“With dread” is the only sensible answer

Tuesday, March 17th, 2020

If you’re a socialist, you have to be concerned that so many socialists before you defended totalitarian regimes as they committed atrocities, but you might say that the best socialists spoke out:

A reasonable position. I don’t want my views judged by the quality of the typical person who shares my label, either.

Still, this raises a weighty question: How should the best socialists react when they discover that a new socialist experiment is about to start? “With dread” is the only sensible answer. After all, the best socialists don’t merely know the horrifying history of the Soviet Union and Maoist China. The best socialists also know the psychotic sociology of the typical socialist, who savors the revolutionary “honeymoon” until the horror becomes too blatant to deny.

If dread is the sensible reaction to the latest socialist experiment, then how should the best socialists react to any earnest proposal for a new socialist experiment? It’s complicated. The proposal stage is the perfect time to avoid the errors of the past – to finally do socialism right. Yet this hope must still be heavily laced with dread. After all, socialists have repeatedly tried to learn from the disasters of earlier socialist regimes. When they gained power, disaster still followed.

That’s Bryan Caplan, by the way, and he continues:

At this point, it’s tempting to shift blame to the non-socialist world. Without American-led ostracism, perhaps Cuba would be a fine country today. Or consider Chomsky’s view that the U.S. really won the Vietnam War:

The United States went to war in Vietnam for a very good reason. They were afraid Vietnam would be a successful model of independent development and that would have a virus effect – infect others who might try to follow the same course. There was a very simple war aim – destroy Vietnam. And they did it.

If Chomsky is right about U.S. foreign policy, however, the best socialists should feel even less hope and even more dread. Even if the next generation of socialists finally manages to durably build socialism with a human face, the U.S. will probably strangle it.

Personally, I’m the furthest thing from a socialist. If I were a socialist, though, I would be the world’s most cautious socialist. Socialist experiments don’t merely have a bad track record; socialist self-criticism has a bad track record.

Comments

  1. Harry Jones says:

    Politics is mainly about shifting the blame for the bad things that happen.

  2. CVLR says:

    The simple fact is that no one knows what “socialism” is. It’s a bogeyman.

    The only definition that makes any sense is “anything that the capitalists don’t like”.

    So when the government steps in to put upward price pressure on wages (or anything else that improves the station of the ordinary person), you hear the familiar screeching.

    But when you strip-mine the American economy and ship it to China, that’s basically moral, because it’s a free market, maaan.

    And when the government makes the money printer go brrr for $1.5T to give to the banks, you hear nothing but silence.

    $5,000 from every man, woman, and child in America. Totally cool, though. Because this is the height of capitalism.

    Just imagine if ordinary people benefited from the economic order. That would be pure evil. It simply isn’t the government’s job.

    Capitalist self-criticism has an excellent track record.

  3. Dave says:

    And fish don’t know what water is. Socialism is government redistribution of wealth via subsidies, taxes, and most importantly, printing money. It’s universal now but was non-existent 200 years ago. Central banks are working hard to end the socialist era by printing so much money that it becomes our new toilet paper.

    When our present first-world governments cannot pay their soldiers and police, they will dissolve, and something very unsocialist and undemocratic will take their place.

  4. Bill says:

    “Without American-led ostracism, perhaps Cuba would be a fine country today.”

    Cuba has dozens of trading partners, and has had them throughout the “American-led ostracism”. Cuba has only itself (and I suppose Castro) to blame for its current condition.

  5. Kirk says:

    The root issue with socialism and all the other utopian schemes is that the adherents thereof are generally idealists without a lick of common sense. They’re also not the sort of people who observe, living in their own self-created delusional world. Because of this, they tend to be easily gulled by the totalitarians in their midst, and they authorize those types to take control when they first run into the dichotomy between reality and what they believe.

    There is rarely any pragmatism or self-awareness among the socialist ranks. They persist in doing things that don’t work, simply because they think that if they just believe hard enough, the hard realities won’t apply. Every single communitarian utopia that humans have attempted has failed utterly, but even with that track record, we persist. We’re not wired for that crap, and I seriously doubt that any intelligent and self-aware creature in the universe would be. If they were, then the intelligence would never have evolved in the first damn place.

    No, socialism is an endemic fantasy for the dysfunctional–Which is why it will never work outside the confines of a late-night dorm room BS session where the realities of human self-interest and motivation can be hand-waved away by undergraduates with no real experience of life or the world around them.

    You want to break them? Let them try to actually run something using their ideas, and watch the horror gradually overtake them as they discover what rat bastards their fellow humans really are.

    One of my fondest memories as a mid-level NCO was the time I actually gave one of these sorts the reins, and let him try his kinder, gentler way of life out. Two months in? LOL… Lemme tell you what, when Mr. Sunnyhappyface wannabe believer in the good will of all men runs smack dab up against the asshole element in his fellow man? That’s a funny, funny thing. You could almost see his little eyes, all shiny-bright with the prospect of Showing The Man how things should really be done, only to see that light fade out gradually over the period where he had free rein to do as he willed. By the end of his rope, he’d reached the point where he wanted authority for capital punishment, and would have probably had bodies nailed up to the walls of that latrine as a measure of encouragement.

    I don’t know what the hell it is that’s so damn amusing and delightful about exploding someone else’s misbegotten fantasies, but… Man, did I derive some pleasure from that whole thing. I should probably be ashamed of myself, but I did get a pretty solid junior leader out of it all, once he’d learned things the hard way. Before that, I really couldn’t trust him with things, because he’d always take the high road and accept someone telling him something. After that months-long fiasco with running the latrine cleanup and maintenance…? LOL. He went from “Trust” to “F**k trust–Verify.”.

    To be quite honest, however, I do have to think that he should have been a little suspicious of the whole deal, what with all the senior NCOs having to hide their giggles whenever the issue of those latrines on that floor came up. The fact that the First Sergeant referred to the whole thing as “Lord of the Flies” should have been a clue…

  6. Harry Jones says:

    The world runs on other people’s misbegotten fantasies. Exploding them is anarcho-terrorism in the ideological sphere.

    I used to think this was a fine thing, until I noticed that there were plenty more bad ideas waiting in the wings.

    I no longer hope to liberate society from its own errors. The errors are mere opportunistic infections. What’s needed is to undermine everyone’s belief in the very notion of conventional wisdom.

  7. Kirk says:

    Which is better–Leave them with their illusions intact, or to inflict the reality of it all on them?

    I’ve found that you can’t afford to leave the delusions intact, if you’re going to have to lead those people under military circumstances. You want effective subordinate leaders, you have to grow them and critique them. Shattering any illusions they have about how the human mind works, and what motivates behavior in the men and women they have to lead for you is a critical part of leader development. You don’t learn from osmosis or observation very effectively until you recognize that your preconceived notions are inaccurate and inadequate.

  8. Sam J. says:

    CVLR says:,”…The simple fact is that no one knows what “socialism” is. It’s a bogeyman.

    The only definition that makes any sense is “anything that the capitalists don’t like”.

    So when the government steps in to put upward price pressure on wages (or anything else that improves the station of the ordinary person), you hear the familiar screeching.

    But when you strip-mine the American economy and ship it to China, that’s basically moral, because it’s a free market, maaan.

    And when the government makes the money printer go brrr for $1.5T to give to the banks, you hear nothing but silence…”

    HELL YEAH! It drives me bananas when they do this. What this shows you is you CAN make socialism work if you just cough up the money. Every Socialist idea should be one thing and one thing only, pay the cash and let people find the best way to deal with it themselves. Will people abuse this, yes of course they will but we won’t have to listen to any more bullshit about how we didn’t care for this person or that person because everyone knows they were sent the cash and if they fucked it up it’s their fault. I’m for some sort of universal basic income like Andrew Yang put forth. This could be used for college or whatever you wished. If you want to live in a ditch and drink whisky have at it. At the same time we should fire massive, massive amounts of government workers. I’m not against socialism I’m against the welfare state that constantly meddles in everyone’s lives.

    You can not give the bankers, businesses and damn near everyone they can find to produce campaign funds trillions (we’re talking upwards of $31.5 trillion or more since the bank bailout)year after year then complain about a program to give the actual citizens a little booty.

    Right now we pay principal and interest to the FED for every damn penny created. A laughably absurd system (mathematically doomed to failure no matter what)where they give us nothing and get paid for it.

    We could just as easily create ALL money by having the Federal Gov. create the money and spend it on the citizens. No more money would be created numerically it would just be distributed to citizens instead of banks. If the banks want money they can pay the citizens for it.

  9. Harry Jones says:

    Trying to fix all the ways people can be delusional is a game of whack-a-mole.

    I’d say let them all be fools if only I weren’t forced to share the same small blue planet with them.

    Social distancing? Just as well.

  10. Voatboy says:


    . Every single communitarian utopia that humans have attempted has failed utterly,…”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit_reduction

    The Jesuit reductions were remarkably successful communitarian utopia.

  11. Kirk says:

    If that’s “success”, I’m not sure I’d want to see what you thought was “failure”…

    Total Population of Guarani reductions
    Year Population Comments
    1641 36,190
    1700 86,173 Steady growth since 1647
    1732 141,242 Largest population of reductions
    1740 73,910 Reduced population due to epidemics
    1768 88,864 Jesuits expelled
    1801 45,637 Reductions in decline

    From 1732 to 1740, your “success” story managed to kill a little less than half of its inmates. As well, the system was imposed from without, and had external free market societies that provided inputs and markets for the outputs, soooooo… Yeah. Not quite the “success” you seem to think it was. And, I would submit, if they were so “successful”, why did they evaporate without the Jesuit enforcers being there to run things beneficially for the inmates…?

    Not a success, in my books. Not even close.

  12. Voatboy says:

    Well, nearly every scholar would disagree with you, but clearly you have mastered the art of becoming deaf to reason when it suits your purposes, so I am sure you can ignore reality as much as you please.

  13. Harry Jones says:

    I’m going to take Kirk’s side against the scholars, even though I’ve never met Kirk but I’ve known some scholars.

    Did I say “even though?” I meant “because.” Scholars are way overrated.

    The first hurdle any system must clear to be considered by me a successful utopia is to dominate a large part of the world. That Jesuit thingie hasn’t cleared this hurdle, so never mind the next hurdle. It doesn’t scale, so forget it.

    (This also rules out most other things that most people have never heard of, precisely because of the reasons why most people have never heard of them.)

  14. Kirk says:

    Every… Scholar… LOL. Yeah, sure… You’ve got one “success” for socialist collectivism that was a.) enforced by an advanced society impinging on a primitive one, b.) did not last into the present day, c.) supported itself by supplying outside traditional economic markets, d.) was enforced by totalitarian ideological means that also did not last past the enforcers being thrown out of the region, and, finally, e.) would be excoriated today because of the religious aspects.

    Those Jesuit experiments didn’t last much longer than the monastery systems did in Europe, and mimic the same track record as the early Christian utopian communities established during the early days of the church. None of them lasted, and all of them parasitized off of the larger surrounding cultures that followed traditional economic patterns. Nowhere is there a case where you can say that socialist patterns were ever organically developed, or that they lasted. Even if you want to throw in examples like the Inca, you’re looking at specious arguments–The Inca were an expansionist military empire with a huge ideological component to their “system”, and while they had some successes in local terms, their system was no more stable in the long term than any other fantasy economic system.

    Socialism does not scale, does not last, and does not work. Human nature being what it is, the “tragedy of the commons” hits hard (ever notice what hell-holes of ecological damage former socialist states are?), and nobody is that altruistic for that long, across generations. The feckless, foolish Stakhanovite “true believer” eventually winds up sold to the glue factory just like Boxer did in Animal Farm, Orwell’s ode to reality.

    I find it deeply and darkly humorous that you would even attempt to laud a totalitarian religious movement that any “real socialist” would decry as “colonialist” and disrespectful of the native’s true sentiments. No doubt, in another line of discussion, you’d take the position that they were better off as noble savages, and be arguing that the brutal Christian missionaries had no business or right to “civilize” them. Amazing how “intellectual yet idiot” types can contain the cognitive dissonance to make such specious arguments, but here we are with such a thing on evidence…

    The amazing thing is that you actually believe you’ve won an argument, here.

  15. Graham says:

    I was struck by the Danish reaction when Bernie described his dream as “democratic socialism” and used Denmark as his goal.

    Naturally, as an old radical, Bernie must know that socialism means collective [in practice state but there's variations including co-op] ownership of the means of production. Democratic socialism means this is carried on under a system of elective, representative and/or direct democratic leadership in both the economic and political sphere. Leave aside whether, or how much, or under what preceding socioeconomic conditions this is possible. Everything hasn’t always gone Full Stalin all at once. That’s the definition.

    Social Democracy is when the means of production are at most mixed ownership, with varying degrees of worker inputs or govt inputs, and a large, even predominant private ownership of said means, operating in the context of a market economy. The political sphere could be characterized as a liberal democracy although social democracy implies a large welfare state as an expression of state identity and responsibility. That is of course what Western Europe more or less has, with variation in how social.

    This is what it means when European constitutions refer to the state as “democratic and social”, or “democratic liberal and social” or words to that effect.

    I grew up thinking far less was “socialism”, and I still use it as an attack word. Just as proponents use far less than actual socialism [ie Denmark] to mask what might be more aggressive aspirations. This is a valid use of rhetoric and concepts, but even so, and despite pooh poohing the distinction for one of my high school teachers, the distinction above between social democracy and democratic socialism is nontrivial. hiving off money for a welfare state is never as bad as owning all the means of production. The latter takes away checks and balances still present in the former.

    Strictly speaking, the US has been democratic and social since the first Social Security or Unemployment cheques started being issued. Or the first medicare payment was made to an old person. Everything after that is a matter of degree.

    I am the last person to not recognize that those degrees are important, the basis of generations of argument even in Canada, and central for me. But there are nuances that can be used to illuminate or obscure, according to need. I assume that latter’s what Bern was doing.

    As for me, I’d really rather not go back to the pure liberalism of the Manchester School, the Whigs, or 19th century France. So I’m stuck with some social.

  16. Graham says:

    As to the Guarani reductions, yes, an experiment in hyper-Catholic Christian Socialism.

    Also, what we in Canada are now whipping ourselves for- Cultural Genocide and Colonialism and Paternalism.

    For the Guarani, possibly still better than what other Europeans had in mind for them, slavery and actual genocide. But still, those colonies are consistent with everything the left otherwise condemns in the treatment of aboriginal peoples by the churches.

  17. Longarch says:

    Kirk: “From 1732 to 1740, your ‘success’ story managed to kill a little less than half of its inmates.”

    It’s more likely that half of the inmates were going to die of disease regardless of what form of government they had. Do you always blame the government for every disease that arises, or do you only blame socialist governments?

    If the US is democratic and social, can we blame the US government for any epidemics that happen in the US? Do staunchly capitalist societies ever get struck by disease?

    “if they were so ‘successful,’why did they evaporate without the Jesuit enforcers being there to run things beneficially for the inmates…?”

    Their success, IMNSHO, depended on specific historical threats: slavery and genocide. When the threats were diminished, enthusiasm for Jesuit totalitarianism was diminished.

    Harry Jones: “The first hurdle any system must clear to be considered by me a successful utopia is to dominate a large part of the world. … It doesn’t scale, so forget it.”

    I like the second dictionary definition: “An impractical scheme for social improvement.”

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utopia

    That aside, I do agree that the Jesuit version of socialism did not scale and would not have been possible except for very odd historical circumstances.

    Graham: “Strictly speaking, the US has been democratic and social since the first Social Security or Unemployment cheques started being issued. Or the first medicare payment was made to an old person. Everything after that is a matter of degree…. As for me, I’d really rather not go back to the pure liberalism of the Manchester School, the Whigs, or 19th century France. So I’m stuck with some social.”

    Even Adam Smith wanted some kind of “social” factor to prevent the excesses of pure capitalism, but most of the later folks who wrote to praise Adam Smith forget to study those chapters.

    “Cultural Genocide and Colonialism and Paternalism. For the Guarani, possibly still better than what other Europeans had in mind for them, slavery and actual genocide. But still, those colonies are consistent with everything the left otherwise condemns in the treatment of aboriginal peoples by the churches.”

    IMNSHO, socialism worked with the Guarani only because outright slavery or genocide was the alternative being pushed by everyone except the Jesuits. As soon as the threat of slavery orgenocide was less pressing, socialism fell apart.

  18. Kirk says:

    Yeah, we get it… Socialism works. Ask any Venezuelan or North Korean.

    Never ceases to amaze me the distance the true believers will go, to find some straw to grasp at. Jesuit-run Guarani slave centers? LOL… Any other discussion, they’d be describing them as the death camps they obviously were, and cheering the Jesuits being thrown out on their asses. But, to save their beloved socialism, they’ll throw that argument into the breach, and support it all.

    Mindless twits. No idea at all how to do anything in the real world, but they insist that they just “know better” than ten thousand generations of their ancestors who’ve gotten by with a system built up from raw experience. Never mind the lessons of all the parties who tried differently, like the original settlers at Jamestown who thought they’d own everything in common. Which produced starvation until someone with a grasp on reality put an end to that BS. Jamestown and Venezuela, baby–That’s socialism. People starve, and eat 14 year-old girls in the wintertime.

    Or, their pets. ‘Cos, socialism just works, donchaknow?

    Despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

  19. CVLR says:

    Kirk, I challenge you to present a coherent definition of “socialism”.

    1. Don’t point and sputter. (Venezuela! North Korea! etc.)

    2. Is it “socialism” when the government prints infinity money and gives it to the richest and most powerful corporations on Earth? Explain why or why not.

    3. If some forms of redistribution are “socialism” and some are not, explain why this is, how it came to be, and who benefited.

    4. No one is going to take the time to explain to you why President Trump introduced that Venezuelan guy to the world in his State of the Union address.

  20. longarch says:

    Remember, everyone:

    1) Handing out $1000 is NOT socialism so long as the USA is the one doing it:

    https://archive.fo/7VaPh

    2) Asserting broad government command over critical manufacturing is NOT socialism so long as the USA is the one doing it:

    https://archive.fo/erMGF

    Socialism ALWAYS fails, EVERY SINGLE TIME it is tried. But when the USA does it, it’s NOT socialism.

  21. Graham says:

    More often than not asserting broad government command over critical manufacturing fails.

    Pre-Thatcher Britain it largely failed.

    On the other hand, basically capitalist economies with social democratic welfare states and considerable government management of manufacturing managed to sustain, rebuild, or even expand critical manufacturing sectors with the right mix of private and public choices, where Britain failed. Finland created a shipbuilding industry not quite ex nihilo. West Germany rebuilt and beat most others with such a model only lately showing its weaknesses. Even France did better than Britain in manufacturing. Germany and France are doing better in most than Britain, including aerospace and shipbuilding, the latter something Europe had almost ceded to Asia. In Britain it’s tiny now.

    I would call that a very mixed and not simple record to consider.

    With the US, apparently the idea has been to cede critical manufacturing.

    At any rate, I’m happy to consider the US a country that has limited social democratic features to its society. It’s only bouts with actual socialism, again, state or collective ownership of the means of production, have been rather few and far between, and usually emergency measures dispensed with after the war or crisis. Compared with Europeans, that’s very short term stuff.

    One other interesting caveat- governments have often owned means of production for specific good for the own needs, such as prison labour but more importantly critical defence sectors. Both Britain and the US build many naval vessels in government dockyards for centuries. One could call that socialism, but it’s usually excepted since its only ownership of the means of production by the state for the state’s own use.

    I agree Smith wanted social provision of some kind. He and many others, at least pre-Manchester, seemed to think “capitalism”, the name eventually coined for the extension of economic principles to the idea of capital accumulation and growth and opened trade, ought to exist embedded in some larged philosophical framework of society.

    Everybody assumed that would be some melange of the Christian religion, medium to light versions or maybe Calvinism for some, traditional republican or English virtues [whether constitutional monarch or not], civil loyalty, national patriotism, neighbourhood, and so on.

    Pity those all got killed. And not just by capitalism.

  22. Kirk says:

    What dolts like some of our commentariat fail to grasp is that you can only loot the base economy so much, and then you’re f**ked. Late-stage socialism always winds up looking like Venezuela or Nazi Germany, which had to start WWII to begin looting Europe after they ran out of Jews to rob. It always ends badly, always. You see the same path downward in most of the oil-rich countries that buy into the idea that they’ll buy their way to prosperity with the resources they loot from the nasty capitalists who invested in their oil industry–While simultaneously running that oil industry into the ground the way the Iraqis and Iranians did, followed by Venezuela.

    The sad fact is, there’s a lot of ruin in an economy, and the connection between cause and effect for these financial fantasists is always too vast for their microcephalic intellects to bridge. In the end, we all pay for it, as they drag down society with their wish-fulfillment fantasies.

    Doesn’t matter whether it’s on the micro-scale, like a communal apartment, or the macro-scale, like a formerly prosperous nation-state–Human nature always wins out, and the Rosseauian ideals of the noble savage and inherently altruistic common man wash up wrecked on the shores of self-interested behaviors that actually underlie most of what we do. Humans ain’t ants, and predicating your social ideas based on them is an exercise in feckless utter stupidity.

    The aftermath will always be filled with cries of “But, it worked on paper…!!!”, while the entire mess falls down around the ears of all involved, particularly the naif class of suckers who get taken to the cleaners first, and put up against the wall in the first wave of killings as the Bolsheviks cull the Mensheviks. Best advice? Get a job with the state security apparatus when the time comes, and at least get the satisfaction of getting to shoot the loony little bastards during the inevitable denouement of their fantasy lives. With any luck, you’ll have your pick of their women and wealth–If you can stomach the hair and odor of patchouli.

  23. Albion says:

    Being in the UK I live in, or have lived, under a socialist banner. Perhaps in many ways still under socialism because, as one sees with the mighty beast of the NHS, all governments are committed to maintaining it and improving it. In many ways, the NHS is the embodiment of the socialist principle that all must pay but are masked from that knowledge by not paying directly at the point of use. It gives rise to claims the “NHS is free.” But we all pay enormously every year, even old age pensioners like me must still contribute.

    Incidentally, Nigel Farage initiated storm of protest in the build up to the 2010 general election when he said it was a National Health Service, not an International Health Service. The left, aka everyone else, stridently disagreed, and therein lies the issue: socialism knows no bounds to its responsibilities. So what if a pensioner has to pay for a service that help pregnant Nigerians to fly in, take the hospital place and jet off without paying? Socialists are happy our largesse (or rather my limited income among others) has kindly helped people who have never contributed.

    Socialism marks itself out by the raiding of the treasury and the easy attendant promises all will be well afterwards. They are not Mr Micawber in any way. Socialism also pre-supposes that by appointing anyone to the role of arbiter and controller then you are going to get the best outcome. No matter that a nasty fight has already taken place in secret behind locked doors by people with agendas to find a boss they approve of, the outcome is a winner who is notable only for surviving (or bribing their way through) a night of the long knives. They do not have to exhibit any ability to make collective decisions for the good of all, and frequently immediately haul up the drawbridge to ensure their continued position.

    Socialists believe, like Candide, in the best of all possible worlds but have not in my experience managed to achieve it. Every socialist government in the UK has retreated or been beaten back by a country facing more debt, more waste, more loss than expected. Blair is the only Labour PM to ever win re-election, and his legacy was bad enough and still provokes white-hot fury among current Labour-supporters for ‘not being socialist enough.’

    The illness of Socialism, or rather the madness of believing it works, never goes away. Next time will always be better. They are the epitomy of the man who believes his next bet on a race-horse winning big money has never been backed up by actuality.

    If if I may sum up socialism it would be this: it is a changing, mercurial theory that a lack of personal responsibility and non-accountability overrides all common sense and established practice, ideally for the good of a population who will never see any benefit from it.

  24. Voatboy says:

    “Don’t point and sputter.”

    Notice that when a rhetoritician is deaf to reason, he can ignore such challenges as if he becomes stone deaf… For just as long as it suits his purposes.

    Albion,

    Your firsthand experience with British socialism provides worthwhile data, and I would be interested to refine your somewhat poetic definition of socialism. But I think it was Pangloss who held the belief that you attribute to Candide.

  25. Harry Jones says:

    Pangloss was an exemplar of well-reasoned pedantry. Nothing he said was falsifiable because none of it meant anything.

  26. CVLR says:

    Voatboy: “Notice that when a rhetoritician is deaf to reason, he can ignore such challenges as if he becomes stone deaf… For just as long as it suits his purposes.”

    Just so.

    Kirk… lol. You are a parody of yourself.

    What dolts like some of our commentariat fail to grasp is that you can only loot the base economy so much, and then you’re f**ked.

    Great point, though. I unironically agree with this.

    You should give us your grand speech about how the bankers, corporatists, and other capitalists should stop looting the base economy with their infinity bailouts.

    Or does that not compute?

    Late-stage socialism always winds up looking like Venezuela or Nazi Germany, which had to start WWII

    Venezuela is under siege, and post-Weimar Germany had no interests to its western front. Do you even into history?

    to begin looting Europe after they ran out of Jews to rob.

    How did the Jews come into possession of fully one-third of all real property, anyway?

    And are you really sure that you want to say that returning German property and the German financial system to Germans led directly to an economic renaissance the likes of which have not been seen before or since?

    Because that would be pretty antisemitic of you.

    It might also be illegal.

    It always ends badly, always. You see the same path downward in most of the oil-rich countries that buy into the idea that they’ll buy their way to prosperity with the resources they loot from the nasty capitalists who invested in their oil industry–

    “The rightful owners of a country’s oil fields is a coterie of Anglo-American international capitalists.”

    Actually, I can get on board with this, provided that I receive my share of the dividend checks.

    While simultaneously running that oil industry into the ground the way the Iraqis and Iranians did, followed by Venezuela.
    The sad fact is, there’s a lot of ruin in an economy, and the connection between cause and effect for these financial fantasists is always too vast for their microcephalic intellects to bridge. In the end, we all pay for it, as they drag down society with their wish-fulfillment fantasies.

    I agree.

    Oil extraction is practically a labor of love.

    Just imagine if citizens benefited: it would be pure evil. Entitlements to “unearned”[1] revenue streams are disgusting, immoral, and wrong.

    Except for corporate dividends, which are right and just.

    Doesn’t matter whether it’s on the micro-scale, like a communal apartment, or the macro-scale, like a formerly prosperous nation-state–Human nature always wins out, and the Rosseauian ideals of the noble savage and inherently altruistic common man wash up wrecked on the shores of self-interested behaviors that actually underlie most of what we do. Humans ain’t ants, and predicating your social ideas based on them is an exercise in feckless utter stupidity.

    Is “the economy” even a real thing?

    The aftermath will always be filled with cries of “But, it worked on paper…!!!”, while the entire mess falls down around the ears of all involved, particularly the naif class of suckers who get taken to the cleaners first, and put up against the wall in the first wave of killings as the Bolsheviks cull the Mensheviks.

    “If you try to benefit from the economic order, the result will be your genocide.”

    Best advice? Get a job with the state security apparatus when the time comes, and at least get the satisfaction of getting to shoot the loony little bastards during the inevitable denouement of their fantasy lives. With any luck, you’ll have your pick of their women and wealth–If you can stomach the hair and odor of patchouli.

    Imagine working for a living.

    I shall sit like an effendi and eat.

    [1] https://apps.irs.gov/app/IPAR/resources/help/unearn.html

  27. CVLR says:

    No response, Kirk?

    Sad!

  28. CVLR says:

    Kirk, I know you’re reading this, you shirker.

    We’ve all witnessed the activities of the Federal Reserve over the past couple of weeks.

    Drumpf and his tribe just gave away 6 TRILLION dollars, magicked ex nihilo, to save “the economy”.

    That is 17 thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child in this country.

    (Do you hear any barking dogs?)

    But it isn’t going to the men, women, and children, is it? No, no it is not.

    Inferentially, the men, women, and children of America are not — I repeat, not — “the economy”.

    It’s going to the banks, the megacorporations, and certain other capitalist entities. They will use it to buy up distressed assets at firesale prices.

    Explain to me how this isn’t capitalism.

    Real capitalism has never been tried! cries the Boomer.

    Debate me.

  29. CVLR says:

    I’m disappointed, Kirk.

    I want you to tell me why banks aren’t capitalism. Is that really so much to ask?

    But congenital boomers are congenitally incapable of explaining why banks aren’t capitalism, apparently.

    If the Orange Man somehow ∞D shivs the bankers I will return to being his biggest shill.

    Just tell me why banks aren’t capitalism, Kirk.

    https://i.ibb.co/0h87DY9/gettyimages-184254554-612×612.jpg

    Tell me.

  30. Harry Jones says:

    CVLR, you do know that communist countries have banks, right?

  31. CVLR says:

    Harry, you do know that the communist countries are inventions of the bankers, right?

  32. Harry Jones says:

    CVLR, what do you wear under your kilt?

  33. CVLR says:

    I have just uttered something so outrageous, so obscene, so far outside all common knowledge, that it cannot possibly be true.

    …Right?

    Right?

  34. CVLR says:

    Let me take you on a trip, little baby girl. Let me take you on a riiiide.

  35. Harry Jones says:

    Not obscene, just randomly goofy. Whimsical, even.

  36. CVLR says:

    Life is too short to live without whimsy. I mean that sincerely.

    Why would bankers create something not in their interests? It baffles the imagination.

    I’m still waiting for Kirk to explain to me why I shouldn’t profit from the economic order — why I should morally endorse a necessity to sacrifice my time and my intellect and my spirit to serve as grist in someone else’s mill.

    I imagine I will be waiting a very long time.

    https://i.imgflip.com/ngmz0.jpg

  37. Sam J. says:

    CVLR is right. I’m not a “workers of the world unite” Socialist but if the government is going to pass out cash I want my share and without the mealy mouthed cries of “socialism”.

    Full on Communism and Oligarchical Capitalism are just two sides of the same coin where the citizen gets the shaft.

  38. Harry Jones says:

    Remember where that money came from in the first place…

    A U.S. government printing press.

    On second thought, remember where the value represented by that money came from in the first place.

    I’ll gladly take whatever the government offers me back, the government having already taken it from me in the first place. And so will anyone else who is sensible.

  39. CVLR says:

    Cheers, Sam, from a knower of what’s what to a fellow knower of what’s what.

    Harry, your comment doesn’t make any sense. The government isn’t going to give you any free money unless you’re “the economy”. If the money printer transferred value from the international bankers and the multinational corporations (the economy) to dirt peasants such as yourself (not the economy), it would never, ever be made to go brrrr. In fact, it would probably be unplugged, disassembled, put onto rockets, and launched into the sun.

    Debate me, Kirk “the Boomer” Shirksalot.

  40. Harry Jones says:

    We are all the economy, but that’s beside the point. There’s no such thing as free money. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t understand how things work.

  41. CVLR says:

    Harry,

    Do you really want to talk about where money comes from? Because it really is free, nigga. You might think I’m kidding, but I’m not even kidding.

    Let us put this matter aside.

    I think we can all agree that the opinion of the Federal Reserve, the entity that prints infinity free money for the economy, is authoritative on the subject of just who constitutes the economy.

    Here is Neel Kashkari, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, India, speaking about the economy,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUrlNHTxuJM

    Perhaps, having watched this video, you cannot believe your ears.

    Thi? i? under?tandable, ?o I ?hall tran?crybe: “So i? it written: nay, even in times of ?carcity and unplenty, the economy can bounce back eagerly and with great rapidity, for a? God hath commandeth, it’? the worker? that do?t neede?t time.”

    Record scratch. Stop, drop, and roll. Scales fall, slow motion, from the dirt peasant’s eyes. Trumpets blare. Angels sing.

    Hark! for this is the age of reckoning, of the nude central banker, indeed, even the age of truth:

    If your income is delivered to you as a paycheck, you are not — I repeat, not — the economy.

    We are thus left with the inexorable question: what, then, is the economy?

    I leave this mystery as an exercise to the reader.

  42. CVLR says:

    Most of those question marks were supposed to be long s’s.

    s/?/ſ/gc

  43. Harry Jones says:

    No, he doesn’t get to say what the economy is. If push comes to shove, we can all go to barter or precious metals and cut the feds out of the process entirely.

    The economy will bounce back when it sees fit. Always has, always will. Federal monetary policy is nothing more than a large nuisance.

  44. CVLR says:

    I’m sitting over here chuckling softly to myself.

    Look, we both know that Kirk is a smart dude, and we both know that you’re smarter than Kirk, and probably substantially more analytical, so you’re not going to step on your own dick like he would if he met me in the field of battle.

    But come on. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

    If you have the money printer, you literally-not-figuratively own the economy. It is your creature.

    He who has the money makes the rules.

    Let me show you something. I want you to explain how this is physically possible. I suspect that you will find it somewhere between difficult and impossible, inclusive, to comprehend according to your mental model of how the world works — a model that is completely, utterly, cataclysmically wrong.

    Are you ready?

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUUMZtrX0AETq7c?format=jpg

    I’ll even tell you how it’s possible: debt is money == money is debt.

    Now I want you to type out what that means in practical terms.

    This is a cognitive assessment.

  45. Sam J. says:

    Harry Jones says,”…Remember where that money came from in the first place…

    A U.S. government printing press…”

    That’s not true. The government can not, in the present system, print any money without incurring debt to a private banking entity, the FED, equal to the principal plus interest. In turn the private banking entity, FED, conjures money from thin air and gives us nothing in return.

    A side effect of this is that the FED’s friends get first pass a funds created from thin air at close to zero interest rates. Hell right now they are negative. A little thought will tell you that having access to this level of cash at little to no interest means you can buy all the productive parts of industry and pay back the loans with the profits from the firms you take over. This was done repeatedly with a big push during the 1980′s hostile take overs.

    Harry Jones says,”…The economy will bounce back when it sees fit. Always has, always will. Federal monetary policy is nothing more than a large nuisance…”

    Not so. In the past there have been numerous times where the amount of cash in the system was too little to entertain growth. Maybe you could say this was wrong but there’s no way that you can argue that too much cash could not cause inflation so the opposite, not enough, causes “real” interest rates to rise drastically. This crunch means no expansion of loans to buy factories, houses or whatever. Ideally the amount of cash in the system would balance the amount of productive work going on.

    In the great depression the FED drastically raised the cost of getting loans. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not but that helped cause the depression.

    A simple question. What if the government provided low or no interest loans to every citizen of the same quantity as that have to the banks in the past few decades. People would be WAY better off with housing cost much lower. We would also have a lot more houses because contractors could build houses with low to no interest but…you won’t see that.

    Our money supply system is stupid. A child can see it’s stupid. All money is created as debt so to pay off the interest you have to have more money…created with more debt. Simple arithmetic will show you that the interest portion will grow to unsustainable levels as the debt compounds. Maybe this is the reason we are suffering so. Mass interest and debt accumulation. The people in control of this FED and other central bank owners are allowed to create any amount of currency while sticking us with the debt. Nice racket if you can get it.

    There’s another way of thinking about this. If all the goods and services in the economy were backed or shadowed by an equivalent amount of currency we would have a situation were there would be debt but it would be owed to no one in particular. The cash would be a direct substitute for goods and services. Benjamin Franklin wrote about the currency in Pennsylvania that worked like this but based on land. It worked very well and provided prosperity for the whole community. Of course when the Bank of England found out about it the King made them stop causing the whole community to crash into a downward spiral. Possibly being one of the reasons for the revolution.

    http://www.philadelphiafed.org/publications/economic-education/ben-franklin-and-paper-money-economy.pdf

    There’s a guy who ran for President, Scott Smith, he had some damn interesting ideas. Very good reading for anyone interested in the economy, cash balances, the FED and the economy.Banks under his rules would just get a fee for initiating a loan. He would pay off the debt in 5 years. All his taxes would come from “transactions”. Sort of like sales taxes but on all transactions. They would also be very small but multiplied by the VAST number of transactions it would come to a whopping big number.

    Let’s look at the numbers he quotes.

    Payrolls total $15 trillion.
    Not much for filling a $4 trillion federal spending.

    The base for what he calls payments, (transactions), is 3,600 Trillion. Big difference. So using this big difference he would only take a tax rate of just 1/8 of a percent.

    He has a load of good ideas. He’s also not some nut, He’s the one who INVENTED Mortgage Backed Securities but his actually worked because he used verified income based loans and out of this calculated the failure rate and put up extra security to take account for it. Mortgage Backed Securities were not a bad idea. It was an excellent idea until the Jews got a hold of them and like every damn thing they touch they turned to shit. They turn everything they touch to shit.

    His site is gone but it’s on the internet archive. It’s good reading for people who like to look at stuff like BIG different ideas for banking,. taxes, etc. Everyone else will be bored to death but most are info graph type stuff you can easily breeze through.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20160126102250/http://www.scottsmith2016.com/#scott-smith-home-1

  46. Sam J. says:

    I want to stress that this link I provided

    http://www.philadelphiafed.org/publications/economic-education/ben-franklin-and-paper-money-economy.pdf

    is an excellent paper based on a lecture given by Professor Farley Grubb on March 30, 2006, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. It’s very good and not too long.

  47. Sam J. says:

    “…

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUUMZtrX0AETq7c?format=jpg

    I’ll even tell you how it’s possible: debt is money == money is debt…”

    If you look at the derivatives and then the amount of money available to purchase the derivatives you see fairly quickly there’s not enough. They can not be backed by real money. So most all the derivatives are just fanciful debt instruments with no backing at all.

    One big Jewified scam. I don’t think they can resist. Just one more shave off the side of the coin. One more derivative. Just that last squeeze of profit out of anything except the last one never comes. It’s always just one big unending scam until the people have had enough and expel them. Everything they touch turns to shit.

    Like slightly smarter Negros. I love to watch those videos where they put tampered bicycles in Negroland. They can’t help it. If it’s not tied down they immediately steal it. You can even see the look of joy on their faces that they stole something…right before the bicycle comes apart or the seat blows up or whatever scheme the pranksters have put place to stop them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX9wHZSRTl0

  48. CVLR says:

    While we’re recommending reading material, I recommend Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States, available here.

    Sam, you are more right than you are not, but I must tell you that the money is absolutely real according to the most refined understanding of what constitutes “real money”. That is, the value of the money (and of the derivatives, which are simply money squared) is predicated upon the profit and power that accrue to the owners the economy of the financial system, on an annual basis. (This is natural, because the value of all revenue-producing assets is assessed in this way.) This profit is most subtilely extracted (or, as you put it, skimmed) from the neo-homogeneous masses of culturally defiled and sexually degenerate laborers; and because dollars are created out of debt, which comes ex nihilo, the money is backed by labor, or, more properly, the value it extracts:

    And so the ellipse curves back in upon itself in flawless form.

    Circles within circles!

  49. Sam J. says:

    “…I must tell you that the money is absolutely real according to the most refined understanding of what constitutes “real money”…”

    Oh I get that. After all they can borrow money to buy a debt instrument creating…more money but my point was it had no backing. It certainly not like buying pork belly with cash. By having no “real” backing but debt piled on debt it makes the whole financial system very shaky and subject to vast gyrations and peril.

    What really, really pisses me off is these guys can conjure cash from nothing and still invest it so poorly that they are constantly having to get more because lest they go bankrupt. They’re not masters of the universe, they are masters of the campaign funds and blackmail.

  50. CVLR says:

    Sam, the backing is the value of your labor.

    That is all that anything is ever backed by.

    Capital by itself is just inert. Or worse than inert, because left alone it degrades and disintegrates and its constituent minerals return to the earth.

    This backing finds its legible expression in the futures market of the extracted value of the sweat of your brow, commonly known as the stock market.

    The fact that the revenue-generating asset that is the double-entry money system can never find satisfaction in the present (but only in the future) is the most brilliant aspect of its design. This feature systematically guarantees that the ownership of real assets will monotonously centralize, accruing into the hands of the economy, which is the true purpose of the system.

    If the system were not shaky and subject to vast gyrations, there would be no peril, and if there were no peril, there would be no opportunity.

    Besides, there is a point beyond which additional wealth has no real meaning. The natural human response upon surpassing this point is to reallocate time from labor to leisure. In making it so easy to produce so much, industrialization “blew up” the natural scarcity of the system, causing the phenomenon that so terrified the early-20th-century capitalists: overproduction.

    The solution to this problem was to raise prices, slash wages, and undertake to demote the citizenry from owners to renters of property.

    And that is why the average person is poorer than his grandfather, even as the wealth in the system has multiplied dozens of times.

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