{"id":29860,"date":"2018-01-18T08:13:37","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T13:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29860"},"modified":"2018-01-18T08:13:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T13:13:37","slug":"the-aristocratic-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29860","title":{"rendered":"The Aristocratic Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Aristocratic Illusion<\/a><\/h3>\n
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They\u2019re not as smart as they think they are.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you draw your sustenance from the government\u2014as an employee, contractor, or beneficiary of redistributed funds\u2014the money you receive comes from someone who had no choice whether or not you got paid. Except for those jobs the government mandates, private sector workers\u2019 compensation comes from employers who have freely chosen to pay it. The jobs they perform are worth more to their employers than what they\u2019re paid, or the jobs wouldn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a new definition of aristocrat: a person legally entitled to take money from other people without their consent. This definition focuses on what aristocrats do and have done throughout the centuries, regardless of their labels.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re an aristocrat, the thought that you\u2019re living on somebody else\u2019s dime may cause psychological stress. All sorts of rationales have been concocted to justify this privileged position. The most straightforward is the protection racket. In exchange for their subjects\u2019 money, aristocrats protect them from external invasion and preserve domestic order. It\u2019s not a voluntary trade\u2014the subjects can\u2019t say no\u2014but at least both sides get something from it.<\/p>\n

However, \u201cprotection racket\u201d doesn\u2019t have quite the moral gloss aristocrats crave. Deities may not have been an aristocratic invention, but they jumped on the concept of divine favor to justify their position. It makes it harder to oppose the rulers if authority is bestowed by the gods or the government is a theocracy. Ultimately, regardless of rationale, the ideology always come down to: The aristocracy is superior to those they rule. The aristocrats have no trouble believing it; they have to psychologically justify their positions to themselves. The trick is to get the subjects to buy in.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aristocratic Illusion They\u2019re not as smart as they think they are. If you draw your sustenance from the government\u2014as an employee, contractor, or beneficiary of redistributed funds\u2014the money you receive comes from someone who had no choice whether or not you got paid. Except for those jobs the government mandates, private sector workers\u2019 compensation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[4863,2860,379,536,10532,5731,12280,12281],"class_list":["post-29860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-aristocracy","tag-authority","tag-government","tag-money","tag-protection-racket","tag-redistribution","tag-robert-gore","tag-straight-line-logic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29861,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29860\/revisions\/29861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}