During an interview with Megyn Kelly this week, Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) offered the “capitalism” defense to Obamacare. Just as with the “conservatism” defense, which holds that the individual mandate is a product of “conservative notions” that Obama accepted in the name of compromise, the “capitalism” defense is a frantic attempt by Democrats to disown Obamacare and disarm its critics. I don’t know whether he was tired, enjoyed himself a little too much at happy hour, or just stepped off of a tilt-a-whirl, but Pa-llone was looking more like Sta-llone after going 15 rounds with Ivan Drago in Rocky IV---swaying from side-to-side with his eyes barely open. It was as if he was the embodiment of political spin; his mouth was working so hard to spin for Obamacare that his body followed suit. Regardless, all that spinning clearly left Pallone disoriented, as the wobbly-wonk failed on both his facts and his logic.
Many people seem shocked that the Obama Administration seemingly put such little effort into the “rollout” of Obamacare, and its concrete manifestation, the website. They shouldn’t be. Obamacare, like all government entitlement expansions, was about power, not people, and its justification was the altruist morality. Altruism is an ethical value system that implicitly denies the existence of values, and focuses exclusively on who should benefit from a value system. So long as someone, with some need, but not yourself, is the professed beneficiary of your actions, your actions are moral. Altruist actions are thus moral exercises, not practical ones. It is only the motive of the subject, and the need of the object that count under an altruist (anti) value system (and the former is only defined in reference to the latter).
This is why the Left wears it as a badge of honor when more and more people are sucked into entitlement programs, and out of the workforce; as the number of people who are dependent on their assistance (which itself is confiscated from others) grows, they believe that their moral importance grows right along with it---a belief that is nothing more than a confession of their moral impotence. Altruism creates a moral vacuum, and it’s thus no surprise that whether or not Obamacare is a net negative in terms of the number of people gaining/losing insurance is of little concern to them. When judgment is replaced by motivation as the criteria by which actions are evaluated, success is necessarily replaced by justification as the criteria by which results are evaluated. It’s thus no surprise that they put such little effort into the actual nuts and bolts required to make this system work, and such great effort into selling it to the American people (rhetorically selling it, that is, as an abstraction). The altruist morality requires only good intentions, not good results---don't be surprised by the horrifying nature of the actual concrete results.
The interview seemed like a modern take on Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, with Megyn Kelly playing the role of Alice, and Frank Pallone as Humpty Dumpty. When Alice meets Humpty, she soon becomes frustrated with him, and objectives to his seemingly nonsensical use of certain words, to which Humpty (Pallone) replies: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean---nothing more nor less." Alice often found herself at a lost for words of her own, as Humpty made words "mean so many things," and ended the conversation by saying "of all the unsatisfactory people of I've ever met..." (it wasn't even worth her finishing the sentence). As it went for Alice, so it went for Megyn.
“Let the marketplace decide; let the marketplace decide.” It’s hard to ever know exactly what Pallone means, as he seems to design his own language on the fly (last week he mixed-up his metaphors and referred to a committee hearing on Obamacare as a “monkey court”---which apparently combines a kangaroo court with the scopes monkey trial), but, in any case, he’s wrong. Pallone referred to the Obamacare marketplace as a “capitalist, private market,” after earlier stating: “It’s capitalism, you can go out and buy whatever you want, but the insurance companies realize they can’t sell this lousy insurance policy anymore.” As Rand Paul correctly pointed out in an interview with Hannity this week: “Liberals have no idea how capitalism works.”
Understanding capitalism requires understanding the difference between economic power and political power. Political power is unique within a given sovereign region, as it involves legal coercion or the use of force, and the government is the only entity within that region that may use, or expropriate such power (it’s the only true monopoly); economic power only exists within the context of freedom, and is purely persuasive---all relationships and associations are thus voluntary, leaving men free to trade, contract, and associate in accordance with their own judgment and values. In a capitalist system, there is no such thing as a “consumer” as apart from a “producer:” That notion only exists within a welfare or socialist state. Accordingly, economic interactions are the product of trade, in which goods and/or services (including labor) are exchanged, and “value” is dictated in accordance with an incalculable number of value judgments by individuals who are free to make them, the sum of which make up the free market.
Pallone’s use of the notion that people are free to “buy whatever [they] want,” is thus a false concept---both the supply and the demand must be the product of volition. Having the government dictate that insurance plans may only be sold if they include x, y, and z, involves the same concept as having the government dictate that you may only speak if you say x, y, and z. The freedom of speech is not simply the freedom from being told exactly what to say, and thus freedom in an economic context is not simply the freedom from being told exactly what you may exchange, and exactly what you may exchange it for. Pallone’s false concept was apparently the subtext for Obama’s, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” mantra, and is reminiscent of Henry Ford’s statement that people could have the Model-T in any color they want, so long as its black.
Understanding Pallone’s sudden discovery that Obamacare is in fact capitalism, requires nothing more than understanding that, in the mind of a socialist, all of societies problems, real and perceived, are attributable to freedom, and freedom in an economic context is capitalism. Whatever the context, their argument can be broken down to: “It’s freedom’s fault.” And the corollary of that argument is: “Give me the power to control it---all of it.”
Pallone’s use of the notion that people are free to “buy whatever [they] want,” is thus a false concept---both the supply and the demand must be the product of volition. Having the government dictate that insurance plans may only be sold if they include x, y, and z, involves the same concept as having the government dictate that you may only speak if you say x, y, and z. The freedom of speech is not simply the freedom from being told exactly what to say, and thus freedom in an economic context is not simply the freedom from being told exactly what you may exchange, and exactly what you may exchange it for. Pallone’s false concept was apparently the subtext for Obama’s, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” mantra, and is reminiscent of Henry Ford’s statement that people could have the Model-T in any color they want, so long as its black.
Understanding Pallone’s sudden discovery that Obamacare is in fact capitalism, requires nothing more than understanding that, in the mind of a socialist, all of societies problems, real and perceived, are attributable to freedom, and freedom in an economic context is capitalism. Whatever the context, their argument can be broken down to: “It’s freedom’s fault.” And the corollary of that argument is: “Give me the power to control it---all of it.”
Many people seem shocked that the Obama Administration seemingly put such little effort into the “rollout” of Obamacare, and its concrete manifestation, the website. They shouldn’t be. Obamacare, like all government entitlement expansions, was about power, not people, and its justification was the altruist morality. Altruism is an ethical value system that implicitly denies the existence of values, and focuses exclusively on who should benefit from a value system. So long as someone, with some need, but not yourself, is the professed beneficiary of your actions, your actions are moral. Altruist actions are thus moral exercises, not practical ones. It is only the motive of the subject, and the need of the object that count under an altruist (anti) value system (and the former is only defined in reference to the latter).
This is why the Left wears it as a badge of honor when more and more people are sucked into entitlement programs, and out of the workforce; as the number of people who are dependent on their assistance (which itself is confiscated from others) grows, they believe that their moral importance grows right along with it---a belief that is nothing more than a confession of their moral impotence. Altruism creates a moral vacuum, and it’s thus no surprise that whether or not Obamacare is a net negative in terms of the number of people gaining/losing insurance is of little concern to them. When judgment is replaced by motivation as the criteria by which actions are evaluated, success is necessarily replaced by justification as the criteria by which results are evaluated. It’s thus no surprise that they put such little effort into the actual nuts and bolts required to make this system work, and such great effort into selling it to the American people (rhetorically selling it, that is, as an abstraction). The altruist morality requires only good intentions, not good results---don't be surprised by the horrifying nature of the actual concrete results.
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