Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

I was greatly saddened by the passing of Walter E Williams.  He was one of the two authors most responsible for me becoming a Libertarian and free market warrior, the other is Thomas Sowell. Through my teenage years, until I was in my early twenties I was a hardcore progressive/socialist.  It was through an exhaustive amount of reading and research that led to my great political enlightenment.  Walter Williams played a major, and very entertaining, part in that awakening.

As you can see from this quote, which appeared in the February 8 2006 article On Bogus Right, Walter Williams was a very outspoken critic of the federal government, and of the redistribution of wealth.

Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we’d call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that’s exactly what thieves do — redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders’ vision, it’s a sin in the eyes of God.

Walter Williams was an Economics professor at George Mason University.  I know he must have been a very informative and entertaining teacher because I’ve watched a great many videos of him speaking and T saw him on TV quite often. He was an outspoken critic of socialism. Here is a  quote from the article Evil Concealed by Money, 19 November 2008.

This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one’s fellow man. Helping one’s fellow man in need, by reaching into one’s own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another’s pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation.

Here is another quote on the subject from Socialist Promises 25 May 2019.

Socialism promises a utopia that sounds good, but those promises are never realized. It most often results in massive human suffering. Capitalism fails miserably when compared with a heaven or utopia promised by socialism. But any earthly system is going to come up short in such a comparison. Mankind must make choices among alternative economic systems that actually exist. It turns out that for the common man capitalism, with all of its alleged shortcomings, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with his everyday needs and desires. By most any measure of human well-being, people who live in countries toward the capitalistic end of the economic spectrum are far better off than their fellow men who live in countries toward the socialist end.

Walter Williams was as big a proponent of free market capitalism as he was a critic of socialism.

Capitalism, or what some call free markets, is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way individuals amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. With the rise of capitalism, it became possible to amass great wealth by serving and pleasing your fellow man. Capitalists seek to discover what people want and produce and market it as efficiently as possible as a means to profit. A historical example of this process would be John D. Rockefeller, whose successful marketing drove kerosene prices down from 58 cents a gallon in 1865 to 7 cents in 1900. Henry Ford became rich by producing cars for the common man. 

Here is a quote by Walter E. Williams from All It Takes Is Guts that I’ve shared on social media many times

But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you – and why?”

The following two quotes are from memes I shared on Facebook.  I tried to track down the source of the quotes but Google failed me.  I’m 100 percent positive they’re accurate. I remember reading them in articles recently,―

Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place

Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done,  It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work, and achievement.

I’m going to end this article with a very recent quote from a Daily Wire Article

The biggest casualty from the COVID-19 pandemic has nothing to do with the disease. It’s the power we’ve given to politicians and bureaucrats. The question is how we recover our freedoms.