Yes, it’s scarcity—the thing politicians are incapable of grasping—that’s at work in Donald Trump’s thinking. “No Wonder The Pols Think Businessman Trump’s Crazy; He Understands Scarcity,” now on The Unz Review, argues that Donald J. Trump’s Muslim moratorium is rooted in an aversion, so natural to a business man, to squandering scarce resources, money or manpower.
“… Good businessmen are programmed differently than politicians. As a tremendously gifted entrepreneur, Trump is averse to squandering scarce resources, money or manpower.
By contrast, politicians do not understand the natural economic reality of scarcity. They control the production of money for their promiscuous purposes, and they exert power over millions of interchangeable people in their territorial jurisdiction.
To a politician, 14 lives in 322 million is a small price to pay for “our freedoms.” Trump’s political rivals look at the price exacted by a Muslim like Syed Farook and his bride in the aggregate. Fourteen dead is not a steep price to pay for unfettered immigration from Islamic countries, peddled politically as “our values,” “our tolerance,” “our greatness.” This callous calculus is second nature to politicians like Lindsey Graham or Darth Vader Cheney. …
Not to Trump. “This must stop. We can’t have this,” he roared.
See, statistics are funny things. Insignificant probabilities, in this case an attack on each one of us, are immaterial unless they happen to YOU or ME. It is this calculus that politicians peddle. They rely on the fact that we’ll adopt their sloganeering because each one of us is unlikely to die by Muslim.
But to do nothing stateside, as Trump’s rivals imply, is to accept that lives lost are, in the grand scheme, insignificant.
The opposite is true for Trump. Taking losses offends his sensibilities. Trump, the consummate businessman, abhors and is angered by the preventable squandering of scarce assets: American lives. (Yes, Trump is an America Firster.) The death of a few Americans pains Mr. Trump, something that cannot be said about Obama, Hillary, Bernie or any of the insider GOPers.
How can you tell? The politicians – Rubio, Ryan – offer up platitudes; political niceties to excite the asses in the anchor’s chair. They propose nothing to stop the slaughter, stateside. Instead, they demand a leap of faith – that you believe dropping “daisy cutters” on Muslims in the Middle East (only on the bad ones, naturally) will reduce the danger to Americans at home.
The instincts of private enterprise and politics – never the twain shall meet. Private-enterprise driven considerations are aimed at conserving, not squandering, scarce resources. If it loses an asset, the Trump Organization hurts.
Read the rest. “No Wonder The Pols Think Businessman Trump’s Crazy; He Understands Scarcity” is now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.