This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit jonathanroseland.substack.com

I live in the bustling center of a European capital city. It’s wintertime and there’s constantly ice and snow on the sidewalk, it’s quite an inconvenience. Every time I shuffle along the slippery sidewalks I have the same thought…

Why the hell doesn’t the government give the refugees (who are cared for at the taxpayers’ expense) shovels and have them clear the sidewalks?

* The refugees are able-bodied guys just sitting around bored in their centers.

* It would engender goodwill towards the refugees because everybody would see them being helpful.

* The refugees could probably use the exercise.

* It would make life a whole lot easier for the people slipping and sliding on the pavement.

It’s such a bloody obvious solution to a couple of different problems, yet the government doesn’t do it. I’m not saying that the government should enslave the refugees to do manual labor, but I bet if they just asked them nicely a lot of them would be happy to pick up a snow shovel and make life a little less slippery for the European taxpayers providing for them.

It would not require any great organization, planning, or management — just a couple dozen shovels and a bus to bring the guys downtown. This is a quintessential example of the government’s profound incompetence and wastefulness when it comes to managing resources.

Statism

If the government can’t even do something as obvious as having the refugees shovel the snow it really is a tremendous Indiana Jones stepping out into the abyss leap of faith to think that the government could effectively and honestly re-distribute resources to solve the tremendous challenge of technological unemployment.

This great undeserved faith that people put in the government is what we call statism. Karl Marx said that "religion was the opium of the foolish masses," but really Marxism is the opium of foolish intellectuals.