The citizens were weary with the Socialist government’s insistence on “More equality!” “Less Elitism!” and the constant flow of new regulations governing the proper procedure for composting fruit peelings, the maximum number of times each citizen could belch each day, proper disposal of the mortal remains of houseflies, etc. If this trend continued, the country would evidently wind up under the control of a handful of hard-line bureaucrats. Totalitarianism was only a step away.

So when the next elections came, a majority of voters voted for the Right. Then the Socialist cabinet had to resign and a Conservative-Farmer coalition government was installed.

The new government immediately set about getting rid of the odious restrictions and paralyzing red tape.

The Socialist Party learned from its defeat and control of the party passed to a more moderate wing. A few years later the Socialists again won the elections and formed the government. Their regulatory policy was much less bossy than before. They took care to sound out public opinion before instituting broad policy changes.

And they all lived happily on for ever after.

Rating: 1 / 5

Hayek’s philosophical bent is to justify maintenance a life of privilege and prosperity for a few built on the backs, blood, sweat and tears of the majority. Same as James Madison when he framed the US constitution to perpetuate and protect the estates of the “opulent minority” from the democratic will of the majority. The ONLY check and balance Madison incorporated in the US constitution was a triple veto in the hands of the rich to stifle any just leveling demanded by a majority of the people.

Toward an American Revolution

Exposing the Constitution and other Illusions

Jerry Fresia Chapter 3

The Constitution: Resurrection of An Imperial System

[...]

The so-called “free market” comes with baggage, otherwise known as fascism. You cannot have inequitable distribution of wealth/property without a coercive police state. Even Hayek bases his economic plan on having a socialized, public subsidized system of ‘law and order’ to protect the purloined ‘private’ property.

The unseemly redistribution of wealth, from the workers/producers to the parasitic middlemen employer/investor/landlord class is now being exposed for what it is, an unjust system where greed and unearned income is protected more than earned, honest income.

Suggested alternative reading:

First – the book Chavez gifted Obama:

* Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo H. Galeano, Introduction by Isabel Allende

* From Freedom To Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America by Gerry Spence

* Unjust Deserts: How The Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back by Gar Alperovitz

* Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century by Gerry Spence

* Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky

* Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

by Jack Weatherford

* Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolome de Las Casas

The system allowing ‘legal’ but immoral, unjust privatization of common knowledge and common natural resources cannot be sustained without a draconian fascist police state as we are now seeing built in the USA. Unbridled lazy unfair (oft spelled laissez faire) capitalism cannot exist and expand without protection of a coercive police state.

The time of the ‘opulent minority’ who’s true motto is “In Gold We Trust” is running out. It’s high time the wage slaves were set free from the control of others, from the rich who declare ‘their’ money gives them the right as ‘employers’ to decide who eats and who will be eaten. It’s time humans are allowed the basic rights all other animals enjoy – free access to nature’s bounty, restoration of the commons.

Benjamin Franklin, arguably the most able and intellectual of all the USA’s ‘founding fathers’, recognized the real source of wealth:

“Superfluous Property is the Creature of Society. Simple and mild Laws were sufficient to guard the Property that was merely necessary. The Savage’s Bow, his Hatchet, and his Coat of Skins, were sufficiently secured without Law by the Fear of personal Resentment and Retaliation. When by virtue of the first Laws Part of the Society accumulated Wealth and grew Powerful, they enacted others more severe, and would protect their Property at the Expence of Humanity. This was abusing their Powers, and commencing a Tyranny. If a Savage before he enter’d into Society had been told, Your Neighbour by this Means may become Owner of 100 Deer, but if your Brother, or your Son, or yourself, having no Deer of your own, and being hungry should kill one of them, an infamous Death must be the Consequence; he would probably have prefer’d his Liberty, and his common Right of killing any Deer, to all the Advantages of Society that might be propos’d to him.”

Franklin thus noted a tyrannical police state was in inextricably linked to the accumulation and maintenance of disparate shares of wealth while candidly admitting such ‘unjust deserts’ were the product of all society, not the loudmouthed greedy individuals that espoused the lie that THEY earned it. Franklin stated further:

“…the Accumulation therefore of Property in such a Society, and its Security to Individuals in every Society must be an Effect of the Protection afforded to it by the joint Strength of the Society, in the Execution of its Laws; private Property therefore is a Creature of Society and is subject to the Calls of that Society whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing; its Contributions therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered as conferring a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honour and Power; but as the Return of an Obligation previously received or the Payment of a just Debt.”

So while returning such unearned wealth to the rightful owners, the working class, is redistribution, it is not charity. It in reality is the return of stolen property to its rightful owners. Franklin opined that the estates of the rich, being ‘unjust deserts’, could be called on for the common good, down to the last farthing, the last dollar.

There is a reason the IRS classifies capital gains as ‘unearned income’ – they are UNJUST DESERTS!

Much of the disparity in sharing the wealth of productivity comes from the legalized theft made possible by extensive privatization of ‘intellectual property’, a system of copyrights and patents that now has no relationship to the promotion of the science for the common good envisioned by some of the founding fathers and enshrined in the constitution. Originally intended for society to grant provision and protection of a short marketing monopoly to an author, artist, inventor or creator in exchange for eventual addition to the public domain, at the urging of Disney Corp., Congress passed the infamous Mickey Mouse Protection Act which prevents such creations as “Steanboat Willie”/”Mickey Mouse” from being endowed in the public domain as called for in the constitution at any reasonable current, useful time, extending copyright monopoly from 28 years to ‘life plus 70 years’. That recently gave birth to the more draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and the ’secret’ Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement now being proposed, which would make criminals of children who do what is natural, share things.

Here again, Franklin enters the fray. As one of the most prolific inventors of his day, Franklin disdained the concept of ownership of ideas. the fact that he formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania exposed his socialist/communist bent eh?

When he was offered a patent on the famous stove that has since borne his name, Franklin placed the design in the public domain, as he did with all of his other inventions, and refused offers by others to obtain patents for him. He clearly indicated in his Autobiography his preference in such matters: “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”

Thomas Jefferson too spoke to how privatization of the commons and the establishment of coercive authoritarian governments to protect such unjust accumulations of property were detrimental to the happiness and freedom of the people as he acknowledged alternative societies:

“I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere.”

‘That, on the principle of a communion of property, small societies (again, such as the Indians) may exist in habits of virtue, order, industry, and peace, and consequently in a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity, I can readily conceive, and indeed, have seen its proofs in various small societies which have been constituted on that principle.’

But after giving such glowing attribution to the wonderful life available to those that choose, and are ALLOWED, to live in small, communal, sharing autonomous societies, Jefferson continued:

“But I do not feel authorized to conclude from these that an extended society, like that of the United States or of an individual State, could be governed happily on the same principle.”

Well, maybe that is the lesson! That happiness does not issue from states and empires but rather is the exclusive domain of small autonomous communal societies!

That utopia or nirvana comes from an egalitarian existence, a foreign concept to the typical European mind and culture. Said Sitting Bull:

“The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it”.

Sharing the earth’s bounty is natural and necessary if happiness is to prevail. On his arrival, Christopher Columbus noted the un-European nature of the Americans (the Indians):

“[The Indians are] so free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts.”

So in the face of such natural generosity and beauty, Columbus reacted as only the greedy, authoritarian European culture enabled him to:

“These people are very unskilled in arms … with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.”

A few decades later as these so-called? Christians invaded the part of North America now occupied by the British, and de Soto sent overtures promising a better life in submission to his king and church, an astute spokesmen for the Indians replied:

“I have long since learned who you [European Christians] are through others of you who came years ago to my land; and I already know very well what your customs and behavior are like. To me you are professional vagabonds who wander from place to place, gaining your livelihood by robbing, sacking and murdering people who have given you no offense. *** I regard those men as vile and contemptible who subject themselves to the yoke of someone else when they can live as free men. Accordingly, I and all of my people have vowed to die a hundred deaths to maintain the freedom of our land. This is our answer, both for the present and forevermore.”"

On such a culture of systemic theft and plunder is Hayek’s Paradise built. Nothing has changed since Columbus stumbled upon America except for the redistribution of wealth from the people to the elite economic royalists.

In Gold you trust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potos%C3%AD

Exactly what are the benefits of living under the umbrella of a large state/nation/empire, always coercive as that is a characteristic ingrained in such forms? Participation in the redistribution of spoils of war and corporate conquest? Living parasitically on ‘unjust deserts’ while lying to yourself, your children and others that you ‘earned it’?

Or would you wish your grandchildren live in a world that nourishes the small, autonomous communal societies that alone can offer what Jefferson described as “a state of as much happiness as Heaven has been pleased to deal out to imperfect humanity”?

“Let is put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.” — Sitting Bull

To the seventh generation and beyond…
Rating: 1 / 5