Like a butcher with a sharp knife, Charles C. W. Cooke slices the pro-socialism arguments to threads:
History has shown us that socialism exhibits three core defects from which it cannot escape and which its champions cannot avoid. The first is what Hayek termed “the knowledge problem.” This holds that all economic actors make errors based on imperfect knowledge but that a decentralized economy will suffer less from this, partly because the decision-makers are closer to the information they need, and partly because each actor does not wield total control over everything but is only one part of a larger puzzle. The second problem is that, because socialism eliminates both private property and supply and demand, it eliminates rational incentives and, thereby, rational calculation. The third problem is that socialism, following Marx’s dialectical theory of history, lends itself to a theory of inevitability or preordination that leaves no room for dissent, and that leads in consequence to the elevation of a political class that responds to failure by searching for wreckers and dissenters to punish. Worse still, because socialists view all questions, including moral questions, through a class lens, these searches tend to be deemed morally positive — bound, one day, to be regarded by History as Necessary. Together, these defects lead to misery, poverty, corruption, ignorance, authoritarianism, desperation, exodus, and death.
Reminds me of the postal workers union recommendation when people first started using email.
The posties wanted the government to force Canadians to send all emails to the post office where union workers would print them off, stuff them in envelopes, and then deliver them days (or weeks?) later.
well joe, it wasnt just ‘zhob security’ they were after, the socialist viewed the new technology as a way to READ OUR MAIL.
and yes, early 80s, I remember a huge graffiti sign painted on the fence of an auto recycler in st catharines to the effect ’40 for 30′ or some such sloganism, ie they wanted the usual 40 hours PAY for 30 hour WORK. based solely on the fact they were, at the time, a very strong union, based on other nonsense. isnt that right monsieur jean claude perrot, cupw boss.
they’re like, mobsters, demanding protection money.
Socialism has failed every where and every time it was tried and no, Demark and Sweden are not examples of success.
Socialism has failed everywhere and every time it was tried.
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Yes, but this is America, Land of the Free, Home of the Naive.
Socialism will work here. It has to.
We have millions of rich people, employers, and businesses that will be willing to pay 50% more taxes and double their fair shares.
In two years we will be able to pay off our 23 trillion dollar debt, give away free Medicare, Food, Higher tenured College education, Fix all the roads and bridges.
The government will enforce the New Green Deal, and give free rides on Bullet trains to Europe and Hawaii.
No more Wars, Hunger, Poverty, crime or Tent Cities.
All these wonderful programs will keep the world from being destroyed in 11 years.
Awesome and Miraculous
free dope will help that along as well.
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let’s just go full sharia..
There were concerns that about 600,000 unqualified doctors
are unlawfully operating in Pakistan, 270,000 of them in Sindh
province where Larkana is located.
I read a good line recently in an internet article, something like this… socialism can only exist as a parasite on a free-market economy, once it has eliminated capitalism it becomes standard communism.
Yes. That is why trying to argue with, or even treating socialists as human, is a mistake.
It is a political and religious ideology of world domination; power for power’s sake. Nothing more, nothing less. Which is why it is inevitable that it will come into conflict with the other political and religious ideology of world domination.
Only cults seek to control how you dress, what you eat, who you talk to, what you say, where you live, what you drive, how you live, how you die, …
If you want to live in an actual secular democracy, there are only two groups that must never be allowed to wield power in any way; socialists, and mozlems.
It is like avoiding pregnancy; all you have to do is control yourself.
Socialism has no interest in generating wealth, only redirecting it.
No point telling socialists or Canadians as the former know and the latter are either ignorant beyond the pale or indoctrinated by the education system to become the former.
one cannot convince a crazy person of anything.
The most important passage from the sermon on capitalism …
I have thought about this conversation frequently since then, because it highlights some of the core misconceptions held by socialism’s champions, which are, in no particular order, that the retention of a democratic system of government makes massive state intervention more acceptable, that “capitalism” is a “system” in the same way as is “socialism,” and that liberal democracy — and, in particular, America’s brilliant constitutional order — can survive the establishment of a socialist economy.
Every single word and action of the new-Socialists is … ANTI-democratic!
You MUST NOT drive a car!
You MUST call gay partnerships “marriage”!
You MUST pay women the same as men … in the broadest possible statistical manner!
You MUST give black folks an UNequal shot at: fill-in-the-blank.
You MUST accept transsexuals in your bathrooms!
You MUST pay higher taxes!
You MUST kill fossil fuels!
You MUST pay higher taxes
You MUST NOT say, write, or distribute unpopular thoughts.
No, Socialism is wholly incompatible with American Democracy. The American Republic. The American Constitution. No wonder these leftist FOOLS are ignoring and attempting to destroy our US Constitution.
America, and our Constitutional FREEDOMS cannot survive command and control leftist freaks imposing THEIR rules on a FREE people
Oops
Statism,Socialism, Communism .
That which is not regulated is forbidden.
Subjects shall not question their masters.
Amazing how damn near every normal human interaction is forbidden, by those who “Only serve to help us”.
A tax on do-gooders is one cure.
Socialism was always deadly, but it’s become even more horrid in its latest incarnation. They don’t even care about their cherished “workers” – just protected groups.
Socialism removes individual sovereignty and choices by force and concentrates power over human action in the state. A large state results in a small-minded, resentful, miserable population. Socialism stands for morality at gunpoint. Capitalism stands for morality as a consequence of free will. There is nothing more democratic than people freely voting with their dollars in a free market.
Red Rachel was going to shut down religious schools by forcing them to have gay sex clubs like public schools.
Not to mention that it is organised theft, plunder, piracy and banditry on an industrial scale.
The fact that 4 people in a room voting to beat up the fifth guy, and distribute his lunch among them is not a virtue. It is organised crime.
I long for the day that socialist parties are treated the same way organised criminal enterprises are. Socialism is rcrime, racketeering, rape and theft, perpetrated by the lazy and untalented.
Capitalism is consensual, responsive sex.
Here is the kicker: the modern EuroDollar Futures contract is a throwback to an old Deutschmark-Rouble trade. This was money-laundering to basically allow the Soviet Union to have access to the global CAPITALIST free market so that they could manage the slack in their economic output.
Got that? Socialism is such a fraud it REQUIRES the existence of global capitalist free markets in order to survive!
Marx had no clue. It’s not capitalism vrs socialism btw, it’s free enterprise versus communism. Why use Marxist constructs.
Marx failed to note the meteoric rise in standards of living that resulted from the industrial revolution, even with all its “unfairness,”which he saw instead as oppression, from which socialist elites could rescue the workers (from their prosperity).
He ignored the iron law of oligarchy that specifies elites will emerge in all organizations, including the socialist collective.
Elites tend not to want to give up wealth, power and stature, so there goes the equality commune, except the misery for the serfs.
IOW, in addition to not having a clue about economics, Marx didn’t understand human nature. Marxism is his excuse for that.
And of course like (almost) all the other bold revolutionaries, he came from privilege not poverty, even marrying into royalty.
In short, he was a putz who’s ilk thought it was OK to torture, starve and murder hundreds of millions because well, their views were not deterministic enough for their class (iow they didn’t know their place) while interfering with their perfection of ideas.
Previous despots were somewhat enlightened. Marxism scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Nice theory? No application.
Marx never had a job.
“On the sole occasion when he applied for a job (as a railway clerk) he was rejected because his hand writing was so atrocious.”
“For most of his life he therefore depended on handouts from Engels, for whom socialism was a hobby, along with fox-hunting and womanizing; his (Engel’s) day job was running one of his father’s cotton factories in Manchester. “
Niall Ferguson, “Civilization” page 207.
Which makes him the perfect socialist man, dictator of the proletariat and neo-bourgeoisie of course, living the good life.
And Bernie Sanders was kicked out of the commune back in the day for being lazy…
and obama rarely showed up for work as editor, back in the good ‘ol days of the harvard law review.
work is for the lumpen proletariat.
Why would they do that? From each according to his abilities, To each according to their needs eh? His communal brothers and sisters had an OBLIGATION to carry his lazy ass. How DARE they kick out a slacker. Why … they sound like corporate slavemasters!!
Engels was the son of an industrialist: a factory owner.
Obviously he had daddy issues. Like our PET and little potato.
Marx never once set foot in a factory.
Marx was a bum.
Bernie Sanders is a bum.
“It’s not capitalism vrs socialism btw, it’s free enterprise versus communism.” Exactly. The term “capitalism” was Lenin’s construct. Your comment was well said btw.
Misery, poverty, corruption, ignorance, authoritarianism, desperation, exodus, and death—for everyone but the elect.
Defects indeed. For the socialists, these are not undesirable side effects of socialism. The mass killing of good, decent people, for no better reason than the fact that the socialists enjoy making people suffer, is the whole point of socialism.
Those words should be carved into bats and beaten into these leftist idiots until they get it.
lol !!!
I volunteer to carve the words into the bats with the mirror image, so that
when the bat hits, voila!!! a dent in their cranium in the form of a legible message!!!
my goodness. not a single positive comment on socialism.
allow me.
the good news is they are batting 1000 as far as the accumulated downside
EVERYWHERE it has been tried in all its variations.
Socialism is, at its core, slavery – forced labour – by the state.
Its consequence is the concentration of power, wealth, and control in the hands of a few at the cost of, off the backs of, the many.
Notice where the greatest amount of power, wealth, and control in the United States is: Washington, D.C.
And the mechanism by which that happened? The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. By the way, the taxing of income is one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto. In essence, the taxing of income POWERS the socialist state.
So, the way to deal with a socialist state is by banning it from taking its citizens’ money.
Condensed version:
“Yeah, it didn’t work there, that time, but that’s because it wasn’t real socialism”
“True, it wasn’t real socialism, but that’s because socialism isn’t real, it’s a fantasy about a world in which things aren’t the way they are in the real world.”
Not quite. Democratic Kampuchea came closest to the “real thing,” with any of the “new people” raised under capitalism who were unable to escape the Khmer Rouge marched into the fields and made to work themselves to death doing back-breaking farm work.
As far as efficiency in killing people went, Pol Pot remains the world champion. By the time he was overthrown by the Vietnamese army, he had killed a quarter of his own people with another half staring death in the face had their been any further delay in his ouster, while maintaining the open sympathy of Beijing, the Carter administration and the UN.
Canadian Forces Afghan memorial dedicated in ceremony three days ago – officials decided to limit publicity
The Canadian Forces confirmed Thursday evening on Facebook that it had held a dedication service at the new Afghanistan Memorial Hall at the National Defence Headquarters (Carling) in the west end of Ottawa. But that happened three days earlier on May 13. “The event was attended by senior Canadian military leadership and Department management,” according to the Facebook posting.
No press release was issued. The decision was made by officials to keep the event quiet and only to release the news via Twitter and Facebook at a later date. Families of the fallen were not invited to the dedication ceremony.
Why would a war memorial be closed to the public? Oh Yea. I forgot.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/afghan-memorial-dedicated-in-ceremony-three-days-ago-officials-decided-to-limit-publicity
Where are the New Canadian Military Shoulder Honor Patches?
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/armband.jpg
That patch reminds me of a ten-mile hike.
North Korea has socialism.
Is anyone interested?
Canadians are lured by the promise of “free things” and are loathe to surrender them, hence the vacillating between the Liberals and the NDP or even the Greens.
When Canada becomes the new former Soviet Union with no money, social services or infrastructure, people will eat their children, starting with the girls they forced into sports and STEM programs because “it’s 2019!” or some such rot.
Before one knows it, we will be a colder Venezuela.
Liberal MP seriously proposes new kangaroo court to harass and punish citizens for thought crimes online.
This government is waging an all out war against free speech.
WHERE WILL IT END?
https://mobile.twitter.com/MaximeBernier/status/1129436734150856705
A @peoplespca
government will repeal all the restrictions on free speech imposed by the Trudeau Liberals, and will counteract the Left’s witch hunt and authoritarian attempts to impose its politically correct dogmas everywhere and on everyone
https://mobile.twitter.com/MaximeBernier/status/1129431276094668801
Socialists always claim that is fails because it has never been perfectly implemented.
Well Free-markets/capitalism is never perfect either and never will be. But at least in an imperfect state and as we try to improve it people become more prosperous.
In the quest for (unattainable) perfection in socialism people suffer horribly and even die. So why try?
I hear that argument. It’s clearly invalid, since as leadership becomes more socialist, their despotism and depravity increases.
I read this morning that Haiti is having problems generating electricity because Venezuela is running out of money. Socialism.
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
And my favorite:
“Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve… But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay – No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.”
Charles C. W. Cooke wrote a great article. So true. Also, many great comments above. I am sick to my stomach at the breathtaking rate at which our society is embracing this evil sickness in all its various societal manifestations.
I won’t repeat the agonies that my wife’s and my family experienced at the hands of the “World’s Joy Bringers” (my gpa’s words).
The Age of Nihilism is neigh.
“WE so good. Venezuela so bad”.
Same. Same. People prefer to live in this illusion than face reality, an illusion reinforced by this BS narrative spun by the fascists who have brought us endless wars. And the fascists also have wonderful social programs. Difference is the means of production is in the hands of the corporate-state. (Think NAZIs).
Beware of the industrial-military complex we were warned. Beware of the banks we were warned. Now we can add to that the spy-intelligence-high tech complex. Old economies built on war and plunder now reliant on endless money printing and debt, destroying the savings of those who toiled and enslaving their grand kids while enriching the 1%. YES the corporate-state will buy our vote of confidence with endless free sh*t while spying on us at every turn & telling us what to think so we become model citizens and consumers.
Ours are not the failed petro-state central planners a la Venezuela. Ours are of the failed financial- corporate-state. Our “mixed-economy” central planners are more cunning, deceptive, alluring , seductive and effective and so people can’t see thru the spin and illusion. The posted article reinforces the illusion.
Venezuela is but the next financial crash away for the many. Be prepared. Keep the larder full. Buy gold. Buy lead.
Choose freedom.