Thoughts About 2016

Last night I went to see the new movie by Dinesh D'Souza entitled 2016: Obama's America. The movie is based on two books D'Souza has written: Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream and The Roots of Obama’s Rage. In the movie, D'Souza attempts to explain why President Obama thinks and makes decisions the way he does. In other words, he tries to define the motivating force behind this world leader. D'Souza presents some very compelling evidence based on Obama's own words, as well as those of his relatives and friends, that the driving principle behind Obama's decisions is anticolonialism. Obama's father was born and raised in colonial Kenya and became a strong anticolonialist. Several of Obama's mentors were anticolonialists also. To better understand the anticolonialist mentality, one must understand what it is like to be a part of a colony.

Throughout history, mighty empires have arisen that felt it was their destiny to conquer other peoples and extract the resources of their land. Some of the better known ancient empires were the Assyrian, Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman empires. In more recent times, the best known and most powerful empire of all time was the British Empire. It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire because it reached around the world. Part of the makeup of this empire was other countries that had been conquered and made colonies. The British would set up some form of government in these colonies and then go about extracting resources to take back home. As you might expect, many of the indigenous people of these colonized nations were not happy with this arrangement. They wanted independence and self-autonomy. They wanted the resources of their land to be used to enrich their own people rather than the country of their overlords.

Kenya was a colony of the British Empire from about 1890 until 1963. So, President Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr, who was born in 1934, grew up in a colonized Kenya. Had I been in his shoes, I would most likely have been anticolonialist also. In fact, I am very much an anticolonialist now, even though I was fortunate enough to have been raised in an independent country. So, if President Obama and I both share an ideology of anticolonialism, why do I disagree with many of his decisions about the direction of our country? That has to do with what one believes should replace the oppression of colonialism once the oppressors leave and the autonomy of a nation is re-established.

Some anticolonialists viewed the people of the British Empire as being capitalists. So, it was natural for them, once they became independent, to want to move as far away from capitalism as possible. Typically, people who reject capitalism, embrace some form of socialism. This is what many Kenyans did. This seems to be the mentality of President Obama as well. But the problem is this: colonialism is anything but capitalism. Perhaps once the resources were extracted from the colonies and made into products, the Brits dealt with other nations on a capitalist basis. But the way they dealt with the colonies was not capitalist by any stretch of the imagination.

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defined socialism as “A) a system of society or group living in which there is no private property” and “B) a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.”

The definition of capitalism is “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”

So, based on these definitions, you can see that colonialism is more akin to socialism than capitalism in that you have a government expropriating the wealth of some people for the benefit of other people. Had the British dealt with Kenya in a capitalist manner, they would have come in and negotiated a contract whereby they paid an agreed upon price for the resources they wanted. That’s how free markets work. Yet, for the colonies that viewed their overlords as capitalists, socialism became the alternative of choice upon becoming independent. They basically jumped from the frying pan into the fire. As George Obama, President Obama's half-brother, said in the movie, Kenya would be better off today if the “whites” had stayed longer.

Fortunately, socialism is not the true alternative to colonialism; freedom and capitalism are. This is the path the forefathers of the United States of America took. Remember that the USA was originally colonies of Great Britain. The Revolutionary War was the result of an anticolonialist movement. Yet, upon gaining independence, the movement led to liberty and capitalism. This smart move led to the creation of what would become the most prosperous nation on the face of the Earth. All because this country embraced the idea that a man's labor was his own and thus the fruits of that labor were his own also. This produced a great incentive for individuals to work hard because they were working for themselves rather than others.

Yet, somehow President Obama has come down on the side of viewing capitalism as the system that oppressed nations and socialism being the cure. D'Souza believes it is due to the influence of his father, mentors, and friends. Perhaps. But whatever the reason, Obama is unfortunately wrong in his assessment. Freedom, liberty, and capitalism are the cure for colonialism. Socialism is but a form of internal colonialism in which government takes the wealth of people by force and passes it on to others, just as the Brits took the wealth of other nations for the benefit of themselves.

I believe our country needs Change and Hope just like President Obama does. However, Obama's cure for our ills is akin to a doctor attempting to cure cancer by injecting the patient with poison. It only makes things worse. What we need is a leader that has a real cure for our nation's problems. Perhaps it is Mitt Romney. Perhaps it is Gary Johnson. I have personally grown skeptical of most politicians. Yet, I do know one thing. I agree with President Obama when he says we shouldn’t return to the failed policies of the past. History shows clearly that liberty works far better than oppression. So, let’s go back to that.

GREED

I recently posted a one-sentence thought about greed on several social media sites. I decided to expand on this thought with a blog post. Here is what the original post said.


“Greed can be found more in the poor who demand the goods of others than in the wealthy who earn their own.”


I have found that a number of people balk at such comments and may think I have something against poor people. But just the opposite is true. I want all of us to live in a society where it is possible for poor people to become wealthy. I have nothing against poor people, but I do have something against being poor. Therefore, to better understand my one-sentence thought, let’s take a look at a typical definition of the word greed.


“An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.” -- The Free Dictionary


Most people tend to concentrate on the first part of this definition, “…more than one needs”, rather than the second part, “…more than one deserves”. I tend to think of the former as a good type of greed and the latter as a bad type of greed. Why? Because of the consequences of each. Let’s take a closer look.

When someone says that another person is greedy because they have a great desire to have more than they need, a number of questions need to be asked. How much does a person truly need? Does need end at the point of survival? Or does need mean having enough to live comfortably? What do you consider to be an excessive desire as opposed to a moderate desire? Does a person’s actions in pursuit of more possessions play into the equation at all?

Here in the United States as well as other developed nations, the free enterprise system has provided its citizens with the means to become wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations. In countries where free enterprise is non-existent, the populace tend to live in poverty. Sure, the leaders may live a life of opulence, but the average person does not, and has very little chance of getting out of his situation apart from leaving for a freer nation. Most countries today have mixed economies, meaning that the economy is free to some degree, but controlled by the government to some degree also. In general, the wealth of a nation increases with the degree to which it is free.

So, what happens when a greedy entrepreneur decides he wants more than he needs. WEALTH! That entrepreneur, in order to gain what he so desires, must develop a product or service that other people want and are willing to pay him more than he put into creating it. That provides the entrepreneur profit. But it also benefits the buyer because they needed or wanted the product or service more than the money they paid for it. It also benefits all those people the entrepreneur had to hire to design, develop, and produce his product. Most people understand this. When people think of greedy people, most are probably thinking of the ones that are willing to cheat or steal to get their wealth. Yes, those actions are wrong. But one must keep in mind that it is not the greed that is wrong, but rather the means by which they went about satisfying their greed. Let’s simplify. There is nothing wrong with my desiring to have a new flat screen TV, and there is nothing wrong with me working at a job to earn the money to buy the TV. However, if I just went down to Best Buy and took it without paying, that’s stealing, and it is wrong. Yet, my desire for the TV was still not wrong, just the means I chose to satisfy my desire.

This leads to the second definition of greed: an excessive desire for more than one deserves. What does one deserve? This should be easy. A person deserves whatever they can obtain honestly. If a person has skills that only earns them $10,000 per year, then $10,000 in goods and services is what they deserve. If a person has skills where they can honestly earn $6,000,000 per year, then they deserve $6,000,000 in goods and services. To say otherwise is to create artificial boundaries. Yes, it sometimes appears that there are a large number of people who become wealthy by cheating and stealing. I personally believe this is mostly perception rather than reality. The press writes a lot about rich crooks, but very little about rich honest people. So, in our minds, we tend to think that a large proportion of rich people got that way by cheating. But even if I am wrong, my point is still valid. It’s the actions one takes to satisfy his greed that determines right and wrong, not the greed itself.

So, can poor people be greedy in the sense of having an excessive desire for more than they deserve. Well, of course they can. And they can cheat and steal just like rich people can. They may not steal as much as the rich, but the principle is still the same. It is wrong to cheat and steal to obtain that which we did not earn. Acting on this type of greed almost always requires one to do wrong. Why? Because how else can one obtain more than they deserve? I can only think of one moral way. Charity. This is where people voluntarily donate time, goods, and money to help those who got a bad break in life though no fault of their own. Yet, there are quite a few people who believe they are due more than they can obtain honestly or through charity and are willing to commit a crime to obtain it. Or, and this is a big OR, they get government to obtain their largesse for them.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing more and more of these days are able-bodied people mooching off the working public via a state-sanctioned welfare program. If one were to suggest that these particular people should be removed from the rolls, many protests would arise because this charity is now thought of as something deserved.

So, let’s summarize. Desiring more wealth is not wrong in and of itself regardless of your status in life. Call it greed if you want, but don’t call it wrong. I call it wanting to improve your lot in life. Even if you consider it wrong for the super wealthy to desire more, surely you can’t believe that it is wrong for a person to desire more, even strongly desire more, if they live at subsistence level (meaning they have just what they need and no more). Would you be willing to walk up to a frail person in a third world country who is surviving, but not thriving, and tell him he is greedy for desiring more out of life? If so, then shame on you. All people should be free to pursue whatever status they so desire. And therein lies the problem. The countries where the people do not thrive are the ones where the leaders are oppressive. Most of these nations’ citizens probably desire a better life, meaning more wealth. What they need are new leaders that allow them to be free.

Now, back to my one-liner. “Greed can be found more in the poor who demand the goods of others than in the wealthy who earn their own.” Here I am using the word “greed” in the sense of desiring more than one deserves. As such, I believe my statement to be true.