Author: jetbrane

Redistribution vs. Wealth Creation

The “Occupy America” groupies seem to believe that there is a set amount of wealth and since that set amount of wealth can neither be increased or decreased it is their conviction that those who are top heavy in this set amount of wealth should be forced, by the god State, to have their wealth redistributed so that those who do not have as much wealth can have more wealth.

Their are several problems with this but let us first note that when the State, as god, controls either directly or indirectly the means of production or the wealth generated by the means of production what one is speaking of also is the god State being given sanction to control the human mind. This is so because the human mind is that which took abstract ideas and translated those ideas into wealth creation. If the created wealth is not to be enjoyed by the mind that created the wealth but instead that wealth is to be seized then what is being advocated for here is not only the control of wealth distribution by the god State but also the control of the human mind that had the capacity to go from idea, to production to wealth.

Secondly, the emphasis on Redistribution over wealth creation destroys a nations citizenry by cutting the nerve that joins labor to prosperity. If, by the god State’s agency, a morality is inculcated into the citizenry which teaches that those who labor and those who do not labor receive the same wealth benefits then what is incentivized is sloth. If the indigent are subsidized by the god State and if the productive are punished by confiscatory taxation then the consequence will be creation of a citizenry that learns the Aesop tale of the Grasshopper and the Ant is a myth. “Occupy America,” is creating a social order where equality of prosperity through redistribution of wealth means the equality of the ghetto.

Again, we would note here that the very thing that “Occupy America” is demanding (redistribution of wealth) is the very thing that will ensure that they remain penniless, miserable, and discontent. Redistribution of wealth always ends up with economic equality, to be sure, but it is the equality of the miserable. Success for “Occupy America” will not be the lifting of the protesters to grand economic heights but will instead mean the descent of the wealth creators to miserable existence of the protesters.

This bring us naturally enough to our next contrast.

Property as Public vs. Property as Private

If the god State is empowered to redistribute wealth the clear implication is that all property is public and no property is private. What “Occupy America” is advocating is the abolition of private property in favor of all property being public. When “Occupy America” demands the government to take private property in order to spread the wealth what they are advocating is the end of private ownership. Thanks to generations of this kind of thing, our once strong private property rights have been abolished through regulatory oppression, bureaucratic tyranny and unbiblical types of taxation and the consequence is the creation of a social order that represents the Hive, the Borg, and the machine, where all exist for the good of the Queen Bee, or for the favor of the those who see themselves as owning the Machinery.

A Liberated America would return to a emphasis on private property and individual achievement. A Liberated America understands that the security that is sought to be guaranteed by making all property public only guarantees both a loss of personal liberty and the personal security that the belief of collective ownership was thought to assure.

Environment as Sin vs. Man as Sinner

“Occupy America” believes that the reason the some people are “have-nots” while other people are “haves” is because of the evil social order environment that locked people in their place. The belief here is that man is impoverished because of the evil cultural institutional environment that has oppressed men. The solution for “Occupy America” is to dismantle the cultural environment and the social order structures that have turned so many people into poor, and oppressed outcasts. For these protesters we find scattered throughout America the evil is located in what they call the Capitalist environment. This can only be fixed by deconstructing what they are calling Capitalism. Only by doing so, can man be free to reach his true potential.

Liberated Americans realize that if the cultural or social order Environment supports sin and reinforces sinful behavior, it is only because it is first the case that men are sinners. Liberated Americans realize that environment does not create sinners so much as it is a reflection of the culture that sinners construct.

The upshot of this is that “Occupied America” types believe that a Utopia can be reached by reconstructing man by reconstructing his sinful environment and so they demand the “New Soviet Man,” or “The New Humanist Man,” through the building of a New World Order that will so adjust future generations that those future generations will be as perfect as the environment that “Occupy America” types intend to build.

Pursuit of Anarchy vs. Pursuit of Liberty

Our last contrast between “Occupied America” and “Liberated America” is the fact that “Occupied America” crowd believes that Liberty will only be assured by anarchy. The irony in this is that if they are successful to this end the result will be Tyranny since a anarchistic social order is not possible and will always eventually result in a strong man to bring order from chaos.

Actually, as much as people hate hearing this, the only possible way to achieve Liberty is to understand that true Liberty has boundaries and constraints. Further, genuine Liberty can only thrive among a people who share a common worldview since without a shared worldview what results is each man doing what is right in their own eyes. This explains why a Libertarian political stance can only work in a social order context where a shared worldview provides the foundation for a Libertarian ethic. Finally, as it is the case that only men freed from their sins by the payment of Jesus Christ for sins on the Cross, therefore only Christians can build cultures that are characterized by Liberty. All cultures that are not Christian are by definition Occupied cultures. Because “Occupy America” descends from a non-Christian world and life view all that will result from any success they have will be only more bondage then we already have.

This final point explain why, ultimately, the problems we have in our political or economic systems will not be resolved through alterations in our social order. Men enslaved to their sins will always build political and economic systems that reflect their bondage to their sin. Liberty, then, will only be procured by men learning that the only way they can be free of their bondage is by learning Christ. Men who have learned Christ will then incarnate that learning into the free social orders that they construct.

I am adamantly opposed to “Occupy America” because I am convinced that if they are successful the consequence will a even deeper bondage then we currently are living with right now. However, for all the opposition and revile that I have for “Occupy America” I realize that the Liberty they desire will not be had through political or economic systems but only through men and women bowing the knee to a non-Marxist Christ.

For several weeks now a astro-turf movement, called “Occupy Wall-Street” has occupied public parks in different cities throughout America (and now the world) and has protested against Corporate greed while appealing to the state to police and regulate greedy corporations. Such an appeal is akin to demanding a ex-lax suppository in order to cure diarrhea.

In this article I want to take just a little space comparing and contrasting the vision of Occupy America vs. the vision of a Liberated America. Remember the assumption behind a Occupational force is that there is a previous evil regime that is being overthrown. If America needs to be “Occupied” one can only wonder what is the evil regime that needs to be overthrown. This brings us to our first contrast.

Capitalism vs. Corporatism

Most of the protesters at these rallies are brain dead in terms of economic theory. A cursory review of the you-tube videos quickly reveals that. However, if there is one utterance that falls across their uneducated lips it is the thought that they are against evil Capitalism and are for sainted Socialism. The Occupiers however don’t realize that the problem that we are having now is not too much Capitalism and too little Socialism but rather that we have too little Capitalism and too much Corporatism (i.e. — Fascism, Socialism, Statism, etc.). The occupiers have rightly seen that there is to much economic disparity in our country but the solution that they are pursuing guarantees that such disparity will be institutionalized as Corporatism gives a system of a thin layer of wealthy elites combined with dense numbers who comprise the oi polloi.

The “Occupy” protesters are too economically illiterate to realize that what they are demanding is a license for those same mega-corporations that they are protesting to continue ignore the market realities that find customers disciplining those corporations by taking their business elsewhere because the mega-corporation did not respond to customer desires and so instead, to avoid bankruptcy they bribed Washington DC to provide the very bailouts about which the protesters are so incensed. The mega-corporations did not minimize their costs, did not make a profit, did not respond to the demands of the market and so in order to stay afloat they turned to their cronies in DC and received bailouts, stimulus, and pork. If instead, the principles of Capitalism had been followed — those very principles that the “Occupy” economic dullards are protesting — those mega-corporations that the protesters insist they hate so much would have been allowed to crumble and fall, thus allowing shrewder Capitalists to purchase the assets of those failed companies and to proceed to provide a better product to the customers. Genuine Capitalism would have let the Big 3 Auto industry fail, they would have let Goldman-Sachs and the New York money interest fail, they would have let the Federal Reserve fail because genuine Capitalism does not believe in private gains and taxpayer losses. If the “Occupy America” crowd had a lick of economic sophistication they would be protesting Fascism, Corporatism, Statism, and they would be doing so both at Wall Street and on Capital Hill in DC. Instead what we get are a bunch of economic heroin addicts who are demanding more heroin in order to cure their heroin addiction.

Rule of Law vs. Rule of Men

Once upon a time there existed a quaint notion that law was objective to all men and that all men, both ruled and ruler, were to be governed by that rule of law. That this was so is seen in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights of 1780 which has as its goal the establishment of a “government of laws and not of men.” Further, the English jurist Sir William Blackstone could write in 1765 that “law is not a transient order from a superior to or concerning a particular person or thing, but something permanent, uniform, and universal.” To the contrary current definitions of law are seen as being merely a social construct. Laws are subjective and their only reality is the reality that force can give to the law as it serves the whim of whoever is controlling the levers of power.

“Occupy America” does not believe in the rule of law unless one believes in their motto that “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” The “Occupy America” has no concept or respect for a transcendent law that speaks of private ownership, they have no concept or respect for a transcendent law that speaks of valid contracts that set fixed limits between what is yours and what is mine, and they have no concept or respect for a transcendent law that establishes connections between labor and success. Instead what they are advocating for is a arbitrariness in the nature of law that allows them the expedience of legally stealing.

Liberated Americans understand that without objective law what eventually descends is Mao’s “power comes from the end of a barrel,” reality. Without the acknowledgment of objective law we return to a world that is red in truth and claw and where the shadows of madame guillotine and Sir Gulag begin to be cast over the landscape. Without a objective law what results is a nation of citizens who are the slaves of the Government since the State is that institution that is control of the capricious and arbitrary law.

This brings us naturally to the next distinction between Liberate America and Occupy America.

Extra-mundane Personal God vs. State as God

Occupy America by insisting on a law that is a social construct by necessity requires someone or something to be the social constructor. If law is not objective and does not descend from a God who rules over men then law must descend from the State as the social constructor. The result is that modern man lives and moves and has his being in the state, or as Mussolini put it, “all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

To see that “Occupy America” views the State as God one only has to understand that it is the State to which they are demanding to arbitrarily recreate the social order that they desire. There is nothing in the appeals of “Occupy America” except the appeal of using the State as a instrument of blunt force to create a more fair world.

“Occupy America,” by locking out the God of the Bible has insured that man will be ruled by the fickle, capricious State god.