I keep hearing from the eco-freaks and the poverty pimps that 80% of the world's wealth is held in the hands of 20% of the population.
Their solution is to destroy free enterprise using fear tactics such as global warming and then have the elites of the world set up a global socialist government to control the planet and (laughingly) it's climate.
If they were to succeed, I think it's fair to say that at that point, 99.9% of the world's wealth will be held in the hands of .01% of the population who will live in opulence and feed their military enforcers in the same manner as Kim Jong Il feeds his fat kid.
Lord help us all and may Al Gore slip into a coma and shut up ASAP.
North Korea is not communist. It is a dictatorship with a command economy. Communism as described by Marx and Engels is entirely different from a command economy. North Korea, the USSR, Cuba, etc. are in no way proof that communism will not work as they are not/ were not communist. Granted, communism is utopian and therefore greatly improble for ever really coming into existance.
Call me a courageous patriot with cruel yet handsome eyes if you must, but a few thoughts struck me up on reading both this post and some of the comments.
First, when did Kim Jong-Il's son turn into a gangsta rap star? Second, anyone who thinks that that dead fraud Marx's vision will result in anything but a command economy is not a student of human history. Not going to happen, folks, because we're human, and humans are greedy and want power, and in the free market, that's allowed for. In a non-free market system, it isn't.
Just the way things work out.
Incidentally, if we absolutely must go back and re-read Marx's work on capitalism (remembering that he coined the phrase) we good decadent free-traders may take solace in knowing that it is the free market that has allowed the worker to make massive investments in their companies if they so desire. If they choose to buy a new television or a $250 pair of sneakers instead, well...
Communism can't work because, apart from requiring people to value complete strangers more than they value themselves, it lacks any sort of mechanism to coordinate economic activity in accordance with people's desires. In a market system that is what prices do.
Defending Communism is just stupid. It doesn't work. It can't work. Even if everyone were willing to commit their entire lives to the idea, they'd still live like shit because there's no way to separate the good ideas from the bad in accordance with consumer preferences.
Marx and Engels believed in the labor theory of value, which is pure, grade-A, 100% bullshit. I could spend all day baking a pie made out of dog turds, but that doesn't mean it would be worth anything. Not to Marx and Engels, though... morons.
Even if people didn't want to own stuff, it still wouldn't work. I think that's an important point; it's not just human nature that makes Communism a bad system. Even if the Communists were able to guilt the rest of us into abandoning our preference for ourselves and our loved ones over complete complete strangers, Communism still wouldn't have an efficient means of allocating resources to satisfy consumer preferences.
I highly recommend P.J. O'Rourke's book Eat The Rich and its section on Russia immediately post-Communism (before Putin started turning it into just another autocratic Russian state) to see how Communism fails in practice.
In a lighthearted manner, of course, or at least as lighthearted as the deaths of several million Russians can be.
10 comments:
You know Cappy,
I keep hearing from the eco-freaks and the poverty pimps that 80% of the world's wealth is held in the hands of 20% of the population.
Their solution is to destroy free enterprise using fear tactics such as global warming and then have the elites of the world set up a global socialist government to control the planet and (laughingly) it's climate.
If they were to succeed, I think it's fair to say that at that point, 99.9% of the world's wealth will be held in the hands of .01% of the population who will live in opulence and feed their military enforcers in the same manner as Kim Jong Il feeds his fat kid.
Lord help us all and may Al Gore slip into a coma and shut up ASAP.
Contestant for NK Biggest Loser? :)
At first glance I thought it was Michael Moore.
North Korea is not communist. It is a dictatorship with a command economy. Communism as described by Marx and Engels is entirely different from a command economy. North Korea, the USSR, Cuba, etc. are in no way proof that communism will not work as they are not/ were not communist. Granted, communism is utopian and therefore greatly improble for ever really coming into existance.
Call me a courageous patriot with cruel yet handsome eyes if you must, but a few thoughts struck me up on reading both this post and some of the comments.
First, when did Kim Jong-Il's son turn into a gangsta rap star? Second, anyone who thinks that that dead fraud Marx's vision will result in anything but a command economy is not a student of human history. Not going to happen, folks, because we're human, and humans are greedy and want power, and in the free market, that's allowed for. In a non-free market system, it isn't.
Just the way things work out.
Incidentally, if we absolutely must go back and re-read Marx's work on capitalism (remembering that he coined the phrase) we good decadent free-traders may take solace in knowing that it is the free market that has allowed the worker to make massive investments in their companies if they so desire. If they choose to buy a new television or a $250 pair of sneakers instead, well...
Communism can't work because, apart from requiring people to value complete strangers more than they value themselves, it lacks any sort of mechanism to coordinate economic activity in accordance with people's desires. In a market system that is what prices do.
Defending Communism is just stupid. It doesn't work. It can't work. Even if everyone were willing to commit their entire lives to the idea, they'd still live like shit because there's no way to separate the good ideas from the bad in accordance with consumer preferences.
Marx and Engels believed in the labor theory of value, which is pure, grade-A, 100% bullshit. I could spend all day baking a pie made out of dog turds, but that doesn't mean it would be worth anything. Not to Marx and Engels, though... morons.
Frank Zappa said it best ...
"Communism can't work because people like to own stuff"
Even if people didn't want to own stuff, it still wouldn't work. I think that's an important point; it's not just human nature that makes Communism a bad system. Even if the Communists were able to guilt the rest of us into abandoning our preference for ourselves and our loved ones over complete complete strangers, Communism still wouldn't have an efficient means of allocating resources to satisfy consumer preferences.
I highly recommend P.J. O'Rourke's book Eat The Rich and its section on Russia immediately post-Communism (before Putin started turning it into just another autocratic Russian state) to see how Communism fails in practice.
In a lighthearted manner, of course, or at least as lighthearted as the deaths of several million Russians can be.
He's the heir-apparent I guess. Good one, it's in and you're linked, thanks!
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
starve your people
always keep them in the dark
execute them at will
.
Post a Comment