Increasing Wealth Disparity & Socialism: Theft is NOT the Solution to Greed

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When the 59 richest men in America own more than the poorest 50% combined (~ 165 million people), we have a very serious problem that simply cannot be ignored. And with the growing wealth disparity between the ultra-rich and the common man in this country in the wake of the plandemic becoming far too evident and problematic to be ignored, there is a growing push for state-sponsored socialism as the solution to what is perceived as the problem behind this madness - capitalism. And I will be the first to point out the inherent corruption and need to eradicate the western socioeconomic governmental system currently in place, which is more accurately described as crony capitalism or a corporatocracy or oligarchy of sorts - a rule of the masses by an elite few banking families through control and influence of government organizations, politicians, mega-corporations, and the fiat currency supply. It is a materialistic and militaristic empire that favors the rich, tramples the poor, feeds off of the rampant consumerism of an overly materialistic culture, and is anything but a truly free market.

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But is the obviously corrupt financial-government system really at the root of this immense wealth disparity, or does it simply serve to allow and help to perpetuate such disparity? Because if the root of the problem is not crony capitalism or any form of capitalism at all for that matter, would a new financial-government system really solve the problem? If we truly had a completely totally free market, and there were greedy people among us capable of using their wits to build corporate empires, or if their were no corporations then simply empires of wealth, would not the same problem be able to occur? And at the same time, history has shown that state-sponsored socialism has rarely brought about the true equality and freedom that its adherents advertise. Just look at the many communist regimes that have existed throughout time for perfect examples of how even the perfect ideal will fail miserably when the system aimed at bringing about that ideal is administered by corrupt, greedy individuals.

Some socialist systems do function much better and more fairly than others, with Sweden as a good example of functioning democratic socialism in action, with many basic services available to the public for ‘free’, but of course such ‘equality’ is still only accomplished through taxation, which is theft. This is also not pure socialism either, with many aspects of capitalism still in play. And then one can simply take a look at the socialist Canadian healthcare system to see how easily such a socialist ideal fails, even in democratic conditions, with hundreds of Canadians forced to travel to the US for healthcare because the wait to receive care from their own ‘free’ healthcare system is far too long, dangerously long, a truly dismal failure.

Switzerland, on the other hand, is not socialist in nature and yet has a high standard of living with no severe poverty or homelessness to speak of, because the people will not tolerate such insanity commonly seen elsewhere. Not only this, Switzerland’s people are (or at least were before the plandemic), one of the freest people in Europe with an extremely small government, almost so irrelevant that the common man was unaware of who his ‘rulers’ were... The socialist ideal can, this example shows, be brought about without heavy-handed state-sponsored socialist policies by big government that most advocates of socialism in America are calling for.

It must also be noted that even the proponents of strictly democratic socialism must be proponents of democracy, which is nothing more than mob rule, wherein 51% of the population can take away the rights of the other 49%, even if they are doing so in the name of equality, justice and the common good; and they can only accomplish such a system through taxation, which is theft, in other words by stealing from all those who did not vote for and do not support such a socialist system. What it boils down to is that state-sponsored socialism, whether communistic or democratic in nature, relies upon rule by force to achieve so-called equality through theft, the very same principle behind the crony capitalistic US empire’s reign - rule by force, in this case to achieve greater wealth and power in the hands of the rich, ruling, banking class. What many socialist fail to comprehend is that if such redistribution of wealth to the poor can be accomplished by a majority vote, then so can a redistribution of their wealth to the rich (or to any number of programs they don’t support) also be accomplished by a swing in votes come election time. Elected politicians meanwhile are always capable of, and as a rule always do break their campaign promises, while even a politician who may actually institute a socialist system that temporarily favors the poor is capable of altering such a system to favor the rich once again at a moment’s notice, whether due to financial incentives offered by the rich or any other pressure, such as pressure by international bankers.

If there is to be any hope of rectifying the societal wrongs we can all see around us, what we have to do is find the root cause of the insane wealth disparity witnessed on our planet at this time. And it seems obvious to me that the root of the problem here is not any particular financial or government system, but rather greed. For there is no law currently in place prohibiting the ultra-rich from sharing and re-distributing their wealth among the poor, there are no prohibitions against the rich sponsoring programs to feed the hungry and house the homeless, and yet these people choose to hoard their wealth and fund programs that largely do not directly address the human suffering across the planet, and they continue to gather to themselves more riches and power while their fellow countrymen are plunged into deeper and deeper poverty. It sure seems like the problem is greed and a lack of love for neighbor to me, for if these men truly loved their neighbors as themselves, they could not sit on so much wealth while allowing so much easily preventable human suffering all around them without investing large chunks of that wealth into eradicating such suffering.

Take Bill Gates for example, who has dumped billions into vaccination programs across Africa that may or may not eventually diminish disease (but have demonstrably caused many deaths and injuries), while refusing to fund much cheaper projects to provide clean drinking water to these same impoverished populations, which is known to have one of the greatest positive impacts on health and to he a leading means of eradicating and diminishing disease throughout history. Meanwhile the very same government that would be responsible for redistributing the wealth under a socialist system in the US currently spends over half of its money to fund the war machine of its global military empire while much of the world is going hungry and homelessness in its own population is on the rise, so are we really to trust that this same government would suddenly begin to fairly redistribute additional wealth taken from the rich to the poor once socialist policies were implemented?

And that is all state-sponsored socialism is, a redistribution of wealth, wealth taken from the rich through taxation by the state and redistributed evenly to everyone else so that we can finally enjoy economic equality, fairness and ‘freedom’. The socialist ideal is wonderful, I agree with that, but I sure don’t fall for ‘the ends justify the means’ arguments, even if the end result of state-sponsored socialism were to indeed be a true economic equality, although there are many reasons to suspect it would not be, at least not in this country.

Those who support such a socialist system of government as a moral solution to the immorality evidenced by the wealth disparity must first deny that taxation is theft, they must support the use of force to initiate aggression against peaceful people, and then they must argue that the function of the taxation is not only to provide the most basic services to society, but also to legislate morality by creating an economic socialist utopia of supposed equality and social justice. The problem is that, no matter how many times they claim taxation is not theft, they can’t get around the simple fact that using force, the threat of force or coercion of any kind to take the property of another against their will is the very definition of theft, and that is exactly what taxation is - the taking of the people’s money (their property), by the state, against their will.

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If it was a truly voluntary system whereby only those who used the state services paid for them, there would be no moral issues, but taxation is by nature not voluntary, meaning even those who do not wish to utilize the services supposedly funded by those tax dollars must still pay up, or risk imprisonment, potentially even death if they dare resist the robbery.

Every evil ever committed by a government was done in the name of the common good and was given a more attractive name to hide its true immoral nature, but such crimes against humanity are still crimes against humanity, governments are not magically immune from morality despite claiming to represent the people. It is the insane idea that the state has some special privilege that grants them special rights to do to its citizenry what is otherwise illegal for any of the citizenry to do to each other that leads to all of the tyrannical dictatorships and genocides of history. Frederick Bastiat did a wonderful job illuminating the inherent immorality of socialism in his book, “The Law,” written when France was facing the imminent rise of a socialist regime.

If it is wrong for you and I to rob a rich man because we have less money then they do, then it is equally wrong for the government to do it on our behalf, and yet that is exactly what the advocates of socialism argue, that it is the state’s duty to rob the rich on their behalf in order to undo the wealth disparity said to be caused by capitalism, but quite evidently ultimately caused by greed and a lack of love for neighbor (selfishness).

After all, if the root of the problem was not greed, there would be no perceived need for the state to get involved by increasing taxes on the rich to redistribute it to the poor, as the selfless members of society with great wealth would have already taken measures to do so on their own, and no such wealth disparity would exist, let alone the incomprehensible level of wealth disparity we are witnessing today. And if the root of the problem isn’t the current economic system, but rather the greed and fear responsible for perpetuating both the corrupt system that institutionalized the rampant materialism driving the greed, and the wealth disparity itself, then the only real solution can be to address the actual problem - namely greed, as well as fear, selfishness, and the rampant materialistic consumerism that all play their part.

But first, let us take a closer look at the US income tax system, for at this very time there are many socialists who are cheering on Joe Biden’s plan for tax increases on the wealthy as a big blow to the rich and a win for the poor, as if this wealth would actually get redistributed to the millions of poor and middle class Americans. Of course this likely wouldn’t even be the big blow to the rich Biden makes it out to be, because the centerpiece of the new tax plan is repeal of the Trump tax cuts which cut taxes for the poorest 80% of Americans, also significantly raising the minimum annual income required to file income tax, increasing the number of poor not demanded to pay any income tax at all. This was and is nonetheless somehow portrayed as ‘tax cuts for the wealthy’ by many on the left, so its repeal is seen as raising taxes on the rich, even if it wouldn’t actually accomplish this supposed goal.

As summarized by the National Review:

President Biden’s promise to raise taxes only on the richest Americans cannot possibly be upheld if he is successful with the centerpiece of his tax plan. That, of course, is to repeal the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed during the Trump administration. The primary effect of the TCJA was to reduce taxes for Americans in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution. Put another way, the top 20 percent of earners were the only ones who did not get a tax cut under the TCJA. Americans earning between about $40,000 and $80,000 per year benefited most from the TCJA, and millions of others at the lowest income levels were taken off the tax rolls altogether.

But even if Biden does somehow manage to raise taxes only on the rich and not anyone else, which could only be accomplished if the centerpiece of his tax plan was removed from the plan, there is still no reason to trust that such wealth would be fairly redistributed to the poor.

One need only look at the most recent multi-trillion dollar so-called stimulus packages to see how government ‘aid’ to the population works, with the average American only getting a fraction of the money being spent by their own taxpayer dollars, while the majority of this funding goes to corporations and government programs that are supporting the Covid1984 “Great Reset” agenda, which end goal is admittedly for absolutely everyone but the ultra rich elite to, quite literally, “own nothing, and be happy.” It is the same Biden vigorously supporting this agenda whose plans to ostensibly ‘help the working class’ are being cheered on by the socialist left, and also by the establishment.

“I want to change the paradigm,” Biden recently said during a news conference addressing this issue. “We start to reward work, not just wealth.”

And how best to truly “reward work” than to stop punishing workers for earning money by taking 25-40% of their income through unconstitutional direct taxes, that, quite literally, only legally apply to corporations and government workers - just another facet of the income tax scam not understood by the average government-indoctrinated American tax slave. But repeal of the income tax, or even a shift to proper application of it as originally written as a corporate tax, which incidentally would actually help the poor while taxing corporate America, is not on Biden’s agenda, because he serves the same corporate agenda that wishes to enslave all humanity, whereby the goal is for you and me to “own nothing, and be happy,” while Klaus Schwabb, Bill Gates, and their merry band of billionaire technocrats and international bankers own the entire earth and absolutely everything on it, including you. But Biden wants to help the poor and working class Americans by punishing the rich, right, like he promised on the campaign trail? Please, anyone who actually believes that is more deluded than their counterparts across the political aisle who ridiculously believed that Trump was actually going to ‘take down the deep state’.

Secondly, we must realize that not one dime of the income tax goes to any of the services the American taxpayers expect from their government, but rather to pay back interest on the federal debt, as a congressional commission found. The Grace Commission, as it was named, found that: "With two thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt and by federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services that taxpayers expect from their government.”

100% of income taxes that aren’t wasted go straight into the pockets of the Federal Reserve bankers, to pay back the interest on a debt that was issued primarily to fund the war machine, with over half of all government money spent on the US imperial war machine. If none of the income tax is returned to the taxpayers in any way, shape or form whatsoever, not even by providing basic services expected by the taxpayers, then what absurdity to cheer the raising of this tax on anyone, even the rich, as a win for the average American who, by the way, still has 25-40% of his income stolen from him to pay the bankers for a debt that isn’t even his own! If at least the proposed tax hike on the rich was to be accompanied by a tax cut on lower income tax brackets, then there would at least appear to be some semblance of fairness beneath the perpetuation of this institutionalized robbery of all Americans by private, international banker mobsters who have, coincidentally, also been the primary financiers and profiteers of every war since the dawning of the 20th Century. But as it is, President Biden’s proposed policy will, as it stands, if it even raises taxes on the rich at all, also raise taxes on the poor and middle class Americans at the same time, simply extending this robbery equally to all!

As tempting as it may be to cheer at tax hikes for the rich, for all those who feel victimized by them or by an obviously corrupt system that clearly favors the rich while warring against the poor, theft is still theft no matter who is stealing from who, whether it is the rich robbing the poor or the poor robbing the rich, or the state robbing everyone and then redistributing the proceeds to the ultra-rich, which is pretty much the reality of the current situation. But this isn’t true socialism, not even close, the anti-socialists and all those who denounce theft-by-government as inherently wrong are informed. And that may be true, although we do have a number of socialist programs that have failed to help bring about the socialist ideal of equality - social security and free public schooling are two examples - but could we really trust such a corrupt government to fairly redistribute wealth under a truly socialist system if one were to be instituted, when right now its social security program is running dry of funds despite the ongoing collection of social security taxes and plenty of excess funds on hand being used to fund Israel and the war machine?

What would cause us to believe that a bunch of greedy, power-hungry, lying, war-mongering thieves would actually fairly redistribute taxpayer funds to the average working class American, when they have consistently shown us that they would rather spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars each and every year to drop bombs on innocent children who live thousands of miles away in countries that have never attacked or threatened to attack us and over $10 million a day to fund the biggest war machine in the Middle East (Israel), all while its own social security program (actively funded by your taxpayer money) is running dry? They literally spend far more money every single year on war alone than it would cost to eradicate global hunger entirely and end homelessness here in America, with an ever increasing military budget, so any additional funds will surely continue to be disproportionately spent on war and all other manner of uncharitable causes, not on any real help for struggling Americans.

But even if the government were to diligently and fairly redistribute wealth in such a manner that everyone had fairly equal amounts of wealth, such ‘equality’ would still have been accomplished by theft, by treating people unequally (by taking a larger percentage of taxes from some to give to those who had less), and it still wouldn’t have solved the underlying problem that caused the wealth disparity in the first place. Because no amount of theft eradicates greed, and in fact those who wish to steal from others who have more than they do are themselves often greedy to some degree, wanting to take from another that which is not their own, instead of finding a way to provide what they seek by their own efforts and ingenuity, or instead of seeking to eradicate the root of the problem by raising awareness about the real-world problems caused by a materialistic, consumerist, greed-based culture.

My point to the socialists which is almost always ignored is that they have no right to demand that the wealth of the rich be forcibly redistributed to the poor to help equalize the situation if they themselves are not willing to first voluntarily share their wealth with those who are poorer than themselves. Since the true socialist ideal is equality for all, why not start by taking direct action to bring about that equality, by sharing your own excess with those less fortunate around you? How can you live in a nice home and walk by a homeless beggar and refuse to give him a few dollars you absolutely do not need for your own survival, while at the very same time demanding that those richer than you be forced against their will to give everyone else a massive chunk of their excess wealth? I suspect the reason is because most of those advocating for socialism are in fact projecting their own greed and selfishness onto the rich in order to be able to lay blame to those outside of themselves, when in fact they themselves are unwilling to take action to be the very change they claim they want to see in the world. And if they aren’t willing to voluntarily do at a personal level what they are demanding the state forcibly does at a societal level, then they clearly do not truly seek the change they claim to desire, and are evidently not looking for real solutions but rather an easy way out, in this case a way to steal from others to enrich themselves rather than giving to others to help the needy.

This is the problem with victim mentality, it projects both ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ onto others, when we are always responsible for our own life. And if we are not willing to share our excess with those who are materially less fortunate than we are, but at the same time demand a government system do the same to those who are better off than us on our behalf, then we are not truly advocates of the socialist ideal at all and are just hypocrites looking for a political solution to a problem of the human heart.

Sharing is the obvious solution to greed, but since most people are themselves not willing to share with the less fortunate, they rather blame a system for not doing what they themselves are not willing to do, and then demand that government do for them what they are unwilling to themselves do for others. I was told in a comment debate, regarding this very issue, that: “Sharing is not the solution, a system that eradicates the need for sharing is the solution.” But if the need for sharing must first be eradicated to solve the problem by this means, then sharing is indeed a solution, and a system that would eradicate the need to share is a system attempting to replace selfless love of neighbor with forcible redistribution of wealth to neighbor via theft.

The problem to immorality (greed) is obviously not more immorality (theft), and to argue otherwise is to miss the heart of the problem for an easy external ‘solution’ that does nothing to change the inner condition of humanity that gave rise to the corrupt system being replaced in the first place. Any attempt to do this, to change the system for the better without first changing the human condition responsible for perpetuating a corrupt system and unjust paradigm, will only result in an equally corrupt system and new unjust paradigm. A problem cannot be solved from the same state of consciousness by which it was caused, and yet that is exactly what the advocates of state-sponsored socialism are attempting to do.

The problem arose in the human heart, and so the problem must also be resolved in the human heart before any new political system will be able to bring about any real, lasting change for the better. The irony is that, once the problem has been solved at the heart level and greed has been cast out of our society, there will no longer be any need to replace the current system with a new one, as the majority of the people will at that point already be voluntarily sharing with anyone in need, and/or proactively and voluntarily creating programs to do so on their behalf, until the point is reached where everyone is being taken care of by each other... And without taxation, we’d all have a little bit more money to share, too, by the way!

I am all for voluntary socialism, and being that such shared community living is a real, practical solution to a very real and widespread problem in society today, it is truly surprising that more self-avowed socialists do not pack up their bags and join such an operative functioning commune of which there are many around the world, or work to create their own, and instead use their time and energy to complain about the problem of capitalism and the greedy rich ones among us, while advocating for a political solution to a moral problem.

Since voluntary socialism, for lack of a better word, does not involve theft (taxation), and a number of such communities based on the equality and freedom of all members are truly successful at providing more freedom and equality to its members than any form of government is, and does so without force or coercion as members are free to leave as quickly as they joined, it is truly mind boggling that more socialists don’t support such practical means of achieving their own ideals, and get involved with advocating for this form of socialism that would not involve theft or coercion in any form.

Such communities have long existed, often as spiritual communities, with the early Jesus followers, the Jewish Essenes, and the Pythagoreans as just a few examples. In these examples, all members gave up all of their wealth and possessions for the common good, all were seen and treated as equals, and all had their needs met and were happy - all without taxation, force, coercion or political system of any kind. Such is the beauty and power of community, of voluntary association based upon love and respect for neighbor, of life rooted in spirituality without the interference of the state. This and only this can ever truly accomplish the socialist ideal where all power, and property, is truly in the hands of the people.

If replacing state rule by force with a society based upon voluntary association cannot be a solution to the problem, that would only be so because of the condition of the human heart, not the failure of voluntary cooperation as a morally superior alternative to rule by force. If we as a society aren’t yet ready to voluntarily share with the needy among us and actively work with one another towards solutions among ourselves within our own communities, then it is we as a society who is not yet ready for equality because we have not yet replaced the fear and greed in our hearts with love and compassion for all. And that is no failure of any government or economic system, that is a failure of morality that no amount of immorality will ever solve, no matter what idealism is driving such immorality, in this case theft to achieve equality.

Rule by force is a disease, fear is the virus that has infected us, and greed is a sickness of the human heart that will never be healed by this disease. Love is the solution, and love does not demand rule by force, rather love necessitates the nonaggression principle be universally applied to all, without exceptions given to anyone, including the state.

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The problem of greed cannot and will not ever be solved by aggression or force initiated against peaceful people, one evil such as theft will never be able to solve another evil such as greed, and anyone who claims greed is not at the root of the problem of the inequality evidenced in the current massive global wealth disparity is simply blind and deluded.

Taking a greedy man’s money doesn’t make him any less greedy, any more than executing a murderer brings his victims back to life. Punishing crime does not solve the problem which caused the crime to be committed in the first place, treating symptoms never solves the problem, and so greed will never be eradicated by theft, only through love.

As with most political issues, the debate between capitalism and socialism only serves to distract from the real problem, and until humanity begins to shift its focus from politics and money to the condition of the human heart and how we can all help one another, we are destined to continue down the same path we have trodden for centuries, in slightly differing forms and under various guises but still the same destructive path that will continue to lead us to the same destination it always has - more slavery, suffering, crime, poverty, and inequality. History is doomed to continue repeating until humanity decides to change itself. It’s time for humanity to see past the disguise, see through the illusion, and realize the answer never has and never will be any particular political or economic system, but rather lies within us, with our ability to choose love and freedom over fear, sharing and kindness over greed, and compassionate community over perpetual division amongst ourselves. Until we begin to do that, no political or economic system, no matter how attractive it may appear, will ever be able to save us.

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