Statism hits the fan

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery," noted Winston Churchill. This astute observation by the late British prime minister came back to me in late June as I talked to a friend about his ruined summer vacation. His family had been making plans for months to visit the beautiful Aegean beaches and lose some weight on a diet of calamari salad and ouzo cocktails. They daydreamed of learning to dance syrtaki, of breaking plates and yelling "opa" for no apparent reason---all without charges of disorderly conduct. Alas, instead of seeing the magnificent ruins of the Athenian Acropolis, they saw their plans in ruins when Greek community organizers, socialist activists, militant anarchists, and labor unions imposed a blockade on their own country in an effort to keep the free lunches of their welfare past coming.

The ordinary Greeks are rightfully mad but they have no one to blame except their own complacency with a political system that breeds dependency on the state. As a rule, government policy south of the Bulgarian border focuses on redistribution instead of wealth creation. Greece is a relatively young country with a long prehistory of centralization of power and bureaucratic tyranny. From the dominating statist philosophy recorded in Plato's Republic to the "divine" rule of the Caesars and four centuries of institutionalized bribery and nepotism under the Ottoman sultans---there is too much rent-seeking and not enough respect for individual freedoms, property rights, and entrepreneurial initiative in the Greek tradition.

In every time and every place where private initiative was unleashed and the rule of law prevented politicians from manipulating economic outcomes for the benefit of special interest groups, prosperity for the many was soon to follow. Some Greeks have learned those lessons, voting with their feet and settling in our neighborhood on Long Island, opening new businesses and supporting their churches. And for the sake of their relatives left behind on the Balkans, let's hope that Greece will finally accept the shift in economic paradigm to less statism.