Fairfax, Va. Since telling Joe the Plumber of his wish to "spread the wealth around," Barack Obama is being called a socialist. Is he one?
No. At least not in the classic sense of the term. "Socialism" originally meant government ownership of the major means of production and finance, such as land, coal mines, steel mills, automobile factories, and banks.
A principal promise of socialism was to replace the alleged uncertainty of markets with the comforting certainty of a central economic plan. No more guessing what consumers will buy next year and how suppliers and rival firms will behave: everyone will be led by government's visible hand to play his and her role in an all-encompassing central plan. The "wastes" of competition, cycles of booms and busts, and the "unfairness" of unequal incomes would be tossed into history's dustbin.
Of course, socialism utterly failed. But it wasn't just a failure of organization or efficiency. By making the state the arbiter of economic value and social justice, as well as the source of rights, it deprived individuals of their liberty and tragically, often their lives.
The late Robert Heilbroner a socialist for most of his life admitted after the collapse of the Iron Curtain that socialism "was the tragic failure of the twentieth century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty."
This failure was unavoidable. It was predicted from the start by wise economists, such as F.A. Hayek, who understood that no government agency can gather and process all the knowledge necessary to plan the productive allocation of millions of different resources.
Likewise, socialism's requirement that each person behave in ways prescribed by government planners is a recipe for tyranny. A central plan, by its nature, denies to individuals the right to choose and to innovate. It replaces a multitude of individual plans each of which can be relatively easily adjusted in light of competitive market feedback with one gigantic, monopolistic, and politically favored plan.
A happy difference separating today from the 1930s is that, unlike back then, no serious thinkers or groups in America now push for this kind of full-throttle socialism.
But what about a milder form of socialism? If reckoned as an attitude rather than a set of guidelines for running an economy, socialism might well describe Senator Obama's economics. Anyone who speaks glibly of "spreading the wealth around" sees wealth not as resulting chiefly from individual effort, initiative, and risk-taking, but from great social forces beyond any private producer's control. If, say, the low cost of Dell computers comes mostly from government policies (such as government schooling for an educated workforce) and from culture (such as Americans' work ethic) then Michael Dell's wealth is due less to his own efforts and more to the features of the society that he luckily inhabits.
Wealth, in this view, is produced principally by society. So society's claim on it is at least as strong as that of any of the individuals in whose bank accounts it appears. More important, because wealth is produced mostly by society (rather than by individuals), taxing high-income earners more heavily will do little to reduce total wealth production.
This notion of wealth certainly warrants the name "socialism," for it gives the abstraction "society" pride of place over flesh-and-blood individuals. If taxes are reduced on Joe the Plumber's income, the rationale must be that Joe deserves a larger share of society's collectively baked pie and not that Joe earned his income or that lower taxes will inspire Joe to work harder.
This "socialism-lite," however, is as specious as is classic socialism. And its insidious nature makes it even more dangerous. Across Europe, this "mild" form of socialism acts as a parasitic ideology that has slowly drained entrepreneurial energy and freedoms from its free-market host.
Could it happen in America? Consider the words of longtime Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Norman Thomas: "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." In addition to Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs, the gathering political momentum toward single-payer healthcare which Obama has proclaimed is his ultimate goal shows the prescience of Thomas's words.
The fact that each of us depends upon the efforts of millions of others does not mean that some "society" transcending individuals produces our prosperity. Rather, it means that the vast system of voluntary market exchange coordinates remarkably well the efforts of millions of individuals into a productive whole. For Obama to suggest that government interfere in this process more than it already does to "spread" wealth from Joe to Bill, or vice versa overlooks not only the voluntary and individual origins of wealth, but the dampening of the incentives for people to contribute energetically to wealth's continued production.
Donald J. Boudreaux is professor of economics at George Mason University. He is the author of "Globalization."
#1
"Socialism" originally meant government ownership of the major means of production and finance, such as land, coal mines, steel mills, automobile factories, and banks.
Just as war is a continuation of politics by other means, the use of massive regulatory authority by the government is ownership by other means. Hitler didn't directly take over the major industries of Germany, but he worked an accord with the industrialist that achieved basically the same end state. They got to keep 'ownership' and management positions, but the state told them what to do.
#1
Sometimes for me, the future seems awfully dim and I despair for our future. Obama's vision takes me back to the fear and despair I felt when reading 1984 during the height of the cold war. Then, I think of Sarah Palin and Bobbie Jindal(?). These two young people give me hope for a brighter future. God bless them both.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
10/30/2008 4:37 Comments ||
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#2
RoO, hear, hear!!
I wish that they both had a full term as governor under their belts so we could have done without McCain this time.
#3
Hello! It is not Palin but the product that she is selling that is valuable. Granted, not everyone can sell it as well as she can, but it's not her legs or her folksy style that is what we are looking for. We want what it is she is selling.
From a policy stand point that's fine but what we really need is a POLITICIAN to sell those points. As far as the election goes the "who" matters a lot. The same policies being pushed by an ugly old troll wouldn't have the same success in the "market".
We need young, sharp, aggressive, HONEST talent.
Palin and Jindal are that as far as I can tell.
If you've got some others that meet the need let me know who they are.
#6
We have a Republic, not a democracy. There's a reason for that. When the Press does everything it possibly can to get one person elected over another, the Republic is strained - possibly to the breaking point. Voter fraud distorts the representative capacity of our electorate, and may result in some people being elected that shouldn't have, and destroying the aspirations of others unfairly. It's time to return to the roots of our nation - the Declaration of Independence which set the tone of how we would live, which was further emphasized by our Constitution, which declared how we would govern ourselves. Both documents have been stretched out of their original meaning, and distorted into something our Founders would not recognize. Only the successful rebirth of our original intent as a nation can retrieve what we've lost in the last 100 or so years.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
10/30/2008 14:01 Comments ||
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#7
Only the successful rebirth of our original intent as a nation can retrieve what we've lost in the last 100 or so years.
Most people fail to understand just why Jefferson insisted on the Second Amendment. A hint - it wasn't for hunting or sport shooting.
Earlier this month, a UN committee stacked with dictatorships (Libya, Iran, Cuba, etc.) produced a provisional blueprint for the Spring, 2009 "Durban Review Conference," an international confab organized to promote the "Programme of Action" that came out of the original, disastrous 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.
Since Durban I has become a byword for anti-Semitism and anti-Western extremism, the forthcoming Durban II confab is widely expected to be a farce (Canada and Israel have already announced they won't be attending). And so relatively few pundits seem to have bothered wading through the UN's characteristically turgid pre-conference planning documentation.
But faced with a slow news day, I decided to take a crack.
Four hours later, I don't recommend the exercise. The five-part "Draft Outcome Document" contains 88 pages and 646 provisions. Most of it consists of boilerplate repetition of the same small handful of themes (encapsulated well in this UN Watch report): (1) Racism is everywhere, (2) The fault for this lies with the West, because of its "genocidal" legacy of slavery and colonization, (3) "Islamophobia" and discrimination against "people of African descent" are especially prevalent and pernicious, and (4) Israel is a blight upon nations (Paragraphs 114-117 of Section 1, for instance, are dedicated exclusively to bashing the Jewish state. No other country comes in for singling out in the whole document). In many cases, whole paragraphs are repeated several times over (such as a lengthy Jimmy Carteresque screed about Israel promoting "a new kind of apartheid").
Yet buried amidst all this are some weird, and sometimes welcome, non sequiturs.
One section singles out Europe's Roma population as being especially vulnerable (true). In other parts, anti-Semitism and "Christianophobia" (a word I've never heard before) are described as serious problems. "Tribal" violence is deplored -- an implied (and deserved) knock on Africa of the type that this sort of tier-mondiste UN body typically stays far away from. There is full-throated advocacy for the rights of women and children -- despite the obvious clash with traditional Muslim social practices.
And then there's Paragraph 109 of Section 1, which calls for nations to address the memory of the "trans Saharan slave trade and the slave trade in the Indian Ocean" -- a clear reference to the Arab and Muslim contribution to the slave trade, which is usually taboo at this sort of anti-Western confab.
Even more shocking (given the number of radical Muslim states that had a hand in this document) was Paragraph 292, which "Affirms that the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice and recalls again that the Holocaust must never be forgotten."
Amen to that. Didn't think I'd find it here, though.
On my pet subject, freedom of speech, the document is a contradictory mess. Section 1, Para. 30 warns us, Canadian Islamic Congress-style, that Islamophobia "takes cover behind the freedom of expression" -- but then, 11 paragraphs later, the document laments, Ezra Levant-style, that the "fight against racial and religious hatred" is "being used as a pretext legitimising impermissible limitations to freedom of expression."
And then, later on, this somewhat confusing -- but not altogether censorious -- take on the subject: "285.Stresses that, as human rights are universal, interdependent, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing, the coexistence of rights does not only imply that a particular right should be seen in a restrictive manner because of the existence of another right; 286.Stresses that the right to freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society, as it ensures individual self-fulfillment and a pluralistic, tolerant society with access to multitudes of ideas and philosophies."
Sadly, that is not the document's final say on the subject. Section 5, Para. 100 "Urges States to take serious steps to address the contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and in this context to take firm action against negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols." (In other words, no pix of Mohammed.)
And then, in Sec. 5, Para 142, comes this especially creepy one-world-government "universal" approach to censorship: "National laws alone cannot deal with the rising tide of defamation and hatred against Muslims, especially if such trends are spreading to the grass root communities. A framework is needed to analyze national laws and understand their provisions. This could then be compiled in a single 'universal document' as guidelines for legislation aimed at countering 'defamation of religions.'"
At other points, the text is weirdly esoteric. Paragraph 276 of Section 1, for instance, invites "the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, in connection with the 2010 Football World Cup tournament to be held in South Africa, to introduce a visible theme on non-racism in football." And then there's Sec. 1, para. 227, which is almost enough to make a reader laugh outright. It warns "that a failure of the Durban review process would, above all, pave the way for intensification of worrying racist and xenophobic trends."
If there was ever a single event in modern history that exacerbated "racist and xenophobic trends" in the world, it's Durban itself. Whatever mixed signals are being sent in this follow-up blueprint, I have little doubt that Durban II will be just as bad. Canada is lucky to have a government with the good sense to stay away.
Postscript: In response to my blog post, I got this interesting message from a UN insider:
The reason the text is contradictory is that the UN facilitators at this stage just pasted in elements of the texts submitted by both the EU as well as the anti-democratic blocs. So at this stage its a hodge-podge, all subject to negotiation. Expect that much of the good stuff will be excised, certainly anything thats a jab at the violators. The references to tribal violence (African), non-Western slave trade (Arab), reference to the ICC (Sudanese genocide) all of that will be yanked out. Similarly, the far more prevalent offensive material will be softened. Yet given the constellation of bloc power, far more of the poison than the perfume will remain. And in the end, in whatever proportions the combination turns out, it will be no less inedible.
So there you have it: All the surprisingly enlightened stuff will probably end up on the cutting room floor. Let's revisit this prediction in a few months and see if it bears out ...
Obama's federalized medical insurance system starts the transition away from private medical care and toward Obama's endlessly promised "universal health care." This has always been the sine qua non of planting a true, managed-market economy in the U.S.
Obama's refundable tax credits are direct cash transfers from the federal government. This would place some 48% of Americans, nearly half, out of the income tax system. More than a tax proposal, this is a deep philosophical shift, an American version of being "on the dole."
His stated intent to renegotiate free-trade agreements such as Nafta is a philosophical shift. It abandons the tradition of a hyper-competitive America dating back to the Industrial Revolution, toward a protected, domestic workforce, as in Western Europe. The Democratic proposal to eliminate private union votes -- "card check" -- ensures the spread of a static, Euro-style workforce.
Eliminating the ceiling on payroll taxes changes Social Security from an insurance to a welfare program. Obama's tax credits requires performing government-identified activities, the essence of a "directed economy."
All this would transform the animating American idea -- away from creation and toward protection.
Many voters -- progressive Democrats, the asset-safe rich, academics and college students -- regard this as where America should go. They explicitly want America's great natural energies transferred away from unwieldy economic competition and toward social construction. They want the U.S. to reduce its "footprint" in the world. Monies saved by stepping down from superpower status can be reprogrammed into "investments" (a favorite Obama word) in a vast Euro-style hammock of social protection programs.
One wishes John McCain had been better able to make clear what the truly "historic" meaning of Tuesday's vote is. Once it's done, it's done.
#1
How different (if at all) is what he is proposing from the current Medicare?
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
10/30/2008 15:09 Comments ||
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REDDIT > IFENG.com [Taiwan] CHINESE NEWS - RAND "WAR TO SAVE THE CITY" IS TOO ABSURD/RAND REPORT SUGGESTS US MAY INTENTIONALLY LAUNCH A SERIOUS GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS FOR THE PURPOSE OF INDUCING WORLDWIDE DESTABILIZATION AND US IMPERIALIST WAR???
Save in times of national peril, Americans have been sober, really minimalist, in what they expected out of national elections, out of politics itself. The outcomes that mattered were decided in the push and pull of daily life, by the inventors and the entrepreneurs, and the captains of industry and finance. To be sure, there was a measure of willfulness in this national vision, for politics and wars guided the destiny of this republic. But that American sobriety and skepticism about politics -- and leaders -- set this republic apart from political cultures that saw redemption lurking around every corner.
My boyhood, and the Arab political culture I have been chronicling for well over three decades, are anchored in the Arab world. And the tragedy of Arab political culture has been the unending expectation of the crowd -- the street, we call it -- in the redeemer who will put an end to the decline, who will restore faded splendor and greatness. When I came into my own, in the late 1950s and '60s, those hopes were invested in the Egyptian Gamal Abdul Nasser. He faltered, and broke the hearts of generations of Arabs. But the faith in the Awaited One lives on, and it would forever circle the Arab world looking for the next redeemer.
America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession -- its imagination.
From Elias Canetti again: "But the crowd, as such, disintegrates. It has a presentiment of this and fears it. . . . Only the growth of the crowd prevents those who belong to it from creeping back under their private burdens."
The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat -- by now unthinkable to the devotees -- will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won't be solved by a leader's magic.
#1
There is something odd -- and dare I say novel -- in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.
As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, "Crowds and Power" (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when "distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd." These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress.
On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish.
The coalition that has propelled his quest -- African-Americans and affluent white liberals -- has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking -- Canetti's feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama's vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.
A creature of universities and churches and nonprofit institutions, the Illinois senator, with the blessing and acquiescence of his upscale supporters, has glided past these hard distinctions. On the face of it, it must be surmised that his affluent devotees are ready to foot the bill for the new order, or are convinced that after victory the old ways will endure, and that Mr. Obama will govern from the center. Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate: He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs: redistribution for the poor, postracial absolution and "modernity" for the upper end of the scale.
It was no accident that the white working class was the last segment of the population to sign up for the Obama journey. Their hesitancy was not about race. They were men and women of practicality; they distrusted oratory, they could see through the falseness of the solidarity offered by this campaign. They did not have much, but believed in the legitimacy of what little they had acquired. They valued work and its rewards. They knew and heard of staggering wealth made by the Masters of the Universe, but held onto their faith in the outcomes that economic life decreed. The economic hurricane that struck America some weeks ago shook them to the core. They now seek protection, the shelter of the state, and the promise of social repair.
WHICH IS WHY THE DEMS CONSTRUCTED IT -- CLASSIC SOCIALIST MOVE TO CREATE FEAR AND AN UNDERCLASS SO THAT "THE MAN" CAN COME TO THE RESCUE.
This is "class":
Tina Fey: Palin offered to have her daughter babysit my kid "Allahpundit" @ "Hot Air"
A lefty in the Baldwin mode: Opposed, but gracious. A useful palate cleanser as tensions mount with six days to go. Video at link.
This is "no class": Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama's aunt Zeituni Onyango James Bone, TimesOnline
Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama's best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.
A second relative believed to be the long-lost "Uncle Omar" described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a "sawed-off rifle" while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court. Instapundit adds this interesting detail:
Bob Krumm emails: "The most damning part of the Obama aunt story is that once his campaign found her living in squalor they told her to not talk to the press until after the election, but they didn't try to help her." He has a post here to that effect.
Vote accordingly.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/30/2008 07:23 ||
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#1
I remember once that Rosie O'Donnell said that money can buy you class. I don't know how much she paid for hers, but she certainly deserved a refund.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
