The Problem of Dolphins on Welfare and What It Means for America

Gary North informs:

The West's governments are going to default, one way or another. Politicians cannot bring themselves to stop spending money the governments do not have.

The deficits of the major Western governments are now so great as to be irreversible. The governments must now borrow money to be used to pay interest on money already borrowed. In the housing market, this is called a backward-walking mortgage. It invariably spells default...

The welfare state is defended ethically as a system of safety nets. These safety nets are defended as ethically necessary for a good society, meaning ethically good. Intellectuals see business profits as legitimate mainly because profits provide a tax base for funding the welfare state.

These safety nets require constant and ever-increasing funding. They are going to lose this funding. Why? Because of national government bankruptcies.

There is no question that the deficits will produce a series of fiscal crises. These crises will initially be covered up by central bank inflation, but the end result of that policy will either be hyperinflation, which is a form of concealed default, or stable money, which will be followed by open default. There will be a default. The political fall-out of this default will change the nature of Western politics.

The welfare state is going to self-destruct....

The defenders of the welfare state have come in the name of a higher ethics. When the system goes belly-up fiscally, these defenders will face the same sort of existential crisis that the Marxists faced in 1992.


They ought to be able to see that the welfare state is a fraud, a delusion, and an ethical monstrosity: charity with guns. They ought to be able to see that theft is theft, with or without majority votes. But they don't.
So, let us look at something more practical. Let us look at a sign: "Do not feed the dolphins."


"DO NOT FEED THE DOLPHINS"


It is illegal to feed dolphins in the United States. Federal law prohibits this. I do not recall anything in the Constitution authorizing federal laws against feeding dolphins, but I'll let that pass. The fact is, people ignore the law. They love to feed dolphins. In Tampa Bay, tourists are big law-breakers in this regard.


Why shouldn't people be allowed to feed dolphins? Because, marine biologists say, giving dolphins free food addicts them to handouts. People are turning dolphins into welfare bums.


The federal government's fish police see the threat. Handouts destroy the ability of dolphins, who are very smart fish, to survive on their own. Mothers do not teach survival skills to their offspring. They teach them to live off welfare.


Tourists are creating inter-generational welfare dependence. In a 2009 article in the "Tampa Bay Times," we read this from a biologist employed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. "We are able to document lineage, from grandmother to mother to calf, all following fishing boats and taking thrown-back fish."
Marine biologists, who themselves are being fed by the federal government, understand the threat to ecology posed by welfare economics. It is a bad idea, they say, to addict smart fish to handouts. But the logic of this position is not applied to human beings, who are far more clever than dolphins. What is gospel at the National Marine Fishing Service is anathema at the Department of Health and Human Services. What the government's experts on fish see as a threat to the fish, the government's experts on human beings do not see as a threat to people.


What is the threat? Creating permanent dependence...

Tax-funded safety nets are in fact political snares. These safety are not deliberately designed to create dependence, any more than Florida tourists deliberately plan to addict dolphins to handouts, but in both cases, this is the effect. The welfare establishments are like zoos. The animals are well cared for. They are well fed. They are given medical care. What they are not given is liberty.

Welfare clients are smarter than dolphins. They learn how to work the system. Nancy Pelosi's daughter has produced a documentary on professional welfare bums. They were amazingly forthright with her about the nature of their ability to work the system.

If they see that they have become ensnared in a system that makes them dependent on the system, they do not show it. They seem to regard their dependence as a badge of honor, proof of their ability to milk the system. They do not see themselves as people wrapped in snares

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CONCLUSION

I end with the words of the newspaper story on feeding the dolphins.

Federal law banned wild dolphin feeding in the early 1990s, but by then the St. Andrew Bay bunch was hooked.

They continue to approach boats three and four at a time. And as YouTube videos attest, people are still happy to provide dinner.

"Grab me a minnow, Patty! Feed 'em!" yells a man in one video.

"They aren't going anywhere," another man responds. "They'll be here until we stop feeding them."

What is true of formerly independent dolphins is equally true of formerly independent welfare recipients. Nobody seems to care.

The tourists will keep coming to Florida. Washington's checks won't.

"When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.
And down will come baby, cradle and all