On the way home from my parents after dinner, I was stuck behind a driver who was the kind I dislike the most. They seemed as if they didn’t know where they were going, as if they had never been in the neighborhood before, and as if they didn’t know how to drive the speed limit or follow traffic signs. I made very little progress. Stuck behind them, I noticed they had not one but two 2012 Obama bumper stickers. When they finally pulled into the casino near the freeway, it suddenly struck me that they might be part of the something for nothing crowd.
I have never been a fan of gambling. My ex-wife lost at least 33% of all the money she earned while we were married frittering it away in the casinos trying to get rich. It invites people to bring a small amount and leverage their luck to win a chance at money other people lost. If you win, it costs you very little, but the effect of winning even a little draws many powerfully to the tables time and time again until they lose more than just their money. It teaches people that wealth can be gained without effort, but what it doesn’t tell them is that in order for you to get something for nothing, someone else must pay for it.
Where there is no effort there also seems to be little value. As a teenager, my parents required me to pay for my first pairs of contac lenses. At what seemed to me exorbitant prices, I obtained two pairs, on which I doted; in fact, I have never cared for any possession as much as I cared for those. Thomas Paine reminded us that what we obtain too easily we esteem too lightly, and some people who obtain free stuff without paying for it do not realize that it costs someone something. These same people will say “there is no such thing as a free lunch” and “if it sounds too good to be true, it is” until they are offered it, and then too often they gobble it up. It strikes me as paradoxical every time it happens that they think they can get something for nothing. It costs me a great deal, as this video from Judge Judy illustrates:
The other problem is that what they offer us in return for limited time, life, and resources constitutes things of no worth. They promise us that everyone who signs up will get an iPhone, a Prius, and a chicken in every pot. Obama literally promised jobs, cars, and new kitchens in the 2008 campaign, none of which happened for the people to whom he made those promises. While they rail against corporations, they promise us the very things that corporations provide. What they don’t like isn’t corporations as much as it’s that we buy from corporations they happen to dislike. So, we take our cows down like Jack to market to trade for something that will sustain us, and they hand us three magic beans- hope, change, and peace- telling us it leads to some pie in the sky world where we fart rainbows and barf skittles. Just because it’s something doesn’t mean it’s valuable.
Subscribing to the utopian elitists invites us to trade something for nothing at all. They promise us something for nothing, but in reality they give us nothing for every something we hand them. Remember that people only give up things they do not value as much for something they value more. That’s the reason why I have coffee and tobacco in my food storage, not because I use them but because I know that people who are addicted to them will trade me anything for which I ask in order to get their fix. The something for nothing crowd is addicted to stuff just like some have said.
I attended a work Halloween activity with my father where they handed out trick or treat brickabrack to children. The stuff they handed out was worthless, but the kids came by and took handfuls. It was free to them, so whether they wanted it or not, needed it or not, made no difference. They were there, and we had stuff, and so they wanted it. They follow the buccaneer theory of economics- they do not care how much swag they have- they care that we have swag in our hold to which they feel they have a right because they exist. As I have written before, elitists, whatever their socioeconomic state, will always think you have too much freedom and too much money until you have none at all of either. Their pride will bring us all down.
"A government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have." --Thomas Jefferson
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