I might as well have slammed my head in a car door

Honest to god, I think I lost brain cells today. Not because of any head trauma, and not because of any tumors or anything, but simply because of what I hear people say.

I was in my Uzbek class, and we were on break. In a four-hour class, you need breaks every hour so your head doesn't explode. Anyhow, somehow we were talking about electoral politics. Actually, other people were talking about electoral politics because I don't converse about politics anymore. You can be damn sure I'll write about politics, but I'm steering clear of talking about that shit from here on out.

They were saying how in some states, all the people outside the major city vote Republican, and the only reason it's a close race in these states is because the cities are almost entirely Democrat. Granted. Any political science student would know this. But then, this one girl in my class decides to add her two cents. She affirms what they were talking about initially, saying that "Oh yeah, in Michigan, eeeeveryone outside Detroit is Republican, [paraphrasing] but Detroit is all Democrat so it's always a tight race. That totally doesn't represent the whole state though!"

People in Detroit live in Michigan. People in SomeplaceElse, Michigan... live in Michigan. If the majority of people in Michigan vote Democrat, even though the Republicans cover most of the geographical area, that's not fair??? Because it's not fair that there are lots of people in Detroit, and they are almost entirely Democrat? THE MAJORITY of people in Michigan vote Democratic, so that DOES represent the entire state, you baked good!

So what she's saying, I say to myself, is that since Detroit is a very small area, and the rest of Michigan is very large, we should weight the voting system to favor those who live in the country and occupy more geographical area? Last time I checked, that was feudalism. So congratulations, girl in my Uzbek class, you want feudalism.

And you know? That wasn't... WASN'T... the dumbest thing I heard yesterday.

I was at Wendy's. Because I had 0.26 cents left in my checking account without any prospects of forthcoming relief. I'm standing in line, looking at the menu despite knowing way in advance what I was getting, and I hear some talk ahead of me in line about "haves" and "have nots." There is an older, professorial-looking guy, and a younger, student-looking guy, waiting for their food at the counter.

The younger guy is getting all hot-headed about how 10% of the world's population controls 90% of the world's wealth. Oddly enough, the old guy agrees with him. That's fine, I say to myself, I mean, people can believe whatever they want, even if they are goddamned pinkos (proper plural spelling of pinko?). But then, he starts talking about wealth redistribution. This is not cool.The studenty guy is saying how we should "redistribute all the wealth." Then the professory guy chimes in and spouts off some good old fashoined Marxism. "To each according to his need and from each according to his ability, is what I say."

First of all, no... that's what Marx said. Second of all, you're an idiot (I'll return to this point later).

So next, the student says "We should just redistribute all the wealth... then we'd all have what, like 10 million dollars? That's real democracy." At this point, I'm thinking, what a day this has been.

"That's real democracy..." I don't think I need to really elaborate on my feelings upon hearing this. You are all smart enough to realize what a dumb pig shit this guy was. And he was totally serious. No joking around, completely and utterly sincere.

It got me thinking along my usual anti-communist streak, and other than it's impossible, I came to another conclusion about the whole "to each, from each, blah blah blah" argument. The thing is that need is involuntary and using one's ability is totally voluntary. Let's put it in simple terms. If x is the quantity of goods and services the population actually supplies (not the amount they are able to supply), and y is the quantity of goods and services a person absolutely must have in order to survive, then x must be greater than or equal to y in order for people to continue, you know, existing. Therein lies the problem though. People aren't going to voluntarily work themselves to their full potential for the good of everyone else. So that amount of goods and services created by people using their ability is going to be too low, and people are going to start killing each other and eating babies and such.

Just look at the Soviet Union. People were eating babies all over the place. Well, not really... but the point is that in the USSR, people "used their ability" enough to get their bosses off their backs, and their bosses did the same, all the way on up. It's all a proverbial house of cards because people don't have any motivation to use or cultivate their abilities.