I invite you to read the last few sentences of the below article from The Lessons of History, by Will and Ariel Durant. It is about the destruction of the Roman Empire through higher taxation that eventually made people “slaves,” in other words how serfdom emerged. This is my number one fear for Australia.
Rome had its socialist interlude under Diocletian. Faced with increasing poverty and restlessness among the masses, and with the imminent danger of barbarian invasion, he issued in A.D. 3 an edictum de pretiis, which denounced monopolists for keeping goods from the market to raise prices, and set maximum prices and wages for all important articles and services. Extensive public works were undertaken (NBN, BER) to put the unemployed to work, and food was distributed gratis ($900 cheques), or at reduced prices, to the poor. The government – which already owned most mines, quarries, and salt deposits – brought nearly all major industries and guilds under detailed control. “In every large town,” we are told, “the state became a powerful employer, standing head and shoulders above the private industrialists, who were in any case crushed by taxation.” When businessmen predicted ruin, Diocletian explained that the barbarians were at the gate (Man-made Global Warming), and that individual liberty had to be shelved until collective liberty could be made secure. The socialism of Diocletian was a war economy, made possible by fear of foreign attack. Other factors equal, internal liberty varies inversely with external danger.
The task of controlling men in economic detail proved too much for Diocletian's expanding, expensive, and corrupt bureaucracy. To support this officialdom – the army, the courts, public works, and the dole – taxation rose to such heights that people lost the incentive to work or earn, and an erosive contest began between lawyers finding devices to evade taxes and lawyers formulating laws to prevent evasion. Thousands of Romans, to escape the tax gatherer, fled over the frontiers to seek refuge among the barbarians. Seeking to check this elusive mobility and to facilitate regulation and taxation, the government issued decrees binding the peasant to his field and the worker to his shop until all their debts and taxes had been paid. In this and other ways medieval serfdom began.
Thank you Will and Ariel Durant for superbly articulating history and issuing clear warnings.
Unfortunately, Australia's leadership has not heeded such warnings. The socialism of Gillard is a Green economy, made possible by the imaginary fear of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Earthians, I hope I have provoked some thought.
Not sure if you read the whole chapter or not... but this isn't a "Warning"
so I did some research.. this comes from the Chapter "Socialism and History" from the Book "lessons of history" which can be read here : http://ia600505.us.archive.org/12/items/LessonsOfHistory/Lessons_of_History.pdf
It's interesting to note that they chronicle the oscillations between capitalism and socialism throughout history, starting in Sumeria... they end their chapter with the following paragraph....
Marx was an unfaithful disciple of Hegel: he interpreted the Hegelian dialectic as implying that the struggle between capitalism and socialism would end in the complete victory of socialism; but if the Hegelian formula of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is applied to the Industrial Revolution as thesis, and to capitalism versus socialism as antithesis, the third condition would be a synthesis of capitalism and socialism; and to this reconciliation the Western world visibly moves. Year by year the role of Western governments in the economy rises, the share of the private sector declines. Capitalism retains the stimulus of private property, free enterprise, and competition, and produces a rich supply of goods; high taxation, falling heavily upon the upper classes, enables the government to provide for a self -limited population unprecedented services in education, health, and recreation. The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.
Posted by: A Facebook User | 13 April 2012 at 02:53 AM