Young Photographer
Creative Commons License photo credit: Azalea Long

Check out this quote in the September 2008 edition of National Geographic in the Letters Section. He is writing in response to last month’s amazing feature about China:

In 1998 I was a 19-year-old student in Hangzhou, China. The doors were “open,” but no one really had come through them yet. I remember thinking, if everyone here lives like Americans, the planet is screwed. The photo of the suburbs is my prophetic nightmare realized. Jackson A. Long North Oaks, Minnesota

The greatest act I ever committed towards my understanding of social economics (which is still too involved and conceptualized for me to grasp on an expert level) was to read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.  In that book, the main thing I learned is that Economics is the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses.  It’s a battle for survival by securing the resources the planet offers for human life and comfort and it takes place on an unconscious level at all times around us every day.

The world cannot live like America does because America can’t live like America does.  My country has been living so far beyond the margins morally, politically and economically that it’s amazing we’ve made it this far.  One thing about my country–every citizen is still born with the heart of an immigrant along with a portion of their hunger.  We have heart.  The intellect is usually our short suit.  Not that there aren’t brilliant people here in my country–it’s just that they haven’t figured out a way to execute that brilliance in a team-based environment whose ultimate goal is social justice.

The second best thing I ever read was the book The Law by Frederic Bastiat.  That little book is an absolute blessing to the concept of social justice.  In it I learned that the fundamental source of all law is the individual’s inherent right to protect their lives and their property from infringement by other citizens.  In this Maxim of Human Law, it is established that a citizen’s property is an extension of their body and is protected by the fundamental right of self-defense.

From this individual right, each of us agrees to partition a little of it away to a social authority (The Executive Branch in our country).  Our Executive Branch enforces the laws that our Elected Representatives pass.  The current problem is that we have elected representatives who want to be career politicians and they go to Congress and rot away on the fat pockets of special interest groups.  And we have a judicial branch appointed by the Executive Branch and approved by the Legislative Branch.  All of these people are supposed to be creating and maintaining a social structure that allows as many individuals as possible to be protected in terms of their lives and their respective properties.

That’s all government was meant to do when America was founded not even one revolution of the comet Pluto around the Sun ago.  Like everyone else, we hit some hard times in the 20th Century.  We sacrificed almost a generation of our young men’s minds and hearts to a global war against tyranny.

The ironic result of all this is that, according to Bastiat, when the collective body of Law for any society steps over the boundaries of protecting peoples lives and property from being infringed upon  by other citizens; the social order has crossed the line of tyranny.  We will know when the people have taken back control of the process of government when you see the IRS abolished.  Seizing the product of someone’s labor before they even have an opportunity to barter with you on its value and their compensation for it; it essentially slavery.  Not to be too dramatic about it.  But on an intellectual level, we must agree on this.  According to Bastiat, when any governing body seizes a portion of someone’s payment for work they rendered, prior to them even receiving the funds–the Massa’ is still crackin’ dat whip.

Honestly, I have no idea what to do about the global economy.  That is neither my passion nor my expertise.  There are far brighter people out there capable of juggling these concepts even when they’re on fire.  But I do know that we must change our habits and living situations as Americans before we ask anyone else to.  With the evolution of digital entertainment delivery and social networking, there is no reason for the ridiculous amount of travel we have to do for business.  There is high definition delivery of video and audio for a reason–let’s  get smart and start using it.

We also need to outlaw plastic sacs at grocery stores and start carrying our shit out of the store the Costco Way and have our own boxes and bags available at the ready for getting them into our houses.  We need to pay off our unsecured debts–they eat away at our labor and curb our creativity.  These are my first draft suggestions but I’m open to the ideas of others as well.

In the end, pay what you owe and don’t step on your neighbor’s toes–this is the fundamental definition of creating social justice in your world.

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