Jack London gave us the Iron Heel; Edward Bellamy gave us the parable of the water tank; so leave it to Ric Locke to explain a few sticking points in the complementary narratives of a capitalist dystopia / seemless socialist Utopia, by providing us with the parable of the farmer, the bureaucrat, and the government:
What to properly rail against?
Consider for a moment the European Convention on Human Rights. It is full of what progressives are pleased to call “positive rightsâ€Â, as opposed to “negative†ones like free speech. One “positive right†is the “right to nutritionâ€Â.
Everybody has a right to decent food, eh? It’s kind. It’s generous. Anybody who argues against it obviously wants poor people to starve. Horrid vile cruel people…
But what if the farmer doesn’t agree? What if the fellow who grows the food thinks he and his family ought to have first pick?
Well, clearly that farmer is a villain, trying to starve the poor people. Equally clearly, we need a third party to enforce the right  to declare the farmer a villain, punish him by taking the food away (and other measures, as indicated), and provide the food to the starving. But by doing so we have created a rich person. Our third party controls the food supply, and resource control is what “rich†is all about. Yeah, yeah, it’s a colorless bureaucrat who draws only a salary  but remember Joey’s underwear. The Church has been wrestling with the problem for a millenium and a half, and I don’t think any honest Jesuit (most of them are) would argue that they’ve really come up with a totally satisfactory answer.
It is the basic contradiction of socialism, and it can’t be eliminated. The farmer is a worker; by fundamental Marxist principle, he is entitled to the fruits of his labor. But the moment he asserts that right, he is and must be declared a villain  he is withholding food from the hungry! Pure eeevile! And, of course, since he is evil, it is simple justice to punish him by taking the food away, and purely Good to deliver it to the hungry. That conflict is inherent and cannot be reconciled.
Similarly, socialism is egalist, levelling; The Rich Must Be Brought Low. But the agency that declares the farmer evil and takes his food for the benefit of the hungry controls the food; it is therefore rich, excuses and misdirections notwithstanding. And, being human, it is certain to respond to the same impulse that led the farmer to feed his family first  they are, after all, Doing Good; there is no reason for them to suffer from it; thou shalt not bind the mouths of the kine that tread out the grain. So sometimes little by little, sometimes in great fell swoops, the agency for Doing Good becomes the Stürmableitung, in control of every aspect of production and enjoying every minute of it. Rich. Specific instances should occur to you immediately…
I don’t know how to break into that worldview, but I do know that anything that can be caricatured as “wanting people to starve†will be, and will accomplish nothing but the reverse of what you want.
Jeff’s shorter — but equally pointed — “parable”:
“I recognize your concern, people,” Mr Frank said. “And trust me. We on the Democratic side of the aisle are doing our best to make sure that you have the food and heat you need to weather this storm caused by unbridled capitalism and Republican malfeasance. In fact, I’ve just introduced legislation that would revive the idea of the ‘bread line’ — merely as a stop gap, and with the caveat that we of course would never give you plain bread. I assure you that peanut butter will also be available. And juice. For protein and vitamins.
“…Now, if you’ll excuse me, it seems my table is ready — and if I don’t order the Crème brûlée immediately it will not be ready by dessert. And that would be… unfortunate, your having kept me here. Understand…?”
Of Barney and Nancy and Harry, Barney seems the smartest and evilest I think. Craven. Harry is the dumbest, easy. Nancy is just a reflexive bitch. Her own people will take her down sooner or later. But all in all we’re pretty lucky none of these people have the affability God gave a chocolate donut.
“It was only after the soviet regime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers,
began to show interest in it. Burnham, although the English Russophile intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.”
-George Orwell
“Being a disinterested government official does not mean that you know what you are doing. That fact gets left out of the equation in a lot of proposals for new government programs.â€Â
-Thomas Sowell
“When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don’t need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
 P. J. O’Rourke
N. O’Brain, I don’t pretend that my insights, such as they are, are in any way new. I simply think it’s worth airing them once more; continually, in fact.
Regards,
Ric
You are a very centered person. I should stop procrastinating on working towards that.
Yes, but did he go to the right schools with the right people and learn the right attitudes? If not, we ought not listen to him.
I should stop procrastinating on working towards that.
tomorrow is always a great time to start on those sorts of things.
Ric Locke
On the other thread comment, that this post came from, I wasn’t going off on you, just the phrase, “The Rich Must Be Brought Low”. It seemed to encapsulate all that Frank, and the odious Rangel were allowed to go on and on about on TV. You, as always, are more measured and spot on.
Just curious, how much can the government intervene in the market without it becoming “ZOMG SOCIALISM”? There is such as a thing as market failure you know. Even Milton Friedman acknowledged that.
It gets better: The bailout bill includes a ton of loopholes that make judges the final arbitors of home values. It also, get this, forces insurance companies to adopt “mental health parity”, which forces them to cover psych “treatments”.
Remember when they tried to make psych assessments and treatments a condition of attending public school? One day they will. Couple that with the left’s approach to speech, citizen, and you can see where this is all headed.
Dude. Crème brûlée is so 2004. It’s all about the toasted pine-nut ice cream or scotch gelee with raspberries and squid ink.
Funny thing.
It doesn’t matter which side of the continuum you live on, if you honestly agree that the economy is in catastrophe.
What are your options? Change the corporations? Hard to do, unless you are a Buffet. Or a Soros. Maybe a Gates… and even then you can’t really change, so much as profit. Which is exactly where Buffet is heading in spite of media glossing to the contrary.
Change the government? We have a chance to do that in November. Problem is, we are dealing mostly with incompetent leavened with criminal, sprinkled with ideology to appeal to the LEFT wackaloons…
Sorry. Mrs. Tmj says I sound insulting when I use “moonbat” or “wackaloon”. I stand on my position that refraining to name the enemy costs more than not, so there you go…
… so if we do in fact go for glory and realize a national movement to throw the bums out, we run the risk of ending up with true idealogues. I don’t think there’s much risk of that; for all the lip service paid to the crazies, especially from the likes of Schumer and Frank and Dodd, they aren’t and they recognize a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
You have to be a representative to be a genuine crazy. Waters, Pelosi, the departed and unlamented McKinney…
The congress is the quickest way to achieve positive influence on our current condition. The more we can see into retirement, the better off the country will be.
Just curious, how much can the government intervene in the market without it becoming “ZOMG SOCIALISM�
What is the difference between intervention and control?
But all in all we’re pretty lucky none of these people have the affability God gave a chocolate donut.
That is the most perfectly formed artifact of wit I have read in weeks. President Chocolate Donut! Cake or glazed?
Yes votes, contact info and potential challengers over here. Clip and save for November 4th.
– The entire House of Representatives is up for reelection this time around, too a lessor extebt in the Senate.
– The fresh warm breeze of opportunity.
Constitutionality. Sheer, hard, incontrovertable, enforced, penalty-dripping constitutionality. Make it a minor crime — say a $100,000 fine — to be found guilty of passing legislation later found to be unconstitutional. Which of course requires a SCOTUS that actually thinks and reasons, but you asked.
Make it frightening to pass laws. Make it beneficial to revoke them — to sunset the damn things after a short period of time, thereby tying Congress in perpetual knots.
Outlaw the lobby. Outlaw political contributions from all but private citizens, and limit the monetary level they can rise to.
And by way of a tsunami of protest, mandate to these fuckers that observe enumerated rights and that they condemn everything else. Down goes federal medicine, education, and nearly the entire domestic, social engine running in DC to the tune of some ten trillion dollars a year, and that’s just the DHHS.
Indeed.
“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
Robert Heinlein
Ric wrote:
“Anybody who argues against it obviously wants poor people to starve.”
But, what if the “poor” people are fat, as so many of our low-income inner-city kids are? Would the Prog’s allow body-fat means-testing before dragging the farmer out back and shooting him?
And, what if the “poor” don’t like what the farmer is growing. Some people at all economic levels simply don’t like to eat, like, REAL food – preferring instead to ‘snack’ on Doritos, diet Coke and Vicadin. The thought of eating something green, or something that used to have blood in it may repel some. What to do with them?
Will international sugar cartels figure into the Prog’s scheme? Ric’s really opened up a can of worms with this one.
That parable of the water tank is lame.
Fry some bacon upwind of the rich and then charge them 50 pennies if they want some
Build them a house with a view and charge them a million pennies
Sell them a Maserati
Rich people have consumptive needs too
Ric should write Zimbabwe’s epitaph… or maybe he just did
We have seen this before. Anyone here remember Justice Thurgood Marshall very seriously arguing that welfare benefits were a Constitutional Right.
Even Milton Friedman acknowledged that.
There’s more than a soupçon of snark there.
Bastiat–
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices upon its citizens, human nature is not suddenly abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate that gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always so good?
Ah, human nature…the most stubborn fact in the world.
“Constitutionality. Sheer, hard, incontrovertable, enforced, penalty-dripping constitutionality. Make it a minor crime  say a $100,000 fine  to be found guilty of passing legislation later found to be unconstitutional. Which of course requires a SCOTUS that actually thinks and reasons, but you asked.
Make it frightening to pass laws. Make it beneficial to revoke them  to sunset the damn things after a short period of time, thereby tying Congress in perpetual knots.
Outlaw the lobby. Outlaw political contributions from all but private citizens, and limit the monetary level they can rise to.
And by way of a tsunami of protest, mandate to these fuckers that observe enumerated rights and that they condemn everything else. Down goes federal medicine, education, and nearly the entire domestic, social engine running in DC to the tune of some ten trillion dollars a year, and that’s just the DHHS.”
At the next Constitutional Convention, old sport, this will be the very first item of business.