Sunday, July 22, 2007

Economics Made Very Simple

Economics, when it really boils down to it, comes down to one simple, cardinal rule;

If you don't work, you don't eat.

If there was just one person on the planet and that person didn't work to find food and find shelter he/she would die.

And even though there is more than one person on the planet, if everybody took the attitude, "I don't have to work" then as a whole since we don't work, we don't eat, we'd all die.

Therefore self-supportation or self-reliance is the single most honorable moral a human can have out of respect for his fellow man and society.

I will work, therefore I shall eat and therefore not rely upon you to take care of me.

However, the left finds refuge in the fact that if there's enough people on the planet and if they work hard enough, then there is a surplus of food and shelter and that some people don't have to work in order to eat. And the left (and I mean this in the sincerest sense) only has the power it does because it convinces people that "no, you really don't have to work in order to eat" and promises those weak-minded fools such a scenario.

Playing off of victimhood, conspiracy theories and any other half-baked reason they can find, the left convinces people they were deprived of food, deprived the opportunity to work, and therefore are entitled to eat at others' expense. And human nature is all too accommodating to this type of thinking because provides them with a benefit with no cost.

But that still doesn't change the cardinal rule that if you don't work, you don't eat.

So, even though common sense, just basic kindergartener common sense would prove this simple rule to be true, because such a large percentage of the population's livelihood is based on the opposite of this rule I find no greater joy in providing empirical evidence to prove them wrong.



For it seems that the freer a society is, the more one is allowed to pursue not just wealth, but allowed to keep the majority of their wealth, the more successful that society is, and not just for the individual, but for society as a whole.

And it is this that gets to the heart of the matter. If you are genuinely concerned about the poor, if you are genuinely concerned about advancing society and increasing the standards of living for ALL people, you would be the most ardent supporter of capitalism, low taxes, freedom and individualism. Alas, because of the left's vehement opposition to economic freedom, I am only left to conclude that the left uses "the advancement of the poor" as a farcical and cowardly cover argument to rationalize the transfer of wealth to themselves.

Craft and construe the argument however you want, it still doesn't change the fact that if you don't work, you don't eat.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

These words should be plastered over the doorways of every school, college, and government institution. "If you don't work, you don't eat."

Thanks for your blog. It makes for great reading!

Anonymous said...

How does this explain the idle rich?

Captain Capitalism said...

Andrew,

They had enough people work up enough surplus wealth to carry them through, effectively making them trust fund babies. Inevitably, if they don't work, they will run out of money. Might last a couple generations, but in the end somebody has to work.

Anonymous said...

I'm eating my deserts now, before I retire.

Sounds like a Libertarian philosophy.

They are in single digits. They will always be in single digits.

Anonymous said...

The sad truth is that you don't have to work to eat somebody else's food. Somebody has to work for anyone to eat, but the person who does the eating isn't always the same as the person who does the work.

The government is the fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else. Apparently that's supposed to produce good outcomes. At least, that's what the people who want to live at my expense tell me.

Alfred T. Mahan said...

"In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul:

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 'If you don't work you die.''"

R. Kipling