Lets say as a child you go around and gather all the crayola crayons you want from the various places they tend to gather, drawers, toy chests, pencil boxes, etc. You then gather your favorite coloring book and stake out a section of living room floor, settling in for a nice relaxing coloring marathon. Suddenly your little brother spots you and demands equal access to the tools you've painstakingly gathered. Mom, desirous of peace and perhaps unaware of your labors, instructs you to share. Sharing may even be the right thing to do, but you know that it wasn't fair.
I'm not saying the above didn't happen to me a few times and I certainly make no claim that I wasn't the recipient of such parental welfare programs, but I will say that my mom did me a great favor of not trying to tell me that something was fair when I knew it wasn't. Instead when I would raise my "That's not fair" whine, she would calmly instruct me that life wasn't fair.
So, here I am, a little bit older, bristling at the notion of fairness that is being pushed upon us. No confiscation of wealth or production to pay for services that I neither requested nor received benefit from is fair. I realize that some people feel it is necessary, but quit telling me it's fair.
Fair IS every person pulling their own weight, providing for themselves and for those whom they choose to provide for. Fair IS NOT confiscating my property to pay for things I would not choose to support. Fair IS allowing a productive concern to realize its gains and reinvest in its future. Fair IS NOT confiscating the production of an efficient business to subsidize an inefficient business thus eliminating the Darwinian impulse to adapt.
And...as it so often does, this bit of stream of consciousness has led me to a future topic: Darwin and Free Markets.
Until next time...
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