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This is Why Socialism Doesn't Work
By: Chris Tell at http://capitalistexploits.at/
Today's article comes from a gentleman I've yet to meet, even though Mark and I know his brother well. Josh Galt is an extreme athlete who has traveled the world extensively and has built himself a life and lifestyle out of his passions, which in his case entails riverboarding some of the most amazing and dangerous rivers this planet has to offer.
He is a kindred spirit. A man who is driven by creating, learning and doing. I'd like to share with you a post he wrote recently which embodies much of what excites us about some of the rapidly growing economies of the world and opportunities.
You can find out more about Josh on his website. Enjoy!
- Chris
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I met a cute Cambodian girl the other morning as I headed back to my hotel after a run on the beach. We went to breakfast, and she told me she knew a great place to go snorkeling, which was our plan for the day.
She was fun and hot and spoke English, so of course, I told her to come with us! :) I didn't realize she would teach me a profound lesson about what it really means to be a bootstrapping entrepreneur.
When we reached our first destination, she jumped in with me and swam around for a few minutes, but then she headed back to the boat. I figured she was going to be a diva relaxing on the boat the rest of the day, or start complaining about being bored. I quickly saw that I was very, very wrong.
She proceeded to wrap fishing line around an empty water bottle, tie on a small metal hook she got from the boat driver, and then jump back into the water wearing a life jacket for extra flotation. From there, with a dive mask on for vision, she began fishing.
After a while she moved back into the boat, leaning over the edge, hook dangled into the water. Aside from the times I was in the boat or water with her, or when we were moving from island to island, she fished this way all day.
I had told her before we headed out to sea that I had to leave as soon as we got back, returning to the city. So, she caught her own dinner.
But maybe she would have done it anyway, because it's just what survivors do – they survive (and some thrive) by seizing every opportunity that they can grab hold of.
That determination of spirit shines in stark contrast to what has become the prevailing western mindset. She knows there are no handouts. She knows opportunity when it presents itself. And she probably knows real, painful hunger in a way that none of us can imagine.
So she made the most of it. And not in a 'woe-is-me-I-have-to-catch-my-dinner-why-won't-someone-take-care-of-me' way. She laughed and had as much fun all day as I did. With me, and on her own. She'd yell out to me every time she caught a fish, beaming from ear to ear, proud of her success.
I was simply looking at pretty fish, while she was surviving. And yet because it's just a way of life, she was very happy doing it.
The opportunity to do so had presented itself, and she seized it without hesitation.
When we arrived back at the beach, she took her fish to a local restaurant. They traded her some veggies and rice for a couple of her fish, for when she returned later when they'd fry the big one up with it for her dinner. A simple trade – a hot meal for a day's work.
What people in the western world don't understand is that in 3rd world countries, EVERYONE is an entrepreneur, because they have to be! And thankfully, there are few regulations stopping them from being such.
Every house is selling something out front. Every person has something they will offer you or pitch you on the street, to maybe make a few cents, or a whole dollar. If they don't work with what they have, they starve to death. Simple as that.
There are no food stamps to buy steak and lobster. No free Obama phones. No handouts.
There is simply the freedom to hustle. The freedom to use what you have, to get what you can, to make it through another day.
In Asia, people seem to understand this better than most anyplace I've ever been. And that's why I'm staying (along with this). I've said it before, and it bears repeating here:
I would rather live surrounded by the exciting chaos of birth that is Asia, than the struggling chaos of death that is the West.
There is no perfect system or place on our blue planet, so spare me your pious lectures about poverty in the 3rd world until, say, you've fixed your own fucking Detroit.
Because people in the 3rd world are working their way out of it. People under socialist control are not allowed to, and so poverty and crime get worse as economies decline.
In the West, this girl (and the restaurant, the boat driver, me the tourist) would have been in violation of numerous health codes, fishing laws, OSHA standards, tourism permits, and more. Leaving her with only one real choice – dependence on a flawed welfare system.
With freedom, though, she could happily get her hands dirty to catch her dinner while laughing and enjoying life, and become an image of human resolve and the entrepreneurial spirit that I will never forget.
Where there's a will, there's a way... as long as the freedom exists to grab hold of the opportunity to work for it without regulation.
"The entrepreneurial instinct is in you. You can't learn it, you can't buy it, you can't put it in a bottle. It's just there and it comes out." - Alan Sugar
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There is a perfect system. It's just that arseholes in banking, corporatocracy and government (i.e. "They") and the bought whores that serve them won't allow them to be tried. Every time there has been major headway (the closest was Alberta in the late 1930s) there has been a political end run to prevent it. There is not just one perfect system; there are two! The first (and I believe best) was proposed by CH Douglas and it has come to be known as Social Credit. The second was proposed by Professor Fredrick Soddy (a Nobel Prize Lauriat) in his book "Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt." His proposals have come to be known as National Economy.
There is what we know, what we don't know and what we don't know that we don't know. For most of humanity, we suffer from the last one because we don't know that we don't know there is a better way. This article proves it. You want a brief and understandable summary? Go to www.economiccures.com and get some knowledge.
Socialism vs Capitalism vs Communism vs, vs,..
I don’t know of any one system that has ever worked on a large scale. In reality all effective economies are mixed. The core must be capitalist, but close to home we always need socialist support. It's becoming easy to see what a mistake socialism can be on a large scale. Social support systems belong close to home; family, neighbourhood and even city wide welfare. Governments just screw it up, big governments sacrifice the people for their own gain -in any system.
At state and global level handouts just skew the whole market until no-one even knows the value of commodities, labour, and locals.
Its funny to see "Capitalist" condemn "Keynesians" when so many fortune 500 companies take government bailouts. And "Keynesians" panic so easily because they forget failures are a necessary part of any economy.
CIA's Genocide of Cambodians: Pol Pot & CIA murdered 2 million innocents
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=156593.0
Exactly!
What jackholes like Joshy Galt never understand is the actual number of Cambodians murdered by both the USA and the USA's policies!
Had they been ultimate survivors, they would have slit his white yankee throat and taken all his belongs, that wussy-looking "extreme athlete" (extreme athlete my barberously hard ass!!!!)!
Morons like "extreme athlete" galt, who still cannot do simple arithmetic, will never comprehend, is that America long ago achieved third-world status, sucker!
I live in a third world country (capitalist), there is nothing romantic about poverty and inequality. I don't know about socialism but what doesn't work is capitalism because capital always falls in a few hands. Marx was not against capital but against capitalists.
I lived in a socialist country which turned into capitalism and now dreams of communism. It is all about motivation and if we can be motivated without money or force we can live in communism. But apparently I cannot be motivated without money or force, can you?
Take your "bootstrapping" theology and shove it up your ass.
Socialism isn't the lie but how to PAY for socialism is.
Nixon was a war criminal and so are Democrats.
What American politician (or political party) for the last 150 years wasn't a war criminal?
How about Eugene Debs?
"June 16, 1918—Debs made his famous anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, protesting World War I which was raging in Europe. For this speech he was arrested and convicted in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio under the war-time espionage law. He was his own attorney and his appeal to the jury and his statement to the court before sentencing, are regarded as two of the great classic statements ever made in a court of law. He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison.
April 12, 1919—Debs began serving his sentence in Moundsville, W. Va. State prison and was transferred to Atlanta, Ga. Federal prison two months later. His humility and friendliness and his assistance to all won him the respect and admiration of the most hardened convicts.
1920—For the fifth and last time, while a prisoner at Atlanta, he was nominated to run for president on the Socialist party ticket. Conducting his campaign from inside the prison, he was given nearly a million votes but was defeated by the Republican, Warren G. Harding. On Christmas Day, 1921 President Harding released Debs from prison, commuting his sentence to time served."
http://debsfoundation.org/
Yes, but did you tap dat azz? ... that's really the only question I have after reading this article....
Total Bullshit...!
Socialism is a weak white man's disease.
We all start out weak and we all return to weak some day. Okay, you might be the exception "that proves" the rule. Some people manage to stay fit and healthy till they drop. Not everyone though.
I'd like to see that fishergirl's pension plan / temporary disability plan. A freezer full of fish? Or a bit of community spirit "because sometimes shit happens and I'm just so glad it didn't happen to me". Charm and good looks that last forever? Family? Or nothing?
Humans are a tribal (or herding) species. The reason for this is so the weak can take advantage of the strong for protection.
Socialism is a human disease. Tigers are not socialistic.
Here is the real scoop on Socialism / Communism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUMOWZc8PU8
Trying to be a capitalist in a democratic country is a losing battle. As more and more voting citizens realize that can have a slice of the national wealth by voting for the right candidate, less and less people work. All democracies collapse from their own weight because of this.
Don't whine about this being a republic. That's just something written on a piece of paper a long time ago that nobody pays attention to now.
"As more and more voting citizens realize that can have a slice of the national wealth by voting for the right candidate, less and less people work. "
Oh lordy, same old US Chamber of Commerce jackhole talking point from the typical aliterate, illiterate who is either a professional liar or too simpleton to understand basic arithmetic and finance.
Question, professional douchetard: Who owns Chase Bank? Goldman Sachs? Bank of America? Morgan Stanley? Citigroup? Wells Fargo, GE and AT&T and ExxonMobil?
You don't know? But you said you were a capitalist?
When that simpleminded swine at Harvard, Rogoff, does that grade-school arithmetic/Excel/ simple stats project, whereon he ommits the important data, and Thomas Herndon of UMass calls him on it, that lying shit-for-brains scumbag Harvard trash, Rogoff, further lies by claiming the exact opposite of the truth, that his blown up "economics" study supports his bullcrap debt-to-GDP thesis, when it shows the very opposite, that 99% of debt-to-GDP over 90% status still exhibit economic grown!
Effing Harvard, Princeton and Yale lying ass morons!
You sound like a drunk mental patient ranting at passing cars. Your ideas are commensurate with your demeanor.
Great article...as usual on this site...what followed in the comments section was a load of total drivel and utter crap from a group of total fuckwits.
You got me baby, I'm a fuckwit.
I won't apoligize for being skeptical of that entepreneurial vocation, extreme boat paddling, that contributes so much to solving world issues and inspires so many others to be equally productive. I'll wager the young fisherwoman would trade her enteprenurial happenstance in shangrila, for the life of a ne'erdowell in a heartbeat.
The non-productive author disses "fucking" Detroit, but fails to acknowledge one of the once vibrant and entrepreneurial lodestars of the world that "built that" so that he could go carbon polluting/ jetting around the planet. While the former "entepreneurs" of Detroit were "shining" the "extreme" boat paddlers were remaking the city/world into the cronyist chaos we have today.
My 2¢ worth.
Communist governments realized that it takes a lot of work to impose and maintain a pure Marxist economy at the lowest level simply because of the natural yearning to engage in free exchange. The only country left in the world that still attempts to do so is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In China, the Party realized that the social tension this caused was so high they realized that it was better (for Party members) to release the citizen to engage in any type of enterprise they please, as long as it did two things: 1) not embarrass or threaten the Party; 2) provide the Party with opportunities for graft, bribes, tax revenue. So the truth is that the individual is free to hustle (and indeed must hustle) but the more successful they become the more that local and regional Party officials will look to them for their cut, and by that dynamic the Party is assured of having control over business.
There are no businessmen or politicians. They are different types of farmers. But they both farm people.
Capitalism is a great idea but it stops working the instant that one or two capitalists buy the government. How did that happen? Wasn't competition supposed to stop anyone from getting too rich or powerful?
"Don't worry about it. Once they get too fat and lazy, a lean and mean competitor will take care of that." - MSM pro-capitalist propaganda from the last two decades.
"All we have to do is wait for another Murder-Death-Kill." - Demolition Man
"Why does anyone worry about tsunamis? No way could a wall of water build up that high! Haven't you heard of gravity? Anyway, at any time, on average, the ocean is flat so you may as well go sailing." - Hey, don't blame me. I just took the logic and ran with it.
"Binoculars, binoculars, get your binoculars here! Two dollars per minute or for sale for a very low $99.95 outright or an even lower $9.99 per month for 24 months. Get the best views of the coming tsunami here!" - capitalist after reading my last comment.
Capitalism is very strange, competition is the main ingredient but all capitalists hate it.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Bingo! We have a winner. A slave is a slave is a slave and he hates being a slave, whether it is due to a "slave owner" or due to "the competition". At least, I suppose, "the competition" won't physically hunt you down and force you back into slavery if you manage to escape. Or won't they? "Kill" one competitor (find a competitive advantage) and another one pops up (people figure out how to replicate that advantage).
Competition guarantees that you work your guts out and get fuck all in return because someone else out there is hungrier and willing to work cheaper. Every factory slave in the world knows this. The goal of every capitalist is to be a monopolist and this overlooked fact is openly preached in every business school in the world. "Find your niche. Find your Unique Selling Proposition, your Unique Buying Advantage". Without a monopoly of some kind, the capitalist is going nowhere. No profits, no redundancy, no protection from plain old bad luck, because there will always be some other hungry guy other there who is currently going through a lucky patch.
Funny thing is, I actually like capitalism. But when some bastard starts shouting out, "Apples are good for you", I pull out my magnifying glass and start examining that apple for needle marks.
Who are the idjuts who upvoted this fool?
Go ahead, keep wishing for what will never be.
Or admit that perhaps the problem should be viewed from a different angle.
Even if I accept your silly premise, it is still very shallow and myopic. You say capitalists will buy the govt, but you think if the govt were stronger and maybe owned whatever those two capitalists own, things would be better?
You're a deep thinker, dude.
sarc/
Either capitalism is this fragile flower that can easily be crushed by the tiniest bit of "socialism" or "government" or "communism" and as such will never exist in its "pure form" in the real world or it is a robust thing and flourishing in this world right now. Those at the top of the tree buy and sell governments, laws, regulations, political power. They buy and sell anything they like. They have achieved pure anarcho-capitalism.
Those guys will ask you, "Why don't you buy your own government?" They won't word it like that of course. Instead they'll say, "If you don't like the laws then form a lobby group and get them changed. It is democracy in action!" They look at you and your complaint about govt the same way a businessman looks at a minimum wage worker.
Businessman: "If you don't think I pay you enough then start your own business and pay yourself what you are worth."
Richest capitalist: "If you don't like govt then buy your own govt".
Or perhaps we are viewing the whole thing from the wrong angle. Those at the top of the tree use capitalism when it suits them. They use communism when it suits them. They go begging to gain political favour when it suits them. It's only the little people that make and adhere to single rules.
I am saying that you can complain all you like about too much govt and not enough capitalism but it is all part of some kind of great big cycle. Eventually you will get your wish (I can't guarantee you will be alive to see it) but I can not guarantee that the underlying problems will go away.
?
PT
There are a couple of things wrong with your observations.
1. In a sound money system, people are forced to choose to underfund one project in order to fund another project. So if the bad guys want to buy the government, they'd have to cut back on their capital spending plans. Neat, huh?
2. Why have government? Any centralized power is easy to corrupt. No government coercion means no coercion.
Get it?
So let's review: we need sound money and no government. It's that simple.
#1. Having bought the government, the bad guys then move to regulate into extinction any competitors that were stupid enough to spend on improving output rather than regulatory capture. The subsequent paid-for private sector taxation provides windfalls that vastly exceed the cost of buying regulators / patents. Spending on regulatory capture is a great way to maximise shareholder dividends, a huge ROI if you can afford the initial spend, and it is the expected behaviour of a large corporation, sound money or not. Do you seriously believe that regulatory capture did not occur under the gold standard?
#2. Believing that no government, as a model, can be maintained within human society, even within the population of ANY social animal species, is pure fantasy, up there with believing in the Easter Bunny. Hierarchy is self emergent, easily demonstrated by observing any group and the political behaviour of its individuals. There could be only two humans left on the planet and they'd still be jockeying for position.
There's no such thing as manipulable power, that's an oxymoron. If a "power" can be manipulated then it's not the power, the manipulator is, and the "power" you see is just a visage that the manipulator wishes you to see as part of their manipulation, a convenient scapegoat. The true powers are beyond manipulation, they are untouchable, they are spoken of only in hushed voices, they cannot be criticised, and most subjects don't even know the manipulators exist, choosing instead to vent against a sock-puppet goverment of the day and wondering why nothing ever changes when they vote a new government in.
Sound money changes nothing and "no government" is nothing more than a slogan popularised by lobbyists who work for their corporatist masters to acquire for themselves whatever independent power the populace still holds for itself via a Democratic government.
Yawn.
Please spend some time reading Rothbard. Then we'll talk.
OK then, let's talk about how praxeology is a complete load of bullshit, anarcho-capitalism is a ridiculous oxymoron rejected by anarchists everywhere, how his ethical framework leads to hilariously unethical conclusions, how his a priori claims are anything but, how he was nothing more than a shill for extreme right-wing private sector oligarchs and made a living sucking their dicks, how his unworkable ideas had already been tried and proven to fail leading to the very oppression he claimed to despise.
Another useless philosopher, drowning in the sterilised (by contradiction) ejection of his own mental masturbations, which is only to be expected from a person who rejects the Scientific approach and believes that his imagination trumps reality.
Fuck Rothbard.
Good job. Your argumentation skills are so masterful that I'm going to start voting again.
As opposed to yours that are non-existent? C'mon, you started it, I gave you plenty of topics to talk about and succinctly expressed my final opinions on them, let's go.
You can start by explaining how praxeology is of any use whatsoever or how the Austrian "human action axiom" (a foundation of Rothbard's praxeology) is not so clearly wrong as demonstrated by evidence (oh, but Austrians don't need 'evidence' do they, how very convenient).
The clown believed that all human action is rational (it's not!) because all action is, by definition, purposeful (it's not!). Not only is that a silly thing to believe period, it's a bizarre re-definition of what the word "rational" means. In true Austrian style, he'd probably redefine, at a run, the words "human", "action" or "purposeful" in an attempt to dig out of the hole. The Austrians love doing that, a sure sign of Sophistry.
Why am I not surprised that you don't vote?
Wow! I'm going to start voting and I'm going to stop paying attention to vonMises. That guy was a fool. It's all about you now.
Nothing to do with me, that's a projection of your own ego. This is about the argument that you started and refuse to participate in. Why not?
I've given you plenty to work with. Here's another talking point: explain how anarcho-capitalism is not an oxymoron given that refusal to recognize the existance of property is THE foundation of Anarchy and Anarchists are typically associated with the left wing throughout history.
How does the Rothbardian right-wing, pro property-rights view mesh with that? "Anarcho"-capitalism is a bullshit term spouted by people who don't think about it.
Proudhon was the first person to define "Anarchist", he was a socialist and his very first book on the matter rallied around the claim that property is theft.
Rosseau agreed: "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
Diametrically opposed to Rothbard.
Well, hold it. Defining anarchy differently isn't the same as saying it's bad. There is plutarchy, monarchy, anarchy, ...etc. If you don't want to be ruled by someone, then you prefer no "archy" which is anarchy. Not the socialist meaning, which was essentially Mao's "continuous revolution."
Anyways you should be in hog heaven here in the USA because you've got all the Marxist tenets fulfilled! Utopia! Especially all the "private property" mess, thankfully that's been done away with. Remember the maxim that if you think you "own" your home, stop paying the property tax, step back, and just watch what happens! Whee! Socialist paradise!
And ownership of private property never caused a war, ever. The causation of every war, ever, was is and has been the state.
No state (i.e. anarchy), no wars.
Get it?
If you're his best representative then perhaps I'll wait. For now I'll keep believing my own lying ears and eyes.
1. That is very simple theory and it doesn't work that way. A simple, well-deserved "competitive advantage" can quickly be leveraged into political power which is used to create a larger "competitive advantage" and that is what we see in the real world all the time.
2a. There will always be the bigger bully. And as long as fighting is easier than farming, we are going to have problems. The farmer has to learn 2 skills: Farming and defence of his land. The fighter gets to specialize on one skill: fighting. Governments will come and go but the bullying just changes form.
2b. Sometimes the fighter has a point. He was either dispossessed of own his land or the land lost fertility due to bad weather (yes, yes, or perhaps he was just greedy and lazy and didn't know how to keep the land fertile, but either way ... ) Once people start getting hungry, all bets are off.
"the opportunity to work for it without regulation"
I understand the gist of the article, but sadly it's not as simple as that... Multinationals already have very little regulation and the result is't pretty... Sure we need reforms, especially for small entrepeneurs, and governments need to be curbed in their powers - so, we need a completely new set of rules. Rules to bring back the balance. Without rules we will be like Asia, struggling to survive, hoping to catch a fish and make it to the next day...
All economic activity is a bell curve, with the x axis one of the activities you see in that country, and the y axis, time.
As economic activity begins to 'produce more fish' than they can consume, they will trade the excess away for either, 1) a medium of exchange or 2) goods, services and 3) favors.
A medium of exchange like the Bhat eventually becomes necessary to facilitate trade, climbing the left side of the bell curve. As there becomes enormous excesses, the complications get greater, hording rears its ugly face, and greed becomes more pronounced, artificial mechanisms for gathering more of the medium of exchange become commonplace, in ALL nations, states, or families.
What you witness is a point in time on the left side of the curve, Stick around long enough and you will bemoan the right side of the curve.
Josh “Galt” is one of the most ignorant writers I have read on ZH. That I see no mention of education on his website is not surprising. If he has read any books beside Ayn Rand’s amphetamine induced delusions of grandeur would also surprise me.
While very deluded, JG doesn't appear to be a malignant narcissist..., except when he is parroting socially malignant Randian Ignorance.
The term, “Hail, jerk, well met” comes to mind. Or is it Hail Jock…?
Hallelujah brother.Tell it like it is!We socialist like being lazy,poor,slovenly,envious,malevolent,hungry...and at the same time (in some parts of the world...cough...cough) fat.AND we expect others to everything for us that we won´t do ourselves.
Here we have the logical fallacies of ,"Straw Socialist" & "Missing the Point" inter alia unnamed. "Unnamed" because the missing words and the grammar leaves me guessing at what you meant to say.
exomike = parasite socialist-rot-brain scumbag
I hate it when this happens. For God's sake, if you don't agree with the man, use your brain cells to formulate arguments as to why you think he's erring. Calling someone a "parasite socialist-rot-brain scumbag" is not my idea of an articulate counterargument.
Is that all you have? The most common of logical fallacies? The "ad hominem" attack? ... Well it does double as a "straw socialist" argument even though I didn't mention socialism; which qualifies the non-sentence as "missing the point". Oh, and there is no mention of anything I said in my critique which would qualify as, "changing the subject".
I do have to admit however that there must be a certiain "talent" in the ability to cram at least four logical fallacies into one incomplete sentence.
He was being redundant. Socialist and scumbag are the same.
Why do you feel you should have the power to take things from me? What makes you think you are bulletproof?
What those questions mean is that you are a little tyrant wannabe and you'll get shot if you lay your filthy grubbing hands on my "stuff".
I suppose you want to argue about systems but your system is going to get you killed. It is that simple.