The miracle of capitalism

The miracle of capitalism is that, first of all, it makes the correct assumption about mankind and how people function. That assumption is that human beings will virtually always act in a way that tends to increase their own happiness or satisfaction. This may be described in various ways:

• Self-defense
• Self-preservation
• Self-serving
• Selfishness

The actions may range, for example, from building an improvised shelter when lost in a wilderness to buying an iPhone. These are both acts of that put self ahead of other options. For example, I may destroy trees or kill an animal to survive when lost in a wilderness area.

What most liberals, progressives and leftists, however, fail to consider is that the buying of the iPhone was just as selfish an act as selling the iPhone was—as was the creation and manufacture of the iPhone.

• If you bought an iPhone, you did so because you felt that you would be happier, more satisfied or better off for having purchased it than by not purchasing it and keeping your money or using it to throw a big pizza party for your friends. Your act was purely selfish. You did not make the decision on whether the world would be a better place if you had an iPhone. You also probably did not consider: “Maybe I should just mail my money to the federal government so they can help more poor people with it.”
  
• If you sold an iPhone, you did so because you felt that your own situation would be improved by having sold it. This holds true whether you were the salesperson behind the counter, accepting a wage—and maybe a commission—for selling the iPhone; or if you were the owner of the franchise or store that sold the iPhone to the end-user. Indeed, it holds true down the entire supply chain—the distributor, the wholesaler, the manufacturer. Each of these were acting in their own self-interest when they acted to sell the iPhone.
  
• If you manufactured an iPhone, chances are you did so because it was in your own best interest to do so. (This is where it gets touchy.) Things are not so wonderful in China. It is quite possible that an eleven-year-old working ten hours a day manufacturing iPhones in China is not being coerced—at least not by Apple®. It is not at all unlikely that the parents of the eleven-year-old feel that it is better for the entire family for this child to be working in the factory than to be in China’s schools of indoctrination, where the treatment of the students may be no better than the treatment in the factory. It is even likely that the eleven-year-old worker feels that it is better for him or her to be in submission to his parents than to rebel. In fact, this young worker may even feel a tingle of pride and satisfaction that he or she is able to contribute to a better life for his whole family by working in the factory. (Granted, this is not the American way—to put children into factories—but we are not in a position to prejudge how other cultures grow and evolve over time. For more on this topic, please read here.)
  
• If you created the iPhone, if you were part of the product design team or even an inventor of one of the components, you, too, decided to create the product and work to get it into production because you were selfish. You did it because you thought you would be more satisfied or better off for having done so than in not doing so. It may have been because you were paid by Apple® or some other company to do the work. Or it may have been that you were simply so enthralled by the invention and innovation that the only way you could find satisfaction was to see it produced and distributed—even if your financial reward was relatively small by comparison. Either way, you selfishly sought whatever it was that brought you satisfaction or happiness.

So, what is the miracle of capitalism? It is the fact that capitalism turns your selfishness into service to the satisfaction of others.

Apple®, in the absence of government coercion, has no power to force anyone to buy an iPhone or an iPad or an iPod. The buyer—as indicated above—buys the product voluntarily (choosing it above all the alternatives, which are not just other similar products, but every other option—including just keeping the money) because the buyer sees the value of the product/service provided by the creators, manufacturers and sellers who bring the product/service to him.

This is the miracle of capitalism: transforming serving for self-satisfaction into service for the satisfaction of others.

The Marxist roots of “political correctness”

On Leftist tactics of deception

Sanford Horwitt prefaces his biography of [Saul] Alinsky, Let Them Call Me Rebel, with an anecdote he felt illuminated Alinsky's method. In this anecdote, Alinsky shares his wisdom with students wishing to protest the appearance on their campus of the first George Bush, then America's representative to the UN during the Vietnam War:

College student activists in the 1960s and 1970s sought out Alinsky for advice about tactics and strategy. On one such occasion in the spring of 1972 at Tulane University's annual week-long series of events featuring leading public figures, students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H.W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, a speech likely to be a defense of the Nixon Administration's Vietnam War policies [Note: the Nixon Administration was then negotiating with the North Vietnamese Communists to arrive at a peace agreement- DH.]

The students told Alinsky that they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush's address. That's the wrong approach, he rejoined - not very creative and besides, causing disruption might get them thrown out of school.... He told them, instead, to go hear the speech dressed up as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards, reading 'The K.K.K. supports Bush.' And that is what the students did with very successful, attention-getting results.

This vignette tells you everything you really need no know about Alinsky's ethics and his attitude towards means and ends. Lenin once said that the purpose of a political argument is not to refute your opponent "but to wipe him from the face of the earth." The mission of Alinsky radicals is a mission of destruction.

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From David Horowitz, Barack Obama's Rules For Revolution - The Alinsky Model, (c)2009 David Horowitz Freedom Center, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499

http://www.frontpagemag.com

Is the feminist agenda really feminism?

Then why do they attack Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann while saying nothing about the millions of women held captive and abused under Sharia law?

On “Big Oil” and taxes

Between 1980 and 2005, oil companies directly paid more than $2.2 TRILLION in taxes (after adjusting for inflation) to federal and state governments—including excise taxes, royalty payments and state and federal corporate income taxes. That amounts to more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period, according to numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. Department of Energy.

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For comparison purposes that is…

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$88,000,000,000	per year
$7,300,000,000	per month
$803,103	per day
$33,463	per hour

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Still, for Leftists—who hate success and are filled with envy—that's not a big enough contribution to make to our American way of life.

But this contribution does not include the other major contribution of so-called “Big Oil.” The firms in that industry employ—directly and indirectly—several hundred thousand Americans. Many of those American earn above-average salaries and virtually all of them pay state and federal income taxes, pay in millions in consumption (sales) taxes, and the vast majority participate in paying millions of dollars into property taxes.

Here are some numbers to think about

In 2010, the U.S. oil and natural gas industry provided $476 BILLION in direct support to the economy. This stimulus did not require an act of Congress nor that billions of dollars in new public debt be foisted upon the taxpayers of this generation and generations to come.

• $266 BILLION was returned to the economy in the form of spending on new energy projects, improvements to existing projects and enhancements of refinery and other downstream operations
• $176 BILLION paid to 2.1 MILLION U.S. employees in wages and salaries, plus benefits and payments to oil and natural gas leaseholders
• About $35 BILLION in dividends distributed to American shareholders

Leftists, Liberals and the War on Liberty and the Economy

Edward H. Crane, president of Cato Institute, writing in “Cato Policy Report” (Nov/Dec 2011), properly characterizes the Left here in the U.S.:

Of course, the Left has pretty much given up any claim to being champions of liberty these days. Speech codes on campus and restrictions of political speech show their disdain for the First Amendment. Double-down on troops in Afghanistan? Okay if the president’s a liberal. Then there’s the Left’s profound ignorance on how wealth is created. They love to focus on how to alleviate poverty when the [real] answer is wealth creation. Poverty is the natural state of man. Prosperity requires free markets, respect for contracts, and protection of private property. No big secret, but it seems to escape the Left.

So you have the Obama administration trample centuries of business law [Common Law] by denying Chrysler bondholders their contractual right to be first in line for assets sales under bankruptcy, and instead giving those rights to the UAW [United Auto Workers union], which had no such claim [under the law]. Property rights abused; the difficulty in selling corporate debt increased. The earned income of the rich? We’ll just take it and give it to those who didn’t earn it. Property rights abused; the incentive to create wealth undermined.

The lie of the "advance" of socialism

Communist socialism was responsible for turning the world's largest wheat exporter (Russia) into the world's largest wheat importer in a few short decades. That same Communist-socialist form of collectivism was able to turn the African continent's wealthiest nation (Ethiopia) into that continent's most destitute nation in only 17 years.

As F.A. Harper has rightly said:

"[Socialism]... due to its inability to generate any accumulation of the tools required for an advanced society,... must subsist on the confiscation of what has already been produced under some other plan; it has to parasitize something. The confiscation of private property is civilization in retreat."

The leftist avant garde is, despite their motives and intent, taking this nation and the world back to the caves and jungles, not forward to utopia.