In an interview today on Fox Business Network, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talked about the need for the Canadian and American governments to make sure economic prosperity includes everybody.
When will people understand: It’s not the role of government to make everyone prosperous!
Why do we need a government in the first place? The function of a government is to protect rights. Is there a right to be economically included, or to make a certain income, or to have a certain lifestyle deemed as minimally acceptable?
Of course not. It’s not possible for any government to secure such a lifestyle for anyone. And it’s not right for the government to try.
If you’re rational, you want a government to ensure that your private property remains yours, along with your physical safety from crooks, rapists, killers and external invaders, including terrorists.
We can debate the best way for government to accomplish those tasks. But there can be no debate about the fact that these are desirable goals, and where government has to focus — and limit — its efforts.
For the government to step in and say, “Hey, everyone should have a certain level of income” means that some people’s rights will have to be violated in order for others to get what certain politicians feel that certain people should have.
And there’s no end to it. Once the principle is established that everyone has a right to food and a home, and an education, then it starts to extend everywhere else. Kind of like we see today, in the Great Redistribution Swamp that Washington DC has become. Everybody has a right to whatever he or she can purchase through the right interest group/pressure group warfare politicians from whom one can buy connections.
Exactly how is this an improvement over the supposed unjust and irrational “dog eat dog” of actual capitalism?
Washington DC is not a twenty-first equivalent of the falling Roman Empire by accident, or merely because some people are greedy and dishonest. Any society can survive a minority of dishonest people. What we can’t survive is a majority mistakenly thinking that everyone has a right not just to life and private property, but to happiness itself.
When socialists like Justin Trudeau ignorantly talk about the need to “include” everyone in economic prosperity, he assumes that everyone has the same ability and motivation. It’s not the case. Some people don’t even want to be prosperous. And when you’re handed something for free, you don’t value it the same way you would if you were expected to earn and work for it. Stealing from people to give to others who did not earn it demoralizes, slows down and ultimately shuts down the engine of civilization. Think Cuba, Venezuela and Russia back in the Soviet days.
Rational people don’t expect something for nothing. Yet Trudeau, like most politicians in America (both parties) build their power bases on the false idea that government’s job is to make everyone rich. How ignorant of most Americans to keep falling for it!
That kind of thinking got us the housing bubble back in 2007. It was based on the false assumption that government’s job was to make sure everyone has a house, and that banks must operate by government priorities instead of market priorities in making loans to anyone and everyone.
We see how well that worked out.
How many depressions and recessions will it take for human beings in otherwise educated, prosperous and somewhat enlightened countries to grasp that government is only worth anything when it does the least possible for us? We are sovereign over our lives and are entitled to be free from coercion. That’s it, and that’s more than enough to keep any government busy.
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