A Problem of Socialism
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 10:11 am by Neal“If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.”
— P.J. O’Rourke
Step back into the southchild time machine for a trip to August 21, 2002 with this great essay by economist and professor Walter Williams, “Whose business is it?”
Should the fact that if I become injured by not wearing a seatbelt or sick from eating and smoking too much, and become a burden on taxpayers, determine whether I’m free to not wear a seatbelt or puff cigarettes and gorge myself? Is there a problem with freedom? I say no, it’s a problem of socialism. There is absolutely no moral case for government’s taking another American’s earnings, through taxes, to care for me for any reason whatsoever. Doing so is simply a slightly less offensive form of slavery. Keep in mind that the essence of slavery is the forceful use of one person to serve the purposes or benefit of another.
Allowing government to be in the business of caring for people for any reason moves us farther down the road to serfdom. After all, if government is going to take care of us, it will assume it has a right to dictate how we live. Right now, the government has successfully attacked cigarette smokers. They are well on their way, with the help of crooked lawyers and judges, to doing the same thing to fast-food companies, soda manufacturers, candy-makers and other producers of foods deemed fattening or non-nutritious.
Hardly a day goes by where I don’t hear some fool argue for government control of individual lives since “it costs us all.” As Williams said so clearly, that’s not a problem of freedom, it’s a problem of socialism. Just Say No to socialized medicine, universal health care, and all the other euphemisms for government control of the healthcare of American citizens, and the regulation and control of our lives that will follow.