Shakedown Socialism
Page 4
Membership in a gang gives one the sense of belonging without the requirement of self-improvement. One doesn't need to be an achiever, lead a moral existence, or do anything at all for that matter - all one needs to do is shed his human individuality and not ask questions.
Collectivist pressure groups are all that and much more. They bait people with the promise of instant entitlements just for being a member. Each group has its prescribed role, legend, grievance, and a turf of operations. Each group pulls the blanket of privileges and exclusive rights onto itself, creating new rules and setting up new terms that render the Constitution meaningless. Together, they create an illusion of a vast moral majority, a representative body competing with the US Congress, an alternative government, a massive front battling American capitalism and individualistic civilization.
While any of these groups would more or less fit Lenin's template as "a school of communism," trade unions have been the undisputed pioneers that blazed a trail for the rest of them. Today, they continue to be the most active and powerful players in the system they helped to create.
P.S. In October of 2009 Labor Relations Institute, Inc. issued a report containing the following quote:
ACORN Corruption Ties with Unions and Politics
With the exposure of ACORN’s corrupt practices by clever undercover video stings, ACORN’s ties to Big Labor have finally made their way into the public discourse. Several congressmen made a presentation in Chicago, making the case that the Census Bureau, who announced they had cut ties with ACORN, should also cut ties with SEIU, as the two organizations seem to be deeply intertwined, both financially and operationally. Following the flow of funds, another obvious conclusion is that tax payer dollars doled out to ACORN have also found their way into SEIU coffers, so that non-union tax payers have participated in funding union organizing and political activities.
SEIU and the UFCW have been the top financial contributors to ACORN among the Big Labor camp, sending $4,019,606 and $2,189,270 respectively during the years 2005 to 2008. Of the total of $8,618,092 contributed to ACORN by labor unions during this time period, $7,013,081 was attributed to "Representational Activities." A high percentage of union members would probably refute that this is how their dues money should have been spent.
ACORN - SEIU connections
Chart prepared by Illinois Congressmen Mark Kirk and Peter Roskam, with North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry, presented at a press conference in Chicago on 9/28/2009.
A Tale of Two Cities
Hiroshima today
Detroit today
Hiroshima survived a nuclear blast. But Detroit was hit with a much more damaging weapon; it killed the population's rational faculties and the very spirit of industriousness that had once made it the auto capital of the world. The name of this devastating bomb? Union-favored policies of "economic equality and justice." And there's a lot more where it came from.
CHAPTER 4
Rigging the Economy in the Name of "Justice"
The demands of forced economic equality are usually justified by the "growing gap" between rich and poor, and men and women, as well as various groups of minorities. Such demands are usually followed by a plan to improve on reality by aggressively tampering with market forces - which, as we already know, can only make the existing income gap worse due to the resulting poverty, economic stagnation, and limited upward mobility.
In a free society, an income gap results from the success of some and the failure of others, and is, for the most part, fair. A rational, constructive way to diminish this gap is to increase the number of successful people by ensuring that everyone has the freedom and opportunity to earn an honest income.
An irrational, destructive approach is to blame the successful, restrict their growth, and redistribute their property. Its proponents would never call it that, though - they prefer the Orwellian term "economic equality and justice," and sometimes "fairness" for short. Resulting in state-sanctioned inequality, it punishes effort, rewards sloth, fosters corruption, and keeps people down by restricting their freedoms, which is neither just not fair.
That is why the only unfair income gap that deserves to be looked at in today's US economy, is the gap between the market-based, non-union wages and the artificially inflated union wages - a gap that was deliberately created by twisting the arms of businesses, paying off politicians, and lobbying for anti-business regulations.
Observe an absurd charade: union-forced unequal pay for equal work has the blessing of the champions of "fairness" who like to preach equal pay for equal work, while all they really advocate is equal pay for unequal work - otherwise known as the communist principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." And these are the same people who can't shut up about the unfairness of capitalism.
They argue that the gap wouldn't exist if all workers joined in solidarity and demanded higher wages, benefits, and job guarantees - or, better yet, elected a government that would force the employers to pay up. Let's test this theory and assume that, as of this morning, all Americans have become equally entitled to union-style wages and benefits. What happens next?
Prices will go up on all essential products. Unionized workers will lose their current advantages. Naturally, the unions will go on strike and use all means in their arsenal to upgrade their members to a "more equal" status. Once they've been upgraded, things will return to the old unequal ways - only now the cost of living will be much higher and people's savings accounts will be severely depreciated. The country will emerge from the pay hikes poorer than before.
And that will only be the tip of the iceberg. The unreasonably high cost of American products will make them less competitive internationally. To maintain a comfortable standard of living in a shrinking economy, Americans will increasingly rely on the influx of cheap products from countries that hadn't been touched by the wage cycle. A skyrocketing trade imbalance will undermine America 's standing in the word. A greater number of American businesses will now be outsourcing jobs or hiring illegal migrants in order to stay afloat.
Worsening unemployment, economic recession, and the growing income gap - both domestic and international - as well as the media campaign blaming the crisis on greed, selfishness, and other evils of the free market, will rally more people to the banners of economic equality and redistribution. In the absence of articulate opposition, free enterprise will lose its former attractiveness and Americans will elect a socialist government that will nationalize key industries and begin openly to dismantle the framework of capitalism.
If you find such a dystopia frightening, I have news for you: it is already happening.
"More and more American workers are joining together in unions to claim a share in the prosperity they help to create, while working to improve the services they provide," said SEIU International President Andy Stern. Engaging in radical politics, the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) has long been taken over by the hard Left. In 2008, this union was more than 88,000 strong.
The deeper we go, the more Lenin's words seem like a prophecy. But there's more. Unions are instrumental in fulfilling yet another of Lenin's directives: "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." And the current US government is going down this path, trying to mend the income gap and the runaway cost of living by increasing the minimum wage. Unsurprisingly, trying to fix an artificially created imbalance by inventing more artificial measures is proving to be as effective as quenching a fire with gasoline.
In the meantime, the self-righteous campaigners for economic equality apply the same approach to narrow the global income gap by sending aid to poor nations - knowing full well that most of it ends up in the coffers of local autocrats whose people continue to live in abject poverty.
Granted, the disparity between rich and poor countries exists to a large extent due to the stark differences in the productivity of labor. But that doesn't tell the whole story. T
he gap has reached such absurd proportions in large part because the wages inside the industrialized rich nations have been artificially raised to unrealistic heights in the course of repeated, futile cycles of union pay increases, followed by price hikes on most products, with the rest of the national wages trying to catch up.
Who is footing the bill? In an isolated closed system, when things reach a limit of tolerance, the system must either balance itself or break apart. But a country's economy is never a closed system. Western economies are connected to poorer nations, whose lower wages and cheaper raw materials temporarily compensate for the unsustainable costs of maintaining overpaid unionized labor at home.
If poor nations are selling their products at market prices while buying Western products at a price that includes the full cost of the union wages, pensions, healthcare, and other benefits, they are clearly being taken advantage of.
For this they should send their thanks to the campaigners for "economic equality and justice" - who, incidentally, are also the loudest voices in the chorus denouncing rich nations that get richer by robbing poor nations that get poorer.
The tired leftist adage is actually true - but its real causes have nothing to do with imperialism, neocolonialism, capitalist globalization, or any of the other phony labels they fabricate.
These labels imply that capitalists are deliberately conspiring to promote "unfairness" out of personal greed and selfishness - while their opponents, by virtue of defending "fairness," speak from the position of morality and transparency. But if "moral" is that which advances poor nations and "immoral" is that which inhibits them, then morality is clearly on the side of capitalism. Likewise, if "fairness" means a level playing field, then it entails the elimination of inflated wages and other unearned entitlements, both home and abroad, making all price creation equally transparent.
The expression "level playing field" alludes to the requirement for fairness in games where a slope would give one team an advantage. I am not an athlete; if I play against an NFL professional on a level field, I will lose fair and square. But if we apply the theory of "economic equality and justice" to sports, a fair game would be played if I had a slope and the NFL professional wore foot shackles, while the referee would continually tamper with the scores and rule consistently in my favor. I wouldn't even have to practice, build strength, and learn strategies; the revised rules would already give me a chance to win.
Any sports fan will tell you this is unfair and such rules would be the death of football. And yet, when the same rules are applied to the economy, very few call it unfair or worry about the demise of the market. On the contrary, many agree that this would give someone a mythical "fair chance," although no one knows exactly how or who would be the beneficiary of this.
When the game is rigged, what becomes of its purpose? Who decides what is "fair" and which team is entitled to a bigger advantage? How do we know what bribes are being passed under the table? How can we tell who is a better player or what training, techniques, and strategies are the most effective?
The same questions apply to a rigged economy. Tampering with the market not only breeds economic unfairness, but it endangers the only fair gauge of the true cost of things in the world. Without the open, transparent market, what becomes of the meaning of "fair price"?
In his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama famously declared, "We can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect." I share his concern, but I'm even more worried that his solution - redistributing unearned entitlements while restraining producers - is what caused the problem in the first place.
The global income gap has already devoured trillions of dollars in foreign aid over the decades, without any sign of improvement. If something isn't working for so long, any rational person would reexamine the theory behind it. Not the champions of equality, however. They continue to demand foreign aid with the moral smugness of someone who owns exclusive rights to the definition of "fairness." But there is a reason why aiding despotic quasi-socialist regimes has never resulted in a prosperous nation.
So far it has only resulted in a bizarre symbiosis between the self-righteous champions of "fairness" in the West and crooked Third-World authoritarians. The despots long ago figured out that "equality" is a great excuse to violate property rights, "fairness" is a license to abuse the law, "justice" legitimizes dictatorial rule, and "redistribution of wealth" allows looting. They have learned that foreign aid is their reward for doing all of the above while keeping the people hungry.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe,
the socialist dictator of Zimbabwe since 1980
It couldn't have happened any other way because the enforcement of all such ideas requires a serious intrusion into the people's lives by the omnipresent state, which also must own all of the nation's resources. This makes any president of such a state the ultimate omnipotent ruler of the land and its people.
Naturally, in the absence of individual rights, opportunities, and the rule of law, the office of “president” becomes a magnet for an endless array of warlords, military thugs, and leaders of nationalistic mobs driven by collective greed and selfishness. Most of these leaders have no idea how to run a country, don't care, and may never have wanted to - if it weren't also a magic key that makes its master the virtual owner of all the foreign aid, gold, diamonds, or whatever else Western geologists can find in the bowels of the state-owned land. This helps to account for the record number of military coups, civil wars, and bloody atrocities happening in the Third World today.
Idi Amin Dada, man-eating military dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, demanded that he be addressed as "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC ['Victorious Cross'], DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, and Professor of Geography."
This kind of bloodletting would be greatly curtailed if political elites didn't have control over the ownership and redistribution of the nation's property. Few warlords would want to stage a bloody coup and take over a government whose functions are limited to protecting individual rights and liberties. For that to happen, property must be privately owned by individual citizens and protected by the rule of law from fraud, coercion, violence, and the dictates of the state. Unleashing the powers of capitalism and free markets would make foreign aid unnecessary; it would be replaced by private investments once the opportunities and the rule of law are in place, and a more prosperous population would eventually be able to take care of itself without anyone's help.
But the self-righteous defenders of "fairness" would never allow that to happen. For them it would mean to surrender their "civilizing" influence over the minds of people in favor of "greed," "selfishness," and "evil corporations." It would also entail the loss of their moral authority, and with it, the power to control world affairs, which they presently enjoy.
Note that all the currently warring mobs justify their actions by the desire to take better care of the people, enforce fairness, and improve redistribution. They all use similar quasi-Marxist rhetoric, which has become a prerequisite for the official recognition of a regime by the "world community." Once in power, they spend their days stealing foreign aid, pilfering the country, looting their neighbors, and fighting off uprisings led by similar thugs who also promise to fight corruption, enforce fairness, and improve redistribution.
A sufficient warning sign that the system is failing is the fact that no foreign-aid-sponsored president steps down voluntarily. The greatest fear of all ex-dictators is to become equal with the people they once "cared about" - poor, powerless, and vulnerable to abuse by any new thug in power.
Granted, "caring" rhetoric as a disguise for abuse and thuggishness is not limited to Third World despots. It exists in any society that accepts rigging the game in the name of "fairness" as its official ideology.
CHAPTER 5
Want a Crisis? Impose "Fairness"
I'll See Your Fair Trade and Raise You a Grande Latte
In the early 1990s I worked as a private consultant and interpreter for American business people visiting the former USSR . My employers, many of whom became my personal friends, were looking for business opportunities, which at the time seemed abundant - even to me.
I knew that government corruption existed, but the real scope of the disastrous legacy of Soviet socialism was only revealed to me when our travels exposed me to situations and facts I would not have otherwise known. To make matters worse, government corruption, incompetence, and the attempts to take advantage of my American friends were disguised with the fig leaf of fairness, caring for the workers, and protecting their wages. It was practically a matter of habit; sometimes I wondered if the crooks themselves knew where the cynicism ended and the caring began.
None of the proposed joint ventures came through because of government officials' absurd demands for kickbacks combined with the requirements of Western-style wages for the workers at a time when the average cost of living in Ukraine was about $50 a month for a family of four. Like children on Christmas Eve, the bureaucrats were holding their breath in anticipation of foreign gifts, exorbitant junkets, no-show jobs, and ready-made factories with salaries equaling those in Europe and the US, without realizing that cheap local labor and low maintenance were their only edge and their only chance in the world economy.