Our Israeli correspondent MC sends these thoughts on the cultural (and moral) foundations of wealth-creation.
The poor are always with us…
…But it is the arrogant who are the real enemy
by MC
Most Islamic countries are poor. They are poor because their religion is a religion of poverty, based as it is on a system where every nuance of a person’s life is dictated by somebody else, thus imprisoning a person’s free will. Even Saudi Arabia with all its wealth in the cities has a real problem with poverty outside the cities.
Most communist countries are riddled with poverty, too. Communism does not encourage wealth-creation except as graft and exploitation amongst its elites. Communism, too, imprisons free will.
Innovation is a prime product of free will, and it is the ability to innovate that generates wealth and civilization. Countries can create their own essences of civilization and export them, others can be gross importers of civilization if, and only if, they have the ability to buy into civilization, otherwise they too are poor and backwards.
Gaza, for example, buys into limited civilization by exporting and exploiting a victimhood culture which plays on the heartstrings of the West to such an extent that the West then exports the bounty of its own civilization to expiate a ‘guilt’ that it perceives when duped by the illusions of abject poverty and victimhood portrayed by the media’s white-guilt propaganda.
But guilt money does not relieve the cause of any of the poverty, especially when the cause of that poverty is Islam or socialism.
The Gulf states have oil. So do the USA and Russia, but the Gulf stuff is cheap and plentiful. So Islam has a rich uncle who can buy influence. Saudi Arabia is like a spider sitting at the centre of a web of intrigue: Islamic intrigue, the intrigue of the wealthy barbarian.
If the West has a vulnerability, it is its denial of its own culture; its denial that the Judeo-Christian basis of the West is superior because it allows the individual the free will to innovate. When one denies the cultural basis of the West’s success, one becomes vulnerable to having one’s behaviour coerced, and in the case in question, coerced by bribery. Saudi Arabia has found that it can use its oil revenue to buy a place in the West’s cultural sunshine. Not only that, it can use its wealth to have the civilization upon which it depends slaughtered as unbelievers — as Islam demands.
Western cultural nuances are ubiquitous across the world, and many have adopted the products of Western culture: phones, bicycles, televisions, tee-shirts, shoes, cars, buses; the list is endless. This is amazing flattery if, we would just be humble enough to stop and think about it. No other culture has contributed anything close to it.
But Marxism has effectively destroyed Christianity. When one can see a Pope actively working a communist manifesto, then one must assume that Christianity is in its death throes. Whether or not the revolutionary theology that the current Pope has brought with him from South America is KGB-inspired is difficult to determine, and the truth may only come out when it is ancient history.
Accepting a bribe is contrary to Judeo-Christian mores, and due to its political nature, to be bribed to accommodate Islamic evangelism (Dawa) is tantamount to treason. When governments start doing irrational things, one must start looking for malicious influences. One can see this in the passing of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, when a goodly proportion of the House and Senate were accepting ‘donations’ from the supporters of the act.
Likewise, we can see the influence of Saudi money in European universities. It is not unique for a university that has accepted large donations of Islamic money to become anti-Semitic in its stance.
In any religion or political religion where the ends justify the means, bribery, and the resulting corruption can be whitewashed, despite their negative effects on society at large.
Bribery short-circuits the process of wealth generation; to gain the due rewards of innovation one must be able to compete in a free market.
A child from a poor family does well at school. A knowledgeable teacher, a mentor, enters that child for a scholarship to an excellent higher school. A mediocre child from a moderately wealthy family also takes the exam for the scholarship. The father of the latter student obtains a copy of the exam in advance by bribery and has his child specially coached.
One can imagine the result. Now it was the father of the mediocre child who took the initiative, even if it was immoral, and it is this immorality that we must examine.
So the poor child is denied the opportunity for development, and the chances are that this child will struggle for the whole of his life just to survive and never have time to put his greater innovative ability to any use. The mediocre child already has opportunities galore, but because he lacks the talent to be innovative, he just continues in the meme of that mediocrity.
In a moral society the bribery would eventually be exposed, in this case because the subsequent poor performance of the mediocre child would show, and the situation could be corrected. However, in a situation where moral relativity is practised, the father’s efforts on behalf of his child would be applauded as the natural thing to do to get ahead, despite the injury to society through the loss of the real talent.
One of the interesting differences between Russian communism and German nazism is that the latter was highly innovative, whereas the former was not, except in the rather dubious areas of espionage — and in mass murder, of course.
If innovation is the driver of civilization, then our leaders must do their utmost to create an atmosphere where innovation can thrive. It is a golden goose which must be carefully nurtured.
To allow communism to destroy morality, and to allow Islam to invade and spoil innovation, is to kill this golden goose. So the poor will always be with us.
It is not that the poor are not innovative; it is more a matter of opportunity. There was a time in England where a boy from the poorest of families could go to the finest schools in the country, or, like me, could attend the local grammar school and still get a very fine education and the subsequent boost to innovation. My grandfather was a coal miner; he started in the pits as a child (about 13), but he got all his sons through grammar school and his youngest son through university as an electrical engineer.
My father’s education was interrupted by the war. He went into the Royal Navy and spent much of the war at Manchester University working on new radar systems.
It was a time when there was some equality of opportunity.
The door was slammed on these opportunities by the British Labour party, which had grabbed the communist religious tenet that we are all ‘equal’ and that one size must fit all in the name of that ‘divinely’-inspired equality. And it is this very same ideal that drives the current immigration mayhem. The grammar schools were mostly disbanded because the (private-school-educated) Labour bigwigs saw them as a ‘middle class enclave’ ensuring that the ‘working’ class remained ‘poor’.
I suspect that this was a lie, and I suspect that it was one of the early religious outworkings of cultural Marxist belief and religion, but this can be disputed.
So when the ‘working class’ failed to respond and submit to the worship of their wealthy champagne socialist betters, those scions of Britain’s elite embarked upon bashing what they defined as ‘white supremacy’ — the idea being that the Western European dominance in world culture was unfair and based upon exploitation, rather than innovation. Essentially that it was the exploited brown people who did all the work and wealth-creation, and that now, as a result, they deserve a major part of the rewards thereof. In exactly the same way that socialists destroyed the working class pathway to betterment by closing the grammar schools, these (politically) religious extremists are now waging cultural warfare against their own countries and people by allowing the Islamic hordes free entry, and also by allowing them to bring their destructive religion with them, unchecked in any way, even to the extent of locking up any who express their dissent.
In doing this they are enshrining poverty as part of the system, poverty through the burden of taxation and the redistribution of wealth to support parasites; poverty because the education system is overburdened by having to teach English/French/Swedish to immigrant children, poverty because of competition for low-end jobs and housing. Poverty from the terror that comes from importing the rabid wolves of a 7th-century culture into the sheepfold of disarmed 21st-century polite society.
Is it that I need to impose my religious beliefs on other people by force? Do I need to impose my beliefs on other people by deception? Is the arrival more important than the Journey?
The Apostle Paul spoke about being a ‘follower of the Way’, and Yahushua tells us that He is the Way the Truth and the Life. Isaiah tells us the we, like sheep, have gone astray; we’ve turned everyone to his own way. In both communism and Islam the Journey, the way, is unimportant. It is at the journey’s end that we are justified; how it is reached is unimportant. If one has to murder and lie and cheat and steal then it is all justified by the expectation of success. And that is why they are both religions of poverty, because along the way the golden goose is killed, or so impoverished as to be incapable of initiative, and where there is no innovation there is nothing to create wealth.
Whilst some religions teach a voluntary humility which enables adherents to listen and learn, and to self-improve, the dual religions of Islam and Socialism teach only submission, and instil an arrogance arising from the failure of a submitting one to stop and think for himself, a blinkered approach where all of life is pre-defined and organized by the elite (or Allah), from each servitude, to each oversight, and nothing left for individualism and creativity. The result: slavery, malignance and violence, mayhem and murder. This is the inherent weakness of these systems: that they kill those who are different, so mediocrity rules and people starve.
- Acts 24:14
- John 14:6
- Isaiah 53:6-8
MC lives in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. For his previous essays, see the MC Archives.
Innovation is a prime product of free will…
And some of the best innovation in the world – in agriculture, tech, medicine – happens in Israel. I read the website No Camels to keep up on Israel’s start-up news.
And the poverty in Communism goes even further than just “equal distribution of poverty”. Czechs in general, for example, will tell you that in the Czech Republic, we like to envy and covet. As the saying goes: “My neighbor has a goat, and I hope the goat dies so that we are both equal – both with no goat.”
As time passed by, I found out that the further east you go, the worse it is… In the end, this kind of attitude can be traced back directly to communism, which is funny considering how universally caring and good the ideal socialist worker should be!
In the end, the “westerners” astonished us “easterners” by giving tips in restaurants, by voluntary donations to charity, or by trustworthiness of the electronic shops that would take a damaged goods back and give you money back. If you bought a broken radio in the east, you had to repair it yourself, for no one would take it back on any kind of warranty.
How could this be? The evil capitalist societies thriving with success and voluntary charity, while at the same time, the equality above all Soviet block dying of degenerative diseases, zero innovation, and universal coveteousness?
PS: Czechoslovakia is a great case study in “arrested innovation by communism”. I think that we have successfully proven that you can quite destroy a high-tech superpower in just 40 years of the Communist utopia.
I drive a Skoda Fabia, really good small car, pre-ww2 Skodas were impressive, as are the post-communist Skodas, but the ones in between were just not up to ‘western’ standards and have disappeared off the roads.
Yes, I have worked in Slovakia, with occasional visits to Czeckia, what I see is a very impressive recovery!
Yes the recovery is not all bad, but we still build a kilometer of a higway for double the price of a German kilometer, yet the Czechs work for half German wage. Where all the money go? I don’t know, but people like “our” Slovak prime minister, former finance minister, former communist secret service agent Bures – he probably knows where all the money go. And he’s not alone.
Skoda (it means “damage” in Czech 🙂 I used to have a 1980 Skoda – rear engine small little car. It certainly wasn’t a speedster, but it excelled on snow. This rear engine rear drive goes up a snowy hill very well. But you wouldn’t want to go on western highway with it.
In the Soviet Bloc, the Russians declared that we may not make “fast” cars in Czechoslovakia, and that our limit will be something like 1 liter engine. How funny is it, that the EU now wants everyone in Europe to do the same? They want to get rid of all fine strong engines. That’s really like from a communist cook book:
https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/2016/june/honda-cbr600rr-killed-off/
So, the EU ship is making circles in the same swampy waters we’ve seen not so long ago in the east.
The Czech car industry immediately comes to mind as far as arrested innovation is concerned, so many abandoned projects and prototypes by the likes of Tatra and Skoda / etc were potentially competitive with other Western carmakers that is it actually surprising Czech cars were still considered the best compared to other Eastern Bloc cars despite living under communism.
One can only wonder how the Czechs would have performed had they remained part of the Western bloc or at least neutral like a few countries during the Cold War. It makes one think back to American Betrayal and which Eastern Bloc countries could have realistically been saved from communism by the Western Allies, with the Czechs and Hungarians immediately coming to mind.
Tatra even has some interesting history in Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_%28company%29#Israel
Tatra has some interesting history overall – after all, its where VW Beetle came to be 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_97
Josef Ganz also had a little role of sorts with what eventually became the Volkswagen Beetle.
Tatra also apparently looked at a smaller model during the 1950s as well as many other projects including a diesel version prior to ending car production sometime after the Cold War ended. – https://jalopnik.com/a-car-you-never-heard-of-the-compact-tatra-that-wasnt-1746271166
Skoda meanwhile produced a number of prototypes from the 720, 740, 760 as well as the 780 (that eventually became the Favorit) with the even the 1970s-1990s rear-engined Skoda originally being conceived with more modern front-wheel drive (along with more modern engines), only to be rejected by the Soviets as it would embarrass the other Eastern Bloc car manufacturers.
Not to mention the 1968 Skoda Mini project that was killed off because of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/skitmeister/9365004632/in/album-72157623157325245/
Innovation starts with education.
After the war the US was facing the baby boom. Huge numbers of kids needed be educated.
The existing educational system couldn’t handle this. So it was completely overhauled.
As a result it began to churn out enormous amounts of engineers, scientists, people who made the landing on the moon possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlZRHBGlBJY&t=729s
Today young people graduate from useless and phoney studies like “educational sociology”, “arts management”, “lifestyle informatics” and other useless rubbish.
Preparing them for a life on the dole.
What we need more than anything is a new overhaul of our educational system.
It’s agreed, marxism, naive, violent ignorance, and islam, are central to the decline of the West. MC exposes the problems, and if we are to survive and prosper we must counter these deranged forces.
Merkel, the American democrat party, the EU, UN, academia, bureaucrats, euroweenies, etc. are parasitic tumors. Each must be removed and the damage repaired.
Best wishes to Barn Swallow in Czechoslovakia.
Equality is some seductress, like the apple in the Garden of Eden, endlessly dangling there, always appealing to those who do not do well and those without talent or energy or wit.
We may be able to beat socialism on occassion, but its fascination is perpetual and its defeat is going to require everlasting struggle and effort–having to win a new battle with each generation.
But if capitalism and free markets are spectacularly successful, and if education is superlative, it makes this battle easier and more tolerable. But, I don’t think that conservatives can ever go home at night and say “we’ve won”.
In looking at the accompanying picture at the top of this essay, I couldn’t help but think “In 50 years, maybe less – if something drastic isn’t done, now – that train is going to be running regularly on the Amtrak in the Northeast corridor.”
I think one of the primary instruments for destruction of any country is the welfare state and deficit spending. MC mentions the bribes of the Saudi Arabian, who buy masses of US bonds and accumulate oceans of US money. He doesn’t mention the Chinese, who with their yearly trade surpluses, are also massively financing US deficit spending.
What do Saudi Arabia and China do with their money? They buy US assets and influence, often quite above board. Saudi Arabia funds schools, Middle East departments in universities, mosques, and think tanks.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/19/investing/saudi-arabia-threat-dump-us-assets-911-bill/index.html
Similarly, China buys US technology and production companies, US land, manufacturing, office buildings and housing, among other things.
http://www.aei.org/feature/china-tracker/
Why doesn’t the US government limit foreign investment in the US, particularly by obviously-hostile countries like China? The short answer is, because of deficit spending required by the welfare state, the US government can’t. If the US seriously limited the number of assets a foreign country could buy, the value of the US currency with respect to the creditor would go down, and the US government would go even more into debt. In other words, the US government is like a junkie, selling his house, car, and furniture for the next fix of money to support the welfare voters.
The first thing Orban, president of Hungary, did on taking office was reduce or eliminate the deficits of the Hungarian government and set about to reduce the national debt of Hungary. This is the reason they can thumb their nose at the EU, the international financiers, and George Soros.
MC rightly skewers the disastrous effects of socialism and the malignant philosophy of cultural Marxism, with its hatred of Western civilization, culture, and ethics. MC talks about the journey as opposed to the destination, an old but invaluable Buddhist insight. Another way of putting it would be equality of opportunity (capitalism) versus equality of outcome (socialism, communism). Really, with the innate, genetic differences among people, the only way to even approach equality of outcome is to rob from productive people, and ultimately systematically suppress and persecute them.
MC talks about the lack of innovation under Communism. I would suggest that at least as important as the suppression on individual thought is the suppression of the freedom of individuals to live their lives as they wish, including commercial transactions and the ownership of companies. I remember reading an article in Discover magazine years ago that the USSR think tanks actually produced technological findings rivaling those of the West. It’s just that there was no commercial mechanism in the top-down economy of the USSR to develop these findings commercially, produce them on a mass scale, and market them.
MC details the corrosive influence of egalitarian philosophy on the West, but my own view is that the genetic deterioration of the population due to the welfare state is at least as important. Why are the Western countries, including the US and Canada, almost simultaneously losing their instincts of self-preservation and allowing in hoards of alien, sociopath, violent, low-IQ invaders, Muslim or otherwise?
Islam, by the way, functions as the sociological equivalent of the AIDS virus: it produces nothing, contributes nothing of value to the host country, but is magnificently adapted to reproduce itself and spread by co-opting the immune system of the host for its own uses. Islam, incidentally, is not the only group to use identity and racial politics to co-opt unearned resources to itself.
A country cannot be serious about protecting itself until it eliminates deficit spending and the welfare state. Deficit spending is like a gaping, open wound in your skin: it exposes you to all sorts of destructive organisms your skin would normally keep out as part of its routine activity.
“Why doesn’t the US government limit foreign investment in the US, particularly by obviously-hostile countries like China? The short answer is, because of deficit spending required by the welfare state, the US government can’t. If the US seriously limited the number of assets a foreign country could buy, the value of the US currency with respect to the creditor would go down, and the US government would go even more into debt. In other words, the US government is like a junkie, selling his house, car, and furniture for the next fix of money to support the welfare voters.”
The equation is a bit more complex. Most of the US capital (dollars) that goes overseas as trade deficit (China, Saudi, and EU has its version) returns to the US in two forms, either direct investment ( property, arms, companies) or as financial investment ( banking, treasuries). The EU (Germany) is busy investing (buying) into US companies, China to some degree, but most of China and Saudi surplus goes into banking (property bubble etc.) and treasuries ( government debt/deficit spending) which are held as foreign reserve by those countries ( when you read of Saudi dollar foreign reserves those are them, they don’t sit on a trillion dollars in a vault).
The Saudi revenue is from oil, which is largely state owned, the US puts the money into Saudi hands, the Saudis put the excess money into US treasuries for storage as reserve, as compromise of deal. The US does not need Saudi to finance its deficit, it has ways it can expand the deficit in house, but the financial math is that dollars will/must return to the US (for use) , so the US just borrows them back, and high finance also accepts them happily. This is a sort of convention. The reason the equation is like this is because the US runs a trade deficit in energy. You want to buy oil? The money goes into the hands of those who sell it. That money must then be used to buy something in US, otherwise it is just a useless piece of paper, the Saudis could buy from another country in dollars, but eventually they would make their way back to the US to “touch base”, other countries know how to print their own money too !
Both Saudi and China hold a peg to the dollar, that means the US and they agree to fix the exchange rate. If the US expands money supply (weakens currency value) so do they. So in fact you might as well look on it all as one currency with a balance of accounts (who owes who). If it were not like this, and the US refused investment by foreign countries of their earnings, then people would not accept dollars abroad and you would have no oil, in fact the dollar would only x-rate in terms of what people were willing to buy from the US… and you do not sell oil and China undercuts your manufacturing by a wide margin….the reason you have such a large trade deficit.
Now you can consider creating trade barriers, or stopping foreign investment so that US wages devalue enough to compete with the Chinese ( domestic made goods get bought because they are then as cheap as Chinese, that because the dollar has become weak for imports – hence no deficit)….but you know what happens when, due to a weak dollar, inflation shoots up? People complain. That is not to mention that trade partnerships globally are a finely balanced network that you do not want to upset too fast as you otherwise risk creating a global crisis of sorts.
So there you have it, the US is purposefully locked into partnership with these countries, profits enormously from that, but at the same time is made weaker in certain ways, and more open to being influenced. You just cannot have it both ways, but what can be done is to steer the country towards a balance of trade. Why would money minded people do that though when they are getting oil and goods for debt that they can just print up, and print away if they choose to one day?
Sorry for such a long post moderators, well not really sorry, but you know.
To anon:
Thanks for the greater detail of international money exchange.
My basic premise was that the US receives oil from Saudi Arabia, various goods from the EU, and virtually everything electronic from China. The value of what we sell is dramatically less than the value of what we buy. So, what makes the countries continue to ship us goods? We allow them to buy parts of the US: land, developed property, technology companies, communications, university departments, transportation, etc.
This may be of interest. I looked up the items imported from the EU, and these are the largest import categories:
Auto parts
Beer and ale
Other beverages
Furniture
Wines
Paper and paper board and waste products
Auto tires and tubes
vegetables
Plastic products
Tiles
https://pierstransportation.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/top-u-s-imports-exports-with-europe/
Like I said, we’re selling off our home to pay for a lifestyle beyond our actual income.
To be fair, as you pointed out, we do provide some services: money reserve services, banking services, currency stabilization. We also provide policing and military services to lots of countries, not all of them particularly savory. So we support Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, although the US interest in the outcome in Yemen is definitely hard to discern, as is the US interest in the outcome of a war in Niger, where we have special forces troops fighting….for what?
As far as trade and trade barriers, I have no doubt that the classical economic model is true: with completely open borders and no trade barriers, your price per item will be the lowest. But, I hold that the price-per-item is a flawed criteria: you really want to measure the more abstract unit of individual happiness or perhaps social happiness. This includes the difficult-to-measure concepts of feeling at home in the culture, family and neighborhood cohesiveness, cultural identity, physical security, and the sense of a coherent country.
As an example, open trade devastates not only manufacturing, but many forms of small farms, both of which provide employment for bedrock Americans. So, do we really want to focus on only unit prices? Open border libertarians indeed focus on unit prices and build fantasy worlds where welfare doesn’t exist and the government is so small that identity politics really don’t net you much.
I have no argument with protectionist policy except that it also tends to lead eventually to national mismanagement because once you have central authority taking over the economy, as with all bureaucracy, it tends to expand and become its own cause, the solution to everything. However global trade also invites predatory practice, that is not just US finance, by its size and monopoly, say plundering poorer countries, but also plundering its very own. For the entrepreneur, the middle man, the finance, profit from all trade no matter if it is unethical, and in this world of debt creation you have to leverage just to buy a home, just to keep fad, or be excluded from the competition. The result is that western society, not just via national debt but also individual debt, is on the hook.
Although I favour libertarian ideas, I also argue against open trade on the grounds that the wealth of a society is also based on continuity and cohesion, it is not a get rich quick organisation but a much more complex circumstance that aims for long term survival. If you allow exterior advantage to one member, the rest must have that or be out-competed, in other words a predatory outsider may (and they do) undercut the local society in trade so as to buy into and then monopolise other key facets. Western finance does this also.
Where do you draw the line though? I have a mindset that does the most to be independent of outside leverage.
The irony is that the Saudi riyal is gold backed, they do not flex much to foreign culture, they do not welfare foreigners, they do not give out nationality, there are heavy restrictions on foreign ownership of business and property…all the moves someone from the right might ask for!
The reasons countries trade with the US is various. Firstly it is a deep and liquid market, it is still a great and innovative economy with much weight. Trade is like barter, so with Saudis, the US gets oil rights, the Saudis get defense, access to a large market, a large country to hold surplus wealth in, this forms a geopolitical axis. They could trade with China instead now, but history has it that they are long tied to the west. You aren’t complaining about Saudi oil though, you see it as needed, though regions in Europe do have a slightly different path on diversity and efficiency which might be one way out of US dependence on foreign energy. So to boil it down there you are looking more for restrictions on what Saudi can purchase of US – that is not a trade barrier as such but national conservatism. It might make the US a bit less attractive as a partner for Saudi, be taken as something of a cold shoulder, but really you would be just equalling its own approach. Remember you NEED the energy supply at present, and Saudi knows that, just as it knows that if it falls out with the west a new government might be on its way, if not by the hand of the CIA then by lack of defense from its neighbour. So it is something of a symbiotic relationship reinforced by necessity.
Yemen, Nigeria, in fact any country you see the west involved in, you can almost always trace it to resources, market, geopolitics.
I think it still stands, the figure for US trade deficit is almost exactly its energy imports. However it is not just the flat trade deficit which counts, because a lot of the trade that works pro US in the balance would also disappear if there was a trade war – not just imports but also exports would decline. So you see these moves can signal a bigger reorientation than we imagine, one that is hard to predict, which is why they are approached with caution, and why globalism seems embedded – to jolt it now invites a national chaos vs. extending play into whatever can be devised that creates a stronger international order, even if there is no guarantee that that also will not lead to national chaos or that it will avoid international confrontation.
The story with China is similar in some ways, the west admitted China to world trade and political sanction in exchange for helping modernise it, and to transfer manufacturing to it. It looks like a win win except that China has own geopolitical ambitions, the surplus earnings of China have gone to help finance more debt in western society , and the transfer of productivity to China has ruined a part of the wests economic ecosystem and hence society , made it dependent on abroad and whatever financial shenanigans can be devised to keep flow of trade going.
However you know also that people do not want to go from playing the part of service economy with welfare to having to labour in factories to produce their own nicknaks.
That is why the tide is hard to turn, you have two populations in the US, one half socialist progressive that feels the momentum is towards some futuristic ideal if renovation of the system is allowed to move fast enough, or else it and they will be going backwards (to slave in factories for capitalists), while the other half sees its efforts gouged and trampled by freeloaders.
Now I could say the day any western country actually manages to vote for considerably smaller government and much less spending, and that is enacted, is the day they will have sorted this out (they won’t though), but the truth of the matter goes much deeper. The money creating (via debt) fiat (it shall be done) financial system is organised in such a manner that it serves the top echelons (0.1% etc.), the corporate entities, the banks and so on, who have seen their total ownership of wealth steadily increase to phenomenal levels while the rest of society has decreased, including middle-class America. They achieve this by financing EVERYTHING. They finance home ownership, consumer purchases, education… this is all forward spending that individuals are invited to, often obliged to… they finance moves of productivity to other countries, socialism for the unemployed, government spending to keep “society in order”…when that does not square, as they know it won’t, as they knew it couldn’t BEFORE they closed the gold standard, BEFORE they started financing national debt in EU, they lower rates to ease the burden of debt service so punishing savers, boosting the possibility of further lending due to the ratios they use.
The effect of this is ALL is that it destroys the organic economy, the values and understandings that used to be constructed locally, that formed society as it was once. It is total management, it is carried out by our own nationals in complicity with other nations, by our own governments.
The traditional America that is getting hurt by this, because of taxes, because of international competition, because of absence of a solid native economy, CANNOT SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES. The whole format is so insidious and pervasive that you would not know where to start, would not even recognise own part in it, and so the most likely targets are always chosen. That is OK also because to disrupt this reality and bring organisation closer to home, disturbing any link in the whole may bring it to heel, if only partially. Unfortunately people get played, their lack of wider knowledge makes it easy to pit them against each other as a distraction and use that to further other ends. Planners are able to wait many years to outmaneuver any seemingly important or decisive swings of events, will simply absorb them if possible.
Which is to say, the total we are talking about might get tailored, or steered slightly one way or the other, but it is not resilient enough either to stand major shocks, in fact is always on the verge of imploding one way or another because of one of many serious global tensions/unknowns, and those that are highly placed in it know that, are even preparing for that eventuality, might even pre-empt that, even at the same time as working for its continuity, because they hold answers, or think they do, for how to create something newer and larger as extension from the ruins.
We just get to enjoy the ride, chat about it, and try to maintain the kind of values and society we hold dear in the midst of it all.
Sorry to bore you all there, lol.
I let this in, reluctantly. Do you realize what work it is to read a comment totalling 1,430+ words? It would have been more merciful to us and to our readers if you’d broken up your thoughts into three or four comments.
Please don’t leave something like this again. It’s late and we’re tired.
Understood. The end comment was not aimed at you but was a kind of humility with me laughing at my own effort. It took me much longer to write than it will for anyone else to read, which obviously does not necessarily translate into reading it being any kind of reward either. Thanks.
Your comment was rudely long. And I *had* to read the whole thing. This website has moderated comments (and guest posts, for that matter). So you thought there’s a moderator fairy who has all the time in the world to read a 1,430+ word essay disguised as a comment??
While the job happened to fall to me that time, the B does the majority of them. He’d probably have deleted it, for the sake of his eyes. I stupidly plowed through each paragraph – while I was at it even cleaned up some of your infeliicities, e.g., when you repeatedly left spaces before commas (might as well derive what Grammar Police pleasure there is to be had – and then let it in. My bad. Won’t happen again; you have to police yourself from now on. Like a real grown-up (as compared to a lefty).
I have a few comments on your posting.
I strongly disagree we are dependent on Saudi oil. North America produces more oil than Saudi Arabia. The US could very easily cut off all foreign oil imports, allow the market to find its own level, and maintain its economy and most of its lifestyle. The need for Saudi oil is a financial, rather than commercial, phenomenon.
As to your post, I believe you’re engaging in paralysis of analysis. There are always reasons pro and con for any avenue of choice, but at the end, you have to travel one road or another. The really important thing is that a government be flexible enough to be able to change policies once it become obvious your present course leads to disaster.
Past a certain detail of analysis, you really do have to leave it to the experts, or better yet, to the people actually invested in production.
When you are on a path to disaster, you have to turn aside. Your alternate path might be just as bad, but you have a much better chance of survival turning anywhere at all from a certain path to death.
And finally, I tend to think that one of the factors pushing every civilization to an inevitable collapse, is that every civilization becomes so adept at following its own rules, that it totally loses the ability to adapt or change.
Oh, I choose my own path that basically shuns the whole arrangement as far as possible, very simple and hopefully of no consequence to anyone. If I thought I had any meaningful say beyond stating my opinion and observation I would take it. So for me it is survival mode, maybe if more people took this stance it would create a natural front to invasive government, who knows. It is a reason I am able to hold a detached view, for example.
Re. Saudi oil
Shale is questionable as long term replacement , but I agree the US could turn away from Saudi oil to readjust to another format. The US also has coal, nuclear and solar potential. Shale was part reply to the global demand for oil ( particularly US) sending prices to unworkable levels, we are living the consequences of this rebalancing.
As stands though energy imports are a major drain on US finance.
If the US were to turn to other oil producers instead of Saudi, which is feasible maybe as south America also has supply, Saudi would offer more to China, Europe possibly ( I say Saudi but we are talking GCC here). The result of that would be unpredictable alliances globally and loss of US influence abroad, loss of diversity of privilege. That could be positive or negative.
If we imagine that as positive, then that leaves the question of the US redressing its own economy to one that is more self sufficient and contained in a reasonable method of transition.
That is where I mean it NEEDS Saudi oil. You mention that it is a financial arrangement, but that financial arrangement is de facto representation of the dependence of the US on Saudi oil. That is to say the juggernaut of the modern US economy, down to the day to day lives of almost every citizen, the political wheels, its complex construct as a machine, of accounts, its direction and ability to stay on road, is deeply tied to Saudi oil supply.
So yes, if the US wishes to keep within the parameters that three quarters of society take for granted and demand as minimum, that avoid a confrontation that would give completely unknown results to the nation, both economically and socially, it currently needs Saudi oil, it needs to be at the centre of Saudi finance also.
Not to recognise that is an error, because only once you recognise the dependency that has been constructed are you able to steer away from it in a controlled manner. For now major oil producers of the world know that if it comes to it, they can shock other countries into submission, which they also know would not be worth their while for the kind of reply they would receive for doing so.
So at current known reserve status, the US has a total of three years own oil supply, then “empty”, assuming it can actually extract all its reserves and does not find vast new reserves
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=33&t=6
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States
So I think there is a panic button somewhere if global supply is cut off, given that the US would be shunning 50 more years of access to oil
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0714/How-long-will-world-s-oil-reserves-last-53-years-says-BP
…and considering the US consumes 25% of that total quantity, or more, depending on method of calculation.
Clearer?
Yeah, I’m tired of the idea that prosperity in the West simply grows on trees–is a part of the landscape. It isn’t. Jonah Goldberg once referred to oil as “the world’s greatest natural windfall.” But it only became valuable after the West had invented the internal combustion engine.
MC, what you have written, and GOV has posted, is quite the appropriate essay for today when 242 years ago a group of delegates to the Continental Congress put their pens to the following statement, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men (all humans) are endowed by their Creator certain liberties; those being the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which is the summary statement to your essay.
Of course the right to life, especially if you are a newborn, has been denied for the past 45 years. Is it any wonder then, that liberty and the pursuit of happiness through the exercise of innovation and merit should also be denied? Those founding principles of our republic have been denied for the past 45 years and it has been the dictatorship of the moneyed mediocre ever since. Everything has been politicized and you either support the narrative to the exclusion of your own personal faith or you starve.
Back at the beginning of this country, this day was a day of solemn remembrance that was often accompanied by prayer and fasting with a celebratory feast and fireworks as the sun went down. Nowadays, it is just another day on the calendar. Ben Franklin was right, and no, we couldn’t keep it because we were derelict in our stewardship of it.
John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil and became a billionaire on extraction of kerosene for light. Kerosene illumination was much brighter, cleaner, cheaper, and vastly safer than any other available light source. Pushing back the darkness was a huge contribution to human development and created a correspondingly huge world-wide demand for petroleum. This demand for light drove many technological developments, ocean-going tankers being only an example. The very name Standard Oil was created to reflect Rockefeller’s insistence that their kerosene be pure and of reliable quality. There was a time when the shiny, rectangular, 5 U.S. gallon tin can with the Standard Oil blue stripe around it was ubiquitous in every corner of the globe; so much so that blue is the official international color for kerosene containers today. Standard Oil’s motto for the first 30 years of its existence was, “Man must have light, and it must be cheap.”
Gasoline demand didn’t exceed that of kerosene until the 1920’s.
The author’s point is illustrated by the fact that Rockefeller didn’t merely put in his thumb and pull out a plum. He saw more than mere barrels of crude oil. He saw potential of process: transportation, refining, delivery, pricing all coming together to meet a universal demand, in a word innovation. This was only possible because he was born into a culture that looked upon innovation as neither a crime (socialism) nor a sin (Mohammedanism); that would come later.
Hi, I didn’t see another convenient place to post something about Israel and Judaism (many older articles have comments closed even if they might’ve been more topical or had related conversations) so I decided to put one here.
One thing I cannot understand is the seeming pressure from many assumedly leftist jewish groups to push for endless immigration including Islamic immigration into the west/europe/america, while insisting on “Israel for Jews”. I have absolutely no problem with “Israel for Jews” as cultural survival, what I can’t understand is why Israelis shouldn’t be the strongest supporters of “Europe for Europeans” (meaning European cultures not bowing down to multiculturalism) and “America for Americans” (meaning American culture – not racial supremacy or neo Nazi boneheadery). Does anyone have any enlightening viewpoints, articles, or links to share on why this seems to be?
It all depends upon whom you call Jews, If you still call Americans of Jewish descent Jews although they are third generation atheists then you will be confused.
Israel is not full of American Jews – it is full of Israeli Jews, totally different and much more diverse group. Most American Jews could not survive in Israel, the coffee is too hard to get…
Well both israeli jews and american jews seem to push alot of leftist stuff, including the mass immigration to europe/america and multiculturalism. What I dont understand is WHY because it’s biting them in the [butt]. The tides of PR have largely turned so that ten years ago I could have worn an israeli flag tshirt on any college campus but now i’d probably be lynched, yet if I were to wear an ISIS flag on college campus nobody would bat an eye, as a matter of fact i’ve SEEN this. Millenials and such I know are far more “pro palestinian” than pro israel… yet a big push for multiculturalism was by various jewish thinkers and such in the first place defending it. Return of Kings website had an article on something to effect of that I remember, but i’m curious what people here think as well.
Just to be clear i’m pro israel, thats the whole reason i’m so confused… I cant understand how such a misjudge of strategy could have occurred. Whether israeli or american, atheistic or religious is irrelevant – modern america has increasingly islamopandered itself and bought into the “palestinian” cause. (the sunni muslims who in this one place on the planet alone are losing their battle for domination of where they are)
Appearances are deceptive, there are some very promenent Jews on the alt-right, but the media does not herald their achievements…..
Jews have been hated down the centurys and the 21st is no different. I always put this in spiritual terms, the serpent whispers in the ear of the Adams and the Eves (including the Jewish ones) and bibbitybobbityboo once more anti-semitism turns into a pumpkin (or is it the other way around….).
The Israeli left appears to want ‘peace’ at any cost, but many are more pragmatic than the American left and understand that a peace treaty with Islam is subject to the (non-)rules of takkiyah. The office I work in is about 2 cliks from Gaza and is full of pragmatic lefties from Tel Aviv, the rest of the country is more somewhat more conservative.
The European left hates Israel for not allowing its cultural base to be diluted by immigration, this, in the eyes of the left gives them carte blanche to accept the Palestinian propaganda hook line and hatred. and to blurt it back as ‘truth’ to avid critics of Israel, only the waste matter gets reported, nothing nice….
The US Left does not want to alienate their Jewish donors too much, this is why O grudgingly supported Israel’s defense in the last Gaza war.
I agree, the situation is ridiculous, but it is the high cost of democracy and of keeping all the parties and voters and donors on board. Israel is ruled by a coalition government which ensures that no extreme measures will be taken. It works, but it is sometimes painful.
…right, I get what you’re saying so far, but i’m not sure if that answers the main core question… wouldn’t it make more sense for Israelis and Jews to push things like an America for Americans cultural policy (not racist, just absolutely rejecting all the communistic socialistic and islamofascist crap – if you’re lukewarm, go move to europe) since we are their best ally? Because some that have encouraged us in the US to be laying down and compromising with the seeming OIC driven invasion of this country has just turned the masses into buying the Islamic side… It hasn’t increased compassion for Israel, I can’t even believe how much vitriol is spewed against Jews over most of the alternative media now… it wasn’t even 10% of that 15 years ago that I can tell.
Since Jews are so good at being organized and pushing for the right kind of liberalism historically and pushing human rights and so many other forward thinking type of thinktanking… I cannot understand why they don’t embrace if necessary a “US and Israel against the world” mentality if needed. The kind of mentality that most people DID have shortly after 9/11 – a zero tolerance for islamopandering mentality where people were sick of it, and now were completely overrun by it. THIS is what I do not understand. As near as we can tell the US govt has been infiltrated by islamic racketeering muslim brotherhood crap left right and center… shouldn’t the dangers of this be trumpeted louder than anyone by our ally Israel who can see it for what it is?
[doubleposting here, or the moderator can simply add this to the above as I haven’t seen a response yet]
Something else i’d like to add.. labels matter, they make people think about things in different ways. Just like the left abused the term ‘assault rifle’ to demonize scary looking black guns, and puts people on the defensive (where people are now ‘defending their right to an assault rifle’) I think there seriously needs to be a fighting over and redefining of this ‘palestinian people’ nonsense in the first place.
If people understand this is just the latest war front, the one and only place the islamic invasion is LOSING (since palestine is 90% sunni muslim), and if they understand that sunni are the “even more intolerant ones” (usually when someone says they have a ‘muslim friend that is tolerant and okay’ they are far more likely to be shia, or even further away from mainstream orthodox islamic thought) it would go a long way. They need to look back at history and stop arguing about “the palestinians were there before the modern israelis” and start asking at what point in history the palestinians forced Christians out of the area. (I don’t know historically the exact date but I’ve seen the maps of the spread of Islam from it’s birth onwards) Even the Christians have more of a claim to that land than the “palestinians”! (unless there’s some part of history i’m missing/based on my own understanding – someone who knows better than me maybe can expand)
There also needs to be alot more awareness brought to other fundamental parts of this cultural war, including when Golda Muir said “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” I’ve heard left wing supporters think this is some kind of smarmy downtalk, but not ONE of them is aware that it is literally a response to the islamic movements that have OPENLY said and sworn that they will sacrifice their children in endless holy wars to see Israel fall! When the parents themselves WILLINGLY breed and send their children off to die, who is the aggressor in this war?? I’ve heard quotes on youtube taken from islamic television shows too where parents of single age children were talking about being happy their children were martyrs, and raising their children steeped in this level of hatred… where one 8 year old boy was asking his father why can’t he be a martyr too so you can be proud of me? Because the father was talking about being willing to send his four oldest off to fight and die and the youngest felt left out… single digit age and already put into his head that he should die to be more loved by his father.
My point with all the above is there are many MANY areas that I think would be far more productive to focus on, whether for Israel to do ‘public relations’ with (their message hasn’t changed in 20 years, and when the modern age hears the talking points from the 90’s they literally roll their eyes and scoff – again i’ve seen this in person on college campuses, because they think ‘palestinians are the winners of the Oppression Olympics’ and everyone has grown up with muslims in every public school now more than they know jews it seems) or Americans or Europeans or anyone else trying to verbally battle over these things.
Random Visitor – I find your popping in here with rather cogent thoughts to be interesting…
Where have you been for the last decade that you ask these questions?
The international political situation as it pertains to Islam is quite complex and your apparent naivete about American and Israeli Jews a bit startling.
I would like to suggest you read the archives of this site. Go all the way back to the inception of GOV. Your questions will be answered.
Which parts am I cogent about and which things do you see as out of touch? I’ve known a number of both Israelis and American Jews, that’s where I made some of my opinions of things. I don’t know how representative of everyone they are.
I’ve been reading through the archives with interest but there is alot there and we all have busy lives. If you want to point me to specific articles to give me a head start especially about things you think I may be completely off kilter about? I’m here to learn not preach, I have questions but I don’t think that i’m right, i’m just hoping that i’m not.
If i’m saying anything at all useful I wish someone else could take what is good and run with it because i’m not sure how to judge what others need to hear.
I’ll expand slightly since I havent heard back although I hope to check in two weeks or so hoping there will have been an update from someone on the topic.
I’ve read a decent number of articles here, and I always learn new and interesting things, but I have not completely had my world turned around or had fundamental changes in any of my understandings of Islam or Judaism or such in quite some time. The big shifts for understanding part of that happened from listening to Bill Warner, John Guandolo, and Stephen Coughlin – my experiences with Jewish and Israeli friends has gone on longer but i’ve been of the same feelings for awhile. That the messages being repeated are not working anymore with the younger generation, i’ve seen the change on college campuses because i’m a later life student who took many years off college and has only sporadically gotten in classes, so I can compare notes of how things were in late 90’s to 2000’s to 2010’s and it’s a depressing slide. The messages I see about Israel seem largely the same as they were in the 90’s and seem to get nods of approval from the echo chambers and be completely ignored by the newer generations that tune them out wholesale and believe the arguments to have no merit because they fall for the images of “dying palestinian children” and all the rest and believe all the propaganda from that side.
In other public spheres I see messages that could or should be publicized IMHO but aren’t. Everywhere we hear its “Israel vs Palestine” instead of “Israel vs this small section of sunni muslims losing their most recent claim” – if i’m naieve of something i’m very confused. Whenever I bring up how I dont think the activism messages for Israel are working anymore I often hear stock answers (echo chamber defenses) about why that is, and my ideas seem to be treated as if they are a new insight rather than out of touch. Yet it’s not like i’ve been invited to speak anywhere it’s just the reaction I get from small groups when we’ve talked about stuff before.
Everything I see from world public opinion, and especially younger generations shows Israel’s image on the serious decline, and that of Muslims and Palestine especially absolutely winning the oppression olympics above everyone. I’ve seen ISIS flags on campuses and nobody cares. I’ve been spit at for wearing an Israeli flag T-shirt which never happened in the 90’s. If i’m naieve as to what the on the ground impressions are, i’d be surprised, but i’m still fully open to hearing a response or being pointed to specific articles (here or elsewhere) you think I should see.