Non-essential Jobs

 

Any job on which anyone’s livelihood depends is essential. It is essential to that person and his family. Without it, they may not be able to buy food or pay rent.

This is not the view of Gov. Newsom and the other petty tyrants now running amuck in our country and impoverishing and virtually imprisoning tens of millions of innocent people.

They believe that to be “essential,” one’s work must be essential to others. To them, only “others” matter, not individuals in and of themselves. On this basis, without a second thought, they issue edicts upon edicts and impose suffering on millions.

Capitalists as a Class Reduce Profits and Raise Wages

If capitalists did not exist, profits would equal 100% of sales revenue and an infinite percentage of zero capital invested. For proof, see my CAPITALISM: A TREATISE ON ECONOMICS, available in hardcover, 2-volume paperback, and Kindle editions at https://amzn.to/3kd4y39

Contrary to Adam Smith and Karl Marx, capitalists do not create the phenomenon of profit, which exists prior to their existence, but rather the phenomenon of PRODUCTIVE EXPENDITURE (i.e., expenditure for the purpose of making subsequent sales).

Productive expenditure consists of wage payments and expenditure for capital goods, both of which show up as costs of production that must be deducted from sales revenues and as capital invested in business assets.

The more economically capitalistic the economic system, i.e., the more the buying for the sake of selling relative to sales, the lower is profit both as a percentage of sales and as a percentage of capital invested, while the higher are wages.

Capitalists as a class do not create profits but wages. They increase wages both relative to sales revenues and profits and absolutely in terms of wage earners’ standard of living.

Again, for proof, read my CAPITALISM: A TREATISE ON ECONOMICS, available in hardcover, 2-volume paperback, and Kindle editions at https://amzn.to/3kd4y39

Competition and Cooperation

Competition and cooperation are often described as opposites, with cooperation favored as “social” and competition scorned as “anti-social.” This contrast is made in utter ignorance of economics.

The economic system of a capitalist society is a system of division-of-labor. In this system, each individual devotes his labor to the production of goods and services that are consumed by others, while what he consumes is produced by others.

This represents voluntary social cooperation of the most intensive and extensive kind imaginable—a cooperation of hundreds of millions, indeed, of billions of people all across the world in serving one another’s needs and wants.

Economic competition is nothing other than the process of organizing this social cooperation. It determines which individuals produce which goods, by what methods, and to what extent.

For a complete elaboration of the nature and effects of economic competition, see my CAPITALISM: A TREATISE ON ECONOMICS, available in hardcover, 2-volume paperback, and Kindle editions at https://amzn.to/3kd4y39

There you can learn, for example, why there is room for all in the competition of capitalism, how people of lesser ability are enabled to outcompete people of greater ability, and how its effects are the opposite of competition in the animal kingdom.

A Hypothesis Concerning Biden and the Election

Having succeeded with 100s of law suits to change state election laws and thereby make it easier to fix the outcome, Biden’s camp was so confident in the fix, that it concluded that all it needed to do was keep him alive until election day.

Hence virtually no campaigning by Biden, thereby avoiding the risk of putting his problem of age on display.

Expect Biden to last beyond inauguration day. But sometime thereafter, perhaps within two years or less, don’t be surprised if Biden is succeeded by Harris. 

A Couple of Badly Needed Facts

Can anyone provide “authoritative” projections of the rise in sea level as of 2100, 2200, …, 3000 and of the number of square miles of land century by century that would allegedly be lost to the rising sea and/or to rising temperatures on land?

Can anyone provide reliable calculations of the number of lives that would be lost as the direct or indirect result of each 10% reduction in the production of power dependent on fossil fuels or atomic energy?

Please do not give a vague reference, such as “see the reports of the IPCC.” What’s needed is specific references to specific pages in specific documents and best of all the assemblage of the data, fully referenced, in a simple table.

Our World Is Becoming That of 1984

As I see our world morphing more and more into Orwell's world of 1984, with a growing inversion of truth and falsehood, I think the time has come to apply to it the language of “1984.”

Thus, at least from time to time, we should refer to the media as branches of “The Ministry of Truth” and to President Trump as “Emmanuel Goldstein,” the arch-villain enemy of the [deep] state as depicted in 1984.

Indeed, Trump has been the victim of so many “Two-Minute Hates” that they blend into one intense, unending hatred 24/7/365.

And let us not forget “The Ministry of Love,” which AOC and other haters are attempting to forge in their efforts to ruin the lives of Trump supporters.

A statement from the Ministry of Truth claiming the honesty and fairness of the election appears at https://nyti.ms/38D5dIV. Be sure to read it if you’re ready to believe that the dead can vote and that preventing Republican observers from observing is fair and honest.

Why the “Right” Should Not Actually Behave Like the “Left” Even “a Little Bit”

Some people have objected to my tweet-thread/blogpost of Nov. 6 in the belief that it supports illegal action and a violation of private property rights.

Actually, it does not, nor did I intend it to advocate illegal action. The blog's title and the question it asks is, “What If the ‘Right’ Behaved a Bit Like the ‘Left’?” It does not say that the “Right” actually should behave that way. 

Speaking out or protesting against the lies and distortions of the media is justified. Exposing their complicity with government corruption is justified. But violating their property rights is not.

That could only be the case under a condition of armed resistance to the government, assuming the media were acting as government agents. Since we are not at the point of armed resistance, we are not at a point where disobeying the laws is justified.

Moreover, even if such disobedience were justified, given the Left’s near-total control over the media, such action would almost certainly backfire, for it would be portrayed not as a response to outrages but as unprovoked aggression. 

As long as we still have the ability to speak and write freely, our best course of action against the left-wing media is to counter them with a free-market alternative.

Some of these alternatives do exist. For example, Parler is becoming an alternative to Twitter. Please see my November 1 tweet-thread/blogpost for an elaboration of this free-market strategy.

What If the "Right" Behaved a Bit Like the "Left"

Imagine that the “Right” behaved a bit like the “Left.” Not that it would smash store windows or loot businesses, but just express itself in strong, justified protest.

What would it be doing right now, based on its belief that the election was being stolen from it, not only by the illegal manufacture of massive numbers of ballots for Biden, but also in good part because of a deliberate news blackout about the alleged corruption of Biden?

Would it not perhaps temporarily occupy and trash the offices of such publications as the NY Times and Washington Post, and the offices of such outfits as CNN, MSNBC, and Twitter and Facebook, who did everything possible to keep that news from their members?

What about the offices of corrupt mayors in jurisdictions where the vote manufacturing has taken place?

Would such behavior constitute a violation of private property rights? Or would it be an act of just and relatively modest retaliation against those who’ve violated the right to a free and honest election, which right is an essential check against arbitrary government?

Would such militant protest be helpful or harmful to the cause of freedom? Would it be an exercise in futility or, worse, self-destruction, or would it be an action similar in character to the Boston Tea Party?

A Possible Free-Market Way of Counteracting the Leftwing Bias of Today’s Internet Tech Companies

Twitter, Google, Facebook, and others are frequently guilty of leftwing bias in their treatment of comments, internet searches, and publication of content in general, for which behavior they are frequently denounced as guilty of “censorship.”

Actually, while private individuals and companies can do intellectually detestable things, they cannot commit censorship. Censorship is possible only when a writer or speaker has the agreement of the owner of a publishing venue to present his ideas.

If he has that agreement and is stopped from presenting his ideas by the government, or by private individuals acting with the sanction of the government, such as disrupters whom the police refuse to arrest preventing him from being heard, then there is censorship.

To make the same point in different words, if the detestable New York Times refuses of publish me, or even acknowledge my existence, that is not censorship. Censorship exists if they were willing to publish me but were stopped by the government or a government-sanctioned gang.

The way to deal with Twitter et al. is by means of one or more counter websites that are willing to publish what Twitter et al. hide. This would both deprive them of any ability to block content and also seriously tarnish their reputations if they did not change their behavior.

There are many concrete problems that would need to be worked out in launching such a website. But here’s a possible name and a slogan for one such site: “Can’t find what you’re looking for in Google? Try ‘Second Search.’ We feature what Google hides.”

The problems in starting such a website are numerous and large. But they do not include having to compete across the board with the leftist sites. The area of competition is only where the leftist sites are guilty of intellectual dishonesty.

And then it is essentially just a matter of showing what they’ve tried to hide.

For books and essays by the author, see https://amzn.to/2NLvVVZ

News Suppression and Its Implications

News stories alleging major corruption on the part not only of the son of the Democratic candidate for President, but also on the part of the candidate himself, namely, Joseph Biden, have largely been ignored by the mainstream media.

The reason given, without any kind of proof, is that the stories are “disinformation.”

If the alleged “disinformation” they provide is to be a reason for banning them, how long will it be before books are removed from the shelves of libraries? After all, what is Marxism and many other “isms” but disinformation?

And, of course, so too, according to Marxists, is any form of opposition to Marxism.

Freedom of speech and press is being destroyed before our very eyes.

And you literally can no longer trust the press or the other media. If the Biden stories can be suppressed, you can have no idea of what else may also be being suppressed. You can also have no idea of which among all the various news reports are actually true.

What you can be certain of is that the media are overrun by liars and political agents, not reporters or journalists. The reasonable way to proceed is to be ready to judge what you read or hear as nothing more than a Party Line and lies churned out by the Ministry of Propaganda. 

How Capitalists Can Be Socialists

At the present moment, we are witnessing a phenomenon that to many people appears bizarre and inexplicable: the phenomenon of wealthy capitalists supporting socialism/communism.

Capitalists, we have been taught, are supporters of capitalism, indeed, the only supporters of capitalism, because they are allegedly the only ones who gain from capitalism. Everyone else is assumed to be a victim of capitalism’s alleged exploitation of labor.

The actual significance of this phenomenon is that it constitutes a living refutation of the doctrine of “identity politics,” according to which people’s ideas and actions are determined by their group membership in terms of economic class, race, or gender.

The truth is that what people advocate is determined by their ideas and values, not their membership in this or that group. This includes the fact that the policies that actually serve an individual’s self-interest is a matter of economic science, not group membership.

The beliefs associated with the alleged interests of this or that group, such as labor and social legislation, confiscatory taxation of the rich, and government ownership, being in the interest of the wage earners, turn out to be nothing more than unchallenged, frozen ignorance.  

They are a bundle of errors. In contrast, a wage earner who understands economics knows that his material well-being is served by capitalism and capitalists. For the capital of the capitalists is the source of the supply of the products that he buys and of the demand for the labor that he sells.

This, of course, means that the greater the number of capitalists and their average wealth, the higher are wages and the lower are prices.

Just as wage earners who understand economics, support capitalism, businessmen and capitalists who don’t understand economics but instead have accepted the nonsensical theories of Marx, stand with the enemies of capitalism.

This has been true from the very beginning, starting with Marx’s collaborator and personal benefactor Friedrich Engels, a wealthy cotton mill owner. Indeed, it goes back even earlier, to Robert Owen, a leading “utopian socialist” textile manufacturer early in the 19^th Century.

An interesting question for psychologists and psychotherapists is how anti-capitalist capitalists are able to live with themselves. They believe that what they are doing is robbing their workers and making them suffer, but they go on doing it.

Is it really sufficient for them to be able to say they are financing the ultimate overthrow of the capitalist system, while on the basis of their beliefs, they think they are causing massive suffering every day, while they themselves enjoy all kinds of luxuries?

I’m tempted to coin a couple of names for this condition: “double inverted schizophrenia” and “capitalists’ socialism syndrome.” The schizophrenic element is a socialist belief-system in opposition to one’s every-day capitalistic behavior.

The “double inversion” part refers to the fact that the actual behavior entailed in being a capitalist is profoundly beneficial to wage earners, while the atonement for that behavior is what is destructive and evil.

Another Global Warming

Melting Alpine glaciers are revealing a previous age of global warming 9,500 years ago. A race is on to retrieve artifacts from that era. (See https://www.sciencealert.com/melting-alpine-glaciers-yield-archaeologic-troves-but-clock-ticking) 

Somehow the world survived that global warming, just as we can survive the current global warming we are being urged to meet with panic.

Our global warming too is an act of nature. Any human contribution is at most the unintended by-product of the actions of billions of people over a period of 250 years.

The global-warming panic is the product of the philosophy of collectivism. It is assumed that the human race is an actual living, acting, responsible entity and that the individual human being is interchangeable with it.

Thus, an individual must be prohibited from driving his car, using air conditioning or refrigeration, or eating red meat if he is to avoid being charged with responsibility for global warming.

This is punishment of the individual for crimes he did not and could not commit. Each person is responsible only for his own, individual actions, not for the effects of the actions of others or of all human beings past and present taken together.

Collectivism is a product of intellectual laziness. The collectivist does not want to bother to distinguish between individuals and between individuals and the concept of man in general.

In the same way, he does not want to bother to distinguish between specific points in time. Thus, he sees and presents the prospect of a hundred feet rise in the sea level over the course of centuries as though it were to happen all at once next year.

Thus, collectivism predisposes people to be panic mongers, which is certainly what environmentalists and people terrified of global warming are.

To learn more, see my essay "The Toxicity of Environmentalism," available at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RZUJ5OU/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i7

“Progressives” Are Neanderthals

The use of the term “progressive” as a description of advocates of Left-wing policies derives from Marxism. Marxism claimed that socialism is the ideal economic system and thus that movement toward it constitutes progress and that those advocating such movement are progressives.

The truth, of course, is that socialism is not an ideal economic system or even any kind of economic system at all. It is nothing but the destruction of capitalism. It is merely the negation of capitalism.

In much the same way, socialism is not a system of economic planning. It is a system of the PROHIBITION of economic planning. Under socialism everyone is prohibited from engaging in economic planning who is not a member of the Central Planning Board.

Unfortunately for socialism, however, the successful functioning of the economic system depends on the thinking and planning of all of its participants, whose separate individual plans are harmonized, coordinated, and integrated by the price system.

In imposing a monopoly of a handful of government officials on the thinking and planning required to run the economic system, socialism commits an error comparable to demanding that the legs of the officials be able to carry the weight of all mankind.

For it demands that the brains of the officials take the place of the brains of all mankind.

This is not progress but destruction. It is the willful, forcible suppression of thinking and planning, which can result only in destruction. Socialists, “progressives,” in their forcible suppression of thinking and planning, are throwbacks to our savage ancestors.

All they know is to use force and violence to get what they want: stealing other people’s property and then compelling others to work to feed them. They should be called Neanderthals rather than “progressives.” Thieves and slavers, torturers and murderers, is what they are.

Scores of millions of dead bodies lie at their feet, the accomplishment of socialism in the 20^th Century.

To learn more, buy and read these two titles, which are available at https://amzn.to/2NLvVVZ:

Columbus Day 2020 II

Columbus Day, which this year marks the 528^th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, is tomorrow.

Everyone who identifies himself as a member of Western Civilization should acknowledge the greatness of Columbus. He brought the Western Hemisphere into the orbit of Western Civilization and thereby correspondingly increased the civilized area of the earth’s surface.

Columbus is one of the greatest men in the history of our planet.

He played an essential role in the development of capitalism, with its science, technology, and industry that eliminate perpetual tribal conflict over scarce land and natural resources by making it possible for the earth to support everyone, ever more abundantly.

He helped make it possible for the average person in every First-World country to live at a level surpassing that of kings and emperors in the past. The same would be true for the average person everywhere if Western Civilization and capitalism existed everywhere.

My and Your Individual Preferences Matter

Here’s my preference: I prefer global warming and rising sea levels to socialism and a life of deprivation and poverty.

I prefer my car, my A/C, refrigerator, and all the other goods that fossil fuels make possible to holding down the global mean temperature a few degrees over the course of centuries. I have the same preference vis-a-vis a 50-100 foot rise in sea levels over 500-1000 years.

Capitalism can handle such problems, with minimal loss of human life. Against a backdrop of continuing economic progress, history will barely notice them.

The Left’s response to the Coronavirus should be taken as a mild foretaste of what life will be like when it is ruled by an obsessive focus on global warming/sea-level rise and the Left’s willingness to sacrifice modern material civilization in order to stop it. 

Columbus Day 2020

Columbus Day, which this year marks the 528^th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, is one week from today.

Some people ask, how can it be said that Columbus discovered a place in which people were already living and who thus knew about its existence before his arrival, and whose ancestors knew about its existence for millennia?

The answer is that Columbus discovered America by virtue of being the first member of Western Civilization to learn of its existence and make its existence known for the first time to all the other members of Western Civilization.

Membership in Western Civilization is achieved by anyone who makes it his intellectual home and sees the world from that perspective.

This includes descendants of the natives Columbus encountered, who have been educated and integrated into Western Civilization. The descendants of savages are routinely members of Western Civilization. Indeed, we are all ultimately descended from savages.

Western Civilization is a body of ideas and values, capable of being accepted and made their own by people everywhere, irrespective of race or ethnicity.

From the perspective of intellectual and cultural content, Western civilization represents an understanding and acceptance of the following: the laws of logic; the concept of causality and, consequently, of a universe ruled by natural laws intelligible to man;

on these foundations, the whole known corpus of the laws of mathematics and science; the individual's self-responsibility based on his free will to choose between good and evil; the value of man above all other species on the basis of his unique possession of the power of reason;

the value and competence of the individual human being and his corollary possession of individual rights, among them the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness; the need for limited government and for the individual's freedom from the state;

on this entire preceding foundation, the validity of capitalism, with its unprecedented and continuing economic development in terms of division of labor, technological progress, capital accumulation, and rising living standards;

in addition, the importance of visual arts and literature depicting man as capable of facing the world with confidence in his power to succeed, and music featuring harmony and melody.

Wherever the intellectual substance of Western civilization is known, its imparting to the minds of students is virtually coextensive with the process of education.

For the intellectual substance of Western civilization is nothing other than the highest level of knowledge attained anywhere on earth, in virtually every aspect of every field.

If the purpose of education is to impart knowledge, then its purpose is to impart Western Civilization.

Those who denounce Columbus are not members of Western Civilization. They have renounced Western Civilization and fallen to the status of the “indigenous people” Columbus encountered. In other words, they are now savages or well on the way to savagery.

Some of them can be seen smashing windows, looting stores, burning down buildings, and beating and killing people. The root of the problem is a racist educational system that identifies civilization and savagery as emanations of race, just as did the racists of the past.

The only difference is that today’s racists prefer savagery.

To learn more, see my essay “Contemporary Education’s Racist Road to Barbarism.” It’s available for 99¢ at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P4IT3JC/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i19 

Countering Support for Evil Causes and Canceling

A number of major firms have contributed substantial sums of money to Black Lives Matter. Others flee from sponsoring anyone whom the Left wants to cancel, such as Hannity or Carlson. Here’s a suggestion for how to help stop such behavior.

Find a printing company that would be able print a list of the names of the appropriate group of such companies on each sheet of toilet paper in a pack of, say, a dozen rolls. Give the rolls to friends and acquaintances, requesting that they too buy and distribute such rolls.

Perhaps then the gutless cowards who hoped to curry favor will learn what disgust and contempt people feel for what they have done. What people will be doing, sheet by sheet, with the cowards’ companies’ names should tell them. 

Answer to Elliot Temple

 I’d like to add an important additional point to the argument against the government’s policy of massive violation of individual freedom to combat the Corona virus.

Namely, if we had even a semi-proper monetary system, such as we had before 1933, the government would not have had the option of imposing a lockdown, unless it wanted to deprive millions of people of the ability to spend money.

If for every new and additional dollar issued, the government had to have in its possession a definite amount of additional gold, the government could not have financed its multi-trillion dollar expansion of the money supply.

It would either have had to relent or force millions into starvation for lack of money with which to buy food.

Soon we’ll very likely experience dramatic increases in prices as the result of the government’s massive inflation. Tens of millions of elderly people will be badly squeezed. The likely outcome will be still more inflation, to help them.

We’ve taken a big step toward becoming Venezuela even without electing Biden and Harris.

The Democrats Are Leading Advocates of Police Violence

The Democrats, who complain about police violence and want to “defund” the police, are among the greatest advocates of police violence.

Their solution for every problem is a new law or regulation. Yet every law or regulation is backed by the threat of physical force, ultimately the threat to kill you if you persist in disobeying it (e.g., if you resist arrest with a weapon).

The threat to kill law breakers is proper if the laws they’re breaking are laws against such things as murder, rape, robbery, assault, and arson, i.e., acts of the initiation of physical force.

But these are laws the Democrats don’t want enforced. They want to “defund” their enforcement. (Think of the riots.) The laws they want are laws that needlessly compel you to do what you don’t want to do or prohibit you from doing what you peacefully do want to do.

For more, see my “Gun Control: Controlling the Government’s Guns.” It’s at https://amzn.to/3jrCklL

I Refuse to Serve as a Conscript in Anyone’s Global Plan

The purpose of my life is my own happiness. It is not to serve as a conscript in anyone’s cockamamie scheme to “bend a curve,” hold back the seas, or hold down the mean temperature of the globe.

That is government central planning, which violates my individual right to plan and pursue my own goals, i.e., my right to the pursuit of my own happiness.

I, and everyone else, engages in individual economic planning that is aimed at making us happier, which often means, making us richer. Our individual plans are harmonized, coordinated, and integrated by the price system. (See chaps. 6-8 of my Capitalism  for details.)

The government, in contrast, cannot rationally plan. It can only restrict or prohibit the planning of individuals, ultimately leaving planning as the monopoly of inept government officials.

The results of government “planning” are as absurd as attempting to protect people from excessive heat by denying them the ability to use air conditioning and refrigeration, because the government’s plan to restrict global CO2 emissions has made electricity unavailable.

If all this were understood, perhaps there would be “peaceful protests” at such places as the headquarters of environmentalist organizations and pro-environmentalist media, to call these grievances to the attention of the world.