From The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Is it just me or do people in the “Occupy” movement seem mostly interested

in occupying their time? They’d be better off trying to occupy that vast

empty space between their ears; but why bother when someone will give you a

slogan and armband for free.

The whole thing is starting to look like an amateurish knockoff of European

austerity protests. Now those people know how to riot.

In the beginning it included Ron Paul conservatives with “End the Fed” signs

and a lot of ordinary people with legitimate gripes about bailouts and

corporate cronyism (but I repeat myself). Now, though, it’s mostly the

standard agitprop by anarchists and communists that gets trotted out anytime

sanitation rules are relaxed,

In fact, one of my favorite themes is that we need to end government

corruption by growing government. Of course. And I plan to get skinny

again by hanging out at buffets.

Here’s a thought. Rather than fighting government corruption by adding more

layers of corruptible government, how about we fight government corruption

by removing the reasons for corrupting it in the first place? Let’s remove

the odor rather than buy a new air freshener.

And that odor we smell is crony capitalism. It’s government picking winners

and losers, and people paying to be on the winners’ list. H. L. Mencken

said that every election is an advance auction on stolen goods, and we’ve

created the biggest auction house in the world.

Take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With all the focus on the one percent it

would be forgivable to have missed that these government sponsored

businesses, which are on track to lose upwards of $120 billion in bailout

funds, just paid their top executives nearly $13 million in bonuses. (1)

Funny we didn’t see the Occupy Wall Street protesters marching by their

headquarters.

Funny we didn’t see them marching by the White House, either. Another odor

coming from those sanitation free zones across the country is the idea of

equal incomes, and according to census data U.S. incomes have never been

more unequal than they are right now under the current administration. (2)

But here’s a nugget the protesters can chew on to occupy their minds.

Incomes are never equal. Politburo members were wildly better off than

average Soviet citizens. The elite in socialist or despotic countries are

always richer than the masses whose lives they’ve taken it as their burden

to look after. And of course Washington D.C. is one of the few places where

employment and incomes are growing, even in this economy.

The truth is that the poorest Americans live better than the majority of the

world’s inhabitants, and have comforts that “the one percent” didn’t dream

of 100 or even 50 years ago. Prosperity isn’t zero sum. It doesn’t come from

equal incomes; it comes from the increased incomes that reasonably regulated

free markets make possible. And all incomes can and do rise if people are

allowed to reap the fruits of their labors.

The relevant question isn’t about equal outcomes, but about how opportunity

is allocated. If government picks winners and losers only the favored will

prosper and the Bill Gates’ of the world will never get out of their

garages. If we are equal under the law, though, that protects the right to

use our talents, ambitions, interests, and even luck to achieve our

potential. Government can and should protect that right, but it should not

allocate it.

I’ll never understand those who think that, by putting something in

government’s hands, it will somehow be artfully and magnanimously managed.

Government is people; people who come from the same gene pool as the rest of

us. There are the same percentages of good, bad, competent, and incompetent

in government as anywhere else. You wouldn’t hand your health care, family,

faith, or any other important decisions over to Google or General Motors.

Why would you hand them over to another bunch of people who are even less

accountable and know less about you?

We should all be free to reach for our potential. But government picking

winners and losers only helps the connected few. We ought to occupy

ourselves changing that.