Peanut Butter, Jelly, and Enemy Exterminations

Before you vote, consider this story:

You and I live on a desert island. You produce peanut butter and I produce jelly. We both enjoy eating our products, but we would really enjoy eating peanut butter and jelly. So, to increase total happiness, I take some of your peanut butter, mix it with my jelly, and have therefore increased the total happiness of society. Your loss of peanut butter has been vastly mitigated by my enjoying peanut butter and jelly. Your wealth has been spread. This is simple mathematics.

Now we are joined by a third person. In order to ensure full employment on the island, I give the third person a uniform and a badge (and a percentage of your peanut butter) to take your peanut butter whenever I choose. Because I have the positive right to your peanut butter (due to increased societal happiness), neither my officer nor I need to ask for your permission -- nor in any way do we need be grateful for your contribution. It is our entitlement and it is your obligation.

We are now joined by a fourth person. I turn my jelly business over to him -- and to sustain the island, my officer collects peanut butter and jelly and brings it to me.

A fifth person arrives and develops a method of making more jelly in less time. However, this is very dangerous for three reasons: First, the island itself has a right to not have its resources exploited. Secondly, what would people on other islands think of us if we were to consume so much jelly? And most importantly, a second jelly producer would harm the ability of the existing jelly producer to a fair wage. And so, my officer approaches the second producer and explains that, in order to guarantee the safety of his jelly, he needs an island license to conduct his business. And since the newcomer cannot prove that his jelly will always be safe to eat, he is denied a license.

A sixth person arrives from another island with a barrel of jelly. My officer turns him back to sea with his jelly. The possibility of dumping this jelly on our island would harm our only jelly producer, and must not be permitted. While I welcome free trade, it must also be fair trade. And this is most definitely not fair.

Thirty-four people then wash ashore, increasing the island's population to forty. The island's food producers attempt to hire them in exchange for a cup of food per day. However, this is worker exploitation, and my sense of economic justice demands that each worker instead be paid three cups of food per day. The producers then have the audacity to hire only half of the new residents at this fair wage, leaving the other half unemployed. To address this issue, I (and my uniformed officer) impose an additional fair tax on the richest 5% of the island's population, which happen to be the greedy and exploitative peanut-butter and jelly "producers" who in fact do nothing but reap unearned windfall profits on the backs of working people.

Sixty more people show up, and now there are 100 inhabitants on the island. These sixty are very poor, ill, and have not eaten in weeks. So, in order to protect them, I order the unionization of the island's 17 employees, which results in a labor contract mandating payment of six cups of food per day, 45 paid holidays, strictly-enforced job definitions, a no-layoff clause, and a just arbitration process to settle any grievances that might arise.

And I raise the top tax rate to 75% in order to pay for my expanded People's Police, comprised of the latest wave of migration.

For inexplicable reasons, the capitalists then reduce production. They are, quite clearly, traitors. And having been exposed as Enemies of The Island, they are set off on a raft to reeducation facilities -- wherever such facilities might happen to be.

At this point, the people are quite upset. They want a solution. They realize that our half-measures have not sufficed. So, in order to satisfy the cries of the people, The Island nationalizes and assumes direct control of all production of peanut butter and jelly. Half of the island's population now joyously works, and the other half performs police services. In the peanut fields, they gleefully sing, "Let's boast to the world about this year's bumper peanut harvest!"

An election is held, and 100% of the people elect me President for Life of the new Democratic People's Island Republic.

The other islands are so impressed with our success that they cheer the arrival of the DPIR's People's Police to liberate them as well.

As the chains of oppression are broken on each island, the DPIRPP listens to the working class as they identify members of the exploitative class: They, and their families, are shown the only justice that is fitting for such parasites.

As proof of our success, there is never again any dissent, anywhere. All infections have been eradicated.

***

The above tale is a fiction of what can happen to several hundred people. It is not what I would personally want to see. Instead, I yearn for this to happen to millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people.

Imagine: Our entire planet, in unity, striving for this permanent and irreversible state of justice. The leaders shall guide with their wisdom, the workers shall endlessly toil for all, and our enemies -- millions and millions of enemies -- shall be silenced forever. And yes, I do mean silenced by death -- for total extermination is the only permanent silence.

To interfere with the will of the people is to label oneself as an enemy of humanity. And there can be no mercy for enemies of humanity.

Please remember this when deciding who to vote for.

Unfortunately, we lack a candidate who can be so candid with us. Instead, we must strive for second-best. Listen to them carefully, and see whose vernacular comes closest to mimicking the above story.

That is who you should want as your leader.

God DAMN Amerikkka!

Cross-posted at The People's Cube