Twenty-five years ago last month the Iraqi army pushed past the Kuwaiti border and in lightning speed took control of Kuwait City and the oilfields nearby. Both nations had oil in abundance, both were cashing in in a big way from this lucky windfall under the sand. Iraq could buy all the weapons they could get their hands on, and recruit and equip one of the largest armies of the time. It could afford to create a vast Stalinist police State, with all that entails. Very little of its wealth reached its people. That just wasn't a top priority. They could fend for themselves . They'd been doing just that since biblical times. The riches , which were in a real sense the patrimony of all, could flow in only one direction and that was toward the center of power, and from there only to the most favored sycophants and highest placed functionaries, in short, the well connected. Kuwait s approach was far different. Wealth was invested in creating more wealth, and creating a social and physical infrastructure that would benefit all its citizens. They became the richest people on Earth.
The conquest of Kuwait by its neighbor was not unique in the annals of warfare for its underlying motivation. It is striking among wars of recent centuries for being so obviously a war impelled by envy and little else. Two nations had great wealth. One had squandered theirs and it's people lived miserably. The other made the most of theirs and subsequently had everything the other population desired but could never obtain except by plunder.
In my sort of perfect world there wouldn't be a lot of perfection really. All of us would not be equal. Not all of us would be rich, not all of us would even be comfortable. There would be poor because there will always be people who make poor decisions. There would be rich because some people are smarter, more talented, work harder, take greater risks, or conversely, are more prudent than others. Given all that, it's imperative that the better off help out those with less, especially their children , who are not responsible for their poverty. My Utopia isn't too far off from the world I grew up in, except that opportunities for all would multiply and impediments would diminish. There would be more autonomy. With autonomy would come a greater sense of pride and responsibility. How great would that be?
This isn't everyone's cup of tea. When Bernie Sanders wows an audience he does it with sentiments opposite my own. Instead of speaking for a program that increases opportunity and economic liberty he speaks for a collectivist vision, and rearranging wealth's distribution for the sake of fairness and equity .
You won't be surprised to learn that I never got the whole argument alleging that the ninetynine percenters are somehow disadvantaged because of the great wealth of the one percenters. That doesn't jive with either logic or experience. Are we supposed to believe that one person's wealth comes only at the expense of another? What kind of economic model is that? It speaks volumes about the abysmal condition of economic and civic education in our public schools that when Bernie goes into Eugene Debs mode he isn't met with laughter and snickers from the crowds but cheers instead. Appreciating the sometimes subtle relationship between cause and effect may not be their strong suit. Take for example the preternatural incapacity of some to credit a persons poor life choices for leading directly to their crappy life.
So what about Iraq's one percenters previous to the Kuwait invasion, wasn't their wealth at the expense of the general population? As a matter of fact it was. In situations where you don't have economic freedom ,wealth flows to those who are well connected to the most powerful political leaders, but that sort of system is not Capitalist. It's a corrupted hybrid. The incentives are all wrong. Instead of getting rich by providing a product or service superior to the competition at a better price, a businessman is more likely to try cornering the market by providing money and favors to a lawmaker, a governor, or president, to influence them to put the squeeze on the competition . Obviously, that's no way to grow an economy.
Curiously, that's the same form of capitalism that we are heading for. It's already here and growing steadily. So in the end the bunch that can't stand Capitalism will ensure we get precisely the kind of capitalism that brings with it all the baggage they suspect from free markets anyway. There's a self fulfilling prophesy in there somewhere.
How do we get there ? How do we avoid getting there, ever deeper into this crony-capitalist Crapilvania? For one thing we call out the demagogues that so easily and naturally resort to waging class warfare and the politics of envy. The kind of politics you find in this campaign is far from the sort of envy that lead to the wanton looting of Kuwait twenty-five years ago. Different only in degree, just the same in kind. Envy is a destructive force more powerful than a hurricane or an earthquake. It's powerful enough to rule by or rearrange a civilisation, but in the end it always destroys what it touches.
