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Your cruise ship sinks, you and one other person, a stranger, are the only survivors, and your lifeboat lands on a deserted island. The two of you have no provisions. Your survival depends on wresting your sustenance from the island. You quickly learn the essentials of both economics and moral philosophy. Or you die.
Lesson one, the foundation for everything else: you are more interested in your own survival than that of your companion, and likewise. You’re both self-interested, because you have to be. The next lesson: production is the foundation of your island economy, not consumption. You can’t eat a coconut that hasn’t been gathered. Fruit must be picked, fish caught, huts built, and fresh water found. Production requires effort and an accurate assessment of reality. There are penalties, not payoffs, for sloth or delusion.
If the two of you grow tired of living hand-to-mouth and want to make life easier in the future, perhaps by setting up a fresh water delivery system or cultivating plants, you will have to plan, forego leisure time and current consumption, and use some of your resources. That’s savings and investment: using today’s surplus and effort to generate tomorrow’s improvement and wealth.
You may be better at building and maintaining huts, your companion at farming. You offer to build his hut if he’ll provide you with food: comparative advantage, voluntary exchange, and gains from trade. If he offered palm fronds for your hut, or you offered the same for his plants, there would be no trade; value must be offered for value. If one of you stole the other’s production, the victim would either incapacitate the thief or move to the other side of the island. Both thief and victim would be the poorer for it.
Let’s assume a happier outcome, that you and your companion survive, thrive, and improve your island life. You two may not like each other, but your joint interest in self-preservation has led you to production, specialization, voluntary exchange, saving, investment, and progress. You have unmistakable and irreplaceable feelings of competence, achievement, pride, and self-respect. You’re a better person than before the shipwreck.
The happy day comes when you are rescued. Or is it happy? “Civilization” turns your island economics and morality upside down. Consumption and debt, not production, saving, and investment, are believed to be the basis of the economy. Governments issue debt, pieces of paper or computer entries that might as well be palm fronds. Central banks exchange their fronds for governments’, and that’s supposedly the linchpin of the global economy. Apparently nobody needs to produce, save, or invest in order not to starve.
Or perhaps not; production, saving, and investment still occur. If, on your island there had been a third survivor who refused to work although able to do so, claiming it was your duty to keep him alive, you would have let him die with no regrets. Back in civilization, these third parties reign supreme. The self-interest motivating producers is bad; the motives of those who take from them are unquestionably good. It’s as if that hypothetical third survivor had said: “I’m virtuous because I produce nothing, you two are evil because you do, feed me,” and you had in fact fed him.
Actually, civilization is far worse. Not only are the non-productive kept alive, they’re in charge. They don’t produce, but they tax, regulate, redistribute (mostly to themselves), and mortgage the production of those who do. They wage stupid and costly wars that benefit their friends in the war and intelligence industries but increase the threats and dangers faced by everyone else. The plunge their nations into debt and have brought the global economy to the brink of ruin.
The honest and productive toil on, hoping against hope that their masters will leave them alone. As their liberties shrink while their masters’ powers increase, as the governments they fund grow ever bigger and more intrusive, they are told they have nothing to fear as long as they do nothing wrong, as defined by the masters, of course. That’s a vicious asininity. “Wrong” is always shifting and arbitrary, at the discretion of the masters, and the right—integrity and productive ability—only gets more taxed and regulated, condemned, and forcefully reminded of its duties to society, or more accurately, to the masters.
They can’t leave the productive alone; their survival depends on them. Your life, your mind, your skills, your effort, and your work are theirs, to be disposed of as they see fit. But it’s moral parasitism that makes physical parasitism possible. On the island, the nonproductive third castaway could have only survived by convincing you it was your duty to support him. History’s greatest heist, swindle, and travesty has been the never-ending effort to convince those who produce that they owe something to those who don’t. Slavery can be imposed by force, but it’s not especially productive. Convince producers that their lives are yours, and you get the production without the whips and chains. That has been the philosopher’s stone for every half-baked collectivist, redistributionist, populist, authoritarian, totalitarian pipe dreamer who ever became or wanted to become a “leader,” and their motley cohorts.
Some producers sell out: if you can’t beat ’em, join em. Some think accommodation is possible, compromise between the voracious and the devoured. If that’s your strategy, how has it worked out? And some simply give up, weary, embittered, and resigned to the incomprehensible: everybody and anybody is entitled to their lives and work except them.
Nothing is working out, things just get worse. Years worth of future production are implicitly pledged to pay the ever-mounting debt, much of which will never be repaid, no matter how high already exorbitant taxes go. Palm frond exchange between governments, central banks, and their financial co-conspirators has not produced prosperity. These leeches are sucking the life out of the global economy, which will soon emit its last desperate gasp.
Honest producers are the real victims in a world that cherishes all manner of purported victimhood. If honest producers do not make a stand, claim their lives, their minds, their efforts, their work, and their right to choose whom they support, the leeches will suck the remaining life out of them. There is no island haven of rationality, justice, and wisdom to which they can repair; resistance or slavery are the options.
Resistance begins with a moral precept, before strategy, tactics, and weapons. My life is mine. Only when you proudly insist on it, recognizing all that precept implies, will you be ready, willing, and able to fight for it with complete moral clarity.
IT’S YOUR LIFE, READ A NOVEL YOU’LL LOVE
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
Reblogged this on The way I see things … and commented:
Are you one of the “honest producers” pissed ENOUGH TO SAY NO MORE? I AM!
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“Honest producers are the real victims in a world that cherishes all manner of purported victimhood. If honest producers do not make a stand, claim their lives, their minds, their efforts, their work, and their right to choose whom they support, the leeches will suck the remaining life out of them. There is no island haven of rationality, justice, and wisdom to which they can repair; resistance or slavery are the options.
Resistance begins with a moral precept, before strategy, tactics, and weapons. My life is mine. Only when you proudly insist on it, recognizing all that precept implies, will you be ready, willing, and able to fight for it with complete moral clarity.”
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Fundamental. Ought to be taught to every HS freshman in America.
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Thanks.
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Who is John Galt?
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Excellent article, as usual for you, Mr. Gore. As Ayn Rand pointed out years ago, the product of your mind and labor is yours and yours alone. If I want to give a beggar a dollar, that is my choice and my crime because I have subsidized sloth. However, anyone pointing a gun at me demanding that dollar so he can give it to the beggar has committed two crimes.
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Thank you and an excellent point.
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You sound like a reformation era preacher, just, minus the credit to God. I’m very often amazed at the natural law principles being applied by what I have to assume are not Christians. I’m pretty sure the American church has been co-opted, there ain’t no other possible answer to it’s malaise. I have to search outside of God’s people for understanding of His creation. Scary times.
arrived here via Western Shooters.
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Not all of Gods people have been co-opted… but then there’s that little Commandment that states “Thou shalt not murder.”
Let’s face it, the only thing that will stop what’s coming is the death of some 4,000-ish progressive pricks who are convinced that they have the answer to what ails the world. If you know history, you know that’s true. You start at the bottom of the list (mostly because they’re easier to get), and work your way to the top. You really only need to work your way up to about mid-point before those at the top figure out the game and just disappear. Where did they go? Who cares, as long as they’re gone. Simple. Not easy though.
Consider the moral aspect. All of these people are taking part in, and are directly responsible for something that is going to kill most of us. But there is no possible way that they can be construed as an immediate threat to life, thus constituting a moral case of self defense. Frustrating in the extreme. So what are we Christians left with? Protesting, condemning the condemnable, blah, blah, blah. None of it works, ever. Death works, but I’ll be damned if I pull the trigger… literally.
Now consider something else. The Bible tells us that this world is full of trials, suffering of mind and body, and a whole lot of other stuff that pretty much ends up being less than stellar on the fun meter. In the midst of all this, Jesus says that he provides us with what we need, and tells us that he prepares a place at his side. It’s called grace. None of us deserve it (for we are all sinners) be we get it anyway….. if we obey. And by obey, I speak of mind, spirit, and body. A murderous heart without action is still a murderous heart. It’s like a socialist is really a communist who hasn’t killed anyone yet. They both suck ass. So this situation ends up being the grand conundrum of eternity. We can all save the world. We know how. We possess the technology. We even have a friggin blueprint! To do so, however, would be to condemn our souls. On the other hand, we can lament the situation in our own world, or we can prepare our place in the next, which is eternal.
Of course this all comes full circle when the libtards get impatient (they will) and start shooting first. At that point all bets are off and I will personally see to it that some folks (hopefully one of them is a lawyer) drown in pools of their own urine, and blood. That self defense thing again. It’s a bitch.
In the mean time I’ll continue to foster my relationship with The Father, teach the younger generation what I can, and prepare for dark times. Knowledge is key, but faith is essential.
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There is something we can do right now that doesn’t involve killing anyone and that is to moving to certain areas that are already conservative and forming Patriot Community’s… We then can bring change by using gold,silver,copper for our means of exchange starving the Fed Reserve of our wealth… We can elect a local Sheriff that understands and practices Rightful Liberty if one is not already in place, we can make our community as self sufficient and Self sustainable as possible and provide the means for that defense of it…These are just some of the ideas that could be implemented if we had numbers of Liberty lovers consolidated in one spot…
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The sweat of my brow and what I produce are mine. I quit paying the leeches 25 years ago. I do not have much but what I do have is mine. Maybe that is why they leave me alone. Sometimes less is more! 0-0=0.
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Unfortunately “the sanction of the victims” is alive and evergrowing.
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Unfortunately, you’re right.
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Superb, excellent, even by your high standard. But in light of some of the responses I’ve seen, I have to – in the spirit of SLL’s masthead – ask: Does not my life is mine as a fundamental moral precept run very much against the grain of religious belief? As Nietzsche put it:
“The man of faith, the “believer” of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man – such a man cannot posit himself as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The “believer” does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-effacement, of self-estrangement. . . . ” [emphasis in original]
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Perceptive. “My life is mine” does run against the grain of current religous belief.
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It may do so in fact, but need not necessarily.
Job, amidst his trials and travails, never demanded sustenance of his comforters nor made claims on their resources. Even destitute, he remained his own man.
The Judeo-Christian deity compels no one to enter into the bargain of belief at flaming angelic swordpoint; it remains a freely contracted obligation, demands afterwards never exceeding the tenth part of production, and all further contributions entirely on the honor system.
The invitation to “Consider the lilies of the field…” assures any who enter into that agreement that being homeless, naked, and starving is no part of the plans, and the parable of the talents underlines that each man is responsible for his own work to bring success.
God, (assuming the existence of same in the first place), and not government, is the only one who can point to the earth, the sea, and the rains that fall on that island in your hypothetical, and presume to tell either party “You didn’t build that.”
And even then, one is responsible, based entirely upon the dictates of their own conscience, convictions, and faith, or lack thereof, to accept or reject the agreement, with the Pascalian wager that if he refuses, and there is a God, he loses all; if he refuses, and there is no god, he gains little; if he assents, and there is no god, he loses little, but if he assents, and there is a God, he gains everything.
What happens along the way is unknown. The cost of belief for a Bonhoeffer, a Solzhenytsin, or a Job may be much, yet the agreement is ever voluntarily entered into, not compelled by force, and they all and uncountable millions more yet regarded it as but slight sacrifice in the end, and held fast.
So there is nothing necessarily hostile to the philosophy of self possession in it, save the multitudinous warnings that when such is pursued selfishly and greedily as an end in itself, the cost in the end will outpace any temporal gains achieved, while noting impartially that the one debt every man owes and pays is a death.
(“Thou fool! Tonight thy soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?”)
In short, there’s nothing more hostile in that than there is in an accountant telling a man he’ll never be rich if he sets all his money and goods on fire, or another fellow warning him of the consequences of gravity as he blindly blunders too near a cliff’s edge.
That’s not hostility, it’s friendship.
How petty and perverse one would need to be to regard such positive kindliness, absent any compulsion but reason alone, as hostile.
Your essay thus stands in no way contrary to any orthodox tenets of the Judeo-Christian tradition, absent following them to reduction ad absurdum territory.
I would not presume to speak for any other religious traditions without diligent research.
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Ann Barnhardt is one of the few with the true “stones” to live in moral integrity, as a (material) pauper by choice, in defiance of a totally corrupt regime. And a “regime” is what it is. Imagine how quickly our “rulers” would take notice if more prducers –like Ann used to be– liquidated all our assets, had no (or only one small) bank account, no retirement, and thus no debt, paid no taxes because there are no hard assets, worked only for cash, etc etc. If we could all manage to agree on that one thing, the regime would take notice of our collective moral integrity very quickly, because the money would simply dry up.
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Wonderful to hear such powerful words and know that someone else loves freedom as much as I do.
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After finally reading this article Robert, I am, as usual, “blown away” by the inescapable clarity. In reading the “comments,” I am further jolted by some, who in the face of such clarity, seek to reconcile it with the opacity of their religious-inspired evasion of it.
Were I the ONLY survivor in your example, then all the values you cite would remain of equally inescapable clarity – particularly the “foundation for everything else.” The unyielding moral question in answer to the questions posed by an immovable metaphysics and the absolute of reason, “what should I do,” would manifest itself in such an obvious manner as to be unworthy of a second thought.
Yet with the addition of but one other person (or another 8 billion), opacity of moral thought has muddied the moral water by those inclined to do so. The moral question does not change except in but one key aspect, ALL moral values remain, except that they must now be further contextualized. The moral question DOES NOT BECOME “what should WE do,” it must remain in the context of a moral question. It becomes “what should I NOT do!”
Only by asking the proper MORAL question can one maintain the moral clarity your article so inspiringly describes!
Dave.
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Dave,
Thank you and you’re of course right, nothing changes from the standpoint of fundamental morality if there is only one survivor. I added the second survivor more to illustrate economic concepts. By the way, I am almost finished with my comments on your email and you should have them later today or tomorrow.
Bob
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The Black Death seriously ruptured feudalism and opened a gateway to greater equality and freedom by gifting the workers with a sellers market. Then we re-bred ourselves back into slavery. If we had used mind rather than instinct after the opportunity we had been given we could have made a different world. This is the price we all pay for male fun and women’s broody instinct.
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