Equality and the Wealth Gap

I watched “The Enemy at the Gates” again over the weekend.  As I watched it, amongst all the other horrifying things that the reality of the Battle of Stalingrad made evident, I was stricken by two things:

First, the absolute certainty that Hollywood labors under the assumption that as long as they give an actor an English, or vaguely Scottish, accent, we’ll accept that they are a foreigner.  It doesn’t matter that these are supposed to be Russians.  They all have English accents.  When they say “glass” they pronounce it “gloss” like a Brit.  It’s stupid.  It also bothered the hell out of me when Leonidas in the movie “The 300” spoke like a Scotsman through the entire movie.  Also stupid. 

But more importantly, there is a scene at the end where the main character’s friend, who is a political officer in the Red Army, sacrifices himself out of desperation and grief when he realizes that the grand experiment of communism has failed, and will always fail, because it is absolutely impossible to make men equal, no matter how hard one tries. 

There will always, always be “haves” and “have-nots”, he realized, and it caused him to despair so much that he allows himself to be killed by the Germans. 

Some men will be more desirable to women, and therefore will be luckier in love. 

Some men will be physically stronger, more healthy, and more handsome than other men, and so will be lucky genetically. 

Some men will be smarter than other men, and so will be lucky intellectually. 

There can be no equality. As soon as you achieve parity on one front, the inequality on others will become more glaring, and the effort will simply shift focus; and at that point, where does it stop?

Forcing women to have sex with men that they don’t want to have sex with, so that there is equality in sexual opportunity? 

Surgically altering handsome or strong men to be less handsome or strong?

Poisoning the healthy so they do not have a health advantage over the sickly? 

Of course, not, because that’s just ridiculous, right? 

So why is it any less ridiculous to attempt to make men equal economically?  Is it so hard to accept that, the same way that some men are gifted in physical strength, or in sexual attractiveness, or in intellectual power, that men will likewise be gifted economically?  That they’ve got some inherent ability to be particularly shrewd and intelligent in business dealings, and so become wealthy?  Given that, isn’t it obvious that the flip side is that some men will be economically incompetent, just as some others are ugly, and weak, and dumb? 

I’ve come to the honest conclusion that if you were somehow able to even the score, right here and right now, and redistribute every penny of money in private hands in America today so that every man had the exact same balance in their bank accounts, that in a matter of no time at all, the same men who have the money now would have it again, and the men who are penniless now would be penniless in spite of your best efforts.  My guess is that in <5 years it’d be back to the way it is right now, with a few exceptions for old money do-nothings and some middle class guys that would be rich if they’d found their opportunity, but just haven’t yet. 

So at what point in time do we accept that efforts to redistribute wealth are just a waste of time?

In light of all of his other abject failures, Obama is now hammering the “wealth gap” and “inequality” in America as if that’s something that is bad, and something that has to be fixed right now, and something that he could, indeed, fix if he was only given the chance.  Through the whole thing, I think of how many times I’ve heard this same tired old saw in my short lifetime, and how men older than me must be growing oh so weary of hearing it, becaue at 34 years old, I’m sick to death of it.  I also think of how intellectually small a man like Obama has to be, in order to think that there is anything that can be done, or rather, SHOULD BE done, to change this thing that they’ve labeled a “problem.”  Some Congresscritters have gone on record, telling me that in writing the things that I’ve written here, I am railing against my own self-interest, because I would be a beneficiary in the reduction of the wealth gap. They’ve gone so far as to insinuate that I’m stupid to NOT want these redistributions, because it would mean that my healthcare would be free and my bank account larger. 

On that point, they are correct.  I probably would greatly benefit from a re-distirbution of wealth, if such a thing could be pulled off without them fucking it up royally first (which is, as you know, a pre-requisite that I don’t think they’ve yet met).   However, I would also benefit from getting away with robbing a bank, but I see plainly how morally wrong that is, and how unsustainable it is, and how stupid it would be to attempt to make that my philosophy; and yet I’m supposed to accept that these men, who cannot see all of those things that are so clear to me, are my intellectual betters – my leaders, as it were.  I simply cannot accept that. 

No one is responsible for you but YOU.  Forcing people to make things “Fair” by asking the government to artificially level the field is nothing more than a great way to be sure that they irreparably fuck things up.  Suck it up, buttercup.  If you want to earn my contempt, then you should start complaining about how someone else should fix something for you.  If you want to succeed, my approval be damned, fix it for your own damn self.