The Guilty Party?

I want to thank my Mother, with whom I talked about this subject a few days ago. She often provides me with clarity, tempers my harsher, judgmental side, and is perhaps the best Muse I have in my life. The following ramblings, however, represent my viewpoint alone. Any mistakes I make are my own.

My question of the day is the following: Who is at fault for a particular government bungle? Clearly the government at least sometimes does things which are not "in the best interest of the people." Take Social Security, to which my generation is certainly holding the short end of the stick. Or Medicare: same story. What about Greece's failure? War in Iraq, or the War on Terror, for that matter? What if the Euro implodes - who's at fault there?

The list of suspects:

• Politicians
• Bankers
• Ignorant voters
• Well informed voters
• Do-gooders
• Selfish people
• The economically illiterate
• Myself

So let's look first at Greece.

I tend to view politicians with what I consider to be a healthy dose of scepticism and distrust sadly lacking in most of my fellow man. These are the men who are best able to demagogue their way to the top. There are exceptions to every rule, but it usually takes a cynical person comfortable with bending the truth and compromising

The climb to the top almost always requires the bending of the truth and the sacrifice of morals and ethics to the point at which the only goal is to retain power or gain even more of it. I find it interesting that most people take Lord Acton's statement that "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absoutely" to be basically true, but then don't extrapolate the indications of it or apply it to their own political class. Regardless, one of the tried and true methods of staying in power is to concede just enough goodies (as in Bismarck's case in Imperial Germany) or give as many goodies as at all possible (today's method) in order to will political allies so one can stay in power. To do this the politician needs money, which must come from the productive citizenry. This can take the form of explicit taxes or implicit taxes. This latter form includes rolling over the state credit card debt at the central bank. All European governments  as well as the United States does this. The citizenry doesn't like explicit taxes because here the expropriation is staring them in the face. Implicit taxation is must more conducive to politics. It enables the politician to take from the citizenry without them noticing, then give the money back to them, appearing to all as Lord and Savior. This is why central banks are so dangerous. It allows the growth of government while hardly anyone notices.

This is why Greece is in trouble. The Eurozone allowed them to continue rolling over their credit card debt. In the process, the funds Greece obtained in order to play Santa Klaus came in large part not from their own citizens but from all of Europe. Now with borrowers less willing to take on that new debt, Greece may not be able to roll over that debt anymore, thereby sticking it to those who lent to the Greek state in the expectation that they would get their money back with interest. Greek politicians certainly carry a large part of the blame here.

But what of the citizens who elected them? Here's where I haven't made my mind up yet. On the one hand, they have been living high on the hog for a long time at the expence of the rest of Europe and they deserve what's coming to them. They wanted the policies that their politicians were more than willing to offer. The voters of yesterday voted themselves goodies and debt, sticking today's and tomorrow's voters with the bill. This intergenerational theft is occuring in every western nation, the US being no exception. It is abhorant and I believe my generation is become more aware of it with every passing year. A part of me despises that Baby Boom generation for taking from ME to make THEIR lives peachy. What right did they have to sell me into bondage? For that is what has essentially happened. Parents bought social security, medical care, a military state, and lots more on the credit card, then popped some kids out, handed them the bill. I can't help hearing Mitch Hedberg's voice at the end of his complicated payments skit: "Good luck, F***ker!" There has been a minority of people for years pointing out this inevitable train wreck. Were they not heard or listened to, or simply not heeded? People have heard talk of social security unavoidably becoming in solvent in the future. The topic even comes up during elections. Yet the political process cannot solve the problem. it's much easier to put it off until the day come when it cannot be put off any more.

On the other hand, most people are utterly ignorant of economics and the political process. The Greeks are no different. They are unaware that the Government takes unseen with one hand only to give it back with the other. They have also been brought up in a society that at least implicitly (when not outright explicitly) informs them since birth that there are wise overlords in government who will look after them. In trying to express to someone the gravity of a given problem with state and government, the question that I almost certainly get goes along the following lines: "Surely if the problem was as dire as you're claiming, someone would have done something about it." It's the typical belief that government if fundamentally good that leads the average person to accept this. Well it seems to me that if government was fundamentally good, "it" would do something about the oncoming crisis. The state would not have allowed the Greek credit crisis to occur. It would not 3 wars at one time as our State is currently doing. And even if it did these things, they would be an anomoly, which the following administration would correct. But that isn't the case. It just goes on and on.

Do I share some of the guilt for the Iraq War? Surely some. I did support it, as did most Americans. "But," it might be offered, "regardless of whether you had voted for Bush or not, there's nothing you can do to stop him from pursuing the wrong policies. He's already in office." I disagree. If I had been more critical and less childlike in my absolute belief and trust in my Führer, and if every one of my countrymen had done the same and demanded that we not go to war, I do not believe Bush would have gone to war. See my previous comments on the politician's desire to maintain and gain power. With so few exceptions as to be negligable, a politician will not commit himself to a policy that alienates his entire electorate. And so in this way, I contributed to our committed war against Iraq, a country that had previously been our ally and who never aggressed against us, yet us against it twice.

But I was ignorant. I didn't have the fortune back then of even once in my life being exposed to the ideas of real liberty and sound economics, ala the Austrian School and Rothbardian Libertarianism. If I am to hate or despise my fellow man who likewise has never been exposed to these ideas, can I really blame him? Most of us just aren't creative or imaginative enough to simply arrive at conclusions of liberty on their own, especially when we've been indoctrinated our entire lives into believing that the state looks after our well being. Hitler understood what many a demagogue and modern politician also understands: The Big Lie. If the lie you tell if big enough, people will automatically assume it to be the truth, because "surely no one could tell that big a lie, right?" 

In conclusion, I will say with certainty that I do despise the majority of the ruling class. For there is no excuse to be in the position of power and knowledge, as they are, and not to fix the glaring problems of the day in exchange for another term in office. What I cannot say with certainty if how much blame I afix to the every-day man. For although he may not realize what he is doing (and that is highly debatable in this context), can he truly be fully innocent in his support for murder and plunder? Here's a starting point for beginning to answer the question: If I were to have a respectful and reasonable discourse with someone regarding, say, the morallity of our military involvements, and if at the end, when there was nothing left to say without repeated oneself for the n-th time, the person was still fully convinced that our foreign wars are Right and Good, then perhaps he is as guilty as my initial intuition led me to believe. For he has at the point been exposed to those moral arguments and still holds to his evil beliefs.

I'm no Church Scholar, so perhaps someone more familiar with the subject could correct me if I err in the following paragraph. I do imagine that the above is similar to back in the day when Christianity was still a new thing. God's judgment of a given individual's breaking of any one of the Ten Commandments would depend on whether the perpetrator was already Christian or still pagan. The pagan, I imagine, would be given more leeway, because the Gospel was not yet revealed to him. Yet the Christian, who ought to know better, would certainly be more guilty in God's eyes.