The Solution
To Talk Of Many Things—Living In Interesting Times
Part 1 of 5
 

First causes are the province of theologians and philosophers; modern economics and politics have none. Every cause is itself a result of foregoing causes, the intended and unintended consequences of previous legislation forming the basis of new, more expansive, often rectifying law. Everyone seems to forget that both politics and economics are ultimately rooted in the biology and psychology of human beings.

Modern democratic-socialism evolved from a desire to encourage responsible behavior. Civil authorities intended to mold personal conduct using impersonal laws, to build great societies based on a new morality. Government-furnished and guaranteed benefits and services, supported by deficit financing, were portrayed as the shortcut to utopia, to an affluent society with prosperity for all.

Today, this siren philosophy so captivates most people that they suffer outrageous fortune without comprehension, not to mention an absence of the promised benefits.
 

Deficit financing gave the plan popular appeal. Its proponents never said it had no cost. They promised the bill would not come today—that when it did, it would be paid by somebody else.

Oddly enough, the scheme worked; impersonal laws modified human behavior. Regrettably, the changes were often in the wrong direction, away from the intended goals. Individuals, lacking control of their own fate, rejected personal responsibility.

Contradictory claims and counterclaims aside, the results seem plain enough—traditional associations of the individual with family, community, state and nation disintegrate daily, replaced with new social alliances, everything from local street gangs to nationally organized special interest groups. What else could one expect in a society based on plunder, much of it legal?

Government programs are driven by distribution of costs for individualized benefits. Public clamor for more benefits escalates from desires to needs to government-granted civil rights. An individual, deprived of natural rights to life, liberty and personal property, joins a group in hopes of claiming a larger share of the loot. In the process, the American dream crumbles.

Contrary to the beliefs of some, this was not a communist or socialist conspiracy but the logical outcome of philosophical error. The ethical ideal of equal treatment under rational law, rooted in religious teachings and the American Constitution, was inappropriately extended to include an equitable distribution of the national wealth, whatever that might be. Government assumed this task by popular request, attempting its enforcement through formulation of public policy.

But utility as a measure of human satisfaction derived from the ownership or use of wealth is always unequal. Civil administrators, unable to determine its fair distribution on that basis, must eventually resort to equal distribution without due regard for its owners or producers. By their logic, law-abiding citizens and convicted criminals must each serve the same time in jail.

The government’s attempt at building an affluent society rested on its regulatory authority and a redistribution of income scheme founded in fiscal and monetary policy. It taxed production to subsidize welfare consumption, to direct capital investment within the private sector toward social programs, and to force productive individuals to forego the immediate purchase of consumer goods by shifting a substantial portion of their wages into a social security plan falsely sold to the public as an insurance program. Addition-ally, the government compounded national problems by using monetary policy to hide failures in the social agenda. With ever expanding debt finally overwhelming finite amounts of available labor and materials, the shortcut to utopia ended in a swamp.
 

Under an attack of democratic-socialism, generating ever higher social costs and a squeeze on profits, America abandoned its status as an industrial power. Capital investment in heavy industry deteriorated. Many U.S. corporations went from supplementing domestic manufacture with foreign production to total replacement. Formerly high-paying secure jobs in a relatively stable business and industrial environment disappeared.

On cue, the bureaucrats shift policy to encourage more business investment. Gross domestic product reluctantly climbs. Employment increases, but not in the categories of jobs essential to raising the standard of living of the masses. Low-paying, low-productivity service jobs keep the average down. Along with corporate downsizing and an exploding debt-service burden, the nation faces increasing disparities in income and wealth. America starts to resemble a banana republic, an unequal society hidden, to some extent, behind massive amounts of debt.

The psychological consequences of socialism are as predictable as gravity. Honest, hardworking people ultimately give in to human weakness; producers and traders become non-producers, marchers and moochers. An ever larger segment of the population grows terminally shiftless. Government officials respond with additional socialization—day care centers that throw more people into an already overloaded job market; job training programs for low-paying jobs, or worse, for jobs that do not exist; tax incentives that further distort an economy warped by years of tinkering—The list is endless.

As centralized civil administration becomes more efficient, public ‘needs’ grow larger and more urgent, not less. Plagued with a decaying society, average, ordinary citizens struggle for solutions and willingly accept as medicine, from the hands of charismatic political swindlers, more of the same poison that is killing them.

Public dissatisfaction with government increases. Welfare recipients resent their low standard of living and fear being locked into a permanent underclass. Producers resent having their wealth expropriated and expended on projects they consider wasteful. In the end America faces the same situation as the former Soviet Union: Citizens are simply unwilling to cooperate with a system unable to keep its promises.

Eventually most of the public and their political leaders reach general agreement to drain the swamp. The difficulty?—There is nowhere for the water to go.

Even a major sustained act of political will cannot accomplish the task under the current rules. Human nature being the given, the public will not stand for the required sacrifice. Ingenuity offers the best hope for finding solutions to the nation’s problems.