Of course she neglected to say that the community as well as the tax base of that community exists ONLY because of “my factory” and the wages it pays to the members of that community who work at “my factory” as well as the peripheral businesses that supply the workers at “my factory”.
Where do supposedly educated people come up with and/or believe this kind of Communist bull$#!+?
What is wrong is the conclusion - well three conclusions:
1. That we need to take stuff from people because government can spend it better (not on genuine public needs, e.g. infrastructure, education or defense), but social welfare redistribution.
And, 2. We end up taking stuff, not from those who profited most, e.g. those with substantial capital assets - because capital assets are sheltered - but from the middle class because tax brackets must be adjusted downwards and rates upwards to collect the funds to be redistributed,
And, 3. Redistribution is not just to the genuinely needy, but to welfare queens, and even worse, crony capitalists.
And this is because of the false premise that redistribution is moral and can be done morally when the decision about how to redistribute someone else's money is thoroughly political and has lead to the present level of government corruption.
American socialists have been determined to evade the totalitarian implications of socialism. Thus, they call socialism “liberalism.” And thus, they follow longstanding tradition of suppressing - by propagandistic abuse of the very word for it - the very concept of “society:”SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. The burden of the article is how diffuse are the inputs to make a simple item like a pencil. Of course a particular company - Eberhard Faber, in the example instance - made the pencil. But Mr. Eberhard and Mr. Faber did not simply speak the pencil into existence; the company has to have buildings housing machinery, and workers to operate the machines. But beyond that, the Eberhard Faber workers have to have food, shelter, and normal amenities - including those required by their families.Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
And the same is true of the vendors who supply Eberhard Faber with the machinery they require, and all the obvious materials - wood, graphite, rubber, and the ferrule material and the enamel. All those vendors have their own equipment, workers, and supply chain. And in all cases the workers need food, shelter, and normal amenities. So although the pencil certainly does not exist without Eberhard Faber, society works together to make pencils - and everything else.
So, “you didn't build that? Somebody else made that happen?” Yes - but that “somebody else” was not government. The “somebody” was more like everybody - mostly very indirectly.
Government planning is merely interference in society’s subtle workings by people who have nowhere near the competence needed to make such large decisions and be responsible for them. It is nothing more than the irresponsible separation of responsibility from authority, in violation of the first principle of good management. Improvement in efficiency via government “planning” is a paper tiger.
