motivated by self-interest, or a desire to live better, whereas the government will be motivated solely by altruism and a desire to rescue the downtrodden from the greedy brutes who might otherwise expect them to actually work for their sustenance! This ignores entirely an inconvenient truth (sorry, Al!): (A) that governments are comprised of individual humans, each with his own desire to live better, and, (B) that people applying for their fair share of the property of others are likewise motivated, and might, just maybe, in the odd instance here and there, lie through their damned teeth in order to get more stuff!

Let me ask you this: what is your fair share of something that was taken, under threat of armed force, from your neighbor? Does it seem odd to juxtapose such concepts as “fair” and “theft” in the same sentence? This is an obscenity so despicable as to be a fitting companion to the Islamic custom of stoning to death little girls who have been raped. I am criticized for dealing in hyperbole. Bull poop. Show me a definition of slavery that does not include some variation on being forced – ie, by force of arms – without being duly compensated for you labor. Show me that, and I’ll show you Barack Obama’s dictionary!

Heresy, I hear the cry! Does not the poor, downtrodden working stiff labor without compensation?

No. He doesn’t. If he wants to make more, he can ask for a raise, or he can find another job. School might be an option, and America is filled with schools for adults that are supported most liberally by charity, or by bond issues agreed upon by those who will pay for them.

Next comes, “Why, you hypocrite!” Well, let’s see. I’m a 61-year old white guy with no degree. That puts me in the snowball’s chance in hell division. It frustrates me no end, but the worst of it is that I – I – me – myself, alone – made the decision in 1985 to drop out of college and devote my time to a job that promised short-term compensation with zero future. Can’t blame nobody else for that one.

No government can give something to one person without first having taken it from another. Period. It is prerequisite that, before we can have recipients, we must have donors. Free people support charities, and if you doubt that, look at the astonishing tsunami of wealth we have sent to Haiti. That most of it will end up in the hands of the UN, or of dictators who are to blame for the wretchedness of the nation, in the first place is beside the point. People are generous, and Americans are especially so. Why? Because we have it to share. And why do we have it to share? Because, until recently, we’ve been free, and, even with the constant, growing cancer of government over the past 40 years, we’re still more free and more wealthy than any nation on earth.

Wealth does not pop into existence by spontaneous generation. It is created by thinking, working, humans. The difference between a pile of rock and a magnificent steel bridge is human action. (Thank you, Ludwig.) Statists don’t understand that. They think they can just order the rock around and the bridge will happen. It’s precisely the same delusion by which they think they can order producers to magically generate enough wealth to feed the infinite gluttony of parasitical government employees and welfare pillagers.

The only thing government produces is armed force, and it is by use of this product that it takes property from those who earned it and gives it to those who did not. The difference between charity, which is a commandment of Our Father in Heaven, and welfare is armed force. Charity is voluntary; taxation is slavery. Here’s another little tidbit: the statists just love the Black racists who demand reparation for the suffering of their ancestors under slavery. They also just love to enslave modern Blacks – along with everyone else – under the yoke of statist dictatorship.

Like a ferret in a henhouse, government requires constant restraint in the presence of the liberty of its citizens.

The statists always invoke “the children,” with this little piteous tremble of their chins. Before the industrial revolution, children died by the millions. After the industrial revolution, the mortality rate is less than by orders of magnitude what it was. And do you know why where was child labor during the industrial revolution? Because there were children! Yep. Children were living longer, and instead of burying them in their infancy, folks had to feed and clothe the little buggers, and because the “revolution” occurred pretty suddenly, it took a while for things like wages – which were a bloody radical idea – to catch up. Without freedom, the industrial revolution could never have happened.

So the statists want to destroy the freedom that was and is instrumental in keeping so many children alive long enough to be a burden on their parents. Where is infant mortality highest? In the free countries or the dictatorships? I’ll give you a minute to think that through. Time’s up. Dictatorships kill vastly more people of all ages than do free countries. You can look it up in Snopes.

It was liberty that gave us the wealth to create the lifestyle that allows our children to live to maturity. It was liberty that gave us the medicine the statists wish to destroy. It was statism that created the idiotic laws and protections that allowed the banking and finance industry to squander trillions in building a house of paper and kerosene. How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that destroying freedom and establishing tyranny is good for the children?

They don’t believe that. They bloody well know the consequence of their actions. They are motivated by a seething, septic hatred of humanity. Don’t ever think otherwise.