Government is Force. Part 742

It's just a minor piece from Steven Greenhut in California, "Taking Property for Fun and Profit," about high property prices in California and the resort to government to Do Something about it.

That is to say, they propose to solve the problem with Force. Of course they do, because Government Is Force.

You don't like the way that the world has treated you? If you are the Vikings you get in your longships and head out for a bit of loot and plunder. If you are a worker in the late 19th century hammered by the Long Depression of the 1870s and 1880s, you strike your employer to protest wage cuts.

If you are a homeless mom in Oakland, why, you take over a vacant house and the local activists celebrate you.

As one of these Oakland moms said, “Housing is a human right. I pay bills there. I pay water, PG&E, internet. We live there. We want to purchase the home; it needs to belong back in the hands of the community. It was stolen through the foreclosure crisis.”

Or this in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles city council might use the power of eminent domain to seize a 124-unit apartment building called Hillside Villa in Chinatown.

See, back in 1986 when the owner built the apartments, part of the deal with the government was to provide some below-market-rate apartments. Now, 30 years later, the owner wants the rent the apartments out at market rates, but "Councilman Gil Cedillo’s plan would have the city take the apartment building to maintain the lower rents."

The point is that all this government force doesn't solve the housing affordability crisis. As Greenhut writes:

The bigger issue, however, is that Los Angeles and other California cities have screwed up their housing markets through decades of excess regulation, slow-growth rules, rent controls, and other policies that depress housing construction and drive up the price of the housing that everyone says they want.

Yeah. And where are the wise heads in the media telling us everyday that regulation, slow-growth, environmental rules, rent control are the best way in the world to destroy the housing stock in a city and make it affordable only for the very rich?

How can it be that a presidential candidate like Bernie Sanders that wants government to take over everything from health care to student loan forgiveness is not laughed out of court?

OK, so Bernie's supporters feature kids from educated families that have had everything handed to them and don't see why it shouldn't continue.

And every kid today seems to be taught the holy art of activism and peaceful protest and the fun of making protest signs and banners.

But suppose I sent out to the local yard-sign company and axed 'em to make me up a sign like this to put in my front yard?

Or this one?

Do you think that I would get my car keyed by some irate Bernie Bro? Or similar Subaru type with a COEXIST bumper-sticker?

You tell me.

Now I think, in fact, that we humans are in a confusing transition era, between the necessity of force to protect our food-growing land in the old days and the necessity, today, of cooperating with everyone in the world to make and sell things.

And I think that our lefties are glorious reactionaries, overflowing with nostalgia for the good old days when every man word his salt was a warrior. Or a revolutionary.

But I say that today's activists are reactionaries, imagining themselves as revolutionaries. Bu they are really modern Don Quixotes, for

activism is part medieval knight-errantry, part pro-regime street-thuggery, and part activisme, or gentry kids putting on a play.

"Activisme" is French for "activism." If you were wondering.

But it still comes down to "Government is Force." And, I think, force is on its way out. Like slavery.

But you knew that.