The alliance of bastards: central planners, do-gooders and population control

[Skybird]

http://www.garynorth.com/public/13371.cfm

There is an international alliance between the bastard children of the welfare state and the self-made bastards who designed the welfare state and then sold it to the voters, beginning in the French Revolution. The alliance rests on a crucial two-part idea: the moral legitimacy and economic efficacy of central economic planning.
(...)
What bothers Leftists today is this. Their programs of wealth confiscation in the name of the poor have produced the obvious result: single welfare mothers who have numerous children, because they know that they can get state and federal money when they have these children. Welfare mothers are not stupid. They are milking the system. The Leftists are appalled by the outcome of their policies. They find, lo and behold, that when the state subsidizes poverty, we get more poverty. The free market responds to incentives. Will wonders never cease?


So, they are schizophrenic. They have always been schizophrenic. On the one hand, they justify taxing the middle-class to finance the poor. They also make certain that their own tax advantages keep them from being taxed as heavily as the middle class. Then they are trapped. Red ink overwhelms national governments. The politicians need to have workers to support the welfare state, but the bastard adult children of the single mothers, who have grown up under the tender mercies of the welfare state's bureaucracies, don't want to work. They want to stay on the dole. Where are the central planners going to find productive citizens who will be capable of paying the taxes to support the present welfare state recipients? This includes a vast and growing army of old people, who are about to tap into the biggest welfare state operations in the history of mankind. It's tough to be a Leftist.

Way to look at things, made me think about some things I did not thought out to the end before, not having been too interested in these details so far.

However, 7 billion people on the globe is always too many, no matter how you look at it. And if man does not find a way to take care of this, than nature's ways will - without any sentimental scruples man is so proud to have.

I note that a slowly increasing number of people seem to draw the consequences I have drawn in my life: not to live at the cost of the system/society and refusing its offered services as far as it does not force us to accept them by law and sanctions (for example it is punishable in Germany now not to have a health insurance), but also refusing to actively help or work for the support of this system and its corrupted policies and rotten schemes. Consider it to be an unlimited strike, not much different from the kind of strike Rand describes in Atlas Shrugged. Becasue the more you would be willing to do in order to aid the system and the wellfare regime, the more you get abused and your aid gets expoected from you and taken for granted. Your own ideals and standards get turned against you, and get turned into a tool of exploiting you. What does it tell about you if you allow that to be done to you without you resisting?

Don't try to be a good human saving the world, for the road to hell is plastered with good intentions. Just try to be a reasonable human. I promise you that most peope will achieve much more sustaining success by doing so, than all those do-gooders and central planners with oh so ambitious ideals and loud Hoorays written on their flags.

For as Mises already said: its not societies or states acting and deciding - but individuals.

[Oberon]

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Skybird

However, 7 billion people on the globe is always too many, no matter how you look at it. And if man does not find a way to take care of this, than nature's ways will - without any sentimental scruples man is so proud to have.

Yep. But they are here to stay.
And if anyone wants to lower that number, he can start with himself

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Betonov

And if anyone wants to lower that number, he can start with himself

Do some thing useful first. Become an organ donor.

[Jimbuna]

Soylent Green anyone?

[Tchocky]

Can't hear you over the sound of THE SKY FALLING

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Can't hear you over the sound of THE SKY FALLING

Sky Falling Bird?

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Sky Falling Bird?

Sounds too native american, might be offensive.

[Skybird]

As I recall it, SKYFALL ended pretty nasty but had some great lines by Tennysson in it:

We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Skybird is plugging a Ludwig von Mises cult member again I see. Though North seems to combine his von Mises dingbattery with demands for rule by a Christian theocracy. So much for 'libertarianism'.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

Skybird is plugging... (...) ...much for 'libertarianism'.

Wenn einmal der Grundgedanke des Sozialismus und Interventionismus, dass nämlich die Marktwirtschaft die Mehrheit des Volkes zugunsten einer Minderheit von Profitmachern benachteilige, als richtig unterstellt wird, dann ist der liberale Standpunkt preisgegeben.“ - L.v. Mises

Translation:
Once the key-note of socialism and interventionalism - that market economy would disadvantage the majority of the population for the benefit of a minority of profiteers - is accepted as to be correct, the libertarian position has been relinquished.

And how exactly does that prove anything? The fact is that these so-called 'libertarians' have amongst their numbers an authoritarian fundamentalist who thinks that women that lie about their virginity and children who disrespect their parents should be stoned to death. A viewpoint closer to that of the Taliban than any movement actually concerned with individual liberty.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by u crank

Do some thing useful first. Become an organ donor.

Amen

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by u crank

Do some thing useful first. Become an organ donor.

Done that.
Prime cuts Don't smoke, rarely drink, constantly hiking and even a low cholesterol level. I'm quite fit for an overweight person.

Let's bid on one of my kidney ??

[Skybird]

AndyWest, I have not quoted/posted a link to just any text by North or to Christian Reconstructionism, but just and only to the one text that you can find in post #1 in this thread. This text and nothing else, not more and not less, I refer to. Either you have something to say on that one text and its points, or not. Its not about the man, its about what he says on the issue addressed in that text.

Beyond that text, I am not that much interested at all currently. Honestly said, I do not know that guy too well at all. What I am about is is the argument and thought expressed in this text. This text, and none other.

Reminds me a bit of some people implying I were a general admirer of Ayn Rand. Heck, I have not read any of her books beyond Atlas Shrugged, both fiction and non-fiction, and my sympathy expressed is sympathy not for her general work (that i do not know in general), but this one specific book only, the only one that I have read by her. And that one book is brilliant no matter her other books. That makes me a fan less of Ayn Rand, but more of Atlas Shrugged. Even if the rest she wrote would be total nonsense, it would not devalue what she has written in Atlas Shrugged.

Same with that article by North. Which makes no reference to religion, Christianity and Reconstructionism at all, btw.

You may consider that to be invalid doing, or opportunism. But then you also should not listen to music by Wagner, because of his later sympathy for the Nazis, or should not read Heidegger, because although the basis of his philosophical work was formed before Hitler, he later openly supported Hitler and his ideas, or you should ignore Arendt, for she is accused of quoting and refering antisemitic authors and material.

Lets keep the one and the other thing in all these cases separated. North's arguments in that one text do not support and are no assistance to any positions claimed by or pushed for by Reconstructionism. His remarks in that text stand for themselves, therefore.