They are a vanishing breed. Those who produce provide the jobs and the wealth for a growing nation and economy. Their numbers have diminished for a number of reasons. The government that should encourage them to thrive often hinders or harasses them. The regulatory environment has morphed into a maze of unfathomable and ill-conceived barriers. Attempts to legislate sound business practices have transformed into insurmountable hurdles that limit the producers’ flexibility and progress. Risk for their huge entrenched competitors is minimized by government preferences, sweet-heart deals and “too-big-to-fail” bailouts, handouts and subsidies. Every where they turn, they find obstacles. Every direction they look, they see an unreasonable regulator. They become frustrated and discouraged, and many of them abandon their dreams.
Others fail to produce because they have lost the initiative, the drive, the purposes for creative self expression that develops when one is a productive contributor to the community. They observe that others who lack their imagination or their ambition are riding the coattails of those who labor and risk to develop and create. While they are battling stringent unnecessary limitations, they note that others are living well playing by “who-you-know” rules. While they resist government efforts to identify their most productive cropland as wetlands, others receive grants, subsidies and low-interest government loans for questionable technologies and shaky enterprises. As they attempt to develop sound business models to map their ascendency to prosperity, they witness others who receive benefits and favoritism for flim-flam scams. While waiting for government approvals and sign-offs, they see their competitors establish cozy crony relationships with venal career politicians and receive special consideration and expedited approvals. Potential producers, their ideas and dreams are sacrificed on the altar of regulation and cronyism while the schemers and scammers are enriched through their inside knowledge of “how the game is played.”
Looters come in all sizes and hues. Some are merely n’er-do-wells who languish on the sofas of sloth and draw their sustenance from the taxpayers who continue to labor. Others manipulate the system to place their competitors at a disadvantage while reaping the benefits of traveling on the inside track. Another class of looter is the government worker….the staff member or bureaucrat who implements the foggy legislation passed by an out-of-touch Congress. Bureaucrats have no “skin in the game,” thus they can arbitrarily decide which laws, rules or regulations to ignore and which to emphasize. Combined with the distasteful (and usually unconstitutional) Executive Orders, the selective enforcement and uneven treatment by government is an indicator of the potential for tyranny. Those in power generate rules and laws that overwhelm the populace, and selectively enforce them to penalize opponents and reward friends. It is rather apparent that not all looters are unkempt and lazy. Many wear the latest fashions and diligently pursue their wrongfully-gotten gains. Looting the taxpayer, looting the Treasury and looting the nation are generally full-time jobs.
It is not unusual for people to be confused about producers and looters. Some ingenious producers may wear greasy clothes, have a limited vocabulary and lack the glibness we often associate with successful people. On the other hand there are many looters who are clean and verbally agile, but contribute to the overall good of the community or the nation in a manner reminiscent of a tic… a blood-sucking parasite that spreads sickness wherever it lands. Looters drain the resources, the lifeblood and the spirit from a nation. They take, consume and demand while providing little for the good of the country. If they find themselves in positions of power, they command and insist with no regard for the impact of their actions on the producers and the people. Looters are takers, and producers are their prey.
Producers and looters are not personality types that have recently emerged. They have been integral elements of the human scene since the beginning. There is an element about the relationships between producing class and the taking class that informs us about the state of a nation or society. When the producers are dominant and influential, the community prospers and grows. If the looters assume the pinnacles of power and the strength of numbers, the nation regresses….and either collapses into chaos or fades into obscurity. It should be noted that nations that succumb to the law of the looters are often overrun and conquered, but their defeats were begun much earlier through their own decay. Nations that encourage, nurture and legitimize looters at all levels are well on the road to oblivion…. and death. Societies that celebrate and enhance producers will grow, flourish and live. The time has arrived for the United States of America to choose a path. Will it be life or death?
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