The Lords of Order

One of the many things that I have always had a hard time figuring out is why do people put so much faith in the government running things and have so little faith in people, business, and religion. For instance, I got into an argument with an aquantace of mine about the healthcare bill recently. I pointed out that the government has not succeeded in running anything succesfully. He responded as many on the left have by pointing out the successes of Medicade, Medicare and Social Security. My response was in effect, what planet are you from, these programs are going broke. His response was " well at least they are helping people."

Never mind the fact that these programs are going broke for the moment, this was the beginning of something of an enlighting moment for me. It did not matter whether they were financially successful, what mattered was that "they took care of someone." Since he never met a tax on the rich that couldn't solve all problems, all was right in the world. He did not care that it was unsustainable, he just cared that it would make him feel a certain sense of safety for him and all of his friends.

What ties this all together I think is a concept from the economist Joseph Schumpeter. Here is an extended quote from Peter Drucker that sums it up:

"In 1942, when everyone was scared of a worldwide deflationary depression, Schumpeter published his best-known book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, still, and deservedly, read widely. In this book he argued that capitalism would be destroyed by its own success. This would breed what we would now call the new class: bureaucrats, intellectuals, professors, lawyers, journalists, all of them beneficiaries of capitalism's economic fruits and, in fact, parasitical on them, and yet all of them opposed to the ethos of wealth production, of saving, and of allocating resources to economic productivity. The forty years since this book appeared have surely proved Schumpeter to be major prophet.


And then he proceeded to argue that capitalism would be destroyed by the very democracy it had helped to create and made possible. For in a democracy, to be popular, government would increasingly shift income from producer to no producer, would increasingly move income from where it would be saved and become capital for tomorrow to where it would be consumed. Government in a democracy would thus be under increasing inflationary pressure. Eventually, he prophesied, inflation would destroy both democracy and capitalism.

When he wrote this in 1942, almost everybody laughed. Nothing seemed less likely than an inflation based on economic success. Now, forty years later, this has emerged as the central problem of democracy and of a free-market economy alike, just as Schumpeter had prophesied."

Schumpeter believed that it was a matter of greed that would lead the bureaucrats and all the rest to destory Capitalism. I think that it is more than that. Greed to an extent is part of it but it takes so much more to keep arguing in this matter. So what is it that causes people to react so fearfully of what we would call freedom and they would call greed? Instead of just greed, I believe that it is just plain old fear.

The Wall Street Columnist Thomas Frank wrote a book callled What's The Matter With Kansas? Though I have not read the book, the premise is one that I have heard of before from people who are liberal. The premise is that the people of Kansas are voting against their own economic well being by voting for economic policies that promote the freemarket and not for the government polices that most would regared as socialism. Though I don't know that he actually uses the word socialism.

At this moment it occurs what all of these people are getting at. Most could not make in the world that most of have to, and those that are not a part of the government are resentful that they have to. We live in a world of what I would term "creative chaos." By this I mean that we have to create the solutions  to our own unforseen  problems and that we have to take care of our own selves. We don't demand that others have to pay our way for us if things go wrong, we believe in self-reliance.

This scares the holy you-know-what out of people who are leftists. What they want more than anything is order, and anything that provides order is good and anything that doesn't is evil. Not bad, but evil.  This is why so many are attracted to working for the government or giving up their freedoms to the government. Because the government can provide or enforce a sense of order.

This is why the Democrats went for broke with the healthcare bill. The capitalistic system was so evil because of it's disorder that they had to defeat it no matter what. It did not matter that the American people opposed it, the Thomas Franks of the world think that you are hurting yourself and so for your own good, you have to be over ruled.

The problem is that when you go down this road, it is not long before you move from a republic to a dictatorship, and you justifiy it with "it's for their own good."

Health care becomes the new abortion

We have all been fighting over national healthcare for over a year now. The thinking from the supporters of healthcare have the opinion that if we just get this passed, then everyone will support it once we find out how great this is. Some of the other arguments in favor of national healthcare is that it will help the poor. In fact, this seems to be a typical  argument of anything that the supporters of government at all costs. This should sound familar to those who remember the abortion debates of the 80's and 90's. We still have not finished that argument to this day.

It seems to me that we are going down that same road again. Abortion was opposed in the beginning as well. The people did not want abortion on demand in 1973. Today, we are being given something else that we do not want in national health care. For those that think that we will all accept this when healthcare is made legal, you will soon find out that this will not be the case.

There is something else that I have noticed as I was looking up some of the quotes from the time that abortion was legalized against the objections of a very large portion of the people of this country. It's contained in this quote:

For those who cannot be educated, sterilization or legalized abortion seems to be the only remedy, for we certainly do not want such stupid people to pollute the race with stupid offspring. The defective conditions of life call urgently for improvement - Norman Haire, letter to the editor, Birth Control Review, (July, 1930)

The idea from this quote is that there are those who think that they know better and that they must make decisions for us because we are stupid and ignorant. Well, there are people who feel the exact same way again. The comedian Bill Maher, who is about as mainstream liberal as the get recently had this to say:

“But what the Democrats never understand is that Americans don't really care what position you take, just stick with one,” Maher said. “Just be strong. They're not bright enough to really understand the issues. But like an animal, they can sort of sense strength or weakness. They can smell it on you.”


It is so typical that they both think that those who are not in agreement with them are stupid. The frightening thing is that people like this have been trying to get control over us for decades and are close to getting it.

Now you may think that comparing these two quote are not the same since that Maher is not calling for people to be killed, then bear in mind this. A woman in Oregon named Barbara Wagner found out that she had a return of cancer. Her only hope was a $4,000.00 per month drug. The insurance company would not pay for her drugs. What the Oregon Health Plan (the government run health care plan ) would pay for was pills for her to commit suicide. Ms Wagner said "It was horrible," Wagner told ABCNews.com. "I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want to take the pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die. But we won't give you the medication to live."

In my opinion it would seem that the Bill Mahers of the world are not to far from the Norman Haire's of the world. The difference is that at least Mr Haire knew what he was actually aiming for. In the case of Mr Maher who obviously either does not have the slighest clue where what he wants will lead or does not care.

What has to be considered, is that what happend to Miss Wagner may well be the future of all of us if this health care bill goes through. Those who support it will be very indignant about even thinking that this will happen. I am equally sure that the people of Oregon did not think it would come to this, but the reast of us knew it would. That's what happens when you have a healthy fear of government versus those who have an unhealthy trust in it.

The socialist rich.

I have noticed that a large number of rich corproate types tend to support big government. Just look at voting patterns. The last few elections has been marked by people who make over $1,000,000.00 voting for the Democrate party. There have been many times when this had not made sense to me. After all, isn't the Republican Party the party of the rich?

Well, that's not really the case. The Republican party, in the case of economics, is the party of the entrepreneur. That's not necessarily the same as being the party of the rich or the party of the coprorate elite.

There is a reason for this, and that reason is that big government and big business are both big bureaucracy. Both have much in common. They even compliment each other in that they are just as hard to deal with. This is because the person who represents either government or big busines has very limited authority, and the person who has the authority is very far removed from the situation and can not make a correct decision. So, they tend to make a decision that does not help anyone and keeps them out of trouble.

Now since they have these things in common, big business tends to make a mistake in thinking that the government is trustworthy. It is a mistake that will costing them dearly.

The thinking of the corporate elite is that socialism is a good idea because this will allow them to use the politicians and the power of government to make restrictive legislation. This will allow them to make it difficult for their competition and insure that new competition will not arise.

The price is showing up in the health care debate. The insurance companies, who have normally tried to stop this, signed on to this thinking that the new system would give them millions of new customers. When it turned out that the bill was not to their liking, the Democrates and Obama attacked them. That is the problem of letting the goverment acquire a market for you. You have sold them your soul and they will want payment at all times. If you try to backout, God help you.

The problem with corporate elite is that the only values they have are the bottom line. If the bottom line is the only thing that matters, then you will be crushed by the bottom line.

Now, to some people this would seem to be an argument to have nationalized healthcare. Emphatically, No.
My rights to free speech, gun rights, and religion to name a few has never been infringed on by a business. If they try, I can go somewhere else. You can not walk from an abusive and authoritarian government.

This is an experimental post to see if this can work.

Let's see if this works.

This is a test to see if this will work

This is my first post. I want to start out by letting others know that all opinions are appreciated and welcome. All I ask is that you keep it cordial (yes I know, good luck with that)