- Over The Socialist Waterfall

Or down the rabbit hole, depending on how you look at it.


I've been arguing in conversations that the credit downgrade of Spain will eventually spell the end of the modern social welfare state as we know it. Socialism has always required external support to make the books balance out. But now there is no more 'external' sources left to tap, and the whole philosophy has come to the end of the road. Market discipline is being enforced now... for the Socialists in Europe (and in places like California) there is no more pretending.

The question now is ... what comes next.

One thing you can be pretty sure of is that it's unlikely to be a laissez faire system based on personal liberty. Yes it's true that a system like that has done more to elevate people from poverty than all the top down 5 year plans and 'targeted benefits' ever conceived by our leaders in Washington. But for them it's always been about power. And history tells us that the person with power won't usually give it up willingly.

In Washington the only interests they're worried about are those that are likely to get them reelected. If the surest way to see another term as speaker of the house was to put all the Jews in America in concentration camps, then Nancy Pelosi would spend all of her time dressed like Jesse James's prom date. They don't care about helping America - they care only about helping themselves. If Americans can benefit at the same time it's a nice side effect, but to them it is by no means essential.

So the truth is, I have no idea what we get after this. But whatever it is, I'm betting that for almost all of us it will be less fun than what we have now.

All the talk in the media about 'economic contagion' across Europe seems to me to be particularly ironic. they don't realize that the disease has already spread. It was all those academics who praised the collective and 'social justice' that spread it. They demanded that governments become players in the markets instead of just referees, and called it a moral imperative that government funds be spent in the least productive ways. They were all strong supporters of labor unions even though their express purpose is to remove the economic consequences of being uncompetitive. And they cheered when all the western governments decided to punish the most productive and reward the sedentary.

The disease has already spread to every western country in various degrees. The all have it... the only question now is whether it's terminal or not.