Who Rigged the System — and Why?

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is campaigning for President on Donald Trump’s theme–that America has a “rigged” system.

It’s an indirect compliment to President Trump.

However, the question begs for an answer: WHO or WHAT rigs the American system of government? WHAT does the “rigging” consist of? And what is the motive?

The answer is simple: Government intervention in the economy.

Warren claims “rich people” are rigging the system. The issue is not “rich people” rigging the system. The issue is rich people with government PULL rigging the system. That’s not a free market!

Private businesses — large or small — do not have coercive power over individuals. The only improper control they ever have is fraud. And if they commit fraud, they are justifiably subject to legal action. Politicians, on the other hand, have coercive power. They are part of the government. That’s what government is, by definition: coercion. We give politicians coercive power over health care, education, and other industries at our peril. When we do so, most of us ignorantly think we’re letting them take care of us and watch out for us. Yet the vast majority of us understand the true moral character of most if not all politicians. THESE are the people we allow to control and rig our economy. It’s a massive and lethal contradiction. It’s also stupid.

So long as we give government moral and legal control over one-third or one-half of the American economy — of all private ownership, of all transactions that take place among private parties — we will have a rigged system. Because when government is permitted to have influence over private economic decisions that morally it should never have had, and that the U.S. Constitution never called for, the economy inevitably becomes political.

The solution is not what Elizabeth Warren and fellow socialists propose: Giving government 80, 90 or even 100 percent control over the economy, rather than the 50 or 60 percent it currently has. It’s like throwing gasoline on a fire. Or giving cigarettes to a COPD or lung cancer patient. Or giving heroin to a drug addict. How can anybody take this seriously?

And the more the economy becomes political, the more we see the rest of society become political. Look at the politicization of sports, entertainment, movies, music, television and just about everything else today. None of that would have happened without government intervention in the economy.

Elizabeth Warren, unlike President Trump, does not want to get government out of the economy. Nor does she want government less involved in the economy, as President Trump’s policies have, in some measure, provided. She wants government more involved in the economy than ever before. She wants 70 percent tax rates, or maybe even 90 percent tax rates. She wants government control over medicine, not just partial control. She wants government control over college education, not just primary and secondary education, because paying for college means government gets to control what happens at colleges. She wants government control over our energy supply and the energy choices we make. This would alter everyday life as we know it, most of all for the poor or middle classes, people whose daily challenges — despite her claims of populism — she will never face or encounter.

Government intervention in the economy gives us the rigged system we have today. It explains why Democrats have turned into arrogant Communists. And it explains why Republicans — nominally on the side of smaller or more limited government control of the economy — sit stone-faced and frightened when it comes time to really separating state and economics. Why? Because they have just as much a stake in the rigged system as everyone else.

Watching America today is like looking at a person with a disease where nobody knows the cure because nobody will name the cause. I cannot express how frustrating and sad it is to watch.

Watching politicians like Elizabeth Warren propose “solutions” that will only worsen the disease whose cause nobody will name takes it to the level of absurdity.

Yet that’s where we are.

 

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