Stick and Carrot

Everyone knows the old addage about motivating a stubborn mule with a stick and a carrot.

Are people so different?

I'm going to write up a post that'll give you the stick, and the carrot, necessary to move people along a smarter path. I'll start with the stick.

SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS GOING TO DIE.

Right now, we're balanced very precariously on the edge of a government-mandated economy. I will not condescend with economic evaluations of socialistic inefficiency. If you missed it in high school economics, you won't care now.

I'm just going to point out history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_USSR

I would like you to consider that. In the period from 1315 to 1892, there were three major famines occupying five years total. Significant events, for sure, but given that these were pre-industry, and the Eurasian north is not at all a friendly place to farm, it tells you something that these people managed to survive and in fact thrive.

In the time during the existence of the USSR, there were... well, it's hard to tabulate the number of famines. Not really possible to tell when one ended and the next began.

Starvation was a constant in Communist Russia and its territories. I don't mean the little farmers in Kazakhstan can't raise their wheat, I mean urban people, like our San Francisco or New York City elites, were starving to death. Your celebrities, if they weren't in one of the Gulag's prisons, were probably struggling to eat often enough to stave off halucination.

SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS GOING TO DIE.

Millions of people died in the Holodomor and the surrounding famines. I'm talking Holocaust numbers. This was just caused by the economic policies of the USSR.

Collectivisation guarantees another Holodomor. Constant shortage on massive scale is the inevitable result of socialism. When we collectivize medicine, as we have finally begun to do under the provisions in this stimulus bill, we will not be able to provide medicine for the people who need it. As time goes on, the problem will become worse.

SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS GOING TO DIE.

When we begin to collectivize food production, we will not be able to provide food for people who need it. The Obama administration will move towards this, I promise. If you live paycheck-to-paycheck, you will not be able to feed yourself or your family.

I'm not saying that generally. I mean - you, the person reading this, will be incapable of feeding your family.

I don't know how bad it will be for you, personally. There are many factors to consider. I can tell you, though, you will miss meals.

Your children will miss meals.

SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS GOING TO DIE.

These are not assumptions or rhetorical predictions. These are economic laws, applied.

Someone you know is going to die, either because they're sick, or because they can't eat - or possibly because they are going to feed someone else who can't eat.

http://eeuropeanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/cannibalism_in_the_soviet_union

I can throw examples at you all day, but that will distract you from my point. Someone you know is going to die.

Someone you love is going to die.