There’s something special about a news story that packs two lessons about the sinister activities of government and the gullible way some “reporters” write about it.
Take the absurd headline and article offered by Politico and its writer, Nicolas Camut:
“Spain approves paid menstrual leave, first country in Europe to do so”
It’s a headline that, to put it mildly, shields the reader from the truth. This is not an instance of companies needing “permission” to offer new paid leave arrangements. Business owners, employees, and the final employer – known as the consumer – can make those arrangements as they prefer, allowing choice, differentiation, productivity assessments, and economic and moral liberty.
The Spanish government did not “approve.” The Spanish government IMPOSED. The current occupants of those tax-funded government seats MANDATED to others that they must interact in the fashion that they, the politicians, command.
So, how is it that both the editors at “Politico” and “reporter” Camut fall into the trap of mistaking government force for some kind of beneficent blessing – an act to be cheerily colored by the verb “approve?”
The root of the error is the fact that both the Politico editorial department and Camut have tacitly embraced Karl Marx’s “David versus Goliath” depiction of trade.
In the Marxian view, the word “trade” is a mirage. In the Marxian view, the “owners of the means of production” force people to work for them, exploit the workers, and force consumers to buy their goods. Marxists – both those who explicitly call themselves that, and those who have obsequiously absorbed Marxist ideology and its perverse, self-negating, hatred of private property ownership – believe that a voluntary trade, or exchange of goods/services for payment of cash or other goods/services, is NOT a trade. Despite not being party to any of the exchanges, they claim the elite and arrogant power to tell others that their exchanges are “unfair” and “unacceptable.”
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And so they point to government – especially if they can get their hands on the coercive levers of government – to dictate how others can engage in their private exchanges/trades.
If this sounds incredibly aggressive and hubristic to you, well, you’re obviously not a Marxist. And you likely don’t work for Politico.
Writes Camut about this wondrous move by the politicians in Spain:
“The Spanish parliament on Thursday approved the creation of a sick leave for women suffering from incapacitating periods, becoming the first country in Europe to do so.
The new bill creates the possibility for women to call in sick ‘in case of incapacitating menstruation,’ the Spanish Congress said in a statement Thursday.”
Again, this is not “the creation of a sick leave for women…” and it doesn’t “create the possibility for women to call in sick…” regardless of the kind of troubles they might be experiencing during their periods.
It IMPOSES on other people – including employees – the mandate that employers must create special carve-outs for new “paid leave” arrangements with female employees.
Women already could add that to their negotiations, and, since employers compete with each other for good employees and for consumer interest, employers could agree or disagree based on the resultant pluses or minuses from such decisions, and consumers could see the price differences and find out about policies if they desired.
No one is being prevented from making these arrangements. Just like employees and employers can discuss the time to start the day, the lunch breaks, the pay, and other factors, so, too, can they discuss medical leave, paid or unpaid.
And by imposing their collectivist will, the politicians prevent this market experimentation and differentiation.
Practically, as with so-called “minimum wage” mandates that price low-skilled workers out of the market, the new Spanish mandate will incentivize employers to avoid hiring younger females (if it’s still acceptable in this woke world to note that only females between certain ages menstruate).
But the immorality of the imposition should be enough to recognize its unacceptable nature.
Sadly, this is not a factor in Politico’s reporting. For Politico, the key drivers are the assumed “positives”: Marxist class envy, antipathy for private property, and the grandiose arrogance to tell others how to run their lives. And once those are accepted, the government imposition becomes a mere formality, a matter of numbers and political arrangements.
Writes Camut:
“It was adopted by 185 votes against 154, with three abstentions. The vote is a win for Pedro Sánchez's Socialist government, overcoming internal disagreements within his own party (Carmen Calvo, a Socialist lawmaker, who used to be the vice president of the government under Sánchez's previous Cabinet, abstained from the vote).”
Tyranny cannot be excused, and it cannot be hidden within the velvet gauntlet of government or “majority vote.”
If those who would use government to command others are willing to overlook the primacy of private property ownership, claiming or implying that the “owners of the means of production” are exploiting people, then they are willing to overlook self-ownership, to overlook the fact that each of us is the owner of a means of production and that, while potential employees offer skills and labor to the employer, the employer offers things the employee can utilize that he or she might not have been able to acquire – things like a heated workplace with machines and energy and other things that only leveraged capital can provide.
Those who use government to manipulate these personal powers and decisions do us moral and economic damage, in whatever nation they try their schemes.
Those who report on these mandates without acknowledging the rotting immorality at their heart do readers a disservice, as well.