PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
1. Many express bafflement and repugnance at the difference in wealth among individuals. How, they ask, could individuals differ so in what they deserve?
2. George Bernard Shaw...said: 'A division in which one woman gets a shilling and another three thousand shillings for an hour of work has no moral sense in it: it is just something that happens, and that ought not to happen. Shaw, The Intelligent Womans Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, p. 22.
3. The basis for this view is that wealth is collective, and hence must be divided up in order to be dispensed, followed by the assumption that this division currently has no principle involved but 'just happens,' In reality, most income is not distributed, so the fashionable metaphor of 'income distribution' is misleading. Most income is earned by the production of goods and services, and how much that production is 'really' worth is a question that need not be left for third parties to determine, since those who directly receive the benefits of that production know better than anyone else how much that production is worth to them - and have the most incentives to seek alternative ways of getting that production as inexpensively as possible. Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies, p. 150.
4. One of the founding myths of the religion of Liberalism is that of social justice. As Thomas Sowell points out (in Intellectuals and Society,) the Left believes that wealth should be shared, ignoring the fact that by way of capitalism, it is shared in the most efficient manner, through trade. Conveniently unasked, is where did wealth come from? Pointedly, it did not come from heaven, like manna, and spread evenly on the ground! No, it was created by individual expenditure of effort, and by individual willingness to take risk! Social justice thesis requires a belief that wealth-manna simply falls equally on all, and if anyone has more than another, it must have been stolen, gotten by cheating- the possessor of more must be a thief! To the Left, in spite of one hundred and fifty years of the most extensive and tragic disprovals of Marxism, the possession of property = proof of theft! Mamet, The Secret Knowledge.
a. Money is merely the most efficient way of keeping track of the production of individuals, of their work, and the capacity of that work to benefit their fellows. Government, which doesnt produce this product, can do little with it but waste it: it cannot allocate it with greater justice than the Free Market. It should provide only those services that the Free Market was incapable of providing, such as the roads, the judiciary, streetlights, Legislature, and the common defense. Ibid.
5. Yet, from the earliest of Progressive administrations, we find the belief that government bureaucrats, and technocrats, and agencies know better than those involved in the myriad voluntary transactions as to how much each should have.
a. Progressives looked to insulate administrators not only from the chief executive, but from politics altogether. It is the Progressives' desire to free bureaucratic agencies from the confines of politics and the law that allows us to trace the origins of the administrative state to their political thought. The idea of separating politics and administration--of grounding a significant portion of government not on the basis of popular consent but on expertise--was a fundamental aim of American Progressivism and explains the Progressives' fierce assault on the Founders' separation-of-powers constitutionalism. The Birth of the Administrative State: Where It Came From and What It Means for Limited Government
b. Perhaps the most fallacious assumption of all is that third parties with neither experience nor expertise can make better decisions based on a belief that the wealth of a nation should simply be spread around.
2. George Bernard Shaw...said: 'A division in which one woman gets a shilling and another three thousand shillings for an hour of work has no moral sense in it: it is just something that happens, and that ought not to happen. Shaw, The Intelligent Womans Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, p. 22.
3. The basis for this view is that wealth is collective, and hence must be divided up in order to be dispensed, followed by the assumption that this division currently has no principle involved but 'just happens,' In reality, most income is not distributed, so the fashionable metaphor of 'income distribution' is misleading. Most income is earned by the production of goods and services, and how much that production is 'really' worth is a question that need not be left for third parties to determine, since those who directly receive the benefits of that production know better than anyone else how much that production is worth to them - and have the most incentives to seek alternative ways of getting that production as inexpensively as possible. Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies, p. 150.
4. One of the founding myths of the religion of Liberalism is that of social justice. As Thomas Sowell points out (in Intellectuals and Society,) the Left believes that wealth should be shared, ignoring the fact that by way of capitalism, it is shared in the most efficient manner, through trade. Conveniently unasked, is where did wealth come from? Pointedly, it did not come from heaven, like manna, and spread evenly on the ground! No, it was created by individual expenditure of effort, and by individual willingness to take risk! Social justice thesis requires a belief that wealth-manna simply falls equally on all, and if anyone has more than another, it must have been stolen, gotten by cheating- the possessor of more must be a thief! To the Left, in spite of one hundred and fifty years of the most extensive and tragic disprovals of Marxism, the possession of property = proof of theft! Mamet, The Secret Knowledge.
a. Money is merely the most efficient way of keeping track of the production of individuals, of their work, and the capacity of that work to benefit their fellows. Government, which doesnt produce this product, can do little with it but waste it: it cannot allocate it with greater justice than the Free Market. It should provide only those services that the Free Market was incapable of providing, such as the roads, the judiciary, streetlights, Legislature, and the common defense. Ibid.
5. Yet, from the earliest of Progressive administrations, we find the belief that government bureaucrats, and technocrats, and agencies know better than those involved in the myriad voluntary transactions as to how much each should have.
a. Progressives looked to insulate administrators not only from the chief executive, but from politics altogether. It is the Progressives' desire to free bureaucratic agencies from the confines of politics and the law that allows us to trace the origins of the administrative state to their political thought. The idea of separating politics and administration--of grounding a significant portion of government not on the basis of popular consent but on expertise--was a fundamental aim of American Progressivism and explains the Progressives' fierce assault on the Founders' separation-of-powers constitutionalism. The Birth of the Administrative State: Where It Came From and What It Means for Limited Government
b. Perhaps the most fallacious assumption of all is that third parties with neither experience nor expertise can make better decisions based on a belief that the wealth of a nation should simply be spread around.