Article by Colonel Nogov on Mar. 4, 2015
Here is an excerpt from Frederic Bastiat’s Selected essays on political economy chapter 5: The State.
The fact is, the state does not and cannot have one hand only. It has two hands, one to take and the other to give—in other words, the rough hand and the gentle hand. The activity of the second is necessarily subordinated to the activity of the first. Strictly speaking, the state can take and not give. We have seen this happen, and it is to be explained by the porous and absorbent nature of its hands, which always retain a part, and sometimes the whole, of what they touch. But what has never been seen, what will never be seen and cannot even be conceived, is the state giving the public more than it has taken from it. It is therefore foolish for us to take the humble attitude of beggars when we ask anything of the state. It is fundamentally impossible for it to confer a particular advantage on some of the individuals who constitute the community without inflicting a greater damage on the entire community.
If you’ve never read Bastiat, I encourage you to do so. Here is where you can read this chapter and others.
The state cannot give more than it takes. This seems obvious. Yet people in general don’t want to face this reality. This leads to the childlike mentality that the government can give the people everything they want without first taking it from them. People want the state to take from other people and give it to them. This is summed up in Bastiat’s famous line:
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
When I look at Greece, I see a childlike State. The people there seem to think the government can give them things without them working for it. When I say work, I mean private sector work. A job for the government isn’t productive work, it’s welfare. The government doesn’t create anything. It steals from the productive members of society and gives it to deadbeats. Whether they’re straight welfare recipients or government “workers”, they’re dead weight on society.
The Greeks recently elected a government who told the people what they wanted to hear. To gain power they promised the fairy tale. They promised them they could have everything without having to work or pay for it. Now that they’re actually in office, they obviously can’t deliver because it’s impossible. So, the Greeks are rioting again. They want the magic they were promised.
The Greek rioters are not anarchists or government reformers, they’re lefties who want the government to get them their goodies. They can’t face the reality that the government has nothing left to give. The Government tries to steal more from its productive citizens, but when that happens the productive citizens don’t like it and they flee the country or just stop producing.
The Greek rioters start blaming other countries, Germany in particular, for not loaning (giving) them more money. This is like blowing your rent money partying and then blaming the landlord for not letting you live there for free.
The Greeks and the rest of the world need to grow up. Government is a fairy tale. It’s not real. People see it as this magical entity that can solve all the problems of the world. It can’t. There is no magic. Only people.