The news out of Cuba and South Africa has been pretty gruesome this last week, what with anti-regime riots in Cuba and general looting in the ANC’s South Africa.

But Communist Cuba has been for over half a century the darling of our socialist friends, and South Africa has been the darling of our anti-racist friends. How could it be that these darling regimes are staring into the abyss, with no food and no medicines when all the good people were agreed that they were the wave of the future?

It all makes sense when you accept my maxim that all government is force plus loot and plunder.

But, I realized, my maxim violates the Einstein principle to make things as simple as possible but no simpler. It seems to me that there is a difference between the loot and plunder practiced by our beloved ruling class here in the USA and the loot and plunder practiced by the Castro family. The key question is who gets a share of the loot and plunder. Rather obviously, in Cuba, very few people get to share in the loot. Beyond the Castro family, I suppose that the drug lords in and out of the Cuban armed forces need to be included in the handout. In South Africa, it seems that the ANC politicians are in cahoots with the billionaires. In Chávez’s Venezuela, it has been necessary to deal in the armed forces, although we are told that “Children of Venezuela’s elite including ex-leader Hugo Chavez’s daughter flaunt wealth.”

But what about the US? It seems to me that the recipients of loot and plunder are more broadly based than in the avowedly socialist countries. Here the recipients of loot and plunder seem to include the corporate elite, the politicians and their families, the educated class, and the vote-bank oppressed peoples. Here the Average Joe still gets his Social Security and the Average Jane still gets her Medicare, but that may change, because Whiteness.

So let us categorize the various socialist systems of loot and plunder.

Stalinist Communism. Only the ruler himself gets the loot, and what he wants is T-34 tanks. Even the ruler’s family members are lucky to get a share.

Latin-American Communism. The ruler and his family get the loot. Others in the “ruling clique” may share if they behave themselves.

Tribal Communism. The members of the ruler’s tribe get to share in the loot. Others need not apply, unless they get desperate.

Chinese Communism. All members of the “ruling clique,” understood as the CCP, get to share in the loot. Factory Girls, not so much.

Democratic Socialism. All members of the ruling class get loot and plunder, and if there is anything left over, the constituents of Bernie Sanders in Vermont and AOC in New York City get free health care.

Viking Socialism. Head over to Britland in the Autumn. Share out the grain and silver and women and slaves among the warriors.

Enough of the socialists: what about us?

Whiteness Countries. The “ruling clique” gets first dibs at the loot, but all members of the educated ruling class get their share, from woke corporations to woke academicians to green energy capitalists to climate-change scientists to grant-fed activists. Non-whites are much fussed over, but the rulers usually Make Things Worse for them. Peasants better get vaccinated, or else.

By “ruling clique” I mean, after Gaetano Mosca, those “who monopolize the management of the state and occupy the more important offices.”  By “educated ruling class” I mean the ruling class in general, the equivalent of an army’s officer corps.

Mosca notes, darkly, that the “ruling clique” is replaceable, but the second tier of the ruling class is not. And that shows how important all the woke professors and CRT teachers, the subalterns of the ruling class, are to our “ruling clique.”

But enough of this squalid world of power and loot and plunder and Making Things Worse. There is another place, way up high / And the dreams you dream of really do come true. Call it the

Over-the-Rainbow Country. All members of society busy themselves making products and give services that other people want to buy, and they accept the market’s valuation of the product of their labor and their creative ideas and, brimming with generosity, they voluntarily help those unable to help themselves, and even chuck a buck or two at people that won’t help themselves.

Loot? Plunder? Reparations? Why would anyone want to elect a politician to take stuff from other people, be they ever so crabby and bigoted? This after all is America, the city on a hill. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Until the billionaires take us to Mars. Or the climate changes.

See, that’s the whole point of limited government. If government is loot and plunder, then the less of it the better.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

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