Carlton's Brain

With thanks to Sumner Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Abe and Bob get together and see that Xavier is suffering from some illness. They feel bad about this and want to help and thus propose a Law that Carl should help Xavier, or perhaps even Abe, Bob and Carl should pool their funds to help out Xavier.

The problem here is Carl: maybe he wants to help out Xavier, maybe he doesn’t; maybe Xavier has been a real prick to Carl and Carl doesn’t want to help; maybe Carl really has a tight budget and needs what he has to feed his family, or maybe Carl has cancer and needs all the money he has for his own chemotherapy. Regardless, if Carl doesn’t want to help Xavier, Abe and Bob don’t care, and the Law forces Carl to pay, otherwise be in danger of breaking the Law and being thrown in prison or otherwise penalized.

Now, if Abe and Bob wanted to go ask Carl for help and Carl managed to re-budget and really wanted to help out Xavier and gave Abe and Bob some money to help Xavier, that’s different. They can’t force him to pay, but merely try to get him to voluntarily abide to their wishes: they have to convince to give them money. This is capitalism: Abe and Bob can get Carl’s money for Xavier only through Carl’s voluntary agreement.

But that’s not the situation; the situation is that Abe and Bob have a Law passed to force Carl to pay, regardless of his whim, at the threat of the physical force of the government. This is socialism: Carl, in Abe’s and Bob’s thoughts to help Xavier, is the Forgotten Man, and he is enslaved by the government because of the Law.

Perhaps Abe and Bob don’t want Carl to just help Xavier but thousands, even millions of Xaviers. Maybe even Carl could get some trickle-down benefit. These are moot points: the basic fact is that Carl is being forced to give up his money, against his will.

Many would say that Carl is only being forced to give up money, just money. But what is money? Money is what Carl uses to pay for his family’s health care, education, food and entertainment. Money is the tool used to trade with your fellow man. Money allows Carl to work in a highly-specialized field, unrelated to other industries, and yet still be able to get steak and apples and cars and much, much more that he would never have time to produce on his own. Money, in a market economy, is produced through the productive investment of one’s mortal time.

In short: money is a symbol of life. When Carl is forced to give up his money, he is forced to give up his own life.

Therefore, socialism pre-supposes that Abe, Bob and Xavier have a claim on Carl’s life. Before getting to the pragmatic reasoning that Abe and Bob may not be able to decide the best way to use Carl’s life or that Xavier could abuse Carl’s life, if one is to allow socialism, one first has to admit that it is morally acceptable for Abe and Bob to take Carl’s life without Carl’s permission, ergo, that it is okay for Abe and Bob to steal from Carl, ergo, that it is okay for Abe and Bob to enslave Carl.

In summary: socialism pre-supposes that slavery is morally acceptable (or, perhaps, that there are no morals or they are subjective, equally fallacious arguments).

Sometimes, the Argument of Democracy is used. Surely, if the majority vote that it’s okay, then it is okay, right? This is Morality from Majority, which leads to the Tyranny of the Majority, where, in the worst case, 49% live in slavery by the authority of the other 51%.

Here’s an example of the ridiculous Argument of Democracy: suppose there are 10 people and 6 decide it is perfectly okay to steal from the other 4 — the reason why is unimportant; this Argument suggests not only that this is acceptable, but that the 4 slaves should agree with the decision as morally right, due to the ruling of the majority. Suppose it was worse: that the 6 decide they should kill the other 4. Is this moral because the majority has voted and decided it to be so?

Some (many) would say yes, in fact, it is okay for the 6 to kill the 4, since all 10 voted on it and the majority agreed to it. This argument is unacceptable in other fields, such as science: physicists do not vote on whether the Higg’s boson exists or not. Why is this immoral practice accepted in politics by so many?