Elizabeth Warren's pitch for class warfare

I saw an interesting video recently (h/t jerrypournelle.com), with a short pitch by Elizabeth Warren in support of class warfare and the overall Left / Progressive agenda:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs

First, here are her words:

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Now let's take a closer look at what she said.
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You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for

I paid for those roads as much as you did; probably more, since my income is above average, and roads benefit others much more than me.

you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate

I paid to educate people, too. I paid property taxes (the source of educational funding in California) for 30+ years, and never sent my kids to public school. I am also not the only person to benefit from the education of others.

More fundamentally, though, so what if others paid for my employee's education? If someone's parents paid for their child's education rather than taxes, should an employer be expected to pay the parents back? When I hire someone, I am paying them in accordance with their skills, knowledge and abilities. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement: employees get an income, and I get the benefit of their efforts; the more educated they are, the more they earn (to a point). Win-win.

BTW, the quality of US public education generally sucks. In many cases, I would often prefer to hire people who haven't been damaged by it.

you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Those police and fire forces are using facilities and equipment that people like me designed and built for them -- structures, vehicles, computers, communications, etc, etc.

And again, I paid for those services as much as anyone else. And again, I'm also not the only one to benefit from them.

Police and fire services don't really keep me safe anyway; safety is much more a function of morality. Installing a new police force in Somalia wouldn't change anything.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

OK, now we're getting to the meat of it.

First, there is no social contract. That's simply an invention the Left uses to try to impose guilt or duty on us. A contract requires conscious and voluntary agreement between parties, and it presupposes the ability to reason, discuss and even disagree, so it's not something you can be born into. I certainly never agreed to anything like what Warren implies. What if I had been born in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany? By Warren's logic, I would be required to live by those "social contracts" as well. No thanks.

My individual rights are not negotiable. No one, including government, has the right to take from me because of some perceived need -- or for any other reason. My life belongs to me.

Finally, perhaps the most important point: when I create a business, I am adding value to the world. I am employing people and producing a product or service that others value more than the money they give me in exchange. How about some thanks, some appreciation for that? No, the Left don't want to thank me, they want to destroy me; they want to steal my earnings while trying to portray me as evil. Why am I evil? Because I am successful, because I am good.