âOkay, whose job was it to feed the butterflies?â â The Venture Brothers
What do you call a unicornâs dad? Popcorn?
I remember reading a story as a child â Iâd give the source if I could remember, but too many years have passed since I read it. Iâm at the age where Iâm having trouble remembering names â mine for starters. But some stories stick with you, especially when you can relate to them like I relate to batteries. I mean, like batteries Iâm not included in anything, either.
In this particular case, a young Japanese girl sat in a classroom. Her desk was near a class project. Inside a terrarium, a caterpillar had spun its cocoon and was slowly turning into a butterfly. Each day, the young girl would watch this metamorphosis. Finally, the butterfly was finally ready to emerge from the cocoon.
It struggled. The little girl watched, sympathetic to the beautiful butterfly that was trying to free itself. She could hardly wait â little kids are like that. Every minute the butterfly tried to escape, she was torn. It worked so hard! Finally, she couldnât help herself, and helped to tear open the cocoon for the butterfly.
The butterfly fell to the bottom of the terrarium. It walked along the bottom of the terrarium, pitifully. Soon enough, the butterfly died. The little girl saw this happen.
That butterfly knows what it did.
The teacher pulled the little girl, who was now crying, aside. âDid you help the butterfly get out of the cocoon?â
âYes,â the little girl replied. âIt was struggling so! I couldnât stand watching it fight so hard!â
âYou have to understand,â the teacher responded, âOnly by struggling to escape the cocoon does the butterfly build enough strength in its wings to fly.â
Then he straightened up. âYou KILLED IT! Youâre so stupid!â screamed the teacher and then sent the little girl to the Japanese PEZ® mines. Okay, in the story I read, the teacher didnât scream that at the child, but I like my ending better. In my defense, The Mrs. says Iâm a high-functioning sociopath.
Butterfly and PEZ© mines aside, a repeated, tragic, repeated lesson of humanity is this: misplaced compassion destroys.
I apologize. John Gruden made me make this meme.
Misplaced Compassion
The median world household income is sort of a guess. In 2013, Gallup® estimated it was about $10,000, and I havenât seen a more recent number. So, if everyone made the global average income, per capita, weâd each make about $2,900. Per year.
The average family in the world is really, really poor. But, hey, give a poor man a fish and he eats for a day. Give a poor man a poisoned fish? He eats for the rest of his life.
If you needed an explanation of why people are attempting to come to the United States, even the poor people here generally make more than $2,900 per year. Welfare benefits for illegals (in the scale of their home countries) is big bucks, plus they get free schools. The magnet driving the illegals is the wage imbalance (if they want to work, and many do) plus social programs (whether they want to work or not).
Being poor in the first world is better than being above average income in most countries.
Huh. They called that a traitor when I was a kid.
This is not sustainable, because thereâs a problem. People rampage across borders in endless waves, yet capital flows freely. Even as people flood the border, and Iâve heard estimates of 3,000,000 this year, industry flows away.
Capital flows freely, it flows without respect to any sort of morality. Add in zero tariffs? Itâs a race to the bottom. The economy hollows out even as millions come to partake in it. Heck, if it gets bad enough, Google® might have to lay off some congressmen.
Just kidding. Google⢠would have to lay off all the congressmen.
The lure is simple. Short term, we all get to buy lower-cost stuff. Long term, however, it results in a shell of an economy. Supposedly, one of George H.W. Bushâs economic advisors said, âIt doesnât make any difference whether a country makes computer chips or potato chips.â
Thatâs true. Unless you live in what we call the real world. Check the wages of people who work at either place. Get back to me and tell me it doesnât matter. Thatâs the sort of short-term thinking that leads to long-term poverty and the eventual destruction of a nation.
What do you call a sad Italian parasite? A hopeless Roman tick.
Venezuela Effect
The other problem with the social safety net is that the money and effort spent in creating and maintaining it is money and effort that isnât spent advancing the economy. Even if we had infinite amounts of money (spoiler alert: we donât) we have only so much effort.
Socialist giveaways lower motivation and destroy economic productivity. I even made the argument with a Leftist friend that we should delay the implementation of socialism so we end up with better technology. He agreed. But, letâs be fair â in a pure capitalist economy, itâs man exploits man. In a socialist economy, itâs the reverse.
What we are morphing into is a government of the takers and the oligarchy versus those that produce, perhaps the worst possible combination of crony capitalism and socialism combined.
One model of this is Venezuela. The government replaced the leaders of the oil company, PdVSA©, with loyal commies. A company that previously was one of the leading economic winners in the country (heck, the continent) was transformed over a decade into a basketcase that had to import fuel.
Yes, Venezuela is sitting on one of the largest deposits of oil in the world, yet they degraded their economy so they couldnât make fuel. Itâs like Hollywood having to import movies, or Washington, D.C. having to import corruption, or a Biden having to outsource sexual depravity.
Biden met with his cabinet today. And argued with his desk.
Welcome to our future under Brandon, er Biden. Being a tick is a great business model until there are so many of them that they kill the host. But I guess that the reason for that is real socialism has never been tried? From a tickâs point of view, I guess they just need more dogs.
Also, the social safety net isnât based on any moral concept, either at the source of the money (which is not freely given, but taken) to the recipient, whose only requirement is to fit a category and be breathing. Forced charity isnât charity. Unworthy recipients are little more than thieves.
I mean, not that I have an opinion.
Potterville
In Itâs a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewartâs character is shown a world where he didnât exist. The same thing happened to me, but it was just called âTuesdayâ. In Jimmy Stewartâs case, it was Potterville â a town where everything that wasnât illegal was fair game for capitalists to exploit.
And exploit it the Potterville that was the United States, they have. The âmoneyâ monopoly was made possible by the end of the Cold War. With enough nukes, pretty much everyone is going to take your cash. So, the idea was to print money and get stuff. As long as that worked, the party could go on forever.
When I win a journalistic prize for this blog, Iâm going stick my finger out to Joe Biden and say, âPulitzer.â
This was built on the idea that there was a check on political financial abuse. Bill Clinton was famously quoted as saying, âYou mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of f*****g bond traders?â In the 1990s, there was a check on the excesses of the Left.
In 2021, apparently, those f*****g bond traders have no real place to invest or are âall inâ on Weimerica, so the printing presses go brrr. Why make (spins wheel) tires when you can make them with nearly no labor costs and no safety or environmental regulations right where they grow the rubber trees?
And if a plucky guitar company (Gibson®) wants to make guitars in the United States and they donât agree with you politically? Why not go after them for a non-crime for âimporting woodâ from countries that wanted to sell them the wood?
Sounds like Potterville to me.
Another Way
Our choice isnât only between Potterville and Venezuela, or the strange blend of the two that we are becoming.
First, we have to have a nation. Nations matter. The second thing we have to have is morality and virtue. As John Adams said, âOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.â
And he was right.
The choice is the âLived Experiencesâ of the Leftist mob creating a new Venezuela combined with Global Capitalism creating a Potterville, or the other way:Â Mayberry â morals based capitalism, a self-moderating system.
- The failure of Potterville is that something being legal doesnât mean itâs moral.
- The failure of Venezuela is that universal socialism is jut theft from everyone.
- Combining the two leads to Purdue Pharma® selling poison while the government pays for it.
Rebirth is possible only with morality, not a reversion. 1992 will always turn into 2022 unless the morality changes.
And he likes his martini shaken. Or stirred. Or unmixed. Or still in the bottle. Heâs not picky.
Politics is downstream from culture. Culture is downstream from values and morality. What values do we share? What morals do we share?
Who do we serve?
In the end, misguided compassion will destroy more than the economy. It will destroy us all, as will capitalism without morality.
There is another way.
I believe in America. We will find our way. It will not be what came before. Like a butterfly, we will struggle.
Let us hope that struggle builds our strength.