Pope Pius IX recognized the moral and spiritual deception at the heart of communism years before Karl Marx published his unholy catechism, "The Communist Manifesto."
Pio IX was one of the enemy of the italian Resurgence and i'm italian. Communism commited no crimes. Idea can't commit crimes. Men do. The analysis of Karl Marx still be one of the bests critic about the capitalist system, and now, in front of the horrible interests that the companyes have in all the wars its impossible don't keep in mind the thoughts of the writer of Das Capital. And i don't say nothing about the impact of IA and the old theories of surplus labour and surplus value, because i would be "saccente".
A superb article Jon, still baffling how much sympathy there is for communism, and now especially Maoism.
So called pro free market economists are falling over themselves to denounce Trump’s tariffs and trade deficits formula.
Of course both are anathema to libertarianism and rightly so.
However, bypassing the cost of labour in free-er societies so that one can be more price competitive via the use of modern day slave labour is immoral relative to libertarianism.
This is what Western capitalists (as distinct from moral free marketeers) have done.
The cheaper goods are stolen property, the property theft being the differences in wages between workers in free societies and workers in slave societies like China.
The crime is actually two fold.
Workers in freer societies lose their jobs, and workers in slave societies work for less because they have no choice but to do so.
Reparations should be called for if libertarian justice was hypothetically possible, which of course it is not.
These reparations should be distributed to the free workers who lost their jobs AND the slave workers who were paid less.
How would they be levied?
In the same way as tariffs are, except that they would not be tariffs but reparations, and going directly to the affected free-er nations workers who lost their work and the calculated balance held in trust to compensate the slave workers who worked for less.
Of course everyone would scoff at this ridiculous notion!
But if instead of smart enterprising diligent Chinese slaves under the Yoke of Mao we swapped them with black South African workers who had massive restrictions on them via Apartheid, then it would not be so ridiculous at all would it 😉 …
Western capitalists have exploited the politically correct zeitgeist to use Maoist slave labour to get a competitive price edge over genuine free market entrepreneurs who would subscribe to the above view of what is moral and what is not.
This is true from IBM to Dell to Apple to Tesla, and all the others in between and all around.
There are probably far more economists advocating “free markets” than there are genuine libertarians on the Planet, they have these paper degrees hanging on their office walls from illustrious universities even though they have no idea what a genuine free market is and what a genuine free market demands morally.
And the moral demand is that no one should have the right to initiate the use of force against others, and harm can only be via consent e.g. smokers or drinkers or substance users consent to the harm of the suppliers of the harmful products.
The reality is that the precursor to studying free markets and to becoming a free market economist should be an obligatory course on libertarianism, without which you should not be able to continue with your economics degree unless you switch to Marxism or Maoism or anything else but free market economics!
Pio IX was one of the enemy of the italian Resurgence and i'm italian. Communism commited no crimes. Idea can't commit crimes. Men do. The analysis of Karl Marx still be one of the bests critic about the capitalist system, and now, in front of the horrible interests that the companyes have in all the wars its impossible don't keep in mind the thoughts of the writer of Das Capital. And i don't say nothing about the impact of IA and the old theories of surplus labour and surplus value, because i would be "saccente".
Andre Martyanov might offer a different perspective on Solzhenitsyn.
A superb article Jon, still baffling how much sympathy there is for communism, and now especially Maoism.
So called pro free market economists are falling over themselves to denounce Trump’s tariffs and trade deficits formula.
Of course both are anathema to libertarianism and rightly so.
However, bypassing the cost of labour in free-er societies so that one can be more price competitive via the use of modern day slave labour is immoral relative to libertarianism.
This is what Western capitalists (as distinct from moral free marketeers) have done.
The cheaper goods are stolen property, the property theft being the differences in wages between workers in free societies and workers in slave societies like China.
The crime is actually two fold.
Workers in freer societies lose their jobs, and workers in slave societies work for less because they have no choice but to do so.
Reparations should be called for if libertarian justice was hypothetically possible, which of course it is not.
These reparations should be distributed to the free workers who lost their jobs AND the slave workers who were paid less.
How would they be levied?
In the same way as tariffs are, except that they would not be tariffs but reparations, and going directly to the affected free-er nations workers who lost their work and the calculated balance held in trust to compensate the slave workers who worked for less.
Of course everyone would scoff at this ridiculous notion!
But if instead of smart enterprising diligent Chinese slaves under the Yoke of Mao we swapped them with black South African workers who had massive restrictions on them via Apartheid, then it would not be so ridiculous at all would it 😉 …
Western capitalists have exploited the politically correct zeitgeist to use Maoist slave labour to get a competitive price edge over genuine free market entrepreneurs who would subscribe to the above view of what is moral and what is not.
This is true from IBM to Dell to Apple to Tesla, and all the others in between and all around.
There are probably far more economists advocating “free markets” than there are genuine libertarians on the Planet, they have these paper degrees hanging on their office walls from illustrious universities even though they have no idea what a genuine free market is and what a genuine free market demands morally.
And the moral demand is that no one should have the right to initiate the use of force against others, and harm can only be via consent e.g. smokers or drinkers or substance users consent to the harm of the suppliers of the harmful products.
The reality is that the precursor to studying free markets and to becoming a free market economist should be an obligatory course on libertarianism, without which you should not be able to continue with your economics degree unless you switch to Marxism or Maoism or anything else but free market economics!
But try telling that to the universities … 😅😂😅