The “People’s” Republic of Chicago… And the People Could Not Care Less
When the question–as the question has been framed for not years but decades now–is no longer, “What policies do the differing candidates possess?”, and has instead become, “Which of the candidates is the least corrupt in the robber-cabal?”, or, “Which one is going to be slowest and most inefficient in stealing from me?”, that’s the very point in which you know you’re one of the few people and fellow residents of the once great City of Chicago who are paying any attention at all to the mayoral race.
The apathy and indifference lies in the very fact that is so obvious to even the most fleeting of observers: These two mayoral candidates and their alderman lackeys are competing for the power to repossess and then divvy up the wealth of actually productive people (that of the dead who built this city long ago and the living who still do work) to those ever-so-refined constituencies of the left.
Aided by an ever-obsequious and lap-dog media, Lightfoot and Preckwinkle will not face one challenging question regarding how their unmitigated local socialism has been an educational, economic, cultural and social failure, especially for poor Chicagoans. Guaranteed. They’ll never be asked what level of taxation is too high. They’ll never have to explain why a $15 minimum wage is good, but not a $16 one. Why stop in the teens? What about $100 an hour? Regarding the real bankruptcy of the city and state, neither has a substantial plan to head off much less forever resolve the pension crisis for public employees. Just the same old same old here, as Chicagoans are fond of saying, usually accompanied by the most insipid of phrases: “It is what it is.” And, if it is indeed what it is, then why waste your time with a vote? The party therefore which has been the most outspoken against (imagined) voter suppression throughout the country has achieved it in reality in the land of Democrats “for reals” with a 27 percent (!) turnout.
While a more notoriously outspoken socialist in New York touts in the most unabashed way the greatness of socialism, the Chicago option is to pave–at great expense to taxpayers and done of course by union members only of course–the middle road that happens to veer further and further left. Truth is, as Ludwig von Mises so eloquently pointed out, there is no middle road. There is only socialism. Once the state even in the slightest way engages in price controls (for labor for instance) and tinkers with the market, the result is always less green and more red:
[When] control of business is attained, there can no longer be any question of a market economy. No longer do the citizens by their buying and abstention from buying determine what should be produced and how. The power to decide these matters has devolved upon the government. This is no longer capitalism; it is all-around planning by the government, it is socialism.
Ludwig von Mises, “Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism”, April 1950.
Flag of Revolution Brewing Company in Chicago; soon to become the official flag of the city; hammer replacing wheat…
The virus spreads through the host.
Back to the media then for a moment: The supposedly conservative columnist John Kass in the imaginary conservative newspaper in Chicago, the Tribune, just wholeheartedly endorsed Lightfoot–truly “lightfoot socialism” despite Mises’s insights. Would an actual conservative with a spine, à la Russell Kirk or Robert Nisbet, simply endorse one socialist over another and identify her as an agent of change? Sure, Preckwinkle is a career criminal, but still: Kass’s endorsement of the lesser of two evils is just confirmation of what we libertarian Austrians have long said about modern conservatism, albeit in much less concise and pithy ways as the great Michael Malice:
Lightfoot is a dogged enthusiast for policies that just a decade ago would have been characterized–even by progressive Chicagoans–as radical. She’s going to make it rain: for unions, school administrators, city employees, the LGBTQ+ community–and that’s on top of providing all Chicagoans with a UBI, i.e. universal basic income.
She does have one thing going for her. It is a small positive followed with a huge negative; namely she is for cannabis legalization but with the corollary that she is going to tax the shit out of it. In other words, she’s willing to allow the herbs in the “urbs in horto” again but only if, like a Spanish monarch in the 17th century, she gets 20 percent.
Sometimes libertarian an-caps are accused of being all complaint and no solutions, but this is always wrong–progressives and neo-cons especially just don’t like the solutions we offer because they rely upon voluntary exchange instead of coercive rule. Thus, the parasitic job of the state would be gone; no more positions for the Lightfoots, Burkes, Preckwinkles, Pritzkers, and Rauners of the world. You would be the sole boss of your life, but that is a prospect so daunting and fear inspiring that even legal weed cannot cure it.
Viva Chicago libre; at least, whatever is left of us.
Tragedy of the Commons=Illinois, usually $25.00,
now, $18.99
2 Responses
This is an outstanding take on the election. Shameful to witness firsthand what is happening to what was, once, a great city.
Poor Chester Cooperpot who, when his wallet was searched in THE GOONIES, what was found? “Niente.” Nothing.
Chester Cooperpot never did end up finding One-Eyed Willy’s treasure. He’s kind of like the average Chicagoan. After decades of corrupt, socialistic rule and mismanagement, his wallet is left with “niente” after the punitive and crushing taxes, fees, fines and onerous red tape. His treasure would just simply be recovering just what was plundered from him by the “statesmen” of the last half-century.