Take two pictures from 1935:
It is really easy to hate this contrast – the poor tenant farmer’s child versus the affluent group of kids in Pennsylvania. The hard part is to know what, if anything, to do about it.
Surely the kids in PA can lose the ties, or hats, and send something to the kid in AR? Right?
The trouble is that the centralized distribution system doesn’t know when to stop, and once the controls are in place, folks that will abuse it gravitate there. We see this now, as our crony capitalism increases, and we face always more restrictive rules of what we can and can’t do. The new ObamaCare law even forges new territory by forcing us to do certain things. The only other example I can think of that is SelectService registration (which I disagree with).
Ultimately, given ethnic ferment and central control, you end up here:
It isn’t about a particular leader – Bush, Obama, Clinton. They play their roles, but we aren’t at the point yet where they can wreak havoc. We approach it, I think. But not totally there yet. This is more about what happens in the long term trends of nations with centralized control – especially in culturally or ethnically diverse places.
Swedes, with their largely homogenous population, may not have to fear their socialism. But in America, with its many different possible sets of “less than humans” (as viewed by some other set), centralized control might not end so nicely.
Given central control, at some point, somebody evil will take the reigns. If we can say no to the person, who cares if they are evil? It is when we can’t choose otherwise that the trouble starts.
So the question is… what track are we on? Towards or away from the freedom to tell that evil leader to buzz off. It seems clear to me… we head away from freedom and towards bloody disaster.