Julia, Plymouth Colony and Obamaland

Obama promised a fundamental transformation five days before winning the election. But it was not clear just what that transformation was to be. Now we know. The Obama team has produced “The Life of Julia,” which is a cartoon chronicle of a fictional woman who is dependent on government at every step of her life. Under Obama’s plan Julia has it made. She is insulated from the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism in the raw. But in a broader sense “The Life of Julia” reveals Obama’s vision of what life should be like for the citizens of his USA - Julia is the personification of the life of any citizen in Obamaland.

In Obamaland the nexus of any citizens life is the State. At every turn, from toddler, to teen, to college, to young professional, to raising a family, to building retirement, to assisted living, the State is there to make sure nothing bad happens. The State is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. Somehow every benefit she gets is cut-rate or “free.”

Commentators have been quick to lampoon Julia, who, as a product of the nanny state, must end up being a sheltered dullard as bland and boring as the poor creature who never leaves home but lives with Mommy and Daddy most of their life.

What hasn’t been addressed is the economic viability of Obamaland. Who is pulling the wagon? The government “providers” are busy helping the Julias pull their wagons - who is pulling their wagon?

This has been tried and tried again. The Stalin model? The Mao maodel? The Castro model? I know, the Chavez model - now that has really worked. Even with the German industrialists and the London financial district pulling the cart, the European model is coming apart.

Indeed why hasn’t our own First Colony experiment in America, Plymouth Rock, been the pivotal example? What could be more instructive of the perils of collectivism. As Jerry Bowyer writes in a recent Forbes article, the first colony in America started out as a socialist experiment. Founded in 1620 the idea was precisely from each according to his own ability to each according to their need. The produce of the colony was routed through a common warehouse and distributed according to perceived need. The experiment was a disaster. The able bodied lost incentive to work and after 2 years the colony was near collapse. In the account given by William Bradford, the first governor of the colony, in his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people who had formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. The Pilgrims “languish[ed] in misery sharing their labor and its fruits.” The collectivism “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment.” Switching to an incentive system in which individuals kept (and willingly shared) the fruits of their labor “Had very good success for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.” Please note the word “compelled”.

There are really only two pivotal basic socio-economic models: the carrot and the stick. At one end of the spectrum is the incentive based model which creates great wealth but with socio-economic “inequality” and the other is the forced-based model which creates a uniformly impoverished “egalitarian” society governed by a commissariat which is some how more equal than others.

Collectivist systems start out on the benign altruistic idea that we all work for the collective good but invariably end up being more in the mode of how to get lazy workers to be more productive. Either humanoids get the fruits of their own labor of there is not going to be a lot of fruit or a lot of labor much less innovation.

But Obama and his social justice team know just the right mix of the carrot and the stick and he’ll get us to Obamaland by hook or crook even if he has to he’ll bust the bank to get us there. He has got that last part right.