Website owner: James Miller
Power to the Parasites
The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 141 - 143
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Power to the Parasites
IT MAY BE A LANDMARK IN THE HISTORY of American business—and of American society—if Dow Corning's filing for bankruptcy is the beginning of the end for this corporation. Lawsuits for huge damages against the company for its silicon breast implants are behind this latest development.
It is not that these implants have been proven to cause medical problems. Rather, it has been unnecessary to prove anything in order to get cases put before juries who are free to hand out other people's money in whatever amounts strike their fancy, in response to whatever appeals the plaintiff's lawyers make.
Scientific study after scientific study has failed to turn up evidence to substantiate the claims made by those suing Dow Corning over breast implants. Meanwhile, back in the courts, judges and juries are handing out multimillion dollar awards in damages.
The fate of one corporation is not a major national issue but what it implies about our whole system of justice has grim implications for the future of this country. As a critic said, more than half a century ago, "Law has lost its soul and become jungle." That is even more true today.
The media have a heavy responsibility in all this. Their willingness to serve as a megaphone for all sorts of politically correct groups and movements has sent them off and running like a pack of hounds after any business accused of anything by the radical feminists, the environmentalists, or other favorites of the anointed.
The very idea that the burden of proof is on the party who makes a legal charge has gone out the window as far as whole categories of charges are concerned. This is nowhere more true than in so-called "women's issues" but it is also true in racial issues, environmental issues and other crusades pushed by strident activists.
More than individual injustices are involved. A whole class of parasites has been created and sanctified, ranging from the panhandlers in the streets to the lawyers in the suites. You can believe that Dow Corning will not be the last of their prey.
All over this country, doctors, local governments, corporations, universities, and many others are being targeted for lawsuits by attorneys on the prowl wherever there is money to be had. Anyone with a "deep pocket" is fair game. And many of these deep pockets are nothing more than a lot of much shallower pockets of taxpayers and stockholders.
Two centuries ago, British statesman Edmund Burke warned of the dangers to any society that promotes the idea that some of its citizens are the natural prey of others. Yet that is not only what the litigation explosion is all about. It is what all the political talk of "the rich" is all about.
This is the age of the complaining classes, whether they are lawyers, community activists, radical feminists, race hustlers, or other squeaking wheels looking for oil.
No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce. On the contrary, the growth of a large parasitic class marked the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the collapse of Spain from the heights of its golden age.
Despite Karl Marx's use of the term "proletariat" to describe the working class, the Roman proletariat was not so much a working class as an underclass supported by government handouts. But the parasites in ancient Rome also included a large and growing bureaucracy. The Byzantine Empire and later the Ottoman Empire likewise developed over the centuries bureaucracies so suffocating and corrupt as to bring their eras of glory to an end.
More than a thousand years after the collapse of Rome, Spain used the wealth it extracted from its vast empire to support growing numbers of Spaniards in idleness. Not only were vagabonds begging everywhere, there were also large numbers of educated parasites with no skills to use to add to the country's output but with big ideas about how that its wealth ought to be spent.
No small part of our social problems today come from miseducated degree-holders who have nothing to contribute to the wealth of the society but who are full of demands and indignation — and resentment of those who are producing.
A study of the decline of great societies concluded that "disappearances of empires due to catastrophes have been extremely rare in history." Rather, they slowly but steadily corrode and crumble from within. There is usually "a growing amount of wealth pumped by the State from the economy," while "extravagances of fashion and license" develop among the people. Does this sound uncomfortably similar to what we see around us today?
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12 June 2024
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