I'm a shooter. I enjoy guns, I enjoy shooting, I'm quite good at it. And so, understandably, I started cluttering our family blog with various technical observations about firearms, cartridge reloading, new product evaluations, et cetera. After a bit, I thought that perhaps I should separate that from "here's our son sitting on the potty, looking guilty for having unspooled an entire roll of toilet paper" posts. And then I further thought, "If we're going to have a separate blog for 'grown up topics', maybe we should go all the way...."
And so... this blog. A place to share technical data, certainly, but also a place in which we can philosophize over the meaning of money and freedom and, frankly, vent over the idiocy of politicians. Ohhhh, yes.... There will be venting. LOTS of venting. I loathe the miserable sonsabitches.
But, for now, I'll start with capitalistic philosophizing.
I'm not a Republican, although Deb is officially (this way, we have an "inside man" for propaganda and primaries). I suppose I'd be a Libertarian if I was a registered anything but I rather like maintaining my "unaffiliated voter" status. Predictably, then, I've read "Atlas Shrugged" - more than once, if you can believe it. It was a painfully verbose and sometimes clumsy read but it would have saved me years of pondering since I came to the same basic conclusion - I'm not obligated to save the freaking world with the sweat of my brow. I don't swear by the book or quote it during random conversations ("Would you like paper or plastic sir?" "Who is John Galt?") but one of my favorite "YES!" moments came from Francisco D'Anconia's "money speech". If you would indulge me:
"Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce...
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort.... Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money....
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.... Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.....
"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot....
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."
The short version, if I may be so bold as to paraphrase: money is life. I'm not talking miserly acquisition and hoarding, I mean simply that money is the medium by which you
provide - for yourself and those for whom you choose to take responsibility. You do something that is of value for another person - a physical service, instruction in something they wish to learn, advice, artistry, something - and that person expresses the value they place on your ability by exchanging money for it. Or perhaps you see an opportunity to trade something of value for that money - don't thumb your nose at dumb luck. This money puts food in your belly. It pays for shelter. It grants you access to better quality, well,
everything. In dire circumstances, it can grant you favors, buy you a chance to escape, to start over. To survive. And it is all based on what you can do for those that hold it.
If you cannot provide such value or achieve such luck, you do not deserve money that was earned by someone who can or has. You are not entitled to it. They do not have to give it to you simply because you exist. Why should they? It is their life. It feeds, clothes and shelters them. Why should they sacrifice for you for no reason other than you can do less, have made bad choices or have bad luck and merely crossed paths with them?
When the government (see - told you I'd come around to them eventually) promises you something, that "something" is paid for with someone else's money. That someone else will be demonized and dehumanized until you don't feel the pangs of guilt but I'm here to remind you that you should feel them. In order to give you anything -
anything - the government must first take money from other citizens to pay for it. These other citizens, while usually dismissed as "the rich", are fellow Americans just like you and me. And, however much or little is taken from them, it diminishes their life. It limits their abilities, their hopes, their dreams, the security of their families. It is taken against their will, whether or not a majority votes to take it.
It does not matter if you think "they can afford it" (by this logic, rape of any non-virgin woman should be legal since your satisfaction doesn't reduce anything of theirs - except, of course, their humanity and dignity). It does not matter if they have more than you. It does not matter if you truly have a need. You are in receipt of stolen property. You are profiting from the victimization of another human being. If you're cool with that, mazel tov. We do what we have to do to get by. Just do me a favor and be honest about what kind of person you are. Whatever the amount, for whatever the "good cause", money taken from another person without their informed consent is theft.
There is no "nation's wealth". There is personal wealth owned by citizens of this nation. Sharing living space with them does not entitle us to a portion of it, regardless of our wants or our needs or promises offered by liars and thieves. If you want more, earn more.
