Valdemar Malin | Eliminate the rich!

Being rich! Many people have been dreaming about these white castles in the air. But at the same time, the same people resent the filthy rich who actually live in those castles. They consider them dishonest and corrupt, and they believe that their wealth is illegitimate. What a paradox of human nature! Why is that? Why does economic inequality still exist?

Just imagine a manufacturing plant that makes millions of ball-bearings. All the balls in each of these bearings are made exactly the same (by size, material and characteristics) to make friction as low as possible. Such bearings work perfectly well for years, and such production is efficient and cost-effective.

Now, imagine a plant that is designed to produce billions of ball-bearings, but every ball in each bearing should be different in size, material and characteristics. Such bearings will never work! And what a nightmare to produce them considering prohibitive costs, inefficiency and waste!

Predictably, the first plant was designed by human mind. Guess who has designed the second one? You’ll never believe it! The almighty Nature—the epitome of wisdom, efficiency and perfection! Nature that created amazing Life on the planet Earth!

Really, there are billions of human beings on the planet, but each of them, by some reasons, is different in everything—in size, physical and mental abilities, intellect, character, you name it? How can the bearings of such a society run at all if all the human balls are not equal? Is Nature so incompetent and wasteful to produce such mind-blowing human diversity, allowing the weak and the strong, the ugly and the beautiful, the stupid and the genius to exist next to each other? This almost absurd diversity carried to extremes leads to economic inequality, while inequality gives birth to envy. What a paradox of Life!

Maybe Berny Sanders and other socialists are smarter than Nature? They want to eliminate billionaires and the rich in an uncontrollable and wasteful capitalist society that allows and encourages such economic inequality. They want to build a new well-regulated society without the rich and without envy provoked by their illegal wealth stolen, as they claim, from the poor. They claim also that inequality and friction between people will disappear in such society, and they will be able to live in harmony with each other. But for this to happen, people should be all equal like the balls in a ball bearing. In other words, people should be genetically identical, like bees or bacteria.

The problem is that people are all different. They cannot be the same like the balls in a ball bearing. Even monozygotic (genetically identical) twins differ from each other. People have to be genetically different because it is the purpose of and the law of Nature.

Well, there is an exception to this law, which is prohibited by Nature—the off-springs of incestuous sexual relations with close blood relatives are very close genetically to their parents. But those off-springs are born physically deformed, mentally deficient and sickly. That’s why they don’t live long.

May be this is a coincidence, but a society in which all people are the same and there is no economic inequality always becomes economically deformed, technologically deficient and sickly. It does not live long because it is a sick and crippled society.

Paradoxically, Sanders and alike are still calling for eradication of economic inequality. They believe inequality is unnatural state of human existence. Then how to explain that, through history, humans, although being all different, desire practically always the same—to gain, amass and possess—the more, the better. It comes naturally by their free will. Millennia come and go, but nothing has changed since the Stone Age.

USSR is a great example. For 70 years, the people there were forced to be the same under the gun. But after socialism has crashed, almost overnight, their petrified, seemingly unalterable society of ultimate equality has disintegrated into two unequal layers—the rich at the top and the poor at the bottom. This inequality happened naturally, by their free will and without any coercion.

Maybe economic inequality is a natural state of existence of Life? Maybe inequality created by Nature sustains lives of majority of people better than artificial equality born in a human mind? In fact, a society can be compelled to accept equality, but only by violence. Stop violence, and equality turns always into inequality, naturally. Similarly, oil can be mixed with hot water, but only if stirred violently. Stop stirring, and a layer of oil ends up always at the top, naturally.

Inequality is the result of a strong urge to gain, amass and possess—a distinctive feature of human nature inherited from our primordial ancestors always worried about tomorrow. As a valuable gift from Nature, this urge helped humans to survive. It has always been the primary law and the essence of Life on Earth manifested itself in many ways.

Make no mistake, Life is the precious baby of Mother-Nature! Nature will defend her baby at all costs and fight back if humans try to threaten Life or break the laws created and enforced by Nature for millions of years. Sanders and alike cannot understand the purpose of Nature and, therefore, they are clueless about the grave consequences of their actions for everyone, especially for those they want to help. But Peter Benchley understood the consequences very well.

In his book “Shark Life,” Peter Benchley, the bestselling author of the well-known novel “Jaws,” describes seaside villagers living near the reef in harmony with Nature. And Nature loves them back—they are making a decent living catching plenty of lobsters and fish, year after year.

But one day, the villagers discover that all sharks, big and small, are lying dead on the sea floor. The fishermen of a Japanese trawler killed all of them for their fins—shark-fin soup is a very expensive delicacy, you know. Some people are alarmed about the disappearance of the sharks, but most of them are pleased. They used to believe that sharks are greedy, insatiable and dangerous predators that steal fish from poor fishermen. But Nature fights back and teaches Man an unforgettable lesson.

Sharks are at the top of the food chain—the important role given them by Nature, on purpose. Sharks prey on octopuses. When the local sharks disappeared, the octopuses overran the reef. Since lobster is their favorite food, the lobster’s population suddenly crashed. In absence of sharks preying upon the sea lion’s colony nearby, the sea lion’s population exploded too. Now, the fish population was devastated by the sea lions, as well.

Disappearance of lobsters and fish affected everyone—the local boat mates and the fishermen; the wholesalers and the fish processors and packers; the truckers and the store and restaurant workers; and many others. They are losing boats and businesses, homes and cars and, eventually, their livelihood. Soon, the entire area is devastated and deserted. That’s how angry Nature turned the sea disaster caused by Man’s ignorance and arrogance into Man’s catastrophe.

In the 1960’s, Dr. Robert Paine, a prominent biologist from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA), was the first to coin a new ecological term “keystone species.” The term refers to a species that, like a keystone in an arch, holds an entire eco-system together. This important role was given to them by Nature.

A popular belief is that, because a keystone species is on the top of the food chain, it is destructive to all links of that chain, especially to the species it preys upon. But surprisingly, when the keystone species is removed, the harm and the damage it causes to the food chain and environment are disproportionally bigger. The entire eco-system may collapse devastating other species, especially those it preys upon.

Only humans can purposely remove keystone species, thus, destroying critical links of the food chains created by Nature. They do it often with good intentions to help people, and they justify their destructive actions by noble goals. But the road to Hell is always paved with good intentions.

Sharks have been a keystone species for ages. The fishermen from that Japanese trawler eliminated sharks for their fins—not because of good intentions to help people to get rid of the greedy, insatiable and dangerous predators stealing fish from the poor fishermen. And many brainwashed, ignorant people were cheering oblivious of the looming catastrophe. They did not understand that humans have broken the eternal law of Nature, and would have to pay for their mistakes.

Ironically, Berny Sanders and other democratic socialists symbolize today that Japanese trawler that eliminated those sharks for their fins. They intend to eliminate billionaires and the rich for their wealth using the same “noble” justification—the rich are at the top of the societal hierarchy and, thus, are greedy, insatiable and dangerous predators that steal from the poor.

But, figuratively speaking, the rich are also the keystone species, like sharks. They play an important role in a society given them by Nature, on purpose. Sanders claims that the rich 1%, being on the top of the financial pyramid, harm all the layers of the society, especially the poor. But history teaches us that the elimination of the rich causes disproportionally more harm to the society—it may collapse the entire society, as it has happened in the former USSR and other socialist countries.

But, ignoring the lessons of history, Sanders and alike propose the old, discredited solution—to take away trillions from the rich (1%) to achieve equality and prosperity for all. Is this enough? To understand the utopian nature of such solution, let’s mentally take away the entire income of the rich (1%) and redistribute this wealth equally among the US population. So, how much do you think would everyone get? Millions?

According to the Congressional Budget Office (Ref 1), if Sanders’s proposal had been approved in 2005 (a very prosperous year for the US economy), everyone would have received (Ref 2)…o-ops, just $3,916! Would this solution have ended poverty and achieved prosperity for all? And what would everyone have received the next year after bankrupting the rich? Catastrophe! The history is littered with the examples of such catastrophes, from former communist Russia to today’s socialist Venezuela.

The tragedy that followed the elimination of sharks is a stern warning from Her Majesty Nature to those who intend to break her eternal law and eliminate the rich. It is also a friendly reminder to those who blindly approves their actions oblivious of the looming disaster. Remember that this law of Nature is applicable not only to shark domains, but to human societies, as well. It is gouged into the granite tablets of human history:

The day sharks die, a human catastrophe begins.

References

1. Congressional Budget Office. Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates 1979-2005. Dec 2007 Summary? Table 1, Effective Tax Rates, 2004 and 2005.
2. Valdemar Malin. Nature vs. Man, About Socialist Ideals Hostile to Nature: Forced Equality (Live as Others), Coerced Altruism (Live for Others), and Suppressed Human Nature (Think as Others). Amazon.com/valdemar malin