Colter Owen 🐝🌻🧔🚜

Antitrust laws, endless regulations, price controls, wage mandates, tariffs, subsidies, bailouts, licensing requirements, production quotas, restrictions on competition, government monopolies, redistribution, and politicians deciding which industries succeed, which businesses survive, and who gets to keep what they've earned. And somehow, the loudest complaints are directed at laissez-faire capitalism. You do realize laissez-faire literally means "leave alone," right? We've spent decades giving politicians more authority to interfere with the economy, and when the consequences become unbearable, people blame the very freedom we've been abandoning. Perhaps it's time to question the direction we're heading rather than the principles we've been moving away from.

Capitalism tends to work less effectively the further you move away from its principles through government intervention, regulation, redistribution, and central planning. You cannot keep undermining the mechanisms that create wealth and then blame capitalism when prosperity suffers. And capitalism was never about distributing wealth. It was about giving people the freedom to create, earn, and trade it.

There's a difference between saying "let them eat cake" and pointing out that the government has already handed out more cake than it can afford. The problem isn't a lack of compassion. It's the assumption that generosity has no cost, that someone else can always be made to pay, and that the solution to the consequences of yesterday's spending is even more spending today.

To those complaining that wages aren't keeping up with inflation, perhaps you should examine the government policies you keep demanding. You demand more spending, more subsidies, more programs, and more government intervention, then wonder why your purchasing power keeps eroding. And to the socialists who believe merely existing and working a minimum wage job entitles them to a life of luxury, nobody owes you that lifestyle. If you want more, pursue opportunities to earn more. The irony is that a minimum wage would go considerably further if governments weren't constantly taking a portion of your earnings, increasing the cost of living through intervention, and eroding the purchasing power of what remains. You demand that politicians take more of your money to solve your problems, then demand even more intervention when their solutions disappoint you. At some point, you have to recognize that the policies you're demanding may be contributing to the very problems you're complaining about. You made your bed. Now you're demanding someone else pay to make it more comfortable.

Nothing terrifies socialists more than admitting that the ruling class they're complaining about consists largely of politicians wielding the very powers socialists want expanded. And their proposed solution? Give that ruling class even more authority over wealth, wages, production, and distribution. They complain about concentrated power while advocating a system that concentrates even more of it.