Posted on 03/08/2006 7:45:38 AM PST by Marxbites
A Message to Redistributionists by P. J. O'Rourke
P. J. O'Rourke is the author of Parliament of Whores and an H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute. These remarks were delivered at the Cato Institute's 20th anniversary celebration on May 1, 1997.
Cato is about ideas. We spend a lot of time talking and thinking about ideas, but not just good ideas. Bad ideas are important, too. In fact, a lot of life operates on bad ideas. And I thought I'd like to talk about a bad idea: closing the global wealth gap. That is a very bad idea.
I mean, do we want to close the beauty gap and make everybody look like Dick Morris? Do we want to close the virtue gap and encourage Mother Teresa to have a deathbed affair, or appoint that Kennedy kid, Michael, to run the Save the Children Foundation? Do we want to close the talent gap and have an NBA full of players who have the height and talent of, for instance, me? If we had a world without gaps, where everyone was the same color, size, social class, and sex, who would get pregnant? If everyone had the same information, what would we talk about? Consider what would happen if everyone had the same work, the same job. Everyone would take the same vacation. You would have 5.8 billion people headed to the shore in the first two weeks of August, playing a game of beach volleyball--2.9 billion to a side. The idea of a world where all people are alike, which is essentially the idea that we fight against at Cato, is a fantasy for the stupid. But I'll tell you, egalitarianism is worse than stupid, it's immoral.
I think the Old Testament is quite clear about that. The Bible might seem to be a strange place to be doing economic research, but I have been thinking, from a political economy point of view, about the Tenth Commandment. Now the first nine commandments concern theological principles--thou shall not steal and kill and so forth. Fair enough. Then there's the Tenth Commandment: "Thou shall not covet they neighbor's wife. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." I mean, here are God's basic rules for how we should live, a very brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts, and right at the end of it is: "Don't envy your buddy his cow." What is that doing there? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, choose jealousy about the stuff the guy next door has? Well, think about how important to the well-being of a community that commandment actually is. What that commandment says is that if you want a donkey, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't bitch about it, go get your own!
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to collectivists, to people who believe that wealth is best obtained by redistribution, and that message is clear and concise: Go to hell! It's as simple as that.
Egalitarianism is sinful; it's also cowardly. We fear the power that others have over us, and since wealth is power, the egalitarians fear the rich. They're afraid that Kathie Lee Gifford is going to make them sew jogging suits in sweat shops for 30 cents an hour. But, seriously, how rational is fear of the rich? Let's take a midnight stroll through a rich neighborhood. And let's take a midnight stroll through a poor neighborhood just a few blocks from here. Sure, you can get in a lot of trouble in Monte Carlo. You can lose at roulette or get suckered into a shady business deal with Princess Stephanie's husband. But you are a lot more likely to get mugged here in Northwest Washington. Now, mind you, I don't think we should begrudge the crimes of those poor people down the street. They're just practicing a little free-lance socialism; they're just being liberal Democrats in their own small way.
But the point is that the real alternative to the power of the rich is not power of the poor. It's just plain power. If we don't want the world's wealth to be controlled by people with money, then the alternative is to have the world's wealth controlled by people with guns. And governments have guns. They have quite a few guns. Now, in theory, it is fine that the government has guns and that the guns control money because, in theory, the mugger puts his pistol down and picks up a ballot and he steals from multinational corporations instead of from you. But the reality is obviously quite different. The track record of collectivist societies in the 20th century speaks entirely for itself. Thirty million dead from closing the wealth gap in Chinese agriculture; 6 million dead from closing the commerce gap in the Ukraine; and the deaths go on and on. Even the most democratic government becomes a law unto itself, and I don't think I really need to elaborate on that. At this moment Bill and Hillary are headed over to the Sidwell Friends School to hawk the Lincoln bedroom to Chelsea's friends. ("Okay, bring your pajamas, s'mores, and a hundred thousand dollars.")
Such are the products of envy and fear, which brings me to the third mainspring of egalitarianism: greed. And by greed I don't mean the simple lust for material objects. I am concerned about the greed for position and pride, for what nowadays is called self-esteem. I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.
Consider the four men who have been America's most prominent politicians in this past year: Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton. Would you hire any of those men? Would you hire any of them to mow your lawn? Bob Dole would be down on his hands and knees trying to make a deal with the grass not to grow. Gore would be asking the cat if dandelions are an endangered species. Newt would borrow the Toro. And Clinton wouldn't be able to make up his mind. Power mower or push? Do the front first or the back? Rake and then mow, or the other way around? So he'd give up and he'd be in your kitchen raiding the refrigerator, flirting with your baby sitter.
We have to kill ideas like the wealth gap. The world doesn't need to be thinking about the wealth gap; the world needs to be thinking about wealth. Wealth is good. Everybody knows that about his own wealth. Wealth improves your life; it improves your family's life. You invest in wise and worthwhile things, and you help your friends and neighbors. Your life would get better if you got rich, and the lives of all the people around you would get better if you got rich. Your wealth is good. So why isn't everybody else's wealth good, too? I don't get it. Wealth is good when a lot of people have it, and wealth is good when just a few people have it. And that is because money is a tool, nothing more. I mean, you can't eat money, you can't sleep with it, you can't wear it as underwear very comfortably. And wealth, accumulation of money, is a bunch of tools. Now when one person, a carpenter for instance, has a bunch of tools, we don't say to him, "You have too many tools. You should give some of your saws and drills and chisels to the guy who is cooking the omelets." We don't try to close the tool gap.
Wealth has brought enormous benefits to the world. Rich people are heroes--especially if they donate some money to Cato. Those rich heroes didn't necessarily mean to be heroes, but that's beside the point. They are heroes, and yet the way we treat wealthy people in our political systems is terrible. Even now that the whole world has come to believe that free markets and private money making are good things, we still have our residual infatuation with equality and our proposals to close wealth gaps.
Message to the redistributionists:
I will be happy to share my hard earned weatlth.
YOU GO FIRST.
Who are "the redistributionists" he is talking to?
Socialists.
This article was like fresh air to me. :-)
ping
I didn't know if there was a specific bill being put in Congress or a specific liberal "grass roots" campaign that was pushing this that I didn't know about, that's all.
Got to keep your eyes out for those things.
That's only part of the picture. The other part is don't waste time wishing for things that you would have no good use for.
Always interesting to read PJ's take on the culture wars.
Liberals love to give away everything that they DON'T own.
Still, if this kind of rhetoric helps to stop taxing us to build new malls and sports stadiums it can't be all useless.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.