{"id":529,"date":"2017-12-12T03:46:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T03:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/?p=529"},"modified":"2017-12-12T03:46:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T03:46:26","slug":"who-is-john-locke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/2017\/12\/12\/who-is-john-locke\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is John Locke?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, we live in a modern and capitalist world. Upon the shoulders of extraordinary individuals and economic elites, society has blossomed with its many bountiful opportunities. Imagine my shock when I had opened the news this morning, only to find John Locke himself propose the preposterous idea that with a modernized, capitalist world comes the need to restrict and tame the wild beast of capitalism. <\/span><\/p>\n

How absolutely absurd. He claims that \u201cby failing to provide a sufficient wage, people become incapable of obtaining those three essential rights of [life, liberty, and property].\u201d If he were to open his eyes and realize the endless opportunities that lie in wait if one only possesses the capacity and intellect to seize it, then he would not claim such a thing. How must it be the government\u2019s responsibility to control and pander to the people\u2019s need as if we were children instead of the reasoned beings that we are? I suppose he must want to grant the government power to further their holds on this country. If they were to dictate how much the value of labor of on a whim based on some flimsy altruistic moral, then it is only a slippery slope away from them making some might moral claim to restrict our freedoms \u201cfor the greater good\u201d of our the nation or even ourselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

He even goes as far as to garner the sympathy of the reader by saying that \u201can individual must work 92 hours a week in order to afford a one bedroom apartment in California at minimum wage.\u201d There is great liberty and choice in that. No one has forced that individual to stay in California and work at that particular job. If it\u2019s too difficult and seeming unreasonable, then quit and move away. Once the demand for that job goes down, then by basic economic processes, the state or the boss will realize that their wage is unsatisfactory. By simply going elsewhere for a job, the individual satisfies supply and demand, and there is no need for a higher tax in order to give more money to those with no skill simply because we feel bad that they are \u201cforced\u201d to suffer through a long job to survive. <\/span><\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said, \u201cthe minimum wage is a tax on the successful. The market will naturally dictate the minimum wage without the government stepping in to determine arbitrary limits.\u201d One only needs to look at obviously economic consequence to see why raising the minimum wage is an absurd idea. Tell me, John Locke, how raising the minimum wage will help the young adult when he loses his job because he is too unskilled to be hired for such a low wage. \u201cThe artificially high wages forced on the economy by compulsory unionism imposed economic hardships on other groups such as non-union works and on unskilled labor which is eventually squeezed out of the market.\u201d What will the benefit of hiring teenagers over the usage of automation in today\u2019s world? What does the immigrant do when he\u2019s excluded from the market because the government will not allow him to sell the worth of his skills that he needs to survive? Raising the minimum wage is a twisted, cruel lie that panders to our idea of noble morality through the guise of altruism in order to destroy us on an economic level. <\/span><\/p>\n

To you, John Locke, I must ask: who is John Galt? We are. <\/span><\/p>\n

But you, John Locke, who are you?<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/2017\/09\/17\/the-worth-of-labor\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we live in a modern and capitalist world. Upon the shoulders of extraordinary individuals and economic elites, society has blossomed with its many bountiful opportunities. Imagine my shock when I had opened the news this morning, only to find … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-locke","category-rand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":531,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/liberrimus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}