day no. 17,015: antisocialism

“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” — Margaret Thatcher

You cannot have an economy based on abduction. You need productivity to have anything. Sure enough, if someone makes something, someone else may want to take it, but if the first guy doesn't make anything else, eventually everyone runs out of things to take or they kill each other until there's no one left to take it from them. Either way, you eventually run out of other stuff or other people, but rest assured, something will run out.

"Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World: III. The New Hypocrite

Modern statesmen want you to be happy with half a loaf. Not because that means someone else will get the other half, but because it means that they can produce less bread without an uprising. They want you to consider your selflessness a higher virtue than your charity since your selflessness requires nothing from them while your charity requires them to leave your things alone so that you have something leftover which you can then give.

“If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love - You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Socialism is driven by scarcity. It promotes poverty over productivity. It penalizes self starters for embarrassing self-pitiers. It is moral and mathematic madness. It is the economic insanity of forcing a grocer to charge $1 for a loaf of bread that cost $2 to produce and expecting the grocer to stay in business or the bread maker to absorb the loss. It is the surrender of reason to the temptation of jealousy. It is the establishment of envy. It is the side hustle of those who refuse to hustle. It is the politics of power grabbing and bad math.

“Soap and Socialism are two hobbies of the upper middle class." — G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

No one who has to work for a living could find the time to pass laws about how clean his hands need to be or how green his car must be. Only those ensconced in the upper echelons of power mongering have time for that brand of nonsense.

"This is the high road to communism; in other words, legislation will be—as it now is—the battlefield for everybody’s dreams and everybody’s covetousness." -- Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Passing laws is how some pass their time and rest assured, their laws mean more work for you and more bread for them.

"You can vote your way into socialism, but you will have to shoot your way out." -- Douglas Wilson

You can vote to give your vote away but you cannot get it back that way.