David McElroy

Why is it that most of us can come to perfectly logical conclusions about philosophy or politics — with airtight logic that nobody could possibly disagree about — but other equally intelligent people can come to radically different conclusions about the same things?

This happens to me all the time, and I’m sure it happens to you. If it happens about which car to buy or which computer is best or which smartphone to choose, it’s not that big a deal, because we can each make our own choices and let everybody else do the same — even if we argue about it along the way. (The correct choices, by the way, are Acura, Macintosh and iPhone. Just in case you were wondering.)

When we disagree about things in the market, we might sometimes assume that people who make different choices from us are wrong, but it doesn’t generally affect our own choices. As long as enough others share our choices to keep a company viable, we can all have what we want. (My condolences, though, go to those who preferred the Palm WebPad or the Amiga computer or even the Buick, because they’re all dead due to lack of market demand.)

Even with philosophical and theological issues, there’s no reason we can’t all stick to our ideas and assume that others are just blind to the obvious rightness of what we believe. But all that changes in one key area today — in our choices for how the society around us should be governed. When it comes to our “one size fits all” rules for society, if a majority accept socialist ideas, I’m stuck being forced to live a socialist life. If a majority want to strip our right to be free from warrantless searches, we’re stuck with that, too.

Does it really have to be this way?

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People sometimes don’t realize the points they’re really making — and this Occupy Wall Street protester is definitely one of those. She says she inherited some money — she doesn’t say how much — and she believed that she should have been taxed. So she says she gave away 80 percent of the money and kept 20 percent for herself. Did you notice what she did? She proved that it’s possible to do through voluntary action what she’s calling for government to do.

You see, her issue isn’t really that she believed she should have been taxed. After all, she proved that she could (and did, assuming she’s telling the truth) give away money without government agents holding a gun to her. No, she wants other people to be forced to make the same choice she made. The people who claim they want to be taxed more are liars. They can give away every penny of their money anytime they want. Their real desire is to control other people — to take away the choices that they themselves had. It’s vile. It’s dishonest. It’s immoral.

The video comes from Reason TV.

We’ve seen beyond a shadow of doubt that the Occupy Wall Street protesters don’t understand economics and don’t understand the source of our financial problems. Until now, though, I could say, “But at least they all understand bailing out the banks was a bad idea.” Unfortunately, even that was too charitable.

The first professional survey data about the protesters is out, and the information is pretty interesting. The thing that really jumped out at me, though, was the news that half of the protesters believe the big bank bailouts were necessary.

So let’s try to wrap our heads around this. They are angry that the banks got our money, so they’re protesting there. But a full half of the protesters believe it was necessary for the government to give billions and billions of dollars to the banks. How do their heads not explode from holding this contradiction inside?

Do these people not understand that businesses which take unwise chances and lose deserve to go out of business? Do they not understand that what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction” is necessary for the market to work?

The survey from which this information comes was done by long-time Democratic Party pollster Douglas Schoen. Anyone who’s under the illusion that these are just frustrated mainstream types hurting from the bad economy needs to listen to what Schoen writes about them:

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