Richard North and Christopher Booker are having a go at the more unpunished sort of looting, by overpaid local council employees. Says North:
Loot a shop, and you go to jail. Loot council tax payers and, if they don’t pay up, they go to jail.
I can’t remember who said it, but what whoever it was (Kingsley Amis?) said was that the rot set in when they stopped calling the Town Clerk the Town Clerk, and started calling him the “Chief Executive”.
LATER: See also this posting, in which trooper Thompson quotes a big chunk from Right-Wing Populism by Murray Rothbard, including this:
Why then did communism implode? Because in the end the system was working so badly that even the nomenklatura got fed up and threw in the towel. The Marxists have correctly pointed out that a social system collapses when the ruling class becomes demoralized and loses its will to power; manifest failure of the communist system brought about that demoralization. But doing nothing, or relying only on educating the elites in correct ideas, will mean that our own statist system will not end until our entire society, like that of the Soviet Union, has been reduced to rubble. Surely, we must not sit still for that. A strategy for liberty must be far more active and aggressive.
Hence the importance, for libertarians or for minimal government conservatives, of having a one-two punch in their armor: not simply of spreading correct ideas, but also of exposing the corrupt ruling elites and how they benefit from the existing system, more specifically how they are ripping us off. Ripping the mask off elites is “negative campaigning” at its finest and most fundamental.
Indeed. I’m not saying I agree with everything in this Rothbard piece, but I do agree with that. But I also believe that if I, and others of my inactive disposition, spread the correct ideas, it is automatic that the kind of people who, unlike me, refer to themselves as “Trooper” are going to want to join in on my side, but more aggressively.
The one that really irritates the hell out of me is the penchant all levels of government have developed for referring to me as a ‘customer’ We are not not their customers,we are their employers!
Or when politicians refer to themselves ‘of being in power’ rather than being in ‘office’
How about all those claims of wanting ‘to serve’ the country- by ruling it! Talk about uppity servants!
Say what you will about a spoils system, it does mean government employees at least know their continued employment is dependent upon elections.
Actually nemesis, it’s not politicians who refer to themselves as ‘being in power’ (at least not outloud), but rather us, serfs – and quite correctly so.
OT, but can anyone tell me how to get rid of the white-on-blue format? I can use XML on the index page, but the individual item pages defeat me utterly.
For socialism to succeed, Soviet communism had to be destroyed because socialism would not triumph with the immediate, constant demonstration of reality for all the world to see. Socialism must always be a utopia not yet attained or its popularity will fade.
Jay: “We are not not their customers,we are their employers”
Employers are not forced to pay others at gunpoint.
Customers are those who have a choice, so we are not customers either.
We are the hapless shopkeepers subject to the protection of a Mafia boss. They give the pretence of charity, of listening, of providing a service. Some shopkeepers kiss the hand and gain favours which will always, always be called in at the worst possible time.
For some reason that Telegraph page is crashing Chrome.
Moving from Town Clark to Chief Executive (and miuch else) – the Heath-Walker Local Governent “reforms”.
John Farrier: interesting point, but what about NK? It’s still there, the great success it is – and yet…
A (non verbatim) quote fron the Godfather: “a lawyer can steal more money than a thousand men with guns”