Thomas Sowell Quotes #4

“In the most varied conditions in countries around the world – whether in Third World countries or in economically more advanced countries, and whether in countries where the majority or the minority has the higher skills – those seeking either the leadership or the votes of lagging groups tend to offer them four things:

Assurance that their lags are not their fault.
Assurance that their lags are the fault of some more fortunate group that they already envy and resent.
Assurance that the lagging group and their culture are just as good as anybody else’s, if not better.
Assurance that what the lagging group needs and deserves is a demographically defined ‘fair share’ of the economic and other benefits of society, sometimes supplemented with some kind of reparations for past injustices or some special reward for being indigenous ‘sons of the soil’.

“In addition, racial or ethnic leaders have every incentive to promote the isolation of the groups they lead – despite the fact that isolation has been a major factor in the poverty and backwardness of many different peoples around the world.

“Where a lagging group is concentrated in a particular region of a country, leaders of such groups have incentives to promote secession from the more advanced part of the country… The people themselves may also benefit physically by being spared the public embarrassment and private shame of being visibly outperformed repeatedly by others in the same economy and society.”

~from Wealth, Poverty and Politics, page 268-269

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Quotes #11

“Mankind writes its own history long before the historians visit its battlefields; days, festivals, holidays, the order of meals, rest and vacations, together with religiously observed ritual and symbols, are sources of political history, though rarely used by the average political or economic historian…

“It is not necessary to record the everyday life of a nation for a thousand years in order to know its aim and inspiration. The great creations of history do not reveal their deepest sense nor their soul every day. But each has its wedding day; and the words and songs, the promises and laws of this period of a nation’s life express its character viva voce and settle its destiny once and forever.”

~from Out of Revolution, page 8 & 9

No, Trump is Not Hitler

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Some people I know are saying that Trump will create a fascist dictatorship in America. He’s the next Hitler! That, of course, is nonsense.

In order for Trump to become a dictator he would have to seize sole control over all of America’s wealth, consolidate all the authority over the military into a very small controllable group of people, disarm the American people, and become master over the economy. Obviously that’s not what he plans to do.

People are saying he’s a dictator because he is a loud mouth bully. Well, maybe he is a loud mouth bully, but that hardly means he’s a threat to American freedom. Hurt feelings are not a threat to freedom.

But look at the list of what he’d have to do to create a dictatorship and then ask yourself which party in the American system is actually trying to do those things.

The threat to American freedom is not from the right.

The Right to Left Political Wormhole

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Often when people think of the left wing/right wing political scale, they think of far left types of governments as being communism or socialism, while a far right example would be fascism. But that is not accurate.

The further right you go on the scale, the smaller the government gets. A libertarian, for example, who wants private schools, private healthcare, private road building, etc., would be quite far right on the political scale with the government being responsible for very little, and private citizens being responsible for much.

So, not only will you find communism and socialism at the extreme left end of the scale, but you will find fascism there as well, as fascism requires a large controlling government structure. The only real difference between communism and fascism is that fascism allows for private ownership while the government still controls the economy. What then, would lie at the far right? It would be no government, or anarchy.

It’s understandable, though, to mistakingly place fascism at the far right, as an anarchy can very quickly morph into a fascist dictatorship. In an anarchy, where individuals control everything, it’s just a matter of time before some of those individuals become very powerful, and, in order to maintain their power, they will have to actively oppose the rise of any others to the same level of power. Boom — there’s your fascist dictatorship. So, there is a wormhole from the far right (anarchy) to the far left (dictatorship).

Thomas Sowell Quotes #3

“Where [democratic socialism and communism] differed was in whether the government officials who were to wield this power [to control the nation’s economy] should be elected by the general public, as advocated by democratic socialists, or chosen by some autocratic process, including dictatorship, as advocated by communists.*

“Although both socialist and communist governments began by replacing market economies with centrally planned economies in the twentieth century, by the end of that century most democratic socialist governments and most communist dictatorships had abandoned central planning after experiencing its results. Then, as many economic decisions were transferred from government officials to private individuals and organizations operating in markets, the rate of growth of output usually increased — dramatically in India and China. In both of these countries, this lifted millions of people out of dire poverty, as had happened in various other countries before. Despite the Marxian premise that the poor are poor because they are exploited by the rich, none of the Marxian dictatorships around the world with comprehensive central planning ever achieved as high a standard of living as was common in various market economies in Western Europe, North America or in such Asian nations as Japan and South Korea.

“Despite the indispensability of government for some economic activities and its value for some other economic functions, the limitations of its ability to carry out some more sweeping economic activities under comprehensive central planning are not simply the limitations of particular individuals who wield power, but include inherent limitations on what power itself can accomplish.”

* “Other central planners include fascists, who allowed private ownership of the means of production, but with these owners subject to government dictates. In Germany, a special xenophobic form of fascism was called National Socialism, more commonly known by a contraction of this party’s name in Germany as Nazis.”

~from Wealth, Poverty and Politics, page 257