Sunday, October 16, 2016

Socialism

When I want a break from reading history, politics or economics, I often pick up a novel. One "escapist" author I really like (if reading about the war with terrorists can be considered escapism) is Brad Thor. I recommend his books. I'm currently reading one of his novels, Full Black, from 2011. Thor gets what is going on. I just pray there are really characters like his good guys taking the fight to the enemy we are at war with. In the novel, one of the very bad guys is a multi-billionaire, James Standing, who has turned on the system that made him rich (maybe based on George Soros?) and wants to destroy capitalism, thus is funding and directing terrorists. A journalist, Julia from a business paper is interviewing him:
Standing: "You have given me the usual shallow, shopworn defense of capitalism, but you haven't given me one concrete reason why my ideas are so unreasonable."
Julia: One concrete reason? ... I can actually give you four. First, it is morally wrong to take anything that doesn't belong to you and having the state do the taking doesn't magically make it okay or right. Second, socialism has been tried repeatedly and has never worked anywhere. Yet each new crop of elites thinks they can enact socialism and this time it will be different. They stick the socialist fork back in the electrical outlet expecting a totally different outcome, but it always ends up the same. Third, when people become reliant on the state, that reliance erodes their self-respect, their sense of self-worth, their work ethic and their independence. Finally, socialism promotes class envy and class warfare. The makers resent the takers for draining their resources and the takers resent the makers because no matter how much the takers take, they always want more. They erroneously believe that the makers have an abundant supply from which they should be continuously compelled to give. But as Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

Yup.

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