The Gifts of a Dictator

In ancient Rome a man by the name of Gaius Julius Caesar came to power because he understood a very simple principle. He understood that the average Roman citizen preferred the gifts of a dictator to earning those same things through their own industry and effort in the free market economy that Rome was fortunate enough to have at the time. Caesar consolidated his power by using the spoils of his conquests in Germany, France, and Briain to buy the affection and loyalty of the common or plebian class of Rome. In doing this, he violated the age-old undertanding with his fellow nobles of the Patrician class which ultimately led to his assasination at the hands of those self-same Patrician senators he had angered.

Consider the key words in the pharae "Gifts of a Dictator" and you get a clearer picture of why such gifts are not, or should not, be preferable to the rewards earned in a free market economy. The first word, "gift" implies something given freely and with love from a friend, relative, or loved one. Gifts conjure images of Christmas, birthdays, families and friends. These are generally positive images that invoke warm and fuzzy sentiments. Now consider the word "Dictator" and a much different image comes to mind. Personally I think of the more tryannical Caesars such as Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. If you're less inclined to the classics, you have the more modern examples such as Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Pol Pot, etc. These names definitely do NOT invoke any warm and fuzzy sentiments.

The gifts from a dictator are very likely to come with serious strings attached and it is those strings that make the case for NOT taking any gifts from a dictatorial entity. After all, the entity that has the power to give gifts also has the power to take them away whereas what you earn by your own efforts, no one can take from you with the possible exception of the government by taxation.

If you need a more concrete example of why a political encomony is not a good thing, take a look at the largest political economy in modern history, the former Soviet Union. In the last 70's, the era of the leisure suit, platform shoes, and discos like Studio 54, there was a climactic anomaly that started with an unusually early warming period followed by a very bitter cold snap. This resulted in the decimation of the corn and grain crops of the former Soviet Union and did considerable damage to the US farmers crops as well. The difference was that unlike the farms of the Soviet Union, which suffered more than 90% crop losses, the US farms only suffered about 30% losses. The US farmers were able to sell their crops at a higher cost, but they were still able to feed not only the US, but were able to sell food to the Soviet Union as well. Though there was no formal trade between the US and the Soviets at the time, President Carter offered to sell food to Premier Leonid Breznev to keep the Russian people rom starving and possibly preventing another Russian Revolution.

Anyone who has ever looked at a map of the former Soviet Union couldn't help but notice that the USSR had signicantly more farmland than the USA. Also noteworthy is the fact the farms in the Soviet Union were not the small family farm operations that we have in the USA, but rather that the farms in the Soviet Union were large collective industrial operations with thousands of workers whose career path had been predestined by their aptitude test scores at the elementary school level. Notwithstanding the fact that these farm workers were less than thrilled with their jobs, they still had to DO the work or they risked ending up in the army or a gulag. Given these seeming advantages, why were the Soviets unable to feed their population without our assistance.

The answer is very simple. Because US farms are predominantly family owned small businesses, when the crops were in danger of freezing, US farmers were willing to get themselves and their families out of bed in the middle of the night with hair dryers plugged into extention cords to warm their crops and prevent them from freezing to death. They were also willing to work through the night laying down plastic to protect the crops thereby saving their harvests. They were willing to take these extra measures because if they did not, they would not eat. Furthermore, if they couldn't sell their crops at market, they would not be able to pay their mortgages, car notes, etc. The difference between US and Soviet Farmers is that US farmers were motivated to go the extra mile because they had "skin in the game" to borrow one of President Obama's favorite expressions. The Soviet farmers, while being forced to work hard when they were on the farm, were nowhere to be found in the middle of the night when the damage was being done, because like most employees, they were home in bed and would not return to the farms until the following morning which was too late to save their crops.

This is why you don't want a political economy when you are blessed with a free market capitalist econony like we have here. If there are those who are willing to throw it away, it can only be because they either don't understand what they are giving up, or they are too lazy in their though processes to take advantage of the opportunities available to anyone and everyone in this economic system.

I'm not calling American workers lazy, only lazy in their thought processes if they think that the government can take better care of them in this country than they can take care of themselves with a little smart work on their part. Opportunities for success are as common in this free market economy as is sand on the beach. The problem most people have is that they expect to reap the rewards without putting out the effort. A free market ecomony is like an ocean full of fish. If you know how to fish, you'll never go hungry. Unfortunately, most Americans have forgotten how to catch a fish and prefer instead to get their fish from the freezer section at the local supermarket.

There's an old saying that says "if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime." This sums up free market capitalism in a nutshell. You'll never starve in a market driven economy if you know how to bait a hook. cast a line, and pull out a fish. But most of us don't know how to do those things and would prefer for the government to just pass out fish to those willing to stand in line to get them. The problem with that is that the government doesn't fish, either. In order for the government to give you free fish, it must first confiscate the fish from the fishermen who braved the icy waters of the North Atlantic, ripped their hands to shreds pulling nets full of fish from those icy waters, and descaled and cut off the heads and tails, gutted, and cleaned the fish, and were expecting to sell those fish for profit so they could pay their bills as well as feed some of the fish to their families.

Imagine if you were such a fisherman and when you pulled back into the harbor you were met by a government bureaucrat and armed federal agents who confiscated your cargo, but left you only enough fish to feed your family. You would be furious at those developments, of course. But the real conssequence of this confiscation would be that you might be less willing to go out and brave those icy waters again when it would be just as easy for you to sleep in and then go stand in line waiting for your free fish that the givernment confiscated from some other sap dumb enough to go out and put his life on the line. Eventually, no one is going to brave those icy waters and they where will we be? I seriously doubt that the givernment is going to go fishing to feed the rest of us while we stand idly by on shore waiting for our handouts.

I gave you an example of a political economy that failed so now let me show you what is possible in a free market economy. A high school graduate decided he didn't want to go to college but didn't want to work at a job for someone else either. So he persuaded his parents to let him take his tuition money and use it to buy a sandwich shop that we know today as Subway. This free market economy also enabled a couple of friends working in their parents garage to invent a gadget that was the basis for the company we now call Apple. Other kids working in garages formed mult-billion dollar multinational companies like Google, Yahoo, and so many more. People like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others of their ilk, including the biggest liberal success story of them all, Oprah Winfrey, owe their successes to our free market economy. Only in America would their stories be possible.

Maybe we would take a minute to think about what we're so willing to throw away before we make the decisions that could eliminate our economic system and with it our prospects for success, especially if we're willing to exchange the infinite possibilities inherent in a free market ecnomy for a few measly gifts from a dictatorial entity. As we learned in grade school, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has to pay for it, even if it isn't you.

Let me leave you with this closing thought. Aesop told a fable about a dog with a bone who saw his reflection in a river as he was crossing over a bridge. Unfortuately, the dog didn't realize that he was looking at his own reflection and thought he saw another dog with another large bone. Naturally, the dog thought he would take the other dog's bone and have two bones for himself. So he opened his jaw to snatch the other bone and as he did so, his own bone fell into the river and sank out of sight. The moral of the story is "be careful when grasping at shadows or you may lose what is real.