“NOTHING BUT A PIPE DREAM”
by OPOVV, ©2016
(Mar. 6, 2016) — There are more fools than wise men; more followers than leaders; and more people looking for the opportunity to walk over others – take unfair advantage of — rather than get down to basics: roll up their sleeves and accomplish their goal through sweat equity. As has been said, there’s no substitute for doing it yourself; if you want to have the job done right, do it yourself; and the old “do it right the first time (yourself).”
The human condition hasn’t changed one iota in the last 100,000 years: a man and a woman produce offspring and it’s up to the coalition of the same afflicted neighbors to bind together to raise the young so the parents can be taken care of in old age which, depending on an infinite amount of variables, may last not long or very long, say from 30 years to 130 years.
One could postulate that there are an equal number of possible governments per population; in other words, each of us has our own ideas about how to rule our world. Problem is, if the ideas aren’t in agreement, conflicts arise; conflict causes strife; strife causes unease; and unease results in a wired environment in which to raise the young. Take it from any parent who raised a kid, additional stimulus that makes the rug rats more energized isn’t what one would consider an ideal condition in which to strive for.
The dreamlike childish belief in a “Garden of Eden,” a “Peter Pan” utopia for adults to sit back and live “The Life of Riley,” has been with us since the beginning of sitting around the campfire and telling stories. The modern-day television set has replaced the campfire of yesterday, just as the telephone has replaced sitting next to your neighbor on the log or a rocker on the front porch. Human interaction has been diminished during the last thousand or so years, which seems to correspond with the ignoring one of the Ten Commandments: Thou Shalt Not Steal.
Murder is a form of theft: stealing a life. Big government – by definition – steals more freedoms than a smaller government and, on the ladder of freedom, Socialism is at the bottom, where anarchy (Nihilism) is at the top. A good example of 100% freedom would be to suggest that a prisoner in solitary confinement is totally free in that his mind is free to wander without undue influence, minus the rats and lice.
Government, by its very existence, cannot operate in an efficient manner because there’s no incentive to do a task less expensive and/or better. An example would be to research how many government supervisors hired more qualified employees than they were.
Socialism is synonymous with control because, in order to keep the socialist wheels greased, there must be a totally-controlled mechanism in place to guarantee the fuel – money – to perpetuate the system. An interesting observation is that there are no safeguards in place to curtail borrowing or, for that matter, cheating (reminds one of a capitalist system when unscrupulous people – politicians – are put in charge of the nation’s purse strings, as in today’s USA, does it not?).
But the fuel to run a Socialist enterprise need not necessarily be money in the form of bartered currency. One could make the argument that the Aztecs had a totally Socialist government as long as the fuel – captive slaves – were readily available for menial and manual labor.
Last century was the Golden Years of Socialism, with numerous European countries embracing the concept of “something for nothing.” The most striking example of Socialism taken to the end is that of NAZI Germany, but the end need not be burnt ruins: the end may be an economic collapse of the highest order where gangs of men scour the earth for food and entertainment with no moral or social restraint placed upon them, not unlike the way ISIS operates in the Middle East.
The end result of Socialism can only end in disaster, for the mechanism for perpetuity doesn’t exist; hasn’t been invented yet; is nothing but a pipe dream because there will always be a Chairman Mao, or a Pol Pot, Stalin or a Hitler waiting in the wings to take control of a failed system and run it into the ground.
There is no magic formula for success other than hard work and the Golden Rule. For those who refuse the dictates of the Golden Rule there can be only one possible outcome: resources, be they human or material, wasted and disposed of in the most heinous manner.
That Bernie Sanders is delusional is a given, but what isn’t fully understood is the massive failure of our public education system that allows such a wacko to pander his goods to a gullible public. Reminds one of the line “I’m shocked, shocked that there’s gambling going on in here!”
[Note to the Readers: Yesterday’s backers of Cambodia’s Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge are today’s leaders of China. Keep that fact in mind when you cast your vote for president. Thank you.]