Don't Stand If You Can Sit; Don't Work If You Can Steal

The Great Train Robbery

Allowing for cultural exceptions, such as the Protestant Work Ethic, labor is most often motivated by the desire to satisfy physical [1] needs.  We don't like to be hungry or cold or thirsty or standing wet in the rain or being unprotected from human enemies and predatory wild things.  Human nature, being what it is, we try to find shortcuts (not always a good thing) and efficiencies (usually good), or when we can get by with it, not work at all. But working is not always necessary, particularly in rich societies where stealing may be an attractive alternative.


The kind of stealing, though, should be given some thought by the risk-averse.  Bank robbery, for example, entails the potential for unpleasant outcomes for the perpetrator; he might be shot, arrested or hit over the head by a little old lady with an umbrella.  If he walks away with cash and is not immediately pursued, he's likely to worry that he'll be tracked down; or he might end up with bills that can't be spent and his best suit ruined by an exploding canister of dye.  Thinking things over in advance he may consider other possibilities.

There are always robbery of individuals, burglary and fraud.  But the first two choices (especially in carry states), like bank robbery, might get him shot or jailed.  Or hit over the head with an umbrella.  Fraud, if one is careful, carries fewer risks.  But, unless one is super-smart and super-devious, there's just too much competition.  There ought to be another way -- one requiring a modest skill-set and involving no risk.  There is.  Hallelujah!


Theft: Legal, Safe and Altruistic to Boot
In Amity Shlaes' wonderful book, The Forgotten Man, she recalls a didactic scenario [2] involving four men (and by implication, government) represented by letters.  Men A and B decide that man X needs  assistance, and they petition government for the purpose.  Man C is unacquainted with any of the others, and he not only has no say in the matter, but he is not aware of their scheme.  But along with other "C's" he will pay the freight.  He is the forgotten man. [3]

For our would-be bank robber nothing could be better than government-sanctioned theft. [4]  There is no physical or emotional risk, the police powers of the state are employed to abet the theft rather than prosecute those who steal.  What could be better?  And think about all the good things he's doing for the downtrodden community of X's!  He can choose among several routes.  If his wants and needs are modest, he can simply sign-up for benefits.  If he is more ambitions he might land a job at the welfare office, where can work (or give that appearance) and steal.  If he just can't shake the image of all that money in vaults, he can run for elected office (preferably in Chicago); with luck he can start his own vault in, say, his freezer. 

Closing Notes
Our strawman, who has prudently chosen welfare over a life of traditional criminality, will of course,  be involved in government theft only in the remotest of ways; if he even votes, we can imagine (since work does not appeal to him) that the sides with the collectivists; he may join demonstrations or write his congressman, but his greatest contribution to the cause will be adding himself to the ranks dependent on public assistance, swelling the numbers to expand the powers of the constituency.  But the great beneficiaries of  government taking and redistribution are to be found outside the subsistence classes.  Bureaucrats, administrators and elected officials.  Private charities, churches and NGO's will also be drawn into the Byzantine architecture of the mercantilist system, and many will prosper well beyond what might be offered in the private sector. 

I have not found a way to discover (or uncover) the percentage of each tax dollar taken that actually reaches intended recipients after overhead, administrative costs waste, fraud and abuse are calculated.  My guess would be .30-.40 cents on the dollar.  At most.  X survives while his enabling intermediaries prosper, smugly claiming to be doing God's work. All at the expense of C.  Whom, do you suppose, has the greatest interest in the growth and perpetuation of government taking and redistribution...? [5]


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1.  It is instructive that Abraham Maslow's famous Hierarchy of Needs has been criticized for biasing the needs (physical) towards a capitalist society.  Among collectivists, the needs are emotional/intellectual -- closer to the "actualization" that is the capstone of Maslow's pyramid.
2.  The title of Shlaes' book was taken from Prof. William Graham Sumner's economic illustration of mercantilist coercion (in collected essays published in 1876).  The Forgotten Man is contrarian (non-Keynsian) analysis of the Great Depression which weaves together the threads of Russian communist influence on America's top tier of political leadership.  It is a fascinating tale, beautifully written.
3.  One cannot help wondering whether A and B ever considered the idea of raising private funds in aid of C...
4.  I readily concede the semantic game in play here; when the taking of private property is made legal, it cannot properly be called theft.  But that's a semantic game itself.  Under the Constitution the government can only take property for certain
enumerated purposes.  Charity was never among them.
5.  In earlier times -- when government had not yet co-opted the functions of civil society -- men distinguished between the "deserving poor" and those who were not.  And for good reason; individual donors and institutional ones (churches, synagogs, etc.) were concerned that their money went to honest persons who found themselves (often temporarily) in hard circumstances.  Once the government came prominently into the picture the distinction was lost, greatly expanding the constituency.  Why? Government jobs and political clout.  Any identity class deemed to require government intervention will be minimally helped and maximally exploited.