Karl Marx and Fat People

Recently, a Canadian court ordered Canada's airlines to provide two seats to obese passengers for the price of one. This is Socialism gone mad and the triumph of Gramscian Marxism.

Whether he realised it or not, the judge was applying Marx's dictum, "From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs."

The obese has a need - the need of two seats. The airlines which has seats must provide one extra for him or her for free. This means that there is a transfer of resources from the shareholders of the airlines to fat people since revenue and profits will be lowered.

Or perhaps, the airlines can increase the airfares accordingly and pass on the increased cost to other slimmer passengers. Either way, it is a transfer of resources. How much the airlines can pass on to other passengers depends on the elasticity of demand for airline seats. If demand falls drastically, the airlines may have to absorb some or all of the costs.

This Marxist victory shows that in spite of massive defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Marxism is winning the war for cultural hegemony. This was a concept first proposed by Antonio Gramsci. Marxism can only triumph when Capitalism's cultural hegemony is destroyed and replaced by the Marxist one.

This court ruling is a victory for Marxist culture. Apparently the Canadian judge thought it was fair that others (be it the airlines or other passengers) must subsidize the needs of fat people. I don't know how the judge acquired this central piece of Marxist culture but it must be contested.

We need to show how unjust his ruling is. What his ruling boils down to is that those who are disciplined enough to eat sensibly and exercise must subsidize gluttons and sloths. This is unfair. How long more must virtue subsidize vice? By subsidizing gluttons, you are going to get more gluttons.

The more gluttons there are the more sick people there will be as obesity is linked to heart disease and other ailments. They soon won't be able to work and have to rely on public assistance. This means that the healthy people will have to work and pay higher taxes to subsidize those whose ill-health is largely due to their gluttony and indolence.

This is no laughing matter as obesity is a growing problem. Surveys estimate that 30% of Americans are obese. If airlines are compelled to give 3 out of 10 passengers free seats, then airline tickets will have to rise by as much as 43% to compensate for the loss of revenue.

James Madison once said, "'Government is instituted to protect property of every sort....This being the end of government....That is NOT a just government...nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has...is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest."

In this case, the Judge is seizing the property of slim people and giving it to fat people. Is that fair?

Let the Big 3 automakers go bust.

President-elect Barack Obama is in favor of bailing out the Big 3 car makers - Ford, GM and Chrysler. That comes as no surprise because the Union workers support the Democratic Party. They are his "customers" and politicians behave like entrepreneurs. That is why I call them "votrepreneurs".

One argument is that the US must save the the Big 3 or it will no longer have an auto industry. This is nonsense because Honda and Toyota are employing 113,000 workers in the US. If you include dealerships and spart parts suppliers, Toyota alone created 400,000 jobs in the US. Of course, if the Big 3 fail, then the US is left with foreign owned car companies.

One reason why the Big 3 are failing is that they are Unionized. The United Automobile Workers has demanded and got for its members generous pay packages including expensive health care benefits. Another reason is that the Big 3 are making cars that people no longer want to buy - like SUVs and trucks which guzzle fuel. Making things worse is the higher cost of fuel.

So why should the US taxpayer be made to shell out an estimated $50 billion to bail out the Big 3 so that Obama's voters can continue to earn high salaries to make cars that Americans do not want to buy? Once again, votrepreneurs must buy votes with taxpayers' money.

The benefits to the few UAW members are high while the cost to each individual taxpayer is low. So the votrepreneurs hope that the cost of the bail-out will not be noticed. In this way, inefficiently run companies survive making everybody on the whole poorer. This includes car workers in the long run.

Ironically, statistics show that non-Unionized workers are catching up and in some cases overtaken UAW members in pay and benefits. In its largest American plant, Toyota paid its workers in its Georgetown plant an average of $30 per hour as compared to UAW workers who got $27. In the long run, an efficiently run company is in every body's interest - including its assembly line workers.

Also a government bailout will likely come with strings attached. Some Congressional leaders insist that the price of a bailout includes that the Big 3 build environmental friendly cars so that they can satisfy their green voters. Perhaps, GM's Chevrolet Volt is for the purpose of giving the Congress the excuse for a bailout and not to make profit. GM's Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has acknowledged that they won't make money out of the car. Who is going to pay for the votrepreneur's desire to stay in office by keeping their green voters happy? Taxpayers of course.
But economic logic will be trumped by political logic as votreprenuers do the sums. The worse outcome would be for Obama to bail out the Big 3 while imposing trade restrictions on Japanese cars and using its clout to force the Big 3 to make cars that the public do not want.