Free Trade vs. Smart Trade:
Can American style free enterprise compete with China? Can domestic small businesses compete against the productive economies or coordination of scale of large corporations?
For domestic national security, cultural assimilation, and wealth,the advantage of dividing labor among international competitors is offset by the cost and environmental damage that is attributable to shipping. Further, enriching unfriendly nations carries its own cultural frictions and costs.
So, to preserve American style individualism and culture, how may American governance be trusted to encourage Smart Trade and help small businesses remain competitive? How may government be trusted to increase incentives inclined towards encouraging more diversified ownership, vision, direction, and management, i.e., more democratic spreading of wealth and influence so that oligopolists and aristocrats do not simply buy up the politicians and regulators who define government?
Perhaps government, once made enlightened by an informed electorate, should:
Forbid corporate involvement in most politics or lawmaking;
Progressively tax individuals and managers based on engagement of lobbyists or lobbying;
Impose import and export taxes, designed to discriminate against corporations that try to leverage competive power based on foreign entanglements;
Adjust relative lengths of patent and copywright protections;
Regulate to increase minimum wages paid by corporations, but not by small businesses;
Make employee health insurance portable and competitive across state lines, so as to make small businesses and independent contractors more competitive;
Encourage privitization of various department and managerial functions and services;
Encourage more involvement in mid-level management by independent contractors;
In rare cases, split up corporations, vertically and laterally;
Better educate a civically responsible electorate.
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9 comments:
OMB said, "Spending spiralled out of control, in my opinion, as a consequence of the other amendment passed in 1913, the 17th Amendment, which took the election of Senators out of the hands of their respective state legislatures and placed it in the hands of the populace. This changed the agenda of the Senate which had been to watch out for the state's interests to one of getting re-elected."
Excellent analysis! Thus began the process of allowing derelicts to vote themselves bennies and unfunded goodies from OPM, with the rot cascading from the head of the fish on down. Thus are poor Dinos easily bought off, while corrupt Rinos (or bi-political elites) take over the money tree. The only ones left giving a fig for the general welfare are the suckers of the conservative middle class. Now, even our President is corrupted to bi-political thugs like Soros, cooing their concerns for mankind while robbing us all blind and selling us into serfdom as "catchfools."
See [en.wikipedia.org]); and [en.wikipedia.org]:
"The Fox invents a story to explain the Cat's missing paw, stating that she had sacrificed it to feed a starving wolf. The Fox further adds, that they must go to the Field without further delay, as a Lord has bought it and would soon make it off limits to the public. The Pair takes Pinocchio to the town of Catchfools (Acchiappa Citrulli), which is inhabited by many emaciated and starving animals who made bad choices in their past. Pinocchio is taken to the Field, where the coins are soon buried. After telling Pinocchio to leave for a few minutes to allow the money tree time to grow, the pair dig up the coins and run away."
Our Founders gave us a constitutional check against such dino cats and rino foxes. However, America let its guard down, so now, given the 17th Amendment, we Conservatives find ourselves at the mercy of voting machines of "Progressives." Repeal the 17th Amendment!
JMT said, "'enslaving white Jewish men" How ridiculouus."
No doubt, Ninja takes your point. But I press it further. Those who believe in nothing save envy and avarice will fall for everything and reap the inevitable Ponzi collapse. Unfortunately, many of the rest of us will be pulled down with them. For example, enrichment by American Jews of leftist politicians translates into the reduction of America and the enrichment or empowering of those who wish to press all free people into abject submission. IOW, the Goldman Sachs bunch are sewing their own or their children's eventual enslavement --- either to Big Gov or to Big Shariah. The point is to think past one's nose. Hardly "ridiculouus."
End of Taxation; Beginning of Direct Assessments:
Once Big Gov has all our data in central banks, our non-representing representatives will have no need to impose taxes. The quaint idea of taxation will be over. Instead, our regulators will simply and continuously extract impositions directly from our bank accounts. Such extractions will be based on how much each of us can proportionately pay to satisfy the national debt and the whims of our non-representing representatives.
Social friction from envy will vanish, because more proportionate extractions will be made against the accounts of everyone who gets a step ahead. (Of course, most initiative will also vanish, but why think that far ahead?) No longer owning our labor, we will no longer own our persons. The horse harness becomes us: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
No wonder Obama and minions are anxious to negotiate with thugs. Just imagine the selling points for making common cause, divvying up territory, and enslaving white Jewish men. What thug of avarice could refuse that offer?
This sort of reductionist mindset seems not altogether unrelated to the reductionist mindset of a goodly number of leftist-enabling scientists and physicists. They conceive our existence as mere random byproduct of nothing more than particulate pool balls pinging around. We have only to fit everyone and everything with buttons for pinging, and then we can control the entire circle of civilization. Man, consciousness itself, is thus reduced to a random game of mindless pool, to be run for the whims of mindless, non-representing representatives.
However, this sort of “nothing but-tery” reasoning is a bit absurd, as is the concept of “nothing” itself. From existential standpoint of a conceptualization (itself a kind of somethingness), “nothingness” cannot very well be conceptualized, except ambiguously. A conceptualizer (or even a storer of information) cannot consistently store or maintain either that nothingness exists or that it does not exist – except subordinate to “Somethingness.” Well then, what is this Somethingness which exists?
Regardless, because IT is, I am – more than a mere particle or button to be pushed around by mindless bean counters and non-representing representatives.
At bottom, we are in a hot contest between mind liberators and mind enslavers; between pursuit of existential transcendence and pursuit of obliterating submission into faux-nothingness. The minds of the godless and the faux-godly are deeply infested with annihilating mind parasites. To whatever extent allowed, they will make common cause to seek to reduce or annihilate all else, leaving us only with Big Gov and enslaved man.
We can no more remain free by gazing into the tempting face of Big Gov (or Big Shariah) than could Perseus survive by gazing into the face of Medusa (or the insincere smile of Obama).
By now, we know how to warp and condition minds to be able to warp and condition other minds, cyclically. Just look at any family of sex and abuse predators (or entitlement mongers and race baiting opportunists). The "value added" by Islam was to justify such mind warping as a religious quest for entitling the subjugation of others. This sort of gardening of mind parasites is prolific throughout history. We have a short window of opportunity to push and preserve a culture of decency. If we allow Rinos and Dinos to make us falter, the world will revert to its default position: empowerment of mind parasites over moral zombies. Mmm mmm mmm.
"Debt is "money" and "money" is debt. "
Well, debt is based on trust in promises. And because our nation has been commandeered so as not to produce any durable goods to speak of, we are living on borrowed promises. And those promises are trending one way: overseas. That is, the money we are creating is debt our nation owes to overseas holders and fascists without national loyalties.
The idea being syndicated is eventually to make nations and borders obsolete, so that all ordinary folks will simply owe body and soul to competing syndicates of debt holders. The idea is to reduce everyone who is not a net debt holder to reliable control, sort of like a rechargeable battery. Your fingerprint will be your credit card, your name will be your account, and your account will be charged a share of what your old country obliged itself to pay. You will be an indentured serf until the day you die.
It does not matter whether you are induced to submit and surrender your self initiative and freedom of conscience to a fascist Imam, a fascist Corp Rep, or a Congress or Union of Dupes being puppeteered by fascist "elites": regardless, you are being induced to deposit your brain on your way to the egress.
This is why the fascists among elites do not fear Islamofascism: the fascists sense their alliance; they need not speak of it. Everyone else is a useful idiot and/or a debt slave. The only controversy is how our syndicates of fascists and families of legal fronted crime will divvy up their spheres of influence. After all, a wise and entitled sort of actor who is unhindered by any sort of conscience can always find a producing sponsor somewhere.
Re: "Did it come about by conspiracy? Let's say it didn't. Then how would it be different if it did?"
Well, conspiracy, whether conscious or not, seems a bit beside the point. People agglomerate to perpetuate and leverage their livelihoods and lifestyles. Among them are found communalists and individualists. There are those who are content to combine deceit and demagoguery to control the others and the masses; and there are those who seek to empower as many as are able, as much as they are able, to take responsibility for themselves. Individualists have failed adequately to foresee and offset trends that are unfolding and evolving that seem destined to reduce most of humanity to abject, submissive subjects, regardless of whether they worship Allah the Beheader or Obama the Won.
FREE TRADE OPPORTUNISTS AND DUPES: Do not advocates of “free trade” often seem to be self-interested opportunists or dupes, for greasing the way for nations of collectivists to tighten headlocks against nations of individualists? Can one partner with countries of crooks or fascists for trading purposes, without to some extent promoting fascism, both at home and abroad? Can America engage in commercial intercourse with nations and cults run by despots of collectives, without to some extent falling to the rule of despots of collectives?
IS THE PRICE FOR FREE TRADE TOO HIGH? Insofar as free trade is not reciprocated, has not our economy declined? Insofar as free trade has rendered us less independent, has it not compromised our American character and mores to foreign influences? Even insofar as free trade may increase the efficient distribution of labor, resources, and technological know-how, are not such advantages of efficiency more than offset by transportation costs, enticements to novel frivolities, and bleeding out of military defense technology?
AMERICAN ABUNDANCE: Why suppose a land as large and abundant in resources and knowledge as America should have any great need for foreign trade? Given the vast resources of America, why is free trade necessary, when it plays into hands of narrow opportunists, manipulators, and despots?
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IF NOT FOR EFFICIENCY, WHAT ABOUT “BETTERMENT”: What about engaging free trade in science and technology for the “betterment of humanity?” Well, much such “betterment” is offset by “weaponizing” foreign tyrants and pirates. How much of the science we receive in trade from despotic countries is shoddy? How much of the trade we deal in science and weapons leaves our best scientists open to nefarious overtures?
WHAT ABOUT TRADE IN LIEU OF WAR: It is oft cautioned that, where traders are not free to cross, soldiers soon shall cross. Perhaps. But the Direction-Of-The-Crossing would seem pertinent. When the crossing is sustainable, it would seem not likely from a despotic state to an equally resourceful free state. Or, if the despotic state is successful, it can only be because the strength of the free state has become corrupt and morally weak. When the crossing is from the free state to the despotic state, it can only be because the free state has been adventurous and the despotic state has become weak from unbelief. Bottom line: Between states of equal resources, fear-of-soldiers-crossing is not ground for a healthy, abundant, free state to open trade in ways that will bleed its independence and internal defensibility.
WHAT ABOUT THE “SUCCESS” OF CHINESE CAPITALISM: Within a despotic society, there will be repression of most traditions of empathy among individuals that were based on faith in a unifying, higher Consciousness. Within such a society, there is little to support good will and trust among the populace, except from governmentally institutionalized force and fear. Such a society may support inferior forms of capitalism. But such capitalism will not support good faith and good will among its populace, apart from pretenses enforced by state institutions for propagating fear. Nor may a free society succeed in enticing such a regime to forsake despotism merely to acquire more commercial goodies. Rather, for a free society to signal reliance on such an ignorant strategy is merely to excite blood lust in the despot to whom it was directed.
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Big Government could be great for all kinds of things, if it could be trusted, if it were honest, and if the electorate were intelligent and virtuous enough to elect trustworthy and competent leaders. If only. Unfortunately, human nature is such that those most interested in government – both as candidates and as voters – tend to be those most interested in feathering their own nests. And they are giga times more dangerous in their Ponzi scheming than Bernie Madoff could ever dream. Indeed, social security, as run, is criminal Godzilla Ponzi.
Productive, responsible people tend not to be vigilant enough to notice that the bigger the government, the greater the power of incumbents to hoodwink, recruit, de-feather, and mal-inform the voters and their educators and media. Unfortunately, once political power tips to favor Ponzi artists and their dupes, it becomes nearly impossible to use big government to restore sanity or freedom. Indeed, big, corrupt government corrupts even the language, using p.c. to turn non-freedom into “hope” and servitude into “change.”
As nearly hopeless as such a situation may be, those who would conserve or restore freedom can ill afford to give up all hope. Conservatives have no choice but to try to fight Big Controlling Gov with Good Liberating Gov. And Conservatives cannot win such a fight by allowing Ponzi artists to sink America into a borderless, free-trade, global, new-world entity run by corrupt, corporatist gangsters.
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