“The first rule of economics is scarcity: everyone cannot have enough of everything that they want. The first rule of politics is to disregard the first rule of economics.”
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One of the deepest (of the many) illusions of progressives is that everyone can have enough...be it wealth or rights. Part of that narrative is that bad people are immorally hoarding more than their share of wealth, or power, or rights. And it is the role of good people to take it from them.
Of course, this is a game of infinite regress. As Kekes asks, if the "poor" of America have some kind of entitlement to a share in the riches of their fellow countrymen, with the government as the agent of redistribution, why don't the "poor" of other countries have the same entitlement to a share in the rights of their fellow earthlings? Including the American "poor"*, who, by global standards, are very well off indeed.
I ask the same kind of question to people who seem to think that Mexicans can just move into America and take up residence without permission and then expect to get benefits, etc. What if someone just moved into your house and did the same thing? It's really just an economy of scale difference; the principle is the same. Why should you get to own your own house if you can't own your own country?
Many high-minded people (aka idiots) seem to think that ideas like "the right to private property" is some kind of embarrassment. Of course they always have in mind other people who have more than they do. Reminds me of the definition of a promiscuous person: someone who has more sex than I do.
And yet when it comes to the female gender, ownership "of her own body" is an Unquestionable and Sacred Prime Directive From The Goddess. If you can't own property...and defend your stuff...(whether you do or not) then you have no dignity to stand on and your "freedom" is empty. The right to property is utterly humanistic, utterly basic.
*Sowell often makes an important point that public discourse, especially among the liberals, ignores. The "poor" are not a fixed group. If you follow individuals and even groups over time, you can see that their economic situation changes. A lot of the poor are young, starting out in low-paying jobs. As people get older, they usually get richer. Same for the rich; fortunes change and they are not always the same group.
5 comments:
Re the feminist principle of a female's ownership of her own body, you might discuss whether conscription (selective service; the draft) violates this principle. Even if as it happens a mass call up for war doesn't occur, the threat of conscription hangs over every guy. He doesn't own his own body.
And if he is drafted, and put through basic training by a penetrating drill sergeant, he doesn't own his own inner thoughts either! ...
Will the answer be, Wars are made by males, therefore teenage males who are drafted have only themselves to blame, and thus no denial of a person's primary ownership of her or his own body occurs? er
1. Maybe before the first rule constituted by scarcity occurs the creation of wants or needs. Seems to me this is an important theme taken up by Rousseau. Tocqueville and even Smith. If amour-propre determines needs, then definitely you have a system of scarcity.
2. I think about thirty percent of the Canadian population is awarded the "Order of Canada" medal by the time they reach age 65. Partly this award would mean more if fewer were awarded, but lack of scarcity doesn't explain the lack of perceived value in the medal.
3. Basically, the value of formal awards is brought to the award by the best recipients of the award. Oxford D.Phil. in the old days, or Oxford University Press before this publication house began cranking out tons of items hardly worth publishing. Or the Nobel Prizes. Because of scientists like Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg, et al, you figure that a recipient of a Nobel Prize in Physics really amounts to something. Great men once study'd and taught at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard etc, so you figured, at one time, that an Oxbridge or Harvard doctorate amounted to something. If there weren't great scholars and great scientists, the Oxford label or the Nobel label wouldn't mean anything.
Same with the Congressional Medal of Honor. Somehow the perception is that this award is never given for flimsy reasons, so it bears great charisma -- from the charisma of brave soldiers -- even despite its absurd name. Somehow the perceived reality of Congress doesn't attach to this medal. In fact, if I may say so, you'd expect such a name for the ultimate American military medal to be a fiction made up, say, by Ferdinand Céline relating his travels in the USA.
I wonder if American soldiers respect it or any other medals. Presumably the routine task of flying a helicopter at tree top level to pick up wounded soldiers in a clearing that maybe surrounded by hidden Cong ready to ambush the helicopter: well, if you've done that or know guys who have done that, then such bravery is revered, whether a medal is attach'd to it or not -- least of all by congressional heavy weights, who, if they had any decency would demur on the right to award, implicitly to value-judge, the bravery of soldiers. If a congressman is a former soldier, then I suppose he may fittingly do so in his capacity as former soldier. But if he is only a J.D. who gets along to go along etc, then shouldn't he forbear from shame?
(I assume whether and who receives a Congressional Medal of Honor isn't voted on etc by members of congress. But darn it's bizarre that the name of this institution is attach'd to an award for exemplary courage. imho)
There are now so many literary awards, that lack of scarcity makes them feel of little value -- unless a sizeable cash prize is added. One doesn't expect a book that has won this or that "prestigious" prize to have literary merit as a matter of course.
If "economics" is primarily the artificial "consumerist" creation of wants, then isn't it difficult for economists to complain if politicians ride in with the beau rôle of redistribution etc?
I mean, the whole focus should be on the "economics" suited to the best way of life. Thomas Jefferson, badnik as he may have been, at least discoursed on the proper sort of economics and in consequence the proper sort of politics for the new Republic. These considerations occur also in Smith and Locke. Economics ultimately can't dismiss the relevance of religion and morals and education and the arts and sciences.
Implicitly anarchist assertions like Hamilton's, that the only purpose of government is to protect the unequal power of acquiring property, may function helpfully if brought in to dash unrealistic dreamings e.g. spirited intention to implement in real populations the imagination of academics that everyone would feel total fulfilment toiling on a collective farm supervised by academics. But themselves libertarian or anarchic assertions would drive any government to ruin: political consideration of the meaning of justice (thus religion, morals, the arts and sciences, education etc) is forbidden. Why exactly must government do no more than protect property acquisition? Is man ultimately only a property acquirer? What does "property" even mean? Rulers are forbidden to have any thoughts on these things, yet must still govern. A vacuum is created, and in rush utopian collectivists, redistributors who never work'd a day in their life but come from inherited money, etc.
That educated-class people wish to own their own houses and recreational property etc but have no concept of their own political country is a correct conclusion from libertarianism and anarchism. »Why "should" I respect your right to property? You have declared all political meanings illegal: only private meanings are intelligible. If I can gain great glory as a Catalinarian redistributor, leader of a ressentiment religion that makes me "first among equals," what can the libertarian or anarchist say except that I have used my private world to trample on his private world. So what? In a Darwinian universe, I evolved, and the trampled upon libertarian complainers lost out in the struggle.«
Locke, Hobbes, Plato, Machiavelli, Aquinas, Hegel, even Rousseau and Nietzsche would have much 'discourse' vs Catalinarian redistributors. But these thinkers are *hated* (suppress'd) by libertarians and anarchists. They don't want a Hegelian state. They don't want this, they don't want that. They even don't want to discuss Marx the anarchist's huge gamble on a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat in its representative vanguard.
(A Hegelian state would not be a 'nanny state' concern'd only about second-hand smoke and incandescent lightbulbs. But anarchists, libertarians, give no purpose to the state at all. Why shouldn't political institutions drift whithersoever the media winds blow? There are serious purposes for the state? Then libertarians should become public-minded and political. But in that case, they would cease to be 'libertarians' or anarchists as such, who complain that the state shouldn't even really occur.)
Libertarianism comes down to a restricted version of the golden rule: how would you like it if you made something by your intelligence and industriousness and then the "state" came along and "redistributed" it to someone else? I might like that very much if I were the recipient of the redistributed item. The Golden Rule is only as beneficial as the understanding of one's neighbour is. (something like that)
I think ultimately the complaint is vs Plato's specialization of labour the city under the regime of Adeimantus. If natura naturans Selfs didn't alienate their transcendence into disown'd natura naturata, Adeimantus's regime would have no traction.
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