Americans for the most part (and this goes for the world at large), are insane. No question about it. In forty five years I have not seen any regression from the entitlement attitude that permeates our society.
If the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing in the hope of realizing different results, then there is no question about my declaration. America is filled with a lot of insane people.
My neighbor declares that mankind does not care enough about each other to see to it that healthcare is extended to every person. He is convinced it ought to be FREE. He of all people, who is older than I and just as well educated should know better. How can a person get healthcare free? For thousands of years man's societies have been based on private enterprise. (Oh Please! Feudalism and every other -ism is merely the plundering, legal or not, of the basic element of private enterprise--the person works to survive.) This is the basis of capitalism--what seems to be considered the dirtiest of words these days. The only place I know of where a person can be freely treated for illness is in the aboriginal tribes of backwater third-world nations. Let's go back to that shall we?
Since our Western civilization is based on private enterprise, and a system of money for exchange of service rendered, there are only two ways that healthcare can be obtained "free"--charity, or contract. I don't know of any doctors who last long as charity providers, simply because they must compensate those who provide them with the necessities of life, and their medical materials. A communal society such as the aborigines operates on a principle different than profit. What my neighbor believes is free, is not free at all. When the government taxes the people in order to give to one, it isn't free, it is plunder. Plunder of not only the taxed person's property, but plunder and corruption of their moral values. This is not contract, it is fraud. If one of us were caught taking from our neighbor without their express permission it is a commission of theft. But if several of us get together and vote in favor of taking from our neighbor in spite of their objection, it is termed a "benefit" to which any of the group's voters have now entitled themselves. If the plundered neighbor objects, they are penalized, ultimately with imprisonment. Great system of charity, that. Falls right in line with the kind of theft Wall Street Bankers do each and every day.
You can try to explain this form of legalized plunder to fellows like my neighbor next door and their brain shorts out. They insist this is freedom. But it is only the kind of freedom that exists in an aboriginal society which is not based on property, and therefore profit. Is my neighbor being compassionate and charitable in supporting such a scheme for funding healthcare for all? In my book he is a thief. This isn't charity or compassion for his fellow citizens at all. His entitlement ethic has blinded him to the destruction he is causing to his friend's and neighbor's wealth, and ultimately his own.
"Think positive, things will get better as the system is fine tuned," he says. What a G.D. short memory he has! This kind of government meddling in the citizen's life has been the source of the devaluation of our hard-earned labor for over 200 years in America. Whenever government regulates or makes an edict, the result is the loss of more wealth than if the individual had managed things himself. Government has no incentive to be frugal, and further, in order to supply the cost of its multiple departments to provide the "service", MUST take more in legalized plunder than the actual cost of the "benefit", to cover it's own costs. Government does NOT produce wealth. It only consumes and redistributes it.
Get this through your heads, you insane Americans: Government does NOT produce wealth. It only consumes and redistributes it.
Anthony de Jasay wrote that "non-unanimous politics is redistributive (unanimous politics being an oxymoron and redundant), not just by taxes (wealth), but burdens and obligations imposed by collective choice (majority rule) do also, which necessarily atrophy conventions of civility, mutual support, respect for promises, contracts and property, self-maintenance of order, and the sanctioning of violations." Once these are shifted to the domain of government, Entitlement fills the vacuum, spurring ever wider redistribution of property and diminution of personal accountability. The result is a reduction in morals to its lowest operation, and a near communitarian state. This being the case, religion in its effort to reinvigorate moral behavior by legal edict administers the coup de grace of morality. But let us not here bequeath conventional religion with the entire disgrace. At its fundamental root lies the principle of the Mote and the Beam no matter what dogma you adhere to.
Alas, but this is futile. For there is no hope for a nation of insane citizens who are duped into thinking anything one gets from the Government is free, and everyone is entitled to every comfort of life.
Indeed, if there ARE any aliens on this planet, it is people like me who were wrongfully born here to live among such nutcases.
SethSmee
References
Anthony de Jasay Against Politics
Frederic Bastiat The Law
