3 Stronger Arguments
1. What, exactly, is intervention? Here are two popular examples:
The government demands that I turn over a portion of my income to cover the cost of public services like roads, police, and domestic welfare programs. The government then gives part of that money to foreign dictators who tend to be the worst enemies of any foreign citizens I’d want to assist. Alternatively, they borrow money from China – a foul dictatorship if ever there was one – give it to third world dictators, then tell me in so many words that China will seize all my funds if they don’t use my money to pay the interest on their debt.
The President has clearly been representing the interest of corporations like Shell, which wants oil rights in Iraq. The President sardonically (laughing at our stupidity) announces that Saddam Hussein has “weapons of mass destruction,” deposes Hussein, slaughters at least 151,000 Iraqi civilians (450,000 according to the Johns Hopkins report), then arranges for the Iraqi government to “introduce a law that will give Western oil companies rights to the country’s huge oil reserves” (CBS News, January 8, 2007).
Older people who believe we’ve been taking the correct course may have been referring to World War II. Here’s some of what happened behind the scenes there. Perhaps it will sound familiar. In 1927, a British chemist named Gordon Alles rediscovered amphetamines, which had been briefly discovered and forgotten in 1887. Then, in 1932, a U.S. pharmaceutical company bought the patent to the discovery and began marketing it as an inhaler in a nasal decongestant. People soon learned that the active ingredient in the inhalers produced a flood of energy, and in no time, amphetamines were being marketed for a host of other ailments: morning sickness, car sickness, obesity, and, of course, depression. We now know that amphetamines are likely to result in quasi-psychotic aggression if used repeatedly, and may even trigger prolonged psychotic episodes. Perhaps that explains what went on when sales skyrocketed and 180 million amphetamine pills were manufactured and distributed to English, German, Japanese, and American soldiers – most notably, Adolph Hitler, who was receiving daily methamphetamine injections in 1942. The question is, should the U.S. have played the big hero in World War II or should it have assumed some responsibility for everyone’s actions? You can’t tell me that in 1942, the pharmaceutical industry had no idea what its drugs were doing.
2. The gold standard ended in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve Act enabled special interest groups (in particular, the U.S. government) to purchase goods and services with money they hadn’t earned. With no increase in goods and services, that worked just like outright theft. Less privileged people were more and more impoverished. So when various businesses used inflationary gains to increase their own productivity, they discovered that consumers weren’t as wealthy as they’d supposed and they went broke. Keynesians have been saying that increased productivity is always good regardless of the basis for it, but we need only imagine – in keeping with the facts – larger and larger injections of unbacked currency to see what would actually happen. Suppose the government decided that an ordinary pebble would or should be worth as much as a gold nugget. How much richer would people get? Overnight, prices would rise so high that increases in productivity on the part of foolish businesses wouldn’t make any difference. People can understand that instinctively. The big, clumsy words Keynesians use were designed to obscure our instincts.
A Neocon might still be wondering about the term “recession.” A recession is simply the beginning of a depression – a depression the Federal Reserve usually decides to postpone by printing more unbacked currency and handing it out in the form of loans and welfare to impoverished consumers who then buy the goods and services they felt they couldn’t afford, thereby rescuing the said foolish businesses until it’s time to repay all the loans. Keynesians want to chop out part of this syndrome – the part where we’re busily spending new money – and use it as evidence in favor of “elastic” currency. What does “elastic” mean in that context, though? There’s more and more and more of it; that’s all. Why don’t they turn pebbles into diamonds while they’re at it? I’ll pick up a handful and be fabulously wealthy, I’m sure.
3. There are three points I’d like to argue with regard to entitlement programs. First, an overwhelming number of disabled people would be, in a free society, able to provide for their needs through lawsuits. That case can be made through the misdeeds of the pharmaceutical industry alone. Big Pharma has been using the United States government to place itself above the law while it progressively slaughtered millions of trusting people. Second, politicians with the means to help or harm the vulnerable haven’t proven any wiser or kinder than private charities or families. They’ll pay for a meal today and execute a “useless eater” tomorrow. Countless people with mental illnesses were offered shelter then used for sadistic experiments (
http://www.newstarget.com/z019189.html). Third, survival of the fittest is all we get on planet Earth. This isn’t Heaven. One hundred years of socialism have merely produced tabloid royalty, not equality. In the next century, we can either do what comes naturally through laws that limit the power “the fittest” have over the vulnerable, or we can allow the fittest limitless license in the form of an omnipotent government.
