Liberal Attacks on Capitalism

I would like to confront typical liberal attacks on Capitalism, and the basic theories of limited government. I have disapproved of the Health Care bill from day one, and adamantly opposed Cap&Trade legislation as well as anything attempting to expand the scope of the federal government. When debating Liberals on these issues, there is a typical criticism that I ALWAYS hear. People say, "But, think about the poor. Think about those who have many children, are working multiple jobs, and can't afford health care." Or, "You're just selfish, why don't you think about other people?" The socialist left is constantly bashing capitalism and the practices of the free market economic system on the premise that it is "selfish". I shall address these concerns in this blog post.

First off, this entire dilemma can easily be solved by reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I've previously mentioned this novel.. it is one of my favorites :) The novel addresses the concerns of the progressive left who gain popularity and control through use of the media, and the idea that "selfishness" is the biggest threat to society. Hence, capitalism is frowned upon as its end result is the selfish desire for profit.

Perhaps one of my favorite examples of socialism in this book is the story of the "Twentieth Century Motor Company". This company was one of the most successful companies in the United States at the time of the original owner's death. The heirs to this business decided that they would not follow their father's greedy desire for profit. Instead, they would transform the company into a "modernized politically-correct" company; One that would not exploit others for profit. After the heirs preached to the workers about the plan, the company had a vote on it.
(This next excerpt is from Atlas Shrugged, pages 661-663)

And if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut-- because they made it sound like anyone who'd oppose the plan was a child-killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how would we know otherwise? Hadn't we heard it all our lives-- from our parents and our school teachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read an every movie and every public speech? Hadn't we always been told that this was righteous and just?

Do you know how it worked, the plan, and what it did to people? Try pouring water into a tank where there's a pipe at the bottom draining it faster than you can pour it, and each bucket you bring breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the harder you work the more is demanded of you, and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six-- for your neighbor's supper-- for his wife's operation-- for his child's measles-- for his mother's wheel chair-- for his uncle's shirt-- for his nephew's schooling-- and for the baby next door-- for the baby to be born-- for anyone anywhere around you-- it's theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures-- and yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing in sight for you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without rest, without hope, without end... From each according to his ability, to each according to his need...

We're all one big family, they told us, we're all in this together. But you don't all stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a day-- together, and you don't all get bellyache-- together. What's whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When it's all one pot, you can't let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim that he needs a yacht-- and if his feelings are all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not right for me to own a car until I've worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on earth-- why can't he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed? No? He can't? [...] Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We voted on it. [...] Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars-- rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no right and no earnings, his work didn't belong to him, it belonged to 'the family', and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his 'need'-- so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife's head colds, hoping that 'the family' would throw him the alms. [...] so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brother's. How else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot?

But that wasn't all. There was something else that we discovered at the same meeting. The factory's production had fallen by forty percent, in that first half-year, so it was decided that somebody hadn't delivered 'according to his ability.' Who? How would you tell it? 'The family' voted on that, too. They voted which men were the best, and these men were sentenced to work overtime each night for the next six months. Overtime without pay-- because you weren't paid by time and you weren't paid by work, only by need.

Do I have to tell you what happened after that-- and into what sort of creatures we all started turning, we who had once been human? We began to hide whatever ability we had, to slow down and watch like hawks that we never worked any faster or better than the next fellow. What else could we do, when we knew that if we did our best for 'the family', it's not thanks or rewards that we'd get, but punishment? We knew that for every stinker who'd ruin a batch of motors and cost the company money-- either through his sloppiness, because he didn't have to care, or through plain incompetence-- it's we who'd have to pay with out nights and our Sundays. So we did our best to be no good.

There was one young boy who started out, full of fire for the noble ideal, a bright kid without any schooling, but with a wonderful head on his shoulders. The first year, he figured out a work process that saved us thousands of man-hours. He gave it to 'the family', didn't ask anything for it, either, couldn't ask, but that was all right with him. It was for the ideal, he said. But when he found himself voted as one of our ablest and sentenced to night work, because we hadn't gotten enough from him, he shut his mouth and his brain. You can bet he didn't come up with any ideas, the second year.

What was it they'd always told us about the vicious competition of the profit system, where men had to compete for who'd do a better job than his fellows? Vicious, wasn't it? Well, they should have seen what it was like when we all had to compete with one another for who'd do the worst job possible. There's no surer way to destroy a man than to force him into a spot where he has to aim at not doing his best, where he has to struggle to do a bad job, day after day. That will finish him quicker than drink or idleness or pulling stick-ups for a living. But there was nothing else for us to do except fake unfitness. The one accusation we feared was to be suspected for ability.

And that my friends, is why socialism fails. All people are given the same pittance whether they work or not. Intelligence and innovation is punished, and the strive to work is ultimately diminished. This is why I support limited government, and believe that free market capitalism is the pathway to prosperity. Why should government think they can do a more efficient job with the health care industry than the free markets can? Why does an entity who can't even run a profitable mail service think they can take on health care? I already know what atrocities lie ahead: Inefficiency and poor service will plague our system. I refuse to live in such a world as the man from "Atlas Shrugged", and his Twentieth Century Motor Company.

Capitalism: The drive for profit

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another - their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun." --Atlas Shrugged

There is nothing evil about rational selfishness. Do you want to live? Do you want the privilege of affording food each night, a roof over your head, and wealth that ensures your financial prosperity? You would be a fool to deny any such thing. Every man desires riches.. Be it for his and his family's humble survival, or to live the rich life. Wealth is envied, and sought after. This is exactly why the free market economic system is the most efficient system ever devised. It seeks to spur innovation by rewarding those who can think; those who can use their mind to invent, those who put their intelligence and brain power to the limits-- It rewards these people with riches and profit. It is such a simple, yet elegant system. All who can successfully delegate and utilize resources efficiently are rewarded with profit. Those who fail, are aptly punished with bankruptcy. Socailism, and government intervention prevent this natural process.

As a libertarian, I am an advocate for limited government. You should be responsible for yourself-- Both your successes and you failures. I don't want a "Big Brother" constantly looking over my shoulder and pointing me in the "right" direction. I don't believe the government knows best how to spend the money that I earn.

Studies have shown that people are much more giving when the government is not breathing down their necks, and confiscating so much of their money in taxes. I believe we need to end every social program sponsored by the government, and cut the government down to what it was designed for-- defense; Protection from crime and military aggression by other States. But aside from that, you're on your own. The government should not be giving MY tax dollars to people who make bad decisions-- Those who are too lazy to attend school, too irresponsible to know the consequences of their own actions, etc.. The looters of the world seek to gain free health care on my work. I cannot, and refuse to hold the weight of the heavens on my own shoulders.

"I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." --John Galt

I oppose the health care legislation based on the simple premise that no man can hold another at the point of a gun, and demand service. I believe people need to take their own responsibility, and live with the consequences of their actions. Government should not be there to support you when you fuck up-- Because who wants to pay for it? Do you propose we force all the people who made the right choices in life pay for the failures of others?

The Solution

"The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force," --John Galt, Atlas Shrugged.

The solutions to health care, the abysmal economy, and all that plague this country is the same: Limited government. Open up state lines to insurance companies to spur competition, look into tort reform, and eliminate government involvement in the private sector permanently-- Including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. These entities do much more harm than good.. Setting prices for insurance companies and doctors to follow. Nay, you must allow the free trade of goods.

Also note that from previous posts, the actual number of people who are LEGAL US residents, make less than $50k/year, and who truly cannot afford health care amount to roughly 3% of the population. Why should we change our system to support these people?

The Disadvantaged
I do understand that people are born with certain disadvantages in life. Be it physical handicaps, mental handicaps, being born into a broken home, awful environment, etc.. These disadvantages do exist, and do pose a problem for people. However, who's fault is it? It certainly isn't the fault of these people born into these circumstances. But is it my fault? Is it the fault of everyone else? Surely not. You cannot play "Robin Hood", and take other people's money to support these unlucky few. It is not anyone's fault that people are born with disadvantages. Though, if someone personally wants to donate to charities to help these people, then they are perfectly able to do so. You are free to allocate your own money however you see fit; And I believe that this can be accomplished through free enterprise. Eliminate taxes, and people will donate more to charity and religious organizations, who in turn, will be able to efficiently allocate their own funding for the disadvantaged. Government intervention always drags inefficiency and waste with it.

Hence, people who fuck up in life and end up having ten kids by the age of 15 will have something to turn to. It is their own consequences and free will which have landed people in the situations they find themselves. Sure, bad luck may play a part. But in the end, it's your problem-- And you need to deal with it yourself. You cannot rely on people to pay for your mistakes.

Now I shall end as I began, with a lil' bit of Atlas: (577)

I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices-- that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over the others-- that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us-- and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord. This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness. Is is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures-- the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich-- whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant-- while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is to be in need. [...] Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.