Politics = Exploitation

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -- Aesop

Frederic Bastiat, a 19th c. French classical liberal thinker had some wise observations.
"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

He also said, "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

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"The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning 'rule by thieves.' Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won't willingly fork over to end poverty, then maybe they'll cough up to fight drugs or terrorism. Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing more than a cover for what’s really going on, like the colors of competing gangs." - Author L. Neil Smith

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This suggests exploitation is a normal course of human behavior. Stealing is a universally accepted crime of 'theft'. It's when one person takes from another person without permission. Conviction of 'theft' results is punishment.

'The commons' has resources accessible to all members of a society. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. Taking from The Commons instead of a person is not 'theft'. When private property becomes common property by law or regulation it is fair game for the taking. Taking is rewarded instead of punished.

The founding American ideas were based on protecting, defending and ensuring individual liberty and private property from being taken by government.

Societies are most prosperous where individuals are incentivized to be productive because their individual liberties and private property are protected. Those societies imposed upon by over-bearing governments issuing mandates about how earnings and property will be re-directed are less prosperous and eventually bankrupt themselves.

"There is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-12/we-people-versus-pikettys-pandering-principles

Over time these ideas have been turned on their head. Laws have been written or interpreted to reduce liberty and take private property. It also led to The Tragedy Of The Commons.

Laws steal choices . They prohibit and limit choices for some people and make you obey someone else’s choices. It’s like being told where to sit on the bus. Laws make you do things you would not want to do if you were free. Was it meant to be this way? What can be more valuable than choice? What do you have when you have no choice? The American Dream becomes an American nightmare. You can see some examples here and here.

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