Jul 15 2007
Slaves to Christ and Compassion Unite: Free Markets Must Prevail
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By Jason Miller
7/15/07
[Warning: Satire Ahead]
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
–John Maynard Keynes
If you’re nodding your head in agreement with Keynes and expecting validation of your opinion as you read this piece, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Forget the humanitarian, bleeding heart nonsense. Let’s reflect on the words of Thomas Sowell instead:
“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on ‘income distribution,’ the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”
We live in reality ladies and gentlemen. Not some utopian fantasy dreamt up by the likes of idealistic dreamers like Marx and Engels.
Ours is indeed a cold, cruel world. The sooner each of us accepts our lot, makes the most of it, and moves on, the better off we will all be. The ingenious and industrious Bill Gates deserves every penny he has. By the same token, the dregs of society inhabiting places like Skid Row and eating from dumpsters are reaping their just rewards for their depraved, lazy, and ignorant ways.
In fact, the brilliant thinkers broadly classified as Social Darwinists were “spot on,” as the Brits would say. “Survival of the fittest” is as applicable to humanity as it is to the rest of the animal kingdom. We are not immune to this inevitable aspect of life on Earth. It is time we accept the “law of the jungle” and terminate our puerile efforts to artificially mitigate natural human suffering.
By God, we live in America! We are the bastion of the free market! We’re the uber capitalists and it’s time we began to act accordingly. Reagan, Friedman, Rand, Bush, and a host of other highly lucid thinkers have shown us the way. It seems we are just too damned cowardly to traverse the trail they have blazed.
As Americans, we extol the virtues of freedom and rail against oppression. Yet we allow our hallowed free market to languish, severely crippling it with a host of asinine socialist elements that seriously compromise our opportunity to revel in the glorious splendor of true capitalism.
We have wasted years applying half-measures and giving lip service to free market capitalists, the potential saviors of humanity. Perpetual teases that we are, time and again we lure them into bed with the promise of sexual nirvana. Yet more often than not, we toy with them long enough to satiate our sadistic impulses and then leave them to masturbate their way to carnal bliss.
Sure, eliminating the Cadillac-driving welfare queens was an important step, but if we’re going to right this ship, we have to go all the way. All of us need to get up off our lazy asses, relinquish our infantile dependence on government programs, and slay the beast of socialism once and for all.
Here are the remedial steps that we must implement if we are to unleash the free market and reclaim capitalism’s former glory:
1. Eliminate the public education system. If you don’t have money, you remain ignorant.
2. Immediately cut public funding to maintain roads and highways. A toll booth at every other intersection would be a small price to pay for the reinvigoration of free markets.
3. Close all public libraries. If you want to read, buy your books.
4. Shut down all forms of public transit. Walking is good exercise.
5. Completely deregulate and privatize public utilities. If the market drives prices too high for you, you can buy candles, piss in buckets, sweat, shiver, and boil creek water.
6. Abolish police and fire departments. Settle your own disputes, protect yourselves, and keep your buckets and garden hoses handy.
7. Put the EPA out of our misery. It’s time to end the tyrannical reign of fear mongering environmentalists.
8. Labor laws, EEOC and OSHA? These anachronistic impediments to profit need to go. Let the market dictate wages, hours and working conditions. People need to be thankful to have a job, regardless of how miserable, discriminatory, or dangerous it might be.
9. Eradicate the FDA and USDA. If a food or drug starts killing large numbers of people, distributors and manufacturers will police themselves in order to sustain their profitability.
10. Dismantle the FAA. Plane crashes are simply a cost of doing business. Let’s put a sense of adventure back into flying.
11. Halt all Social Security and Medicare handouts. The programs are insolvent. Our elderly need to start fending for themselves. Wal-Mart needs greeters. And as for those who are too infirm or feeble to work, they’re fortunate to have lived as long as they have.
12. Kudos to Clinton for creating TANF, but he didn’t go far enough. Medicaid and TANF must go. It’s time we introduced our spoiled and lazy rabble to the concept of the workhouse. It worked for the Victorians; it can work for us.
Enacting these twelve reforms would go a long way toward restoring the supremacy of free market capitalism. However, our task would not be complete.
Consider an even more critical challenge. To unfetter the free market, we must divorce ourselves from the idiocy of Christianity. Let’s face it. Christ was about compassion, love, generosity, and forgiveness. In the final analysis, Jesus was a loser who provided false hope for misfits, outcasts, incompetents, and weaklings. As free market capitalists driven by greed, selfishness, and hyper-competitiveness, we need to exorcise Christ’s moronic teachings from our society and culture.
Now let’s get busy.
Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/. You can reach him at JMiller@bestcyrano.com
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I think that we should keep being compassionate. We should continue telling people “If you are unable to produce $5.15 per hour, you are forbidden to work and thereby gain skills to increase the value of your future labor.” It is cruel to let worthless people work. They are a lost cause, and should be given the palliative care of a welfare hospice until they die.
We should continue robbing the creators of jobs in order to prevent them from enslaving more Americans by paying them to do things for them. A man who pays others to work is a slaver. It is only when people are assigned jobs by the government that they are truly free.
We should continue to pay poor people to have more children. What the world needs is more poor children, and we can best increase their numbers by paying people to have them. This is not slavery, because it is the government pays mothers to do the work of having children, and when the government pays you to do a thing it is not slavery. Slavery is chosen, not enforced.
We should continue to enforce laws against price gouging during natural disasters. If people take the risk to deliver goods to an area which has been devastated by a hurricane, they are taking a risk. They could be hurt or killed. This is unacceptable, and must be stopped. Permitting people to deliver goods and services in a dangerous environment is cruel.
We should continue to follow the teachings of Christ. Did he not say “Blessed is he who steals from one neighbor to give to another, for this is the definition of generosity?”. Did he not say “Blessed is the tax collector, for when the meek inherit the earth, he will get half”? Did he not say “Blessed is he who crucifies the tax evader, for those who challenge established authority should be crucified.” Every morning, we should wake up and ask ourselves: “Who would Jesus imprison?”.
It would seem that Ayn Rand has taken over the mind of Jason Miller. I feel like I just read Atlas Shrugged; I am entertained, shocked and fear the very essence of mankind.
After all the conversations that I had with different people on the subjects of philosophy, sociology, psychology and just plain old ranting about the top-heavy, pyramid scheme of a system that we live in. If you were to take a lot of the derogatory comments and insane rationalizations that had been offered, you could write this article with them.
Nicely done Jason, I hope that people get it.
I am my brother’s keeper.
And the begger Lazarus…who was at the bottom of the Pyramid…like the one on the back of the American’s dollar bill..ended up in the bosom of Abram…Symbolic of the Kingdom of God/Heaven…While the rich man…who was at the top of the Pyramid…ended up in the fire…begging for water…
The paradox of the Pyramid…For the High shall be made low..and the low will be made high…
Most all the European’s Institutions form a Pyramid…but what does this Indian know about such things…I am just passing through the world the European’s have built in this land…
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Go Jason,
It ’s high time someone took umbrage at the brutal reality that the poor can’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps — because they keep them on the throats of the downtrodden rich.
In my neighborhood, for example, I see the homeless sifting through the garbage of their betters. There needs to be a law passed to prevent this sort of outrage: These people have no right to eat garbage that they did not earn.
Keep up the good fight, Jason. All the vast wealth the rich and super rich have is not comfort enough, because such infamy, as mentioned above, exists in this unjust world.
This plan has great merit, Jason. I commend you on your sound thinking and bold new direction. It has me thinking of the aftermath of the plan.
That strategy brings many potential solutions to mind. They just pop out at you after reading the cogent tome above.
The worn-out rabble who are unable to function properly in a World that overflows with opportunity, wealth, and inspiration, are more like a lead anchor holding back our sailing ship of Utopian enterprise, rather than mere denizens at the bottom of our golden pyramid. Keep in mind that these people are even immune to the plethora of self-help that our society provides via books, lectures, and television! How is that for personal failure?
We CAN certainly solve the problem of the unwashed masses forever, while providing new, important, even vital, commodities to our genetically deserved and hard-earned ascent towards more profit and wealth and freedom.
While I am not sure about the technical aspects of this, (leave that to the think tanks for final solutions to work out) here is my sincere contribution to the cause:
We should immediately establish a Ministry of Enrichment. That new agency would begin in the United States, (God Bless!) with essential plot programs that would eventually become global.
The Minirich would offer the rabble viable and satisfying ways to turn their parasitic, unfulfilled, even depressing and often brutal existences into real benefits for our Great Society.
Their would be three major departments overseen by the Ministry of Enrichment:
1) The Department of Collective Infrastructure and Gentrification
2) The Department of Corporal Reclamation
3) The Department of Renewal
The Department of Infrastructure and Gentrification, when in place, would function like public work programs of the past. We could easily set a threshold for psychological, physical, vocational, and other aspects of the conscripted. The initial qualifications for the program will be income level using a calculation based on net worth plus public benefit versus personal consumption of goods and services. As we know, the homeless and the poor will fit our numbers. The members of the CIG Core would then be put to work in various capacities, from preparing their own dwellings for upscale revival by investors to massive projects aimed at repairing and upgrading the country’s infrastructure. I assure you, this project will bring many, many able-bodied and even mentally capable bodies to our cause.
Those deemed not fit to have the luxury of serving their country and its hard-working capitalists in this way would be directed to the Department of Corporal Reclamation. Of course, they will have options. They can earn some quality camp-life by offering vital organs for transplants. They can choose to partake in pharmaceuticals trials or be subjects for medical research. Those who refuse to volunteer for our wide-spectrum of programs or fail to see the value of camp life will then be offered a final solution: Reclamation! We can give them enough time to consider their options while they enjoy the benefits of camp life, but they will be creating a bill by staying there and, if they do not take the generous offers we provide, (do to stubbornness or ignorance, etc.) the bill will come due and they will be allowed to serve the country as a Reclament, as I would call them.
I assume that we can render and recycle large quantities of camp debtors in a satisfactory way with today’s technology. The ceremony prior to rendering would be glorious and perhaps we could use a pseudo-religious, patriotic ritual to mark their transition into valuable, (and it is valuable) protein, and various byproducts? If we can sufficiently purify this new product, it could be used to feed pets, livestock, third-world dwellers, and even members of the Corps. Note how cost-effective “Corp Chow” would be!
Of course, along the way, we have to offer, (they must feel like they have choices, since this is a free country). All members of the Corps will have the option, (at any time) to opt-out. In that case, they can be transported to the Department of Renewal where a glorious, pain-free, (maybe even multimedia) release awaits them. Of course, we still have the valuable commodity of their remains to send back to the Department of Corporal Reclamation. We must renew them carefully so that vital organ stocks are at optimal.
As you see, this wonderful and potentially profitable program will assure us that all the inferior remnants that contrast and hold back our superior growth and evolution as a species will be put to the best use possible and for the greater good. One can imagine the joy, pride, and sense of meaning and fulfillment that will give these lucky people compared to their current, meager and substandard lives.
I submit these carefully thought-out ideas for the consideration of the body politic and I strongly suggest that we waste no time or investment in getting this important job started. We have a World’s worth of poor and dejected people to reclaim! That’s a duty and an honor, so legislation should be proposed as soon as the think tanks get on this.
Thank you for your time and inspiration, Jason!
Some of this I got, some of it I didn’t. Mainly because some of these things we really need to do. Socialism is an unfair form of government that basically rewards the people regardless of what they contribute to society. I believe that if you don’t work, you don’t eat. I have never taken a government handout in my life and it burns me up to see those lazy people with their hands out living life like they don’t have a care in the world, while I bust my a** trying to stay on top.
So if the point of this article was to poke fun at Capitalism, it fell short. And if the intent was to support Capitalism, it fell short. Capitalism is not the problem; the problem are the people. And Free Enterprise is a great thing. People who work are not slaves and business owners are not slave owners.
Also, the list of things that you sarcastically said needed to be abolished has nothing to do with capitalism because:
1. If you don’t have money you don’t stay ignorant. Paid education is far more superior to that of a free education.
2. roads and highways are actually owned by the people of that state - collectively.
3. You must buy your books if you want to read because - 1.) people don’t write books to give them away; and 2.) libraries only carry certain books.
4. Public transit is a service. Taxis are the private branches of transportation.
5. Utilities are already privatized. These companies are owned by individuals, not government.
6. The EPA, EEOC, OSHA, FDA, FAA, & USDA are all regulatory organizations that oversee the activities of BUSINESSES, not people. They are there for safety, and have nothing to do with socialism, capitalism, etc.
7. Social Security and Medicare are jokes. And Welfare should be either abolished or seriously revised.
My point to this is that most of the argument presented in this article has nothing to do with capitalism or free enterprise. I’ve owned businesses in New Orleans and Dallas. I’m a 35 year old Black man with a federal conviction and I have never had a job, and there is no law on the books that prevent me from creating my own business. To me, that’s what makes America a great place. Do we really want to change that? Do we really want the government to “distribute” the wealth rather than secure the rights of the people earn their way? Do we really want those who do nothing to live like those who work hard? I don’t know……. we should think about that one.
Khazeem
Hey Khazeem, there’s nothing wrong with Nazism either. It’s the people…bla bla bla…your pseudo-realistic logic is infantile.
The mythology about the self-made man is one of the oldest sustaining lies for a system of plutocratic control, and the unfortunate part is that it includes supporters like you, who judging by a puny minority of “successful” entrepreneurs or whatever, go on to assume anyone can “make it.” Did you ever think, you moron, that your own “success” such as it is is predicated on innumerable facts, including luck? Just consider the Moron in Chief. Do you think he’s there on merit? And so it goes with just about 85% of what we might call the US “upper class” (overwhelmingly white, incidentally, if it matters at all to you). Most inherited their wealth, or were brought up in a cushy network of privilege making “success” all the more likely. Speaking as a black man who literally clawed his way out of the ditch, but didn’t go stupid like you, you remind me of other disgusting people in our community—the Colin Powells, Condis, “Republican strategist” Amy Holmes—and so on who see nothing wrong with shilling for a system of institutionalized exploitation. Go on living in the universe of “I’m alright, Jack!” if you like, but at least fix your pathetic political logic.
Mr. Khaseem, I would be on the streets if it werent for social secureity and Medicare. I am 71 yo, workerd all my life, my husband and I owned a store and when he died I couldn’t continue, suffered a stroke, and so on. Luck has indeed a great deal to do with how things eventually turn out and that’s what people like you refuse to compute…
@ julietSobran. I’m not against social security and medicare, i said that the programs were a joke. they fall short of doing what it is that they are supposed to do. And luck does pay a role in success…… so does hard work and proper preparation.
@alabamy-albignon
alabamy, the Black man that can’t even disagree with his brother online without insulting him, you seem to misunderstand everything that I said. And its sad that I could express my opposing opinion without insulting the author, but you - Mr. Black Man - seem to be angry at those that work hard and succeed in this country. There is a difference between the wealthy and the well off. Just as there if a difference between Nazism and Capitalism.
You believe in a lot of lies about how money is acquired in this country, and its those lies that hold you down, not capitalism. Some people do work hard for their money, you know? If your understanding is true then it makes no sense to go to these expensive universities for a degree because there is no way to earn a good living? There are jobs that do pay well, my brother. But you must put something in to get these jobs.
And FYI, I can’t stand this Bush administration, nor do I subscribe to any of the conservative or liberal beliefs or positions. I deal with things based on what is right and true, versus what is a wrong and false. And what you said about me and how money is acquired by THE MASSES in this country is wrong. I’m sorry if my comments about the abolishment of welfare hit a little too close to home, my brother. But remember, I’m from the hood too.
Khazeem
khazeem, thank you for your note.
Whatever myopias you or I may suffer from I can see you are a man of goodwill. My reaction comes from the wounds I have personally suffered and witnessed, far too many times, brother. The Man is in charge of this plutocracy-wins-all game, which receives its maximum cover in what we call corporate America. Being from the ‘hood, as I am, too (I got an education but I ain’t no “middle class” dude like Sowell, or these latter-day “republican strategists” like Amy Holmes that the prostituted media insist on parading in front of us as “success stories”…) you must know that many of our people survive via cooperation (there’s a lot of predation, too, of course, but that is always the case where extreme poverty and despair have become ubiquitous…the Irish and the Italian and the Jewish poor neighborhoods once showed the same conditions, but, they could eventually move on, and I don’t have to tell you why), and that our historical roots define communalism as our preferred mode of social organization. In fact, until capitalism came around, except for tribal wars, some form of village-community or communalism was the prevailing de facto mode for most of humanity. It was capitalism that deepened the war of all against all and enthroned hyperindividualism as a vertue. I don’t know if you’re a Christian—I used to be one, and I still have a big amount of respect for Christ as a moral teacher. So I’d like to ask you this: Do you think he would endorse hyperindividualism as touted by system boosters, as something desirable in people? My hunch is not by a long shot. Passing capitalism through the eye of the needle into the realm of heaven is as next-to-impossible as threading a plutocrat into His kingdom. Philosophically capitalism and true Christianity are at loggerheads, no matter what Calvin and the rest of the protestants say.
The idea that “anyone can make it” if he tries real hard and honest is, as I said earlier, one of the pillars supporting an elaborate edifice of lies constantly reinforced from every opinion-forming pulpit in America—politicians, media, churches, etc., all such lies propping up a highly inequitable system, and one which is becoming increasingly so by the hour. America is today the industrial nation with the most severe spread between ultrarich and poor, and that includes the dismal fate of the rapidly vanishing middle class.
Applied to our community, it would mean that all that unemployment and human degradation you see is inherent in our people and not explainable by anything else than genetic shiftlessness, the ol’ step’n'fetchit dragging of the feet, and a pronounced lack of entrepreneurial spirit. What happened to institutionalized racism, whose insidious effects we still battle?
While there’s no doubting that generations of poverty create their own toxic efects, including a cynicism toward mainstream avenues of self-improvement (we can discuss the merits of those in more detail another time as they apply to people of any color), defeatism, and ignorance and often irresponsible self-harming behavior take their toll, as they’re likely to do. Poverty also breeds more than its share of criminals, it’s always been that way in ANY society. It’s simply human. I’m sure such a rump explanation for the conditions of life for so many Americans—that it’s simply their lack of “industry” a la Henry Ford or Benjamin Franklin, would suit racists fine, not to mention those in the upper reaches of society who benefit from our “lower classes” divisions.
Read Earl Ofari’s THE MYTH OF BLACK CAPITALISM for another explanation of why, you, indeed, may be luckier than most.
No hard feelings brother.
^it’s good to see someone break that down with such patience, I have difficulty doing so myself, as I have dealt with my fair share of those who believe people should “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” and etc…
their lack of love for their fellow man is truly astounding to me.
Right on, Jason… look like the Republican platform to me!
Kent Welton,
OligarchyUSA.com
The way I see it, if someone lets you die in their arms, they can’t be that bad.