Among the fascinating aspects of the many crises facing America is the refusal of the statists to face an uncomfortable possibility — that it is their beloved welfare state and controlled economy that has failed. Instead, they blame their woes on everything but the welfare state and the controlled economy. Their solution, not surprisingly, is to call for more welfare, more regulations, more borrowing, and more spending.
Suppose a 3-pack-a-day smoker learns that he has lung cancer. He absolutely refuses to accept that his heavy smoking is responsible for his woes. The problem, he says, is the large period of time in which he isn’t sucking on a burning cigarette. His solution: He just needs to smoke more in order to cure his cancer.
That’s what the welfare-and-regulation statists, led by President Obama, are now doing. Refusing to believe that their beloved welfare state and regulated society might finally be reaching a tragic climax, they blame the problem on insufficient welfare, inadequate regulation, or the wrong people at the controls. The last thing they want to accept is that their entire paradigm itself is the problem.
Here’s a way to see the world the way a statist does. Imagine a box that is labeled “Welfare State/Regulated Society.” In that box, the government is empowered to take money from people and give it to other people. It is empowered to regulate the economic activities of the people. The government purports to take care of people, watch over them, and protect them from the vicissitudes of life.
Yet, people within the box get sick from Salmonella poisoning in peanut butter. Other people lose their life’s fortunes to scam artists. Others lose their money in the stock market. Banks and investment houses are going under. Automobile companies are faced with bankruptcy. People are losing their homes. Social Security is bankrupt. Healthcare costs are soaring. Grocery expenses are mounting. Most everyone is having trouble making ends meet.
This is what the statists call watching over people and taking care of them!
So, what do the statists in the welfare-state/regulated-economy box say? They say that all these woes are because they didn’t have enough welfare or enough regulations. Or that the welfare managers and regulators were asleep at the wheel.
Their solution: Reform the welfare state and the regulated economy by increasing the welfare and the regulations and by putting better people in public office. That’s what all the increased borrowing, spending, printing money, expanding credit, bailouts, economic stimuli, and new regulations are all about.
But if insufficient welfare and regulations are really the cause of the problem, doesn’t that nonetheless still reflect a failure of the statist paradigm? After all, they’ve been operating this paradigm for some 75 years. That’s a long time! During that time, they’ve had the power to implement any and all welfare schemes they’ve wanted. They’ve had the power to regulate the most minute economic aspects of people’s lives. They’ve had the power to create departments, agencies, and bureaus and staff them to their hearts’ content with the best and the brightest bureaucrats around.
So, why are all the crises? After some 75 years of welfare-state, regulated-society, weren’t we supposed to have arrived at nanny nirvana by now? Yet, all we see are crises everywhere we turn.
Outside the box is the alternative economic paradigm, the one on which our nation was founded and that provides the true solution — in fact, the only solution — to our nation’s economic woes. That paradigm is the free-market paradigm. The reason that this paradigm is outside the box, rather than in it, is that it does not purport to reform or improve the welfare state or the regulated economy. Instead, contending that the welfare state and the regulated economy are themselves the problem, it aims to dismantle the welfare, the regulations, and all the departments and agencies that administer them, sending all those bureaucrats into the private sector.
The free-market paradigm is one in which economic activity is entirely free of any government control. That’s why it’s called free market. It is a paradigm in which people are free to keep everything they earn to do what they want with their own money. It is a paradigm in which government is prohibited from taking care of people, providing for people, and protecting people from the vicissitudes of life.
Thus, the free-market paradigm has no income taxation, IRS, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, subsidies, grants, SEC, HUD, Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, and others, DEA, paper money, or Federal Reserve. Under the free-market paradigm, the market (i.e., people) are free from interference by any and all government welfare and regulatory departments and agencies because such departments and agencies simply do not exist.
After 75 years of existing in the welfare-state, regulated-society box, America might finally be facing a perfect storm of crises arising from the nanny state. The question is: How bad do things have to get before Americans say “Enough is enough. Tear down the walls of this box and restore a free market to our land!”