Some of my more liberal friends were sharing this meme on
social media recently. A commenter asks, “This is very interesting. Could you
please explain how government dealing with a natural disaster has anything to
do with socialism or free market capitalism.[?]” Well, okay, here we go.
The short answer is that it doesn’t. Collecting taxes and
using those taxes to provide disaster recovery assistance to citizens is not
the same thing as socialism. It is not the same thing as socialism in the same
way that collecting taxes and providing universal healthcare to citizens is not
the same thing as socialism.
This meme is making a joke; albeit a very dark one. Many of
the people affected by Harvey
and the subsequent flooding would ignorantly characterize government provided
services such as universal healthcare as socialism. They would argue that the
free market would take care of everyone better than a government program. It is
ironic that these people are now in need of government assistance, and there is
no feasible free market alternative. Personally, I enjoy dark, ironic humor,
and I particularly enjoy making fun of hypocrites. I think this meme is
hilarious.
I doubt that the creator of this meme, or my liberally
minded friends that shared it, are suggesting in any way that we not use our
pooled social resources to help out with the disaster recovery. This is exactly
the sort of thing that the government is supposed to do. Not every social problem
can be solved by individual perseverance. Not every social problem can be
solved by the invisible hand (I like to call it “The Magic Hand”) of the free
market. Sometimes a socialized solution is the correct answer, and solving some
problems with socialized solutions is not the same as socialism.
I would also like to use this opportunity to point out an
even more blatant hypocrisy. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, along with many other
republican representatives from Texas ,
opposed federally funded relief for a similar disaster in 2013. I’m referring
to the Sandy storm event that devastated the New Jersey
and New York
coastal areas. Now Senator Cruz and others are supporting federal relief for Texas . They have all
sorts of rationalizations and excuses for their hypocritical positions which
are mostly factually untrue. That means they are either outright lying or are/were
unaware of reality. I find both explanations unacceptable for any of our
elected representatives.
