http://www.thedailybell.com/4360/Tibor-Machan-Frankness-About-Wealth-Redistribution
Frankness About Wealth Redistribution
Thursday, September 27, 2012 – by Tibor Machan
Dr. Tibor Machan
When taxation is part of government, wealth
redistribution goes hand in hand with it. Taxation was what feudal
systems used so as to pay rent to the monarchy. The monarch, after all, used to own the realm. All of it. So just as owners of apartment
houses, monarch's collect rent from those living in there.
The meaning of this is that members of the population got to live in
the country by permission of the government, be that a tzar, king,
pharaoh, caesar or some other ruler who had nearly absolute power to run the place. It is still so in many regions of the globe. The people
aren't deemed to have rights, including private property rights. That
emerged late in the history of Western politics, mainly within the
philosophy of the Englishman John Locke and his followers. They defended the idea of natural rights against those who championed the divine right of monarchs.
With the American Revolution the Lockean system started to be implemented, though by no means fully. This abolished serfdom or involuntary servitude but didn't quite
manage to abolish taxation, namely, the confiscation of people's
resources, although in principle that should have followed the
revolutionary turn of events. If citizens own their lives − have an
unalienable right to life −they also own the fruits of their labor.
(And such fruits did not need to be created by them from scratch as Mr. Obama suggested with his misguided remark, "You did not build that.")
In any case, when governments confiscate resources from the people
via taxation, the sort of wealth redistribution that Mr. Obama and other statists are avidly defending cannot be avoided. Taking their wealth
and handing it out to some citizens for various purposes simply involves redistributing that wealth, period, be it justified or not.
Government's redistribution of the citizens' wealth is unavoidable
unless taxation is abolished. Even the most minimal of taxation brings
about such redistribution.
But in systems of limited government such as what the United States
of America was supposed to become, the wealth redistribution was
supposed to be minimal! That is where Mitt Romney is basically correct while Mr. Obama is wrong. It is under collectivist kinds of statism, in which the wealth of a country is deemed to be
owned by the government exactly as Mr. Obama and those who support his
political philosophy see it, that citizens do not have the right to
private property but merely get to dispose of some property that the
government allows them to retain from their earnings and findings.
(Yes, Virginia, some private property is found, meaning it isn't built
from scratch but arises from good fortune, like the wealth one gains
from one's talents or good looks!) But just because one doesn't build
one's wealth it doesn't follow that government owns it. That is rank
non sequitur. (After all, one doesn't build one's pretty face or good
health either, yet it doesn't belong to Mr. Obama!)
The real issue is whether the wealth one owns is to be distributed by oneself or others! Extensive taxation assumes that it may be
distributed and redistributed by others, specifically by the government − politicians and bureaucrats. Not only that, but that these latter
actually own one's wealth, including one's labor just as is believed
under socialism wherein all the major means of production, including human labor, is
collectively owned and administered − distributed and redistributed − by government officials. (Several major American political theorists, like Thomas Nagel and Cass Sunstein, argue for exactly that idea.)
This is the issue that could be debated in the current presidential
campaign. Who is to do the distribution and redistribution, the
citizenry or the state? In a free society it is the former that gets to do the bulk of the distribution and redistribution as it spends funds
in the marketplace, gives some away, etc. In a welfare state, and
especially in the full-blown socialist society, it is government, with
the people left "permitted" to make some decisions about the allocation
of resources.
Which is it to be in America? Why and how? That is what could be
fruitfully debated now! But instead, the campaign is bogged down in
moronic trivia and detail. It should be dealing with the fundamentals of the nature of free government − at least a substantially free
government!
No. The Democrats refuse to admit that they really favor the
socialist alternative, basically; and the Republicans lack the
philosophical savvy to stand up for a truly free system of government,
wherein the latter is seriously limited in its powers.