Rigging the Economy in the Name of ‘Fairness’
The deeper we go, the more Lenin’s words seem like a prophecy. But there’s more: the unions are instrumental in fulfilling yet another of Lenin’s directives: “The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” And the current U.S. government is going down this path, trying to mend the income gap and the runaway cost of living by increasing the minimum wage. Unsurprisingly, trying to fix an artificially created imbalance by inventing more artificial measures is proving to be as effective as quenching fire with gasoline.
In the meantime, the self-righteous campaigners for economic equality apply the same approach to narrow the global income gap by sending aid to poor nations — knowing full well that most of it ends up in the coffers of local autocrats whose people continue to live in abject poverty.
Granted, the disparity between rich and poor countries exists to a large extent due to the stark differences in the productivity of labor. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The gap has reached such absurd proportions in large part because the wages inside the industrialized rich nations have been artificially raised to unrealistic heights in the course of repeated, futile cycles of union pay increases, followed by price hikes on most products, with the rest of the national wages trying to catch up.
Who is footing the bill? In an isolated closed system, when things reach a limit of tolerance, the system must either balance itself or break apart. But a country’s economy is never a closed system. Western economies are connected to poorer nations, whose lower wages and cheaper raw materials temporarily compensate for the unsustainable costs of maintaining overpaid unionized labor at home.
If poor nations are selling their products at market prices while buying Western products at a price that includes the full cost of the union wages, pensions, health care, and other benefits, they are clearly being taken advantage of. For this they should send their thanks to the campaigners for “economic equality and justice” — who, incidentally, are also the loudest voices in the chorus denouncing rich nations that get richer by robbing poor nations that get poorer. The tired leftist adage is actually true — but its real causes have nothing to do with imperialism, neocolonialism, capitalist globalization, or any of the other phony labels they fabricate.
These labels imply that capitalists are deliberately conspiring to promote “unfairness” out of personal greed and selfishness — while their opponents, by virtue of defending “fairness,” speak from the position of morality and transparency. But if “moral” is that which advances poor nations and “immoral” is that which inhibits them, then morality is clearly on the side of capitalism. Likewise, if “fairness” means a level playing field, then it entails the elimination of inflated wages and other unearned entitlements, both at home and abroad, making all price creation equally transparent.
The expression “level playing field” alludes to the requirement for fairness in games where a slope would give one team an advantage. I am not an athlete; if I play against an NFL professional on a level field, I will lose fair and square. But if we apply the theory of “economic equality and justice” to sports, a fair game would be played if I had a slope and the NFL professional wore foot shackles, while the referee would continually tamper with the scores and rule consistently in my favor. I wouldn’t even have to practice, build strength, and learn strategies; the revised rules would already give me a chance to win. Any sports fan will tell you this is unfair and such rules would be the death of football. And yet, when the same rules are applied to the economy, very few call it unfair or worry about the demise of the market. On the contrary, many agree that this would give someone a mythical “fair chance,” although no one knows exactly how and who will be the beneficiary of this.
When the game is rigged, what becomes of its purpose? Who decides what is “fair” and which team is entitled to a bigger advantage? How do we know what bribes are being passed under the table? How can we tell who is a better player or what training, techniques, and strategies are the most effective?
The same questions apply to a rigged economy. Tampering with the market not only breeds economic unfairness, but it endangers the only fair gauge of the true cost of things in the world. Without the open, transparent market, what becomes of the meaning of “fair price”?
Spot on. The Obama administration, sadly, hasn’t had a reality check, yet, even with 9+% unemployment and nightmare-level federal deficits. That is due partly to the current low interest rates. When interest rates head north again, so will inflation & unemployment and they will be accompanied by an erosion of middle class buying power. The reality check will then arrive on the Obama administration’s doorstep. We will then see people (even those who voted for him) counting the days until election day in November 2012 so they can fire him. There is a glimmer of hope however, and that is the town hall meetings/tea parties, being conducted & attended by ordinary, everyday hard-working Americans (and not brown-shirted Nazis as described by the moronic Nancy Pelosi), that are going on across our great fruited plain. The sleeping giant is beginning to awaken, rub its eyes and finally see what Obama is doing: instituting socialistic wealth-redistributive policies (including our wealth to the rest of the world. Don’t believe me? See the last two G-20 summits. Obama has signed agreements that weaken the dollar, restrict U.S. sovereignty, and strengthen the power(s) of the IMF, WB, and the UN, none of which are good for the U.S. economy).
The left equates fairness of income (or economic equality or justice-insert the appropriate liberal term here) with fairness of outcomes, i.e. that everyone should be rewarded the same. What they fail or refuse to understand is the inequality of inputs. Some work harder & make better choices (graduating from school, waiting until marriage to have kids, not using drugs/alcohol, & staying married, securing employment, investing & saving for the future) than others, and ideally in a capitalist society, those who work harder & make better choices should, and often do, reap greater rewards. That is fair. When government interferes with outcomes (by changing the rules in order to redistribute wealth), and simultaneously does nothing to interfere with inputs (which would be extremely difficult) the results are worse, as you point out, resulting in true unfairness, i.e. rewarding those who make bad choices & don’t work and punishing those who make better choices and do work.
The irony of part of what Obama has done is to give the UAW ownership in the car companies, so that now, labor has become management. When they go bankrupt (and if they continue the kamikaze course they’re on now, they will), who will the UAW blame? Of course, it won’t be themselves – after all, isn’t their mantra “higher wages & more benefits are better for everyone”? Instead of talking about higher wages & more benefits, shouldn’t they be talking about pride of craftsmanship & building a better, higher quality product that people actually want to buy? If they did (and actually practiced it), the higher wages & benefits would take care of themselves.
When we try to “fix the system,” we end up making things worse – bringing down the rich does not elevate the poor, it just makes everyone poorer. This is the lesson we have failed to learn from the collapse of communist and socialist regimes. We’re well on our way down the wrong road, and our President and most other politicians are doing their best to speed up the journey.
bringing down the rich does not elevate the poor, it just makes everyone poorer. This is the lesson we have failed to learn from the collapse of communist and socialist regimes.
Some of us have definitely learned that lesson. The day that I was freed from envy of the rich is the day I started on my own road to doing well for myself. Wealth is like health, in the sense that just because you are healthy doesn’t mean I am sick.
Resulting in state-sanctioned inequality, it punishes effort, rewards sloth, fosters corruption, and keeps people down by restricting their freedoms, which is neither just not fair.
Experience, rather than theory, shows that it does nothing to reduce the real disparities between “rich” and “poor” in terms of access to material goods, it simply shifts them so that the “rich” are no longer the “business class” but the “political class”. At least the business class has to produce a good or service in order to maintain its position. All the political class needs to be able to do is confiscate someone else’s wealth and be able to redistribute just enough of it (keeping some for itself, of course) to fool the useful idiots into remaining loyal. As the situation deteriorates (which is inevitable because new wealth creation slows to a crawl), the political class shifts from trying to buy the loyalty of the useful idiots to simply making sure that its hired thugs, a la the Stasi or other secret police forces, are well-paid and to hell with the rest of the population.
Yet, no poet trying to romanticize real life has ever come up with a bigger bunch of BS than the proponents of socialism, in order to make it sound sweet. Talk about lipstick on a pig.
Excellent article. This describes the conditions that Americas founding fathers anticipated, and labored to avoid. Sadly, rationality is not an attribute of those seeking “fairness”.
“Catch a fish for a man and you’ve fed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.”
Such is the current sorry state of political affairs in America that we elect those that will catch a fish for you then outlaw the teaching.
Oleg, you are correct on the problem and the solutions.
WHY the government has been allowed to intrude on civil liberties of some in the name of others is truly sad.
this has been a long time coming and I do not see it reversing to where it should be.
It is class warfare but this time the producing class is funding their own demise.
regards
#1: “… people…counting the days until…2012 so they can fire him.”
No one ever lost a bet overestimating the stupidity of the electorate.
Don’t bet on it. Especially given the brownshirt-run elections you’ll have.
Oleg,Another great read for me. #5 You said it correctly but the Libs, will sit in the boat while we catch the fish for them.
to those who think that obama is doing or will do anything but continue on the path he is on are very mistaken.
obama’s goal is to redistribute wealth .the fact it will destroy the USA is not a concern to him. he could care less about the citizens of america or any other place.
obama has with deeds and words proven that he in particular dislikes america ..the american dream or people in general.
he is a narcissist and a marxist. whether he cares to admit it or not. judge him by the people around him.
do not think he is just the front man for his handlers. they are the same ilk. he uses them and they use him. they made him but he is the boss.
is obama stupid. YES and NO. …he is not grounded in reality. and he doesn’t care either.
good luck liberty.
The National Socialists certainly expected some opposition to their fundamental transformation of America. But they should have taken over the Internet and Fox News before they revealed their agenda. The timid GOP (party of sloth and torpor) is finding some backbone thanks to the Tea Party movement. People are beginning to read the Constitution. Too many of us were educated before the anti American agenda took over our schools. Too many of us know we have the kind of diversity, social justice, rule of law, and economic opportunity that people in most countries can only dream about. It ain’t over yet, but I see this administration as the High Tide of the American Left and the stimulus to a new birth of freedom and all the other brilliant notions Lincoln articulated so well. The pundit talk has been about the end of the GOP, sure, why not? We need to make it into an institution that inspires pride rather than contempt. But it is the Democrats who are going down for a big fall, and they strayed so far from their Jacksonian origins they may not survive. With them goes the Marxist fantasy with a silver bullet and a wooden stake through the heart of the beast.
“… the only unfair income gap that deserves to be looked at in today’s U.S. economy is the gap between the market-based, non-union wages and the artificially inflated union wages….”
Even for PJM – and that’s goin’ some – Oleg’s statement is stupid.
So far it has only resulted in a bizarre symbiosis between the self-righteous champions of “fairness” in the West and the crooked third-world despots, who have long figured out that “equality” is a great excuse to violate property rights, “fairness” is a license to abuse the law, “justice ” legitimizes dictatorial rule, “redistribution of wealth” allows looting, and foreign aid is their reward for doing all of the above and keeping the people hungry.
this sums up the situation, great piece Oleg
10. Gary Ogletree:
you have a very good point about the obum-a administration taking over the critics internet and tv.
the republicans aren’t completely timid but if they cannot get their message out …and they cann’t (the democrats in the house and senate limit debate and the MSM doesn’t air them)
that said if the GOP need to start screaming to get heard, then start screaming. (alas too many of them are too willing to compromise)
We are all experiencing the mess created by our so called `leaders` regarding boosting home ownership. Millions who could not afford a home were given access through adjustable rate mortgages with NO MONEY DOWN.
Now the government is creating the same mess on a more massive scale by creating `fairness` in the marketplace. The results will be as predictable as housing, healthcare and automobiles. We will enter a new era called `shared misery` whereby all Americans will be equally miserable.
A quibble:
NO — it’s not “fair”, that is to say, it doesn’t match the ethics necessary for survival of a hunter-gatherer-scavenger tribe.
What it is, is equitable, in that output is related (as Chuck, above, points out) to inputs.
Agriculturalism and industrial capitalism are intellectual constructs that don’t match the inherited feelings related to “fairness” that we got from our hunter-gatherer-scavenger ancestors. It’s not fair that the children should go hungry, but if you feed them the seed corn everybody dies a little later. It’s not fair for anybody to have two billion dollars while there are poor people, but if nobody can have two billion dollars the world can’t have a wafer fab, and if you can’t have a wafer fab you can’t have cell phones, computers, or MRI machines.
Rightists should never use the word “fair”. The Leftoids have a fixed usage of the word, and it doesn’t match our conception, so communication does not occur.
Regards,
Ric
Ric – our ethics and sense of fairness is not a genetic inheritance from a hunter-gatherer economic mode. Such linearity doesn’t function in the economic reality..because the economy is not a genetic construct but an intellectual adaptation to a particular ecological reality.
Hunter-gathering is an economic mode that can only support a group population of about 30 members. What is emotionally and intellectually fair or equitable in such an economy, which survives by sharing everything, is most unfair and inequitable in a larger horticultural society, that is able to support a larger population.
In an agricultural society, based, let’s say, on cattle husbandry, the cattle go, as a totality to the eldest son. Th ensures the reproductive strength of the herd, and thus, of the economy. Giving each son an equitable share of the herd would weaken and destroy the reproductive continuity of the herd.
Same thing with an industrial economy. The wealth cannot be spread around ‘equitably’ – as you point out. Because it is the surplus wealth that is invested in the future technological research and development and infrastructure devt. Without that surplus – no future.
I see your point about the term of ‘fair’ and ‘equitable’; my comment was primarily to point out that such emotional perceptions are not inherited from a past economic societal structure,but are directly related to the economic mode..which is an adaptation to both an envt and population size.
ETAB: I think you are wrong (obviously).
Our ancestors lived for thousands of generations as hunter-gatherer-scavengers. I judiciously use the word “heritable” rather than “genetic”, because the mechanism(s) are obscure and almost certainly do not depend on genes as defined by Watson & Crick, but we do, in fact, tend toward the behaviors of our ancestors, especially when emotion is involved.
If you examine what the Leftoids define as “fair”, and put that up against the survival requirements for a hunter-gatherer-scavenger band, they match almost perfectly. At the top of that list is a picture of resources that “just happen” — no human agency can affect whether they are there or not, or what quantity; they can only be found.
Once found, resources must be brought back to feed the children and their mothers, or the tribe dies out. A balance must be found that keeps the motile members of the tribe, who actually do the hunting, gathering, and scavenging, and the sessile members, children and stay-at-home mothers, both alive and healthy — and it is that balance that the Leftoids define as “fair”.
It is an emotional construct, and when things get tough we always revert to our emotions to generate reactions. Intellectual constructs such as agriculture and industrial capitalism go by the wayside.
Regards,
Ric
What would result if all workers were unionized?
Higher wages for the lowest paid workers, job security for all, and an end to the income inequality that marks the USA as a haven for the rich. Improved standards of living for lower income workers, leading to improvements in life expectancy, and to a lower level of poverty and disease.
Union workers earn more money, have better health care, enjoy job security, and are protected against abusive practices by management.
If you want to know what unions do for the economy, study the period from 1945-1973 – you will find that growing union membership, combined with progressive taxation, led to improvements in living conditions for all Americans. Study the period of union decline, and the tax cuts of the past thirty five years, and you will see an economy that does not provide any net benefit to 90% of workers. It is an economy by and for the rich.
Unions help build an economy that is run by and for the people, as it should be.
Peace.
DS
Furthermore, the hunter-gatherer model benefits from the prospect of everyone in the group being closely related. People are much more willing to work for the benefit of the collective when that collective consists of family members no more distant than first or second cousins than they are for a nation. That’s called kin selection.
ric locke – your conclusions about how we ‘tend to behave, emotionally, as hunter-gatherers (H-G), is only your opinion. There’s no factual evidence to substantiate this assumption.
You simply cannot say that we tend towards the behaviour of our ‘ancestors’, emotionally, because your unexamined assumption in this opinion, is that economic modes are linear and ‘naturally’ progressive (i.e., first hunter-gatherer, then agricultural, then industrial). This is an invalid claim.
We do not have default emotions that are linked to a particular economic mode,i.e., theH-G mode, which is your unexamined assumption.
Indeed one of our basic human emotions, that of individal competition, must be drastically repressed in the H-G society, and they go to great lengths to demean, denigrate and mock any hint of ‘individualism’ and attempts to ‘do better than the next guy’.
Economic modes are not linear evolutions but are logical adaptations to particular biomes – and we have a variety of different biomes on this planet; nothing to do with any linear evolutionary steps. Our planet still has groups living within the H-G economic mode because the ecology of their envt cannot sustain agriculture.
And no, the ‘leftist’ mode is a top-down authoritarian redistribution mode. That is not at all like a H-G mode, which has no leaders, no individual or group authority to oversee the redistribution, and the economy is based around sharing. However, if there is some individual, who could, but won’t, work and share…then he is run out of the Band. An H-G Band operates by group consensus; there is no Elite Government as in the Leftist mode.
Actually, no, it’s the women, in the H-G economy who do the gathering. The men do the hunting/fishing.
The leftist top-down redistribution mode is instead found in large populations..not small, as are H-G economies..which are TWO class, an elite governance who are beyond criticism. And the peasantry..who are all ‘equal’ and ‘alike’. This style of economy is found in the massive Irrigation Agriculture Economies (ancient Egypt, Inca, etc)..and in early feudalism. It sets up these two classes, where the elite are privileged..and we see that in the lefist treatment of themselves (tax dodgers, rapes, etc)..versus the ordinary citizen who is repressed more and more.
Myth buster – H-G peoples are very careful not to inbreed. You marry outside of your small Band/family. The Band, which lives as a collective of, usually, about 30 people, is the economic unit. If it gets larger it won’t work, and will have to split..because the numbers go beyond what is called the ‘carrying capacity’ of the local environment.
In larger populations than the small H-G, again, you marry outside of your Clan and into another Clan within the Tribe. The Clan is the Economic Unit. This is indeed, organization by kin group.
However, a kin group organization, which is obviously hereditary, is dysfunctional in large populations. We can see the result of this in the Arab Nations in the ME, which still organized by kin. In large populations, the societal organization has to move to a ‘civic mode’..where you are a member of the community, not by virtue of kinship, but by being a citizen. An individual not a kin. Very different..and is required for large populations to be flexible, adapt, invent new techologies.
ETAB
I think some of the confusion (connecting dots that may or not be connected) is that “what is the goal”?
unions remove the incentive to be productive. so they actually do achieve their goal.
…and tribes are like unions. …communities are like unions.
it is only when one gets to keep the profits of ones labour that things improve, not just for the individual but for society at large.
and community societies are always lagging the societies where the individual is allowed to keep his profits.
what is often stated as a lofty goal ends up being something complete un-recoginsable from said goal..
alturistic goals are are almost always hi-jacked by one participant or other.
the incentives need to take human nature into account.
transparency is what helped keep the west free ..and this is disappearing fast, especially with the current administration. Unions often remove any ability to track their actions …unions are anti-transparency.
George S- I think you are discussing a different issue. My posts dealt with incorrect asssumptions of a hunter-gatherer economy.
A union is not similar to a tribe and shouldn’t function that way, for as such, it would deny individual freedom and submerge it within the collective. Certainly, unions DO behave this way, but I think that is harmful. A union ought to deal only with work-related issues, and since most of these are now govt-regulated, there is no need for unions.
Unions certainly remove the incentive to be productive, similar to a tribe or band, both of which are ‘no-growth’ economies and neither the tribe, band or union have any capacity to adapt.
My point is that unions no longer function on behalf of the worker. They are massive corporations focused on profit and wealth – for the executive, providing no goods or services, and existing as parasites on the worker.
ETAB
I agree with your premise of unions and tribes, although the hunter gatherer was usually a collective. …an alfa leader and the rest stayed in line behind the leader.
to me that is like the union. some good ..lots of bad.
once the union became an entity of it’s own ..as you say corporation, then it’s goals changed to it’s own self intrest which usually did not match that of the worker.
I guess that is pretty much where are at. Unions lost all their use when the law instituted the rights that the original unions fought for.
so now as you say they are just parasites on the workers and as Oleg shows on society as a whole as well.
George S., ETAB, Ric Locke, excellent thread. I enjoyed reading it all, but have nothing to offer other than my appreciation of your points. I don’t know which is correct, but your points were well presented and coridal. I appreciate that.
David S. @18; All workers were unionized once. It was in a place called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Didn’t work out so well as I recall. In a society wehere everything is “owned” by everybody, no wealth is created. Think, for example, of Mikhail Kalishnakov, develpoer of the AK-47. If he was able to earn a profit from his design patent, rather than it being deemed “intellectual property of the state”, he wouldn’t have died vitually penniless in his state-owned apartment, waiting in a bread line for his last meal, walking everywhere or driving in a state owned, top-of-the-line lemon built by heavily subsidized union labor in one of the state-owned factories. He would have most likely lived, and I mean “lived” not merely existed, in a lavish home, possibly owning several, employing, what, hundreds of carpenters, painters, plumbers, electricians, etc., driving in one of several luxury sedans or a limo, which would have employed, again, hundreds of machinists, engineers, etc. and spending weekends on his yacht, which would have employed… well I’m sure you can guess the next line. And, I’m saying this with an absolutley straight face, holding charitible fund-raisers for a rare disease, or the spotted owls, or whatever he would want to spend HIS money on! He died a “Hero of The Soviet Union” and all he got was this lousy medal!
Oleg Atbashian,
Your article is flawed due to what I perceive as your confusion of management and regulation. I agree with you that government cannot and should not run business. History has shown us that it doesn’t work (China, India, & USSR). However history has also shown us that government must regulate business. Two recent examples are Bank of America and Citigroup. In the case of Bank of America (a bank that did not get involved in the sub-prime market, counted half of all US adults as customers, and was in no financial trouble) was forced by the US government to purchase Merrill Lynch. Which caused the bank to almost go bankrupt and required 10’s of billions of dollars from the US tax payers. That’s what happens when the government attempts to manage a business. Now in the case of Citigroup the government failed to prevent that bank from leveraging it’s assets at such unsafe levels. That’s what happens when our government fails to regulate a business. There is a difference. I appreciate that you grew up under the yoke of communism and as such are very distrustful of government. But if you really think that an absence of government regulation will be good for the economy and the workforce, then why hasn’t it worked in Mexico? Mexico has the 11th largest economy in the world, is one of the most economically libertarian countries in the world, and yet over 50% of it’s citizens live in poverty. There is a balance that can and must be met. Government can’t manage business but it must regulate it
Oleg Atbashian,
Your article is flawed due to what I perceive as your confusion of management and regulation. I agree with you that government cannot and should not run business. History has shown us that it doesn’t work (China, India, & USSR). However history has also shown us that government must regulate business. Two recent examples are Bank of America and Citigroup. In the case of Bank of America (a bank that did not get involved in the sub-prime market, counted half of all US adults as customers, and was in no financial trouble) was forced by the US government to purchase Merrill Lynch. Which caused the bank to almost go bankrupt and required 10’s of billions of dollars from the US tax payers. That’s what happens when the government attempts to manage a business. Now in the case of Citigroup the government failed to prevent that bank from leveraging it’s assets at such unsafe levels. That’s what happens when our government fails to regulate a business. There is a difference. I appreciate that you grew up under the yoke of communism and as such are very distrustful of government. But if you really think that an absence of government regulation will be good for the economy and the workforce, then why hasn’t it worked in Mexico? Mexico has the 11th largest economy in the world, is one of the most economically libertarian countries in the world, and yet over 50% of it’s citizens live in poverty. There is a balance that can and must be met. Government can’t manage business but it must regulate it.
#17 Ric:
“If you examine what the Leftoids define as “fair”, and put that up against the survival requirements for a hunter-gatherer-scavenger band, they match almost perfectly. At the top of that list is a picture of resources that “just happen” — no human agency can affect whether they are there or not, or what quantity; they can only be found.”
True – but I would add that what the Leftoids fail or refuse to understand is that many important resources to the band aren’t just “found”; they are created by those looking to improve the lot of themselves (and possibly the band) from the resources that are found, i.e. the net woven to catch more fish than the single fishing pole, so that mother & more children can be fed and more time can be spent constructing another net that can then be traded for something else that is useful (e.g. a water container, a spear, clothes, shoes, a roof, cooking utensils, etc.). It’s simple supply & demand economics. When the individual competitive nature of humans is inserted, however, which #20 ETAB correctly says must be repressed in a HG society, then true fairness (or equity per Ric) emerges, i.e. those who work harder & smarter are rewarded. But the Leftoids want none of that; to them, competition must be repressed b/c no individual/family/tribe/clan should be allowed to “do better” than any other, which, in turn, causes misery and death. We must have equality of outcomes, according to the Leftoids; children must receive equal grades, so their “self-esteem” won’t be damaged. Never mind that the little darlings spent most of their time watching the idiot box or playing useless video games rather than studying and learning, all with the approval, and possibly encouragement, of the parents. Never mind that they don’t acquire the skills necessary to actually secure employment, support their families and contribute to society. The socialistic redistributive policies of the Obama administration are doing just that – which will inevitably lead to widespread misery & ultimately, a quicker death, first of the individual, and then society.
#27Chuck – exactly. The concept of equality of outcomes is disastrous outside of a H&G society. Notice that such a band can only support about 30 people, both economically and organizationally. Any larger and the requirement for sharing dissolves as the band starts to split on its own into ‘favorite’ people. Furhermore, the reduction of individual enterprise in such a society mean that HG peoples have no capacity to adapt; they simply have to migrate.
Large populations, whose sustenance requires long weeks and months of work (seeding, harvesting, animal husbandry)means that work must be rewarded with the results of that work. They must also promote individual enterprise, hard work, and adaptive solutions to new environmental pressures. The people must be settled rather than migratory. This brings in the concept of ownership of the land area or of the produce harvested.
The attempt by socialists to transform a large population to an ‘equality of outcome’ HG mode is, as you say, disastrous.
The act of avoiding inbreeding in no way invalidates what I said. You still increase the survival of your own genes by assisting in the survival and reproductive success of your siblings and cousins because they share some of your genes. Therefore, it is very much in the best interest of siblings to look out for each other, provided the sibling in question isn’t completely dead weight.
George S:
“the republicans aren’t completely timid the republicans aren’t completely timid the republicans aren’t completely timid”
You’re mad.
The “Republicans” ARE completely timid. To the point of treachery.
Excellent article, Oleg. I’ve enjoyed reading all your very informative and well reasoned articles. Please keep them coming. Thanks.
Myth buster: what if YOU’RE the dead weight?
Obama’s plan for forced welfare:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/16/morning-bell-obamacare-puts-you-on-welfare/
David S,
Your post is half right. Yes organized labor is the best answer to ensuring the dual growth of both an economy and more importantly, the workforce. Unions can ensure that workers earn more money, have better health care, enjoy job security, and are protected against abusive practices by management. Most importantly, unions provide to their members the important benefit of representation in a similar way that legislatures provide representation to voters in a democracy.
However taxation (although a necessary evil) does not in of itself improve an economy. Yes taxes can be used to build and maintain important institutions but every tax dollar collected is a dollar that can’t be used to hire an employee.
Unions can help build an economy for the benefit of all workers but we have to careful not to ruin that economy with crippling taxes.