What is the moderate left? The moderate left is where many people gravitate to when the pendulum isn't swinging back to the right. The moderate left is where most people define themselves even when the pendulum is swinging to the right. It is the section that embodies humanity's desire to be caring and wholesome with the acceptance that there needs to be some spot where the rubber meets the road. It is a safe place that keeps the majority feeling like they are helpful kind members of society but also reasonable and rational. They believe in personal accountability, but support measures that subsidize those without accountability because of a deeply held belief that a helping hand will carry people out of poverty.
The premise is a straight A to B. I help you get to B, so you get to B and we all want as many people possible to get to B. I am already at B, so I feel great about helping you get to B. However, anyone who has sat on a beach and fed a seagull knows that feeding the seagull doesn't simply result in one happily fed seagull. Not only is the original seagull changed into a ravenous glutton for more, but other seagulls whom otherwise would have carried on finding resourceful ways to feed themselves now leach onto the person feeding the first seagull. It is simple economics, it is simple incentives. From the seagull's perspective: Why struggle when there is a literal handout of bread from this human over here. Why does this human only give so little bread, when I am clearly more hungry than this human? This human is fat and has too much food. It is immoral to allow me to exist as a hungry seagull when this human has so much. We need to force this human to feed me. Look how many hungry seagulls there are and yet this human is still happy and fat. This is proof of the selfishness of humans. I am just a poor measly seagull, I have always had to forage and you can't expect more from me, this is what I have been taught to be. Therefore, you must keep feeding me since you have created me. Blah blah blah, the victimhood of the seagull might be harder to feel due to their brutish gluttony, but is it really that different between seagulls and other forms of welfares. This doesn't mean that humanity is inherently lazy or greedy. It just simply means humanity responds to incentives just like any creature.
Problems with society are rarely not complex with multiple data points contributing to the problem. For example, in Freakonomics, it shows clearly that abortions led to less crime. This is because crime is commonly a symptom of poverty and women more likely to have an abortion are in lower income situations. However, this can be rolled back further to determine why poverty began in the first place. If we can help to curb the poverty, then the benefits from abortion would decline as well since children would be raised more effectively. The biggest turning point was also a moment looked upon as a moment of great empathy, the civil rights movement. Specifically the funds that were provided to single mothers to help raise the kids. On the surface, just like feeding the first hungry seagull, who would not want to help a single mother. In isolation, there would likely be a strong net benefit for the child and mother. However, when we realize these systems are complex, we realize that we have created an incentive for single family homes because if a man is involved, that government check will not be coming. Many studies show the massive benefits from being raised with a mother and a father, and now we are incentivizing fatherless households. Roll this program forward a few decades and we have created the inner city culture and poverty that persists today.
This is only one example. You can look at rent control. In isolation, fair rent for someone who is struggling sounds great. In practice, a higher cost of living city with rent control will disincentivize money from rehabilitating damaged units and from building new units causing the supply of houses to stagnate or even decrease while the houses outside of the rent control skyrocket. And because of rent control, you now have individuals living alone in a 3 room apartment because they can afford it. Smaller supply and less efficient use of it creates more homelessness. So in an effort to reduce homelessness with rent control, you created a supply shortage that in effect had a much larger increase in homelessness. Of course, you could instill more restrictions, but as we learned the unintended consequences don't go away, they just exaggerate as the can gets kicked down the curb.
Fast forward to today. What is the Folly of the Moderate Left? The moderate left has been taught to be blind to these alternative effects. We have been taught that ideas like full communism or full anarchy or full libertarianism are idealistic and unattainable. By contrast a socialistic/capitalistic hybrid is ideal and should be aimed for. Unfortunately, this hybrid is just as unattainable as the ideals of a pure communist. Just as communism adds layer upon layer of red tape, which adds layer upon layer of power dynamics, which adds opportunity upon opportunity for corruption, so does any government intervention. Where there is an opportunity for power, that void will be filled often by the worst of humanity. These voids and power dynamics are created intentionally to further fill them and expand their roles much like a slime mold growing on a substrate. The folly is that the moderate left believes we should have many of these social programs and that they can be done implemented in a good way. If they were implemented perfectly, you would still have the problem of the seagull, but in practice the moderate's left blindness to trust ignores the corruptions that comes along with it. The corruption that tried to start the Cuban missile crisis, the corruption that new about Pearl Harbor and let it happen, so we could enter WWII against the will of the people. The corruption that blew up Nord Stream 2, The Corruption that gaslit the world for 3 years about Covid to expand control. The corruption that says you will own nothing and you will be happy. The corruption trying to create control in every possible way because we nothing more than slaves. This is what the moderate left misses. Everything the government is does is parallel with everything a bad actor does is parallel with moving society towards a more polished version of modern slavery. The welfare creates the dependence and the inequality. The inequality creates, the hate. The hate is used to create more welfare. The welfare comes with more controls. Once the majority hates the other, then more controls can be implemented, until you have the socialist "utopia" the moderate left always wanted. But in reality all we have is serfdom. We need to understand the inherent evil that is government. Every expansion is a foot in the door, a two steps forward and one step back. The pendulum never swings back quite as hard is it swung forward.
The folly of the moderate left is believing that this socialist hybrid is ideal and can work. It can never work in the long term. Even something as simple and harmless as the fire department is a foot in the door to more control and more need for more government. It is hard to see the wave coming when you look at the horizon. All government is like a virus and this is why our constitution was uniquely created to control government and not to control the people. I feel we are doomed to forever creep towards this mistake until we can instill in each and every one of us an understanding of unintended consequences and the mechanisms of power. There is evil moving this planet and this country forward to their design as their has always been evil moving things forward. We have tools to our advantage with the internet and AI. It is only a hope that through these tools, the truth can finally be released and a more prosperous future might be felt in a golden age of the world. Let's fight for that golden age and put an end to the archaic corruption that has infested our world since the dawning of man.
Sorry, I did not proofread this nor any of my blog posts, maybe one day I shall, but for now I have to spend time designing coffee bags to keep this ship moving forward.
