- Reply to three "patriotic" articles (see
them below) against the Occupy Movement...
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- Put me down as one who believes we would have more abundance
without the capitalist system. I am one fo the few who knows that without
the capitalist system we could have a consumer driven market system that
elevates the household and makes the government the serving tool of the
people where entrepreneurship in non-corporation single proptrietorship
and partnership businesses can start up and keep going under the good system
of profit or loss not hollowed out and collapsed by the use of usury based
money that only comes as loans and always goes away as principal dragging
compound interest with it. The money to pay the interest is never provided
and so the people must turn over to the finance in bankruptcy or distress
sales all that they have produced. That is where the big debt comes from,
that is why Americans have lost there businesses, homes and farms and the
government it utilities and why we live under tax slavery which is only
part of the larger picture of debt slavery.
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- I am angered and the willful absymal ingornace
beneith all of the self-righteousness and these glittering but sterile
generalities of the Austrain Schoolers and conservatives who will not look
at the beam in their own eye.
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- Here are three choice examples of this stupidy -- and
you will condemn me for opposing the empty praise of the capitalist system
and despise me for showing the devil in the details - or accuse me of
serving the devil by what I say. And of course there is no chance those
who sent these to enlighten me would ever send my reply back upstream --
not that it would be ever answered if it reached there - it would not.
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- Did it ever occur to the that the man the defenders of
systems that are gone wrong in ways that make some people very rich and everyone
else very poor never answer or even acknowledge the existence of the
man who really understands the economy's plumbing and how to fix it.
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- The Austrian Economists who know that unanswerable criticisms
of their system are out there but refuse to acknowledge them -- lacking
the courage and resolution to speak the truth and not bury valid criticisms
which point up causes of, and provide remedy for, the depredations of
the usury enslaved economy.
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- By the way, I think the Occupy movement is equally vacuous
-- the way they blame "greed" -- which is a pseudo explanation
for criminal behavior -- completely empty. Arrest the CEOs and you have
done nothing. You can't remedy the problems of the world by arresting
all the bad people. You must change the incentive system, you must break
up the crooked rigged gaming table and substitute a system without its
flaws -- and I have yet to see one person in the occupy movement shown
on TV who has a clue of why the system is failing us. All I hear is "greed"
or "paper money" as the cause of our problems, with occasionally
remarks about corporations (but what about them???) and "profits"
-- but never "interest" -- and lots of talk about debt, but
only in terms of greed.
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- A revolution against greed is bound to fail --
as is a war on illegal drugs that focuses on how bad cravings are.
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- Dick Eastman
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- ----- Original Message -----
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- Occupy Wall Street Protesters Blind To Benefits Of
Capitalism
- Would You Rather Be King of England In
1263 Or Now?
- By Gary Wolfram
- Professor of Economis - Hillsdale College
- 11-19-11
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- The Wall Street protesters, in their hatred of capitalism,
overlook things including the fact that over the last 100 years capitalism
has reduced poverty more and increased life expectancy more than in the
100,000 years prior.
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- Every semester I ask my students: "What would
you rather be? King of England in 1263 or you?" Turns out, students
would rather be themselves.
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- They enjoy using their iPhone, indoor plumbing, central
heating, refrigerators and electric lighting. All of these things are
available to the average person in America today and none of them were
available to the aristocracy when the West operated under the feudal system.
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- How is it that for thousands of years mankind made
very little progress in increasing the standard of living and yet today
half of the goods and services you use in the next week did not exist
when I was born? It wasn't that there was some change in the DNA such
that we got smarter. The Greeks knew how to make a steam engine 3,000
years ago and never made one. The difference is in how we organize our
economic system. The advent of market capitalism in the mid 18th century
made all of the difference.
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- We need not just rely on historical data. Look
at cross-section evidence. I try another experiment with my students.
I tell them they are about to be born and they can choose whatever country
in the world they would like to be born in. The only caveat is they will
be the poorest person in that country.
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- Every student picks a country that is primarily
organized in a market capitalist system. No one picks a centrally planned
state. No one says, "I want to be the poorest person in North Korea,
Cuba, or Zimbabwe," countries which are at the bottom of the Heritage
Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom.
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- What does it mean to be poor in our capitalist society
that the Occupy Wall Street crowd so hates? Robert Rector of the
Heritage Foundation has several studies of those classified as poor by
the U.S. Census Bureau. He found that 80 percent of poor persons in the
United States in 2010 had air conditioning, nearly three quarters of them
had a car or truck, nearly two-thirds had satellite or cable television,
halfhad a personal computer and more than two-thirds had at least two roomsper
person.
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- Contrast this with what it means to be poor in Mumbai,
India, acountry that is moving rapidly towards market capitalism but was
burdenedfor decades with a socialist system. A recent story in The Economistdescribed
Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, where for many families half of the family
members must sleep on their sides in order for the entire family to squeeze
into its living space.
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- The Occupy Wall Street movement has shown a lack
of understanding of how the market capitalist system works. They appear
to
- think that the cell phones they use, food they eat, hotels
they stay in, cars they drive, gasoline that powers the cars they drive
and all the myriad goods and services they consume every day would be
there under a different system, perhaps in more abundance.
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- But there is no evidence this could be or ever has
been the case.
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- The reason is that only market capitalism solves the
two major problemsthat face any economy -- how to provide an incentive
to innovate and howto solve the problem of decentralized information.
The reason there isso much innovation in a market system compared to socialism
or otherforms of central planning is that profit provides the incentive
forinnovators to take the risk needed to come up with new products.
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- My mother never once complained that we did not have
access to thelatest Soviet washing machine. We never desired a new Soviet
car. Thesocialist system relies on what Adam Smith referred to as the
benevolentbutcher and while there will undoubtedly be benevolent butchers
outthere, clearly a system that provides monetary rewards for innovators
ismuch more dynamic and successful.
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- The profit that the Occupy Wall Streetprotesters decry
is the reason the world has access to clean water andanti-viral drugs.
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- The other major problem that must be solved by any economic
system is how to deal with the fact that information is so decentralized.
There isno way for a central planner to know how many hot dogs 300 million
Americans are going to want at every moment in time. A central plannercannot
know the relative value of resources in the production of variousgoods
and services.
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- Market capitalism solves that problem through the
price system. If there are too few hot dogs, the price of hot dogs will
rise and more hot dogs will be produced. If too many hot dogs are produced,
the price of hot dogs will fall and fewer will be produced.
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- Market capitalism is the key to the wealth of the
masses. As Ludwigvon Mises wrote in his 1920 book, Socialism, only market
capitalism canmake the poor wealthy. Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek in
his famous 1945paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, showed that only
the price systemin capitalism can create the spontaneous order that ensures
that goodswill be allocated in a way that ensures consumers determine the
use ofresources.
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- The Occupy Wall Street movement would make best use
of its time and energy in protesting the encroachment of the centrally
planned state that led to the disaster of the Soviet Union, fascist Germany,
and dictatorial North Korea.
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- Some Belated Parental Advice To Protesters
- By Marybeth Hicks
- Washington Times Columnist
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- Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look
at the Occupy WallStreet protesters without thinking, "Who parented
these people?"
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- As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social
and politicalramifications of the "movement", now known as "OWS",
whose fairylandagenda can be summarized by one of their placards: "Everything
foreverybody."
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- Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there
are people withserious designs on "transformational" change in
America who are misusingthe protesters.
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- Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts myparenting
question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teensand young
adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly
have not passed along.
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- Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers
should havetaught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:
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- *Life isn't fair. The concept of justice that everyone
should betreated fairly is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on
which ournation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not
the same.
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- Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what
you want. "No matterhow you try to "level the playing field,"
some people have better luck,skills, talents or connections that land them
in better places. Someseem to have all the advantages in life but squander
them, others playthe modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference
in hard work andperseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually
buy housesin the Hamptons. Is it fair?
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- Stupid question.
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- *Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs
that seek "free" collegedegrees and "free" health care
make you look like idiots, becausecolleges and hospitals don't operate
on rainbows and sunshine. There isno magic money machine to tap for your
meandering educational careers and"slow paths" to adulthood,
and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans oweyou neither a degree nor an
annual physical.
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- While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are
a few other thingsthat are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal
workers,trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids
andthe food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest
kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting yourcivic temper
tantrum.
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- *Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to
eliminate studentloan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity
you decryin others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them.
Noone forces you to borrow money. You are free to choose educationalpursuits
that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocationaltraining that
allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educationalgoals.
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- Also, for the record, being a college student is not
a state ofvictimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people
around theglobe would die for -- literally.
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- *A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York,
while making amad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you,
I saw whatisn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations:
Most ofyou are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people
in a soberpursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down
Sixth Avenuelike attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish,
you smellgross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that
all aroundyou are people who deem you irrelevant.
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- *There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth?
Your tattooednecks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks
areoff-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue.
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- Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are
out of work. Ifyou are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face
the problem. It's not them -- it's you.
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- Grey-Haired Brigade
- By Anonymous. Grey-Haired Brigade Member
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- They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies,
geezers, and in some cases, dinosaurs. Some of us are "Baby Boomers"
getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk
a little slower these days and our eyes and hearing are not what they once
were
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- We have worked hard, raised our children, worshiped our
God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being
over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely,
there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration.
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- In school, we studied English, history, math, and science
which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. Most of us
remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience. We
remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25 cent gasoline, and milk
and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don't know what
an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators.
A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived
those days.
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- We are probably considered old fashioned and out-dated
by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely
writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Viet Nam. We can
quote The Pledge of Allegiance, and know where to place our hand while
doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends
on the battlefield. We didn't fight for the Socialist States of America;
we fought for the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave."
We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag. We know the words
to the Star Spangled Banner, America, and America the Beautiful by heart
and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We
have lived what many of you have only read about in history books and we
feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America.
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- Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured,
we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country,
fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is
our country and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths
to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is
an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land
we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain
silent.
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- It was the young people of this nation who elected Obama
and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the "Hope and Change"
which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies." You have tasted
socialism and seen evil face to face, and have found you don't like it
after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in
their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved
in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell
for the "Great Lie" in 2008 are now having buyer's remorse. With
all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through
the lies and instead drank the 'Cool-Aid.' Now you're paying the price
and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less
freedom. This is what you voted for and this is what you got. We entrusted
you with the Torch of Liberty and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy
house.
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- Well, don't worry youngsters, the Grey Haired Brigade
is here, and in 2012 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive
a little slower than you would like but we get where we're going, and in
2012 we're going to the polls by the millions. This land does not belong
to the man in the White House or to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry
Reid. It belongs to "We the People" and "We the People"
plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do
a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren.
So the next time you have the chance to recite the Pledge of Allegiance,
Stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God
for the old geezers of the "Grey-Haired Brigade."
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- ~ Author, Anonymous. Grey-Haired Brigade Member
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