Economic Inequality: a Small Price to Pay for Staying Human

It isn't enough to know that capitalism is moral and socialism is not. We must also know how to prove it to the rest of the world. If we don't do it soon, nothing else will matter.

Our editorial in the American Thinker

By Oleg Atbashian

To paraphrase Baudelaire, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world of the moral superiority of collectivism. According to Ayn Rand, if we don't convince the world otherwise, nothing else will work. Our greatest ally in this fight is human nature. Our greatest asset is morality itself, which is really, truly, undeniably, and absolutely on our side.

Today's political debates often end up in the following compromise: capitalism may be more economically efficient, but it's no moral match to economic equality that benefits most people. But the only way economic equality can benefit people is by pandering to their class envy. In all other aspects -- economical, political, cultural, philosophical, and spiritual -- it's a dastardly, immoral cause.

To begin with, it is the efficiency of capitalism that benefits most people. Among other things, it raises everyone's living standards and quality of life; expands consumer choices; boosts innovation that reduces the share of low-paying, mind-numbing manual jobs; increases the pool of well-paid professional jobs; gives the poor access to things that only the rich could enjoy a short while ago; promotes the creation of new cures of diseases; extends life expectancy and makes old age much more enjoyable.

The alternative to capitalism -- whatever one would like to call it -- is the loss of freedom, loss of choices, government corruption, and moral decay. What do we get in return? The vague promise of economic equality.

But in human reality, complete economic equality cannot be achieved. A century of collectivist social experiments around the world has proven three undeniable facts: One, government-enforced economic equality results in a forced inequality of a powerless, impoverished populace ruled by a corrupt elite. Two, the main obstacle to economic equality is human nature. Three, human nature cannot be changed, no matter the effort to re-educate, indoctrinate, or punish the violators.

An essential part of everyone's human nature is what collectivists are maligning as greed. Generally speaking, it is a normal desire of all humans to achieve a better life for themselves and their children. In a free capitalist system, "greed-driven" achievers engage in lawful productive work, start businesses, and build things. In a restrictive socialist system, to achieve a better station in life, one must either join the corrupt government apparatus, or become part of the criminal underworld with its vast shadow economy. The alternative is to succumb to misery and, very likely, alcoholism or worse. In the end, capitalism brings out the best in people; socialism brings out the worst.

How worthy and moral can an ideal be that punishes achievement and criminalizes human nature?

Proponents of economic equality are either willfully blind, or are themselves sociopathic megalomaniacs, trying to create a restrictive system in which they envision themselves to be part of the powerful ruling elite. Both are willing to go to extremes in order to achieve their goal. As they spin their tale of an imminent paradise, they never say what it will cost us to get there -- and, frankly, they don't give a damn. Individual human sacrifice is never an obstacle for collectivists; their glorious end justifies any unsightly means.

It is up to us then to examine just what exactly we will have to give up for the promise of economic equality -- something that has been proven to not exist.

At first we will have to accept restrictions on certain consumer choices and products in exchange for letting the government take care of our personal well-being. Then come restrictions on speech and activities: a price for maintaining the national well-being. Eventually all dissent is suppressed and criminalized, as the media falls under the government control, young people are indoctrinated in the "new ways," businesses pay enormous taxes, more and more families descend into misery and live off government subsidies, the economy crumbles, and shortages create long lines at the supermarket.

The leaders shift the blame to "enemies of the people," saying that this country would have been a dreamland if it weren't for a few greedy reactionaries. With no one left to object, desperate citizens succumb to the hatred and accept the idea that eliminating the few is a fair price to pay for improving the lives of the many. Then they accept the idea that eliminating an entire class of people is a small price to pay. But despite all the bloodletting, the promised collectivist paradise never arrives and the misery only increases. By now the demoralized, destitute masses are fully separated from the ruling elites by an impenetrable wall of privilege.

The ultimate price -- the relentless sacrifice of millions of people: their work, careers, ambitions, property, and lives -- has been paid to reach an unattainable economic mirage, a phantom concocted in the feverish minds of a few maniacs obsessed with class envy.

In contrast, the price of living in a free and prosperous capitalist society is merely to accept economic inequality as a natural extension of human nature. Without doubt, it's a small price to pay for remaining a free, productive, and moral people who live in harmony with objectively true moral principles, otherwise known as the natural moral law.
 

Comrades
Proletariat is constantly blinded by desire to have the unattainable without personal effort. They want to be at the top of the social food chain with all attendant luxuries heedless of the requirement to earn anything or even squander government benefits on Powerball tickets. Since they cannot earn and were not born to privilege, destroying all who are satisfies their blood lust for supremacy. To all Tovarichi not reading this ensconced in your chalets outside Zurich, be very afraid. And when they slaughter all who are competent as happened in Old Soviet Union, they still will never learn that emotional vindication does not fill one stomach, build one house, or raise quality of life in any way except that transitory satisfaction. Being on top is wonderful Comrades, so long as is no better than bottom.
 

Doctor Utopia, KMTC

The reason socialism is superior to capitalism is because capitalism begins with a flawed idea of the nature of Man. Capitalism is actually the result of the idea that each person is a sovereign entity with a life of their own to be lived on their own terms and that the proper role of government is to protect individual sovereignty through the vehicle of Natural Law, the idea of individual rights.

This is of course nothing but the intellectual superstructure of the dominant economic class, used solely to rationalize and legitimize the capitalist interests. Socialism rejects all such rationalizations for power. We do not need any such superstructure. Collectivism embraces the true nature of Man and the only moral and fair way for Man to live.
 

And Womyn, Comrade KMTC - you must not forget Womyn!!
 

Quote:

At first we will have to accept restrictions on certain consumer choices and products in exchange for letting the government take care of our personal well-being. Then come restrictions on speech and activities: a price for maintaining the national well-being. How about that, everything has a cost, especially government-provided "free stuff". Then again, do we really need to be human? It's sooooo much work.
 

Socialism makes an honest attempt to try to share the misery equally to everyone who is in a lower orb than they.
The two orbs are IN [upper] and OUT [lower].
The vast majority of workers are in the lower or OUT group.
 

Fortunately, Dear Leader wrote an Executive Order back in March, to wit: "The new Executive Order states that the president and his secretaries have the authority to commandeer all U.S. domestic resources, including food and water, as well as seize all energy and transportation infrastructure inside the borders of the United States. The Government can also forcibly draft U.S. citizens into the military and force U.S. citizens to fulfill "labor requirements" for the purposes of "national defense." There is not even any Congressional oversight allowed, only briefings."

So we won't have to worry which group we're in, because the President Himself now has the authority to put us wherever He wishes to, doing whatever He wishes us to do!

Along with Dear Chief Justice's ruling that we can be forced by the feral government to purchase anything, as long there's a tax penalty if we don't, this new EO (and, of course, the slightly older one, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which "gave the president and his agents the right to seize and arrest any U.S. citizen, detain them indefinitely without charge or trial, and do so only on suspicion, without any judicial oversight or due process"- well, comrades, we don't need to worry about ANYthing anymore! Just do what you're told, buy what you're told to buy, and go where you're told to go. Unless, of course, you'd prefer to be held indefinitely without legal recourse. Or, as they used to call it, "be disappeared".



Yes, Next Tuesday™ is so close I can SMELL it, comrades!!
 

It's not a small price to pay. It is that we don't have options, even if we decided otherwise. The economic equality has NEVER been achieved anyplace in real world. Quarter a billion people have died in the process, and no sign. In all places that equality was claimed, the inequality was vast. The only place where equality exists is Utopia.
 

Red Square

Proponents of economic equality are either willfully blind, or are themselves sociopathic megalomaniacs, trying to create a restrictive system in which they envision themselves to be part of the powerful ruling elite. Both are willing to go to extremes in order to achieve their goal. As they spin their tale of an imminent paradise, they never say what it will cost us to get there -- and, frankly, they don't give a damn. Individual human sacrifice is never an obstacle for collectivists; their glorious end justifies any unsightly means.

AHAHAHAHAH!

Our Glorious People's Direktor, Red Square, is making such a funny joke! Roads of Bones are much more immune to the wear and tear of tanks, and the freeze/thaw cycle of weather - not that we will have to worry about freezing for much longer... But asphalt will melt in the heat... Bones... not so much. So what could be better for the collective infrastructure? Besides... when we have worked the proles to the point of starvation all given our best to the collective effort, there will be much fewer of us to around to share the pie... Then we will all be able to drive the BMW's and Mercedes that are left, snarfing caviar and foie gras! We'll all be rich! Isn't that the way it's meant to work? What is so wrong with that?

Sister Megalomaniacally Opiated (and sociopathic... my eyesight is just fine, thank you!)
 

Today American Thinker published the illustration above. It didn't exist yet when the essay was published.

http://www.americanthinker.com/cartoons ... be_18.html
 

Sister Massively Opiated,
All we have to do is look to the Northeast, and the "help" given to Hurricane Sandy's victims to know what's in store for all of us. Bloomberg said that no one is allowed to give food to anyone out of benevolence because the state cannot regulate the amount of trans fats and salt that might, just might, lie therein! Better they starve than get too much salt. Good grief! I know people in NYC who voted for this guy. I'm ashamed to know them.
 

I don't know which story warms my heart more.....
Bloomberg's food restrictions to the survivors or having five heavy utility repair trucks and their crews drive all the way from Decatur, Alabama to the storm disaster sites and then being told that Decatur Light and Power would need to join a New Jersey utilities union
(along with membership fees) in order to help with the huge task of repairing electrical service.
They turned around and drove back home the same day.

You just gotta' be proud of that NJ union for having their set their priorities straight.
And as all good liberals know, the most important thing would be the taking money away from others at all costs, God bless 'em !
 

Succinctly:

Socialism is to Capitalism, what a mummy is to a living healthy human being.

Genius:

A German Engineer named Karl discovered that Capitalism as an Economic Engine was full of inefficiencies, so he decided that the best way to fix the Engine was to destroy It. Now they are back to a Horse Drawn cart named Socialism.