I saw today’s Mises article (http://mises.org/daily/4522/Defending-the-Slumlord).
I remembered Tom Woods’ video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIVEdMyv2Tg).
And I thought, “Oh, I have to do this.”
This is a parody of Walter Block (or is it some humor directed to Tom Woods?), enjoy.
Defending the (Libertarian) Moocher
by Balter Wlock
To many people, the moocher, represented by such online memes such as “Scumbag Steve” represents an apprenhensible ideal of virtue. Known for a sense of entitlement to all of the world’s goods, and consistently deriding the quality of goods as he derides the use of any object he happens to get his grubby hands on. The moocher is even criticized in libertarian circles [1], where if an individual had any hope of an ethical reapproachment, it would at least be among them.
A moocher is someone who, via various means of social or personal annoyance–typically through direct face contact social pressure–will demand that any good or service another individual has be given to him, in particular, for free. The charge is that this is a horrible misconduct of the highest disrespect, that this individual has no idea to the value of the good or service he demands. He is abusing the benevolence and social welfare of those of a higher aptitude.
However, it should be first recognized that the moocher applies no threat of physical violence. At most his vocal abilities may be deemed a petty annoyance, but the moocher does not force anyone to give the product to him. The moocher is simply doing what we all do at an open market bazaar–we hassle for the lowest price–and what is the lowest price? Zero. All the moocher really is, is simply an excellent haggler, which in a market society is hardly an individual of disreputable standard.
In fact, if the moocher is loosely defined enough, as it is likely to eventually be so by any store owner, we find that the ‘moochers’ of society are typically the progenerators of progress. A moocher simply becomes the class of individuals who consistently live in the margin of demanding ever lower and lower prices that provide an incentive for producers to reach such a class of individuals. It is these individuals that provide the consistent drive of society to supply an ever increasing supply of wealth for its scarce resources.
Moreover, the moocher is really only exercising his right to free speech. One may be annoyed with the grievances and petty social guilt-trips that the moocher places on others, but we are to be no more harrassed by this than by those whose opinions we happen to disagree with.
Perhaps the best reaction to the moocher’s completely honest admissions is the same reaction we might have to the grating experience we face on reaching a beggar for our money, that old adage, “Get a job!” Likewise, to the moocher–and in particular the libertarian moocher–we might say, “If you think you can do this at that price, be my guest.”
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIVEdMyv2Tg
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[125](because if this really was a Walter Block parody article, there’d be at least one hundred references)