Pondering Rand
From “The Inverted Moral Priorities” in Ayn Rand’s The Voice of Reason:
In view of what they hear from the experts, the people cannot be blamed for their ignorance and their helpless confusion. If [thanks to government-caused inflation] an average housewife struggles with her incomprehensibly shrinking budget and sees a tycoon in a resplendent limousine, she might well think that just one of his diamond cuff links would solve all her problems. She has no way of knowing that if all the personal luxuries of all the tycoons were expropriated, it would not feed her family–and millions of other, similar families–for one week; and that the entire country would starve on the first morning of the week to follow. (This is what happened in Chile.) How would she know it if all the voices she hears are telling her that we must now soak the rich?
No one tells her that higher taxes imposed on the rich (and the semi-rich) will not come out of their consumption expenditures, but out of their investment capital (i.e., their savings); that such taxes will mean less investment, i.e., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices for scarcer goods; and that by the time the rich have to lower their standard of living, hers will be gone, along with her savings and her husband’s job–and no power in the world (no economic power) will be able to revive the dead industries (there will be no such power left).
One Comment to “Pondering Rand”
No economic power left, only criminal power. I don’t call it political power just because it’s in the hands of those in positions of government officials, but wielding initiatory force under cover of the guise of law and government. It’s crime and they’re criminals carrying out criminal plans, not laws. They infest law and government and displace it. It’s not law and government, nor government officials. And the enforcers of those plans, on the street, aren’t cops. They’re goons for the kingpins.
Law and government, and government officials, are of individual rights, most particularly of self defense. The physical power vested in it, is economic power allocated to it, just like private security guards on store or company premises. Usurped by crooks under cover, it becomes criminal power, especially when the crooks and their plans are endlessly allowed to keep operating, even above board.
Political power? That exists only in the realm of establishing and operating law and government from their basis of individual rights. In that realm it’s the ability and activity of voting, campaigning and vote getting, essentially, of seeking and marketing the best way of identifying and making needed laws, and of carrying on government (enforcement). As such, political power, a form of economic power, is essential, and politicians engage in an honorable activity.
If there’s no economic power left, there’s no political power, either. And criminal power will last only until the crooks use it up. They can’t replace it if there’s no economic power for them to try to usurp, or, better, if economic power is put beyond their reach. Then, any dead but viable industries can be revived.