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A Capitalist Christmas
By Dale Steinrich via The Mises Institute,
Halloween has a socialist tenor. Menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified "trick" if you don't fork over. That's the way the government works in a nutshell.
Thanksgiving has been reinterpreted as the white man, after burning, raping, and pillaging the noble Indian, trying to make amends with a cheap turkey dinner. New Year's can be ruined as the beginning of a new tax year, and the knowledge that the next five or six months will be spent working for the government.
That's why I love Christmas. To this day it remains a celebration of liberty and private life, as well as a much-needed break from the incessant politicization of modern life. It's the most pro-capitalist of all holidays because its temporal joys are based on private property, voluntary exchange, and mutual benefit.
In Christmas shopping, we find persistent reminders of charity programs that work and little sign of those (welfare bureaucracies) that don't. The Salvation Army, Goodwill dispensers in parking lots, and boxes filled with canned goods and toys are all elements of true charity. This giving is based on volition rather than coercion, which is the key to its success.
People complain about "commercialism," but all the buying and selling is directed toward meeting the needs of others. Even if the recipient doesn't give gifts in return, the giver still receives satisfaction. Absent entirely is the zero or negative-sum political process that tilts property in favor of one group or another.
Santa, unlike Halloween figures, comes to your home to bring gifts and goodwill, and never takes anything except milk and cookies. You wouldn't think of hiding your silver from him. Unlike government bureaucrats, Santa and his workers are entirely trustworthy, and even work overtime by creating goods that are desired by millions of people.
If the Labor Department or OSHA ever get around to investigating the North Pole, they'll probably find all sorts of labor violations: safety and health (too cold), unemployment insurance (does he pay it?), minimum wage (is there exploitation here?), overtime (Heaven knows they work long hours), civil rights (any non-elves employed?), and disability (is Santa accommodating these tiny men?). But the point is that everyone is there voluntarily, and no doubt considers it an honor and privilege.
Christmas trees are lovely to behold, and tree farms are the ultimate model for environmental policy. The trees are harvested and the ground replanted for future holidays, a process driven entirely by market demand. If this technique were transferred to our national parks and forests, we could satisfy timber demand, lower the price of wood, and make sure trees are always valued.
Christmas cards are an outlet for attractive art, communicated to the masses in ways the National Endowment for the Arts would never support. Card makers must satisfy actual consumers, who have better taste than NEA's program managers.
The downside of Christmas cards is that they have to travel to their destinations via the state postal monopoly. Every year the postal monopoly angrily warns its captive customers to mail their insignificant holiday letters two weeks in advance. If you're a postal bureaucrat, there's nothing more irritating than consumers mistaking your operation for a competitive one.
What do we do when it's time to send our most precious packages? We use private shipping services, which provide services at a profit even though they are prohibited by law from mailing letters. These companies welcome our business, and don't complain the rest of the year about the high volume.
At some point during Christmas, the official culture of government and the media — dominated by Obama and Pelosi and the goings-on in Washington — fades from view and we can't help but recall what's really important. It's family, community, home, tradition, and loved ones, and all the other things that government succeeds in crowding out during the rest of the year.
This year, let's remember to appreciate the role capitalist institutions play in making our holiday even more special. Not even the government can take away that Christmas spirit.
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You've nailed it, and I've just celebrated my last Christmas
Christmas is the biggest joke of all of the holidays. Gasp.. I called it a holiday. Shame on me. It's not a holy-day. It's just "Merry Christmas" period, lol. At least that's how I keep getting corrected by the righties.
Lets throw Thanksgiving in trash and line up at shopping malls to buy trinkets. The stores are filled with road rage in the parking lots, rude people trampling each other and bumping into one another. I worked at a department store back in my teen years, and got all of the holiday cheer I could ever want dealing with the snobbish disgusting general public. The customers were so rude I don't even know where to start but it was good motivation to not work there the rest of my life, so there's a little good that comes with bad.
As for chopping down a tree and decorating it, trampling each other at malls for trinkets, and a man in a red suit with NSA-like powers to know whether you are naughty or nice, I don't remember reading any of that stuff in the gold ol' Christian Bible, so calling this travesty "Christ"mas is a total misnomer.
I see this garbage on the right wing blogs, news outlets, and other media where they claim there is a "war on Christmas". What rock are these righty tighties living under? As soon as back to school is over, nativity scenes, lights and tinsel take the place of notebooks and binders on Labor Day weekend at Walmart, the nation's largest retailer. It seems more like Christmas has a war on us, as it's celebration is pushed earlier and earlier to point where Thanksgiving is trampled over and forgotten about. There's a war on Thanksgiving, not Christmas righties! At the rate we are going, retailers will take "Christmas in July" literally and the Fourth of July will be zombies hitting the malls, in anticipation of Christmas 5 months out.
As for Xmas, the righties get all mad because the X replaces Christ. Last I checked it was the Church that came up with that abbreviation because X means cross. Oh yeah, just like the cross dangling from your neck, on the roof of your church, the bumper sticker on your car, and your daughter's arm tattoo. Christ was nailed to a cross, or at least that's how the narrative goes along with the Easter bunny and Coca-cola's Satan Claus.
New Years, here we come! Happy New Year everyone! I need a drink after all of this holiday family madness!
Obama voter?
No I'm not. And no I didn't vote for Keating 5 McCain, nor gun banner Obamacare-pioneer Mitt Romney either.
Try again with your reactionary kneejerk.
If it matters or if you care, I voted for Gary Johnson in the last election cycle, as he was the ONLY pro gun candidate on the ballot.
If I'm a single issue voter, gun rights are my issue. Unfortunately the left is clueless about how political power is leveraged. And the right is pro-gun but clueless on what freedom actually is.
You called someone who presented their conclusion based on obvservation from the info in your rant.
You replied: Try again with your reactionary kneejerk.
And illustrated exactly what one was with your subsequent rant.
Your words & presentation do fit in snugly with what many have found standard from liberals, be it you are one or not.
If it quacks like a duck...
It's a duck.
Thanks. Couldn't have said it better myself.
I might have enjoyed your comment had you not poisoned the tone with your particular brand of political horse shit. All things good are not born from left wing Nazi's like you. How many of those rude customers were "liberals"?
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
Dale Carnegie
I enjoyed your Dale Carnegie quote, and respect that you disagree with my political leanings.
No I'm definitely not a Nazi, as I am a huge critic of fascism.
Most of those nasty customers were most likely Reaganites.
Highly unlikely they were Reaganites.
Just got back in from picking up a few things and getting Mrs.N's car out of the body shop (she hit a deer). Stopped at a gas station and there she was, a 300 pounder behind the wheel of a minivan packed with kids, with a bag of potato chips in one hand, trying to navigate to a gas pump with the other hand (when she wasn't using it to slap at the kids in the back while screaming obscentities at them).
Three guesses what bumper sticker she had on the back and the first two don't count. It was Mr.Hope-n-Change.
And yes, Mrs.N and I laughed our ass off ;-)
I'm amazed the land manatee wasn't holding an Obamaphone up to her ear using her shoulder while doing all the rest you described.
You get the picture...lol.
I swear we were laughing our asses off...I came out and Mrs.N had noticed her backing up and pulling forward without turning her wheels to change angles, thats when I told her she was concentrating more on the bag of chips and beating the hell out of her? kids than anything else.
She's like naw uhhh, no way, so as I pulled out I slid up beside the 300 pounder, slowly, giving her the full monty out her passenger window.
I thought she was going to wet herself laughing...lol...uhhh huhhh, dats right! I done told you! as one of the kids started balling...it was a classic ;-)
Similarly for Hannukah?
No that's different and special... which is why it is current decisional law in these United States that a menorah may be erected by itself on public or government land, but a nativity scene by itselfwould offend the Constitution. If that isn't a prime example of Jewish Privilege, I don't know what is.
That would be bad/unfair enough {note that I personally have no problem with such displays so long as there are no exclusions - which there plainly are} but the national menorah is lit by Chabad - in their essence a Jewish Supremacist group that is not called such because it is impermissible to call racists racists if they are Jewish, black, or on the Left.
p.s.
The Myth of Abraham and America’s Allegiance to Israel {Do "Christian" Zionists even celebrate the Birth of The Christ?}The Mises Institute. One dimensional and frankly ridiculous since whenever it was founded.
Funny I say the same thing about the Republocratic Party.
that's quite a broad brush you paint with. Actually the author has some pretty legit articles, it seems. He can be forgiven this inane lump of rhetorical coal.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/steinreich1.html
http://www.whale.to/a/ama-robbery.html
No broader than any other brush here.
That's a pretty broad brush as well...
I fit right in.
touché
We crucified some folks
Capitalism died a long time ago......all of us slaves live in Communists States now
1945 British National Archives Document Calls For New World Order Now
Lagarde Ponders IMF Headquarters in Beijing
Communist E.U. and America Gorge On Taxes And Want Laws To Make Lower Taxes Illegal
Renewable Energy Will Allow Communist Party Of China To Hold Onto Power
Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble Promotes Globalist Tax Collection
All Art Is Propaganda – UK Review Gushes For Communist Revolution-era At V&A
All Art Is Propaganda Part II – 2nd UK Gush Over Communist-era At V&A
what an incredibly inane and foolish article.
agreed. poorly written, meandering, and thoughtless, just like most of the Christmas cards I got.
Speaking of Christmas cards...
Quite a bit of junk mail ads in the mailbox are disguised as hand-written cards. It really blows because it's not even real paper so I can't use it to light a fire.
The shit doesn't burn, it melts.
"We use private shipping services, which provide services at a profit"
City Link tells its employees they no longer have a job... on Christmas day
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/26/city-link-closure-announ...
Nice one City Link.... They always were a rubbish company!
Better than ParcelForce.
If ever there were a courier company that deserved to collapse, it would have to be ParcelFarce. They only survive because of government handouts.
let's remember to appreciate the role capitalist institutions play
If you had been paying any attention, you would know that there is no capitalism left in manipulated markets, captured regulators, bailing out of banksters, infinite printing and a fascist, police state that is constantly limiting your privacy and your liberties.
Maybe you drank too much eggnog when you penned that one.
"Maybe you drank too much eggnog when you penned that one."
I don't know. I think it's actually pretty consistent with the Mises Institute philosophy that they would publish an article that identifies everything wrong with what Christmas has become in the US, and hold up those things as everything right about Christmas.
Maybe his glass was half full.
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
The "commercialization" of Christmas, that this author defends is one of my biggest criticisms, as it flies in the face of Christ's teachings.
I never understood why righties cling to Christ, when Christ would be an ardent leftist in today's political sphere. Read a Red Letter Bible to understand where I am going here, and forget the garbage peddled at a 501c3 sellout megachurch. Then I also don't understand why Atheist Ayn Rand's Objectivity gets packaged in with this too. It is odd bedfellow mixed with yet another odd bedfellow. I have a hard time getting my head around this amalgamation. Then enter in Coca-cola's Satan Claus, and the pagan ritual of decorating a decaying tree even though righties hate paganism. Then the righties lecture you for not wishing them a Merry Christmas as early as Pearl Harbor Day.
Christmas is the longest, most dragged out Holiday there is, and I'm just burned out from it.
I never understood why.......
liberals are not liberal
progressives are not progressive
Astute.
Nice.
The Mises institute is right that capitalism (the free-market) is the bom-diggity, but they seem to assume that most businessmen are capitalists both in philosophy and in deed, when in fact most are cronies both in philosophy and in deed.
The Rule of Market is not exactly what the Mises institute is preaching.
Tis the season to cancel Glass Steagall Act. fa, la, la, la, la
Who repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?
Private Ownership of the Means of Production creates undemocratic hierarchical structures
The fact that human being aren't all identical clones 'creates undemocratic hierarchical structures'.
That and the fact we acquire knowledge and accumulate capital as we age.
Next.
instead of capital, you could exercise and collect points
I prefer Easter, you don't have to buy anything.
I like... gasp... Labor Day weekend.
Instead of working for the Man, I get to go camping with friends and family.
OMG. I must be a super duper left socialist according to these guys.
I work for a major corporation that is closed on Labor Day and gives us paid time off added to our salary. Oh the travesty!
/using a sarc tone.
eye rolls for Memorial Day, though, right?
post or don't post, nobody gives a fuck about your left/right or red/blue hand-wringing.
I have an idea.
Step outside your house, and talk to people in the general public sometime.
Yes, there are righties that whine about big government meanwhile collecting social security, Medicare, and have a "Support the Troops" bumper sticker on their SUV. Yes there are lefties that think their Prius will keep global temperature from increasing one degree Celsius.
That's why I bring it up. I have no choice, because this is the society we live in, and I critique it.
Bottom line -> people are stupid*.
Useful idiots keep nations down. They are easily manipulated to further their leaders stranglehold of tyranny over the masses.
Lenin was not the first to understand nor cite useful idiots.
* for the dolts in the crowd that was a lessor form of hyperbole [don't know what that means? get a dictionary]
Just a 12er of eggs. Fyi its spelled Oestre.
Easter is also very cool - an ancient celebration of the vernal equinox and associated fertility rituals.
Again, the Christains have tried to muck it up with their nonsense. But one can easily ignore that with a little effort.
Christmas should also be a celebration of the vernal equinox but the winter soltice had to be de-emphasized.
Ancient conspiracy theory, you know.
Too much easy money, the result of cheap credit, will eventually dampen even the best of Christmas spirits...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/jaguar-inflation-a-laymans-explanatio...
"It's family, community, home, tradition, and loved ones, and all the other things that government succeeds in crowding out during the rest of the year."
Code word spotted.
Sssshhhh, ixnay on the arbaricbay elicray.
This year, let's remember to appreciate the role capitalist institutions play...
Name ONE.
If you're conflating the meaning of Christmas with "capitalism" - you don't understand either.
I’m in a tutorial mode for ZH the last few days. Here is another two part series.
PBS Frontline: The Persuaders (2005)
Ask yourself why the social media hub has become a non-persuader consumer magnet? Enjoy!
Capitalism is on life support if it's not dead already. To all you lefty progressives take heed in knowing BHO is making damn sure of it.
Dumbest fucking article ever.
The dumbest fucking thing you’re going to experience is when no one buys your shit shipped from Timbucktoo. You will sell the inventory to wholesaler to split a cunt hair profit. Another ivory schooled reject posting on Zerohedge.
I hit your nerve. Nothing else matters.
:)
How about: Christmas in a vapid, demoralized society.
I love Christmas. The winter solstice is one of the oldest holidays known to humanity. And what could be better cause for celebration than the return of more sunlight?
More recently, the Christians have tried to muck it up by tying it to the birth of their particular prophet. But that's their business, I don't give a flip about that.
Bethlehem Star and shepherds watching over their flocks at the 31 degree latitude make no sense for December 25th, but whatever, I'm just a scrooge I guess, lol.
You know,,, maybe a nuke holocaust wouldn't be so bad after all...
What is this "liberty and private life" of which the Author speaks?
Crony capitalism is no better than the other "-ism's", which seem to all be morphing into kleptosociofascistoligarchism.
Sure, there are some good people and good things left; but the world teeters on the brink of unsustainable consumerism.
Capitalism? More like Digitalism...
All work to be assumed by Mr. Digital. Won't even be manipulated markets. No more ZH. No more whining. Machines doing it all. They'll even repair and reproduce themselves. Gee, what a marvelous advancement.
Then how will the proles progeny survive in an era where even the machines won't need them. Oh heck.... who cares. It'll be wonderous!
Read:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/12/gary-north/the-taxi-drivers-last-stand/
ALL Christian holidays have been spayed & neutered by Hollywood and Madison Avenue elite.
They have hijacked Christian holy events and holidays (Santa Claus is the commercialised perversion of Saint Nicholas, and a mere mascot for buying stuff), and turned sacred events into something profane: secular events with hedonistic, consumerist indulgences. Remember...
THOSE WHO DEFINE AND CONTROL THE DEBATE, ITS VISION, VALUES AND TALKING POINTS, CONTROL.... EVERYTHING. This also applies to religion and banking.
Unless you go from passive to active, NOTHING will happen. Real change starts with one of us, and it starts from the bottom up.
quote the irs agent next door "obamacare is really gonna bring in a wind fall of revenues."
......... as the upper middle class sell all their jumbo loan homes
nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzLry3ABpV0
TAX REVOLT NOW !!!
As my Scrooge-like Christmas ho said, "Bah, hum job".
Christmas is what you make of it, not of what anyone else does.
As a predominately live and let live type, I personally don't give one single shit whether a person conforms to my view of a holiday.
We had a large family gathering with an overabundance of grand-nieces and nephews yelling with pleasure at enjoying their new gifts and ample supping of the wassailing bowl while reaffirming kinship and clan ties and feasting in a grand style on delicacies prepared with great effort and love to please the senses. A proper homage of thanksgiving was offered to the Christ Jesus to commemorate his birth that was heartfelt by the faithful.
The only down note was that my own children weren't there to enjoy it all but we will visit them next month in their out of state home.
All in all, a most satisfying event which made me mindful that these rituals serve a real purpose in binding familiar ties tighter and celebrating our common blood and bonds.
Santa doesn't pay his Elves, so they are either the longest running volunteer organisation in history, or Santa is a slaver.
And it doesn't get more capitalist than that!
A guy comes and gives you stuff and asks nothing in return.
Tell me again how thats capitalist?
Steinrich the Brown Nosed Reindeer
This article is a load of unadulterated twat. What planet is this clown author living on? Maybe he forgot his /sarc tag? Christmas is a massive commercial con job to get the idiots to spend spend spend. WAKE UP!!! (...time for another Tiger beer).
At issue is Obama’s support for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would establish the world’s largest free-trade zone.
This is how Obama Avoids Impeachment from Boner.
The administration is moving aggressively in hopes of wrapping up negotiations by the middle of next year on a 12-nation free-trade pact in the Asia-Pacific region before the politics become even more daunting ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-hopes-to-enlist-gop-in-push...
The dynamic, as the White House plots strategy for the new year when the GOP has full control of Congress, has scrambled traditional political alliances. In recent weeks, Obama has rallied the business community behind his trade agenda, while leading Capitol Hill progressives, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have raised objections and labor and environmental groups have mounted a public relations campaign against it.
When exactly did ZH become a platform for the Mises institute?
If I wanted to read kiddy essays on Scrooge and Ayn Rand, I'd go to a Young Republican convention. Like with socialist or Keynesian ideologues, propaganda should be pointed out wherever you see it.
Always was. Didn't you know?
The fact that the name/story of Jesus Christ is absent from movies and television in the weeks leading up to Christmas, given the religious persuasion of 80%+ of the country, is strongly suggestive of a deliberate effort to denigrate, whether or not you adhere to it yourself, the Christian religion during one of its most important holidays.
The only "Christian" thing I see on tv is one channel dedicated to "christian" Zionism - Hagee and his ilk. While I don't take dogma of any kind seriously, I have some respect for the Christian meaning behind Christmas and Easter - messages wholly foreign to the death cult of the Scoffield Bible crowd, who worship "Israel" instead of The Christ, and who pray for war, instead of trying to prevent it.
Author is an asshole.
Hmmm.
Wonderfully thoughtful and uplifting.
I feel like committing some "goodwill to men".
Well. MOST men, and some women.
Let's not get crazy here.