Any Economics 101 course could have told you that this would happen. As you artificially increase the price of something, fewer quantities of that good will be purchased. If you raise the price of milk, people will buy fewer gallons of milk. If you raise the price of televisions, people will buy fewer tv's. If you raise the price of labor, employers will buy less labor. In other words, unemployment will result. Yet, people still vote for increases to the minimum wage.
What does this tell us?
It tells us something very important. It is direct evidence that the political motivation of most people is something other than economics. In other words, economics is NOT the primary driver of people's political decisions. Rather, morality drives political decisions. If policies like artificially increasing the cost of labor are to be changed, you need to challenge the moral root that drives them.
It tells us something very important. It is direct evidence that the political motivation of most people is something other than economics. In other words, economics is NOT the primary driver of people's political decisions. Rather, morality drives political decisions. If policies like artificially increasing the cost of labor are to be changed, you need to challenge the moral root that drives them.
Look at Medicare or Obamacare or social security. People KNOW these are economically destructive, but they still vote for them; they still support them BECAUSE they hold them as a MORAL ideal. If you want to change these economically destructive policies you have to challenge them at their moral root.
To challenge the prevailing moral code you must first be able to state clearly that your life belongs to you (the morality of egoism). This is a moral code that is congruent with the requirements of human life. What is currently held, unchallenged, is the premise that your life belongs to others and that your moral duty is to serve others (the morality of altruism). So long as altruism is held unopposed, political policies that are destructive to human life will continue.
The two videos below both really drive home this point. Check them out:
Yaron Brook's lecture at Clemson:
Leonard Peikoff's lecture on the Philosophy of Objectivism:
