Ayn Clouter's Blog

"SAW THE HEAVENS FILL WITH COMMERCE":
Some fuzzy-brained lefty polemicist from Porlock sent me an article from Our Noble Leader's home state, asking if I don't think this represents an unconscionable redistribution of wealth:

Businesses are shouldering a smaller share of Harris County's tax burden, leaving homeowners and residential property owners to pick up the slack. ... Figures from the state comptroller's office suggest a similar trend across the state.

Quite the contrary. I applaud efforts to shift the entire tax burden from business to what Leona called "the little people". Companies are your friends. I think the best description of how wonderful they are can be found by taking those famous words of Dr. Susan Calvin in that lefty sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov's collection I, Robot, and substituting "corporations" for all her gushing references to "robots":

There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. ... But you haven't worked with them, so you don't know them. They're a cleaner better breed than we are.

Corporations have another advantage over mere human beings. They are immortal. For most of us being part of a company is the closest we will ever get to lasting forever. Again this was expressed well, though unintentionally, by a pulp fiction pontificator, in this case in an interview with Ray Bradbury in Oriana Fallaci's If The Sun Dies. Asked why we should go to space, he said:

Don't let us forget this: that the Earth can die, explode, the Sun can go out, will go out. And if the Sun dies, if the Earth dies, if our race dies, then so will everything die that we have done up to that moment. Homer will die, Michelangelo will die, Galileo, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Einstein will die, all those will die who now are not dead because we are alive, we are thinking of them, we are carrying them within us.

That self-centered writer, whose most horrible vision of the future was a world where his own products were burnt (I will give him points for the reports that he resents Michael Moore's cribbing the title of that novel for his latest movie), misses the possibilities for all of us. To phrase it in his terms, if the Sun dies, but we do go to other stars, then Microsoft will still live, AT&T will survive, Exxon will continue, because corporations never die. They dwell among us as manifestations of Platonic perfection. Taxing them is worse than lese majesty; it should be seen as an act of hubris just short of lese divinity. A further quote from that same article is right on point:

Jim Robinson, chief appraiser of the Harris County Appraisal District, said the property tax burden has become "oppressive" to Harris County homeowners. "Quite frankly, from an overall viewpoint, the property tax is too high," he said. "But taxation is the price we pay to live in a free society and have the services we have."

No, you visionless hack, taxes are what YOU and other merely biological persons should pay, so that corporations can thrive. A price is something you pay voluntarily; taxes are what we make you pay. Remember that, as you look up in awe at those shining skyscrapers on the hill. Console yourselves as you pick their cotton, that you're footing the bill for legal persons who will outlive even the wildest dreams of the Pharaohs. Their freedom is your monument. Now stop carping and cough up to support them.