What many young people today don’t realize is that socialism is a machine for empowering insiders. Few insiders have ever been rewarded more assiduously than the nomenklatura of the Soviet Union. Few governments have been as gray — in every sense of the word — as the Brezhnev regime. A vast expansion of the American government, as imagined by today’s Democratic Socialists, would create its own privileged elite.
From its inception, by contrast, capitalism was designed for outsiders. Its original apostles, such as Adam Smith, argued that entrepreneurs needed freedom from the royal regulations that limited trade and the formation of new enterprises. When the government controls decisions to work or to start a business, political pull becomes a prerequisite for success. The whole point of economic freedom is that all people — not just the connected — can use their talents to help themselves and, potentially, to change the world.
These days, capitalism’s advocates often focus more on defending the status quo than on promoting outsider opportunity. If capitalism is to win over the young, that must change—and a new freedom agenda can help make that happen. In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt announced his four freedoms (of speech and worship, from want and fear) that helped frame his objectives for World War II, which the nation would enter before the end of that year. Our contemporary outsiders would benefit from a renewal of four key freedoms: to build, to work, to sell, and to learn. The young need fewer land-use restrictions that make it tough to provide affordable housing in productive areas. They need fewer employment rules that limit their ability to find work, as well as fewer business regulations that suppress entrepreneurial energies. And — even before these other important things — they need new educational options that liberate them from underperforming educational monopolies.
In 1981, the social scientist Mancur Olson published his magisterial The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. Olson had already won acclaim for The Logic of Collective Action, which explained why some groups received an outsize slice of the political pie. In his new book, Olson turned to the question of why nations fail. His thesis: nations lost dynamism when insiders managed to stack the rules against disruptive outsiders.
Stable societies with unchanged boundaries, Olson observed, “tend to accumulate more collusions and organizations for collective action over time.” Instead of accepting rules that encourage overall growth, these collusive organizations — trade groups and labor unions were paradigmatic examples — fight to keep what they have, slowing down “a society’s capacity to adopt new technologies and to reallocate resources in response to changing conditions,” thus reducing economic efficiency. Decline follows.
Olson pointed to Japanese stagnation under the Tokugawa shogunate, when, “before Admiral Perry’s gunboats appeared in 1854, the Japanese were virtually closed off from the international economy.” Ruling Japanese society, he writes, “were any number of powerful za, or guilds, and the shogunate or the daimyo often strengthened them by selling them monopoly rights.” The guilds “fixed prices, restricted production and controlled entry in essentially the same way as cartelistic organization elsewhere.”
A second example: Great Britain, “the major nation with the longest immunity from dictatorship, invasion and revolution” and, consequently, Olson explained, suffering “this century a lower rate of growth than other large, developed democracies.” In Olson’s view, the weak performance resulted from limits on change established by a “powerful network of special-interest organizations,” which included labor unions, industrial groups, and aristocratic cliques. By the 1970s, after the conservative government of Edward Heath fell in a losing battle with striking miners, many deemed Britain ungovernable. Olson contrasted the British situation with that of postwar Germany and Japan, where the chaos and destruction of wartime defeat wiped away established industrial and retail groups, leaving the field open to newcomers like Soichiro Honda or the Albrecht family (creators of international supermarket giant Aldi), who could work economic magic.
What many economists today don’t realize is that capitalism is a machine for delivering dividends to investors. Few investors have ever been rewarded more assiduously than the Boomers of the United States of America. Few governments have been as gray — in every sense of the word — as the American regime. A vast expansion of the American government, as imagined by every savvy investor, would be impossible, as the only way that the American government could get any larger is if it gave free money to middle-class non-colored employees, which is not going to happen.
From its inception, by contrast, capitalism was designed for investors. Its original apostles, such as Giammaria Ortes, argued that entrepreneurs, given freedom from royal regulations, would create abundant material prosperity, causing the world population to increase geometrically, doubling each thirty years, destroying capitalism. When the government fails to control decisions to work or to start a business, competition makes profit impossible. The whole point of economic freedom is that all people — not just the connected — can use their talents to compete with each other in the gig economy.
These days, capitalism’s advocates often focus more on securing their investments than securing the investments of others. If capitalism is to rule the young, nothing must change — and a new freedom agenda will not help nothing happen. In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt announced his four freedoms (of speech and worship, from want and fear) that helped frame his objectives for World War II, which the nation would enter before the end of that year. Our contemporary outsiders would benefit from a renewal of four key freedoms: to build, to work, to sell, and to learn. The old need more land-use restrictions that make it easy to provide for themselves through their savvy real-estate investing. They need fewer employment rules that limit their ability to negotiate with their employees, as well as more business regulations that secure the production of profit. And — even before these other important things — they need new educational options that make their prospective employees more reliable than ever before.
Part of Olson’s point was that this decline in societies is inevitable. The guys who benefit the most from the current set-up are going to fight tooth & nail to extend & keep their current advantages — and they have to power to do that. The society becomes ossified. Eventually, an external event (often invasion) knocks down the system — and then the cycle starts all over again.
“Capitalism” is a poor expression. After all, every society above subsistence level relies on capital — investing savings in expansions of productive capacity. Communist societies rely on investing capital! The issue is who gets to decide how much gets saved and what it gets invested in.
A better description than “capitalism” would be “market-driven economy” — where individuals get to decide how much of their own earnings to save, and what to invest it in.
“half of younger Americans would ‘prefer living in a socialist country’”
Why wouldn’t they? They see the people at the top, the financially connected and the bankers wholesale looting the country for every last penny they can while using the government security apparatus to invade other countries for the Jews, ruin the middle class, spy on us and lock us down in our homes (if we haven’t lost it already). Why the hell shouldn’t they want some, if only a little piece, of what the people at the top have stolen and looted?
All this talk about shareholders and the wonders of capitalism and all this rot when any fool can see the people running this train are a bunch of criminal, evil shysters set out to suck the life out of everything still moving.
None of the economic systems that are so “fantasized” by our masters are in place. It’s all corruption, lawfare and murder to keep themselves at the top. It’s all lies and shit. So don’t pretend to be virtuous when you lecture us on the “wonders” of capitalistic systems when we live in this rot.
I like to remind people of something that happened in the past that the narrative was totally distorted. It’s relevant to the present case.
Many people blame the unions for the decline of the auto industry but that’s a lie.
Back in the day when Roger Smith was running GM he and his executives were stuffing their pockets full of shareholders money as fast as they could. Enormous amounts. The union not being full of complete idiots wanted a little for themselves. Can you blame them? After all Roger and his buddies were getting fat. So they told them they were going to shut the whole thing down.
Now today we totally blame the union for this but in reality it’s Roger and his executives that were in charge. They were paid a shit load of money to keep the car companies prosperous. They could have not knuckled under and fought them but they folded. Why? Because they wanted to keep stuffing their pockets with cash and what we have today is no different. If the people at the top are going to run the country into the ground then the people want at least a taste.
We have Socialism right now but it’s only for the rich.
Sigh.
Close the book. Go to range. Form ranks.
Or have nothing and be nothing.
OTOH form ranks and the young shall gather.
But we cannot read, talk, blog, or vote our way out.
“half of younger Americans would ‘prefer living in a socialist country’”
Then they should be pretty happy right now.
“Then they should be pretty happy right now.”
Socialism is when the value of capital unerringly appreciates.
” ASM826 says:
December 30, 2020 at 11:22 pm
“half of younger Americans would ‘prefer living in a socialist country’”
Then they should be pretty happy right now.”
Let’s put some numbers on that to give us perspective. After all saying that we live in a Socialist country should be obvious right? At this scale the numbers should be easy to see this “Socialism”.
So consumer debt in US is $4.2 trillion.
https://www.thebalance.com/consumer-debt-statistics-causes-and-impact-3305704
Mortgage Debt is $9.86.
https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/american-debt-mortgage-debt/
So total is $14 Trillion.
But the banks have been given somewhere greater than $40 trillion dollars since the banking crisis. Around $9 trillion voted to them just recently in the corona attack. So a small class of people have been given over twice the credit at at give away terms that every single US citizen.
Does this sound like Socialism??? Hell no it doesn’t. If all the consumer and mortgage debt was rolled into essentially zero interest loans for the citizens then they would be doing WAY better. That would be real profit in their pockets.
Here’s a novel idea. Since the FED gives us not ONE DAMN thing and charges us interest for it and gives all it’s Oligarchical buddies(((Jews))) MASSIVE amounts, obscene amounts, of zero interest loans far exceeding the average Americans loans outstanding. And seeing as how all this massive cash flow degrades the average Americans cash on hand then why don’t we take every single damn thing the banks and financial class bought with these consumer net wealth degrading loans and all the profits they made from these inflationary loans and put them in a trust for Americans as a whole? Fair right? That would end this mighty Socialism experiment[for the rich].
What we have now is MMT for the financial class. Debt, monopoly financialization and being shit on for the citizen.
Of course if you talk about MMT for the actual citizens who are financially on the hook for the entire monetary system then IT’S THE PLAGUE because they don’t want any competition for their own nice little MMT profit center where they rape the fuck out of the economy and financialize everything. How long before they start taxing air?
Appropriate reading that summarizes the whole scam much better than I can.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-5-steps-to-world-domination.html
So after reading the above the next time someone blathers on about Socialism or how MMT will ruin us you know they are either fools, liars or shills for the financial class.
It costs the government almost nothing to print money, especially when that money isn’t even paper, just numbers in a computer. The problem with handing out that money to poor people is that money’s value is based entirely on the fact that some people have to work for it.
Banks that get free money mostly use it to cover bad loans that politicians pressured them into making, i.e. money you deposited that was spent building McMansions for Africans and Latinos who wrote “$250,000/year” on their loan applications. Many bankers who once lived high on the hog are unemployed and broke now because they didn’t have the connections to avoid getting laid off.
Nations fail when they stop being nations. If every citizen is entitled to free money, we have to import foreigners to do all the work, and when they become citizens, we have to import more, until one day we wake up and wonder why our country looks like Guatemala or Nigeria.
You’re wrong and I can pick what you said apart easily.
In the first place if it’s good for banks to get wades of interest free money why is it not the same for citizens?
“…The problem with handing out that money to poor people is that money’s value is based entirely on the fact that some people have to work for it…”
You’ve taken a little tiny piece of a puzzle and blown it up to be “the World”. I’ll explain. If you give people just enough to live on sure some will have no other aspirations and do nothing. They’re likely doing that now but the VAST majority will continue to do something for more cash because people always want more(people have wives and there is you answer to infinite need). So saying a minimal living wage means no one will do anything nor require any more cash is easily proven wrong by the most simple reasoning. And since cash is exchanged for goods that people need the goods will not suddenly become worth nothing. And don’t even bother to complain about inflation because we could give everyone a basic income for far less than the massive give away to the bankers and Oligarchs that do NOTHING for the country at all. Nothing. They are nothing but parasites. If inflation is a problem for giving money to people then why the hell should we give it to bankers? Their monopolizing of all assets will cause far greater inflation because they want as much profit as possible but basic needs, food shelter etc. remain the same for people. There is not a vastly higher demand for basics that already “are” needed.
“…Banks that get free money mostly use it to cover bad loans that politicians pressured them into making, i.e. money you deposited that was spent building McMansions for Africans and Latinos who wrote “$250,000/year” on their loan applications…”
No. The amount of money they got was well in excess of the amount needed. I might ask a simple question if they got the cash to pay off these loans who got the house? The banks did so they got far in excess of the value and didn’t put up anything in the first place. Why didn’t the citizens get the house? Why the hell should we bail out people who wrote liars loans then give them houses and cash? Why shouldn’t they instead be in jail? They didn’t do anything noble or suffer any grief for any of their fraud. Outright fraud. In fact they got paid for fraud. As I pointed out before.
“Mortgage Debt is $9.86″
so where did the rest of the $30 trillion go? And we know the whole entire housing mortgage payment industry didn’t go broke so the whole story is a big assed lie. It’s a scam and even the most simple rough numbers show this to be so.
“…Nations fail when they stop being nations. If every citizen is entitled to free money, we have to import foreigners to do all the work…”
I’ll agree with you there. People who immigrate should wait a couple generations before they can receive any basic income or just don’t let them in at all. Raise tariffs and pay will go up or robots will do the work.
Robots will do most work in 20 years or so anyways. In 5 to 7 years we will have a $1,000 processor with the power of a human brain. I mean why do you think they are trying to kill everyone off or at least corral everyone into a forced poverty?
“How long before they start taxing air?”
If you think about the logistics of something like this… you would need to measure how much air someone is breathing. So you would probably need to convince everyone to wear a mask at all times unless they want to die. Then you could sell masks with smart technology embedded in the material, a bit like a breathalyzer, and pair the mask to an app on their phone. The app would then communicate with the app of your customer’s bank — automatically, to provide a seamless user experience.
In other words, it’s pretty much a non-starter. How do you convince someone to strap a device to her face whenever she goes outside?
That would never work.
“… money’s value is based entirely on the fact that some people have to work for it…”
That is right! And not just work, but produce some good or service for which other people are prepared to exchange the goods & services they in turn produce. The problem arises when the dastardly Political Class steps in the middle of this free exchange and takes from Peter (giving him nothing) and gives to Paul.
It looks like Sam grasps part of this reality — the basis of a sustainable economy is PRODUCTION. That is why the Political Class’s outsourcing of actual production to China is destroying the US.
Part of the Political Class’s problem is that they fail to understand money. Traditionally, the line has been that money is both a means of exchange and a store of value. But reality is that money is a store of value only in the short term — within living memory, a cup of coffee was 10 cents and a hamburger was 25 cents.
Money is simply expedited bartering — and ultimately rests on the ability of an economy to produce goods & services to be bartered. That is why China is winning, and laughing at the stupidity of the US Political Class.
Sam, printing money always causes inflation. Give money to the poor, and prices for food, fuel, and rent go up. Give money to the rich, and the prices of modern art, stocks, Bitcoin, and luxury real estate go up. Both policies are idiotic, but the latter does not immediately turn your country into Venezuela.
When, not if, this system collapses, the economy will revert to gold, barter, and slavery (hey, it beats starving to death). If banks exist, they will not be limited-liability corporations — bankers who lose customer deposits will pay for it with their flayed hides.
Gavin Longmuir says,”…It looks like Sam grasps part of this reality — the basis of a sustainable economy is PRODUCTION. That is why the Political Class’s outsourcing of actual production to China is destroying the US…”
No I grasp all of it but note that if the bankers get free credit then the citizens should too. I particularly jump up and down about the outsourcing as the people doing this are the same damn bunch.
Dave says,”Sam, printing money always causes inflation. Give money to the poor, and prices for food, fuel, and rent go up…”
The question is how much and who benefits. Inflation from giving subsistence level wages for free to the poor would have extremely low inflation as this covers food, housing, basic stuff. This they are already paying for. Many are already on welfare so it wouldn’t change a thing. It would not change the number of people providing we don’t import the masses which I’m totally opposed to.
Making it profitable for the rich to buy up all the productive assets with free debt is positively horrible and is leading us into the dark ages. It’s destroying the country.
You people pretend I’m some sort of commie or insinuate that I’m somehow wanting everything for free but that’s a lie. It’s just another straw man propped up that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about so stop. I’m not and I could care less how much money people make in productive enterprises where people provide goods and services.
I’ll tell you what I would do. Tax the living daylights out of the financial class. Make a law that if you import finished goods none of the executives of any corporation could make over 20 times what the least paid employee makes. Including contracted out service employees. Let’s bring our corporate leaders pay in line with the “global” mean. That would get their attention. Let them suffer the same pay degradation as their employees. Let the extra profits go to the shareholders instead of the corporate looters.
It would not hurt the average little store owner as they could import goods small scale and still make a good wage.
I’m incised about the Oligarch bankers and financial swindlers looting the country by printing money by the trainloads, buying up all the productive business and using this monopoly to destroy us and outsource our productive capacity.
“…Give money to the poor…immediately turn your country into Venezuela…”
You can not prove this and do not have the data to back this up. Venezuela has one large commodity and it’s ability to export it was cut off. All the capital equipment needed to run it or expand it was cut off. It’s productive assets not in the country were seized. It’s ability to raise or even move capital was cut off and several coups were attempted against the government. Equating it and a relatively open market like the USA is a non starter and fake. Fake economics! It’s like comparing cheese whizz and carbon chunks.
Let’s look at Germany which totally took the banks under control before WWII. When farmers were hanging themselves in their barns during the depression in the US workers were taking paid vacations in Germany because the government cut out the swindling Jews. Now this is a fact. And the Germany economy was a world wide miracle. They went from being flat on their backs to prosperity and this was well before they started in on war production so don’t use that ruse.
No wonder everyone tried to murder them. Others may have gotten the idea that they didn’t need the Jews to tell them they could have money without their say so while providing nothing but porn and hate.
Before Hitler got into power and disenfranchised the banking elite it WAS JUST LIKE WHAT WE ARE GOING THOUGH TODAY. EXACTLY. Almost a carbon copy.
So you can’t bluff me with “stupid Oligarch” based economic lies, nonsense and bullshit their paid peon professors feed us. I know better.
“The problem arises when the dastardly Political Class steps in the middle of this free exchange and takes from Peter (giving him nothing) and gives to Paul.”
Is this satire?
“That is right! And not just work, but produce some good or service for which other people are prepared to exchange the goods & services they in turn produce.”
Most people work for corporations owned by other people and exchange their wages for things made by other corporations owned by other people.
“Part of the Political Class’s problem is that they fail to understand money. Traditionally, the line has been that money is both a means of exchange and a store of value. But reality is that money is a store of value only in the short term — within living memory, a cup of coffee was 10 cents and a hamburger was 25 cents.”
What if it is you who fail to understand money?
“Money is simply expedited bartering — and ultimately rests on the ability of an economy to produce goods & services to be bartered.”
What if your basic model of economic reality is wrong?
“I’ll tell you what I would do. Tax the living daylights out of the financial class.”
Why do you need to fax the financial class? Won’t that just entrench their position? Where did they get their money, anyway?
How?
“Sam, printing money always causes inflation.”
Does it?
“Give money to the poor, and prices for food, fuel, and rent go up.”
Do they?
“Give money to the rich, and the prices of modern art, stocks, Bitcoin, and luxury real estate go up.”
What is money?
”Both policies are idiotic, but the latter does not immediately turn your country into Venezuela.”
For best results, be embargoed and cut off from world trade.
The poster who calls himself “Jim” wrote: “What if it is you who fail to understand money?”
Jim, it is difficult to tell from your writing style if you are enlightened, misinformed, or merely a bored teenager playing with the question mark on his mother’s keyboard.
For now, let me take you seriously, Jim. I am certainly willing to entertain the idea that I fail to understand money. Please, Jim, inform & educate me.
“…“The problem arises when the dastardly Political Class steps in the middle of this free exchange and takes from Peter (giving him nothing) and gives to Paul.”…”
That didn’t happen in Germany when Hitler kicked the Jews out of the banks.(Understand that I’m NOT a total fan of Hitler but I appreciate a lot of the things he did in the sense of Nationalism). And notice, I MEAN REALLY NOTICE, that the Jews totally own the political class so Jews blaming the political class is by default blaming themselves.
“…What if it is you who fail to understand money?
“Money is simply expedited bartering — and ultimately rests on the ability of an economy to produce goods & services to be bartered.”
What if your basic model of economic reality is wrong?…”
What I do understand is that one class of people,[led almost totally by Jews per capita], have obtained over $40 trillion of loans at essentially zero interest and have bought all the productive businesses in the US and west with it. They have used this ownership to stress the workers to the max to pay off the loans, stolen their pension funds, driven many bankrupt and used wage arbitrage to off shore manufacturing, bribed our politicians, possibly(we’ll see today) stolen the elections, funded antifa and BLM to burn down our cities, attack and kill whites, and many more things to awful to mention.
Now Jim, if I’m correct on who this is, is a Jew and will spout nonsense until his ears bleed because, well that’s just what Jews do. Jews can not tell the truth about what is going on in this country and what they are doing less they be torn to pieces. My only reason for answering is I want people to see how he is willing to go to any lengths to gas-light everyone. Let you see it for yourself. Use simple logical reasoning and tell me do I or I do not have a case that the financial class is ripping us off. Forget all the multitude of gas-lighting diversions that will be propped up. This is just to confuse you. The real case is “where is our $40 trillion dollar zero interest loans”? It’s a damn fair amount of money and while you can argue inflation if every citizen had this instead of a small select group of people who are looting the country then no matter what, inflation or not, I think a tremendously good case could be made that they would be far better off. Almost certainly. Anyone who says otherwise is dumb as a brick or lying to you.
“…“I’ll tell you what I would do. Tax the living daylights out of the financial class.”
Why do you need to fax the financial class? Won’t that just entrench their position?…”
The reason to PERSONALLY tax them is to make it unprofitable for them to do as they do. The details could be worked out. There’s a guy who ran for President when Trump won. This guy invented Mortgage Backed Securities but his actually worked because he made sure it was a broad based legitimate loans. As soon as Jews got a hold of this idea they of course corrupted it as they do everything. It was a good idea and good for the economy and finance before the Jews destroyed it. Read his stuff he has some interesting ideas.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160126102250/http://www.scottsmith2016.com/#scott-smith-home-1
“…Where did they get their money, anyway?
How?…”
The FED. The are insiders and are ripping us off.
“…Jim, it is difficult to tell from your writing style if you are enlightened, misinformed, or merely a bored teenager playing with the question mark on his mother’s keyboard…”
He’s Jewish. A vast amount, not all, but a vast amount of Jews spend enormous amounts of time reciting lies and nonsense to discombobulate the truth. They do not want you to know the truth as that would be deadly to them because…they are parasites who have been thrown out of every single country they have ever been to in any numbers for thousands of years. Now they will tell you it’s all someone else’s fault but if someone had been thrown out of say, bars and they had been expelled from 1,030 different bars would you believe it’s the bars that they went to fault???? Hell no you wouldn’t and it’s the same for them.
https://lordmolyneaux.wordpress.com/2018/05/02/complete-list-of-jewish-expulsions-908/
Mostly I answer these foolish missives of the Jews so that people will see what they are up to. Realize that everything you have read your whole life. all the TV shows, the radio shows, the magazines, all the textbooks and on and on have mostly been edited by these people who are filling you with nonsense and you will see the enormity of the problem.