"There are some structural issues with our economy, where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient, with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to the bank and use an ATM -- you don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport, and you're using a kiosk, instead of checking in at the gate." -Barrack ObamaHe goes on to explain that "what we have to do now...is identify where the jobs of the future are going to be...how do we make sure that there's a match between what people are getting trained for and what jobs exist? How do we make sure that capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity...we're on the right track."
[Weep]
Mr. Obama, no, I'm sorry, but you are not on the right track. Millions of businesses, entrepreneurs, and employees are expertly pouring over countless bits of data in order identify need, satisfy that need efficiently, and are willing to take accountability for the results. You and your friends simply do not have the bandwidth for the task you propose. No person or administration does. The nature of the market, of reality, is spontaneous and dynamic. It responds instantly to new discoveries you could never predict. It rewards those who accommodate others best. It demands individual risk and real incentives. Obama, you are advocating the opposite: a command economy where you and your friends dictate the future. All history demonstrates that what you propose can't be done without rampant destruction, slavery, and death, to the degree it is implemented.
Whatever you decide, no matter how clever and well-intentioned, will deprive the market of the resources it needs to accommodate real demand. It will make the economy worse.
Reminds me of The Fifth Element scene in Zorg's office with the priest, Cornelius, debating the business of life.
ZORG(There were a few script changes to the actual scene...)
Follow me.. Life, which you so nobly serve,
comes from destruction. Look at this empty
glass.
Zorg pushes the glass with his finger.
ZORG
Here it is... peaceful... serene...
but if it is...
[Zorg pushes the glass off the table.
It shatters on the floor.]
ZORG
Destroyed...
[Small individual robots, both free-wheeling
and integrated, come zipping out to clean
up the mess.]
ZORG
...Look at all these little things...
so busy all of a sudden.
Notice how each one is useful.
What a lovely ballet, so full of form
and color. So full of..life!
CORNELIUS
They are robots!
[A SERVANT comes in pours water in another
glass. Zorg tosses a cherry into it.]
ZORG
Yes but... by that simple gesture of
destruction.
I gave work to at least fifty people today. The
engineers, the technicians, the mechanics. Fifty
people who will be able to feed their children so
they can grow up big and strong. Children who
will have children of their own, adding to the great
cycle of life!
[Cornelius sits in silence.]
ZORG
Father, by creating a little destruction,
I am, in fact, encouraging life! So, in
reality, you and I are in the same business!
CORNELIUS
Destroying a glass is one thing..killing people
with the weapons you produce is quite another.
ZORG
Let me reassure you Father..I will never kill
more people in my entire life than religion has
killed in the last 2000 years.
[Zorg smiles, holds up the glass and takes a drink.
Unfortunately, he chokes on the cherry. Unable to
breathe, Zorg starts to panic.]
CORNELIUS
(mocking)
Where's the robot to pat your back?
[Zorg falls, writhing, on his desk, inadvertently
hitting buttons which trigger a slew of little
mechanisms. They pop out all over the desk. True
chaos reigns. Even a cage appears, holding a
Souliman Aktapan, a fat multicolored beastie,
PICASSO, who seems surprised to be out in daylight.
He licks his half-dead master in thanks.]
Cornelius gets up and walks around
the desk.
Zorg motions for help.
CORNELIUS
Can I give you a hand?
Cornelius whacks him on the back. The cherry comes
flying out. Zorg regains control of himself. GUARDS
come running in.
ZORG
You saved my life... So, I'm going
to spare yours.
(to the GUARDS)
Throw him out!
The GUARDS throw Cornelius out.
CORNELIUS
You are a monster, Zorg!
ZORG
(complimented)
I know...
It seems the difficult fact often forgot is that people cannot be forced to save or help others. We know they do so in abundance when given the chance, but it happens despite the direction of well-intentioned dictators, not because of it. On a more basic level, ask yourself: "Am I helping someone else if forced to do so? Or, is it not myself, but the person commanding me that is actually helping." As the one being helped, "Am I genuinely grateful when the person who is helping me has no other choice?" Finally, "Do I help others more effectively when doing so of my own volition? With the possibility of recognition? With the possibility of profit?" I suspect the answer is yes. But also, "Do I resent the fact that my good and noble actions are not appreciated because the beneficiary knows I had no other choice?"
A command economy is one in which our conscience and dignity is yielded to external planners–we all become stooges, zombie-like characters. Individuals, instead of responding to the needs of neighbors using their own faculties, act on behalf of some false, non-dynamic theory of good. It perpetuates itself in a downward spiral, where accountability is lost, no one can be trusted, and all appeal to one supreme planner. A command economy can only win when everyone is losing (e.g. during a war). There is some solace in the fact that we can know, without the shadow of a doubt, that all coercive economic plans will deprive people of freedom and accomplish less than what would be accomplished otherwise. In this example, Obama's plans would unintentionally prevent the priest from slapping Zorg in the back. Or in the best case scenario, would diminish his incentive for doing so (I know, in this special case it would probably have been best to let Zorg perish–a touch of irony there).
In a larger sense, Obama is using the same logic employed to justify all great economic planners/plans (Mao's Great Leap Forward, Lenin's New Economic Policy, Hitler's Four Year Plan). His argument cannot easily be refuted, because not dictating seems less effective. Any electorate can be seduced by impossible promises–"Vote for me and I'll provide for you" rather than "Vote for me and I'll protect the conditions that allow you to provide for yourselves." It is well known that Democracies are prone to be vulnerable to choosing the former lie over the latter pragmatism. We all want something for nothing, and in large incomprehensible matters, we find it romantic to hope. This notion was clear to our founders, who agreed upon a Constitutional Republic rather than a direct Democracy. Majorities tend to believe a command economy will bring positive change without remembering that the results of the change are always disastrous. Subsequently, the individual will awaken to discover, in his delusion, he voted away what power he had to reverse it.
The problem is not new. It has been with us for ages. The argument against it requires subtlety to communicate, and the value and breadth of that argument requires little short of meditation to comprehend. Fortunately, there is one 19th century French economist who has done well to interpret and explain the economic portion of this greater truth, Mr. Frederick Bastiat. (Yes, I return to Bastiat).
Zorg uses the first part of Bastiat's Broken Window Parable (in his essay What is Seen and What is Not Seen) to justify breaking the glass. He argues it is good for the economy to destroy things, because it puts people to work and gives them purpose. Of this there is universal agreement. A war, for example, puts people to work and gives them purpose.
The disagreement between Zorg and Cornelius lies in what could be accomplished instead of cleaning up the glass, with the same resources. By looking only at what is seen (the robots cleaning the glass and the workers required to build them), and not what is unseen (the good that could otherwise be accomplished with the same energy), the argument is incomplete.
Zorg addresses the unseen with a presumption: "Fifty people will be able to feed their children so they can grow up big and strong. Children who will have children of their own, adding to the great cycle of life!" A well-intentioned, thoughtful, reasonable person might momentarily consider it vaguely plausible that indiscriminately killing as many people as possible could be done with the full consent and force of one's conscience. Of course, Zorg is an insane, murderous psychopath who needs no particular justification to slaughter any number of innocent people, and is using this parable to taunt the poor priest before killing him. To Zorg, the unseen is a population of people whose purpose is not their own, but his–humanity exists to serve his destructive fetishes. These children he speaks of will be his slaves. Cornelius calls him a monster, indicating he disagrees with Zorg's assessment.
The argument against Zorg's requires imagining some purpose more desirable than his own. Obama imagines a population whose lives are dedicated to a higher GDP. Our founders, and those who drafted the U.S. Constitution imagined a country where government didn't usurp the lives of its citizens.
Obama's assumptions demonstrate another popular fallacy: that a strong economy is necessarily evidence of success. This is not necessarily the case. In a dynamic free economy, a slowing would indicate the needs of the people had been met. Less demand would reveal a general reduction in want, which is a positive thing. It would also be a sign of increased self-reliance, something American patriots and writers have championed since the founding of our nation. With a few animals and a large garden, large portions of our population might live successfully, and in perfect happiness, without contributing one dollar to the GDP.
Of course, our economy is not slow because we lack need or want. It is also not slow because we lack resources or talent. It is slow because we lack trust and incentive. Entrepreneurs feel the need to gain Obama's blessing, or be destroyed by the economic favoritism given to their competitors. Business leaders all understand the Broken Window, and hesitate to invest in growth considering the extra risk inherent to a society with a Zorg-like President. We cannot know how far technology might have advanced without the economic destruction caused by Bush's TARP program or Obama's "Stimulus." We cannot know how much prosperity was squandered, or how many lives damaged by these plans. Similarly, we cannot know how many lives would be saved without The Great Leap Forward or Communism in One Country.
We see "radicals" in the Republican party objecting to these plans, but we know they do the same thing when they are in power. They do so because this is what governments do, to the degree they are able. If we are to learn anything from the Fifth Element, it is that Bruce Willis kicks ass, but aside from that, we should be fortified in the complete confidence that the Fifth Element is not government, but something entirely different...
