‘Seize the Moment’

George Rebane

So exhorts The Economist (here), Britain’s famous weekly ‘newspaper’ since 1843 that has metamorphosed over the years into a leftwing trumpet with an international audience.  The lead editorial in its 23may20 issue counsels countries, especially the US, to use the coronavirus pandemic to include in their government aid machinations additional laws, regulations, codes, restrictions, taxes, fees, fines, … to advance the global socialist agenda while their citizens are focused on maintaining health and hearth.

The number one supernumerary policy having nothing to do with the pandemic relief involves climate change legislation and subsidies.  They are more open than Team Pelosi about not wasting this crisis – “The covid-19 crisis reveals how hard it will be to tackle climate change – and creates a unique chance to do so.”  Specific recommendations focus on first instigating new “carbon pricing”, their code for passing massive new carbon taxes which “schemes” they claim will “use the power of the market to incentivise consumers and firms to cut their emissions, thus ensuring that the shift from carbon happens in the most efficient way possible.”

Anyone with even a smidgen of capitalism in their veins knows that such government dictates have nothing to do with “the power of the market”.  In enforcing the use of uneconomical alternative energy sources with the government gun simply mangles the markets beyond recognition, and in its wake leaves an economy mired in ‘mother-may-I’ mandates that will impede economic recovery wherever it seeks purchase to climb out of its current hole.

Socialists use their gross misunderstanding (or cynical ignoring) of the ‘Broken Windows Fallacy’ (here) first illuminated by Frederic Bastiat a little after The Economist was launched.  In his ‘That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen’ Bastiat introduces us to the important economic concepts of “crowding out” which denies the existence of “idle resources”, and the little recognized distinction between wealth and employment.  The parable has a hooligan break a baker’s window which act is ameliorated, actually even celebrated, by onlookers as being beneficial to the economy in that it now will create extra business for the glazier when the baker spends to replace his broken window (that which is seen).  However, this creates no new wealth or work since the baker had other uses for the money he lost, uses that would have expanded his business creating more wealth and other income for his suppliers (that which is not seen).

Socialist economists like Paul Krugman agree with the crowd in the fable, and in their ideologically-blindered, profound ignorance don’t recognize that “if that which is not seen is taken into consideration, because it is a negative fact, as well as that which is seen, because it is a positive fact, it will be understood that neither industry in general, nor the sum total of national labor, is affected, whether windows are broken or not.”  And so it will go with the funding and created jobs of climate change to replace existing, cheap energy sources, with manmade make-work before the market is ready to accept them.  We will never know what other unseen advances and social benefits we will deny ourselves by implementing such still uncompetitive ‘sustainable energy sources’ through the seen artifices like punitive carbon taxing.

Which now brings us to the more fundamental crisis that pre-dates the pandemic – why our country is terminally polarized and “why we hate each other”.  The real answer to those questions is more often than not papered over by various kinds of feel-good pabulum.  An example is the op-ed ‘Why We Hate Each Other’ by Scottie Hart in the 28may20 Union.  She cites “solid research” by sociologists that point the finger at our loneliness being caused by modern technology-induced isolation.  Put simply, our online virtual relationships are not cutting it.  “A wide array of prominent health organizations now recognize deep, pervasive loneliness as a major public health issue, eroding our lives and often prematurely ending them. … Even before COVID-19, long-term trends have changed, and will continue to change our lives. As we negotiate the enormous shift from an industrial, manufacturing world to a near-virtual, technological world, it is no wonder we feel disoriented and vulnerable.”

Ms Hart is a self-avowed, good-hearted liberal who totally misses the deeper schism between us.  The country now is home to two cohorts of citizens with profoundly different beliefs about what constitutes a beneficial and preferred socio-economic structure for maximizing our quality of life.  Those of the various flavors of the collectivist Left see an ever-encompassing growing government that will ultimately provide succor, sufficiency, equality, and social justice to all its citizens through central planning and control, a social structure in which citizens will gladly trade their liberties and freedom for promised risk-free living where the meritocratic competition between the competent and incompetent will be banished forever.  This course has been successfully pursued now for over fifty years, and there is no indication that it will do anything but accelerate.

The various flavors of the conservetarian Right see the Left’s pursuits as leading to an enforced egalitarian amalgam ruled over by a corrupt elite that wields all power.  Given all the diverse human frailties, the Right recognizes that life does contain more than a modicum of risk for any individual in their pursuit of happiness.  But that risk is worth taking within a society that recognizes and promotes individual initiative and enterprise, with all the necessary freedoms and liberties, under a social contract based on laws under which we are all treated equally.  And yes, the outcomes there will be unequal where those who can and do will naturally want to provide for those who can’t or won’t in order to maintain the social order.

Such views are intrinsically incompatible within one sovereign nation-state, and that is why we are polarized and, as the Ms Harts among us observe, that we ‘hate each other’.  Today we are two incompatible countries trying to live within a single border under an increasingly dysfunctional state.

Comments

[rlcrabb]

I'd rather live in a capitalist economy than a socialist economy, but when capitalism seems determined to wring every last penny from every resource on the planet with little regard for the consequences,what will your grandchildren inherit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bshz1reMTVY&fbclid=IwAR12ZBAjvuvZZczcR6wst9hWy6mcdaf6kdSVdpZhGC2u2j7jYu0h9WhSCHk

[Gregory]

Crabbie... I hate to break it to you, but that was a MOVIE. F-i-c-t-i-o-n. Not Galaxy-Questish historical documents.

Thank you for worrying about the children and grandchildren of others, but we got it.

[rlcrabb]

I guess you haven't noticed, bubba, but we're living in a badly written sci-fi novel.

[George Rebane]

rlcrabb 349pm - Bless you my son. And I would counsel that it takes a whole lot less to temper capitalism, than the effort needed to even slow down rapacious socialism. One wants to maintain a vibrant and prosperous customer base that creates wealth to float ALL boats; the other wants only to increase the concentration of power and control for the controllers who seek more power. For them, their 'customer base' is easy to keep compliant and contained under the government gun.

Before capitalism caught on, the only way to amass wealth was to take it from those who harvested or dug it out of the ground. The king dependent only on his destitute peasants was soon overrun by the king with stolen wealth who could hire more troops, and who then created more destitution in order to concentrate what little wealth was available from the conquered. Socialism has shown itself to be exactly like that in the modern era, adding the fraudulent claim of a moral imperative to equally divide ever smaller amounts of extracted wealth. The guiding shibboleth of the socialist worker - 'They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.'

[Gregory]

I guess you haven't noticed, Crabby, but we're really NOT living in a badly written sci-fi novel.

[Scott O]

crabb - "...when capitalism seems determined to wring every last penny from every resource on the planet..."
There's your problem, crabb.
'capitalism' is a system of wealth creation, accretion and transfer. It has no more ability to plan or direct anything than your kitchen table.
Humans (some of them) can certainly abuse our natural resources and those directing the non-capitalistic ones have been the worst offenders. A thriving, free market capitalistic society is the best defense against rapacious and greedy destruction of the environment.
Claiming that we live in a badly written sci-fi novel is a lame and ignorant excuse for those unwilling to face reality.

[Scott O]

BTW - I wish the author of the article in the Union would speak for himself. I don't 'hate' people I disagree with on political matters. There is no point in expending energy in that way.

[Don Bessee]

But they do @1031.

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

Saw this video and thought of Ms. Hart standing as the peacemaker in the middle between the two sides. Funny, but true. :)

MASK VS. NO MASK

[Bill Tozer]

MASK VS NO MASK link
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/05/mask-vs-no-mask.php