We hear a lot today about political power and corruption. But what is power, really? A lot of people talk and think as if someone who has more money or property than you, or who is better off for whatever reason (even psychologically), is somehow violating your rights. Implicit in the words, actions and laws of much of our government today is the barely stated premise, “By being better off than you, someone has violated your rights.”

That’s why there’s such a pervasive sense of entitlement, so strong that the millennial generation has, in large numbers, opted for outright socialism, where nearly everything is “free,” an entitlement or a right granted by the government. Unless mass numbers of these younger people change their minds sometime in their 20s and 30s, America will probably be a totally socialist country (e.g., Soviet Russia, Cuba, Venezuela) in another few decades.

Ayn Rand made some interesting and insightful comments on the subject years ago:

“A disastrous intellectual package-deal, put over on us by the theoreticians of statism, is the equation of economic power with political power. You have heard it expressed in such bromides as: ‘A hungry man is not free,’ or ‘It makes no difference to a worker whether he takes orders from a businessman or from a bureaucrat.’ Most people accept these equivocations—and yet they know that the poorest laborer in America is freer and more secure than the richest commissar in Soviet Russia. What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.

The difference between political power and any other kind of social ‘power,’ between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.”

Today you hear things like a “right to a living wage.” The implication is that by making under $15 an hour, someone’s rights are being violated. You have a right to a certain wage, whatever the government deems it.

But does anyone really have such a right? On the surface, to disagree with the idea of a “right to a living wage” sounds like you’re denying individuals their right to life. “You can’t live without a living wage; therefore, you’re denied the right to life if government does not raise everyone’s income.” It’s like somebody killed you if you don’t get the job or income to which you’re supposedly entitled.

But such an idea defies and evades the fact that in order to enact this living wage, or right to health care, or right to food, or right to anything else at all, someone else has to be coerced. What happens to the rights of the person being required to pay for the wages, food, health insurance, education, cell phone, corporate subsidy or anything else of another person?

Like Rand says, it’s a package-deal. It takes the legitimate idea of a right to life and quietly merges it with the illegitimate idea that someone else may be required, by law, to take care of you. The person relying on this package-deal should be required to defend it. The problem is that nobody ever requires them. Donald Trump doesn’t challenge Hillary Clinton when she spouts off about the greater number of entitlements she will require some to pay for others. He does, to his credit, acknowledge the unsustainable national debt, the high level of taxation and the fact that government is too big and bureaucratic. But these are merely surface issues compared to the very fundamental one Rand identifies in her quote, and politicians like Hillary Clinton are all too happy to ignore while they ride their Santa Claus sleigh to power.

Either you’re sovereign over your own life, or you’re not. You’re free to believe what you want about the obligation (or not) to give to others, if you have more than others. You’re free to practice whatever ideology or philosophy you wish, so long as you don’t use government to force it on others or engage in force yourself. This is the issue we have to identify and struggle with people about, if we’re ever to have any hopes of restoring and sustaining a free society. Otherwise, the “Republicrats” who dominate Washington DC and the federal government will keep on spending, winning, controlling and slowly destroying our liberty and prosperity.

Let’s be honest about all the millennials as well as older people and special interest groups who want some version of government loot or socialism: It’s someone else’s loot they’re after. They’re not shouting, screaming, voting and fighting for the right to be able to give everything away. In America, there’s already a right to make lots of money and give it away. They’re shouting for the “right” to take what they believe is theirs, from someone else to whom it belongs, to use for purposes they deem better. In the words of Frederic Bastiat, it’s nothing more than legalized plunder. It has been going on for a long time, even in America. We only call it “socialism” when it reaches its climax, as the whole rotten corrupt system is now doing.

Do any of us have a political, legal right not to be hungry? No, we don’t. Because to impose such a right would mean obliterating the concept of rights in the first place. The moment someone has a right to force me to do something against my will, or you against yours, then freedom is lost. This includes the hungry person you are forced to feed because once he’s fed, and back on his feet, he will become a slave to the government’s requirements as well.

The good news is that economic freedom, even when partially established, has led to the greatest reduction in hunger ever seen in human history. Famines, which used to be the norm, are a thing of the past in even a severely hampered free market economy. Just imagine what a fully free market could do for what remains of hunger and other problems in the world. And all without violating a single individual’s right.

Real, authentic capitalism. The answer to all our problems is right here, and was here all along. If only we would embrace it. Instead, younger Americans in particular are embracing the very things which have harmed or destroyed other societies throughout history. How sad to think they will have to learn such a harsh and painful lesson all over again.