This is a GREAT parable, one I received via email from the great Paul Mannix and one that sparked an interesting exchange I'll share here;
A Realization and My Dog
From Danasic’s Blog on SodaHead
http://www.sodahead.com/other/my-dog/blog-227619/?page=1&postId=5222095#post_5222095
My dog sleeps about 20 hours a day. He has his food prepared for him. He can eat whenever he wants, 24/7/365. His meals are provided at no cost to him.
He visits the Dr. once a year for his checkup, and again during the year if any medical needs arise. For this He pays nothing, and nothing is required of him.
He lives in a nice neighborhood in a house that is much larger than He needs, but He is not required to do any upkeep.
If He makes a mess, someone else cleans it up. He has his choice of luxurious places to sleep. He receives these accommodations absolutely free. He is living like a king, and has absolutely no expenses whatsoever.
All of his costs are picked up by others who go out and earn a living every day.
I was just thinking about all this, and suddenly it hit me like a brick in the head, Holy S#!t, my dog is a illegal Democrat!
H/T to Paul Mannix for sending this via email and to Danasic at SodaHead
A Liberal Acquaintance Responded;
That’s not how liberals and Democrats LIVE! It’s what they want for us EVERYONE!
Why should we all be reduced to mere “wage-slaves”?
Why shouldn’t we all have our most basic needs provided for free by a benevolent government/owner who cares about and for all of us?
What exactly is wrong with that vision?
My Response;
Well, since you asked, it is WORK, those labors you deride as “wage-slavery” that provides all the commodities (things) that satisfy our most basic needs and our less basic desires.
Food, clothing, shelter, heath care, etc. are ALL provided by a combination of investment Capital and individual labor/effort supplied by free individuals who sell their labors for the wages they receive.
The Command (government-run) Economy has NEVER worked and it’s been tried in a wide variety of methods across virtually all of mankind’s history, first in the form of Monarchies, then in dictatorial Theocracies and finally in secular Centralized States or Tyrannies, from the freely elected Third Reich, to the revolutionary Maoist government of Communist China, to the equally revolutionary and tyrannical former USSR and its satellites, like Albania and Bulgaria...in EVERY case, those command economies failed miserably.
The original United States (that is the USA up to around 1912 when Bernard Baruch and J. P. Morgan forged the current heavily government-regulated market-based economy) was the ONLY human society to run counter to the command-economy and the many tyrannies common to mankind’s history. The USA was founded on the principles of private property rights, free and open markets and individual self-ownership and the complete personal responsibility that comes with that.
That total personal responsibility makes seeking a benevolent owner/provider, not only UN-American, but fundamentally ANTI-American, as well.
America’s Founders didn’t create or “come up with” the idea that the people, the individual owns what he/she produces and the ideas they come up with, they merely recognized that (1) those are inviolate (sacred), innate principles that exist absent governments, democracies, or any other manmade parameters and (2) that adhering to those principles is the best way to produce the MOST prosperity for the MOST people.
The Command Economy can only function so long as the government is empowered to force, or “draft” ALL of its people into the kinds of work it feels it needs and that it deems each is most suited for. That kind of “labor draft,” or state-slavery is the most fundamental violation of personal freedom that can exist.
In short, there is simply no way for us to have even our most basic needs met “for free,” any more than there is a way to make it rain root beer. It just can’t happen, as all our needs are met by the production of commodities that must be produced via the labors of others and those who provide those labors are best off when they own their own labors and are responsible for their own needs regardless of how much or how little their labors are valued in the open/free market.
There is no short-cut. There is no better, or easier way...and universal “state-slavery” is certainly not a viable option to EVER consider, given its long and complete history of abject failure.
7 comments:
They don't want to be "wage slaves" but they want to "owned" by the government? Is someone pulling your leg?
No FS, those who claim to believe in a more collectivist/socialist society don't seem to regard government control and micromanaging our lives as "universal slavery."
I've heard some even claim that "When everyone is in that same position it's no longer really 'slavery.' "
While it is sought of a "The sky is green" kind of belief, it does seem to account for the fundamental naivete of most misguided Leftists.
Geez, and they think we're ignorant? hmph!
How exactly do these people think (and I use that term loosely when talking about liberals) the government gets it's money to operate and who is going to produce the goods they want handed to them?
I not only think their ideas are wrong, they are in no way based on ANY logical scenarios.
Your liberal commenter's "dream" is okay, I suppose, for a population of mindless sheeple. They call it utopia; I refer to it as udopia.
Either way, no such government has lasted. And such populations of sheeple have been grist for Nazis, Communists, the code of bushido, and now, Islamofascists.
The sooner we dispense with the current admin and Congress at the ballot box, the better our chances of continuing our American dream that's worked for more than two centuries.
"...the government gets it's money to operate and who is going to produce the goods they want handed to them?
"I not only think their ideas are wrong, they are in no way based on ANY logical scenarios." (Dan O)
They are NOT based on logic, but instead on feelings.
And the problem we face is that America hasn't really manufactured or PRODUCED much in decades and now people mistakenly believe we can create a "new economy" in which we don't have to produce actual THINGS or even VALUE....so that's a part of what we're up against.
Many on the Left mistakenly believe that government can simply print money and create "value" out of thin air....that is what they're promising to do now by seeking to "improve the economy via more government spending."
And YES, it's going to make for an even worse disaster!
"...no such government has lasted. And such populations of sheeple have been grist for Nazis, Communists, the code of bushido, and now, Islamofascists." (SF)
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That's true, but a major reason why we had the shift we did in 2008 was a hopelessly naive, misguided and DUMB mainstream media....a media that blamed the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent global credit crisis on "Bush's free market policies and his deregulation."
In FACT, Bush was as Keynesian (BIG Government) as his Dad and delivered over 1,000 pages of REGULATION EACH and EVERY year in office, including Sarbannes-Oxley one of the most far-reaching and expensive pieces of financial regulation in a half century!
The "ownership society" predicated on government pressuring and suing banks and brokers to give more loans to LOW INCOME (a/k/a "deadbeats") was NOT "deregulation," is was, in fact, OVER-regulation!
Keynesian policies and over-regulation are what caused our current and ongoing economic mess and since the MSM blamed the wrong policies, we've gotten HYPER-Keynesianism as the proposed "cure."
The coming result will be even more disastrous than what we feared in September of 2008.
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"The sooner we dispense with the current admin and Congress at the ballot box, the better our chances of continuing our American dream that's worked for more than two centuries." (SF)
Maybe. I'd say, "Hopefully," BUT (and it's an awfully BIG BUT), there are many, MANY devoted Keynesians within the GOP, so it's not merely about changing Parties, but getting the Right candidates into office....Conservative ones, rather than merely Republican ones.
We really need a whole new paradigm for this.
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