"We don't need as many people as we have" if they don't produce more than they consume.
This is Malthus writ large, and Malthus was one of the worst fools of our time. He was exactly wrong, and it's not at all easy to be exactly wrong.
For most of us, we produce more than we consume. For many of us, we produce much more than we consume. For some of us, we produce spectacularly more than we consume.
For most of my working life, I've produced much more, sometimes spectacularly more, than I consume. I've carried a lot of people on my back for a long time.
Then we get old. When I get too old, I'd appreciate it, when the time comes that I am not producing, I am still allowed to coast a little on my laurels and keep consuming until I die a natural end. I don't expect you to simply give it to me. Just don't take it away from me, don't get in my way.
I've made the world a better place. I've freed people from debt slavery, non-productive millstones around their necks. And will keep on doing so for as long as my mind and my hands are capable.
Do you know, there are people who spend their entire lives victimizing others, simply because they can? They target sectors of the population with a high percentage of people who can be taken advantage of, the weak -- people with diminished capacity, the young and foolish, the gullible? They deliberately target poor people, who cannot read and have few friends. They deliberately target people in the military, of all things, because people in the military are good at chasing bad guys but not so good at money and paper-work, and they are trusting of authority figures. They deliberately target recent immigrants, who work hard but can't read English. They deliberately target people who are illiterate, innumerate. They deliberately target people who are old and alone without a good support system. The weak are an ecological niche that the predators exploit.
The world would be an even better place if we could eliminate predation, force predators to produce rather than consume. Human beings are malleable, predators can learn to create, or at least put their abilities in support of creation, of wealth, of well-being. We can all do more.
The predators show their victims shiny objects that are really toxic, and then latch onto them, hoping to never let them go, rent-seeking. They want to bleed them, milk them, turn them into cattle.
And I save the victims from their foolishness. I give them back the ability to produce for their own needs rather than being bled dry.
Another aspect of rent-seeking is turning people who are fully functional into dependents on government handouts, the dole, aka socialism, via exploitive taxation.
That makes a double layer of exploitation, the government exploiting the productive in order to pay for itself, and then sharing exploited money with their created dependents. That's another shiny object that is dangled before the foolish.
The only way to fight that is with the vote. I can't do anything about that, at all, except vote against it. For that, at least, I have my vote.
I am talking about financial exploitation but there are other forms of exploitation. Forcing women, young girls, young boys, to become sex slaves. Selling adulterated food and drink to the trusting and unwitting. Selling counterfeit goods. Fake drugs. Fake machines. Fake machine parts. Fake consumer goods. If there is an economic niche to exploit, someone will exploit it.
Human beings are deeply flawed. We are all, all of us, deeply flawed. But we don't have to surrender to our flaws. We can rise above them, especially if we help each other. |
