Amateur Poli-Sci

Karl Marx and Ayn Rand got it wrong!

Karl thought that the state would wither away after the transition to the communist ideal where labor value was the only value and each member of the commune would work hard and to the best their ability would allow. This would be done willingly without the incentive to obtain more goods and services than the next person. In turn each person would receive an equal portion of material even if they could not produce as much as others.

That principal lasted but a short time after the Bolshevik led Russian revolution's attempt to create the first communist/socialist state. After Lenin died and Trotsky were removed with extreme prejudice, Stalin and his political heirs usurped communist ideals, people withered away and not the state. All of the other nation states that have called themselves communist have turned into dictatorships led by personality cult despots.

The Libertarian idea is that mankind, given the freedom to do so, would sort itself out into talented achievers and loyal workers. All citizens, guided by natural rights, would “do the right thing” without overweening government interference.

So far no nation state has achieved that exalted status. All political movements that have attempted to do so have crashed on the rocks of plutocracy and imperialism.

To date man appears to not be perfectible.

In my experience (1933 to present) this most workable method of organizing society has been the implementation of a hybrid system of government. A representative political system that guarantees and enforces basic rights, the rule of law and a free but limited market economy . For the longest sustained period in our, or any nation's history, around sixty years, the business cycle had been tamed and living standards had increased for all citizens. Certainly excesses occurred, a war of choice was undertaken, but over all the nation prospered without the feast or famine of economic roller coaster rides.

For the past twenty years, a period that included two wars of choice paid for with a credit card and an uncontrolled capital market, we seem to have forgotten the principals what fostered those halcyon days. At present the social compact between capital, labor and the common man has become tattered. Plutocracy is not only raising it's hoary head it appears to be winning. Has that special period disappeared never to return?

My father and grandfather warned me that the younger generation was ruining the country, now its my turn.

Paul Hunter paulhunter45177@gmail.com