The Lotus Eaters

Chapter Thirteen

Democracy, it has been said, can only exist until the voting populace discovers it can vote itself largesse from the public coffers. Though it is less often said; it also happens that the voting populace discovers—indeed it is educated to the notion—that it has the power to radically expand the size of those coffers, seemingly the better to vote themselves largesse.

How quickly this happens depends on many factors. A relatively classless society is relatively immune, for so long as it remains relatively classless. There are several reasons for this. Large among these reasons is that, without great disparities in wealth being shoved into people's faces, they feel little envy. Less emotionally, without some apparent concentration of wealth to be tapped, people will tend to see government redistribution schemes as little more than an exercise in taking money from their pockets, peeling off a large percentage for government overhead and then returning that much reduced sum back to their own, now sadly emptier, pockets.

Never mind that even in societies with great inequalities in wealth it works much the same, as the poor use the government to take from the rich, and the rich use the fact of ownership over property, and the ability to set prices (which price setting is driven by the common tax, acting in lieu of a conspiracy), to take it right back from the poor. People tend to want to believe the illusion that this does not happen or, at least, need not, even though their own lot never improves, long-term, under such a regime. Thus they demand that the government take ever more from the rich, which causes the rich to take ever more from the poor, with only the government itself gaining any advantage whatsoever, as it takes an increasing cut of an increasing share.

This continues, at least, until the taxation gets to the point that it begins to hurt the economy. After that, government takes an increasing share of a decreasing pot.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,

Historia y Filosofia Moral,

Legionary Press, Balboa,

Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468