Read this mention at Derbyshire about Nick Cohen's new book (discussed in the past here). Derbyshire noted that Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling believes that the Left has plenty left to offer. Dillow accuses the Left of squandering opportunities and ideas, and of confusing statism with socialism.
Well, I enjoy reading Dillow regularly, but there is little he says with which I could agree. He is openly utopian which, for me (although I like Dillow from what I can tell) indicates a great misunderstanding of human nature, especially its "dark side," which afflicts poor, middle, and wealthy equally. Dillow's notions, like those of Labour, lead to situations such as this: 1/3 Britons now derive over 50% of their income from welfare and the dole (at Tangled Web). Extend that further? To 100%? So who is "greedy"? Indeed, who is truly greedy? Those who want to achieve, or those who want support from others?
For me, that would be the utopia of a serf on an estate, or of a cow in a barn. Dillow has no faith in people, it would seem to me, to find their own paths through life, and so I feel his utopianism is basically elitist and condescending. (My view tends towards the notion that Socialism, in practice, is Feudalism in new clothes and with new excuses.)
And I will answer one question posed by Mr. Dillow, who asked, "why, if a centrally planned economy is a stinking idea, should a centrally planned company be a good one?"
Because:
1. Government enforces its wishes with guns and jails, and corporations do not.
2. Government planning has failed catastrophically everywhere it has been tried, and has diminished human freedom at the same time. Examples of successful business planning abound in the world: it's a lot easier to try to understand one market that to try to understand every world market in product and labor.
3. Government does not need to compete to survive, but business has to. Monopolies do not work very well: they of necessity stifle growth and innovation and rapid adaptation.
4. Government has a near-endless supply of revenue collected at the end of a gun. Businesses' revenue only comes when they make things or do things people voluntarily want.
5. Government is a sponge for power over people, and that sort of power is a zero-sum game. Corporations only want to make money, so they are relatively harmless. Wealth is not a zero-sum game.
6. Bureaucrats who plan things in government have the 180 degree wrong incentive structure, and are of famously lower quality that those in the private sector. Furthermore, no planner can be as wise as markets - and we know what happens when governments think they are smarter than markets. You drive subsidized Yugos. How many theoreticians have run a successful enterprise?
7. Government's rationality and effectiveness is distorted by political contingencies. Government planners would be instructed to keep a buggy-whip factory open to save a few jobs in somebody's district. A business would adapt, and the workers would go find something else.
8. Government planners would be risk-averse. Business is risk-savvy.
9. There are no meaningful incentives in government businesses. As they said in Poland after they threw out the socialists: "We pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us." They also said, "Now we have rich, middle, and poor. Before, we were all poor, except the government."
And, lastly and most importantly, 10: Freedom. Economic freedom, risk-taking, failure, choice, etc. is so fundamental to the freely-chosen life of a free man that no bowl of lentils, no matter how tasty, should have the power to buy off part of his soul and his dignity so he can stand in a warm barn. Voluntary serfdom: Not a credit to the human spirit. Today, government builds and maintains the roads on which capitalism can drive. Give the government the steering wheel too, and they can control everything in your life. That would be a morally very bad thing even if it could be done successfully - and they would want to lock me up for having a social-psychiatric ailment like "Independence Disorder" or "Ambition Disorder.".
Mr. Dillow, the need for socialist measures is done. We have enough of them: No-one freezes, no-one starves, people get the education they need, the medical treatment the government planners want them to have, and they can spend their life on the dole for a sore back if they want to. Many, many votes have thus been bought already. And this is all thanks to the transfer of money from capitalism's miracle of wealth-creation, the miracle of markets and market incentives, to the non-producing but ever-arrogant parasitic government.
Yes, socialism is alive in all Western nations in hundreds of government redistribution programs, but we have had enough of it. No more required. Material needs have been met. Leave the rest - the pursuit of happiness and dignity and self-respect - to the people. No-one can confer these things of the spirit on anyone else: find out what people are capable of if not treated like imbeciles and cripples by a condescending, vote-buying government.
