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Today’s Anti-Capitalists Ignore the Fundamental Problems of Socialism

Bernie Sanders

JULY 27, 2015

Jonathan Newman

Anti-market and pro-socialist rhetoric is surging in headlines (see alsohere, here, and here) and popping up more and more on social media feeds. Much of the time, these opponents of markets can’t tell the difference between state-sponsored organizations like the International Monetary Fund and actual markets. But, that doesn’t matter because the articles and memes are often populist and vaguely worded — intentionally framed in such a way to easily deflect uninformed attacks and honest descriptions of what they are actually saying. In the end, they can all be boiled down to one message: socialism works and is better than capitalism.

While most of it comes from the Left, the Right is not innocent, since the Right appears to be primarily concerned with promoting its own version of populism, which apparently does not involve a defense of markets. “Build bigger walls at the border,” for example, is not a sufficient response to “All profits are evil!”

Instead of stooping to this level or simply resorting to “Read Mises!” (a more fitting response), we must show, yet again, that socialism — even under well-meaning political leaders — is impossible and leads to disastrous consequences.

The Necessity of Profits, Prices, and Entrepreneurs

Socialism is the collective ownership (i.e., a state monopoly) of the means of production. It calls for the abolition of private ownership of factors of production. Wages and profits are two parts of the same pie, and socialism says the profit slice should be zero.

The inherent theoretical problems of socialism all emanate from its definition, and not the particulars of its application. However, the supporters of socialism define “collective,” as no exchange of the factors of production. And without exchange, there can be no prices, and without prices there is no way to measure the costs of production.

In an unhampered market economy, the prices of the factors of production are determined by their aid in producing things that consumers want. They tend to earn their marginal product, and because every laborer has some comparative advantage, there is a slice of pie for everybody.

If technological changes make certain factors more productive, or if education and training makes a laborer more productive, their prices or wages may be bid up to their new, higher marginal product. An entrepreneur would not like to hire or buy any factor at a price that exceeds its marginal product because the entrepreneur would then incur losses.

Entrepreneurial losses are more important than many realize. They aren’t just hits to the entrepreneur’s bottom line. Losses show that on the market, the resources used to produce something were more highly valued than what they were producing. Losses show that wealth has been destroyed.

Profits give the opposite signal. They represent economic growth and wealth creation. A profitable line of production is one in which the stuff that goes into producing some consumer good costs less than what consumers are willing to pay for the consumer good.

As such, profits and losses are more than just important incentives, or cover in a conspiratorial capitalist class system; they are the only way to know that wealth is being created instead of destroyed in any line of production.

Under socialism, there is a single owner that does not bid factors away from some lines of production and toward others. Nobody is able to say, with any shred of certainty, that a particular tool or machine or factory could be used to produce something else in a more effective way. Nobody knows what to produce or how much to produce. It’s economic chaos.

Without Markets, We Can’t Know What or How to Produce

Profits and losses guide and correct entrepreneurs in the process of producing things they expect consumers will demand. Without this information, including the costs of production specifically, entrepreneurs cannot engage in economic calculation, the estimation of the difference between future revenues and the costs of production necessary to gain those future revenues.

Laborers are put to work in areas where they don’t have a comparative advantage. Farmers are sent to factories, and tailors are sent to the mines. Workers are in the wrong lines of production and have the wrong tools. Every morning, the economy looks like Robert Murphy’s capital rearranging gnomes just ransacked it.

The Polish film Brunet Will Call lampooned situations like this throughout the movie, with consumer and capital goods in the most unlikely places. A butcher pulls an automobile’s clutch cable out of his freezer, and gives it to the main character, who pays for it with information on the whereabouts of a double buggy for someone’s newborn twins (at the flower shop, obviously).

So the failure of socialism is not conditional on the culture, time, or place of the victims. Socialism is flawed at its core: the “collective” ownership of the means of production. As such, there is no way to enact a functioning, growth-inducing version of socialism anywhere. In practice, however, the theoretical problems of socialism give way to civil unrest, which is met with state force and results in a death toll higher than any official war ever fought.

Without profit motives to produce, quotas must be put in place. With quotas, even in the cases where workers don’t lie about their production, chaos still reigns. For example, if a nail production quota is based on the number of nails, workers produce a lot of tiny, unusable nails. A nail quota based on weight would encourage workers to produce massive, but still unusable nails — a situation lampooned by this cartoon in Krokodil during the 1960s.

Endless queues stretched across the USSR, filled with people looking for shoes even though shoe production in the USSR exceeded that of the US. The problem was all the shoes were too small, because shoe production was measured by number, with no regard for the sizes or designs consumers demand.

The Wake of Socialism

Some cases are funny; others are not. About seven million people died of starvation in the USSR just in 1932–33 (middle-of-the-road estimate based on manipulated data). The authors of The Black Book of Communism (1999) estimate the deaths of close to 100 million people are attributable to communist and socialist regimes. That’s more than 200 times the number of US deaths in WWII (and a case could be made that their deaths are attributable to socialism, too).

Even today, in Cuba, the average wage is about $20 a month. In North Korea civilians are routinely rounded up by the dozens for public execution for the crime of watching South Korean TV smuggled into the country.

When people are hungry and unhappy, the state cannot survive if the people know others are better off. The state uses propaganda, misinformation, and censorship to make an already captive citizenry even more confused and submissive.

So count me surprised to hear fresh calls for socialism in 2015 — if the strong economic calculation argument and astronomical death toll haven’t turned the Left off of socialism, I don’t know what will. The idea is both bankrupt and deadly in both theory and practice.

https://mises.org/library/todays-anti-capitalists-ignore-fundamental-problems-socialism

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Jeb Bush Staffer Planted In Audience for Donald Trump Hit Job….

Jeb Bush

Busted ! CNN Uses Jeb Bush Staffer Planted In Audience To Frame Donald Trump Narrative/Hit Job….

Posted on October 13, 2015 by sundance

During an appearance at a Jon Huntsman “No Labels” event, a female audience member named Lauren Batchelder played the role of a female antagonist toward candidate Donald Trump.

However, Ms. Batchelder is not just an average audience member.  She’s a paid political operative of the GOP and a paid staff member of Team Jeb Bush:

Within minutes of her scripted performance at the event, the producers of CNN were quickly editing soundbites and framing a narrative.  That story was pushed into the media stream within hours.  CNN’s Jeanne Moos was the delivery vehicle for the a hit piece.

Here’s the CNN narrative as presented yesterday:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/10/13/busted-cnn-uses-jeb-bush-staffer-planted-in-audience-to-frame-donald-trump-narrativehit-job/

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Gowdy: Fired Benghazi panel staffer decided to ‘run to the press’ after failed effort to get money

Trey Gowdy

Published October 12, 2015
FoxNews.com

The leader of the Republican-led special Benghazi committee tried Sunday to discredit a former staffer’s claim that he was fired for not joining in a partisan-driven effort to tarnish Hillary Clinton, saying he never even spoke to the ex-staffer.

South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said he never met with the staffer, investigator and Air Force Reserves officer Bradley F. Podliska, and that Podliska was, in fact, warned about his own efforts to discredit Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

“Because I do not know him, and cannot recall ever speaking to him, I can say for certain he was never instructed by me to focus on Clinton, nor would he be a credible person to speak on my behalf,” Gowdy said.

He also said Podliska has never mentioned Clinton — from when he was counseled about his “deficient performance” to when he was fired and through the entire legal mediation process.

Furthermore, Gowdy said, Podliska has “run to the press with his new salacious allegations” after failing to get money from the committee.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/12/gowdy-fired-benghazi-panel-staffer-decided-to-run-to-press-after-failed-effort/?intcmp=hpbt2

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Why are we so angry, politically?

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“if your not angry ,your not paying attention” Joel Winton 

October 12, 2015, 06:00 am
By Chris Spatola, contributor

Over the last several months, Donald Trump has insulted Mexicans, insulted POWs, insulted women, insulted his fellow candidates and insulted the media; and that’s only to name a few of his targets.

Ben Carson has said he does not want a Muslim in the White House because Muslims cannot be trusted. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” Carson said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” in September. “I absolutely would not agree with that.” Carson does not believe that Islam is “consistent with the Constitution.”

In this election phase, we have elevated the cruelest, most divisive and least qualified candidates to the top of Republican polls. In the case of Trump and Carson, we have branded their misogyny, xenophobia and volatility as “refreshing.”

I’m sorry, but there is something wrong with a country that is so angry at the Washington “establishment” that it finds these two candidates, and their impertinent behavior, refreshing.

How has name-calling become a winning campaign strategy? Why are we so angry?

The answer to these questions begins with how divided we are. The number of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal, opinions has doubled over the last two decades, according to a Pew Research poll conducted last year; while the center —  people who express an equal number of conservative and liberal opinions — has shrunk.

We have become ideologically tribal in this country. We are much more comfortable basking in our sociopolitical super-zones — Fox News, MSNBC, left- and right-wing blogs — that create content to promote, and placate, our own biases. The proliferation of media, and the sensationalism in which most of these 24-hour outlets now traffic, have made it easy to cloak ourselves in dialogues that are frighteningly fanatical.

The presumption 20 years ago was that the Internet and emerging technologies would give a voice to a large percentage of the population that had never had one. The world would become more connected, citizens more engaged and proactive. What we have discovered in a more connected world, however, is that there are a lot of different people out there and a lot of different opinions. The proliferation of media has amplified this diversity of opinion; but in a counterproductive way, has also made it easier for like-minded people to coalesce, mingle and entrench themselves ideologically. As discontent with the government’s role in our lives grows, these predisposed outlets, which are inherently void of compromise and nuance, foment that discontent rather than soothe it. The Internet and, to a large extent, cable television have become riotous free-for-alls laying waste to the idea of a civil, balanced discourse.

The one thing a great majority of Americans can agree on, regardless of party, is that they are angry. They feel like they’re being ripped off, marginalized and underrepresented; and they feel like an epically unproductive Washington doesn’t care

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/256632-why-are-we-so-angry-politically

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Second IT firm agrees to give Clinton’s server data to FBI

Hillary-Clinton

Former secretary of state hired Datto Inc. to provide a private cloud backup of her emails

FBI asked the Connecticut company to turn over data. It agreed.

State Department also asking again whether she turned over all of her business emails

BY GREG GORDON AND ANITA KUMAR

McClatchy Washington Bureau

Hillary Clinton hired a Connecticut company to back up her emails on a “cloud” storage system, and her lawyers have agreed to turn whatever it contains over to the FBI, a person familiar with the situation said Tuesday.

The disclosure came as a Republican Senate committee chairman, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, also asked the firm to turn over to the committee copies of any Clinton emails still in its possession.

There were conflicting accounts as to whether the development could lead to recovery of any of Clinton’s more than 31,000 personal emails, which she said she deleted from her private server upon turning over her work-related emails to the State Department, at its request, in December 2014.

Congressional Republicans have voiced skepticism as to whether the 30,940 business emails that the Democratic presidential candidate handed over represented all of those related to her position as secretary of state. The FBI is separately investigating whether Clinton’s arrangement put classified information at risk but has yet to characterize it as a criminal inquiry.

Datto Inc., based in Norwalk, Conn., became the second data storage firm to become entangled in the inquiry into Clinton’s unusual email arrangement, which has sparked a furor that has dogged her campaign. In August, Clinton and the firm that had managed her server since June 2013, Colorado-based Platte River Networks, agreed to surrender it for examination by the FBI.

Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article37968711.html#storylink=cpy

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FBI Seizes Four State Department Servers in Clinton Email Probe

hillary-clinton-what-difference-does-it-make

Probe focusing on how classified information was sent to secretary of state

BY: Bill Gertz
October 7, 2015 5:00 am

The FBI has seized four State Department computer servers as part of its probe into how classified information was compromised on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email system, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The four servers, which were located at the State Department’s headquarters building, were seized by the FBI several weeks ago. They are being checked by technical forensic analysts charged with determining how Top Secret material was sent to Clinton’s private email by State Department aides during her tenure as secretary from 2009 to 2013, said two people familiar with the probe. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing investigation.

State Department spokesman John Kirby referred questions about the computer servers to the FBI. An FBI spokeswoman, Carol Cratty, declined to comment.

No other details about the servers, including whether they are part of the department’s classified system, or used for unclassified information networks, could be learned.

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not respond to an email request for comment.

Clinton has offered varying explanations for her use of a private email server, initially claiming she had done nothing wrong. Then, under pressure from critics, she said she was sorry people were confused by the practice, later admitting in early September that her use of a private email system had been a mistake.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/fbi-seizes-four-state-department-servers-in-clinton-email-probe/

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Bill Clinton White House suppressed evidence of Iran’s terrorism

Bill-Clinton

Sent secret cable accusing Tehran of 1996 Khobar Towers attack, but kept it from public

By John Solomon – The Washington Times – Monday, October 5, 2015

Bill Clinton’s administration gathered enough evidence to send a top-secret communique accusing Iran of facilitating the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist bombing, but suppressed that information from the American public and some elements of U.S. intelligence for fear it would lead to an outcry for reprisal, according to documents and interviews.

Before Mr. Clinton left office, the intelligence pointing toward Iran’s involvement in the terror attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen and wounded hundreds was deemed both extensive and “credible,” memos show.

It included FBI interviews with a half-dozen Saudi co-conspirators who revealed they got their passports from the Iranian embassy in Damascus, reported to a top Iranian general and were trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), officials told The Washington Times.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/5/bill-clinton-white-house-suppressed-evidence-of-ir/

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“Gun violence” is Actually Down Dramatically

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“Gun violence” is not “becoming” anything. Rather, it’s down — and dramatically: National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

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Chris Christie Urges Focus on Mental Health After Oregon Mass Shooting

Chris_christie_theridgewoodblog

OCTOBER 5, 2015

(NEW YORK) — New Jersey Governor and 2016 presidential candidate Chris Christie weighed in on the recent mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon, saying that America should get “tougher” on mental health issues.

“I’m very concerned about the mental health side of this,” Christie told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Sunday on “This Week.” Christie advocates making involuntary commitment easier for doctors to enforce if they fear a mentally ill patient could become violent.

“We don’t want to involuntarily commit them, to put them away,” he said. “We want to protect others and get them the help they need.”

Christie, a former prosecutor, also supports stricter enforcement of gun laws. “There’s lawlessness out there,” he said, pointing to Chicago, a city with tough gun laws and high violent crime rates. “We are not enforcing the law in as aggressive way as we should.”

As governor of New Jersey, which has some of the strictest gun laws and lowest murder rates in the country, Christie has vetoed a gun control bill that would have limited the size of munitions magazines.

“I think it’s about the mental health issue,” Christie said. “I don’t think we’re as aggressive as we should be.”

The governor turned his focus from the campaign trail to his home state in recent days, canceling campaign stops in the New Hampshire. He declared a state of emergency in New Jersey to help residents prepare for Hurricane Joaquin, which so far has spared the state from any major damage.

“We’re lucky we dodged a bullet in New Jersey this time,” Christie said.

 

https://wbt.com/chris-christie-urges-focus-on-mental-health-after-oregon-mass-shooting/

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Joe Biden could decide presidential run in the next week

FE_DA_121012BidenSmirk425x283-1

By JULIANNA GOLDMAN CBS NEWS October 3, 2015, 2:41 PM

Vice President Joe Biden is nearing a decision on whether to run for president, and it could come as early as within the next seven to 10 days, according to three people familiar with his deliberations.

Two of those people said he is leaning toward entering the race. Still, they caution that family considerations remain the overriding concern and would be the reason he doesn’t run. His wife, Dr. Jill Biden, has said that should the vice president launch a bid for the Oval Office, “of course” she would “be on board.”

Even if Biden decides to seek the Democratic nomination before the party’s first debate on Oct. 13, he likely would not participate, sources told CBS News.

They said he’d need time – perhaps a couple of weeks – to put together the foundations of a campaign and raise money looking ahead to several ballot deadlines. States like New Hampshire, Texas and Florida have deadlines beginning in November.

Biden has been weighing a White House bid for the last few months, with several Democratic fundraisers even pledging their support should he launch a presidential campaign.

Some donors who have met with the vice president in recent weeks told CBS News they came away with the impression that he was going to run.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-could-decide-presidential-run-in-next-week/

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What Was a Member of Clinton’s ‘Secret Spy Network’ Doing While Working for CBS News?

hillary-clinton-what-difference-does-it-make

4:10 PM, SEP 29, 2015 • BY MARK HEMINGWAY

In March, an investigation by ProPublica and Gawker revealed that a “secret spy network” that was not on the State Department payroll, run by longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, was “funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack.” Now the WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service in Europe who was working directly with Blumenthal as a member of Clinton’s spy network, was concurrently working as a consultant to CBS News and its venerable news program 60 Minutes.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/member-clintons-secret-spy-network-worked-cbs-news-helped-shape-benghazi-coverage_1034186.html

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No Donald Trump is no Libertarian , no conservative and no liberal . Donald Trump is a REAL New Yorker

-donald-trump-candidacy-speech-thridgewoodblog

July 13,2015

Pj Blogger
Ridgewood NJ, Trump has taken the political spectrum by storm ,with his straight talking , often rambling can do common sense style . He has managed to tap into the anger at the political process that leaves most Americans feeling totally disenfranchised and disheartened. For many it seems their own government continues to attack them and the very culture that made this nation great . They the great american middle class have become the enemy ,with virtually every move coming out of Washington perceived as an effort to undermine traditional american values, of hard work, common sense and fair play .The electorate feels powerless as DC peruses a coarse self destruction selling out country . Be it Obamacare which voters opposed , nuke deals with Iran , sanctuary cities , amnesty ,or jamming social policy down everyone’s throats there is a general unease with the direction of things. While skepticism has been meet with cat calls of,racist ,bigot, homophobe or ridiculous edicts ,such as “denier” to many the future looks bleak.

Trump has managed to tap into the national angst with his hard hitting , straight talking New York approach . New York  , is really different . Its huge city , with vast financial resources and global responsibilities . New York is a city of conflict , where people come from all over the world to make their mark . Its the city of non stop hustle ,where people are there to “make money”  and the best and the brightest compete on a global scale on many levels. New York is where huge events  like the New York Marathon and the St Patricks day Parade are run by private organizations and huge museums like the MOMA or the MET are private non profits , where central park is maintained by not only the NY Parks Department but also the private Central Parks Conservatory . New York is a city were people get things done and that is always the priority.So Trump comes out of all this with his ego centric self promotional ways looking to leave his mark on a country that has lost its way . He channels the national angst , with a we can fix this New York common sense attitude and no amount of attacks by the powers that be seem to shake his conviction , that he is Rich and they (DC) are Stupid.

No he is no Libertarian , no conservative and no liberal . Donald Trump is a REAL New Yorker  and he has started the transition of from the age of Cowardice , to a new rebirth of America.  Perhaps he is much like Teddy Roosevelt  who many view as a “progressive” busting trusts and economic monopolies  ,now Trump will bust political monopolies of cowardice, failure , political correctness, insecurity and blatant stupidity.