The Downside of Prosperity - Too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious

I’ve always been a fan of the prosperity created by Western civilization in general and the United States in particular. Indeed, I even created a website called Gratitude for America, where I write about American entrepreneurs who invented things like barbed wire and standardized shipping containers. But maybe there’s a downside to this prosperity because we’ve created a class of people (especially in government) completely disconnected from how the world actually works.

Cyrus McCormick, who invented the mechanical reaper, is the most important entrepreneur in human history. He basically untethered mankind from farming, one of the most dangerous occupations on earth. In 1831, when he invented the mechanical reaper, approximately 80% of the American population was involved in agriculture, and, in most places in the world, it was higher—in some cases, 95%.

Back then, farming’s efficiency hadn’t changed much since the time of the pyramids. A man, using a scythe, could harvest approximately one acre of grain a day. Fifty years later, McCormick guaranteed that, by using his machine, a farmer could harvest 15 acres a day. With today’s machines, a farmer can harvest up to 100 acres in a day. Small wonder that only 3% of the US population today farms.

The reason McCormick is so important is not because of farming, per se, but because he freed up most of the population to go out and do other, less dangerous things. With that shift, work-life expectancies began to skyrocket in the latter half of the 19th century. In 1800, the average life expectancy was approximately 30 years, with Europe averaging 33 and the US close behind. By 1900, the world average had increased to 32, but in Europe it had jumped to 43 and in the US to 47.

Since they didn’t have to be on farms, people became inventors, entrepreneurs, and innovators. During the late 19th century, countless inventions (e.g., usable electricity, automobiles, and the telegraph) and innovations (e.g., drilling for oil, railroad expansion, and the widespread adoption of the assembly line) changed the Western world. Food became more abundant, transportation became easier and safer, housing became cheaper, and medicine began to improve.

In the 20th century, things really took off. Today, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, world life expectancy is 72 years, while in the US, it’s 78, and in Western Europe, it’s above 80.

Not only are we living longer, but we’re also prosperous beyond anything in human history. Our food is more varied, dependable, and plentiful than ever. We have transportation, hospitalization, housing, employment, clothing, education, sanitation, entertainment, and leisure opportunities exponentially beyond anything in all of human history.

Contrast all of that with what humanity endured through most of our history. Poverty and scarcity were the norm. Food availability was always an issue. War was almost constant. Work was dangerous. Slavery was everywhere. Many worked seven days a week, changing clothes was rare if at all, people rarely bathed, virtually everyone was illiterate, plumbing didn’t exist, disease was rampant, shelter was overcrowded, heating in the winter was from burning wood or dung if either could be found, infant mortality was stratospheric, and leisure was a luxury only the elites could afford.

The average Westerner’s life is far superior to any experienced by 99.999% of the people who ever lived, but, somehow, everyone today is a victim—and we know that everyone is a victim because the elites tell us so. Through schools, media, and government, we’re told that Western culture is racist, sexist, fascist, or somehow otherwise oppressive. Basically, the better things get, the worse they get.

America today reminds me of a Jetsons episode I saw as a child. George Jetson, the father of the “Space-aged family,” came home one day exhausted from working at Spacely Sprockets and said, “Jane, these one-hour-a-week workweeks are brutal.” No doubt we’d be told he’s still a victim.

The reason those elites, the ones who seek to manipulate the public, get away with it is because a significant portion of the population believes them. And they believe them because of the division of labor-driven prosperity that McCormick unleashed.

Virtually the entire left in this country has zero connection with anything having to do with creating anything, growing anything, building anything, or risking anything. They spend their days pushing paper in offices or selling cappuccinos, if they work at all. Not only are few of them farmers, but few are truckers, lumberjacks, steel workers, plumbers, electricians, or entrepreneurs. Few have ever had to balance paying a credit card bill versus making payroll. Few ever risked their money and invested sweat equity to start a business.

The left today is largely government employees, students, college-educated white women working inside large corporations, Wall Street, academia, the cabal of NGOs, the media, the 40 million who suckle on the government teat through programs like SNAP, and the 47% of the country who either pay no tax or get “refundable tax credits”.

Few of those people do anything remotely productive for the economy. Few understand that the government doesn’t have money beyond what it takes from taxpayers or prints via taxpayer IOUs. They have no appreciation for Capitalism, the thing that gave us our prosperity. They flush the toilets and expect them to work, flip the light switch and expect the room to illuminate, and go to the store to pick up a pound of beef without knowing how it gets there. Few of them have any real connection to the basic functionality of life.

The result of this societal bifurcation is that half of our population has little understanding of or vested interest in the country’s or the economy’s continued functioning. More regulations and higher taxes are always the answer because none of them are affected. Regulations make it harder to open a business or keep one running, but they’re easy promises for politicians to offer as the solution to every problem because their voters never pay the price for the consequences.

We’re living in the world Ayn Rand envisioned in Atlas Shrugged. Everything we see going on in our cities, on our streets, and on our border is so because the division of labor has allowed so many people to bask in prosperity without having a clue about how it’s actually created or what’s necessary to maintain it. Their checks come, their jobs are secure, and they don’t have to deal with the government’s suffocating regulations, so everything is good.

Of course, it’s not good, and things are getting worse. Thomas Jefferson understood the problem, saying in 1824: “I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” That is 2024 incarnate.

This needs to be fixed. How we do that, I’m not quite sure, but, at a minimum, we need to slash government spending and regulations at every level. Perhaps only those who pay taxes should vote. Perhaps government employees should not be allowed to vote. Maybe we make election day the day after Tax Day. Whatever the solution, until those voting have some vested interest in a well-run government and a functioning economy, things will only get worse, and they’re already pretty bad.  

 

Setting Good Money on Fire After Setting Bad Money on Fire in Gaza

I was walking down the street yesterday, and suddenly, I heard honking from a bunch of cars. Not sure what it was, I looked over to see a cavalcade of cars driving by, waving big Palestinian flags out their windows. This went on for about five minutes until, eventually, they had all disappeared.

This comes on the heels of seeing the Palestinian flag painted on the sides of buildings or on overpasses or stickers stuck to signs and the windows of various McDonald’s –and not put there by the store’s owners! Thankfully, there was no real disturbance other than a bit of annoyance.

They are, of course, protesting the alleged “genocide” that’s being carried out in Gaza by the IDF. We’ve been told that, in the slightly over 100 days since the beginning of this war, there have been more than 24,000 civilian casualties at the hands of the IDF. Given that that information is coming from Palestinian “authorities” which, in Gaza is Hamas, that number is likely highly exaggerated. Even so, if the actual number is 10% of that total, it’s a tragedy. One civilian death, never mind 2,400 or 24,000, is a tragedy. It’s not genocide, but it’s a tragedy nonetheless.

Simply, it’s war, and most wars include civilian deaths, many of them.

And how did we get to this war? As everyone knows, it started on October 7th when Hamas sent terrorists (“freedom fighters”) into Israel who raped, tortured, and murdered some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, with victims ranging from 10-month-old babies to 80-plus-year-old men and women. And they kidnapped 200 more.

The depravity of the attacks was extraordinary, something along the lines of Dr. Mengele or the Rape of Nanking. We’re told, however, that while the events of Oct 7th were indeed despicable, the Israeli response has been disproportionate insofar as civilians have died. And as such, we’re also told that Israel needs to be stopped. And punished.

Solely for argument’s sake, let’s pretend that there is some moral equivalency here and agree that the terrorist attack by Hamas and the so-called disproportionate response from Israel are somehow equal.

Then the question becomes, how did we get to this place? In November, someone posted a TikTok video showcasing “Beautiful Gaza that you never saw before. Filmed just before Oct 7th, 2023.” The video shows bright Mediterranean colors, beautiful smiling faces, and everything from bustling stores to beach resorts to crowded restaurants and much more. It looks like a Madison Avenue marketing job seeking to induce the world to spend their next vacation in Gaza. (See also this tweet describing what soldiers saw: wealth and militarization.)

Nevertheless, we’ve repeatedly been told that Gaza is a modern concentration camp. That’s why, pro-Hamas factions insist, Hamas was forced to attack Israel in an attempt to break the Israeli chokehold on the Palestinians.

But, if indeed it is true that Israel was turning Gaza into a giant death camp, where was the rest of the world? Why weren’t they helping? Well, it turns out, the world was helping… A lot. And I mean a lot!

Over the decade-and-a-half since Hamas was elected, Gaza has received approximately $40 billion in support from around the world. That included $5 billion from the United Nations, almost $2 billion from Qatar, $20 billion from the Palestinian Authority (which itself receives billions annually from the world community), as well as over a billion dollars each from the US, Europe, and Iran.

The average works out to about $3 billion annually for a population of approximately 2.3 million people or about $1,300 per person living in Gaza. That $1,300 makes up a little less than half of the per capita income of the average citizen of Gaza. Other sources of income are primarily small businesses and agriculture.

We’re told that the citizens of Gaza live in poverty that Israel imposes upon them. The approximate $3,000 per capita income of the citizens of Gaza puts them at about 165 in the world rankings, ahead of 30 nations, most in Africa.

However, the reality is that, if Palestinians live in poverty, it’s the fault of Hamas. The leaders of Hamas have stolen at least $11 billion of the money that was supposed to go to the citizens of the Gaza Strip. They enjoy that fortune relaxing safely in their multimillion-dollar compounds in Qatar.

What’s more, and far more deadly, is that Hamas spends billions of dollars a year on things that have nothing to do with supporting Gazan citizens. Firstly, they have spent over $1 billion on a 350-mile-long network of tunnels under Gaza, a 141-square-mile strip of land. Every mile of those tunnels represents piping or concrete or steel that could have gone to building schools, shopping malls, hospitals or anything else that could have positively affected the lives of Gazans. But they didn’t.

Those tunnels had to be used for something, of course, and that something was and is preparing to attack and actually attacking Israel. Of course, to do that, they need weapons and Hamas has spent $5 billion on weapons over the last decade and a half. Everything from small arms to bombs to missiles.

Together, the total theft for the tunnels and the military spending equals $17 billion or 42% of the world’s contributions to Gaza over that 15-year period. But here’s the thing: As bad as it was that Hamas squandered at least 42% of Gaza’s donations, the reality is that the real damage isn’t the money. The real damage is that, instead of focusing the people on building a thriving, robust economy, Hamas instead focused on teaching children to hate Israel and launching tens of thousands of rockets into Israel.

So, Hamas pushed the hate narrative and launched missiles into Israel on a regular basis, actions that would, of course, prompt reprisals, which would, in turn, reinforce the hate. It was and is a never-ending cycle of victimization, hate, and poverty. Hamas, not the Gazans, profited from this. Yet, somehow, the money keeps coming... because most relevant actors don’t care about actual progress or peace.

Nonetheless, they say that hindsight is 20/20. That’s true, and so too is the reality that, had Hamas taken a different path and its leaders pushed for living in peace with Israel rather than cultivating a perpetual war footing, we wouldn’t be watching Gaza turned into a parking lot. But they didn’t, and we are.

This is simply another example of leaders using their citizens as cannon fodder so that they can accumulate fortune and power. When the dust settles, one can only hope the Gazan people look at the difference between their world and the luxury their leaders enjoy and decide to vote for a different path forward, one that doesn’t include perpetual war and tragedy. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath.

The Green Energy Cult is Killing the West

Years ago, I wrote a post about how cheap air travel to Europe was ruining America. My point was that the Americans visiting Europe were confusing what they experienced as a tourist with the reality of life in Europe. These progressive American fans of two-hour lunches and 6 months of maternal and paternal leave didn’t have a clue about how average Europeans lived. Indeed, a couple of years later, the Foundation For Economic Education came out with a study that showed the poorest 20% of Americans were better off than the average European. Basically, the average European suffers from high taxes, high prices, tiny homes and cars, and, increasingly, less freedom. But tourists sipping tea in London or shopping in Paris rarely, if ever, see this, or understand it if they do.

Nonetheless, with little understanding of economics or history, they decide that America must become Europe. Socialism, Obamacare, and gay marriage are just some of those European imports that Americans have to deal with today.

We are seeing something similar play out on a grander, global scale—or at least in the West, where prosperity has dulled the brains of much of the population.

Naturally, I’m talking about the green energy hoax. Here in the West, we have people so spoiled by prosperity that they have the luxury of pining for a time when we weren’t poisoning our earth with fossil fuels or risking apocalypse with nuclear power.

On both sides of the Atlantic, you have a perfect mix of brain-dead green energy cultists and fascist elites who seek to harness the power of that cult to control everyone. That’s a toxic combination because energy controls pretty much everything.

The reality is that inexpensive, reliable energy is the single biggest driver of prosperity in all human history. And it’s not even close. Inexpensive, reliable energy drives virtually everything that we Westerners enjoy: Our food, iPhones, transportation, heating and cooling of homes, televisions, hospitals, schools, movies, plumbing, video games, Starbucks, and the Zambonis at hockey games! Everything.

It’s not that energy didn’t exist previously. It did. But the difference is that it was inefficient, hard to get, and expensive. The first significant source of fuel for humans was wood. That lasted for tens of thousands of years. Although the first recorded use of coal was in China between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, in Europe, for two thousand years, coal remained an insignificant source of energy. Change came in the 17th century because England had felled most of the easily accessible trees and was in need of energy. With the advent of large-scale mining, coal rapidly became the most significant source of energy in Europe.

This would be the status quo for the next 300 years until the first successful oil well, drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. Over the following decades, tens of thousands of wells would be drilled and, by 1900, the US alone would be producing 20 million barrels of oil a year. That oil was first used to produce kerosene for heating and lighting homes, then gasoline for automobiles and, eventually, powering electricity plants as well, although coal was the dominant fuel for powering electricity production well into the late 20th century.

In the latter half of the 20th century, nuclear power emerged as a viable vehicle for producing electricity and was joined by fracking-driven natural gas early in the early 21st century.

Of course, renewables had been around for centuries, first with windmills and watermills, then hydroelectricity and, eventually, solar. Renewables always remained a small sliver of the power generation, however, only becoming slightly material in recent years due to heavy regulation and subsidies.

But now, for the first time in human history, we have a segment of the population, largely Western liberals, who want to restrict the use of inexpensive and reliable energy.

For the last 400 years, mankind has been marching forward in the direction of increasing the amount of energy we consume. As a result, lifespans have increased dramatically, prosperity has flourished, technology and sciences have advanced dramatically, and lives have become exponentially more varied.

Believe it or not, all of that is held together by a tenuous electricity grid. Not sure? In 2019 the Air Force said the following about an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack:

A successful EMP attack on the U.S. could lead to a nationwide blackout of the electric power grid and a shutdown of critical infrastructure reliant on the grid, including, but not limited to, communications, transportation, food and water supply, and sanitation. Such a shutdown could last as long as a year, and without such critical infrastructure, a large fraction of the America could die from starvation, disease, or the effects of general societal collapse.

That gives some indication of how dependent Americans are on energy. But it’s probably not going to be an EMP that cripples America and the West. It’s going to be the fiction of green energy.

In 2011, Angela Merkel announced that Germany would shut down all 17 of its nuclear reactors. Last year, the last three were shuttered. In 1990 Germany generated 25% of its electricity from nuclear; now it’s finally zero. And it shows.

While harassing citizens to conserve energy, Germany has gone from a net exporter of energy to a net importer. In addition, in 2010, German GDP growth was ahead of every single nation in the EU and double the average. By 2022, it was half the EU average and, over the next six years, it’s predicted to be dead last in the EU and behind only Belarus and war torn Russia and Ukraine on the continent. This is all in pursuit of the goal of cutting CO2 emissions 65% below the 1990 level by 2030.

On this side of the pond, we have California banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and a wave of blue states lining up behind them. This at the same time the state is asking existing electric car owners not to charge their cars while leaning on fossil fuels to stave off the return of rolling blackouts.

The reality is that the green energy revolution is a fiction. Green energy is incapable of providing the energy requirements developed nations require and the green energy movement is a cult. In fealty to that cult, Western nations are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every year on “green energy” programs—most of which fail. Between 2020 and June of 2023, Western nations spent $1.34 trillion on green energy “investments“ while private companies spent tens of billions more annually.

Basically, for no discernable benefit, and arguably with many negative consequences, Western nations are setting fire to 2% of their GDP annually and expect to burn even more going forward. That would essentially mean that GDP would have to grow at 2% annually just to tread water, an unlikely prospect in the face of tightening energy supplies and skyrocketing costs.

And this is all because people with no understanding of science, economics, or history operate under the illusion that civilization is a virus on the pristine earth. Western civilization as we know it will not survive the economic suicide of the green revolution.

Perhaps that’s why Western elites are inviting into their countries tens of millions of third-world “migrants” who aren’t familiar with inexpensive and reliable energy. At some point, those who do remember them will become the minority, and the elites can finally drop the fiction of concern.