Friday, 11 September 2015

A link worth sharing?

Here

My latest blogpost: A link worth sharing?Tweet this! Posted by Lola at 13:32

11 comments:

Random said...

Also read:
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com//news/world/why-many-drivers-in-china-intentionally-kill-the-pedestrians-they-hit
Nuts.
Marxism made humans mere machines, disposable.

11 September 2015 at 14:35
MikeW said...

'A Link worth sharing?' No, not really, when you read the last bit.

“Socialism is not in the least what is pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created . . . Each step leading towards Socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists.”

When voices are raised today calling for socialism in America, including by those attempting to win a major party candidacy to run for the presidency of the United States, it is important – no, it is crucial – that the history and reality of socialism-in-practice in those parts of the world in which it was most thoroughly imposed and implemented be remembered and fully understood. If we do not, well, history has its own ways of repeating itself.

11 September 2015 at 16:10
Random said...

Mike W,
All of the US candidates are authoritarian. You have no choice.

11 September 2015 at 16:12
Bayard said...

I'd disagree. That article is more about the Russians than socialism. You could write a similar article about the communist revolution in China, but it would be more about the Chinese than socialism, too. The Chinese showed the same lack of respect for human life during the Boxer rebellion, leading to the slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The article is also more about the ways that brutal dictators consolidate and hold onto power than socialism, too. Finding a common enemy for "the people" to hate is one of the oldest trick in the book, and how much easier is it, when that enemy consists of unarmed and powerless citizen of your own country, rather than a possibly better-armed foreign state.

Ultimately, beliefs are not responsible for the people that hold them.

11 September 2015 at 16:53
Lola said...

B. You could add Pol Pot and pretty well every 'socialist' South American dictator - not Pinochet, obviously (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet)

By posting I wasn't commenting, but hoping to drive a good comments thread.

11 September 2015 at 17:07
benj said...

Why not pick on the Swedes? At State spending >50% GDP that's pretty Socialist. And what most Americans who are Socialist have in mind. Not the USSR.

It's a Strawman to divert attention from the fact Allodial-Capitalism is Blue Socialism. Aka Feudalism Lite.

The Faux-Libs say they want freedom, but they are in denial that the only reason we need such a large and overweening State apparatus is due to the inequities caused by an unfair distribution of Land rent.

Wars, poverty, crime etc, etc are all symptoms, that have a root cause.

11 September 2015 at 17:43
Lola said...

BJ. Sweden is interesting. Although it has high taxes it is also quite economically free. See here: http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

Furthermore I was reading an article elsewhere that I can't now find which showed that Sweden's success predated their high tax high spend government and that since that has been going on it's relatively wealth has declined.

11 September 2015 at 21:19
MikeW said...

I don't know about the original article but the heritage index Lola posted is a real gem:Index with New Zealand as number 1, then,

For example, Denmark 11
USA 12
UK 13
Sweden 23
France 73
Italy 80

But take your pick from 'Freedom' States better that France and Italy. I went for Romania at 57, Albania at63 Kazakhstan at 69 and wait for it - Saudi Arabia at 77. Priceless. I had real chuckle at that one! Who would have the bare face cheek to publish this stuff/guff?

11 September 2015 at 22:14
Random said...

Mike, it is economic freedom not social freedom.

11 September 2015 at 22:18
Tim Almond said...

Lola,

Sweden is free markets + high taxes on the output of those markets to pay for public goods. Most lefties who advocate Sweden would hate the reality of it, with more decentralisation, less huge bureaucracy and far more private sector involvement in delivering services.

For me, that's the only sensible way of running government: free markets, tax the outputs, spend that on services, giving consumers choice in who delivers them to them where sensible (hip operations can be a market, putting out fires can't). All you then argue over is how that gets balanced - do you want more hip operations for old people, or newer Volvos for the workers.

11 September 2015 at 22:50
MikeW said...

Random above,

Point taken after rereading this morning. If you mean the freedom site is merely a utility that helps a company make business judgements about overseas investment then I retract my stuff/guff comments. The market will decide how good the Liberty table is.

My problem on first reading was that it seemed a league table to enshrine the idea that 'economic' freedom, a few key economic or legal indicators can be used as a proxy for the Big/Total 'social' freedoms and judge and tabulate a society accordingly.

12 September 2015 at 11:11

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