Thursday - October 29, 2009
Driving Towards a New Feudalism
Feudalism is, "A political and economic system of Europe from the 9th to about the 15th century, based on the holding of all land in fief or fee and the resulting relation of lord to vassal and characterized by homage, legal and military service of tenants, and forfeiture," according to Answers.com.
What part of this definition isn't becoming more of a reality today?
With the healthcare reforms being shoved down our throats now, we will have completed the transition to a modern feudalism.
Medical insurance must be had by every person according to just about any politician, they only quibble on who pays for it. But most of the methods proposed force your employer to pay for it. Anyone getting a non-employer provided insurance will pay exorbitant taxes. The days of being self-employed are ending, except for a few rich people.
Now everyone will be employed by someone else.
Isn't it strange that the party that traditionally is against "big business" is destroying the ability of individuals to work for themselves? Tax laws, regulations, and social security laws have long made it hard to do, now it will be virtually impossible.
For most of human history, if a person needed to earn money, he or she could just do work for people and get paid for it. My grandmother cleaned houses her entire life. She sought clients and kept them happy by keeping their homes clean. It was a hard life but she raised a very happy family as a widow for decades. I know people who mow grass for a living and start their own companies doing that. How many jobs out there are still available without licenses? You can't cut hair without a license. You can't clean houses. You can't even babysit -- not even for your next door neighbor in Michigan.
Homes are owned by people, but almost always with a mortgage. This means that the idea that an individual owns his home is largely a fiction. Banks own most homes. Who owns the banks? The government? Feudalism is when the government owns the land.
Student loans, mortgages, and professional licenses (in a society where even babysitting your next door neighbor's kids requires a license in many jurisdictions) are all available to the government to exact fealty and homage to the political class.
So few Americans today work for themselves that it's almost quaint to suggest that people should be free to choose their own medical insurance. Almost everyone gets their insurance from their feudal lord, the corporation that is allowed to exist and operate only through the good blessings of the politicians.
We no longer really understand what freedom is in this country. It's a dead idea. We think freedom means being able to listen to rock and roll music. We think freedom means being able to choose which of 700 government controlled television channels we want to watch. We think freedom means being able to get free medical care. We have no idea what freedom is.
Whether the economy recovers soon or not is of little direct concern to me. That is such a petty issue compared to the horror of seeing the increasingly government controlled life that my daughter will live through. If I can't pay for private schools, then she will be allowed only speech approved by government schools, she will be subject to searches without warrants in those schools, and her life will be spent in fealty to the government through the tentacles of student loans, mortgages, and medical insurance.
We used to have an intellectual class that understood that communism was bad, not simply because Joe Stalin, Mao, Castro, and the others were murderers, but because people have a right to be free. Even the most benevolent tyranny is evil. A cage, even a gilded cage, is anathema to the spirit of man.
We are driving down the road to serfdom.
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