New
Zealand Progressive commentator Chris Trotter, who wants our Inland Revenue to squeeze
the rich until their pips squeak, is advancing collectivism by crowing the disasters
of capitalism which he thinks is leading to another bust bigger than the Global
Financial Crisis out of 2008.
ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND it goes,
and where it stops nobody knows! You might think that ordinary human-beings
would have tired of Capitalism’s cyclical catastrophes by now. But our capacity
to absorb these entirely man-made calamities appears to be no less impressive
than our ability to cope with the genuine disasters nature sends our way.
Indeed, Capitalism’s longevity is, almost certainly, attributable to its
success in convincing us that it, too, is a force of Nature – something far
beyond our feeble strength to influence for good or ill.
It was not always so. Eighty years ago, with the world in the clutches
of another capitalist catastrophe, human-beings somewhere found the collective
strength to denounce this “force of nature” falsehood. They decided that what
humankind could ruin just by “letting things go” (laissez-faire) it could
rebuild by replacing the “invisible hand” of the all-powerful capitalist market
with their own.
And
then Chris warbles on about Roosevelt’s New Deal, oblivious to the fact that
grand piece of interventionism extended the harmful effects of the Great
Depression by upwards of a decade. Chris should also read up on how it was US government
interventionalism leading up to the Great Depression which was in large part
culpable.
Anyway,
I couldn’t let Chris away with this nonsense regarding the modern-day Big Brother
State West, so posted the below quick reply:
The West is not
capitalist, Chris, no more than China has an actual sharemarket. The West is
crony capitalist, which is totally crippled markets ruled by government
interventionism that has broken market coordination and the quick liquidation
of malinvestments of a true laissez faire system. Through centrally banked command economies which print fiat
money while playing loose with interest rates, to fund the Huge State model where state spend is close to 50% of the
entire economic activity in Western economies, out-of-control and God help me, well-intentioned politicians, only build asset bubbles, then
grow them bigger and bigger by trying to cap the chaos caused through
socialising what should remain private sector losses.
But I say
private sector, which denotes property rights, and where it's important, we
don't have those anymore.
It's Keynesian
socialism and though it doesn't destroy lives, thus liberty and the quality of
living as directly as the straight out communist gulag economies did - those paragons of
collectivism - it still achieves that in the long run. Indeed economystic JM
Keynes has managed what the Soviet Union couldn't: total destruction of
classical liberalism, and with that the West itself.
[And not forgetting Keyne's awful legacy in enslaving the arts to the state, and thus taming it as a vital market of ideas in resistance to the modern day abuses of state power.]
[And not forgetting Keyne's awful legacy in enslaving the arts to the state, and thus taming it as a vital market of ideas in resistance to the modern day abuses of state power.]
In terms of starting a business, getting ahead, getting workers who understand who the damn money belongs to (clue: it's my damn business, and my damn money)
ReplyDeleteChina beats Keynesian countries like the US, and communist ones like NZ, AUS etc hands down.
Hell: viewed objectively, there is more regulation, more taxes, more surveillance, and more intervention in somewhere like NZ than there was in East Germany at the height of "communism". You could always have a smoke in East Berlin!
I admit to being surprised in learning China has a lower corprate tax rate than we do.
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