Posted by Chrissy the Hyphenated because the article posted by Pete is SO good, I want to give it an extra push!
EXCERPTS (link below)
People have been discussing economic systems for more than two thousand years. As described in my books, Science and Technology in World History, Vols. 1 & 2, communism was advocated by Plato as early as the fourth century BC.
But Plato’s student, Aristotle, disparaged communism by observing “that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual.”
[I would think anyone who has parented a teen can relate to Aristotle’s argument.]
Aristotle concluded that the ills which are supposed to arise from private property in fact originated in human nature.
In Principles of Political Economy (1848), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) gave three reasons to severely limit government interference in a nation’s economy and markets.
First, any increase in government power is a threat to human individuality, freedom, and originality, qualities necessary for the progress of the human race.
Second, market economies function more efficiently and produce more prosperity.
Third, laissez-faire economies inculcate moral virtues in citizens by making them more self-reliant, virtuous and intelligent. “A people,” Mill explained, “who expect to have everything done for them … have their faculties only half developed.”
[It occurs to me that the apparently widespread phenomenon of overgrown children living in their too-tolerant mothers’ basements is part of the cultural phenomenon that led to Barack Obama’s election.]
To test socialism versus capitalism, we would have to take one or more countries with similar social and physical characteristics and divide them in half. After assigning a different economic system to each country, we would then sit back for fifty years and observe what happens.
But this experiment has already been performed through an accident of history. We know the answer. At the close of World War II, Germany and Korea were divided into socialist and market economies. Socialism failed dramatically. East Germany had to build the Berlin Wall just to keep people from fleeing.
In the U.S., we exist in a curious state of denial. We acknowledge the inferiority of socialism but continue to become more and more socialistic. Every attempt to shrink the size of government or repeal a regulation brings about a shriek, like a bottle being pulled out of the mouth of an infant.
I cannot recall a Republican president or Congress who reduced the size of the federal government. No one wants to surrender a special privilege or entitlement. We know what the best system is, but we lack the discipline to return to it.
READ THE REST of “Does America Deserve Obama?” By David Deming – November 4, 2011
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/does_america_deserve_obama.html
The comments are interesting too!
polination.blog 