Reading: "The God Of The Machine" (EDIT)

So, a few weeks ago I ran across a thing at the Cato Organization on the founders of Libertarianism. While I was not too surprised to learn that Ayn Rand was one of them, I was more than a little surprised to see that all three were women. Surprised, because I thought I'd've heard of that by now...*

The other two women were Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane--daughter, by the way, of Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House On The Prarie fame.

So, I've been reading Isabell Paterson's The God Of The Machine. (Available through the King County Library; Lane's The Discovery of Freedom is not.)

Can be hard reading at times. Paterson is the first author I know of who systematically describes cultures, economies and governments, in engineering terms. And means it: This is not a metaphor to her.

Anyway, an excerpt from CHAPTER XV: The Fatal Amendments. (Discussing the effects on Amendments to the Constitution subsequent to the Bill of Rights. I skip XI-XV, and go directly to XVI...)

It was forty years before the decomposition of the bases became fully apparent; but it made the next attack possible, when a national function was nullified, by the income tax amendment. Previously no direct or personal tax could be laid except in proportion to the population. Then the action would be equated in every voter and representative. If a tax were proposed, each would know that he must pay a proportionate share; while if any region were to receive an extra share in expenditure (as in river or harbor works, etc.), its influence would be greatly outweighed by that of the other areas. Mass inertia is the stabilizing function 5 it inheres in any ponderable material; but it is best understood when it is supplied separately, as in ballast. The weight (gravity) is the power j its use is in a constant relation to a center of gravity. When the interest of every voter must be practically the same, the center of gravity was a constant even though the particles of ballast were mobile. But when the Federal government could mulct a wealthy state in taxes disproportionate to the population, to buy out a poor state by expenditures disproportionate to the population, the equation vanished. The mass-inertia veto was lost. (The weight, the interest, thereafter took effect in unbalance, as uncompartmented liquid ballast surging from side to side, dislocated mass.)

Probably the majority of people had no comprehension of these altered relations. They thought of it in simple terms of taxing the rich, perhaps with a vague infantile further expectation that the proceeds would be "given to the poor." Money obtained from the rich in any form except wages is never given to the poor. If it is taken by an ordinary hold-up man, it goes to the hold-up man. If it is taken by a philanthropic organization, it goes to the organization. If it is taken by the government, it goes to the politicians. Neither does increased taxation of the rich lower the rate of taxation on the poor; it is bound to cause an increase in all taxation, reaching down inchmeal until it expropriates a portion, not merely of the last dollar of a poor man, but of the first dollar he can earn. The tax will have to be paid before he can even touch his earnings. The present tax on wages, accurately described as "the Social Security swindle," could not have been imposed under the original Constitution; it is validated only by the income tax amendment. There is no means by which "the rich" can be taxed without ultimately taxing "the poor" far more heavily. And one tax tends to increase all other taxes, instead of lessening them, because tax expenditure goes into things which require upkeep and yield no return (public buildings and political jobs). Kinetic energy has been converted into static forms, which then necessitate the diversion of more kinetic energy to carry the dead-load.

(All emphasis added by me.)

*Although, considering the way feminists ignore or participate in media attacks on Sarah Palin, I should have learned that it is NOT about "sisterhood."