The Cancer of Utopianism

I recently ran across this from Nancy Pelosi advancing reasons to support Obamacare.

She proffered that it would lead to "an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance."

In other words, it would facilitate the migration of people to activities which are less economically productive. Now, in the Utopian fantasy mindset this is all quite wonderful because we don't actually have to confront how the things that support these artists and photographers get produced. But in the real world -- say in places like Greece -- we can see what actually happens when we penalize higher economic producers in order to facilitate more low producers.

This is not really new news. Most people have always known that when you tax an activity you will get less of it, and when you subsidize it you will get more of it.  What (apparently) has still not quite registered is that we are passing the tipping point where the effects of ignoring this fact turn malignant.