Speaking of Fire in the Belly...

...what happened to mine? I was reading through old threads on The Firing Line and found one from 2001 where some guy was complaining about how much money Bill Gates had in his Scrooge McDuck vault. Given today's demotion of Billy Boy to Number Three on the big list, I'll roll out this old fisking for your perusal:

He was not rich when he started. Big deal. He still has more money than he personally needs.

Needs? I wasn't aware that freedom was a needs-based condition. How many bullets do you need in your magazines? How many guns do you need to own? How fast does your car need to go? Do you really need that fast of a CPU in your PC? Part of the magic of this nation is that need doesn't enter into our economy, else Ben & Jerry's and Hagen Dazs would be Tango Uniform inside of a week.

Despite the hatred of welfare so often found amongst conservatives, there are indeed some people who truly need it.

We only guarantee the pursuit of happiness here. Catching it is up to you.

Why does it hurt that this man pay a vastly larger share of the costs

Why should we endorse using the guns of the state to extort a larger percentage of money from this person, simply because he has the audacity to have it, and we think it could be better spent elswhere? Down that line of thinking lies all sorts of nastiness, from the confiscation of farms from the kulaks to the looting of Foot Locker stores during urban riots.

when his wealth is made possible by our consumer environment and our money which is all created on a collective basis.

I don't know about you, but I'm not part of any "collective". Nothing gets done on a "collective basis"; there are only bazillions of individual human beings who make individual decisions to drive a Ford or eat at Burger King. I recall my purchases of various Microsoft products fairly well, and am quite sure that I was not under the control of the Hive Mind or ordered to purchase them by the State.

I believe something like 70% of all money in this nation is controlled by less than 1% of the population. That pisses me off.

I don't care if 70% of the cash in this land was controlled by one guy. More power to him! Look, prosperity is not a finite item like a Domino's pizza, whereby if Bill Gates has eight slices of pepperoni and extra cheese, then you and I have to eat the cardboard box; prosperity, wealth, capital, money, value is something that is created by effort, inspiration, intelligence, and sometimes pure dumb luck.

Think of a lottery winner; how much of his money came out of your pocket? Unless you bought a ticket, none. When you gave Microsponge your money, did you feel you got value in return? If not, return the product and demand a refund; if so, then what matters it to you how many other people made the same transaction? Why should the people who make the least use of this vast leviathan of a welfare state have to pony up the largest share of its cost in total dollars as well as percentages of income taken? Billy Boy probably pays more in taxes than everyone on this board put together, and for what? He's sure not gonna make use of public schools or hospitals. All the return he gets on those tax dollars is some indifferent pothole repair on his street, the Heathen Chinee Navy kept away from the coasts, and a horde of federal lawyers who are payed with his tax dollars hounding him with ridiculous charges for being too successful.

Once upon a time, America used to worship the underdog. We'd send our kids to play high school football so that they could learn that sometimes the other guy may be bigger and faster and stronger, but that what counted most was fire in the belly, the grit to get knocked down and get back up and try again.

Now, in everything from income taxes to Japanese car companies to the silly federal harassment of Microsoft, we're teaching our kids that if the other guy's bigger and faster and stronger, just whine to the ref and maybe he'll make the other team wear lead boots.





PS:

Capitolism works by our government producing a system and a currency, and then we use that system to divide up labor so we can get more done.

I'll leave you with a quote from noted hardcore conservative thinker, Hank Thoreau:

Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.