They doth protest too much....
While the Tea Party is judged - with news media fostering a judge-jury-and-executioner role - as a kind of homeless shelter for racists, the "Occupy (fill in the blank)" movement has been hailed as Democracy's great hope. The topic of media favoritism is a favorite of this blog, but there's a much more serious issue at hand, which is the conviction of the "Occupy" folks that capitalism is evil.That such a statement is taken as a perfectly acceptable and even laudable stance is a dire warning for our way life: a significant portion of the population has been brought up with this notion as a kind of gospel. Don't believe it? Look through a college course catalog, read student papers, listen to the somber pronouncements by supposedly wise men and women that equitable distribution of wealth is not only a desirable goal, but a moral imperative.
With this in hand, it makes perfect sense to camp out at the doorstep of Wall Street, and denounce "Those *** with their ***-in' yachts", and such (Hat tip: A&G). Never mind that it is crony capitalism that is largely responsible for the corrupt bubbles that have plagued homeowners and shareholders alike; what really irks the protesters is the notion that some people have so much, and too many have so little. No further analysis is needed; the mere fact that some super-rich guy has tons more money than you or I do is diagnosed as proof positive that an injustice has taken place, thus the need for "Social Justice", a recently-coined phrase that, while little more than fascism in a new suit, has captured the imagination of the young - well, not really; there's plenty of adults around who ought to know better, but apparently, the much-vaunted "Critical thinking" that was supposedly being offered as instruction in our higher-education system was merely a new pair of blinders.
Gone is the insight by Adam Smith that a mutually-beneficial exchange actually enriches both parties to a transaction; it is much more satisfying to locate and condemn the perceived evil of wealth; the thought process returns to the time when wealth was something that grew in the ground, or was picked off a tree - there was a finite amount of it, and the only way to possess it was by taking it away from someone else.
Flash forward to the present, where we are treated to lectures about the "Ever-widening gap between rich and poor" which is apparently the greatest threat to our social fabric. It's a classic case of misdiagnosing a symptom for the wrong illness. One of the best illustrations of the "Occupy" movement's inherent contradictions was its love for using technology to push its platforms; thus did we see protesters, blogging, tweeting, IM-ing, Facebook-updating, flash-mobbing, and iphoning, all the time rhapsodizing about its purported disdain for corporate greed, while lining the pockets of - gasp! - corporations!
But this amusing juxtaposition is merely an illustration of thought gone off the rails. It's time to de-throne the notion that wealth is evil; a single semester of studying the ideas of Adam Smith would do wonders to our national dialogue, but sober analysis is just not as exhilarating as denouncing an enemy; thus do we have an army of educators, technocrats, and government-dependents, shouting that our salvation lies in state administration of - well, everything. As usual, those who are so quick to denounce government sloth and waste are at the same time apparently willing to turn over the entire notion of private-party contracts, which has formed the foundation for America's success.
Well, say the objectors: America is in fact not successful; just look at all the poverty, graffiti, crime, inner-city schools, and such. Again, the disease is not capitalism, but it's more fulfilling, somehow, to blame the image of Monopoly men, fat-cat bankers, and corporate jets going to Las Vegas than it is to figure out why so many children are being raised in one-parent households (if that many).
The protestors would do well to look beyond the actions of banks, which primarily exist to invest money in as many different places as possible, and look to the examples of government collusion with business that result in so much market imbalance. While GE's CEO lectures us on the need for more tax revenue, his company's accomplishment of avoiding taxes completely last year gains little scrutiny. While Barney Frank announces "Retirement" after decades of enriching himself through his Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac shenanigans, the rest of the population now has to pay for its failures, number one as a company, and number two, in the form of a severely distressed housing market, which was driven into the ditch primarily by those who now claim that government must do "even more" of the same to solve the problem that was its own creation.
And the view that wealth, and capitalism in particular, are to be accused, tried, and executed, should be put back into the sewer of history.
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Presidential pontification:
If it's Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama, Romney can win.
If it's Newt Gingrich vs. Barack Obama, Obama will win.
If it's Romney-Perry, or even Perry-Romney, Obama could lose.
If it's Romney-Newt, or Newt-Romney, Obama will win.
This is probably not what the so-called "Smart" money is saying, nor is it the line at Vegas, but that's our offering for the "Prediction" racket for 2012.
posted by ET @ 12:33 PM
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