By Robert Gore
History demonstrates that collectivist regimes which stifle economic
and political freedom often turn to war, plunder, and empire building to
mask their repression and failures at home. Doesn’t that describe the
US government to a tee? It has military bases and deploys special
operations forces all over the world. In the name of global order and
fighting terrorism, it has engaged in more wars this century than any
other government. To instill domestic “order,” the national security
state surveils everyone, including a president-elect, and subverts the
press.
Not only do wars add a lot of chits to the debt pile, but guess which
generation gets to fight them? Not that the military is having trouble
filling its ranks. It offers steady jobs with good benefits—hard to find
in the private sector—for those who avoid getting killed or maimed.
It takes a while for those millennials who find their way into the
private sector to discover how thoroughly it is dominated by the public
sector. The meddling, stifling, counterproductive hand of government
weighs on every important economic activity. In some jurisdictions kids
can’t even sell lemonade without a permit. It takes time, experience,
and investigation to discover another truth: regulation protects the
entrenched and stifles the new and innovative.
The apotheosis is finance and banking. Central bank debt monetization
and interest rate suppression promote government debt and add to the
millennials’ load. The Fed is owned by the banks, buys their securities,
promotes their cartel, and acts as their agent in Washington. Cheap
money drives up the price of financial assets, which millennials by and
large don’t own. Reams of legislation and regulation not only make it
difficult to impossible for competitive new entrants, but are explicitly
designed to ensure that members of the old guard don’t fail. When they
nevertheless fail, they get bailed out.
It is the intellectual crime of the century to call this bastardized
state of affairs capitalism or freedom. Capitalism—investment,
production, and voluntary exchange—is what people do when they’re left
to their own devices and are free to pursue their own legitimate
interests. It was dealt a mortal blow in 1913 with the establishment of
the central bank and income tax, and buried in the New Deal. It’s no
surprise the left falsely labels the grotesque and failing mixed economy
capitalism. It’s every failure can be ascribed to capitalism and used
as a justification for more government.
What’s revolting is the rhetoric of capitalism’s so-called defenders.
Conservatives ritualistically praise a “free market system” that hasn’t
existed for decades. It’s useful cover: invoke the free market while
supporting and profiting from collectivist skims and scams. From the
dwindling ranks of true entrepreneurs and honest businesspeople the
rhetoric snares some of the more gullible. However, even when the red
team has full control of the government, it just keeps getting bigger,
more intrusive, and more powerful, reminiscent of communism.
Read the entire essay
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