Fascinated by how the behavior of the people who took 3 pieces of pizza at a pizza party

 Posted by a FB friend:

Transcript: Fascinated by how the behavior of the people who took 3 pieces of pizza at a pizza party because they thought it would run out and the people who took 1 piece for the exact same reason is such a perfect encapsulation of American beliefs about community.

Apparently this person is making a statement about greedy rich people taking more than their fair share of the nation's wealth, which means others, the poor, are deprived of what they are owed. And this has something to do with community, and that community (communism?) is violated by people who take too much.

The Left seems particularly bad at constructing analogies, mostly because they build on false premises. An analogy only works when the underlying assumptions are true.

In this case, there are glaring fundamental problems. 

• The writer cannot know why these people made their pizza choices.
• The writer thinks the pizza supply is limited. He is wrong.
• The writer thinks people are taking pizza, but they actually paid for it.
• The community is not impacted in any way by people who have a lot of pizza

Leftists love to make moral judgments about the rich. The rich are greedy, they are taking what does not belong to them, they're trying to screw the little guy. This is purposeful, a deliberate technique that traces back to Marx. Marxism seeks to sow discontent among the "lower class," to make them envious, discontented, and ultimately revolutionary. This is the rising up of the proletariat against the bourgeois. The Left needs a ever-growing group of angry people who think they're being cheated, and they use all sorts of agitprop to achieve this. Hard working, happy people who are making a life for themselves are obstacles to revolution.

This envy and hatred is predicated on a lie. They view the economy as a closed system, where people with a lot of money are depriving others or are stealing from the poor. Because they think being rich is the cause of poverty, they view it as their duty to determine who has too much money, and return that money its rightful owners, the poor.

This is where government comes in. the revolution requires coercive power to achieve these goals. Leftists/Marxists invoke the power of government in order to change outcomes, taking the "excess" and giving it to others. Thus, money is distributed according to who they think needs it, not according those who earned it and therefore who it belongs to. 

The economy is not a closed system, however. New wealth is being created all the time, so the pizza is expanding. This means that someone who has a lot of money has no impact whatsoever on someone who doesn't. Therefore the poor cannot blame the rich for their plight; they are forced to take personal responsibility for their own lives. The Left hates personal responsibility, their entire world view is predicated on blaming others.

Furthering the lie, the Left would never admit that their redistributive goals won't work and have never worked. Redistribution creates more poverty by making people dependent on handouts. This means the government destroys the incentive to work, save, and move up in society. The nuclear family is imperiled, as the parents as providers are pushed aside by the government as provider. The father as provider is unnecessary, and thus more and more children grow up in fatherless homes.

In addition, the rich simply do not possess enough wealth (total worth of all the billionaires in the US is $4.18 trillion, which is about $18,000 for every person in the US) to affect the economy. They don't even have enough money to fund the government for a year.

The Left compounds the lie by imputing universal virtue to the poor at the same time they impute universal evilness to the rich. There are only two kinds of people, the evil greedy oppressive rich, and the noble, virtuous poor. It's a stereotype, pushed as far and as hard as it will go. It's trumpeted from the media, academia, the media. It's in every TV show, on every news network, and in every classroom. It's presumed true, but never documented.

People are poor for a reason. Some have had bad luck or a financial tragedy. Others are working their way up. And still others have made and continue to make bad choices. And finally, there are some who don't have the skills, talent, or even desire to make a way for themselves in life. 

The rich for the most part have earned their wealth. They have a great idea and start a business, they work hard and take risks, they position themselves to take advantage of trends, etc. They are smart with their money. The save and invest. Yes, some are greedy and cheated, but most did not. Some inherited their wealth but most did not. Generally, they simply possess the skill and timing and drive to succeed that others do not.

Someone once said that if the government confiscated the total wealth of everyone, and divided it up evenly, within a few years the rich would be rich again, and the poor would be poor again. We don't know if this is entirely true, but the principle is sound. People who are poor largely are that way because of the life choices they make.

So what would the Left do about the pizza problem?

• There needs to be someone in charge of determining how much pizza each person gets. Perhaps we could call this person Big Brother.
• The pizza needs to be made by a central kitchen, with all the toppings the same on every pizza. This means there might not be any sauce on any of the pizzas. 
• Every pizza will taste equally bad.
• Every person's home ought to be checked for excess pizza. That pizza needs to be seized. It will likely be thrown away.
• People who take too much pizza need to be re-educated.