Utopia

An interesting post on the impossibility of utopias at Empire Must Fall.

Every utopia fails. They fail because the consequences of their contradictions finally hollow them out and cause them to collapse, which is exactly how empires falls, and often by the same ultimate event: insiders turn traitors and throw open the gates to hostile outsiders. 

And yes, I do mean every utopia. The excuse is irrelevant; the results are the same: oppression, poverty, misery, and death- lots and lots of easily preventable, avoidable, and often deliberately-inflicted death. Its psychology is that of a willful child, insisting that it has to work despite how many times it previously failed. The politics that demand that Big Daddy handle it all, and make the meanies go away, stems from every last damned utopian scheme and scam ever attempted- and the solution is also the same: Let. It. Fall.

It's been said that Communism would work if all men were angels. The same has been justly said of Libertarianism (though at least that acknowledges individual choice and the limits of scope of knowledge). The obvious corralary has been "and if all men were angels, we would not need government."

I'm not sure that's true.

Even angels can war amongst each other.

Tax Inducements (Cuts) are Giveaways?

I don't usually watch much of Sargon of Akkad anymore. While his routine was funny at first, it has devolved into a largely "point and say 'how stupid'" exercise in the vein of Jon Stewart. That said, as a self-admitted leftist he nevertheless has a degree of intellectual honesty that largely escapes the left, and sometimes he catches something interesting.

So - I watched the following video, which indeed had some of the Young Turks crew shutting down a Q&A session in full petty totalitarian mode ("they'll come back and take questions from "real students" - implying the first questioner wasn't a student on no basis of evidence than he asked an uncomfortable question), but more interestingly had some video of Cenk Uygur recording himself at the airport commenting on what he saw as the pros and cons of Trumps Carrier deal, and at the 13 minute mark said something that always gets my hackles up.

He referred to "tax inducements" - or tax breaks, as giveaways from the US government.

This is something I see all the time - a tax cut being described as the government giving away money, as if that money belongs to the government and anything people or companies keep is being stolen from it, rather than it belonging to the people who worked for it, earned it, invested it, with some handed over (under, ultimately, a threat of force if they choose not to) to help run the government. These same people hate citizens hopping over the border for cheaper gasoline or cigarettes when there's a discrepancy between tax rates.

It's like saying people taking advantage of a sale, or negotiating a better price for a product, are stealing from the business, when the money doesn't even belong to the business yet.

I find it coldly telling that liberals view the money in your pocket as the governments, and that you only have it at their sufferance.