V. Influence of social parasitism

Major explanation and the very basis of embedded in human nature inclination to live whenever possible on account of other people, if not its entire justification, lies in the weakness of human nature. We are really weak, vulnerable and dependent on a large variety of outer things and external occurrences in this life, even the strongest amongst us or those who consider themselves strong and independent. At this stage we are living in sufficiently mild and yielding societies – in socialist democracies – inherited from our ancestors and built mostly by their sufferings. Everything is more or less smooth and well founded in our society including interpersonal relations, social cohesion and even justice in its superficial expression. Of course, the most important part is our financial prosperity, which makes it all happen, while economic growth even depressed by excessive income redistribution is maintaining our hopes and aspirations for the future. We are getting a feeling that it is exactly us who rule the world and build our own life and consequently usually we do not consider ourselves as being weak.  

However, even if we are playing god, exchanging one true real God for deity and idolatry of the State or even of ourselves as gods, we are still weak and vulnerable, may be even weaker than ever before both as spoiled by modern comfort human beings and as a society weakened by extraordinary social parasitism, while even minor social cataclysm might reveal our inability and ignominy. We worship our state and our quite controversial societal system and imagine that we are independent and free with our boundless dependence on the domestic coercive power of state and on the socialist democracy, which is unleashing social parasitism to its height. We are thinking just like people in the former Soviet Union before its collapse. Hardly we have more strength, independency and self-sufficiency than they did – we are merely the humblest slaves of our modern deity – the State. Minor fall of this god and we are meek in front of the rough and tough societal realities of non-socialist world. We can only pray for that our socialist god might stay intact a bit longer than the communist one did.

We as human beings and our entire society both dictatorships and democracies much rather deserve pity than admiration. Leading our objectively rather meaningless (though subjectively, of course, pleasant and meaningful for us life) with a very little hope and even with a very little consolation that somebody will remember us one hundred years from now. And what about a million years from now – hardly anybody will be still here in order to remember the very existence of human specie. Our single hope, fate, sense and trust is in God, for without the God everything – our thoughts, ideas, brainpower, feelings, passions, zeal, philosophy, knowledge, history, arts, culture, science, technology, even our very life - is absolutely futile and worthless (at most enjoyable) and will be erased by a natural order of things in a certain period of time.

We cannot be too judgmental of our social (based on power and coercion) inclinations as that who sits in judgment of social parasitism, first of all, is judging himself and questioning the entire human nature, which is hardly a lucrative exercise. However, equally we must not adhere to an opposite extreme – worship of social parasitism. We have much more fundamental and much more complicated task – to build an adequate founded on such human nature society. And we probably need something much more sustainable than the socialist democracy, which only hope is international competition between separately inefficient and fragile societies.

It is absolutely out of the purpose of this treatise to analyze extensively or even to analyze at all the entire variety of manifestations, effects and influences of social parasitism. Such an ambitious undertaking will probably require tons of written volumes and extraordinary amount of time. In this treatise we will basically limit ourselves to two key objectives - first is to emphasize the most important effects of social parasitism upon our society and second is to define those effects from the point of view of social parasitism and to propose several preliminary assumptions for their analysis. 

There seems to be two fairly positive effects of social welfare. First is that among tons of rather controversial and hardly justifiable social benefits, the really needy people are still getting their small share. And second is social cohesion. Apart from those two returns there is a whole lot of problems related to social welfare. The most important being that it is based exclusively on coercion and therefore has a strong inbuilt potential to be, in one way or another, both inefficient and unfair. Another problem with social welfare stands in that it is never objective but is always biased, partial and relying on material and financial interests of self-interest oriented human beings. Besides all that, social welfare is not something independent or a thing in itself. It completely depends on economic welfare or on welfare created in real economy without interference of the mechanisms of coercion. This dependence is both direct and indirect. Direct, since we can redistribute only something already produced in the real economy. Indirect, since our inclination to redistribute scarce financial resources including our sense of justice, fairness and compassion is absolutely contingent upon affluence of our society or upon its financial prosperity. In poor medieval society, for example, existed very little redistribution and generally it is not until capitalist opulence that the entire idea and even the entire philosophy of wide-scale income redistribution emerged. 

17. Equality

There are two types of equality, which are almost antipodes – equality in consumption and equality in opportunities. Normally more equality in consumption is being based upon higher implication in society of the mechanisms of power and coercion and therefore upon simultaneous reduction in equality of opportunities especially in the short run. But even such equality in consumption is an absolute illusion as it simply implies an elevated consumption in places, which you can neither see, nor investigate. Simple and most instructive example in this sense is a former Soviet Union where unhidden but deceptive equality in consumption (or rather equality in poverty) among vast majority of population was a mere illusion on the background of concealed but enormously elevated consumption of the communist party leaders. Under the modern socialist democracy equally extraordinary elevates consumption of the top-level state bureaucracy and representatives, all forms and aspects of which considered before in this treatise are hardly less disguised than the consumption of their fellow politicians under communism.

Equality in consumption has little value by itself except that it stimulates a social cohesion. Social equality in consumption represents a rather controversial effect or outcome of social parasitism, as any equality besides equality in opportunities is superficial, artificial, hardly justifiable, economically unfair and inefficient. Equality among people as it is generally understood by socialist ideology and by socialist policies or equality in income and consumption can only be a consequence of income redistribution and represents a product and a value of socialist society. Since under economic injustice we basically understand unearned income based on the mechanisms of power and coercion, socialist equality is economically unfair because it is based on coercive redistribution of income and on a variety of specific, unearned and socially distributed benefits. Whether equality in consumption is fair socially we leave to the reader’s judgment. Strive for socialist equality is economically inefficient because it favors something less efficient or less qualified on account of something more efficient or more qualified. More specifically in order to make equality in consumption to happen we simply need to expropriate resources from producers and production and channel them to consumers and consumption or to discriminate more efficient people and economic agents in favor of the less efficient ones.  

18. Social cohesion

Social welfare and social equality are stimulating social cohesion. We cannot define social cohesion so clear economically or numerically as for example economic efficiency. Social cohesion on the contrary to social welfare and moreover on the contrary to income redistribution rather represents a result or an outcome than phenomenon or process. Social cohesion, taken purely as it is, seems as a predominately positive thing since it suppose to diminish probability, scale and number of social conflicts. Poorer people, who form an overwhelming majority of population, enjoying social protection and experiencing equality in consumption, are much less inclined to provoke any social revolts. While rich and affluent people, though are paying entire social parasitism are less inclined to produce any violent opposition as even after paying all gigantic taxes they are still left with a good fortune in consolation. Another thing is what price we are paying for social cohesion built on social parasitism and ultimately on the instruments of coercion. Much more important though is that general welfare, social cohesion and equality both in opportunities and in consumption are incomparably more relying on the wealth of our economy than on socialist democracy and on associated with it social policy – of economy, which is barely subsisting in a permanent struggle with our inefficient societal construction. 

19. Social idealism

Social idealism or idealization of social system and social relations in particular society is certainly not an exclusive effect of social parasitism. Any personal wealth tends to justify and to praise society were particular private interest was raised to economic prosperity. What extraordinary income redistribution of socialist democracy is adding to this phenomenon is, first of all, a mass scale generated by higher equality in consumption, social cohesion and affluence of society. But most fundamentally incomes based on coercion tend to conceal and to cover up a comprehensive and permanently accelerating involvement in society of the mechanisms of coercion employed for purposes of massive income redistribution. People are persuaded to forget that their entire social welfare, social cohesion, equality and the whole society are founded on coercion. Such statement of things complemented by other “fruits” of social parasitism generates mostly idealistic and distant from reality political, social and economic views dominating any society built on immense income redistribution. More than that, it produces illusory and imaginary perception not only of our own society, but also of the one in underdeveloped countries, unrealistic vision of global social values and social principles and even idealized images of people and society in historical retrospective.  

20. Economic equilibrium

Not so much social parasitism per se, but rather the entire set of leading to it political, economic and social recipes of socialist society is generating a permanent economic disequilibria, which is an absolutely natural consequence of elevated interference of the coercive instruments always accompanied by rigid prices, rigid wages and massive state interventions in economy. Economic disequilibria in socialist society is abundantly described by economics, particularly by classical liberal economics and is sufficiently simple and straightforward as the entire economy and all particular markets can freely bounce according to the conditions of supply and demand and produce absolute economic equilibrium only under the laissez-faire or under free market economy. And the further we are from laissez-faire, the more socially (based on mechanisms of power and coercion) monopolized is economy, the more regulations exists, the more we are departing from any equilibrium and the closer we are to intensifying chaotic recessions and depressions, to artificial financial support of the economy and to bail out deals for “strategically” inefficient companies. Major economic problem with social parasitism is that it enormously strengthens the largest social monopoly or the largest monopoly on coercion ever – the state - and therefore is moving us further and further away from the free market economy and from any economic equilibrium.  

21. Social and economic incentives

There are three major prices, which we are paying for coercive welfare, artificial social cohesion and coercive equality in our society. First is slowdown in capital accumulation and technological innovations, second is evaporation of social and economic incentives and the third is consolidation of the state domination in society. Evaporation of economically efficient incentives or of incentives conductive to economic efficiency is embracing virtually all categories of population and is a sufficiently wide-scale phenomenon. Large business and hired executives are more inclined to master public relations and to please governments rather than to dedicate themselves to production activities as a lot of their revenues depend on governmental regulation, taxation and on public procurement. Small business is striving real hard barely subsisting under a pressure of competition (unhampered market competition in our days exists almost exclusively for small business), taxes, inspections and regulations. Employees, including “civil servants”, are much more preoccupied with employment guarantees and job security than with their job responsibilities. Consulting companies reorienting towards highly profitable and less demanding international development industry loose all domestic business qualifications and being directed and supervised by even less competent and less efficient governments never understand and never need to understand the nature of underdeveloped countries. Unemployed have all the disincentives to work with extensive social benefits to back them up. Young people displeased with low initial salaries besides basic social benefits are having their parents with money and shelter. Significant loss of efficient incentives is, first of all, explained by the fact that free economy, free business and creativity as such are being more and more crowded out by the role and influence of coercive social institutions and by general over-regulation of economy and society. Another essential source of disincentives certainly represents an extraordinary level of taxation.

22. State domination in society

Social parasitism developed to such a height and particularly income redistribution through the state and based on the coercion of state, as well as state regulation of economy and society cannot be realized without critical elevation of the state’s role, significance and overall presence and interference in every aspect of social and economic life. Whether it is good or bad we leave to everyone’s own conclusion. What we have to take into account investigating role of the State in modern society is that State per se is a conventional commercial enterprise with its own interests, bias and partiality, which is normally acting exclusively in the interests of its real true managers or rather even proprietors - of our “representatives” and of top-level state bureaucracy. Just like any commercial enterprise it is generating revenues through taxation; paying costs mostly expressed in social benefits, business and economy related costs and in international “bribing” and making its profits in the form of previously examined incomes and benefits of representatives and top-level state bureaucracy. Much worse is that at the same time State is a social monopoly (monopoly based on instruments of coercion) and indeed the final instance of coercion in society with all its revenues coming almost exclusively from coercion. Therefore, State as any social monopoly is economically unfair getting exclusive above and beyond the market revenues based on coercion and economically inefficient generating less value than would be created through an alternative mode of resources utilization (which we will examine later). More specifically, economic inefficiency coming from the State is manifesting itself in the subtraction of scarce financial resources from more efficient private economic agents, in state’s inability to compete with normal unregulated private sector, in plain waste of economic resources, in deterioration of economy through economic “regulation”, etc. Of course, no one economic agent would deem necessary or its existence would be justifiable under such circumstances - either by the market or by people’s judgment. What about the State? State does not fall under the market judgment since it has no any dependency on market whatsoever subsisting exclusively on coercive non-market revenues. What concerns people’s judgment - we leave it to our readers.

23. Political freedom and democracy

There are two essential components or two determinative factors of political freedom. The most important one is economic freedom. It is only economic freedom conducive to economic wealth what makes political freedom and any democracy to happen. While permanent deterioration of economic freedom under an influence of modern socialism and social parasitism are leaving less and less grounds for any political freedom including freedom of expression. Social parasitism is deteriorating political freedom through enormous withdrawal of financial resources from private individuals in favor of instruments of coercion (in favor of the State), through downgrading of power and competitiveness of the non-coercive economy, through constantly accelerating state control and “regulation” of economy and society, through imposing of wide-scale social idealism and various unsustainable idealistic prejudices, through obliteration of any personal independence and through conversion of almost entire population into absolutely dependent upon the state “sheep”. Second component of political freedom is power of social counteraction, which is based on previously accumulated experience in fighting for one’s rights. Social counteraction is significantly diminishing under the influence of social parasitism owing to an ever-growing reliance of people upon instruments of coercion. In this sense social counteraction being based on economic power of particular individuals is dependent and inferior to economic freedom. Evaporation of economic freedom undermines social counteraction. Of course, such evaporation is not happening right away and at one particular point in time, but is a rather continuous process and therefore even under significant limitations of economic freedom people are still maintaining previously acquired abilities, skills and knowledge of social counteraction for a certain period of time.

Democracy is merely a part of political freedom and not yet the most important and most influential part, such as for example are economic freedom and property. Democracy under the influence of social parasitism and of unsurpassed envy for income redistribution is degenerating in various violations of property rights including massive property expropriations (taxation) and comprehensive property rights limitations (state regulation). Since society is only about power, coercion and money and about nothing else, any kind of management of societal affairs is reduced to a sheer control over these three factors and does not bear anything romantic, poetic or anything noble in it. Vice-a-versa it is a rather deceitful, rough and repugnant process. Even representative democracy through arithmetic absurdity of “one man – one vote” is merely channeling resources from few (minority) to many (majority) based on instruments and mechanisms of coercion and because of an ever growing involvement of coercion in society, it is all set to degenerate in various limitations for both personal and political freedom.

24. International relations

Social parasitism in international relations basically means a partial subsistence of foreign countries on financial resources coercively expropriated from our taxpayers by our state. Generally speaking buying foreign governments either directly through subsidies and international aid or indirectly through various economic facilities, incentives and political support is much better than to fight them in open war. We certainly have an enormous progress on this chapter comparatively with our previous history. There are a variety of reasons why we need to buy foreign countries or rather foreign governments. More strategic and straightforward reasons would be related to promotion of our economic, business and political interests. But there are a lot of less strategic interests (though to some people they might be even more important than the former ones) such as global considerations including environmental concerns, preventing trafficking of human beings, humanitarian relief, fighting terrorism, counteracting international crime, etc.; facilitating presence of our citizens abroad including solution of their problems in foreign countries; intelligence and security; etc., etc., etc.

There are, however, several complications related to international “buying” of our “friends”. First one is already mentioned scarcity of financial resources complemented by constantly elevating wealth of underdeveloped societies (we assume that all economically developed countries are our allies and we do not have to buy at least them). Problem associated with such statement of things is a relative diminishing of our contribution to national income or to national budgets of underdeveloped countries on account of constantly rising in these countries GDP and therefore also our diminishing influence, even though there is to our help such thing as investments of our companies abroad or foreign investments. Another complication is that we are buying in bulk almost all countries in the world without differentiating between our real true friends and temporary or even permanent enemies. We have also mentioned already that “buying friends” internationally, we are mostly buying the governments, which situation might very much offend people in these countries. As vast majority of underdeveloped countries are dictatorships, semi-dictatorships or at most are countries with cosmetic democracy, interests of the government and those of the people rarely coincide there. Finally, the most fundamental problem we are facing internationally is that it is getting more and more difficult to sell to underdeveloped countries our rather deteriorated social values almost exclusively based on hardly exciting, even if justifiable, social parasitism.   

25. Economic growth

Situation with economic growth under the influence of massive income redistribution is not entirely straightforward primarily because economic growth still exists in socialist economy and there are only two things, which we can generally discuss and analyze in its relation to social parasitism. First is giving away opportunities in terms of economic growth, opportunity costs of socialism or simply how much higher will economic growth be if we would have some other social and economic system. Second is a slowdown in economic growth on account of socialist economy and elevated income redistribution. Slowdown in economic growth is more evident and less complicated phenomenon than the giving away opportunities. In a very recent history of economically developed countries after the 1970 and comparatively with after-the-war period (till 1970), the slowdown in economic growth seems evident based on statistics. In Europe, for example, economic growth on average is almost of the former Soviet Union level. And it is only a bit higher in North America. This is moreover disturbing in comparison with a very impressive economic growth in large underdeveloped countries (China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc), which suppose to stimulate our economic growth as well.   

How much higher would be economic growth under different circumstances is a rather theoretical or even speculative question as we cannot experimentally construct alternative economy and alternative society. On the other hand, even though several modern dictatorships are growing much faster than democracies we cannot say that this is happening because of their inherent societal advantages, but rather because they are far behind economically developed countries, while catching up employing existing business practices and technology is much easier than to develop new ones. At the same time, all our socialist policies significantly downgrading business efficiency and performance as well as withdrawing enormous resources from business in favor of state consumption, can hardly be absolutely efficient and stimulate any economic growth. There are, however, counter-arguments to all that. Under the modern structure of international relations and according to the nature of contemporary society, loss of business efficiency is compensated partially or entirely by domestic protection and international promotion of national business. This is only partly true. Under the international battle between various national interests we cannot have unlimited protection and business promotion is quite difficult as well both on account of competition between economically developed countries and on account of our diminishing influence upon underdeveloped ones. However even in as much as this statement is true, such practice makes a vicious circle or rather a vicious spiral. Business is loosing its efficiency owing to state regulation and heavy taxation and therefore needs constant protection and promotion. While, protection and promotion are further on producing more incubated and less competitive business. There is another counter-argument against any alternatives – a stronger one. It is exactly the current structure of society what is making business generally possible and generates all our financial prosperity and economic growth. This is not so straightforward either since financial prosperity, even stronger economic growth and much better conditions for business have existed under the capitalism in 19th century. Still there is one more and the strongest counter-argument. Alternative structure of society under self-interest oriented and susceptible to social parasitism human nature is not possible. The only answer we can give at this stage – it does not have to be like that.    

26. Wars

Social parasitism is a major cause of any wars as it merely represents a continuation of domestic coercive expropriation of income in international environment where any particular State does not possess a power of coercion and has to acquire or to win such power. It is not true that wars are not benefiting anybody – either winner or looser, either government or people – at least not true in the short-term. If it would be so, we are hardly so stupid as to kill each other without any hope for gains. Wars certainly have at least short-term benefits for the victorious part – benefits related to social parasitism both of the “sheep” and of the “wolves”. Roman Empire, for example, lead it to an extreme and made its living almost entirely on account of military conquests and even in the long-term perspective. Fundamental benefit for the State coming from wars is income redistribution from looser to the winner, which is formed from short-term redistribution such as spoils of war including lump-sum contributions and long-term redistribution in the form of taxation on annexed territories. Another important type of gains represent obtained military, political and economic advantages, which are materializing themselves in more opportunities for domestic business of a victorious nation and therefore in more employment and more tax revenues. There are also less important considerations (though sometimes they acquire decisive significance) such as various ideological motives, necessity to prevent internal social revolts and even simply to employ people particularly important if large masses of population are staying unemployed. The more of tax and non-tax revenues receive particular state, the more maneuvering it has in maintenance and consolidation of its power. “Wolves” are always getting more income with rising state revenues including higher salaries, bonuses, non-salary benefits, bigger budgets for state departments and subdivisions, more influence and power, more possibilities for promotion of their special interests, etc. Significant portion of taxes collected on annexed territories is usually spent in the core part of victorious State including for buying “sheep” in order to keep them happy and away from potential rebellion. Besides, most profitable economic activities on annexed territories are usually reserved for companies of the victorious side additionally increasing domestic employment. Therefore, wars are adding to domestic social parasitism, social parasitism on account of annexed territories, on account of various spoils of war and on account of acquired as military gains international privileges and advantages. Of course, in our days in economically developed countries we are at an absolutely fair apprehension that none of those gains cost human victims of war - either victims among military personnel or among civil population.

Wars, of course, take place throughout the entire history of mankind and it is hard to distinguish any particular more peaceful or more aggressive period in overall universal history. Yet it seems to be true that countries close to laissez-faire and to classical liberal idea of society relatively rarer pursue military ambitions than societies built on state domination and on elevated levels of income redistribution as free market societies hardly imagine at all making a living through social parasitism of any kind and probably do not see or do not apprehend as important the military gains above. They simply make much more money, influence and power through business and economic activity than they can expect from wars. On the contrary, societies built on comprehensive income redistribution are never satisfied with its current level and are always eager to invent new ideological justifications for its elevation including justifications projected towards international environment. Two most bloody wars in the history of mankind so far (World War I and II) were initiated by countries with significantly escalated state domination in society and driven by highly pro-etatist socialist ideologies – state militarism or military socialism in 1914 and national-socialism in 1939. Those wars were taking place during a historical period when socialism in different forms, but in one glimmering yet vague idea, started to unleash and to gain its power throughout the globe. Of course, we cannot say precisely how much of their victims fall on advanced military technology and how much on dominating socialist ideas.     

27. Science and technology

Examining history of scientific discoveries and of fundamental technological inventions we might be caught by an apprehension that vast majority of essential scientific discoveries and particularly of essential technological innovations were made before the global financial crisis of 1933, which lead to a spread of socialist policies worldwide, or even mostly during a period of 18-19th and beginning of 20th centuries. Technological innovations in 18-19th centuries were less abundant than during our later history as economy was much smaller, but they were a way more strategic so that further innovations mostly followed and lead them to perfection rather than were generating essentially new ideas. Particularly interesting is that in 18-19th centuries, innovations were predominantly related to capital or to production technology, while in 20th century a significant share of discoveries and innovations falls on consumption items and military technology. Inventions in consumption items, of course, are equally important, but such a trend says a lot about what exactly is being financed and where money flows. All this, in fact, is even more relevant for scientific discoveries. Actually a significant number of crucial scientific discoveries were made yet far back in history even before the 18th century. Nevertheless 18th-19th centuries and beginning of 20th century are booming with the strategic discoveries as well, while rather few of them were made after 1933. This is moreover notable since science in the 20th century, particularly theoretical science, was getting significant financial resources from the State and was financed by State incomparably more abundantly than in 18th-19th centuries.

Is it a coincidence that science and technology were developing more impressively and faster during a prevalence of classical liberalism under capitalism and particularly in societies close to laissez-faire (as very few of those discoveries and inventions were made by German or Russian nationals in absolute monarchies, while vast majority by British and Americans) and that with a spreading of socialist domination worldwide after the Great Depression, we are witnessing a less impressive evolution, not to say “slowdown”, in discoveries and innovations? Seems like not. With resources being subtracted from capital accumulation and production in favor of consumption, inventions related to industrial technology are having much less motivation. While with over-regulated and heavily taxed business it is getting more difficult to arrange adequate favorable environment, to generate ideas, to test, to register and to implement innovations. Plus to that, inventions and discoveries are seriously threatening to all components of social parasitism as they suppose significant changes everywhere and all the time including bankruptcies, lay offs, reshuffling of input and output structures, etc. They are a clear-cut threat to the entire system of social parasitism and therefore need to be kept on leash in the interests both of employees and employers, not even mentioning the state bureaucracy. One objection might arise on our time comparison for inventions and discoveries. Aren’t they having their natural limit and everything what is possible to discover is already mostly discovered and everything what is possible to invent is already more or less invented and needs only permanent improvement? Probably, this is a way of thinking of all our ancestors starting from prehistoric times and up until now. This thesis is hardly a legitimate one since even if scientific discoveries more or less presume a detection of objectively existing trends and laws (whether they are limited in numbers we cannot say), innovations are in their nature something, which was not before, something completely new and therefore they do not have any limits or ends except limits established by inefficient societies.

In the conclusion we ask reader’s kind permission to step aside a little from our purely theoretical perspective and bring a more prosaic practical example. Reading various popular science fiction books or watching science fiction movies written and filmed twenty-thirty-forty years ago, one could not help but notice them always drawing a picture of the end of twentieth century with people traveling to other planets, meeting extraterrestrial civilizations, being surrounded everywhere by robots, being spared from any toiling and annoying work, just thinking, engineering and discovering. None of these is happening and we do not see them happening in the near future. Why? We are leaving this to reader’s judgment.