This week Studley and I played in the foursome that won first place in a golf scramble. We won even though I was the worst golfer on the team and I don’t practice or excel as much as the good players but through the handicap rules we redistributed the wealth of our collective talents to serve the greater good. Other teams with better players were prevented from winning because they didn’t have a bad player. Karl Marx, the socialist philosopher who advocated communism, would be proud. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so grouchy if he had played golf.
The fallacy with the redistribution philosophy is that the best golfers play in scrambles to practice and to have fun. They also compete as individuals in tournaments where they have the potential and opportunity to earn millions of dollars because of their skills. They pay government income taxes on these earnings which are then used to fund education, build roads, and pay into a Social Security program that gives money to those who don’t work or golf as well. They also donate to charity and sponsor community events, which Marx never did. The winning golfers get to keep about half of their earned money. And, they deserve it.
The best golfers, like other successful entrepreneurs, have unique tenacity, talent, intelligence, and risk-taking ability to create and sustain their enterprises. They play by the rules that reward achievement, and they don’t expect free mulligans or trophies for everyone. If the current trend toward political correctness changes the game and decrees that all golfers will play par for the course, most of us will stay in the club house and drink gin and tonic cocktails.
One last comment before I go back to the golf course: Karl Marx, the avowed socialist who wanted a classless society and condemned capitalism, received his income from Friedrich Engels, a rich industrialist who paid Marx from the profits of his capitalistic factories. Comrade Marx was a fraud.
Today’s blog was inspired by a 2008 Snake River Valley Cabernet Sauvignon grown, produced and bottled locally by a capitalist company, Fraser Vineyard. I eagerly exchanged $24 for the bottle, and both consumer and seller are happy.
