Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Money- The Root of All Good

From a news story:

E-mails released Saturday morning show top executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boasting about the money the firm was making as the national housing market collapsed in 2007.


The e-mails suggest Goldman benefited from its bets that securities backed by subprime mortgages would lose value.

Gee, imagine that. They placed a bet - a bet they could LOSE - and which would kill them if it went against them, and now the have-nots are angry that it went the other way and that they made money. Good thing nobody knows that I bought that land out int he desert and then sold it at a profit.
 
Profit Jealousy is the root of all Evil - not Profits. That this is true, then what does that say about those that harbor Profit Jealousy and THEIR contribution to evil.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Why Johnnie Doesn't Share

In my earlier article  Communist vs. Capitalist Vocabulary, I discussed what I meant when I said that the first word the little communist (Billy) learns in kindergarten is S-H-A-R-E, while the first word learned by the little capitalist (Johnnie) is T-R-A-D-E.

In the article I pointed out the insidious nature of S-H-A-R-E  being a first word learned and also pointed out that Johnnie - even without being taught property rights - has a very definite idea of property, and has an innate resistance to its theft.

After reading the earlier article, one may ask why it is that this little proto-human (Johnnie) has such an innate reasoning about property and an innate resistance to its theft, and it is obvious that the reason for this is that it is an evolutionary survival mechanism.

Consider, if you will, the earliest days of man, and ask yourself what man would it be that would survive if he simply turned over his scarce property (food, clothing, shelter) without which he would starve, to one who, instead of creating such things on his own ,or trading them for other things of value, was just allowed to take them. No, my good friend, the humans that did that did not live long enough to procreate (they starved, or froze, or were eaten by beasts).

Thus it is that what we have in the world today is a species whose very existence sprang from the idea of NOT SHARING. NOT sharing, meant survival and propagation, and NOT having a sense of ones own property meant death and extinguishment of that particular hereditary line.

Thus it is that little Johnnie is exhibiting a trait (What's Mine is MINE, Not Yours) that has kept the human race alive -and the reason HE has it is because he is the end result of a million years of evolution that propagated these traits and extinguished others.

Keep in mind, however, that Billy is also exhibiting a trait - also in the human condition - that it is easier to take than it is to make. Consider too, that he is also exercising a form of survival strategy. However, this is not a long term survival strategy, for if all you do is take, then who is left to make? And, even if there are those that can make, the question is "will they" and "for how long"?

Think of it this way, as long as there are others to take from, and there are others that do not mind starving and dying so that the Billys of the world might live, then Billy may indeed survive . However, the question is for how long? It is easy to see that at some point Billy is going to run into somebody that will kill him, instead of giving up that which they themselves need to survive, and indeed this is exactly how the human evolution has played out to ingrain in even the tiniest babe a sense of property and the intimate and instinctual connection of property to survival.

The reader may now ask what does this have to do with Communism, Socialism, & Collectivism, and I will now proceed to show what it has to do with it. The connection is that the grown-up Billys of the modern world are not stupid, and by executing various survival strategies over the past 2000 years, they have learned that if they can convince a group of sufficient size (but not too great a size) that the need of the "have-nots" stakes a moral claim on those that "have", then they will be able to persist in their strategy of "feeding" without producing much of anything themselves.

Thus it is that the smart collectivist does not mount a frontal assault against the producers, for to do that would polarize the producers and in not to short a time there would be few collectivists. In addition, if a frontal assault succeeded, then in not to short a time (50 years?) the collective would perish as there would be no one left to produce.

No, the smart collectivist, executes a different strategy. He insinuates the ideas of the collective into the population via slogans, symbols, art, literature, religion, and especially into the minds of the children (the kindergarten scenario above) - and, critically important, he does this so that not all are turned into collectivists. This is critical - that not all be turned into collectivists, for even the true collectivist knows that if there were nothing but collectivists, that nobody would eat because, as in Jamestown in early America, where all land was held and worked in common, with rations distributed evenly from a central storehouse, there was no incentive for an individual to work harder and, with such an attitude of "Why should I work if my neighbor is required to make sure I do not starve", everybody indeed starved.

No, the smart collectivist, tries to, in the mass of producers, create and then calve off from the main mass of producers two groups.

The first is a mass of modified Johnnies, who after 15 years of exposure to such pap as "share" because others are in need and you have more - or the pap that selfishness is bad - or the pap that what's his really isn't his, have been body-snatched and re-educated to the collective and thereafter turn into community organizers, marching all around town (with Billy) trying to organize all the other body-snatched Johinnies and Billys of the neighborhood to come together into a shouting mob to take from the producers of the world - all while carrying signs accusing the producers and property owners of the world as being selfish. (Hell yeah, they are selfish - it is THEIR property.)

The second group is different in that they have not yet been completely body-snatched, but have been sufficiently indoctrinated with the kindergarten lessons, to be useful to the collectivist agenda which is to propagate and survive.

The members of this second group are the kind that get up and pronounce that private property rights should be respected - but that all children should be insured; or that complain about the government taking over health care - but in the next breath intone how it is "society" that should come together to pay for care for their aging parent; or that talk about how people should bear the consequences of their acts - but then participate in engineers without border, doctors without borders, carpenters without borders, habitat builders without borders, etc, where they go into a society that in 5000 years has not learned to, for example, drill a water well, and proceed to drill it for them, thus upsetting an entire societal structure with their do-goodedness.

These are the same people/groups who talk loudly at tea parties against government intrusion - but when that government intrusion is going to throw pork their way, are nowhere to be seen, but everywhere to be heard, as they grovel ,grunt, and shove their way to the head of the line. (A perfect example of this being individual members of a national engineering society who while protesting the evils of Obamunism, try to move themselves to the head of the handout line by raising a hue and a cry about how their profession should get government money for work that is not in need of doing, and if it is in need of doing, should be funded at the local level instead of at the national level.

These in-betweens & bystanders are very useful to the true collectivist because they are economically productive, are attached to their station in life, and are attached to the fruits that they have been able to gain and retain by in essence being closet collectivists, or by averting their eyes from what it truly is that they obtain their wealth and possessions. Essentially, they are people that are so wedded to their comforts in life that they will suffer giving up a portion of their property - if they can convince themselves (and indeed they do so convince themselves) that they can just be left alone to enjoy the rest, or if they judge that it is less work to just give up than it is to fight. (BTW - The IRS tax structure is EXACTLY set up with this in mind.)

As a stark lesson in what I mean, consider Nazi Germany and the work of extermination of the Jews. Ask yourself, if they came for your Jewish neighbor, but not for you, would you have stood against the Nazi boots - or would you have "stood-by"? If the answer is that it depends on the cost to you, then you might be an in-between , or a bystander.

Considering the above, is it any wonder then that the signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their property, and their sacred honor, instead of pledging 5% of their income, or a couple weekends of their time working in a homeless shelter.

How many of us would do that - Pledge our lives? Pledge our property (all of it) ? Pledge our sacred honor? Not very many of us, I am afraid, and THAT is exactly the strategy of the collectivist. To take as much as can be taken without causing a complete attack from the production tribe, and to even bribe part of that production tribe with promises and selective delivery of economic gain to those that can be body-snatched and induced to continue to stand-by.


It is these in-betweens and bystanders that the collectivist needs, for it is they that set the tone of social acceptability and pressure, it is they that work in the factory or the office, and it is through them that the true collectivist achieves his aim of creating a system where a sufficient number of producers continue to produce, and where he the collectivist, just as a vampire bat, can feed.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

What Little Communists Learn in Kindergarten

Do you know what was the first word the little communist learned in kindergarten?
S-H-A-R-E


Do you know what was the first word the little capitalist learned in kindergarten?
T-R-A-D-E


In what kind of kindergarten did you learn?
In what kind of kindergarten are your children learning?
How about your neighbor's kids?

Monday, February 23, 2009

Producers, Not Looters

I wear one of those screen printed tee-shirts that has some nice logo-looking artwork on it. Around the logo art is the tag line "Rearden Steel - Producers, Not Looters" and from time to time as I am out and about, I am asked if Rearden Steel is the company that I work for.

Now, those that know me know that I do not work for Rearden Steel - and those that really know me know that indeed in a way I do.

I especially like getting this question from the young people who are clueless about the past and therefore about the present, and , if I am lucky, and one of these seems a likely candidate for rehabilitation, I proceed to ask them they have ever heard of Hank Rearden. If they say that they have not, then I tell them:

"Hank Rearden was a fellow that believed that the money he earned belonged to him, and not to you".

When their eyes go big, and if I sense a glimmer of intelligence, I bring it home to them by asking, direct to their face, as they are standing there handing me my triple grande venti vanilla mocha Frappuccino sissy-boy drink:

"You have a job, right?"
"You work hard at your job and earn money, right?"
"You do not think that the money you earn belongs to me, right?"


Seeing in their eyes the beginnings of understanding, I then close the deal by telling them:

"Ah, I can see that you are getting it. OK - Hank Rearden was a fellow that believed that the money that YOU earn belongs to YOU, not him, or anybody else, and especially not to the government so that they could go out after confiscating it from you to give to some lazy bum on the street that did not want to work to earn it."

With that, they give me my drink. Another one saved!

~ PS - Blame this one on my friend Rick - he made me do it.