Saw this on Facebook. Love it! Anyone know who the author/artist is?
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This comment sparked a long argument over at Roderick Long’s blog, but let’s see how this goes here at Pileus…
“A picture like this could of course be made for libertarians too – showing libertarians with tax-funded educations walking on tax-funded streets, contacting each other via government postal monopoly, paying for their lunches with federally issued currency, etc.
Libertarians understand why that would be a silly argument against anti-government protestors. They really should understand why the parallel argument against anti-corporate protestors is equally silly.”
(http://aaeblog.com/2011/10/07/double-standard/)
Who uses the post office anymore?
But my first reaction to your reply was that libertarians don’t really have much of an alternative to using the post office for petty first class mail and tax-funded streets and federally-issued currency since these are government monopolies (for the most part since there are private roads in some places) and so the state crowds out or makes illegal real alternatives. On the other hand, these protestors could pretty easily avoid using corporate products without impinging on basic needs even in a modern economy (unlike in the cases Rod points to such as driving to work or using money!)
When I did click on the link, I saw that someone named Cal had basically said something similar (though I’ll admit I didn’t have time to read that whole debate) so I figured I’d quote it here: “As Plauché correctly indicated, Rod, the two are not comparable given anti-state protestors necessarily did not voluntarily purchase any of the state goods or services. Conversely, absolutely everything in the WallSt photo (other than the city road sign) was voluntarily purchased by those individuals who had many immediate alternatives to those purchases, almost always including versions of the same item not made by big evil nasty corporationy corporations . . .”
It would be a dangerous move to try to nail the protestor’s expression to one simplified cause. Obviously this is about more than just “corporations”, and it’s disturbing to see the media constantly try to transform this into something dumb enough for their viewers to fit into the bipolar narratives of US politics. It’s equally disturbing to see unions and Democrat politicians trying to channel these frustrations into a consolidation of their power. And the Republicans, who only yesterday sympathized with the equally varied and chaotic agenda of the Tea Partiers, are now ridiculing and demonizing the Wall Street Protests in the way that only a complete fucking idiot would buy into.
This is a mass movement and has many different angles and participants. There is a general frustration with the way the United States has been operating, and the only outlet is mass rage. Your vote is meaningless. You cannot get out of debt. You cannot even invest in anything and expect anyone to play fairly anymore. There is no job market. If some of the older participants in this blog want to sneer they can. The younger generation cannot afford to, and this has compelled action.
Libertarians especially should look at this time as an opportunity to educate people and to empathize with the frustration of these protestors. The unifying cause of these guys is that they hate the futility of the situation they are in, and a lot of it has to deal with their own ignorance of economic realities. The last thing a libertarian should do is have a cheap laugh and poke fun — this attitude will only encourage those who empathize and offer the deluded alternative of socialism and regression. Economic hopelessness led to extremism mid-twentieth century Europe. You can already see the trend taking effect in federal politics here.
And anyone who thinks that U.S. corporations are innocent little lambs needs a fucking wake-up call. They’ve been ensuring via lobby dollars that markets remain relatively uncompetitive for a long time now. Imagine the potential for innovation where government favouritism is non-existent. You could reverse the above image into an argument for the opposite cause.
If the authors of this blog had any authentic commitment to the message they’ve been preaching, they would be in NY today giving lectures on solutions rather than giggling over a primitive piece of inflammatory propaganda.
[...] Various commenters have either defended the principle behind the picture, or defended Long’s accusation of unfair practice. The main argument from the former group went along lines such as that taken by Grover Cleveland at Pileus: [...]
My name is Chris. I’m responsible for the Photoshop image above. I honestly can’t believe how it took off … I got the idea and spent about an hour tinkering with it several nights ago. I put it on Mark Levin’s Facebook page because he’s been such a big influence of mine. Well, a couple other FB pages picked it up from there, and before I knew it, it had been shared over 10,000 times.
To have my little fun piece go viral and wind up on national TV in the scope of 6 days truly shows the wonder of the digital age. Elisabeth Hasselbeck actually read the entire thing on “The View” this morning. Not how I expected to get my 15 minutes of fame, but I guess we don’t get to choose these things, do we?
In any case, I can only take so much credit. I didn’t take the original picture, and I’m not sure who did.
About the comment that “a picture like this could of course be made for libertarians too – showing libertarians with tax-funded educations walking on tax-funded streets …” this kind of comment is what Thomas Sowell refers to as “Stage One thinking.” Where do those tax dollars come from? They come from income taxes, and those incomes are paid to individuals by businesses and corporations. Without corporations and without a private sector, there would literally be no tax revenue to speak of. Restricting the private sector from earning profits while simultaneously pushing for record expansion of government is a sure-fire way to depression. How this is lost on so many Americans, I’ll never understand … but I blame it on a severe lack of critical thinking in our country.
Thanks for the nice compliment.