{"id":5128,"date":"2017-10-20T04:58:48","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T04:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/20\/ten-political-economic-theses\/"},"modified":"2017-10-20T04:58:48","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T04:58:48","slug":"ten-political-economic-theses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/20\/ten-political-economic-theses\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Political-Economic Theses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are ten theses to which I subscribe in the critical way of the philosopher, not the dogmatic way of the ideologue.<\/span><\/p>\n

1.  There is nothing wrong with money.  It is absolutely not<\/em> the root of all evil.  The most we can say is that the inordinate <\/em>desire<\/strong> for money is at the root of some<\/em> evils.  I develop this theme in Radix Omnium Malorum<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n
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2. There is nothing wrong with making money or having money.  There is for example nothing wrong with making a profit from buying, refurbishing, paying propery taxes on, and then selling a house.<\/span><\/div>\n
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3. There is nothing wrong with material (socio-economic) inequality as such.  For example, there is nothing wrong with Bill Gates' having a vastly higher net worth than your humble correspondent.  And there is nothing wrong with the latter's having a considerably higher net worth than some of his acquaintances. (When they were out pursuing wine, women, and song, he was engaging in virtuous, forward-looking activities thereby benefiting not only himself but also people who come in contact with him.)   <\/span>Of course, when I say that there is nothing wrong with material inequality as such, I am assuming that the inequalities have not come about through force or fraud. <\/span><\/div>\n
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4. Equality of outcome or result is not to be confused with equality of opportunity or formal equality in general, including equality under the law.  It is an egregious fallacy of liberals and leftists to infer a denial of equality of opportunity — via  'racism' or 'sexism' or whatever — from the premise that a certain group has failed to achieve equality of outcome.  There will never be equality of outcome due to the deep differences between individuals and groups.  We must do what we can to ensure equality of opportunity and then let the chips fall where they may. This is consistent with support for government-run programs to help the truly needy who are in dire straits through no fault of their own.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\"Common-core-the-peoples-cube\"<\/a>5. We the people do not need to justify our keeping of what is ours; the State has to justify its taking.  We are citizens of a republic, not subjects of a king or dictator or of the apparatchiks who have managed to get their hands on the levers of State power.<\/span><\/div>\n
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6. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty.   Socialism and communism spell the death of individual liberty.  The more socialism, the less liberty.  "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen." (D. Prager)<\/span><\/div>\n
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7.  The individual is the locus of value, not any collectivity, whether family, tribe, race, nation, or State.  We do not exist for the State; the State exists for us as individuals.<\/span><\/div>\n
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8.  Property rights, contra certain libertarians, are not absolute: there are conditions under which an 'eminent domain' State seizure (with appropriate compensation) of property can be justified.  This proposition tempers the individualism of the preceding one.<\/span><\/div>\n
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9.  Governments can and do imprison and murder.  No corporation does.  Liberals and leftists and 'progressives' have a naive faith in the benevolence of government, a faith that is belied by that facts of history: Communist governments in the 20th century murdered over 100 million people. (Source: Black Book of Communism<\/em>.)  Libs and lefties and progs are well-advised to adopt a more balanced view, tranfering some of their skepticism about corporations — which is in part justified — to Big Government, especially the omni-intrusive and omni-competent (omni-incompetent?)sort of governments they champion.<\/span><\/div>\n
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10.  Our social and political troubles are rooted in our moral malaise, in particular, in inordinate and disordered  desire.  It is a pernicious illusion of the Left to suppose that our troubles have an economic origin solely and can be alleviated by socialist schemes of redistribution of wealth.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are ten theses to which I subscribe in the critical way of the philosopher, not the dogmatic way of the ideologue. 1.  There is nothing wrong with money.  It is absolutely not the root of all evil.  The most we can say is that the inordinate desire for money is at the root of some evils.  I develop this theme in Radix … Continue reading “Ten Political-Economic Theses”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[503,215,216,56,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credo","category-economics","category-money-matters","category-politics","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}