opinion@dailylobo.com
I will not defend Republicans, because they have the same problems Democrats have: a misunderstanding of moral issues. My defense is of capitalism and the rational, selfish pursuit of happiness.
The statists like to pretend it was the government that laid the foundation of capitalist success, that built the roads, that created an educated workforce, that “invented” the Internet.
However, could all these things exist or have existed in the absence of government? Yes, and they did before the government injected itself. Private institutions would happily replace the public ones, as there are profits and value to be made by them.
Profit is the sense of harnessing value, and competing consistently increases that value. Make no mistake as to why roads, schools, banks and health care seem to remain fully stagnant. In fact, it is only the free market or the confiscations of its success that have allowed these institutions to exist.
They claim that government is needed to prevent anarchy because everyone would otherwise find the quickest route to extorting cash. But would a businessman make profits by raising prices to ridiculous levels? Not with Walmarts, or the need to exchange with all levels of income. Would restaurants, such as McDonald’s, make any money if they sold bacteria-contaminated food? Would unscrupulous doctors last if they performed unnecessary surgery?
The statists would like you to believe so. They conjure up ideas of rampant anarchy and uncontrollable irrationality. It almost comes as a natural thought, that all people are cheaters, not honest. But of the people with whom you choose to have relationships, would they turn on these values if they were rich?
What would these people lose if they took the shortest route to acquire money? To be dishonest and without integrity is an act of self-immolation. Bernie Madoff was not an example of freedom run amok.
The statists will say that I am painting an extreme picture, that they actually want only “small” amounts of redistribution or “some” taxes; they don’t want full control, only partial. But if we accept their premise, this distorted idea of morality, our road to serfdom is all but certain. The “partial” statist will always be undermined by the more “moral” controlling statist, moving further and further to complete control. We must reject their so-called view of morality on the ground level. Below is a partial list of the moral issues that must be faced:
1. The demonization of the profit-motive. To them, man does not have the right to his own life, what he earns. The contracts made between the employer and employee are not good enough; they must give more. We must understand that workers and executives have rightfully given and received value by means of peaceful and voluntary trade. The money was obtained by the creation or exchange of value. Many do destroy this value by the justification of forceful redistribution. For example, bailing out failing banks, stimulus packages, food stamps and corporate welfare. This ideology is not how society is helped, and not how our civilization evolves or moves forward.
2. The blame of the free market — or individualism — for the government’s failures. In any case, you will see the rise of prosperity parallel to the level of free-marketeering a country invokes, for rich and poor. When things go wrong, and they do in free societies, but never to the extent of pure statist ones, a crisis is equivocated, and the finger is pointed at someone and says “look at what he has, lynch him, he’s rich, he has taken it all and is the reason for your misery.” It’s because of “greed.”
Then there is an equivocation of what is at fault, unharnessed capitalism. The prescription is more government; the cycle continues. The free market creates value; it is the intervention of government that stagnates and cripples free creativity in the pursuit of happiness. You can see the clear experiments in action from East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Hong Kong and greater China, and now, to some extent, the espousal of the majority of people in Greece, Italy and France.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
The more government intervention and planning, the worse off its citizens are. With a government to protect only individual rights, men would have a self-interest in honesty. Honesty, integrity and pride are all values that can bring real wealth, not by colluding with the government. It would be in the best interests of private entrepreneurs to play honestly and provide harmonious relationships with the voluntary decisions of society, or they wouldn’t win their dollars.
3. Many see money as an end. This is an important concept to understand. Money is only a tool; it brings more choices, but what you produce is what you value. Whether it is a family, relationships, working for the poor; it is all related to what you produce. And long-term happiness is directly correlated with value. This is why the left champions spending, wealth redistribution, and why it doesn’t work. They claim the “moral responsibility” of redistribution or “paying your fair share.” They either fail or refuse to understand what value really is.
When it is redistributed, that is what destroys value. It sedates individuals from finding ways to contribute value. The wealth redistributors are no different from the unscrupulous Wall-Streeters and Big Bankers either, the looters of wealth. They instead use political pull to acquire material goods. Bernie Madoff, Kenneth Lay and Andrew Fastow cannot survive in pure capitalism; they obviously could not survive in a society of honest men. They didn’t understand production is what brings happiness.
4. “Rights” are rights to action, not to someone else’s work. You do not have a right to the work of another man, whether it is health care, insurance coverage or picking cotton. You do not have the right to enslave others to some undefinable anticoncept such as “the common good.”
5. The acceptance of the morality of self-sacrifice. This is the most important point of all. And this also goes to the idea of nationalism, patriotism and the common good. This is rooted in Kantian philosophy and has followed through Marx, Hegel, the Pope, religious leaders and even politicians such as Bush and Obama.
To be clear, Immanuel Kant tried to save religion from the onslaughts of science and reason. He understood perfectly well the idea of individualism, with it selfishness, and wanted to destroy it. Self-sacrifice is the core issue that is shared by too many; religious Republicans, including Paul Ryan, agree to the nobility.
All of the following examples have some “morality” based in self-sacrifice: Christianity, the quasi-religious idea of the “common good” or even to the Earth in religious environmentalism. It’s not moral, they say, to be selfish. It’s not moral to pursue your own goals, your career, your dreams, your happiness — unless you are doing it for the common good or for our form of self-sacrifice.
Self-destruction is essentially moral; selfishness is not.
But it is absolutely moral to have self-esteem, selfishness and greed, but not self-destructive greed, as in the case of Bernie Madoff, but what you earn through honest trade. If you harness these morals, you will find the utmost happiness. If we champion this idea of selfishness instead of shunning it, we will see a society of willing and capable men, not of victims with consistent excuses and finger-pointing. We have to take the moral high ground and reverse the destructive act of self-sacrifice.
I can only give you this small glimpse of objectivism and the ideas of Ayn Rand. However, if you want to know more, or if you want to understand these ideas, start by reading the book “Free Market Revolution,” just released last month.
