I’m Smart. I’m Special. I’m Saved.

Why would anyone be opposed to making their own choices in life?

Because making decisions for yourself is lonely… and it leaves you with no one else to blame should something go wrong.

For years I’ve wondered what the resistance was to Free Markets. Once a person has taken the time to understand what voluntary exchange and free-market capitalism really is, how can they not like it? How can an individual not appreciate the power over their own lives and freedom to choose what’s right for them?

Because, while it makes you feel powerful… it doesn’t make you feel powerful enough.

Seems counter-intuitive, I know.

But, if everyone is expected to take care of themselves then what role is left for those who feel they should be making decisions for you?

In other words, if we all take responsibility for ourselves, what work is left for those who want to do the “telling”?  What would “The Deciders” do?

First you must understand who the people are that want to do the “telling” and who are the people who want to be “told”.

These are the same two groups who support the goal of “collective’ rights.

The First group is made up primarily of those people who believe they are smarter than you in every way.

They associate their self-proclaimed omnipotent intelligence to being highly specialized.  They could be a doctor, lawyer or politician. You can even find them working at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

They are found to associate intelligence to geography, such as living in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Vermont, the other side of the railroad tracks, river, etc.

Bear in mind, it does not mean they make particularly good decisions when it comes to their own lives… but that is not a requirement to their self-assigned superiority.

The Second group is a product of our public education system, more or less.

They have been told they are special. In fact they have been taught that there is nothing more important in life than being special, Over and over and over…   And, when you’re “special” you shouldn’t have to do anything.  You should have stuff given to you.  Thus, these people gladly accept what they are “entitled” to.  As long as those who do the “telling” repeat endlessly how wonderful they are, while also giving them other people’s money in the form of government “entitlements”, they will remain placated… and vote accordingly.

So it is not difficult to see how a system of trade and government that does not make them feel this way is so repulsive to them.  It’s easy to see how people like me are a turn off.  Anyone who genuinely promotes self-sufficiency and personal responsibility will find no friends in either group.  While Capitalism gives you supreme power over yourself, your power is small when looking at the world as a whole.  While I would argue this is as it should be… it can be incredibly frightening to many when they realize the Universe doesn’t necessarily need them.

True Capitalism would make the First group feel unimportant… and at the same time depress the Second group.

Unimportant and Depressed…  it sounds like something most of us deal with very early in our lives once we figure out the Universe does not revolve around us.  This should be the healthy maturation process of our species…  yet… we are all contributing tax dollars to keep the paradigm of parent and child alive after the age of majority.

But just when you though it was easy to understand… There is a subgroup which also exists.

A number of people try to be both, and will neglect all aspects of taking care of themselves in order to “help” others so they can feel special.  This behavior is a uniquely destructive phenomenon.  The irony is they have now made themselves a burden on everyone else, thus helping no-one.  This fact misses them entirely.  So much so that if you present them with this truth they will adopt a blank stare.  The rational escapes these folks… helping one person at the expense of two others is not a winning formula.  This group can be the most dangerous… much like a drowning man.  Reason will always escape them.

All three groups genuinely feel we should be Forced to “help” each other… but never Forced to “help” ourselves.

These are the people who subscribe to the Communal theory of government, dividing all of us into permanent classes of the helpers and the helped.

I believe they adopt this point of view, and vote accordingly, because it’s easier than accepting the alternative outlined above.  But there is also a Sinister type of Self-Interest at work.

The First group achieves the Power over others they so crave, the Second Group achieves nothing, but they’re paid for it. The Third group achieves what they believe is Salvation… which, in their minds, elevates them above all others.

(In the end, looking at all of these groups, what is the difference between them and the relationship of the Drug Dealer and the Drug Addicted?  The dynamics are similar in ways we should all find disturbing.)

For the rest of us, all we can do is keep doing our best to meet our needs at our own expense.  We must continue to thrive while trying to drag the above groups along with us into the light of self-reliance.  We must Restore the Stigma that used to be associated with taking other people’s money from the government.  We must be Loud in our disdain.  What choice do we have?

At the same time, we must always resist The Deciders efforts to drag us down into their Social Utopian world of Dependency and Entitlement.

(053013)

Advertisement

“Why do people Hate Capitalism?”

(I’m addressing this as it shows up in my ‘top search’ stats almost daily.)

The reason so many people Hate Capitalism is because we are all being told, via the Mass Media and our Leftist Elected Officials World over, that Fascism is Capitalism.

Read the above line again… slowly… I’ll wait.

Done?

OK then.  Here we go.

Fascism is not Capitalism.  Capitalism is not Fascism.  The two are mutually exclusive.

Fascism is simply a variant of Socialism.  It provides for private ownership of business as long as the businesses, and the owners, are controlled by Government via taxation, regulation, party membership, political dictate etc.  That’s the only difference.  All other aspects of Fascism are purely Socialist in nature.

The above sets up a model where it appears Corporations Control Government… and that ‘control’ allows them to profit utilizing Government Force.  While this is true, it’s only half right.  Well, not exactly half right… it’s actually half right but reversed.

It is Government Force which controls Business and that Force places Business in the position of having to support Politicians.

There it is.

It’s always Force…

So the truth is found in the other half of the equation.  When you realize that the politicians use this power, or the threat of it, so they can extort donations (most often in the most subtle, gentle and softly insidious ways) from the business owners, you gave arrived at understanding the state we are currently in.

But, as is typical, the Left intentionally sees only half of the problem.  They want you to blame the Corporations and never the Government.

But you can’t Blame the Corporations and not also Blame the Government…

The Federal Government was never intended to have the power which business owners would find attractive enough to enter into such an incestuous relationship.

So now that you understand the problem, what do we do about it?

The only way to get to real Free-Market Capitalism is to remove the ability of Force from the Federal Government over Business.

What this means is Polticians at the Federal must be returned to their previous state of limit upon their power to grant favors and create ‘barriers to entry’ within the market place.

Once removed, businesses will not be incented to give large sums of money to elected officials save for ideological reasons.

This would go a long way to restoring the United States to its once great place in the World.

At the end of the day, the Left will always Hate Capitalism, and the Voluntary Exchange associated with it, because it does not require the ‘brilliance’ of their control.  It works just fine without their help.  Clearly Administrators will never like such an idea.

If you’re a person who thinks they know what’s best for everyone else… Freedom and Liberty of the Individual combined with the Natural Right to be secure in one’s property… all protected by Free markets and Constitutionally Limited Government… are extraordinarily crappy ideas.  And whatever it takes to gain and maintain control over others will be preferred to truth.

For the rest of us, we have to recognize we are being lied to about what Capitalism is.

And we must recognize its intentional.

The Socialists hope we’ll think Capitalism is the root of all Evil, when in fact it’s Socialism that Sucks.

rebellion by fives

So once again Snake has caused me to think… so here I am staring at a hand painted Ceramic Skull filled with 110-proof Reposado tapping through a thought.

After Canadian Rattlesnake’s last post Let It Burn, which I reposted here on makeaneffort and past comment exchanges with Dan Miller in Panama, a couple of things hit me.

First… Snake’s right.  It’s too late.  It’s too late for the changes that must be made to be painless.  The Government Education system has fulfilled its role in removing any understanding of Voluntary Exchange and Free-Market Capitalism, not by demonizing it but rather by simply omitting it.  The demonizing of it is consigned to the Main-Stream Media and it’s brothers in the Entertainment Industry.  This fact has left us with a population who does not, can not, comprehend the pain which is headed our direction.  Even if they did, they would not understand why they are directly responsible for this eventuality due to their support of those individuals who champion the intrusion of Government.  It is exactly this intrusion into the our beleaguered Capitalist system which has brought us to this point.  It is the undying wish to manipulate what is the Default State of Economics that causes strife worldwide and it has Progressively invaded our shores over the last 100-years.

It’s here.

…Everywhere you look.

Any assertion that we can “avoid it” is long past its expiration date.

So what now?

The only course of action I see is Reaching Out.  Reaching Out is a non-violent, no-lose, approach to what is in store for us.

If each of us reaches out to just 5 people who believe themselves opposed to what we “think”, or are remaining quiet because they feel intimidated by their lack of knowledge, we can start the conversations so desperately needed.  It’s called “grass-roots” organizing.  It’s a page out of Alinsky… and the Socialists have shown us it works.

First, this is the only way to “fight the man” and explain American Exceptionalism to those who consider themselves already educated because they met the requirements to earn certain diploma’s.  (Bizarre isn’t it?  So strange that self sufficiency and personal responsibility are considered “rebellious”… times have oddly changed.)  Trust me, I’ve met many individuals who have achieved higher levels of education that are woefully uneducated when it comes to the basics of this country.  I have learned to ignore ones “credentials” until demonstrated as valid.  It’s rare that this behavior has left me surprised.

Second, if things end up as bad as they could be we will have established a group of people around us who have not lost all hope.  This is key, because those without hope are the same as drowning men… they will pull you down with them.  We will need calm, reasoned, rational individuals who understand free-market economics.  These people will instinctively know that the two “f” words, free and fair, simply do not exist.  It will be us and those we gather around us who will repair the damage caused by those currently in power… massive damage indeed.

This is all we can do.

I was having a conversation with a couple from Turkey several days ago.  The topic came up on the old Soviet Satellite States and how they were faring since the collapse of their Patron.  The simplest observation was once the Soviet support, by means of infrastructure and money, disappeared those “who wished to be free” suddenly found themselves confronted with problems they never before had to address.  And, as is always the case, the Thugs took over and prevented any change or solutions that they didn’t directly control.  The Thugs took over everything from distribution of food to one’s ability to travel.  It was societal de-evolution.  It’s a lesson repeated throughout history.  We left it there.  We just stopped at the assessment without asking the obvious question of “How could one prevent that scenario from occurring?”.

The above discussion also lent to this post.  The answered now seems easy… once you understand why those people living around the old Communist State couldn’t figure out what to do.  But, for some reason, we always seem satisfied at stopping at the assessment.

As is always the case, the populations of the Satellite States didn’t know what to do… because they didn’t know what to do.  Nobody had ever showed them what to do.  No one had ever had an interest in teaching them what to do.  In fact, the exact opposite had been drilled into them for decades.  Dependency was what was required by the Social Democrats.  Sound Familiar?

Had the populations of those countries been versed in Free-Market Capitalism and Individual Liberty they would have been far better prepared to deal with the sudden responsibilities of self-rule.  The Thug’s would still be present and they would still attempt to assert their power over others through force, but they would be meeting formidable resistance.  Instead, the populations had been trained to be supplicants.  They have been taught to wait for someone else to come and fix their problems.  They have been conditioned to expect their needs to be taken care of by some nebulous bureaucracy answerable to no one, and if that fails to be taken care of by someone… anyone… even the local Thug.

Make no mistake… it is now our responsibility to teach that which has been intentionally omitted from our schools and institutes of higher education.  It’s now that we must Reach Out to those five folks around us and once they have a working knowledge of how this country was founded and why free trade protects it send them out to find five folks of their own.  Now.  Right Now.

It’s time to stop counting on things always being okay.  It’s time to start thinking about what we are going to do once it’s not okay.  Well, it’s already not okay, but it is not getting better regardless of what your being told.

When you’ve Socialized Medicine, taken the Fascist approach to owning all Means of Production through Regulation and now our politicians are talking about seizing your retirement plans, we’re in deep.  Very, very deep.

We need many, many people at the grass-roots level that understand nothing is free…. or fair.  But our innate right to Individual Liberty is always our Individual Responsibility.

We need many, many people who know how to run successful businesses that don’t depend on their buddies on the city council sending them taxpayer dollars through government contracts.  Whose success is delivering a product the people want, not dependent on taxpayer patronage bequeathed from “well-intentioned” politicians promoting their pet projects which create things nobody wants.

We need many, many people with skills directly applicable to real world needs… not idiots like me whose only skill is intoxicated drooling over a laptop keyboards.  In other words, basket weaving could once again be a practical profession.  Knowing how to make things should never have been demoted by Elitists to the level it now occupies.  People who can make things are in short supply and will soon be in high demand.

Get started.

Go out, grab your five and get to work.  It is personal responsibility chock full of self-interest.  It is what we must do.

We’re all in this together, as individuals… and no matter what the outcome of our current race to drive this country over the cliff, we will be better for each of your efforts.

Just makeaneffort.

Ever notice that Tequila smells like Agave Flowers?