The division in the United States comes about because political solutions are imposed from above rather than relying on voluntary cooperation. If the rights of every person were protected from the depredations of others and from the government itself, people would be held accountable for their own actions. Normal people would be able to accumulate wealth and there would be the proper incentives to be productive. That productivity is where development and progress comes from. Taking wealth from the productive people to give to the parasite class is the core of division and animosity. The fact is that people, especially Americans, have always been among the most charitable people on earth. When government takes their money away, it not only is not available for their own private charity, but it destroys the incentives toward productivity. When people have their money taken away for forced charity, they no longer feel compelled to do private charity. It is a vicious circle which all socialist countries eventually face. Even the socialist shining star, Sweden, is using up all of the capital accumulated before they wandered into the egalitarian morass.

If powerful people abuse the markets and use force, coercion or fraud for gain, that is not free markets or free trade. It is violence and the absence of free markets and voluntary trade. It is necessarily the partnership of government with business forces to give an arbitrary and unfair advantage to a favored party. It is the mercantilism of old, which has nothing to do with free markets and everything to do with government grants of monopoly power.

Colbert is a useful idiot to Ehrenreich and others who think they know what is best for 300 million people. The “free market aphorisms” that you talk about are merely straw man arguments that distract from the fact that we don’t have free markets and have not had for many decades. There is not a single market in this country, or any developed country for that matter that is not severely distorted by hundreds of strangling bureaucracies and thousands of pages of incomprehensible gibberish that passes for law. It is a pathetic distortion of the truth that is giving credence to a mountain of lies.

Equality of conditions can be guaranteed by making everyone slaves, which is what strictly socialist countries do. Don’t you find it ironic that the most passionate advocates of egalitarianism and global socialism are fabulously wealthy and extremely influential? They don’t use their incredible wealth to help the poor, but rather use their influence to make everyone else equal. (Think Animal Farm.)

(Just kidding.)

A great question. The answer is, nothing in the abstract/ if you don’t have to live there.

If you do have to live in it, though, there’s a lot wrong with a sharply divided country.

Please note the distinction: There’s nothing wrong with concentrations of specialties, with one group holding land and another focusing on industry, etc. There’s nothing wrong with one group dominating a specific activity, like a sport. The problem is with sharp and steep divisions that run through the country.

The problems are practical, ethical, and emotional. As political scientists dating back to Aristotle have pointed out, if people have some form of ownership in a society, they become emotionally invested in the status quo—in sustaining the existing laws. If a lot of people have nothing, they clamor for change, and often any change. The ethical problems come from the manipulation of the law that is supposed to be fair by those on top of the pyramid. And emotionally, it tears me up when I see children eating garbage to survive.

Greg