American Socialism: Acquisitionism

The Cognitive Dissident is not very financially or economically savvy. His parents worked hard and saved so that he wouldn’t have to. So he doesn’t.

As far as economics are concerned, it seems to me that the true meaning of supply and demand is that wherever there’s a supply, I demand to get a hand in it.

The news surrounding the government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac basically underscores this general attitude of entitlement that seems to pervade American political and socio-economic culture. In other words, people don’t just have a right to a roof over their heads: they have a right to OWN the roof and everything under it, even before it is even close to being paid for.

In this sense, it seems that American has gone even one step beyond baseline socialism. One might say that it is a distorted analog to Manifest Destiny: when we ran out of frontiers to conquer, we turned to our own backyards. Instead of capitalism, we might call it acquisitionism.

This acquisitionist position has extended to two very important social goods: health care and education. The existence of a system of public education is predicated on the notion that a basic “free, appropriate” education should be available to all. The systems of “socialized” medicine that exists in much of Europe applies the same notion to health care.

From the little I know about economics, by designating health care and education as “rights”, by extension it means that demand is infinite, which means that supply will never catch up. More importantly, it also means that someone will always be compelled to pay for someone else’s goods.

Aside from the blurry billing, there’s the issue of ostensible “moral hazard”. The lines have always been drawn between progressives’ complaints of “corporate welfare” (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, S & L, airlines, bailouts, tax cuts for the rich) and conservatives’ fears of creeping socialized just-about anything (higher taxes, education, health care, welfare, “war on poverty”). Don’t be fooled: the American Left is just as acquisitionist as the American Right.

The lesson of all this? Unless you find yourself as a real outlier on the great American socio-economic bell curve, you will probably be getting an output somewhat proportional to your input. There are just two things you wont be able to do: one, discern a necessarily direct connection between your efforts and rewards; and two, control who may benefit as a result of your efforts.

Ultimately, the latter is probably the unique defining characteristic of American “socialism”. In capitalism, you have to invest. In acquisitionism, you get someone else to. You can’t win unless someone else loses.

That is the acquisitionist ethos.