Reality brings... cheer

Margaret Thatcher's old line really strikes home: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

Monty at Ace of Spaces has some sobering thoughts.

Half of the US population, in short, lives not by the fruits of their own toil but by the (coerced) charity of others, as filtered and distilled through the hand of the government. This can not -- it can not, by the laws of economics and simple physics -- continue. The mathematics of the problem trump even philosophical issues of fairness, of governance, of ethics or law. The mathematics simply will not allow it.

Consider the French. They are rioting over a proposal to raise the national age of retirement from 60 to 62. Germany's is 65 (going to 67) -- how happy will German workers be to subsidize the early retirements of their French neighbors? The French labor unions are on a rampage, denouncing the move as a violation of a "promise" the country made to the workers. (If this reminds you of California, New Jersey, New York, and Michigan -- well, the situations are closely analogous.) The word "promise" is illuminating: people have stopped thinking of social welfare as a "benefit" or a "perquisite", and have begun instead to think of it as a "right" or a "promise"... Reality will assert itself, one way or another.

Mean old reality and facts. It also gets into the falling birthrates and the question of immigration. Hmmm... familiar.

If the governments of the West have an excuse -- however weak and puling -- it is this: they meant well. It is not wrong to wish that every citizen have free health care, free food, free housing, and some money to spend even if they have no job. It's not wrong; it's just impossible. Health care is a service that has huge costs associated with it. These costs cannot be "magicked" away just because we find them inconvenient. Food must be grown, transported, packaged, and prepared -- all costs that must be accounted for. Shelter does not precipitate out of thin air.

But if we mean well then it has to work! Otherwise, well, it'd all be unfair!

I'm remined of this bit I saw on Robb Allen's blog where he gives up on a gun-banner due to her... specialness.

She doesn’t bring up any valid points, and is as lost as they get.
She believes it’s legal to sell guns to a felon because felons can get guns. Logic like that is impossible to argue against since you can only bring facts and logic is wasted on the illogical.

This also shows a naive and deluded trust in the power of the state and the compliance of the populace. It's very magical thinking, all that needs to be done to stop something is to pass a law and everyone will fall in line.


Just like how "free things are nice", people should get free things, therefore the goverment should and can give free things to people.