Socialism and the bottom 10%

Life can be cruel. It is our job (in defining gov't) not to talk about how life should be, but think about how we can make life best for all members of society, especially the poor.

Capitalism, which uses our own greed and selfishness to keep cruelty in check, is currently the best known system for raising the standard of living for the poor. Free market countries have longer lifespans, less disease, and less poverty for the poorest citizens.

Capitalism includes secrets and cartels, but is not unique in that capacity. Socialism includes corruption and lying more often, because power is held by an elite class. Free markets check these lies more easily because power is distributed to all citizens who are free to start a corrupt business or an honest one. The honest businesses will do better than the dishonest and we all end up with less corruption.

Socialism, in every case it has been tried, has reduced the quality of life for the bottom 90% of the population. The government has stopped the free market from functioning in every country where we currently see rampant food shortages, starvation, disease, short life spans, huge amounts of corruption, and low access to health care.

Nationalizing "too big to fail" industries makes us all worse off at the expense of those business owners.

We can imagine that we will find noble men and women to be the leaders of a socialized country, but it never happens. No group of leaders has ever come to power and avoided terrorizing their people, and that terror is always especially cruel for the poorest people.

It's hard for us to imagine that allowing a lot of cruel business men to run around trying to trick us out of our money is the best solution, but experience shows that somehow, a free system improves the lives of the poor better than a benevolent system which attempts to directly aid the bottom of the society.

We think that the rich get richer, and that is the way of a free market, but that is not necessarily the case; free markets bring new wealth into the world and help everyone become wealthier. Socialistic policies move the world in the opposite direction, resulting in less wealth for everyone, and insure that lawmakers and their friends become wealthier.

When you or I cannot start a business easily, and we are forced to work low paying jobs for someone who already owns a business, that keeps the rich richer, and us poorer.

With less regulations the poor can more easily start a burger stand and take some money from McDonald's -- but with regulations (health codes, zoning laws) McDonald's gets all the business and the poor guy who can make really good burgers goes back to working for McDonald's.

Further, if the government decides to provide free burgers for everyone regardless of the quality of the burger, no one would ever be able to enjoy his quality burgers -- now there are two barriers: first, it is too expensive to start a regulated burger place, and second, he won't get any more business than shitty burger joints.

The lesson here is that when we hear nice things from politicians, promising rainbows and fairies with glitter on top, we should think first about who will benefit most from the law.

In the case of socialized health care the answer is fairly obvious -- health insurance companies and big pharma will benefit most. They are the current owners of the biggest burger joints, and we are the consumer who will never taste that poor man's super-burger. (or Dr. House's sweet diagnostic skills)

The law will serve to insure that the elite stay rich and the poor stay poor. We should all be supporting the poor expert burger guy, and not the elites who already own McDonald's.