"The pessimists failed to allow for the stupidity and incompetence factor among people who would run the totalitarian states."
- Russell Baker, from the preface
He, of course, was talking about the Soviet Union but this quote can be applied to America today. Democrats got their wish and annexed another segment of the population into perpetual dependency. Even without being a totalitarian state (yet), the people see only the promise of another handout but cannot see the "incompetence factor" within it.
Businesses, of course, are subject to this factor too. However, when a business fails or misleads or hurts someone or is just plainly run by stupidity and incompetence, mechanisms exist to combat this. People stop buying their products. Government shuts them down or legislates them out of business. Government is meant as the fallback, not as a the primary. Once government is primary in some venue, no fallback exists anymore. Dependence is assured and with dependence comes power, not from the consent of the governed as intended by our Founding Fathers but rather from those giving the handouts. Perhaps we can rewrite Baker's quote:
"The pessimists failed to allow for the stupidity and incompetence factor among the voters who would chose their leaders."
Forty-five years and running we've been doing this - voting for leaders who promise handouts and entitlements. Authoritarian control (listen to Rep. John Dingell admit it) can fall under the guise of good intentions and the
Existing entitlement programs like Society Security and Medicaid are broken due to mismanagement and due to leeches sucking the system dry. The incompetence factor comes into to play when those in congress cannot say 'no' to another group who wants part of it. Then, who suffers? Those the system was meant to help.
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Handouts. To paraphrase a famous line, eventually we will run out of other peoples' money. Actually, we already have but let's continue to tax and spend and flush money away. Idiots.
This is why I say
"Genetic engineering: it's the only way out."
We need to wash the inner ape out of our genome. And, while we're at it, the inner reptile
ps the average Republican voter exhibits an awful lot of this self-same evolutionary baggage: omission bias, xenophobia, greed, fearfulness, etc.
Not to mention the drive to dominate other people
And it's not as though I'm saying a lot of left-wingers don't have their own cognitive biases
They fail to recognize the genetic deficiencies immanent in the Earth's human population and, though their heart is in the right place, they often have uneconomical proposals
That is not to say socialism cannot be effective if properly managed, as it is even now in northern Europe
We are sorry. New comments are not allowed after 21 days.
Archives
