Anti-capitalists often ask, "How much is enough?" The answer is one dollar more. A person is not obligated to stop earning at a certain point despite what these fools would like you to believe.
My question to them is also, "How much is enough?" How many policies do we have to pass until they are satisfied? How much redistribution must take place before they are done? Their answer always seems to be one social policy more.
In these facts, lies the greatest danger of our society. Many have been misled into believing that a certain level of social policies will be adequate to cover poverty. If we only move minimum wage up a little or make better government housing, this will be enough. This is the great lie. Liberals and socialists do not plan to stop until we are equally poor; until their vision of a freedom-less tyranny against the individual is complete.
Ludwig von Mises said it best, "The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism." Those who think that social programs are going to end at some point are very wrong. The Welfare State grows larger without end.
If you are convinced the free market with some government intervention will solve poverty, you are very wrong. Poverty is whatever the opponents of freedom make it out to be. Have capitalism and semi-free markets not increased the wealth of the poorest in America ten-fold?! The luxuries considered standard to the average U.S. citizen would have been marvels to kings and queens of a hundred and fifty years ago!
If capitalism in another hundred years improves the situation of the poor ten-fold again, the obstructers of liberty will still call it poverty! Not because the lower 20% don't have enough but because the upper 20% have a hell of a lot more. This is where one begins to hear the talk of most "virtuous" equality.
The social program advocates are concerned with equality, mainly robbing tax payers. If they were true saints, they would only speak of poverty. But talk of equality exposes their underlying Marxism. Their war on poverty will only end when no man is above another financially. The system will only be enforced by violence to keep those in society with intelligence, skill, hard work, and ambition down. Poverty will be declared a thing of the past when no man is richer than another.
We will never win this struggle through a democratic government. Greed is not virtuous. But, one thing stands above greed and that is envy. The envious masses, no matter how well their lot, will always outvote the rich and highly productive of society. Mises comments on this too, "Politically there is nothing more advantageous for a government than an attack on property rights, for it is always an easy matter to incite the masses against the owners of land and capital."
Further, our youth will continue to enter schools where they are mis-educated. The socialists control our universities and high schools, teaching redistribution and theft as virtue. What is the benefit of studying political science or sociology in a market economy? Does one job of political science (or as I like to call it Commissar School) actually exist in a truly free society without government subsidization? Political Science in most schools is the study of government justification, not study into the nature of government.
In these places of "education," students are taught that the world would be better when a certain policy is passed in a certain way. The schools teach intervention and dabbling with the lives of citizens. Sociology students are told how society "really" works and how it should be. The government project buildings could supposedly be fixed if only a certain combination was met.
Supposedly when the government builds housing well enough or the correct neighborhood is chosen, the policy could work. So, the sociologists experiment on citizens, creating a chemical explosion of poverty, destitution, and crime. In the documentary, New Orleans eXposed, Rosevelt Mohamad, a motivational speaker for urban schools says to an audience, "Damn dog, I thought we learned science projects when we was in science class, but why they call where I live a project. It seems like I'm the object of somebody's project."
Mohamad is completely right. This whole process of redistribution is not about helping the poor; do not be fooled. Look at the things sociology students study. They study theories of how the world should be according to them. They have a vision of a grotesque Marxist dream, they want you to be part of their social society science project. Rosevelt Mohamad goes on further to say, "what is the object of the project" it is to keep us "stuck in the mentality of rats in a cage."
How do we escape this system? If socialism is a step-by-step process through the Welfare State as Mises said, then privatization is a step-by-step process to freedom. The role of government must be delegitimized slowly. Whether you can privatize your garbage disposal or your security, you have made a great step towards liberty. Privatization makes one less reason to justify our taxation and redistribution. People must see for themselves the inefficiencies compared to the efficiencies. Companies like DHL and FedEx have shown millions the advantages over government. Government can do nothing to curtail their success now.
Even drinking bottled water is a step in the right direction. I've heard countless comedians jest at people who drink bottled water. What's so funny about this? I don't drink bottled water because I have been "brainwashed" by marketing. I drink bottled water because public tap water tastes like filth. Some say, "But look on the label it's just purified tap water." Yes I know it is. That's why I drink it….because it is purified. That should tell you something about the state of regular tap water.
If people can begin to understand why they drink bottled water over tap water, why they choose DHL over the U.S. Postal office, why they prefer private housing over public housing, they will begin to understand the nature of government in all things. Once people realize why government can't even provide good water, a basic necessity to life, they will begin to realize that government makes everything filthy and unpurified.
My final justification of the market goes beyond efficiency. The market is the way of freedom and in my opinion also the way of God. God learned himself what happens when you simply give. Even in a utopian setting in the Garden of Eden where God could give without taking, He saw Adam and Eve gravitate toward evil.
Many people ask, "Where is God to help with all this poverty on Earth?" God does not need to intervene. He in his Greatness has realized the effects of even a utopian Garden of Eden. In return for kicking us out, He gave us the greatest gift of all. This gift is mutual benefit through voluntary exchange and the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith. The Invisible Hand is the same as the hand of God. Whenever His people demand something, it will be supplied so long as there is no intervention through sinful government coercion and violence. If we do not sin through government intervention, everything on this Earth will be given to us by supply and demand. The market is God's way of caring for us. The free market is the gift of God and the only thing that will save the world from violence, coercion, slavery, and ultimate socialism.
June 3, 2006
