Economics & Politics: A Brief Discussion

Postulates
1. Natural inequality is intrinsic to life.
2. Greed is intrinsic to capitalism.
3. Corruption is intrinsic to socialism.
4. Artificial inequality arises from the greed and corruption that spin the revolving door between the private and public sectors.


Conclusions
Both socialism and capitalism are evil. Capitalism gives more individuals an opportunity to do great things and therefore tips the scales of justice to its side. Even the less capable has a chance at winning the lotto.

Note here that good cannot be achieved by giving more people a chance to be greedy. However, if evil is inevitable, it is fairer that everyone gets a shake in having a good life rather than limiting it to those most articulate and charismatic who become politicians and those most organized and influential who put them into office.

Discussion
Politicians are beholden to a handful of voting blocs that put them into office. Their scared cows are fed at the expense of other voting blocs with different breeds lest they and their party lose the next election. Each voting bloc wants to have many cows in their field as they can in order to remain relevant.

This posting focuses on two major breeds, the socialists’ breed and the capitalists’ breed.

Socialist cows have low self-esteem. They are lazy. They get fat from government favors and handouts. They are overfed and underworked. Their keepers let them languish on their own as their fields become a vast methane-filled wasteland. The cows remain content as long as they are fed and cared for by the state.

Capitalist cows are fussy, but they are ambitious. They grow from eating better than what they have. Their keepers have to keep up with new and interesting enticements so that the cows continue to work hard for what they want before they become lazy with boredom and join their socialist comrades.

The keepers of socialist cows depend on political cronyism to satisfy their breed and are therefore corrupt. The keepers of capitalists’ cows are greedy for they always want more to placate their fussy breed; meanwhile, they continue to accumulate wealth beyond their ability to consume in their lifetime.

The socialist wants to spread this wealth around. He does so by taxing it. In other words, he wants the capitalist to work a percentage of their workweek for free to benefit those who are lazy. This is forced charity to support those who do not deserve it and supplants voluntary donations for those truly needy.

The capitalist realizes that he cannot take his wealth to his grave. He gives it away, willfully in life and unwittingly at death. Either way, the wealth is spread but not by the will of a socialist.

The socialist state does not see this kind of wealth for the incentive to produce is diminished by the dictates of the system. The only people who earn some money are the political cronies and the politicians they elect to office. The rest are treated as an expense of the state. When a person becomes an expenditure, he is no longer an asset that produces. He is therefore a wasting asset until old age when he turns into a liability. Not even a compassionate socialist likes to dig into his pockets to pay for expensive healthcare for someone he does care about or know. But this is the result of an artificially created inequality that benefits the same crony institutions by means of corrupt arrangements with a socialist government. To avoid having bitter socialists, a person at his prime should have been given the opportunity to work hard and provide for his family and own retirement.

Under capitalism, everyone has a chance to strike it rich, even the dim, for they have their dumb luck. Granted there is a built-in inequality among people, but it is precisely this inequality that drives a free society. Not everyone can be a genius and sit like Rodin’s Thinker. If everyone is a genius, then nobody is going to roll up his sleeves to do the work. Of course, greed, the fuel for capitalism, is not exactly a virtue. But let poison be poison’s cure with this simple Rx: Caveat emptor!