the state of the better

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Dave

Property, according to Oscar Wilde has such dreary duties that it constitutes and endless bore. It is unbearable and prevents the full flowering of individualism. Property then, in the interest of the rich said Wilde, must be gotten rid of. Lenin also said something to the effect that freedom as know it was little more than a bourgeois prejudice. Listening to Obama’s State of the Union address had some disquieting resemblances to 1930′s style British Fabianism. Although Obama said the right kinds of things, one gets the impression of some trigger happy liberal populism moving inexorably into the private sphere.

After all, why let a good economic crisis go to waste? Exactly the opportune moment to craft some utopian social engineering projects. Does the pioneer spirit still exist? The rugged individual? America, in spite of all the terrible miscalculations and errors its made,is, the greatest most beneficent,most open, inclusive, and grandest culture in world history. Is a sharp left turn, a dead man’s curve, a road to Hell paved with good intentions? State Socialism collapses upon itself inevitably. Is Obama teasing about prodding the global industrial plutocracy into the stinking hole the commies fell into? Can what’s left of the pioneer spirit get us back to a Jeffersonian model of individuals and small business interacting with one another out of choice,in addition to necessity tempered with community responsibility?

Wilde: The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Read More:http://www.library.gsu.edu/spcoll/pages/pages.asp?ldID=105&guideID=510&ID=4223

Alexis de Tocqueville’s trip to the United States in the early 1830′s led him to  write the famous 1835 essay entitled Democracy in America. At about the same time Thoreau was skimming stones on Walden Pond.  In it he warned of the dangers of a nurturing government extending its arm over the whole community, and he contemplated presciently how “a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism”. Read More:http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/what-sort-despotism-democratic-nations-have-fear

The problem with the welfare based society is they are extremely difficult to dismantle in the face of change. They become structurally rigid and often dysfunctional depots of despotism and paper milling. Even advanced a relatively prosperous countries like Canada will not be able to sustain their model. The social solidarity thesis is in direct juxtaposition to the creative destruction model of free enterprise. Although Greece and Portugal are economic backwaters, the comparison to entitlement countries is not a spurious one.


From Michael Ferguson . Read More:http://thefuture101abstracts.blogspot.com/

Michael Ferguson:

In the State of the Union, President Obama said, “I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” Notice the insertion of ‘better’.

What this means is even if ‘people’ are doing something adequately themselves and, perhaps, would prefer to continue to do it themselves, because government can do it BETTER they can commandeer it. In fact, if you read that carefully, the burden of proof is upon the people. If government can do it just as well, or asserts that it can, then the inference is that the people cannot do it better and the government, by this principle, can do it. And, of course, better can be a slippery term. One person’s ‘better’ may not be mine or yours. …


su.edu/spcoll/spcollimages/labor/19clabor/Labor%20Prints/80-39_2.jpg">

Read More:http://www.library.gsu.edu/spcoll/spcollimages/labor/19clabor/Labor%20Prints/80-39_2.jpg

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it does now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a night’s unclean lodging. Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse. Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism. ( Wilde )

…This appears, at first blush, to be a very conservative sort of statement and, by wrapping it in Lincoln the impression is reinforced. However, by inserting that one word in the statement, it is, in reality, an extraordinarily Statist remark. Be careful people. Very, very careful.

Having said that, President Obama quite correctly doubled down on Technological Unemployment, “Let’s remember how we got here. Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores. Technology made businesses more efficient, but also made some jobs obsolete. Folks at the top saw their incomes rise like never before, but most hardworking Americans struggled with costs that were growing, paychecks that weren’t, …..”

---"Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice. We repudiate all morality which proceeds from supernatural ideas or ideas which are outside the class conception. In our opinion, morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of the class war. Everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting order and for the uniting the proletariat. Our morality consists solely in close discipline and conscious warfare against the exploiters." Vladimir Ilylich Lenin--- Read More:http://www.revleft.com/vb/lenin-free-speech-t140598/index.html?s=16dc4f73633845511a92626f35c2b2b3&t=140598

…That could have come out of The Future 101.

As I have stated, manufacturing will come back to the U.S., but it will come back automated. I have pointed out that China desperately needs to move its Economy from exports to domestic consumption or their success story is in jeopardy. President Obama is correct in his observation and it is to some degree responsible for the uptick in GDP and employment.

However, the forces of Technological Unemployment are much larger than those of International jobs migration and in the next few years, unemployment will rise again.

Wilde:The possession of private property is very often extremely demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at last, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. Read More:http://www.lacarmina.com/blog/2010/01/history-of-the-dandy-flamboyant-flaneur-male-fashion-from-rococo-wigs-to-new-romantic-todays-steampunk-neo-victoriana/

ADDENDUM:

But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.( Wilde)

Jack Levine. Medecine Show. ---Read More:http://mhsartappreciationjj.wordpress.com/levine-at-wam/

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