First, we need some clarification. Freedom isn't for everyone. Part of the Commy master plan is, after all, the freeing of women:
We have established that many of today’s women are a lot crazier than nature meant them to be, and we are searching for the reason. Our thesis of course is that the disorder is not accidental, that it is the product of a carefully orchestrated plan.
Watch out for those crazy women with their red bandanas. If you do come in contact with them, immediately wash you hands and say some prayers to get rid of the pollution. And if that isn't enough, there's the . . .
Aqua-Chi footbath, which we recommend, because many people say it has helped them detoxify.
I don't quite know what to make of these ultra-right wing conspiracy theorists with their aqua-Chi footbaths. In addition to crazy lefty women, Alan warns us away from flouride (actually, he's probably right on that!) and the evils of sustainable development (another vile plan to take away our liberty). Of course, no rightwing intellectual could earn his bona fides solely through attacks on women and sustainable development. At some point, there has to be a racist remark. While most of the Republic Party cadre have, since Nixon, had sense to talk in code when beyond closed doors, Alan is quite open about feelings.The “Abolitionist” movement that provoked Lincoln’s Communist War to Destroy the Union is a good place to start. At this distance it is easy to see that the “Abolitionists” extruded a species of madness, a fanatic mania personified by lunatics like John Brown, who fastened onto Negro slavery as a vehicle to express it. Had there never been Negro slavery in our country, their madness would have fastened onto something else . . .
John Brown has been called a "fanatic" so many times that we find this "fact" repeated in fairly mainstream histories: There isn't a shred of historical evidence to support it. John Brown was a deeply principled person who was willing to give his life to a noble cause, but according to Stang, this was just someone who didn't have anything to do on the weekend and wanted to jump on the latest political bandwagon (not a very crowded bandwagon). If slavery hadn't been around, John Brown would probably be out campaigning for other frivilous causes such as the emancipation of women or sustainability. (Just thinking about this, I could really use an AquaChi footbath.) Alan adds . . .
I was recently dismayed by the sudden realization that there could be pockets of population, however small, whom I have not yet managed to offend.
I can think of a few pockets . . . racists, religious zealots, conspiracy theorists living in psychiatric wards . . .
50 comments:
Thanks for this post. It made my morning.
I used to listen to the "Alan Stang" report on the radio. There's nothing like learning that the Communist are tapping your every phone call as you sip your morning coffee. It's nice to know that I can start talking to Natasha or Ivan (the Communist operatives listening in on my phone calls) if my conversation with my American comrades starts to get boring.
I've been reading Alan Stang's books and articles for many years now, along with other writers in the same camp, and I am not the least bit impressed by the criticisms in this post or the comments.
Stang's writing deserves a lot better criticism than that - better than you appear to be capable of.
With this one post, you have convinced me that you are not even sophisticated left-wingers. Your comments indicate a naive perspective on what left-wing ideology actually involves.
I've spoken to activists recruiting on the street with more sense than you.
If you put the time you waste trying to make intelligent political comment into washing dishes, you'd at least be rich and stupid decades from now.
On second thoughts, get a job in the arts - dishwashing requires too much thinking.
Actually, Stang's writing's are a waste of good toilet paper. But they are funny. So we dishwashing artsy leftists, vanguards of the great commy feminist revolution must occasionally put on our bandanas and visit Alan for a good laugh.
Commie fag loving fools! Alan Stang's writing is simply scrumtrulescent.
Okay, I said I was wrong about the dishwashing and "useful idiots" certainly aren't in the vanguard. If you aren't for feminism or some kind of revolution, what kind of leftists are you? The "arts" is a routine part of the left scene. You laugh off communism, but what part of communism don't you go along with?
Which part of your comment was a joke?
Follows of the so-far-right-they're-almost-left crowd have used the word Communist to refer to anyone they don't like. Someone on C-Span (an Alan Stang devotee) even talked about "Communist bankers who secretly run the world." If wealthy bankers are the Commies par excellence, what pejorative term are you going to use for third-world peasants leading uprising against the rightwing drug-running CIA-funded thugs that control them? Or are we going to start lumping together billionaire bankers, shoeless 3rd world revolutionaires, and gay artists? My take on this is that the Alan Stang followers are evidence of a vast consipiracy to establish such poor educational standards that people can't even talk intelligently about the most basic facts of history. The Communists, whether you love them or hate them, were a particular group in history with a definitive ideology and goals. Alan Stang has about as much intellectual validity as people who drink poison in hopes of going to live on passing comets. He's OUT there.
Before you criticise conspiracy theorists, first understand their perspecitive properly. Your lame send-up of them shows that you have not gone to the effort.
Communism as an ideology and a movement was created by the wealthy elite as a facade behind which to politically take over all countries of the world and gain support or aquiescence from the people they aim to rule - i.e. by posing as a "proletarian" movement.
Those third-world peasants are, yes, poor and in many cases oppressed, but just dupes of the leadership. Their leadership act on behalf of the Communists. Revolutionary organisations are created in third-world countries and peasants are either duped or terrorised into joining them or at least shutting up (as in Kenya, Vietnam, China, Rhodesia etc).
Those "fascist CIA-controlled thugs" they are fighting are either some competing non-Communist dictator the Communists want to replace with one of their own (the kind of government you'd expect in such a country) or a genuine or relatively moderate ruler who the Communists and the complicit elite-controlled media have falsely presented as such (as they did with Chiang Kai-shek, Augusto Pinochet, the white South Afrcian government etc).
I don't see anything inconsistent in that scenario, or even improbable.
There's no doubt that revolutions are taken over and controlled by elite forces that use it as a facade. But we'll have to rewrite a lot of history before we make Chiang Kai-shek or Pinochet look respectable. Many of the Americans who were sent to China to help Chiang found him and his forces so completely corrupt and despicable that they had a hard time following their orders and supporting him. As for Communism, I think there's good evidence that many Communists were quite sincere. In many countries, they did what they set out to: taking down an economy that essentially ran on slave labor and replacing the formers rulers with peasants and working class people. Contrary to what's been said, people in many countries had greater freedom and greater wealth and security after Communists took power. While I don't have extensive knowledge of Stang, this mixing of rhetoric about God and country and the righteous protection of the wealthiest members of society have, throughout history, been a hallmark of Fascism (which may explain why Pinochet and Chiang Kaishek are being cleaned up so that they can be shown in public).
At what point are those revolutions taken over by the elite? Mao was mass-murdering and terrorising peasants and his own followers long before he took control of China. Lenin terrorised, arrested and killed many more people, more brutally, than the Czars did before him. Same goes for Ho Chi Minh, Jomo Kenyatta, Mugabe and others.
Western elite bankers were heavily involved in Lenin's coup from the beginning. The founder of modern socialism, Claude Henri de Rovrouy (Comte de Saint-Simon) at first proposed it as rule by the industrial elite, whom he considered the most fit to do so (what today we call "economic rationalism").
Chiang Kai-shek's and Pinochet's history was already "rewritten" by an elite-controlled and therefore complicit mass-media in order to make the Communists look good or at least not worse.
Those Americans ostensibly sent to China to help Chiang were themselves Communists or supporters - including Generals Stillwell and Marshall. They themselves villified Chiang. Roosevelt was himself a socialist and had collaborated with the Soviets in WW2. A number of top officials in his government were later convicted as Soviet spies. the Amerasia spy ring was busy turning out pro-Communist/anti-Nationlist propaganda to the mass-media and government.
No doubt there was a lot of corruption in Chiang's government, but it is impossible to keep corruption out of any government, especially in the chaotic corcumstances which prevailed in China at that time.
Pinochet has been similarly villified. He did what was necessary under the circumstances in Chile, which under Allende by that time had become emergency. Chile had become so infested with red saboteurs that police measures were unavoidable. He did not intervene until he deemed it absolutely necessary. Allende had been systematically destroying the Consititution he had promised and been elected (by a plurality, not a majority) to govern by. Many of those "victims" you see interviewed in our media were those same enemy reds. Your information about him has come from two sources: the elite-controlled mass-media and Communists, neither of which are reliable.
Communists themselves set up slave-labour camps. Peasants and workers did not assume leadership under Communism. Communist leaders have always been upper-class intellectuals. Name one worker in the top Communist leadership. What economic security people had under Communism came at the price of state terror. That's not really security. There was often great economic hardhip for the majority. Communist e4conomies have been largely sustained by Western aid.
Yes, many Communists - right up into the leadership - were and are sincere. That's what ideology does to a person - it justifies criminal activity as humanitarian. Many rank and file Communists are of course sincere also - because of ideology and disinformation. Sincerity is irrelevant.
Calling Stang a fascist shows a misunderstading of both fascism and Stang. Fascism is a brand of socialism. The fascists heavily regulated and taxed the middle class, to the extent that industries and businesses (and individuals) were effectively (if not on paper) state-owned.
Stang consistently denounces the wealthiest people in the US. That's who the conspiracy for world government is run by - the corporate elite. He is for free enterprise, which he believes increases the wealth of all members of society and restrains economic dominace - by restraining the government.
There is nothing fascist about valuing "God and country", even though it may have been part of fascist rhetoric. That's what rhetoric is - paying lip-service to genuinely sound ideas. Fascist rhetoric was also about liberty, strength and humanity - do you hate those?
The Nazi ideology was in every way hostile to Christianity, and Christians were persecuted. It was allowed to continue only in Nazfied form, as it was in Communist Russia.
Here are a couple of articles by Stang which specifically address his stance on fascism:
http://etherzone.com/2005/stang062405.shtml
http://etherzone.com/2005/stang052605.shtml
A couple points. I now often see people lumping the Nazis and the Communists/socialists together as if they were all the best of friends. This is odd, of course. The very first group the Nazis went after, before they killed off the Jews, gays, Gypsies, and so on, were the Communists. This is because the Communists were the one group that posed a realistic threat to what they were doing. As for Pinochet, if we're going to justify what Pinochet did as necessary in the circumstances, we can also justify all the Soviet atrocities (Russia, after all, was almost immediately attacked by the U.S., Britain, and many other countries after it became Communist.) As for consiracies, conspiracy theories are unnecessary. The wealthy elite in this country meet and plan quite openly. What they do is simply accepted as "the system," although the system is dressed up a bit when shown to the masses. Lastly, Alan Stang's concern about "world government" leaves me cold. World government would have some benefits in that it would remove one of the ideological pillars of any tyrannical system. I think people lose their ability to think straight when you start showing them pictures of their hometown adorned with flags flapping in the wind. We all love our families, hometowns, and customs, but these aren't a good basic material from which to build a system of power. Anyway, thanks for the comments. I always appreciate frank dialogue and the exchange of opinions.
The fact that the Nazis went after Communists does not mean that they are opposed to their basic ideology. It was necessary because they were a competing bands of socialists. That is why, as you said, the Communists were a threat to the Nazis. If two rival crime gangs compete in the same town, it doesn't make them different. Even different factions of Communists compete for power, the winner ruthlessly eliminating the losing faction.
The Nazi and Communist ideologies even have parallels. For instance, Marx said that economic evololution (with a bit of a push from the vanguard) would produce the perfect man, far in advance of his present state. This closely parallels the Nazi superman, who would come via biological evolution (with a bit of a push from the vanguard).
I don't deny that there were abuses during Pinochet's police activity (though his enemies have no doubt exaggerated them). As in Chiang Kai-shek's situation, there was socaial chaos. As in any large, powerful government, even in orderly conditions, it is as difficult to police the government as it is to police the enemy. But a dictatorship is unfortunately necessary under those conditions. A free society cannot exist under such disorderly and threatenning conditions.
The difference between Stalin and Pinochet is that Stalin was a psychopathic despot who was eager to use any measures (and then some) to take and keep power, and enjoyed taking them; whereas Pinochet was a genuine patriotic Chilean (as far as we know) who reluctantly did what was necessary. The record shows that he took action (jointly with the heads of the other military forces) only when the problems under Allende were very far advanced. Until then, he supported Allende's government, while others in the government were frantically protesting about Allende's own coup being arranged from the top down. Consider also that Allende was a Stalinist.
I don't say that Pinochet was perfect or even necessarily a good man. Unfortunately, Jesus Christ didn't step in, so some man had to do it.
Those attacks on the Soviets by the Allies were a fraud. That many western countries failing to bring down the then weak Soviet government in the state that Russia was in at the time should have easily won if they were really trying. Like many other so-called "anti-Communist" war efforts (e.g. Korea and Vietnam), they were just necessary window-dressing for the benefit of us rubes, and probably more opportuity for the big industries to profit from warfare. The elites love war - the reason or the outcome doesn't matter.
Not everything is planned in the open, and it is not dressed up just a little bit. It is dressed up a lot, to the point of us being told the opposite purposes of the system to those which it is secretly really for.
There is no reason why nations cannot get along with one another, any less than different individuals within nations (or under a world government) can get along. That is up to the people themselves. Nor do I (or Stang) wish to build a "system of power" on nationhood or anything other thing - that is what we are against.
However, world government is not the problem. Given the present speed and range of communication and travel, different cultures could one day,through natural processes, become close enough that national governments are unnecessary. On the other hand, it may go the other way - states could fragment further. History shows trends in both directions.
The problem is the type of world government the conspirators are actually arranging: a totalitarian one. The problem is what type of system we live under - free or unfree. To that end, they are seeking to artificially abolish national governments and throw people of different culures together more quickly and less smoothly than it might naturally happen.
Nationalism was not genuinely part of the fascist ideology in the larger scheme. Nationalism was merely used as an appeal to the masses, both for the fascists taking power in that country and for that country to invade others as part of the fascist plan of conquest. The real goal was "internationalism" - world conquest. Germany was just the first country the Nazi's could capture, which happenned to also be their home country. But Mein Kampf showed that the goal was to make the world Nazi - ruled by supermen. Mussolini had the same ambition. Throughout history, no dictator has been happy with ruling just one country. How would you like that sort of world government?
Communism do the same thing. It is openly internationalist, but uses nationalism as a step to eventual world power. The Chinese and Vietnamese Communists use nationalism to keep the support of their subjects. Lenin devised "national liberation" - an appeal to indigenous nationalism - as the revolutinalary strategy in colonised countries. But the long-range goal of this strategy was internationalist - expansion of the Communist bloc under central control from Moscow. The Communist strategy is to communise individual countries and then merge them under one government.
Apologies for the length of this and my last comment, but it's difficult being brief when explaining whollydifferent perspentives, especially one which is not commonly known.
I'd agree that it's always difficult to discern between stated ideology and what states actually do. Within early Soviet communism, there were people such as Trotsky who pushed for an international movement that wasn't based on states. The early success of the Soviets in creating a large bloc was partly due to these original ideological convictions (although these were certainly a facade by the time of Stalin). These successes contrast sharply with the empires of Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan. Nobody (except ethnics Germans) within Germany's short-lived empire ever thought that they were going to become part of the new nation. Likewise, everyone in the Japanese empire understood that they were going to be low-wage slaves in the service of the new "master race." As for Stang, what little I've read of him makes me think that he isn't very meticulous in his analysis. Lincoln is described as a commie at a period in history when no one in the U.S. had ever heard of Communism. What could this possibly mean--even as a rhetorical flourish? And his hatred of abolitionists--where in the world does that come from? Are we supposed to hate people who gave their lives to help those who were enslaved? Were the slave-holding southern successionist states somehow righteous in their cause? While I would certainly agree that there's a certain leitmotiv running through history, it certainly isn't "communism." We'd be much better off calling it oppression. (In this respect, the analysis of Karl Marx and like thinkers might be a better place to start, albeit not a great place to finish.)
Communism (not just Trotsky's version) was an international movement. But I am talking about internationalISM. Communism was internationalist also, but made use of nationalism as a tactic when it suited. Hence nationalist rhetoric does not necessarily indicate a nationalist objective. No dictator is happy ruling just one country.
Soviet leaders in Lenin's time problably did believe in ideology, but ideology for the leadership is different to that which they teach the rank and file. (In that way it was always a facade.)
Whatever Germans thought, the Nazis did want to rule the world. That is internationalist. Same goes for Japan.
The difference between Nazism and Communism was not the objectrives, but the means of conquest used: one military invasion, the other revolution. But both used the other when it suited them. Hitler encouraged subversion in target countries (standard pracitce in warfare) and the Soviets have used military means - occupation ("liberation") of European countries at the end of WW2, invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of South Korea and South Vietnam etc.
Most people in the US may not have heard of Marx, in Lincoln's time, but that doesn't mean that Lincoln hadn't. Marx had a regular column in the "New York Herald Tribune" (today called the "New York Times").
This article by Stang shows why he calls Lincoln a Marxist.
http://www.alanstang.com/index.php?/site/comments/republican_party_red_from_the_start/
His point also is that Communism and other forms of socialism are essentially the same. After all, all Marx and Engels did was contribute some theory to the already existing socialist/communist movement which they were part of. The Republican party was mercantilist and interventionist from it's founding (Lincoln was the first Republican president). Stang has many articles on that too.
Stang says the abolitionists were frauds who used abolition only as a political tool, and who even when they were sincere were zealots willing to sacrifice the individual freedoms of others to free slaves (which defeats the purpose). Lincoln's war wasn't over slaves, it was over Northern economic monopoly. There were slaves in the Northern states at the time. Stang has written a number of articles on these. Som of Stang's past articles are archived at his website, more are archived at etherzone.com:
http://etherzone.com/cgi-bin/search/search.pl?Terms=%22Alan+Stang+%22&I1.x=6&I1.y=6&sort-method=3
If you have only read a little Stang, you shouldn't be bashing him. Understand him, then bash him - if you can.
Doesn't matter what you call it - in my perspective, Communism is only a facade for oppression. You don't expect them to actually call it "oppression" do you? Wouldn't sell. Communism isn't the motive, it's the sales pitch. Look at Marx's theory objectively, and you'll see that it is the perfect tool for oppression. That's because that's what it was designed to be. Remember Orwell's "1984": "Freedom is slavery". He had Marx's number. He's the last place I'd start look for help finding the source of the oppression, since he is part of it.
The abolutionists wanted to "deny others freedom"? And the South were a righteous "Christian" army? The South was built from the ground up on slave labor, as was much of the U.S. Did Jesus preach slavery and the accumulation of wealth built on the backs of others?
Abolitionist agitation led to the war on the South. They were zealots who called for government intervention to implement their ideals. These Wikipedia articles will show you what a maniac their leader John Brown was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Six
The real reason for the war was not slavery, but a conflict of economic interests between North and South. Lincoln merely used slavery as a pretext for protecting Northern interests by force.
The slave economy in the South was set up by the English and inherited by the US upon gaining independence. It's not something that could have been done away with overnight. The South petitionned King George (before independence) to allow them to stop importing slaves - the King had forbidden them to end the slave trade.
You said yourself: "as was much of the US" besides the Southern states. So why suddenly did the North attack the South over slavery? Lincoln himself was an admitted racist and so was his lifelong idol Henry Clay.
I don't know if the whole Southern army were saints, but Stang appears to be of the opinion that much of it's leadership were good Crhistian gentlemen, at least in comparison to the Northern government and military leadership. In any case, the North were the agressors, so it's really the same way you might talk, for example, about Iraq and the US, isn't it?
Slavery is wrong and oppressive in principle, but slavery in the South was at least largely benevolent, despite the popular conception of it we have today as brutal and malicious.
No, I don't remember Jesus commanding us to establish slave economies. I don't think He said much explicitly and specifically about economics at all.
Why would the fact that the English ran slaves at one time make any difference? The Spanish government, even in its colonial areas, were able to give up on slavery. I don't see you providing the same argument in defense of Stalin ("Well, the Czar oppressed the people and it takes a while...") As for slavery being benevolent, what could that statement possible mean? You have generations whose labor was expropriated while the slave-owners drank limonade on the porch. All those who really believed in a free-market economy and felt strongly that we own the fruits of our own labors, should now be clamoring for reparations to be paid out to the descendents of slaves. But I hardly expect such consistency. I'm sure that Stang believes in benevolent Christian gentlemen who only used their whips to instill a wholesome work ethic in their lazy slave population. Please tell me you don't buy all this. And this old canard about abolitionists being crazy is from a bunch of southern propaganda from the time of the Civil War. If I'm elected King, we'll have John Brown Day full of parades and festivities, we'll have Spit on Columbus Day when we recall his atrocities, and we'll take the money stolen by Wall Street executives and pay reparations for the labor stolen by slaveholders.
The US were seperate English colonies before independence and federation. The slave economy was set up by England. England (the King) forbade the Southern states to end the slave trade, as they petitionned him to let them do. (In contrast, this was omitted as one of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence in it's final form in deference to New England - a Norhtern state, which desired to continue the slave trade.)
Under the corcumstances, it would have been unjust to immediately dismantle the slave economy - unjust to whites and slaves - because of the wevere economic consequences of that for everyone.
My point was that England set up the slave economy, and theuS inherited it, and could not dismantle it right away. However, the South at least desired to end it even before independence.
At what point do I stop coaching you on the numerous misconceptions regarding this topic and you become interested in investigating it on your own? Or are you satisfied with the left-wing and "yankee" propaganda you have up until now been swallowing whole without question? Remember that the victors write the history. Is it possible that you are ignoring the possibility of proaganda yourself?
How long did it take Spain to end slavery? Under what pressures? With what adverse political and economic consequences? How meticulous is your analysis of this area?
Lenin and his successors increased oppression of the Russian people. The Czara were bad, but they were not ruthless and barbaric. The Communists dispensed with civilised political ideas altogether - using superficial ideoological justifications. In fact, Lenin's revolution aborted the Democratic reforms which the Czar ten years previously began and which were already being set up in the full eight months between the abdication of the Czar and Lenin's coup.
By "benevolent" I meant that the Southerners largely treated their slaves humanely, often even as part of their families. Slavery is liable to abuses, so there would still have been many. But it was not brutal and cruel slavery across the board. It's true that their labour was "expropriated", but since in exchange they were well fed, clothed, sheltered and given health care etc. (Sounds like socialism, doesn't it? - full employment into the bargain!) That made them were better off than most free whites, many of whom were dirt poor, employed or not.
Who pays those reparations? All Americans, black and white and otherwise, through their taxes. (Don't insult your own intelligence here by telling me corporate executives will pay most of it - you will not be King when it happens.) The people responsible for the slavery should pay for it, if anybody, and they are long dead. And they did: the Lincoln took it out of the South's hide in a brutal war, in which Southerners (civilian and military and both) suffered hrribly, their homes and industry were devastated, and during a punitive and oppressive "Reconstruction". Northerers paid too - by fighting and dying in the war. Yes, they really were Christians - you know that - and they behaved like Christians toward their slaves (even if it was wrong in principle to have them).
Your assumption, as in all left-wing concepts of "reparations" like it, is that all whites were and are responsible for suffering of all blacks past and present. that is a vastly more racist concept than any you accuse your target groups of. What about the ten thousand black slaves under black onwership in the South? Where do their reparations come from? Again, preparations made by the US government today would come from black taxpayers as well.
This concept of collective reparatisn between groups assumes that all whites in the South were sipping lemonade on porches and all blacks were being brutalised. It goes furhter than that and makes a white baby born an hour ago guilty of enslavement of a black who died 150 years ago.
Lincoln himself characterised Brown as a fanatic. Wikipedia, not Civil War Southerner propaganda, says so. Did you read the articles I linked? Stang didn't write them.
When you are King, I hope you show impartiality by having"spit on" days for the black Africans who kidnapped and sold the slaves at the African end, and the Arabs who shipped them, And for the Arabs and balck North African Muslims who kidnapped and enslaved Europeans. In fact, good luck unravelling every injustice ever committed against everyone of every national or racial group throughout history.
Again, sorry for the length of my response, but you've got a lot to unpack. If you'd just your head out of Marx's arse and take a look around you could save me the trouble.
I said nothing about collective guilt. I don't feel guilty about what anyone did in the 1900s and I'd fully agree that such guilt is ridiculous. I'm simply saying that if we were trying to create a world in which a person's contribution to the creation of wealth were awarded fairly, taking money from the wealthiest sliver of the population and using it to pay reparations to slaves would help restore the balance. It certainly wouldn't be a perfect solution, but it would move us a little closer to that Libertarian utopia where every unit of productive labor is justly awarded by an unfettered market. (All this isn't Marxist at all--this is what YOUR principles would imply.) As for benign slavery and your complicated justifications, why would you go to the trouble. We don't need to worry about Arab traders and African slave runners. The fact that evil existed throughout the world isn't the point at issue here. Slavery's wrong. Full stop. The history of capitalism is largely the history of slavery or relationships similar to it. You'll find the same sort of people sipping lemonade in different parts of the world, expropriating resources and labor and justifying it as a benevolent intervention. The notion that the South was begging for slavery to stop but just couldn't quite put a stop to it because of the evil Brits and Northerners is such a ludicrous notion that it doesn't deserve comment. Southerns making fortunes and able to live as a wealthy class OF COURSE didn't want to stop slavery. These people will never stop what they're doing until they get a bullet in the back of their head. Some of the slave rebellions did just that. After I become king, we'll also celebrate these righteous slave rebellions.
You said before that "if you were king" you would take reparations from the salaries of executives. Now you say that this confiscation would be a step towards a libertarian society and a free market. How do you have a monarchy and libertarianism at the same time? Taking money from the wealthy requires a big government - which is a big step away from a free market.
It does sound like Marx, who said that we would need a dictatorship "of the proletariat" (socialism) to arrange a stateless society (communism).
You see the "wealthiest sliver" as a threat to a free market, and you are right (but for the wrong reasons - zero marks for process). A major concept of the "conspiratorial" perspective is that big business and big government go hand-in-hand. Monopolies don't arise from free markets, they develop with the assistance of big government.
Free enterprise and monopoly are opposites. They are two opposite kinds of capitalism. Free enterprise relies on competition and freedom (small or no government), monopoly is the absence of competition, which results in total control (big government - fascism).
Marx himself said that free enterprise and monopoly are opposites. His mistake (or lie) was that monopoly arises from free markets - by his material diaclectic process, in which one thing, under it's internal contradictions, transforms into it's opposite. However, history shows this to be the opposite of the truth.
I mentionned above that the founder of socialism, Saint-Simon, first proposed socialism as an elite state/corporate capitalist system (like fascism, which is a form of socialism). Socialism creates and preserves monopolies. Socialism IS a monopoly - minority control and ownership of all industry.
So those wealthy executives got to be the "top sliver" through socialism. The way to "justly award every unit of labour", then, is simply to take away socialism - which we have had a lot of for a very long time. This would result in an "unfettered market". That is my principle - not confiscation by big government. Those executives would simply take control of such a government. They control such a government now. Taking away socialism would be the same as taking away their money.
Not everyone in the South owned slaves, so it was not in everyone's interests there to keep slaves. What benefits slave-owners does not necessarily benefit those who don't own slaves, and may go against their interests. One, it gives slave-owners an unfair advantage over non-slave-owners. Two, it puts people out of jobs. Three, the workforce is not competitive and does not work on incentive, which is not good economically. There were many reasons for many Southerners to oppose slavery. You have a crude and uninformed view of the South.
Regarding the first post, I would agree that the wealthiest sliver of the population are directly supported by the state. What we call "foreign policy" and "protection of our freedoms" in the popular press, is really the protection of elite interests through a vast and extremely expensive state apparatus. As for the South, I'd completely agree with you that slavery wasn't in the interest of poor southerners. And we know from history, that many southerners (who were poor) saw this clearly and therefore opposed slavery. Please don't attribute ideas to me that I don't express. (If you read what I wrote, you'll see that I refer to the slave-owning class in the south.) As for Marx, I don't pretend to know much about Marxism and I've never thought it wise for people to take Marxism or the ideas of Adam Smith and try to adopt them as is to our current situation. In our modern world, we aren't picking apples from trees or making needles in a shed. That said, there are a few elements of Marxism that are valuable: its focus on oppression as a theoretical concner and its use of analytical categories that are scientific (even if they're wrong). Writers on the philosophy of science, even those completely opposed to Marxism, have all agreed that it's a science since it makes clear statements that can be disproven. Much of the pabulum in the popular press has no analytical dimension and is offered merely to prevent thinking.
Incidently, I am for a stateless society. In fact, I think a state is hard to square with any radical individualism whether comes in a Libertarian or anarchist flavor. It seems like your convictions (based on my understanding of them) would lead you there as well.
Regarding your first post: Whether foreign policy and protection of freedoms serve the elite or the people depends on what the policies are and how they are carried out. If it's a "vast and expensive" state apparatus, it's not going to be run for the people. But you still need real protection of freedoms and good foreign policy. Protection of freedoms means not protection of the people by the state, but protection of people from the state, and that is easiest when the state is small and restricted in power. Foreign policy should be for the state to keep out of foreing affairs, except for intelligence.
Slavery wasn't only against the interests of the poor in the South. It's simply not a good economic system. It's not free enterprise in the labour market. Not every businessman in the South owned slaves.
The best you could say about the work of Marx and Engels is that it is very bad science. Political economy is not a science to begin with. Their ideas were solely for the purpose of advacing socialism, not genuinely to actually explain anything. They were revolutionaries, not scientists or even real economists.
Their concept that workers are oppressed is nothing more than the original socialist idea of capitalist expoloitation of one class by another in pseudo-scientific garb. I can make some clear statements that are ridiculous.
The same basic economic principles apply to picking apples, making pins and manufacturing automobiles and personal computers. As for the Marxists, they revise or interpret Marxism to fit whatever situation they wish to address. Marx himself did it. Marxist theory is so vague, complex and unintelligible that it can be made to say or justify whatever you want it to.
Regarding your second post: I have spoken to and observed "anarchists" or "libertarian socialists" as well as Marxists in my locality and it is obvious that "anarchism" is nothing but Marxism dressed up as libertarianism. They make the same demands as Marxists dd, on the same issues, use the same concepts and terms, cooperate with, demonstrate with, Marxists using the same tactics as, and are part of alliances with Marxist groups. One "anarchist" had a friendly two-page centre-spread interview with big colour photograph in the "newspaper" of one of the major Marxist-Leninist groups. Historically, anarchism was always just a faction participating in the overall socialist movement.
Their idea is to have a "democracy" consisting of a "confederation of worker's councils". Australia, the USA and other capitalist countries are already confederations of councils - we just call them "parliament" or "congress", which have the same dictionary meaning as "council". The communist countries also have "worker's councils" - "soviet" in Russian.
Communism itself is conceived a stateless society - you just have to have an all-powerful socialist world government to get it.
So-called "anarchists" talk a mean individualism, but their actual ideas don't lead to it.
They are against private property, free enterprise and profit. That makes them basically different to economic libertarians and it means they are not libertarians at all, since without private property, you cannot have liberty.
I'd agree with some of what you say. I also believe that protection "from the state" is extremely important, and would say that this protection has been altogether lacking in the Bush administration.
As for slavery not being a good economic system, I don't see why we need to toss people's personal experiences out the window. For the large slave owner who is rich without having to work, who can rape young women anytime he wants without fear from the law, the system probably seemed like a Utopian economic system. And I don't see why it wouldn't work economically (the Nazi economy hummed along quite well on Jewish and Russian slave labor). The problem isn't economic but ethical.
This gets to the heart of the problem. I'm told by many that it's extremely important that we have a system in which people can become extremely rich--that this is a more effecient system. But wouldn't the Nazi's slave system be more "efficient" since you could get the maximum amount of labor out of a population at the least costs? We reject it (I hope) because it's terribly unfair and evil. Shouldn't we likewise reject any economic system that has people engage in complex interactions to create wealth together but then divvies out the goods so that some people become billionaires while others (who work hard their entire life) live in squalor or even starve.
I do think that modern economies are completely different than picking apples or making needles in a shed. If I work as a janitor for Microsoft, I can't just work a double shift and push my broom twice as fast and make what Bill Gates does. Modern financial markets don't exist to make things fair--they're the modern incarnation of the old aristocratic system in which we paid people for being born aristocrats. We now pay rich people for being rich people. If you go beyond the bottom rung of the modern wealth hierarchy, you'll consistently find that those who make more money do less (and yes, those at the very top, generally do absolutely nothing). Worker oppression isn't some abstract concept dreamed up by postmodernists--it's the everyday experience of most people on the globe, as obvious to most people as the air they breathe.
When you say protection is lacking in the Bush administration, I hope you don't mean that the state should be protecting us from itself. The only protection from the state is to have a weak enough state that it can't harm the people to begin with. Any law made by the state, regardless of what purpose it ostensibly or even genuinely is made for, can be turned to some harmful purpose or just plain ignored by the state which is supposed to uphold it.
My point about slavery not being a good economic system wansn't to assess slavery on an economic basis instead of an ethical one, it was just a reason for why it would not have been in the interests of the overall population - not just the poor, but businessmen also. slaves might be driven to work, but they don't have an incentive to work better. They have no prospect to advance, earn more, or eventually be able to have their own business or even a different employer or job of their choice.
The Nazi economy was of course not entirely slave - except for the fact that socialism itself is in prinbciple slavery. They "mobilised" the whole population as a workforce. Germany also receive funding from foreign merchant banks. Also, at the same time as Germany was paying reparations after WW1, it wasw receiving money from the allies to rebuild it's industry.
Socialism is basically the same thing as slavery (food, clothing and shelter in return for work), and we know that socialist economies cannot sustain themselves long term, at least not at a high standard of living. This is why the third world is increasingly in debt to Western finaciers and still recieves foreign aid from Western governments. The Soviet Union and other Communist countries (directly and indirectly) have, from Lenin on, received all forms of aid from the West. Soviet industry was BUILT by the West. At times (as with China now) Communist countries resorted to partial capitalist means to counter socialist stagnation, beginning with Lenin's "New Economic Policy".
The reason slavery is not efficient is because there is no incentinve for work or innovation. It is unfair in the sense that it is imposed on individuals and is liable to abuse. But it is "fair" in the sense that everyone is clothed, sheltered and fed - possibly even have DVD players and go out on weekends.
The idea of free enterprise is not for everyone to become obscenely rich, but for everyone to have the opportunity to become wesalthy according to how much they work or take risks. Of course, not everyone will want to work hard or take risks. This applies not just to business, but to competition for jobs and advancement in employment. Competition also progressively raises the overall standard of living and encourages technical advances. As Adam Smith pointed out, even in his day the average living standard was that of an ancient king. Who a thousand years ago had plumbing, glazed windows, etc? We take them for granted.
Under free enterprise, people may either set up their own business and employ others, or become employees of existing businesses with the option still to later set up a business. Either way they make comfortable incomes. That's not complex. Nobody is institutionally trapped in employment and nobody with an income starves.
Smith's idea was that it depends on the method used to produce pins. A blacksmith will make pins at a much slower rate than an unskilled machine operator in a factory. (He was really talking about specialisation of tasks.) Same goes fo a janitor if he has the machinery. He may even own a business in which he employs machine operators. If you clean in a shopping centre today, you ride a big motorised floor cleaner and polisher, you don't push a broom or a mop.
Todays corporate giants dominate because of government intervention on their behalf. That's not free enterprise. That is mercantilism or socialism. Mercantilism was the old system where the government partnered with corporations for large enterprise. It's what the US fought for independence from - the British East India and Hudson Bay Companies got King George to give them monopolies in the American colonies and increase taxes for their smaller competitors. Later it was called fascism. Communism also works that way, just not openly.
Today's system is not complicated becaus of free enterprise (which we don't have), but because of massive government intervention in numerous forms. When you start tinkering withthe economy, it gets complicated.
The job market is not oppressive as long as the whole market is free. If you don't like one employers conditions, you find another. That punishes bad employers. I am a worker, and I have not experienced oppression in any of the places I have worked. But then, nor do we have free enterprise.) In any case, the alternative is an imaginary just and prosperous communist society, which cannot exist in practice, or socialism, under which you have no gaurantee of being free from oppression, and under which you will likely be oppressed more for less pay and lower living standards.
I'd agre that we don't have a completely free market. As for systems' complexity, I do think that economies beyond susistence level agriculture or hunting and gathering tend to be complex. While I'd agree that incentives are an issue, I don't think million-dollar incentives are necessary. Most people (myself included) would be happy working for a living wage. If we want fair distribution based on individuals' actual contribution, a good place to begin would be by putting a ceiling on wealth since no single individual can ever contribute so much as to justify an enormous income. The CEO of GM (an extremely poorly-run company) earns in a day what I earn in a year. As someone who works hard, I find that obscene.
An above-subsistence level economy would have to be more complex - we hope! But the basic economic principles of the free market (incentive, profit motive, competition, supply and demand etc.) are not, compared to the endlessly varied tinkering you must resort to when you try to steer all areas of that complex above-substistence economy from the top toward some elusive end.
Most people are happy with a living (subsistence?) wage, but many obviously are not, since besides wage-earners like yourself, there are business owners (your employer for instance).
Instead of putting a ceiling on wealth, abolish socialism - you'll get rid of those CEOs much faster (i.e. sooner than never).
While big corporations like GM are not desirable, large businesses are still be justified. The person running it would work hard, unlike Mr CEO. Many people - even just professionals and middle-management people - are on salaries with long hours. That may only be twice the hours you work plus weekends, but it's still most of their daily life - 30% more of it, leaving little free time.
If the owner doesn't work hard or at all, he still had to work mcuh harder than you,and take more riskds, to be eventually able to do that.
A big company makes a contribution just by the scale upon which it can produce, which is necessary for some industries, and whatever price or other benefits that might bring to consumers. The businessman also brings in the initial capital and takes the risks involved in setting up and conducting business. (Someone has to set it all up.) It contributes employment for people who are happy with living wages and prefer to only work 8/5.
However, eve a relatively small business can achieve a lot in many instances.
The alternative is for officials and bureaucrats to do it all, with your tax maoney. Good luck with that!
Would it be possible to be directed to the place the anonymous writer posts his commentary? I came to this thread by chance and have thoroughly enjoyed the exchange.
I have just recently started my own blog, but I don't know if it's okay to promote it in someone else's. I guess you'd have to assume that I have my own website going by the length of my "comments" here.
The blog post at the top of this page is about Alan Stang and his commentary, which you would enjoy if you like my comments here. There are links to it in the post.
Glad I'm not the only one enjoying myself here.
Anonymous should feel free to leave a link here. I also welcome the exchange of ideas.
Regarding your commment: "The businessman also brings in the initial capital and takes the risks involved in setting up and conducting business. (Someone has to set it all up.) It contributes employment for people who are happy with living wages and prefer to only work 8/5."
People who operate small businesses work hard and take risks and certainly deserve to earn a bit more based on their extra work and responsibilities. As for "capital" making money, I think we need some clarity. Capital isn't labor and its importance and value within the moral universe is only derived to its ties (usually tenuuous or fictional) with labor and individual's personal contributions to the creation of wealth. While I can't come up with an exact figure off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure that most capital isn't derived from the wealthy elites' extra labor either now or in the past. For this reason, capital's ability to make extra money doesn't represent an equitable reward system but is similar in many ways to the extra taxes people have always paid to aristocratic classes simply on the grounds that they're of "noble" birth.
Regarding: "A big company makes a contribution just by the scale upon which it can produce, which is necessary for some industries, and whatever price or other benefits that might bring to consumers."
Economies of scale are definitely where it's at. For this reason, I find many self-proclaimed anarchists to be pie-in-the-sky idealists. If we all tried to live off backdoor gardens, most people on the planet would immediately starve (in addition to the millions already starving) --something to keep in mind if the peak oil theorists have things right.
Incidently, there's this bizarre meme that keeps popping up in U.S. discourse to the effect that billionaires are vital to the economy since they bestow our jobs upon us. The truth is that just about everybody (except for perhaps billionaires and homeless schizophrenics) are essential to keep our economy chugging along and if we're going to take care of one non-productive class out of the pity in our hearts, I'd rather it be the homeless schizophrenics than the wealthy megalomaniacs. Another meme is that the big problem in the economy is that people are lazy and need more incentives to work (i.e., they need to starve if they don't work or need a chance at making millions if they do). Whoever thinks this needs to find a better group of friends. Most people I know are perfectly willing to go to work each day and do their part. We don't have a labor shortage, we have a distribution problem, a cancer that creates global conflict and endless wars over resources.
In a free enterprise society there is no aristocracy, because there is no big government for them to live off of. Capital therefore must somehow come from one's own labour or be inherited from someone who already laboured for it.
Originally perhaps a lot of capital would have come from nobles using their wealth for enterprise. But the changeover from mercantilism or feudalism had to happen somehow. The aristocracy largely resisted free enterprise and the emergence of the new middle class. (As did Marx - "bougeoisie" is French for "middle class", not "ruling class". More proof that socialism is just a modern name for feudalism and mercantilism.) Yet it was eventually in the interests of some of them to participate in free enterprise.
Capital is not labour, but it is the result of labour. Marx said that it is "stored labour". It had to be produced by soembody. To say that capital is not moral is to say that having wealth is not moral, since capital is basically someone investing their wealth in setting up some enterprise. The free-enterprise idea is that people are entitled to be wealthy according to their efforts.
Wealth can come not just from labour, but from profits of prior enterprises. Marx said that these profits are just diverted from the wages of labourers. But profit is what drives enterprise.
I recommend "The Theory and Practice of Communism" by Carew N. Hunt, which concisely discusses this issue in regard to Marx's ideas about capital, profits, laboour and value.
Scale of businesses is not the important thing for me. Anarchists are not so much against scale but profits and "exploitation" of labour (and in that way are Marxist). The "individualist" anarchists are therefore stuck with living off their own plot (small scale) and the "cooperative" anarchists are stuck with collectively run industries (large scale), with no incentives for the effort beyond subsistence, and perhaps not even that.
I also disagree with he idea that the "big players" come first because they contribute the most to the economy. They have become important because they have achieved market dominace and so made the populace dependant on them. (That is monopolistic.) But they became dominant with government help - with the growth of government. It is wrong therefore for the government to then justify continuing to help those corporations. That just perpetuates the increase in their dominance. The real solution is to take away government support (by reducing government) and so rid ourselves of monopolism and dependence.
People do need incentives to work. Nobody works for nothing, though not necessarily for a financial reward. Some work to live, some work for wealth - it depends on what one is content with. Many of those content with just living will take the option of not working if it is provided - I have met many people who do.
Free enterprise (if we had it) would take care of distribution along with all other material concerns. Whatever conflicts are over - war profits, resources, territory, pewer - wars are conducted by national governments. The more powerful a government, the more say it has (relative to the populace) on whether to start or enter a war and the more influence it has over public opinion about the need for one. Without a government to declare and run their side of it, other private interests cannot have a war.
If free enterprise existed everywhere, and people everywhere were able to enrich themselves, there would be no (or at least less) justification for the populace to suffer through wars just to get more than their share.
I think Dawkins' idea of "memes" and the evolution of ideas is pseudoscience, along with biological evolution. Am I a religious nut? Anthony Flew, former major athiest, has recently renounced atheism and evolutionism. He has not adopted religion - he has merely converted intellectually to theism.
I have no idea whether "memes" are scientific. I use the term its vulgar, popular sense. On the other hand, biological evolution has been proven as well as any scientific theory. As for theism, a person can always believe what they want--if we want to follow in the footsteps of the postmodernists and consider all thruth to be little more than opinion. Belief in the wonders of free markets is a bit like belief in the wonders of socialism--it's only wonderful in a very idealized form. We live in a free market world, for the most part, and while it isn't the perfect system envisioned by Milton Friedman, it's pretty free-wheelin'. And the system has done wonders in some areas. But I don't think the current system is intelligent enough to deal with the problems we're face with. Corporations (and a fortiori, small businesses) will never deal with over-population or unsustainable patterns of resource exploitation. They simply aren't designed to do so. They also will never worry about the world our grandchildren will live in. That just isn't the sort of thing discussed at a shareholders' meeting.
Sorry if I was too technical about memes. I know it's used in a wider sense, but oftem also by Dawkins fans.
Let's not go into evolution vs. creation. However, here is a good Christian website: http://creationontheweb.com/
You may not agree that they prove six-day creation - six-thousand-year-old universe and global flood like they believe, but they certainly make evolution look bad. Don't be embarrassed to read it - ID is all the rage now.
It would take a lot more than fuzzy psotmodernism to convert an Flew to theism. It allows atheism too.
There are no wonders of socialism - unless you accept Marx's dialectical materialist view of history and its idea of a good economic system making good people.
Free enterprise doesn't promise utopia, but it does make best use of self interest: directs individual incentive to good social effect and restrains powerful government and it's abuse. It was devised by Christians, who recognise man's sinful nature.
Free-wheelin' - sort of like Jack Kerouac? Right on, daddy-oh!
Milton Friedman is a monetarist - he believes in government control of currency, like Marx did. In his younger days (during or soon after WW2) he was one of the mob who arranged the increase in the US income tax as a means of mopping up purchasing power as a check against inflation, caused by introduction of printed funny-money into circulation as a result of the fractional reserve banking, which is how the government borrows a lot of it's spending money. Wow - that guy was of control.
Read Hayek and Von Mises instead - the real thing.
If free enterprise has done wonders in "some areas" while constrained by massive socialism since at least 1913, imagine what it could do if really free. I can only speculate, of course, since it has rarely existed.
The current (socialist) system not only isn't intelligent enough to deal with social problems, it doesn't want to - it created most of them. Even with the best intentions, how can anyone direct something as complex as a large human society of a few million individuals? Nobody's that intelligent or capable, and most politicians aren't.
"Sustainable Development" is another sociaist movement. Global warming, peak oil, overpopulation have been thoroughly debunked - just not in the mass media where everyne can be made aware of it. The world's elite are behind this whole scam, and it's objective is political - as in "political power". Corporations and western governments support it 100%. You'd think if they were against it that the corporate media would at least come up with some good lies.
So - it is precisely corporations which are dealing with "unsustainable patterns". Corporate tax-exempt philanthropic foundations have been notorious for funding all these "left wing" causes for almost a century. They even have their own website: http://www.hrfunders.org/
Ask yourself why it is that every solution they have to this "emergency" is more government control and more international "cooperation". Sort of like Bush using the war on Iraq (also a fraud) as an excuse for homeland security, isn't it?
Regarding your remark about peak oil, sustainability, and global warming, we won't need to wait much longer for the verdict to be read. A few years ago, skeptics were telling us that global warming couldn't possibly be happening, and now we're looking at the very real possibility of taking a cruise across the North Pole in the summer. In spite of the low prices we currently see, once the economy picks up again we'll see the verdict read on peak oil as well. You can simply look on graphs of output around the world to see the trend. Peak oil in the U.S. happened about 35 years ago, so I'm amazed that anyone would think it couldn't happen in the world at large. As for sustainability, the idea that the population can keep growing and we can keep using more and more finite resources is simply illogical. I'd agree that economic value doesn't need to be predicated on resource consumption (we could, if we wanted, see value in people reciting poetry or giving massages on the beach), but much of our consumption is still based on bigger, faster, and better--the creation of bigger and more cars and larger houses that consume more fossil fuels. I don't rule out the possibility that someday man could head for the stars and be mining astroids with robots and so on, and could actually be living in a system where sustainability was an anachronism, but we certainly aren't there yet and we'll need much greater collective wisdom in the coming millenium if we're ever to get there.
Hubbert came up with "Peak oil" in the 1950s and predicted the peak to occur in 1970. Verdict: No peak. Almost 40 years after it was supposed to happen, we still can't see it coming.
The US has recently discovered that it has more oil than Saudi Arabia. Others we have known about for some time have been untouched due to environmental "reasons". (BTW, the Alaskan oilfields take up something like 1/50,000 of the wilderness area.) another reason is that when oil exploration companies find the oil they cap it and sit on it until the price of the shares go down and they buy out their backers. (There's your output.) There are other such dirty games.
Polar ice has melted one or two times in the past century or two. Claims of it happenning now have been inflated. Remember "ten years ot save the planet" in the late 1980s? Twenty-five years later even proponents are using words like "just in case" or "pobably" - i.e., still no hard evidence.
It all sounds like the "end times" predictions made by many Christians - they keep moving the date back.
There is another side to this beside those of the mass media and the left-wing poliitcal press.
Population doesn't just keep going up. It goes up and down, dependent on fertility, resources, standard of living etc. Australia's birth rate is currently below replacement though we are a developed country.
We do not keep using resources at the same rate either. Technology has enabled us to make increasingly more efficient use of fuel. We also discover new reserves periodically. When resources do dwindle, rising prices are a natural check on their use. (Legislation is not necessary.)
Here are a few interesting sources:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/categories/C19
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php/?pageId=43&authorId=82&tId=7
http://www.theregister.co.uk/science/environment/
http://www.john-daly.com/
I think Hubble predicted the US peak in the 1970s. He was off by 3 or 4 years because of the OPEC embargo. Incidently, the peak oil theory does deal with oil in the ground, but rather our ability to extract it. At some point, you can't extract it at ever faster rates and production peaks. Simmons (who discusses peak oil in debt) has Canada has the leading oil producer in the world, ahead of Saudi Arabia, in a few years--almost all due to nonconvention sources (oil sands, primarily). However, much of this extra oil is expensive oil. Regardless of how wonderful new technologies are, oil extraction is a physical process that itself requires energy.
The whole point of wonderful new technologies is to devise a physical process which requires less energy.
Here is an article about the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php/index.php?pageId=61488
People have worried about running out of fuel since we began using it. In the 19th century people worried about running out of coal. But technology improved so that it was used more efficiently and more could be economically mined, and more coal was discovered. Then we shifted to technology which uses other types of fuel.
Here is another article on peak oil's validity, which also discusses the theory of abiotic oil formation.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php/index.php?pageId=59502
This whole "peak oil" scam and other environmental scares are pretexts for government restriction of use of resources by the "masses" so that high living standards are available only to the elites who administer those restrictions. This is what Orwell's "1984" portrays. Living standards are linked to political liberty: mobility, health, technical capabilities, education, wealth etc. Private property and liberty are inseperable. Without private property, there is no liberty - you simply own nothing with which to exercise your liberty.
If peak oil's a scam, why doesn't the US, which originally had more oil than any other region on the planet, keep producing more oil? Is every wildcat oil drilling operation in on the conspiracy as well? There will always be plenty of oil. The question is the cost of energy needed to get at.
I think this "anonymous" fellow lost all credibility when he stated that biological evolution is "pseudo-science". I presume that his alternative would be creationism? you know--the fabled biblical and mythological story about a sky man that created the universe in 6 days? or how about intelligent design (talk about pseudo-science)?.
I find it tiresome to have these pseudo intellectuals such as this anonymous fellow ranting on about things they know little or nothing about. They appear to be stuck in the 1960's boogeyman red scare era where we were told to check under our beds every night for pinko commies and to spy on our neighbors and friends for the possibility of them being commies; it just all seems so absurd. Since its inception, capitalism has been the engine that drove modern day globalization while its arch enemy communism, particularly soviet communism, failed utterly--which it was destined to--yet still you have these yuppies who continue to resurrect the rotting carcass of soviet totalitarianism and write completely absurd conspiracy theories about how it is on the verge of world domination. Now you can split hairs on what defines "free enterprise" or "free markets", however the reality is that the industrial nations of the world DO run on the capitalist system. To argue otherwise is as absurd as the communist claiming that "true" communism has never been attempted.
In anycase, regarding Alan Stang--who recently died--I think people like him appeal to the emotional and frustrated right wing types who have nothing but contempt for modernism and the progress of society; they feel the need to blame something for the cruel and nasty aspects that life tends to takes on, so they turn to one of the most drudged up scapegoats: communism. International communism. Jews. The illuminati. etc etc. Always some all powerful, over reaching and unseen force working behind the scenes; the delusions of a person who does not have the emotional stability to deal with reality.
I find it absolutely ridiculous that people would continue believing that all of lifes ills are being created by some dead and impotent ideology as communism--they give its influence and power way to much credit; and at the same time turn a blind eye to the kind of economic system that feeds off the cheap labor and lives of people living in 3rd world countries (China, indochina, Africa, Latin America etc), corrupts and poisons entire ecosystems, uproots people from their indigenous lands, pollutes our air, our water, spreads corruption and crime like a disease; a vampiric system that knows no bounds, rather seeking to dominate and control every natural resource of the planet. A system that is driven by a voracious desire to consume without end. A system that hires a slew of psychoanalysts who use their knowledge of the human psyche to assist mutli national corporations in creating subversive advertising that influences how we act and think. I find it despairing that people like Stang blatantly ignore REAL issues that effect common people and would rather dwell on paranoid delusions about "evil communists and their banker cohorts". As far as I'm concerned people like Stang are nothing more than demagogues and distractions, diverting our attention from real issues with toxic tin foil hat wearing nonsense.
I agree. It's enough to make a person want to go out and buy an Aqua Chi Footbath.
Heard Alan Stang died, been surfing around about it, found this old chestnut about him.
Snippy, snippy, snippy. Obviously this lazy ass never read enough of Stang to make a good joke and a true point about him; just the effeminate contrived smirks where criticism might have been, not half the talent of that old man's pinky. Isn't snippy smirks how the Republicans woo'd the masses for awhile? You gullible rubes, I mean? "Here, smirk like me, and you'll be safe too."
But we will bury you. Your children will live under Stangism.
I should've hated Alan Stang, for back in the days when commies were hiding under every bed and I was one of the first to wear long hair, people used to try to run me over while I walked along the road. There were editorials. Kids like me were commies, commie dupes, pinkos, etc.
Instead, I grew to love 'im. Those crowd-pleasing noiseboxes weren't Stang at all. He knew America: where you're entitled to believe in any god damned half-assed religion you want to. You can pick any dried intellectual or political snot out of your nose you want. You can see life as leftists versus rightists, Democrat versus Republican, creationist versus evolutionist, and it's all one cozy little ball game for your snoozing convenience. Turn red-faced when you read about the opposite team like you're supposed to. Cheer huzzah when your team seems to be winning. You've done your half-assed job.
Or you can think about what you're saying, see the holes in the reasoning around you, including your own, insist on more than "a shallow consistency" as Emerson put it, and independently come up with your own point of view using the terms as you understand 'em -- and have the integrity to make sure your own terms aren't just a fantasy of fey smirks about the imaginary ballgame you think life is.
This is what Stang did. Years back he'd already run playful circles around this turtle-headed blogger's every sentence -- in humor, intellectual capability, accrued knowledge, you name it. This bloggist is just one more pissant desperate for fame and dear of brain.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to see what Stang was up to with his use of the term "Communism." He made it work, even about Lincoln.
But maybe it takes somebody who's stepped out of the ballgame and watched the whole show. That's not hard to do either. Maybe it's not cozy enough for some.
"Communism" was a good term for what Stang was talking about. It was the closest term he had, and if only coincidentally, it matched by its own stated intents and documentations, which you lonely and lazy couch-leftists have never even read.
No rube had to get a lump in his throat to allow for what Stang had to say. Nobody had to believe as he did. Nobody had to view his words from any point but an individual's. I'm not a churchgoer, a rightist or leftist, or any part of that shallow ballgame myself. I didn't need Stang to reinforce my private views. He was just a good read, and will be for years.
Incidentally, John Brown WAS crazy. He'd failed in everything in life and decided to go out blazing and took his kids with him. And if you haven't noticed from your couch, war, too, is crazy. They need crazy men to inspire crazy young rubes who don't even know who they are to go get themselves killed. Old story.
Stang saw how Americans dupe themselves out of their own inalienable rights. He couldn't play the game that would have made him a rich sucker of Mike Wallace's coattails. He couldn't even play the game with the John Birchers. If it wasn't a free and independent thought from the free and independent individual he was, he couldn't write it. That's why he died sane, and you won't.
And that's what made him lovable.
I see. We're supposed to get teary-eyed because he was an "individual" who had "private views." I guess I need to read some "private" histories. The ones that I read, say that in spite of eye problems and financial difficulties, Brown was initially quite successful in creating a tannery, a cattle business, and eventually, had success as a horse and sheep breeder--even recognized as a leading expert in the area in a number of leading journals at the time--hardly the life of a dissolute mad drunk. The interesting thing about all his failures is that they were suffered while trying to stand up for the underdog (wool traders who were exploited by large manufactures, black slaves, and so on). I guess he should have been an advocate for the rich and powerful so as to be more "successful."
No, it is I who see, Karlo. You think we're supposed tear up over a religious fanatic whose "initial successes" all failed miserably, was used as an excuse to trigger America's biggest mass suicide to date, besides leading his kids to their deaths, because some little rooster thinks duckspeak is doubleplusgood and arranges his imaginary facts that way. Look how stupidly contradictory your "facts" are.
"The interesting thing about all his failures," intones the pissant marxist, precursing a Bush-like excuse... just like a Nazi blaming reality on the jews. Finessing the facts.
The "dissolute mad drunk" you snidely pretend wasn't there would have been Ulysses S. Grant. A failed shopkeeper handed a greatly superior force who was drunk enough to slaughter his countrymen on both sides...
...but it's good to wipe people out who don't fit the program, right Karlo? Fun fantasy for someone like you, isn't it? Just so long as you don't get hurt, right, Karlo? And so long as it's for a "politically correct cause", yes, Karlo?
...Grant's "fame" led the drunk to the most corrupt presidency there had been to date. Who was to blame for Grant's own behavior, Karlo? "The rich and powerful?"
You've got a serious problem with individualist thinking, Karlo. That individual thinking, what little there is of it, with which you have this problem, is not Alan Stang's. It's yours.
You also have a problem with "private views," I see. You prefer the "collective" ones, don't you? The politically correct ones invented by committee. Find out what the "winning" side wants you to think and then you'll think that too, right? I see the effeminacy of your reasoning and have already remarked on it.
Now. You're only semi-literate, as your commentaries and poorly constructed sentences show, as well as your snot-nosed remark about "getting teary-eyed" shows. You don't read very well.
Show me a fact Alan Stang ever finessed, like you just did, schoolboy cheater.
And show me where Stang ever used the transparent little cherry-picking tactics you just did.
But maybe that would tax your lazy, rigid duckspeak mentality too much. You'd make an excuse but still drop your pigeonshit and fly away in a nervous fit.
I think you're a "leftist" because you think it might keep you from having to work for a living and also might get you laid.
Wow, Ed. I think you've gotta a few "issues," as is commonly said in the Newspeak parlance. Since most of your points have no relationship to anything that I said or to me personally, I'll simply sit back and marvel at them without comment. In the meantime, I would recommend taking a few deep breaths, say "om" several times on the outbreath, and maybe stick your feet in one of those aqua chi footbaths.
Karlito Marxito, you don't seem to read your own typing. You've never quite heard of yourself, have you? That's kind of a "wow."
It's even a little wow that you don't know what "om" is for, either.
I thought your previous postings were parrotings and contradictory remarks owing to semi-literacy, but here also is this dimension of... of... like an old TV test pattern or something.
There is space and sound, but just a holding pattern. Are you now or have you ever been on ritalin?
Trust me, however you got this way, blaming your mom won't help.
Guess I'll go hang out with people who can hear themselves.
OMG. You're going to now lecture me on "om"! I'm sure that somewhere in the archives, our old buddy Alan has something to say on that too. (Don't tell me . . . the Upanishads were written by commies.) Is there a little army of ants, rewriting my words on earlier posts? My mom? Did I have a attack of Freudian neuroses back there at some point? I never realized so much could be gleaned from my writings by reading between the lines. I'll have to try that myself sometime.
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