False Premises and The Root Failing of Collectivism

We all know that communism is evil, socialism is bad, big government reduces personal liberty and central planners can’t plan their way out of a wet paper bag. But we don’t often examine why. If governmental interventions into private lives and free markets are supposedly rooted in altruism and compassion for the less fortunate, why do they so often fail?

I recently wrote that the war on poverty has been an abject failure, leaving in its wake families and communities in utter chaos. Well, the reason that the programs fail is that the descriptions of being rooted in altruism and compassion are based on false premises, that too often go completely unexamined by their adherents. As Lenin (not Lennon) told us, “The goal of socialism is capitalism”, and he conveniently mapped out the method for us: “The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” Redistribution of wealth is not altruistic, and helping the poor is not the goal. The goal is to crush those at the top, to punish them for doing too well.

My friend Tom is fond of saying, “All taxes hurt the poor.” Even the ones that are designed to help them. We see the effects of government dependency all around us as the entrepreneurial spirit and rugged sense of individualism is slowly extinguished. That dependency cannot be built except by redistribution via the tax code.

This system predicated on the false premise of helping the poor is a sick, twisted form of bondage. The true, inviolable, fatal flaw to the idea of government helping folks is that government solutions require a steady supply of two commodities: tax revenue, and poor people. So the question we must ask ourselves when considering whether a program is beneficial or not is: does it solve the problem, or perpetuate it? When you honestly examine almost every governmental program in existence, and really, truly want to know the answer, it becomes pretty clear. Then, when you stop to consider the words of Lenin and his roadmap to a communist state, you are forced to decide why similar policies exist today that drive up taxation and inflation.

Government isn’t in the saving people business, or the environment business, or the health care insurance business, or the education business. It’s in the government business.