RE: Money is a tool. A Message to Redistributionists

The ten commandments have a great deal to do not with jealousy but with
wants. If everyone in the world took only what they needed and left the
rest for others who needed then we would be ok. The ultra-wealthy are wrong
for hording. But then again so are those that want to horde under the guise
of social justice. Everyone should give back that which they do not need.
But at the core of this is the idea that God provides us with what we need,
food, shelter, etc. These are available in nature, as well as the natural
resources used to create the types of food and shelter we desire. Wanting a
$200 pair of shoes is not necessary and if we bought instead 5 $40 pairs of
shoes we could donate the other 4 pairs to help someone in need. As
Christians we are called to do such. Consumerism is bad and hurts society
in the end. But this does not mean that the gaps of wealth should be closed
just because those that desire more want to be like those who have more.
Both are wrong for wanting more than their fair share.

Don P

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of Janice Matchett
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 23:18
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Money is a tool. A Message to Redistributionists

  I love it. ~ Janice

  "Money is a tool. And wealth, accumulation of money, is a bunch of tools.
Now when one person, a carpenter for instance, has a bunch of tools, we
don't say to him, "You have too many tools. You should give some of your
saws and drills and chisels to the guy who is cooking the omelets." We don't
try to close the tool gap."

  A Message to Redistributionists
  Cato ^ | May 1, 1997 | PJ O'Rourke
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-19n4-5.html

  Posted on 03/08/2006 10:45:38 AM EST by Marxbites
  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1592384/posts

  P. J. O'Rourke is the author of Parliament of Whores and an H. L. Mencken
Research Fellow at the Cato Institute. These remarks were delivered at the
Cato Institute's 20th anniversary celebration on May 1, 1997.

  Cato is about ideas. We spend a lot of time talking and thinking about
ideas, but not just good ideas. Bad ideas are important, too. In fact, a lot
of life operates on bad ideas. And I thought I'd like to talk about a bad
idea: closing the global wealth gap. That is a very bad idea.

  I mean, do we want to close the beauty gap and make everybody look like
Dick Morris? Do we want to close the virtue gap and encourage Mother Teresa
to have a deathbed affair, or appoint that Kennedy kid, Michael, to run the
Save the Children Foundation? Do we want to close the talent gap and have an
NBA full of players who have the height and talent of, for instance, me? If
we had a world without gaps, where everyone was the same color, size, social
class, and sex, who would get pregnant? If everyone had the same
information, what would we talk about? Consider what would happen if
everyone had the same work, the same job. Everyone would take the same
vacation. You would have 5.8 billion people headed to the shore in the first
two weeks of August, playing a game of beach volleyball--2.9 billion to a
side. The idea of a world where all people are alike, which is essentially
the idea that we fight against at Cato, is a fantasy for the stupid. But
I'll tell you, egalitarianism is worse than stupid, it's immoral.

  I think the Old Testament is quite clear about that. The Bible might seem
to be a strange place to be doing economic research, but I have been
thinking, from a political economy point of view, about the Tenth
Commandment. Now the first nine commandments concern theological
principles--thou shall not steal and kill and so forth. Fair enough. Then
there's the Tenth Commandment: "Thou shall not covet they neighbor's wife.
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his manservant, nor his
maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's."
I mean, here are God's basic rules for how we should live, a very brief list
of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts, and right at the end of it
is: "Don't envy your buddy his cow." What is that doing there? Why would
God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, choose jealousy about the stuff the
guy next door has? Well, think about how important to the well-being of a
community that commandment actually is. What that commandment says is that
if you want a donkey, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady,
don't bitch about it, go get your own!

  The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to collectivists, to
people who believe that wealth is best obtained by redistribution, and that
message is clear and concise: Go to hell! It's as simple as that.

  Egalitarianism is sinful; it's also cowardly. We fear the power that
others have over us, and since wealth is power, the egalitarians fear the
rich. They're afraid that Kathie Lee Gifford is going to make them sew
jogging suits in sweat shops for 30 cents an hour. But, seriously, how
rational is fear of the rich? Let's take a midnight stroll through a rich
neighborhood. And let's take a midnight stroll through a poor neighborhood
just a few blocks from here. Sure, you can get in a lot of trouble in Monte
Carlo. You can lose at roulette or get suckered into a shady business deal
with Princess Stephanie's husband. But you are a lot more likely to get
mugged here in Northwest Washington. Now, mind you, I don't think we should
begrudge the crimes of those poor people down the street. They're just
practicing a little free-lance socialism; they're just being liberal
Democrats in their own small way.

  But the point is that the real alternative to the power of the rich is not
power of the poor. It's just plain power. If we don't want the world's
wealth to be controlled by people with money, then the alternative is to
have the world's wealth controlled by people with guns. And governments have
guns. They have quite a few guns. Now, in theory, it is fine that the
government has guns and that the guns control money because, in theory, the
mugger puts his pistol down and picks up a ballot and he steals from
multinational corporations instead of from you. But the reality is obviously
quite different. The track record of collectivist societies in the 20th
century speaks entirely for itself. Thirty million dead from closing the
wealth gap in Chinese agriculture; 6 million dead from closing the commerce
gap in the Ukraine; and the deaths go on and on. Even the most democratic
government becomes a law unto itself, and I don't think I really need to
elaborate on that. At this moment Bill and Hillary are headed over to the
Sidwell Friends School to hawk the Lincoln bedroom to Chelsea's friends.
("Okay, bring your pajamas, s'mores, and a hundred thousand dollars.")

  Such are the products of envy and fear, which brings me to the third
mainspring of egalitarianism: greed. And by greed I don't mean the simple
lust for material objects. I am concerned about the greed for position and
pride, for what nowadays is called self-esteem. I wonder how many of the
people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and
egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for
nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable
self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become
scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people.
So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so
justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit.
Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be
controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.

  Consider the four men who have been America's most prominent politicians
in this past year: Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton. Would
you hire any of those men? Would you hire any of them to mow your lawn? Bob
Dole would be down on his hands and knees trying to make a deal with the
grass not to grow. Gore would be asking the cat if dandelions are an
endangered species. Newt would borrow the Toro. And Clinton wouldn't be able
to make up his mind. Power mower or push? Do the front first or the back?
Rake and then mow, or the other way around? So he'd give up and he'd be in
your kitchen raiding the refrigerator, flirting with your baby sitter.

  We have to kill ideas like the wealth gap. The world doesn't need to be
thinking about the wealth gap; the world needs to be thinking about wealth.
Wealth is good. Everybody knows that about his own wealth. Wealth improves
your life; it improves your family's life. You invest in wise and worthwhile
things, and you help your friends and neighbors. Your life would get better
if you got rich, and the lives of all the people around you would get better
if you got rich. Your wealth is good. So why isn't everybody else's wealth
good, too? I don't get it. Wealth is good when a lot of people have it, and
wealth is good when just a few people have it. And that is because money is
a tool, nothing more. I mean, you can't eat money, you can't sleep with it,
you can't wear it as underwear very comfortably. And wealth, accumulation of
money, is a bunch of tools. Now when one person, a carpenter for instance,
has a bunch of tools, we don't say to him, "You have too many tools. You
should give some of your saws and drills and chisels to the guy who is
cooking the omelets." We don't try to close the tool gap.

  Wealth has brought enormous benefits to the world. Rich people are
heroes--especially if they donate some money to Cato. Those rich heroes
didn't necessarily mean to be heroes, but that's beside the point. They are
heroes, and yet the way we treat wealthy people in our political systems is
terrible. Even now that the whole world has come to believe that free
markets and private money making are good things, we still have our residual
infatuation with equality and our proposals to close wealth gaps.
Received on Thu Mar 9 12:41:02 2006