The Other Golden Rule

In discussing crowdfunding and its advantages for determining what people actually want in his latest Periscope , Vox mentioned the “original” Golden Rule – that he who has the gold makes the rules. He brought this up specifically in the context of investors having a say in what you do with their money, and that this was not a bad thing.

Now, absolutely, it is a bitter joke on the fact that rich people can buy politicians and lawyers and a degree of protection from the law that people without “fuck you” money cannot. The extent to which this is a problem, of course, is almost directly the extent to which money translates to power and influence.

As an aside, it doesn’t translate that efficiently. Power – the ability to influence or coerce others – can get the corrupt money better than money can get you power, as well as getting you things money never will. Think of the social capital of movie stars and what they can get away with in terms of crime, etc., or the riches available to politicians willing to engage in graft.

Because, at a higher level, it is a statement of property and ownership. Your time, your blood, sweat, and tears, what you invest your work and emotions into, and how the things you acquire are treated and disposed of, are for you to decide and not to be coerced by others, whether you own a mansion and a yacht, or just the clothes on your back. Taken reciprocally, it is a statement that you cannot coerce a poor man to work from you any more than he can take money from your pocket against your will.

Ulitmately it is also about power. That those who have it will exercise it to their benefit. From the post-modern standpoint, the leftist, power-dynamics-trump-all standpoint of no true narratives and no virtues, it is why this cynical variant is heard so often – it is projection that those with power will work to acquire more and strip it away from others.

But then the leftist death cult isn’t really big on reciprocally respecting your right to choose how you spend your time, or you keeping the results of your labor. “You didn’t build that.”

They are wrong that economics is a finite pie. In his tale of the pastry chef in Starship Troopers Heinlein rightly pointed out that a poor baker could take the best apples and flour and ingredients and turn them into a tasteless mess (hell, even leaving theapples alone until they rot will do that), while work, practice, and effort can turn even mediocre ingredients into a tasty pie. Think ACTUAL added value rather than just as a buzzword. Communism and the death cult of the left make any move but letting the apples rot nearly a chumps game, unless you can somehow become that 1% that runs everything under such systems (they hate the one percent in part because they feel they, as the “smart” ones, should be in it).

They are also wrong that power is finite, though that is far closer to the truth. Sure, our power budget per person is expanding, but it doesn’t do so very quickly and you can’t just conjure a power plant with a wave of the hand, or a stroke of the pen as the Soviets were wont to do.

Power though, is ultimately about who gets to tell you “no.” The more things someone can stop you from doing by letter of law or ultimately raw violence, the more power they hold over you, and vice versa. It doesn’t matter how many people want to, say, go to the public beach on Sunday if you, either by passing laws or posting armed men blockading the road, can say “no” and make it stick.

The left mistakenly thinks this ability to choose whatever they want is freedom, and empowerment, not realizing that making other people deal with the consequences of your choices is taking away their power. You then have authority without responsibility, and they have responsibility without the authority to even say no to cleaning up after you. In short, Tyranny.

The flip side of the “going to the beach” scenario would be going up to a beachside home belonging to someone else and leveling the existing house, digging a foundation, laying a driveway, and putting up a much nicer home with a pool, and telling them they are wrong to stop you from doing what you want. They’d have every right to block the road and stop you.

Communism, socialism, progressivism, all of the leftist death cult, is saying they are doing it for your own, and everyone else’s good.