Still Not Voting? POTUS SOTU and Fairness

Still Not Voting? POTUS SOTU and Fairness

Kelly King writes in the Mises Daily The Immorality of Democratic Voting:

"Suppose your family decided to start a business. You invest time, sweat, money, and opportunity costs in creating a new product or service. Your company's product did not previously exist, but you made it available for others, without harming or forcing anyone to exchange their income for the product. After some years, your product becomes so popular that your family has now become wealthy through voluntary exchange.

"Others, who engage in forceful, not voluntary, exchange, in their jealousy, use the government to regulate you. They force you to sell part of your company to your competitors (antitrust legislation) who are not able to compete as efficiently and effectively; they force you to pay your workers more than you can afford (union legislation); they force you to sell your product for a lower price than the market demands and for a lower price than you would like (price controls); they force you to produce in a way that pollutes less but raises your costs and reduces your output (EPA legislation); they then impose a "windfall-profits tax" because they think you're earning too much money this year. 

"Your company started out being your private property that benefited society, but then society — through government regulation — took control of it and sucked it dry. 

"Now your family earns less, your workers earn less, and less of your product is available to consumers, and at a higher price. The consumers got what they voted for. Voting for the government to improve one's life almost always results in the opposite."

Pies and Pie Redistribution

The government does not bake pie, the government does not make pies bigger... the government only redistributes slices of a pie created by others. As Richard Espstein summarizes: "In today’s environment, individuals divert their energy from producing wealth for themselves, which would otherwise create greater opportunities for others, to securing the transfer of wealth from others, which in the end diminishes all the possibilities for growth created by human ingenuity and invention."

If you depend on the government to make your life better - it is ALWAYS at the expense of someone else - and is usually at the expense of everyone else. 

Bottom Line

If you don't vote, don't complain. Government "fairness" is an oxymoron. 

~Tot1