Saturday, December 28, 2013

A Redistribution of Respect?

By, Chris Rossini

Noah Smith, who in my readings seems to support every form of government thuggery imaginable, adds his opinion to the "inequality" debate that is making the rounds amongst the redistributers.

Smith writes:
I've always been a communist revolutionary at heart. Inequalities between human beings have always annoyed me, and I have the strong desire to see them eliminated.
Smith identifies the various inequalities that the talking heads are mulling over, like the inequality of wealth or income, of opportunity, or rights under the law. However, he throws another inequality into the mix:
I've come to realize that there is another important dimension of equality that I care about. Maybe more than any of the others. It's equality of respect. (his emphasis)
This is what Smith would like to see in the U.S.:
I had this realization (as with so many others) while living in Japan. I first noticed it when I was sitting in a "kaiten-zushi" restaurant, watching some cooks chop fish. It was robotic, repetitive work, about as difficult - and about as well-paid - as flipping burgers. But my Japanese friend referred to one of those cooks as "sushi-ya-san", meaning "Mr. Sushi Chef". She used the honorific reflexively, not patronizingly or sarcastically. The respect for this low-paid, low-skilled worker was reflexive, automatic.
Ever the meddler, who seeks to change others, Smith had the following thoughts (this time my emphasis):
I suddenly wondered if we could get Americans to start calling burger-flippers "sir". The thought made me laugh. [...]
I want this to change. I want to move back toward a society where the hard work of an unskilled laborer is considered worthwhile in social interactions, regardless of how many dollars it brings home. I want to move back toward a society where being a good parent or a friendly neighbor earns as much respect as making a hundred million dollars on Wall Street.

In other words, I want our "democracy" back. We need to redistribute respect.
Putting aside that "redistributing respect" makes no sense, this much is obvious...Whenever you hear a meddler say something like "if we could get" or "we need to redistribute", they mean the government should do these things. Like I said, from my readings of Smith, government is the wellspring which brings about all the good things that the meddlers want to force on everyone else..

So, it's no surprise that "respect" should be brought about by government "redistribution". Heck, maybe next Smith will throw "love" into the inequality shindig as well. The government will make us "love" whoever they deem in need of the most love.

Now for the hard truth.

Government is the last place to find anything resembling "respect". In fact, it is a major factor in the destruction of respect. If someone really respects their neighbor, there's one simple ingredient necessary: hands off!

True respect means no initiation of aggressive force against your fellow man. Government is the premier man-made tool that is used to aggress against others. Washington DC is a slop factory filled with fat sweaty hogs that come from all over the country with the goal of somehow initiating force against their fellow neighbors. At this stage in the game, after 200+ years, it has become a free-for-all.

When using aggressive force becomes as widespread as it has, your neighbor is not someone you "respect", but someone that you loot. And if you don't loot him, there's a good chance that he'll "win," and will end up looting you!

If Smith wants to "respect" the burger-flipper (as he claims) then stop "helping" him by advocating that the burger-flipper be forced to pay for someone else's healthcare. Stop "helping" him by advocating the robbery of his purchasing power via the printing press. Stop "helping" him by forcing him pay for other people's "Social Security", "Food Stamps" and the rest of the unending list of "benefits".

The best way to "respect" the burger-flipper is to take your hands off of him and treat him as an individual human being who deserves not to aggressed against. He and his property are off limits!

Multiply that by 300 million, and you'll have a much more respectful society. No "redistribution" required.


Chris Rossini on TwitterFacebook & Google+

14 comments:

  1. Can these statist morons get any stupider?

    By the way, Americans used to have much better manners and to show more respect for each other when this country was more socially conservative. We can probably trace the disappearance of manners/respect to the statists' culture wars and the steady increase in welfare and other government "programs" in the past 50 years or so.

    As usual, these cretins are proposing stupid government "solutions" to problems created by previous stupid government "solutions."

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  2. If he moves to the South, he might find some of this respect in ordinary interactions still present.

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  3. Most Americans use the "honorific" 'mister' or 'sir' or 'ma'am' when speaking to someone they don't know. So far as I know there is no law requiring them to do that, they just do.

    But perhaps what we need is a government edict requiring us to be just like Japan in every way, because 'san' sounds way cooler than plain old mister.

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  4. LOL, may be we should also start calling five year olds sir and ma'am.

    Also, if this dumdum really wants to show respect to the low-paid, unskilled workers, he should share his pay with them. I am sure they would consider that a higher form of respect than a meaningless "sir."

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    1. I call everyone who is serving me, be it a bank teller or kid slinging burgers- "Sir" or "Ma'am" - when interacting with them. It's just the way I was raised. I treat everyone I am peacefully interacting with with the utmost respect and dignity- yes sir, no sir, thank you, please- and expect the same. The thought of treating the man or woman who is working their a$$ off to prepare my food, or bag my groceries, or cut my hair, with anything less than the ultimate in gratitude and respect...well, I'm a southern boy, so it's just how I was raised.

      God help them if they don't return that genuine respect...

      Hell hath no fury like a good ol' boy disrespected by an uppity shopgirl. I will cut a bitch!

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    2. Even if the customer is 5, he gets called sir.

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  5. "I've always been a communist revolutionary at heart. Inequalities between human beings have always annoyed me, and I have the strong desire to see them eliminated."

    In other words, you're so mentally deficient that you can't even understand economics 101 or have you even bother to read even a little bit of it.

    As for the "redistributing respect.....Uh....yeah. Are these people THAT stupid and THAT desperate to create a problem where there isn't one? Stupid is as stupid does.

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  6. What he really wants is for everyone to call each other comrade.

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  7. It is impossible for a statist brain to examine a situation and assess whether a particular "problem" is the result of voluntary cooperation or the initiation of force. They either will not or cannot make this essential differentiation. As we've known for decades and decades, the elite uses the coercive forces of the state to loot the general public and without such forces, there would generally be less extremes of wealth. Further, the very "progressive" legal theories that justify forced transfers of wealth "for the public good" facilitate this looting because no court is going to second guess the legislature regarding economic legislation that claims to have a good purpose. But absent this legal theory, forced transfers of wealth would be prohibited.

    Clueless and evil. This is the nature of our opponents.

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    1. They must understand that the state inherently brings about inequality. Nothing is more unequal than one man ruling over another. They just must think that in a total state, they would be the ones doing the ruling. But they are indeed clueless as they demand an ever more powerful state to protect us from the very wealthy elite and its minions that essentially control the state. A state for which they will never be more than useful idiots.

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  8. "I've always been a communist revolutionary at heart."

    Well, in that case i'm surprised he didn't call for a Gulag Archipelago for those who refuse to show the proper respect by calling burger flippers "sir". Dumbass.

    I'm sure he was confused as to why "Harrison Bergeron" was considered a satire.

    At least we know not to take anything he says seriously, like we shouldn't do with anyone taking pride in affiliating himself with the greatest mass murderers in history.

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    1. After a three decade absence due to the marvel of Pol Pot, the commies ARE BACK:

      This creates studies that are much more empirical and less ideologically based than what economists tend to turn out.

      Its relevance to socialists is that you can use these methods to analyse capitalism and understand why the labour theory of value holds, and why income distribution becomes so skewed.

      Can you briefly describe what you think are important results that we’ve found in this area?

      To my mind the important results are:

      That the labour theory of value is basically accurate.

      That any market system has a pretty uneven distribution of income—this would apply even to a system of worker owned firms.

      That the existing system, however, contains an even more uneven distribution of income than would be expected just from the considerations above.


      http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11711



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  9. Sorry, but I don't see where Smith advocated government interference in this particular matter. There are a lot of things I advocate, such as an increase in politeness, respect, etc. Can I not advocate these things without it being assumed that I'm in favor of government force?

    Is this view not the mirror image of libertarians being unfairly called anti-social because they want power taken away from the government?

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  10. I personally cannot stand the inequalities of size among people, and feel we need to redistribute height so that everyone is at least tall enough to get respect but not tall enough to have an advantage over others. Think how competitive basketball would be if everyone was tall enough to play. Gov't should definitely deal with this issue as quickly as possible.

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