It's Our Problem

 

We must love both our enemies and our neighbors.

 

 I made the mistake of reposting one of those silly comments, the kind you get every day, without screening it sufficiently.  It’s my own fault, I read it, I got careless.  Here’s the original post, as I have now edited it, which is attributed to Steve Forbes:

“An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class.  That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

“The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".  All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A....  (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

“After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.  The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.  As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

“The second test average was a D!  No one was happy.  When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

“As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.  To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.  Could not be any simpler than that.

“1.  You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

“2.  What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

“3.  The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

“4.  You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

“5.  When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.”

Here’s my initial response:

“This can also be explained by Statistical Game Theory. This is a form of the Constant-Sum or Zero-Sum game known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma when played one-on-one by two players. The Nash (A Beautiful Mind) equilibrium is reached only when everybody loses. As in the games of Chicken, and Tic-Tac-Toe, the only way to win is not to play at all. The Nash equilibrium firmly establishes that the universal outcome, not merely the outcome of this one classroom experiment, must always be zero, total failure. However, this is a great illustration of the point. Why play at all if you cannot win? Drop the class.”

Here’s my well-deserved scolding:

“This story seems to be used as the "target du jour"... This time Obama. Read: http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp The last paragraph is particularly interesting.”

Here’s my current response:

I should have removed Obama’s name from the parable.  I deplore almost all partisan politics and didn’t mean to serve Obama up as “target du jour.”  I cannot speak for the original author.  I cannot fault anyone for objecting to the incessant serving up of Obama as “target du jour.”  Obama is our President and that’s the end of that story.

However, I can speak for myself.  Almost all politicians are in the business of selling utopian dreams, none of these dreams work.  The populace will not accept a negative report, so the utopian dreams continue to multiply, because the politician doesn’t want to get fired.  Democrat, Republican, Tea, and other parties are all guilty of this sort of futile spinning.  The only person of note that I trust with truth in this scenario is Ross Perot.  Historically, I trust Moses and Jesus, with all the Biblical Apostles and Prophets.

A parable is a parable.  This one will resurface many times with new environments, names, and axes to grind.  I’m sorry about that, but a parable cannot be made to walk on all fours.  As a criticism of one particular utopian dream, this parable will stand on its own two feet, even after all contextual reference is removed.

Another parable along this line is the parable of the goat.  A man’s neighbor was given a goat.  The man’s response was, “Kill the goat.”  The tendency among us to be jealous of our neighbor, rather than loving him/her, and being glad for his/her welfare is a very real temptation, one that sensible people learn to overthrow.  Jesus showed us the solution to this problem in the Parable of the Generous Employer (Matthew 20:1-16): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard makes an interesting connection with Deuteronomy 24:14-15.  It should be clear from these passages that the minimum wage is a living, or even a saving wage, on the order of fifteen to twenty dollars or more an hour in today’s market.  However, this legal mandate cuts two ways.

James 5:4 makes the balancing point.  I do oppose the current redistribution of wealth.  Wealth is created by the wise and judicious application of direct labor.  Therefore, wealth belongs to the laborers that create it.  If that wealth is created on another’s property, the other has a right to share, but not to oppress.  In our present system, middlemen (government, insurance, investments, lending etc. together with the regulations that all of these create) strip both landowner and laborer of that wealth.  A great deal of this stripping of wealth is outright fraud; much of it open theft.  Some of these middle operations are legitimate: such as fire, police and sewage.  The illegitimate operations need to be dissolved.  If the contractual relationship between landowner and laborer was straightforward and level, there would be little need for the chronic obfuscation of graduated taxation and other devices that attempt to correct one evil with many others.

Along with the evils of middlemen lies the incessant meddling of our federal government, in open defiance of our Constitution, in matters that the Constitution protects as local or private affairs: namely, education, police, and infrastructure (mostly road building).  However, the majority of the populace seems to want this meddling to continue; so it will continue until we realize that we are being robbed blind in the process.  Once again, the solution is to love our enemy and love our neighbor, which are best exercised as very local ideas.  Nevertheless, in the days of David, most folks wanted a king to fight their battles for them.  Fine, but it’s going to continue to cost us big time.

As far as the serious economic error of confusing Communism with Socialism, we agree.  Communism should never be confused with Socialism.  After all, Communists carefully observe the distinction, frequently referring to themselves as Socialists.  If a theoretical difference in definition does exist in the world of economics, we cannot agree that it plays out in any practical sense.

We can continue to live in denial, but the reality is that our country is not doing well, we are not any longer strong in any sense of the word, we are in serious trouble.  Utopian mythologies solve nothing, we need not be so gullible.  Our leaders continue to play another Zero-Sum game called Chicken: a game that can only be concluded when all parties involved are crushed out of existence.  Meanwhile, we are at each other’ throats.  Every joke, every parable ignites a new level of highly politicized and polarized (often hateful) argument.  I say again, politics can never be redemptive, only Jesus is redemptive.  Our leaders are incapable of solving these problems, they are too busy playing Chicken.  We shall have to solve these problems ourselves, and we shall do it on the local level by loving both our enemies and our neighbors.

 

We must love both our enemies and our neighbors.