The strange and fatal attraction of statism

The question is -- Why are voters attracted to statists like Obama? Is it merely a reaction to difficult economic times? So, we say -- The economy is terrible and since a Republican is president, I will vote for the Democrat, Obama. Perhaps.

So let's look at what Obama believes. He believes that free enterprise has failed and that those who say - let the free market work -- have misled people and created the economic meltdown that is now taking place. Let's set aside the fact that a free free-market has never existed and go with what he probably means -- that to the extent the market has been allowed to operate without strict government control and design, it has failed.

This tells me that Obama, and those like him, believe the only way for the economy to work equally for all and to establish justice for all is through government control and design -- that the parts of the market left to sponaneous order have caused inequality and injustice.

Obama, and those like him, believe no parts of the economy should go uncontrolled and that right and proper design will achieve the goals of social engineering which small amounts of freedom throughout the market have thwarted. Freedom either works or it doesn't -- you can't have it both ways -- plus he and his cohorts have chided Bush/McCain for their free market policies (what a joke). He believes that operations like ACORN are necessary as activist efforts to help achieve the goals of equality and justice.

Let's also forget for the moment that designs to implement equality and justice have led to the present financial freeze and miscalculations, then ask what Obama might attempt to implement in order to properly design the best of all possible worlds. He will need to take a huge amount of money from those who produce wealth in order to redesign the economy. He will need to help struggling home owners who can't pay their mortgages and he will need to strengthen entitlement programs to support those who have been left behind in the age of technology. This can be done by giving more money to people directly or by forcing financial institutions to work out plans to help those who can't pay for what they've borrowed.

He will need to control private enterprise in a much more active fashion, using the coercive power of the government to transfer a large amount of wealth -- the particulars of how it's done are just a matter of committee decisions, but he will have to exercise much more control over private concerns. Let's forget for a while how businesses will react -- if they leave the country, go out of business, lay people off, whatever, it's something to put on hold for right now, because the critical goal is to achieve equality and justice.

If we all decide that the mystics of muscle are right and that free enterprise must be controlled and designed in order to establish fair redistribution, then I suppose it will happen.

But before we go off the deep end, let's consider a few things. How in the hell do you expect people to sit by and be muscled by unproductive politicians to give their earned wealth away to government? I won't try to convince anyone they are wrong, reality will do the convincing. If I have learned anything through the years it's that reality always wins. You can dance in circles on clouds of hope in your dreams but in reality only that which is real has lasting economic value. All these designs are hot air swirling in small minds and stand for nothing against the real actions of men and women working in the material existence that represents the limitations to which we all must adjust or perish.

You can work yourself into a tingly illusion of utopian equality and justice built on the schemes of social engineers and power brokers all day long but at the end of the day reality goes on day after day, month after month, year after year -- it is what it is. Work has to be done to produce the real products and services that keep us going, and that has to happen through the purpose and intent of human minds, wills and exertion. You can't look at the "economy" as something that can be designed in committees-- it's the separate and many actions of individuals spread out across the world interacting directly and indirectly through the motivation of needs and wants causing co-operation. The only structure that will allow this spontaneous order to fully function is freedom. The controllers and designers of Russia and Iran and Venuzeula are prime examples of idiots propped up by oil - and if it goes so do they, because they have no structure of freedom to allow the spontaneous order of a free market to produce what's needed and wanted. Now the designers want to prop up the US on worthless printed paper, hope and promises, designs and schemes? And they expect producers to produce while politicians take their money to design and scheme and throw it down a black hole? No, I don't have to convice anyone, we'll just wait and see.

The Obamas of the world had better get out of the way -- reality always wins.