“You didn’t build that” and “The private sector is doing fine.”

In the furor over Obama’s put-down of private enterprise in his infamous “you didn’t build that” comment in Richmond, I have not seen anyone making the connection to a previous comment about the private sector as he answered a question about the economy: "The private sector is doing fine." That comment was quickly forgotten as the media did it's usual job of "moving on." Both comments together open a window into the Obama mind. His experience with the private sector is very, very limited. Outside of a brief job working for a newsletter publisher, his only contact with the private sector is either the corrupt businessmen of Chicago like Tony Rezko, or the wealthy titans of industry whom he befriended in his fundraisers.

When Obama thinks about “private industry” is he really thinking of the woman owner of a restaurant, or is he thinking of his ardent supporters like billionaires like George Soros and Warren Buffet or the head of his Jobs Council, Jeff Immelt – the chairman of GE? It is entirely likely that to Obama, “private industry” is personified in men like Immelt, Buffet, Soros, the Hollywood moguls and the investment bankers who backed his presidential bid. And you know what? These guys are doing fine. They would do fine in any economy. Unlike the rest of America, a million dollars is a rounding error when assessing their net worth.

Something else that these people have in common: they didn’t build that. People like Immelt inherited a job in a global conglomerate he didn’t build. Buffet amasses his wealth by buying companies other people founded, often buying them from heirs who don’t want to run the businesses their parents founded. Soros is truly a vulture, picking at the bones of dying economies.

Obama is a product of the Left who despise capitalism believing it to be parasitic and an exploiter of labor. What’s interesting is that Obama has surrounded himself with the very crony capitalists who fatten off their ability to influence government for their benefit at the expense of the rest of society. He sees that and knows that they didn’t build the source of their wealth and that they’re doing fine.

In a display of cynicism that is truly breathtaking he’s trying to form a coalition of crony capitalists and the underclass. A coalition of people who live off the government dole and those capitalists who didn't build what they control and who are doing fine thanks to their crony in the White House. The objective is electoral victory at the expense of the broad middle class.

Why does this remind me of this story from Genesis?

Joseph and the Famine

There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine. Joseph collected all the money that was to be found in Egypt and Canaan in payment for the grain they were buying, and he brought it to Pharaoh’s palace. When the money of the people of Egypt and Canaan was gone, all Egypt came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? Our money is all gone.”

“Then bring your livestock, ” said Joseph. “I will sell you food in exchange for your livestock, since your money is gone. ”

So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and he gave them food in exchange for their horses, their sheep and goats, their cattle and donkeys. And he brought them through that year with food in exchange for all their livestock.

When that year was over, they came to him the following year and said, “We cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except our bodies and our land. Why should we perish before your eyes —we and our land as well? Buy us and our land in exchange for food, and we with our land will be in bondage to Pharaoh. Give us seed so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate.”

So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh’s, and Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other. However, he did not buy the land of the priests, because they received a regular allotment from Pharaoh and had food enough from the allotment Pharaoh gave them. That is why they did not sell their land.

Joseph said to the people, “Now that I have bought you and your land today for Pharaoh, here is seed for you so you can plant the ground. But when the crop comes in, give a fifth of it to Pharaoh. The other four-fifths you may keep as seed for the fields and as food for yourselves and your households and your children.”

“You have saved our lives,” they said. “May we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh.”

So Joseph established it as a law concerning land in Egypt—still in force today—that a fifth of the produce belongs to Pharaoh. It was only the land of the priests that did not become Pharaoh’s.

In the context of a business model that only functions because of heavy-handed state intervention, I have real distaste for the idea the profit might be involved. Using eminent domain to rob mortgage holders of their rights would be bad enough if the government were to assume the restructured mortgage on the seized property. Doing and letting some other business profit is called corruption, and is the kind of thing that goes on in the kleptocracies of the third world.

(I object so much to business models that only work through state-intervention that besides objecting to this, and to bailouts, I'm a copyright and patent minimalist.)

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