Today’s Democrats: The Party of Poverty, Pain, and Punishment

Today’s Democratic Party, with its Green New Deal, is the Party of Poverty, Pain, and Punishment. Reminiscent of the Soviet Communists, it seeks to impose massive human sacrifice on the living for the alleged sake of the unborn. Indeed, it is worse than the Soviet Communists.

The Soviet Communists impoverished and killed for the alleged sake of promoting prosperity and life in the future. Today’s Democrats and Greens seek to impoverish and kill for the sake of promoting more impoverishment and death in the future—a permanent state of poverty and death.

For example, they demand that people give up gasoline, electricity, and red meat today in order to limit the rise in the global mean temperature and sea levels in the year 2300.

While the Soviets were ready to kill for the alleged sake of industrializing, the Dems/Greens are ready to kill for the sake of deindustrializing. The former claimed to want the Industrial Revolution; the latter want to destroy it. Economically, intellectually, and morally, they seek a new Dark Age.

The pretext of excess CO2 emissions is a lie. Any possibility of CO2 being a problem could easily be solved by switching to atomic power. That would be a workable solution. But the Dems/Greens are phobic when it comes to atomic power.

The psychological problems of the Dems/Greens don’t stop with a phobic reaction to atomic-power and a willingness/readiness to cause mass impoverishment and death. Many of them also deny one of the most obvious facts of reality: the biological differences between men and women.

These differences are comparable in their sharpness to the difference between day and night, left and right, front and back, up and down. Yet our culture is being destroyed by a virtual epidemic of mental incapacity to recognize such obvious facts.

We have become a society without genuine intellectuals. Today’s fraudulent intellectuals should be ignored. Anyone in quest of truth must turn to the past, especially the last two centuries and the writings of Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand. My Capitalism is a good introduction.

Rights Are Not Privileges

The fact that the individual rights of blacks have often been ignored in the United States while the rights of whites have generally been respected does not reduce the rights of whites to “privileges.” The actual logical inference is that the rights of all must be respected.

Reducing the rights of whites to “privileges” means that they can be revoked at the whim of government officials. The American Revolution was fought precisely in order to prevent such a thing.

Today, there are whites and blacks with privilege. Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden are examples. They apparently have the privilege of engaging in illegal behavior without legal consequences.

The members of BLM and “Antifa” have the privilege of robbing and looting stores, setting buildings on fire, and assaulting and killing police officers, without suffering legal penalties.

If I had privilege, which I do not, I would use it to slap the face and kick the rear of anyone who told me that my unalienable individual rights were mere privileges that mobs and/or politicians could justly revoke.

To learn more, read my essay “Capitalism: The Cure for Racism,” available for 99¢ at https://amzn.to/3fL4xoK 

“White Supremacy”

What is “white supremacy,” besides being an expression I had virtually never heard of until a few months ago when it was shoved into the world as an allegedly powerful and dangerous force?

Is it a belief, a doctrine, a political movement? What are its sources? Who are its leaders? What is its leading book(s)? What is its program? Is it real or a manufactured bugaboo designed to frighten people who have the mentality of small children?

What can it possibly do in the way of harm to anyone that is not already fully prohibited by existing laws, such as those against murder, robbery, extortion, arson, and rape?

Is “white supremacy” intended to serve as a pretext for vigorous law enforcement against a phantom phenomenon, thereby counterbalancing the lack of law enforcement against real, highly destructive movements such as BLM and “Antifa”?

To learn more about the subject of racism, see Reisman’s Capitalism: The Cure for Racism, available for 99¢ at https://amzn.to/3fL4xoK

Two Tweet-Threads on Gun Control

Capitalism Magazine has retweeted much of my thread on gun control as properly applying to the GOVERNMENT! (See https://twitter.com/CapitalismMag/status/1374753384612397065?s=20)

The Bill of Rights is a set of gun controls on the government. Each of the rights enumerated implicitly says that the government shall not use its guns to violate that right.

The Democratic Party, with its program of ever-increasing government power is the party of ever-growing gun violence.

Bernie Sanders and all other socialists are necessarily advocates of massive, limitless “gun violence.” Try to imagine socialism with the government deprived of the power to use guns or other weapons to seize and control the use of property. Next, imagine a square circle.

To learn more, see my essay, “Gun Control: Controlling the Government’s Guns,” 99¢ at https://amzn.to/2nVAVfM

From December 12, 2013.

Everything a government does rests on the use of force. No law actually is a law unless it is backed by the threat of force.

Every law, regulation, ruling, edict, or decree rests ultimately on the threat to kill you if you disobey it, even a parking ticket.

Unpaid parking ticket: arrest warrant; resist arrest—get clubbed over the head; resist with a weapon—get killed.

Behind a fine is a club and the threat of jail; behind the threat of jail is a gun and the threat of death.

“Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen.”— Ludwig Mises

“The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.”—Ludwig von Mises

Government is an institution of destruction, injury, and death, fit to be employed only against common criminals and aggressor governments.

Government is a dangerous beast that needs to be shackled, caged, and constantly guarded.

The Founding Fathers of the United States recognized the dangerous nature of government when they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights and Constitution are designed as shackles and a cage for the US government.

The Bill of Rights restrains the government. The Constitution confines it.

The welfare state is financed ultimately on a foundation of death threats that force you to pay the taxes that support it.

“Do-Gooders” do their alleged good at the point of a gun.

Gun Control: the government relies on its guns in everything it does. Real gun control means limiting what the government can do.

Guns in the hands of citizens serve as a check and balance on the guns in the hands of the government.

The psychopath Adam Lanza killed 26. 3,000 psychopaths employed by the government of Nazi Germany shot and killed 2 million.

If the 2 million Jews shot and the 4 million gassed had had guns, far fewer of them would have been killed.

 

Class Harmony, Not Class War

The discontent and unrest that followed the 2020 presidential election was, at least in major part, one of the innumerable destructive consequences of an almost 250-year-old error in economic theory made by Adam Smith: namely, the belief that profits are a deduction from wages. (See the first eight paragraphs of chap. 8 , bk. I, of The Wealth of Nations.)

This error is the basis of the Marxian exploitation theory, which holds that profits are stolen from wage earners by a comparative handful of capitalist exploiters who, under a system of unhampered, full-bodied, laissez-faire capitalism, reap enormous profits by compelling the masses of wage earners to toil eighteen hours a day for subsistence wages under brutal and dangerous working conditions that apply even to the labor of small children, whose work is necessitated by the insufficiency of the earnings of their parents. It is present, at least implicitly, in practically all debates about tax, spending, and labor and social legislation. (All references to Marx are to vol. I of Das Kapital.)

This view of things is the foundation of demands for the “expropriation of the expropriators” and the establishment of socialism, which will allegedly give back to the wage earners what the capitalists have stolen from them and continue to steal from them.

This view has been the foundation of most of the major policies of the Democratic Party at least since the time of Woodrow Wilson and the “progressive” movement, with progress being understood as movement toward socialism. Today, it is prominent as never before in the far-left agenda of the Biden Administration. Its influence has become so great that it permeates the thinking even of the alleged capitalist exploiters themselves, many of whom apparently seek redemption by pouring fortunes into the financing of far-left causes and so present the spectacle of capitalist “exploiters” themselves acting as veritable communists, following in the footsteps of Friedrich Engels, the wealthy capitalist who was both the collaborator and the financial patron of Marx.

The fact is that capitalists do not deduct profits from wages or “exploit” wage earners. Capitalists do not create the phenomenon of profit. The existence of profit is logically prior to the existence of capitalists. Indeed, if there were no capitalists but only manual workers producing and selling products, as Smith and Marx claimed was the case in their respective imaginary constructions of “the original state of things” and “simple circulation,” the rate of profit would be infinite. The truth is that the existence of capitalists serves to reduce the rate of profit. Indeed, their saving and the expenditure of their savings in the form of wage payments and expenditure for capital goods has served in the industrial countries of the world both to reduce the rate of profit to just a few percent and progressively to raise the standard of living of the average wage earner to a level far surpassing that of kings and emperors of past ages.

However ironic this may be, a good way to understand the truth about profits is by using the distinction Marx makes between simple circulation and “capitalist circulation.” Simple circulation refers to conditions in which workers produce commodities, “C,” which they sell for money, “M,” that they then use to buy other commodities, “C.” Marx describes this sequence as “C-M-C.” Under capitalist circulation in contrast, the starting point is not the production of commodities by workers but the outlay of money by capitalists, who pay for the construction of factories, for the machinery that fills them, for supplies of materials, and the wages of workers while the commodities later to be sold are in process of being produced. Marx describes this sequence, that constitutes capitalist circulation, as “M-C-M.”

As I say, what the capitalists are responsible for is not the phenomenon of profit but the first “M” in Marx’s “M-C-M” sequence, that is, for expenditures for capital goods and wage payments. These expenditures all show up, sooner or later, as costs of production that are deducted from the second “M” in Marx’s sequence, representing capitalist circulation.

Now this second “M” is equally present in simple circulation. In both types of circulation, it is the money for which the commodities produced are sold. It is sales revenues.

In simple circulation, while there are sales revenues, there are no monetary costs of production to deduct from those sales revenues, because there have been no prior outlays of money to bring in the sales revenues, costs being the reflection of such outlays.

Thus, Marx’s simple circulation is a situation in which 100 percent of the sales revenues are profit. There is also no accumulated capital in the form of a monetary book value of land, plant, equipment, or inventory, for no such assets have been purchased. (Their having been purchased would require capitalist circulation, which is precluded by the requirements of simple circulation.) Thus, we have a situation, in which not only do profits equal 100 percent of sales revenues, but also the rate of profit is determined by the division of that amount of profit by a zero amount of capital invested. Division by zero, of course, results in infinity.

In simple circulation, only workers receive incomes, but the incomes they receive are profits, not wages. In simple circulation, there are no wages paid in the production of products for sale. Such wages, and the expenditure for capital goods, come into being only under capitalist circulation. And as capitalist circulation intensifies, something which can be expressed by dividing the first “M” by the second in Marx’s sequence for capitalist circulation, the economy wide profit margin declines. This is because the costs of production emanating from the first “M” grow as the result of its increase relative to the second “M,” which is sales revenues. And, of course, the economy-wide average rate of profit on capital invested declines even further as a larger first “M” in Marx’s sequence results in a book value of capital assets that is greater than sales revenues.

In conclusion, what capitalists are responsible for is not the phenomenon of profit, but the expenditures that include wage payments and that show up as costs of production to be deducted from sales revenues and correspondingly reduce the proportion of sales revenues that is profit. The capitalists’ expenditures are also responsible for the accumulation of the monetary value of property, plant, equipment, and inventory/work-in-progress, which serves further to reduce the average rate of profit, as a smaller economy-wide profit margin is divided by a larger capital base.

A further point: The capital accumulated by the capitalists is not used to fill their bellies, as commonly alleged in cartoon depictions of capitalists as men who are very fat. On the contrary, the capital of the capitalists is the source of the supply of products that everyone buys, including, for the far greater part, non-capitalists, and is also by far the main source of the demand for the labor that non-capitalists sell. In other words, the capitalists’ capital is the source of enormous general economic benefit. A classic example of this is Henry Ford’s accumulation of a vast personal fortune, which served to enable millions of ordinary people to have automobiles and tens of thousands to have gainful employment in producing them. Again, the capitalists’ capital is the source of the supply of products that non-capitalists buy and of the demand for the labor that non-capitalists sell.

And one last point: Capitalists work. Their ranks include the primary workers in the economic system: those who supply guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level in firms. This work is a labor of thinking, planning, and decision making, rather than manual labor. As such, their income tends to vary with the size of the capitals they employ. Just as a worker digging a hole with a steam shovel, is still the party who digs his vastly larger hole than a worker using a conventional shovel, because it is he who supplies guiding, directing intelligence to the steam shovel, so a capitalist with ten billion dollars of capital may produce ten times the output as one who has just one billion of capital. In both instances it is the capitalist who is the party who supplies the guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level. Thus, just as one says, it was Columbus rather than his crew members who discovered America (or did say this in the days when people identified with the ideas, values, and perspective of Western Civilization rather than the racial membership of their ancestors), so it is capitalists like Ford, Rockefeller, and their contemporary counterparts who should be named as the producers of their companies’ products. The employees are to be regarded as their helpers (the “help”) in producing their, the capitalists’ products.

I have certainly not answered in these few paragraphs every possible question concerning the justice and fairness of the profits earned by capitalists, but I believe I do so in my book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (see in particular, pp. 473-500 and 603-673.) So, I will simply stop here and hope that the reader will turn to those pages and read and study them. If enough people do so, that will be the end of Marxism and all of its destructive consequences resulting from its doctrines of exploitation and class conflict, for people will then realize that there is no exploitation of labor and no class conflict under capitalism and its economic freedom but rather a profound class harmony between capitalists and wage earners.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

The hardcover edition of Reisman’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics is now on sale for almost 50% off, at $49.95. For more information, and to purchase, go to https://amzn.to/3qr0ijy

Stop Amazon from Banning Books

According to Tucker Carlson (03/01/21) and Ben Shapiro (http://binged.it/3b9qz1x) Amazon has started banning pro-right books and videos, calling them “hate speech.“

PROTEST: Call Amazon customer service at 888-280-4331 and ask to speak to a supervisor.

Ask if Churchill should not have spoken with hatred against Hitler and Nazism.

Ask if Amazon plans to ban Marx’s Das Kapital, a book so full of hate that it promotes class WAR and mass murder. (Amazon shouldn’t because, among other things, everyone should have ready access to an objective record of what Marx says.)

And please retweet to get the word out. If Amazon hears from a few thousand people, it may drop this vicious policy.

Washington's Birthday

Today is the birthday of George Washington, the Father of Our Country. In his time, the ownership of slaves was a widespread practice, and he owned some. But his principles and those of the country he founded guaranteed the end of slavery.

They did so by positing for the first time in human history the existence of individual rights to which laws and governments were to be subordinate

Far-leftists have no right to condemn Washington for owning slaves, for they advocate the fresh imposition of slavery, universal slavery, in the form of socialism. Under socialism, everyone is compelled by force to work for the government. Socialism is forced labor camps—Gulag.

Such camps are what those who tear down  the statues of Washington want to construct.

NY Times Distorts the Facts about the Texas Freeze

See The New York Times article HowTexas’ Power Generation Failed During the Storm, In Charts - The New York Times(nytimes.com)

In an effort to get wind and solar power off the hook, the article blames the Texas power failure mainly on natural gas, claiming that “Natural gas production froze, and so did the pipelines that transport the gas.” It “was hit hardest.”

The Times needs to explain how natural gas can freeze in a surrounding environment of 9⁰, when its freezing point is almost minus 300⁰.

A Challenge to Communists, Socialists, and “Progressives” to Debate

Resolved: “Marxism/Socialism, Is A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder.”

For the affirmative: George Reisman, the Capitalist Professor.

For the negative: Bernie Sanders?, AOC?, any Communist, Socialist, or “Progressive” anywhere.

The affirmative position is available in written form in both Kindle and paperback versions at https://amzn.to/2N44uTu

How House Republicans Can Launch an Offensive for Freedom of Speech

Nutsy Nancy is trying to impose a speech code on the House of Representatives. The code would bar words that indicate gender, such as father and mother, daughter and son, husband and wife, and replace them with gender neutral terms such as parent, child, spouse, etc.

Republicans can stop this nonsense by standing up one after another, hopefully all 211 of them, and announcing that they speak standard English not 1984 Newspeak, and so will go on using such words as mother and father…husband and wife, etc.

They should remind Nutsy Nancy that the First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits Congress from making any law that abridges the freedom of speech, which this speech code clearly attempts to do.

And if it is not a law, because of its being prohibited by the Constitution, then it is without force and thus can be ignored, and will be ignored, at least by all House Republicans.

The Republican speakers should insist that their remarks be taken down and reprinted verbatim in all relevant Congressional documents, such as The Congressional Record.

If Republicans do this, and thus role back the anti-free speech movement in Congress, then perhaps others will be inspired to do the same thing on college campuses.

A Mouse Is Not A Lion: 1/6 Was Not 9/11

The frequently heard demand for a 9/11 type commission to deal with a mob’s vandalism at the Capitol on January 6 implies that these two events were commensurate. Such a claim is laughably absurd.

Almost 3,000 innocent people were killed on 9/11, most in two collapsing skyscrapers rammed by airplanes loaded with highly flammable jet fuel.

On 1/6, ONE innocent person was killed, in what appears to have been a scuffle between some rioters and a Capitol police officer, who died. One of the rioters was shot and killed by the Capitol police. Three people died from medical emergencies, such as a heart attack or stroke.

As for property damage, on 1/6 it was not what were the world’s two tallest skyscrapers at the time, plus part of the Pentagon, plus three commercial jet passenger planes, but some broken glass.

Nevertheless, on the basis of this absurd equivocation between 6/1 and 9/11, a cabal of radical Leftists in the House of Representatives rammed through the impeachment of the President of the United States. The House was turned into a lynch mob.

Those who claim that 6/1 was similar to 9/11 are unfit to disseminate the news or hold public office. They are intellectually and morally despicable. They deserve the profound contempt of all mankind. 

MAKE AMERICA FREE AGAIN!

To make America great again, we must make America FREE again. Yes, MAKE AMERICA FREE AGAIN! As the very first steps, stop the lockdowns and stop the cancel culture.

As the first step in stopping the cancel culture, publish the names of the corporate cowards that are threatening Congressmen and Senators (and talk-show hosts too) for having exercised their constitutional right to question the results of the 2020 election.

Parler and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act

In the last few days, a combination of some of the country’s largest businesses (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter) have joined together in an effort to put another firm (Parler) out of business.

How does this not come under the heading of a “conspiracy in restraint of trade,” to quote the language of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and is therefore illegal?

Has America Just Had Its Reichstag Fire?

Last Wednesday looks like America’s “Reichstag Fire.” The suppression of ideas is rampant. Representatives of the incoming regime are laying plans for the punishment of its adversaries. How long before there are concentration camps?

In calling for the impeachment of a President who has only days left in office, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, reveals a streak of viciousness and venom that makes it seem like she must spew hatred just in the act of exhaling.

We are living in dangerous times. A leading goal of the new regime is the reduction of CO2 emissions, ultimately to net zero, the effect of which will be a return to the life of the Dark Ages and massive depopulation across the world.

We are living in the midst of a revolution that Ayn Rand called “The Anti-Industrial Revolution.” Saving the Industrial Revolution and its foundation of capitalism and individual freedom must be our foremost political goal in the years ahead.

Some Questions About Climate Change

Does anyone know of a century by century (i.e.,2100, 2200…3000) widely endorsed projection of just how much the global mean temperature and sea level will have risen? The claims I hear all seem to imply just that the numbers are huge and are coming very quickly

Can anyone explain how it is rational to try to fight a natural phenomenon like climate change and do so by means of abandoning fossil fuels and atomic power, which are the foundations of our ability to cope with nature? 

What is our basic problem with respect to nature? Is nature largely hostile, making it necessary for us to take action with respect to it? Or is nature fundamentally benign, becoming hostile only as the result of our actions?

To learn more, read my “The Toxicity of Environmentalism,” 99¢ at https://amzn.to/2XkCIcf

 

Sex-Hating Nonsense in the House of Representatives

A change in the code of conduct of the House of Representatives seeks to replace words that indicate gender with words that are “gender neutral.” For example, “mother” and “father” are to be replaced with the word “parent”; “son” and “daughter,” with the word “child.”

The authors of the code change seem to have overlooked the fact that most first names indicate a particular sex. For example, “Frank” and “Joe” are names for males; while “Barbara” and “Susan” are names for females.

Perhaps the next Congressional code change will replace all such traditional first names with names of sexless objects, such as “desk,” ”lamp“ “carpet,” and “chair.”

In response to such brainless, sex-hating nonsense, I say, “Vive la différence.”

Questions on Transparency and the Elections

Transparency

“Transparency” is one of the most popular buzzwords of our time. So I say, how about some transparency for social media “fact checkers,” such as what are their names and educational qualifications?

Stolen Elections

Were there other stolen elections in 2020? It’s widely believed that at least some significant percentage of the presidential vote was fraudulently diverted to Biden.

But no one is asking about the vote in House and Senate races. Is it possible that where votes were created for Biden, they were also created down ticket, enabling the Democrats to retain the House?

Is it possible that the Republicans won the House if cheating is factored out? They would have needed only six more seats.

Two New Publications of Mine

The paperback version of my The Government Against the Economy is now for sale on Amazon for $14.95; 223 pages. This book was strongly endorsed by both Hazlitt and Hayek and is included as chapters 6-8 of Capitalism. Go to https://amzn.to/3o4bRgi to order.

More good news: My Jefferson School pamphlet “Platonic Competition,” which originally appeared in Ayn Rand’s “The Objectivist,” is now for sale on Amazon. Price 99¢. Buy it at http://amzn.to/2Lhy6kd

A critique of core concepts of contemporary "microeconomics," above all, the concept of "pure and perfect competition" and equality of price with marginal cost as the standard for judging competition. It is the antidote to much of the error in contemporary "microeconomic" theory.

Industrial Civilization Is Far More Beneficial than Global Warming Is Harmful

The benefits of Industrial Civilization, i.e., the use of man-made power, specifically fossil fuels and atomic power, are so great that even if global warming and rising sea levels were in fact its by-products, it would deserve the total, enthusiastic support of everyone.

If global warming and rising sea levels are coming, we should adapt to them, not try to fight them by means of government mandated climate manipulation, which can kill billions and reduce everyone left to the poverty and misery of our Dark Age ancestors.

Let us not perpetuate and enormously magnify today’s already massive economic destruction by substituting the goal of fighting climate change for the goal of fighting the Covid-19 virus.

Don’t listen to lunatics who seek to conscript the human race as expendable means in their wars on phenomena of nature, leaving to suffer and die countless numbers of those about whom they are supposed to be concerned.

To learn more, read Reisman’s “The Toxicity of Environmentalism,” available for 99¢ at Amazon.com:The Toxicity of Environmentalism eBook: Reisman, George: Kindle Store