THE CURSE OF CENTRALIZATION

Back when I was young and naive, I believed the Marxist notion that capitalism was evil and that the government was fair. It seemed to make sense that some profit-oriented rich person would only care about making money while oppressing the workers. I was taught by three socialist teachers in high school that Keynesian economics was a much fairer system as it would supply people's needs and tax the greedy.

It's obvious to me now that those men misled me with their enticing philosophy. Looking dispassionately at the results of socialism and free market capitalism, I plainly see that the former stultifies economic growth while the latter amplifies it. Furthermore, top-down government control is inefficient. Bureaucrats thousands of miles away have no understanding or empathy for local situations.

One recent example of governmental mismanagement was the amalgamation of Alberta's nine regional health boards into one "superboard." This resulted in millions of dollars wasted and massive confusion. Furthermore, bureaucrats in Edmonton thought they could plan for local conditions better than the people who lived hundreds of miles away from the capital.

A dramatic example of this was the meal-planning SNAFU in hospice facilities across the province. Before the boards were collectivized, local people cooked appetizing and nutritious meals for their residents. The word came down from on high that meals would be pre-packaged and sent out to the various facilities. These were bland and unappetizing. Additionally, senior-unfriendly foods like tacos were included in the packages. You can imagine how difficult eating one would be if your hands were arthritic.

Thanks to public pressure stirred up by the Wildrose Party, local cooks are again providing delicious meals to their charges. The Wildrose Party is also pressuring the government to give better care to seniors, including common sense ideas like home care and adaptive aids.

Local charities are likewise better equipped to care for their needy neighbours. A bureaucrat in an air-conditioned office can't relate to an elderly pensioner living in an over-heated apartment in summer. Likewise, distant government employees aren't face to face with those people who need help as local charity workers are. These entities are also dependent on the good will of their donors, causing them to be cautious about mismanagement of funds. Governments, on the other hand, mismanage money all the time and people have grown used to that sort of criminality.

In my own case, I've been helped by local charities and friends while having been harassed in 2003 by my pension case worker. I wrote about how it happened in How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.

WHY WE NEED RICH PEOPLE

Wouldn't it be nice if the rich weren't so rich and the poor weren't so poor? In actuality, things would be worse if there were no rich people. Here's why we're better off with wealthy people.

First of all, rich folks invest their money. Unlike a dragon lying on a mountain of gold and jewels, wealthy business people create jobs through their industries. Money is useless unless it passes from one person to another. Business owners hire people to make products and perform services. Those workers then buy the products and services from others.

Wealth is greatly multiplied through capitalism, whereas hoarding wealth retards the growth of a country's economy. Socialist schemes also diminish a country's growth in that civil servants don't produce products and they often give poor service. When governments try to run businesses, the results are woefully pathetic. Furthermore, crown corporations such as Air Canada and Canada Post run deficits because they lack the competition present in situations where monopolies are non-existent.

Wealthy citizens buy luxury products and hire people to work for them. If everybody was equally poor, there would be no incentive to build homes and high-end cars. Nobody would be building and buying yachts and private jets either.

Neither would there be any incentive to achieve great things. When people are denied the opportunity to fulfil their dreams and reap the rewards of their work, they end up like workers in the former Soviet Union. Farmers who would work until the crop was gathered in would leave at quitting time. Craftspeople wouldn't work as hard because they have no reason to. Only when people have vested interest in their labour do they put their full energy into what they do.

Furthermore, entrepreneurs are much more likely to create innovative products than would be the case with government workers. The hope of profiting from their inventions drives talented individuals to accomplish feats of ingenuity, benefiting not only themselves but all of society.

Socialism, on the other hand, robs citizens of incentive. If they get the same pay for just doing their job as for coming up with a brilliant solution to a problem, folks are more likely not to bother doing more than they have to. This decreases tax revenues, giving governments incentive to raise taxes on fewer and fewer productive people. In the end, the economy craters.

Selling my books has taught me much about economics. By allowing failures, marketing has taught me about what sells and what doesn't. My first two paperbacks are available through the Bruce Atchison's books link. How I Was Razed is distributed by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.

THE WEALTH OF NATIONS REMAINS RELEVANT

Telephone banking, debit cards, PayPal: these forms of monetary transactions have been around for only a decade or so. Yet the underlying time-honoured principles of economics continue to work in the same way. Somebody pays with part of the reward for their labour for a product or service provided by someone else. That person is in turn paid for their work.

A book called The Wealth of Nations was written by a man named Adam Smith in 1773. It described the way commerce worked and how the balance of wealth benefited a nation's people. Smith also demonstrated through his examples how capitalism is the most efficient system for raising the masses out of poverty.

Beginning from primitive people bartering what they had in excess for what they lacked, Smith showed how humanity became progressively specialized. Folks used to have to make everything they owned, including tools. Eventually, those who were better at one craft focused exclusively on that and traded their wares for the goods of other specialized craftspeople. Today, folks have become so specialized that they would be hard pressed to harvest a crop without machinery or build themselves a house, let alone making every implement they needed by hand.

I see this fact plainly in my own life. I write fairly well and I'm becoming skilled in storytelling. But don't ask me to repair a car, fly a plane, or remove a brain tumor. I can bang nails into boards but I'm no carpenter. Likewise, the best I can do in regard to being an electrician is attaching ready-made plugs to electrical cords.

Additionally, Smith noted the power of self interest. People won't work for no reward but they'll give their best when the incentive to do so is held out to them. Whether it's volunteers at a charity or a rock star on stage, the passion of their activities drives them to continue on in spite of difficulties. Negative incentive also keeps employees labouring, though they might feel like they're only "working for the man." Even so, positive incentives such as fulfillment, fame, and royalty payments are more likely to produce good results than negative pressure.

Two-hundred-and-forty years have passed since the publication of The Wealth of Nations, yet Smith's observations continue to ring true. Socialism promises great things but it operates through confiscating wealth from its producers and giving to those who crave it. In fact higher taxation and regulation of industries dampens their output. This is why free enterprise and governments favourable to it tend to encourage economic growth whereas socialism stifles it.

Having self-published three books and sold many freelance articles, I know first hand about economic incentive. When a Man Loves a Rabbit: Learning and Living With bunnies sold relatively well since I knew people who loved their house rabbits. Deliverance from Jericho: Six Years in a Blind School sold poorly because most of the enquiries regarding it were from blind folks who couldn't read the paperback. I learned from that experience that knowing one's readership is crucial to increased sales. Details on these books are available through the links on the right hand side of this page.

How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity, my most recent book, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Virtual Bookworm Publishers.