Valcorba, or the sentence the left passes on itself
Paradoxically, those who pompously preach about the exploitation of man by man are the very ones who created the most perfect system of human exploitation: totalitarianism. And they exported it with remarkable success.
It is a package of measures that never fails.
It carries the perfect poison, hatred toward the successful, the deserving, the creative, the ones who multiply resources for society.
It promotes every kind of aberration against morality, ethics and the general abstract rule.
It succeeds in sabotaging every attempt to grow the economy, expand employment and raise people out of poverty.
If the Broad Front’s program were fully applied, it would unquestionably generate a perfect form of state totalitarianism.
It takes the irony of egalitarianism to the extreme of full redistribution of wealth in Uruguay.
If applied, we would enter the scenario economist Martín Vallcorba has called financially impossible. It creates a distant and unrealizable expectation, always postponed to a mythical moment when conditions will magically appear.
In that parallel universe, the country would become a piece of conceptual art, where the economy has been sacrificed on the altar of absolute equality that never exists in any socialist country.
There are always insiders and outsiders. Or better said, trained insiders. People skilled at quietly plundering the future until society has been slowly cooked.
Wilde said that only those who are financially independent can afford to have principles.
In a Uruguay of total redistribution, once individual financial independence disappears, principles become the property of the State and of those who control it.
By decree, all personal resources would be equalized. Ration cards would become the new currency of everyday life.
Envy would disappear. So would admiration.
No one would want to be the best surgeon if the State rewards him the same as the one who just watches the grass grow.
Uruguay would become one giant social club of an oppressed class where everyone wears the same sleeveless shirt, drinks the same mate and nobody stands out.
Because standing out would be a crime against the imposed national solidarity.
Vallcorba warns that the numbers do not add up without investment.
And capital, that shy and cowardly creature, would not wait to be redistributed. It would simply fly away to Paraguay or Miami before the first inspector rang the bell.
The result would be a magnificent welfare infrastructure used by new privileged elites but without any engine to turn the lights on.
It would be like having a ticket to the opera in a theater where the musicians sold their instruments to pay the bus fare.
The State would not administer anymore. It would curate the lives of citizens declared incapable.
An army of bureaucrats would be needed just to redistribute each peso, until half the population watches what the other half no longer produces.
In the end there would be no wealth left to distribute, only poverty evenly managed.
Uruguay would be the most equal country in the world, with the equality of passengers on a sinking ship. Everyone in the same class. Everyone drowning.
If Vallcorba’s impossible program were applied, Uruguay would be aesthetically fascinating and economically nonexistent.
We would have solved poverty by eliminating the possibility of wealth.