A Warning to Pope Francis; Socialism is the Tail That Wags the Dog

This a follow-up to my recent article Pope Francis Ignores the Lessons of Collectivism The purpose of this article is to better explain what is meant by my remark that socialism always has unwanted consequences, which is why, no matter how good it sounds, it always fails While Pope Francis may want an altruistic planned economy, what he will get is the unwanted consequences of socialism. In his definitive work on free market economics, The Road to Serfdom: (Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition; The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2) Hayek explains that stated goal by Pope Francis of a planned economy to combat poverty, suppresses the wants and needs of the individual in the name of the collective; which by definition is the tyranny the Pope Francis attributes to the free market (or as Hayek would say, "the road to serfdom").

The “social goal,” or “common purpose,” for which society is to be organized is usually vaguely described as the “common good,” the “general welfare,” or the “general interest.” It does not need much reflection to see that these terms have no sufficiently definite meaning to determine a particular course of action. The welfare and the happiness of millions cannot be measured on a single scale of less and more. The welfare of a people, like the happiness of a man, depends on a great many things that can be provided in an infinite variety of combinations. It cannot be adequately expressed as a single end, but only as a hierarchy of ends, a comprehensive scale of values in which every need of every person is given its place. To direct all our activities according to a single plan presupposes that every one of our needs is given its rank in an order of values which must be complete enough to make it possible to decide among all the different courses which the planner has to choose.

One avenue often used by those that propose a planned economy is freedom from economic matters. However it is how we approach our economic issues that gives us the freedom to pursue our individual wants and needs. When the government controls these economic issues, they will in essence define what wants and needs you our allowed to pursue.

The so-called economic freedom which the planners promise us means precisely that we are to be relieved of the necessity of solving our own economic problems and that the bitter choices which this often involves are to be made for us. Since under modern conditions we are for almost everything dependent on means which our fellow-men provide, economic planning would involve direction of almost the whole of our life. There is hardly an aspect of it, from our primary needs to our relations with our family and friends, from the nature of our work to the use of our leisure, over which the planner would not exercise his “conscious control.”

While the Pope Francis stated his belief that a planned economy free from global economic system,  would lead politicians to guarantee all citizens "dignified work, education and health care." Pope Francis Attacks 'Tyranny' of Unfettered Capitalism, 'Idolatory of Money , it is the individuals dignity that will all but disappear in with the collective state; work, education and healthcare will be one size fits all with the wants and needs of the odd man out is purposely ignored.   

Conditions will be without exception what in some measure they inevitably are in a large organization—or rather worse, because there will be no possibility of escape. We shall no longer be free to be rational or efficient only when and where we think it worth while; we shall all have to conform to the standards which the planning authority must fix in order to simplify its task. To make this immense task manageable, it will have to reduce the diversity of human capacities and inclinations to a few categories of readily interchangeable units and deliberately to disregard minor personal differences.

So much for dignified work, education and healthcare

The Abuse of Presidental Power

 Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. President Obama's Dragnet; another truism is the bigger government grows the more corrupt it will become.

Recent conservatives have likened the Democrat's  use of the IRS to attack conservatives and the general loss of privacy due to warrantless wiretaps, detaining people,  reading people's emails and now the large scale monitoring of phone calls to a Banana Republic in the way way the leadership is using government agencies that are mandated to be apolitical, to attack it's political enemies. Added to this is the socialist the concept of the Infallibility of Government, meaning demanding a blind belief of all information and explanations by the government and the suppression of any anti-government rhetoric in the name of stability and national security; in other words it is illegal to speak up against the government and it's policies, because the government must  necessarily be always right to rule.

Is the US becoming a Banana Republic? The first clue should have been President Obama's inability to follow through with any promises made by candidate Obama. Candidate Obama's  platform wanted to protect whistleblowers and empower them as “watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.” President Obama now engages in  self-serving leaks, and aggressive prosecution of the whistleblowers, which he determines are harmful to his administration (the Obama Administration also leads the Bush Administration 2 to 1 in turning down FIOA (Freedom of Information Act) requests; this political screening has also cropped in the IRS and who gets tax exempt status; since the Supreme Court decision on Corporate personhood  Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010),  President Obama (after personally chastising the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address) and Democrats in congress have directed the IRS to scrutinize the tax free status requests of  conservative groups.* Then there was the pending Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) extension vote; "Senator Obama unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies." FISA also contained the "warrantless wiretaps, detaining people, and  reading people's emails, which Obama promised, "Under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and "wiretaps without warrants". Obama signed the FISA extension unchanged.

 * "...Max Baucus, Chairman of the Finance Committee, is leading the investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups but he is one of the Democrats who insisted they be scrutinized in the first place. He wrote a letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman dated September 28, 2010 urging the IRS to investigative nonprofit conservative groups during the Tea Party-dominated 2010 midterm elections...In February 2012, Sen. Chuck Schumer D-N.Y., together with Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Sheldon Whitehouse. D-R.I., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Tom Udall D-N.M.wrote a letter to the IRS Commissioner asking for an investigation of all these “social welfare organizations. Democrats Told IRS To Scrutinize Conservative Groups

In the final analysis it seems President Obama is telling us to judge him by what he promises, not by what he does. A Banana Republic? no. The Road to Serfdom? yes (and a must read!)