When I was taught about political systems, I was told that Communism and Fascism were at opposite ends of the spectrum. Of course, I went to school in the 60s, and 70s, and graduated from undergrad in 1984 and they taught topics differently then. Funny how Orwell titled his book the same year I finished my traditional education. I see the distinction between the far right and far left echoed in lots of debate around the corners of the web these days.
I did a search for an image and I found this:
It shows how wrongly we are educated about the two systems. Fascism doesn’t support private enterprise, it’s crony capitalism. Buck the dictator, you are out of business. That doesn’t sound like the free enterprise system does it? Do you think there isn’t “class” in a communist society? Do you think that communist citizens don’t have pride in their country and want national glory? I don’t think people understand the two different systems except that they are bad and so they toss the words around to sound intelligent.
In the graphic above, they forgot the “fix election outcomes” part. Could be Chicago.
As I examine the opportunities and outcomes for citizens of each system, there is no difference. It’s about who gets to divide up the spoils.
In a free society, the pie is never fixed so there are no spoils to divide up. You always create anew.
Think of the battle between freedom/opportunity and control/order in terms of a basic microeconomic 101 concept. Surplus. There is a constant battle between dividing up the surplus. Micro econ categorizes it as “Consumer Surplus” and “Producer Surplus”. This is the utility a consumer or producer derives from marketplace engagement. It can be monetary, but it might be something else as well.
Recategorized in political terms, we might think of surplus as freedom and opportunity. Consumer surplus then becomes what the citizen utility is or Citizen Surplus, and Producer Surplus is the government or Government Surplus.
A couple of assumptions:
Governments derive satisfaction from the amount and total control and order they can have over society.
Citizens derive ultimate happiness and maximum utility if they have total control over the choices they make in their own lives.
In a full command and control model, Fascist or Communist, randomness and free thinking are totally penalized and not tolerated. Try doing something out of the ordinary in China and see what happens.
When a government has full control, you have no risk. Everyone gets a trophy, albeit a meager one. Of course, full control governments need leadership, and those leaders establish a pecking order. The top of the pecking order doesn’t get a trophy. They get a Swiss bank account and until they have to tap it, they live in the lap of luxury. The bottom echelons of the pecking order do all they can to curry favor with the upper echelons with the hope they will join it and enjoy the spoils someday. But, everyone can’t be at the top and as soon as you become a problem, you are eliminated somehow.
They used to eliminate people by killing or imprisoning them. Then it became labor camps. North Korea, China, and Russia all have labor camps. Hitler, no fan of communism, had them too. Today, technology has created new avenues for government control and it might be as simple as the Chinese social credit system. You have an inability to access certain things in society because you don’t have the necessary permission from the central authority.
The other feature of totalitarian systems is there is no rule of law. It’s what they feel at the time. Today it’s one way. Tomorrow, it’s the opposite because someone somewhere changed their mind. Or, it’s possible someone somewhere bribed someone to change their mind. Or, your competitor bribed someone so they get to play by different rules than you.
By the way, Merrick Garland just took Donald Trump’s passports if you are keeping score at home.
President Reagan was right. If they can control your access to healthcare, your ability to eat, and your ability to decide what you want to do for a living, a democratic republic cannot survive. In a free society, you accept not only control over your life but the risk that comes with that control. You can fail. But, failure isn’t fatal in a free society.
Look north to Canada. They instituted a socialized medical system. That’s what Democrats want here in the US. $35 dollar insulin! Everything free!
Socialism doesn’t stand for equal access or treatment by the way. It’s really a code for rationing.
The Canadian elites debated the topic of Euthanasia for a long time. They legalized it. The apparatchiks in the Canadian socialized health system did the math and realized that euthanizing people would save the system a lot of money. What’s the 6th leading cause of death in Canada today? Euthanasia. The movie Soylent Green wasn’t a how-to manual anymore than Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, or 1984 were.
If you look at Canada and Covid, you saw government extend its power and reach into even more aspects of people’s lives. It happened in many parts of the United States too. Have you enjoyed being out of stock or waiting for interminable amounts of time for everything? Personally, my two-year experiment with socialism is done.
I empathize with people who have terminal illnesses that do not want to go on. They are in pain. But, the government shouldn’t enter into the decision of whether they want to euthanize themselves. It’s their choice. It’s their family’s choice. As soon as the government enters this area, there will be winners, losers, and adverse consequences. Guess who loses?
Oh, by the way, when elites and totalitarians’ grand plans and ideas screw up, they never admit it. They blame others. Usually, the blame falls downhill to the average citizen. Covid spread because we didn’t get our vaccines and mask up. It can’t be that the vaccine didn’t work as advertised and that the elites changed the definition of what a vaccine was. It can’t be that masks didn’t work, never would have worked, nor do they work today. It has to be that we aren’t wearing them correctly or we aren’t wearing enough of them. Damn it, you were four feet apart when you should have been six.
In Canada, sorry we killed your great-grandmother. Her best days were behind her anyway and you have photos and memories. Listen to her voice on your phone messages or watch a video. They don’t come more cold-hearted than the Canadian government.
You can have legalized weed, but only our special people will get the license to distribute it and you won’t be able to use the banking system to process transactions. Oh, and during an entire economic shutdown because of a virus so dangerous it will wipe humanity off the face of the earth, we will make sure the weed stores stay open. That’s a totalitarian government that doesn’t embrace capitalism in a nutshell.
We are now in “active discrimination mode” transitioning from covert discrimination mode but the discrimination is random. In the Minneapolis Public School system, if you are white, you get laid off first. In this teacher’s class, don’t wear a mask and you are racist. If you speak out, you can’t work for my company. If you attend the wrong protest march, you aren’t welcome here. “This is a safe space”. Why isn’t every space a safe space? This is okay when it used to not be okay. Buck the system, lose your career. There are more examples of this than the internet has web pages.
It’s ironic to me that conservatives today have a lot in common culturally but not intellectually with the counterculture movement of the 1960s that conservatives detested. Maybe conservatives should start wearing tie-dye and listening to the Grateful Dead?
When I look at politicians and elites today, the Democrats view the government’s role no differently than totalitarian regimes of the past. They want to tell you how to lead every single aspect of your life. They want total control over the inputs, and what happens to outputs. Interestingly, most of the big money backers are in their camp. Why? They don’t want to be peons in the hierarchy. You don’t get a Swiss bank account then. Instead, you get to build the structure that houses all the gold for the Swiss bank accounts.
Do you think John Kerry and Bill Gates are going to a labor camp? No, they want to be commissars.
The Green New Deal is rife with this sort of apocalyptic and unrealistic thinking. The other day I saw a “study” by “experts” that said because of global warming the oceans would rise and flood California. Hey, there are a lot of people that might see that as a feature, not a problem. I might get oceanfront property in Las Vegas!
Their models aren’t realistic and it turns out much of the data being input into them is as corrupt as the researchers are. The Karens of the world won’t believe it until the NY Times tells them to. It’s just not science or polite.
No critical thinking in the analysis by the mainstream news or even scientists happened in this study or the reporting of the flood study. It’s just meant to scare you. You know, billions of years ago there was a lot of water in lots of places on earth. I think southern Utah was a big sea. If they can frighten 40 million people in California, they have done their job, and believe me when I tell you California people are easy to scare. If Larry Elder was elected governor, he and his white supremacists would put them in chains. Screw capital punishment lynchings would probably be an everyday occurrence if that happened. Lord have mercy.
Problem is, it’s the free thinkers and freedom-loving risk-taking people that are getting virtually lynched.
I mean, a bunch of years ago we were talking about how if the oceans rose inches, Miami would flood. Didn’t happen and won’t happen of course but to climb over the cliffs of California’s coast and have enough water to engulf large areas of the state? Come on. Please put some clothes on the Emporer.
Did you ever notice that the problems these totalitarian-minded people try to solve are never solvable? Global warming is one. Poverty is another. I am sure you just thought of another one.
Our educational system today is full of government surplus. Citizen surplus isn’t maximized. It’s not getting better, it’s getting worse the more we spend on it. People are dumber.
Of course, when we try to introduce competition to the system with vouchers that are given to poor people, this is the response:
Virtually every industry vertical is full of the government taking its pound of flesh to maximize its utility at the expense of citizens.
If you do come up with holes in their arguments, which is easy to do, they will switch the subject or rationalize. “Drive an electric car”. Did you know the mining of lithium and the production of electric cars are highly pollutive? Doesn’t matter. Get “free” energy from wind power! Did you know that there are miles of copper cable inside a wind turbine, the blades aren’t recyclable, and it needs a lot of fossil lubricants to operate? Doesn’t matter. Where are we gonna get all that copper? Not in my backyard, but we have to save the environment! These same greenies would have you bike to work, build your house out of reclaimed timber or mud, and heat it with the sun. Enjoy your cold shower.
Of course, we could supply more than enough power at a cheap price using nuclear power which is green. “But, the movie I saw said it’s bad.” Then, the government apparatchiks regulate the heck out of nuclear to make sure it’s so hyper-expensive it can’t get built while doling out subsidies to their pals in the solar panel and wind industry.
The RINOs or colloquially called the “Uniparty Republicans” are similar to the Democrats. Is there really that big a difference between John Cornyn and Joe Manchin? Their path is just more “reasonable”. One puts a little more spice in his Senate bean soup. Really, it’s just crony capitalism and they want to make sure their people get their piece of the action. Make sure my guy gets a check.
All this debate that is pulling our country apart is about control and risk. Who or what gets control, and who gets to take the risk? The people that love the Democrats either don’t realize it or even worse, want it. The “Bulwark” “Dispatch” Republicans want the old order back. They liked being the Washington Generals of politics. It’s much easier to be a backbencher, react, and criticize than it is to lead, take risks, and potentially fail. It is much easier to take a risk when a government crony has your back.
This is a core reason why free unfettered capitalism is the best system for a society. It’s not “conscious capitalism”, “compassionate capitalism”, “reasonable capitalism”, “regulated capitalism”, “community capitalism” or any derivative of capitalism. Nope. FREE market capitalism. It works.
Build, try, compete, win or lose. Keep innovating.
When you have free market capitalism, people are free to choose. Taxes are low, flat, or don’t exist. Regulation is light. Risk-taking and the innovation that comes with it are not taxed. Government officials don’t get bridges named after them and society barely knows they exist. Lobbying doesn’t happen but the transparent debate does.
This is hilarious. You can’t believe the number of subsidies in all areas of the federal budget. End those and we might be in balance.
This is why a minimum corporate tax is stupid. It’s why a tax on stock buybacks is stupid and why dividend taxes are stupid. Want to end the politicization of taxes? How about a flat individual tax of something like 15% with no write-offs? Politics will end. The Willard Hotel lobby will get less crowded. (this is where lobbying was invented)
In capitalistic systems with low taxes and low regulation, the spirit of compromise is alive and well. People and companies negotiate for themselves so you get fewer extremes. That negotiation moves the needle on the line between consumer and producer surplus.
Capitalistic systems have a rule of law that is predictable. No one can hide from it and no one can buy their way out.
There are of course downsides to capitalism too. Some people are always going to do better. Lots of people get envious. “It’s not fair”. But, the upsides far outweigh the downsides. But the best thing is in the tenuous battle between citizen surplus and government surplus, the citizen maximizes their utility all the time.
The "it's not fair" thing when others make more money providing value to society has always blown my mind.
I firmly believe that many Democrats believe that economics is a zero-sum game, where there is a fixed pool of wealth, and the object of the game is to "get" your share by extracting it from someone else. They make the mistake of thinking that wealth is money, and that the money supply represents all wealth. They don't realize that money is an element of wealth, but not wealth itself.
Wealth is created, not transferred.
When someone goes on about billionaires, I ask them why it's a problem? You do not have to transact with a billionaire. In fact, in our free country, you are perfectly capable of saying that you wish to do no business with that person. In other words, they do not have a command on any of your freedoms or provisions or labor. So why would it bother you? All you can get out of it is that you freely enter into a transaction with that person or company, and it makes you better off. After all, if you were worse off, why would you do the transaction?
The next response is, "well, I just don't think anyone should have that much money." This is the most irrational response I've ever heard. Money is simply a representation of how much value that person or company has provided society. Otherwise, why would someone give it to them? And that excludes criminal behavior or crony capitalism. I'm speaking of pure capitalism.
Money is an instrument, where someone else voluntarily enters into a transaction to provide something in exchange for it. You don't have to do anything you don't want to.
So what is it that gets taken away from you when someone else earns billions?
Nothing.
Some of the dumbest people I have ever met are hardcore democrats who understand nothing about the world in which they reside. The fact that they believe socialism or fascism or communism is a better option further convinces me that these people are dangerously dumb.
True capitalism has never been tried. And the correct corporate income tax rate is 0%. Oh yeah, and taxation is theft.