My Beauty Best Teacher

Today I read a great article in National Affairs called "Capitalism After the Crisis." It discusses what is happening to the idea of capitalism after the recent economic crisis, and makes some very important points. One of the most important ideas is that the idea of capitalism is dying today, but not because of it's failures, but instead because we are turning away from capitalism:

When the government is small and relatively weak, the way to make money is to start a successful private-sector business. But the larger the size and scope of government spending, the easier it is to make money by diverting public resources. Starting a business is difficult and involves a lot of risk — but getting a government favor or contract is easier, and a much safer bet. And so in nations with large and powerful governments, the state tends to find itself at the heart of the economic system, even if that system is relatively capitalist. This tends to confound politics and economics, both in practice and in public perceptions: The larger the share of capitalists who acquire their wealth thanks to their political connections, the greater the perception that capitalism is unfair and corrupt.

Under Democratic-control and influence, America is increasingly becoming less a company where your fortunes are defined by what you do, and is increasingly becoming a nation of who you know- who your political connections are, who is giving you grants of taxpayer money, who your parents are, etc. If you have a million dollars now, the best way to turn it into two million is not to work harder and develop a better product- it is to lobby government to have government help protect your product from competition, or to give you a government contract, or to help you in some other way. Our nation is becoming corrupt under Democrats and corruptible Republicans.

Think about what is going on today, especially in the debates regarding healthcare and energy. Supporters of government control of these areas of the economy talk about all the failures of these 'private capitalist systems'- but over the past decades, energy production and healthcare have become amoung the most non-private non-capitalist systems in our economy. The soda-pop market or movie business does not have the same problems as transportation, energy, healthcare, etc- and the difference is not that these problem areas are more capitalist, it is that they are less capitalist.

The problem with healthcare is not not enough government, it is too much government. The problem with energy is not not enough government, it is too much government. The problem with transportation is not not enough government, it is too much government. The problem with education is not not enough government, it is too much government.

The sad thing is, America might have turned the corner towards statism and corruption, and what once made us exceptional may have been lost forever:

Once economic and political systems are built to reward relationships instead of efficiency, it is very difficult to reform them, since the people in power are the ones who would lose most in the change.

One way to possibly make America exceptional again is to remember how we got here. When your children read stories or watch movies, what sort do they read or watch?

The image many Americans have of capitalism is therefore that of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches-via-hard-work stories, which have come to define the American Dream. By contrast, in most of the rest of the world, Horatio Alger is unknown — and the image of social mobility is dominated by Cinderella or Evita stories: fantasies more than plausible dreams.

Are your children taught to win the government lottery? To win riches by being a professional athlete? To go to Hollywood and star in movies? To marry someone rich? Or are you teaching your children that the way to success in life is hard work and a good attitude? And is our society still reinforcing those teachings by rewarding hard work and a good attitude more so than luck and connections?

Read the whole article- I'm only pulling from a tiny portion of it, but the whole thing is indeed a good read.

Last week on Frank Beckman's show on WJR 760AM, Frank asked Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-11) if he thought that Obama was engaging in Cloward-Piven Strategy. This question surprised and intrigued me. I wrote about the Cloward-Piven Strategy before (see post Cloward-Piven Strategy), but for those of you who are sadly not frequent readers of my blog, I'll explain it to you now.

The strategy is called the Cloward-Piven Strategy after a pair of radical socialist professors from the 60's who came up with it. The idea is to purposefully create a series of crisis, each one of which will then be blamed on capitalism, de-regulation, low taxes, free markets, etc. After the crisis is at its peak and conservative ideals have been successfully blamed, you then advance a solution for the crisis- a solution to put in place a more socialist, state-run, liberal society. This solution will not make society better, but will instead create more crisis, which you then in turn blame on conservative ideas, and advance more solutions that are liberal. Eventually, the state will take over every aspect of our lives and run our society as a radical socialist utopia.

When I first suggested that the national Democrats were engaging in this policy back in 2008, I was drawing on my long experience watching Democrats in Michigan, particularly Detroit. In our state, Democrats put in place their liberal ideas, they backfire, and we get more liberal ideas, which backfire, leading to more liberal ideas, and eventually, you get Detroit (dominated by liberal Democrats for over 40 years) and to a lesser degree Michigan (dominated by liberal Democrats for almost 8 years). I figured that the series of crisis which followed the Democrats regaining control of Congress in 2006 were not due to bad ideas, incompetence, or just plain stupidity, but due to an organized and concentrated plot to create crisis so that that you could then advance liberal solutions.

For example, this current healthcare bill is not just an idiotic attempt to destroy our nation out of a foolish and misguided attempt to make things better, but a grand conspiracy to actually create a crisis in the healthcare system by putting in place laws and regulations that will lead to higher costs and lower coverage and benefits, and the response then will be an even bigger and stronger healthcare bill (which will then create an even worse situation, like we see in Canada, which will then lead to calls for more government, etc, until government controls everything).

In other words, the Democrats are purposefully overloading the system in an attempt to collapse it- adding more regulations and laws and taxes to our capitalist free-market system so that people will then think that the capitalist free-market system is failing, where in reality it is the very liberal policies that are creating the crisis.

In his interview, Frank Beckman suggested that the Democrats were engaging in this policy. Congressman McCotter disagreed.

McCotter thinks that it isn't an intelligent conspiracy of not letting any crisis go to waste to put in place more government, but rather just plain out liberal elitism and incompetence. He thinks that it is instead simply a selfish desire to create permanent dependent constituencies that will then vote Democrat, who will then distribute benefits to them. It isn't 1984, but rather more like the People's Republic of Haven (from the Honorverse). He makes a good argument, as most liberals that I have come across are really not evil manipulative people, but rather idiots and fools who lack an understanding of people, history, economics, and policy.

It does bear watching though if the pattern laid out in the Cloward-Piven Strategy holds true- if we get another crisis followed by more government control which leads to another crisis and more government control, etc. Keep your eyes on it- we have one more year of Democrats running the show in Congress, and they are sure to create more crisis in our society, either through an orchestrated strategy or incompetence, and keep your eyes out for the resulting 'the market failed' rhetoric and the 'more government is the solution' rhetoric that will follow.

P. Kalonga Stambuli wrote in 1997 about challenges that still ring true today:

“African Capitalist States” are facing large difficulties associated with downsizing of government. The end of subsidization of enterprises means that disguised unemployment is manifesting itself into widespread joblessness. The government is continually challenged as political activists and interest groups fiercely oppose many of these measures. The alternative of reversing these measures means that budget deficits re-emerge and government remains in the vicious circle of stabilizing the economy in the face of declining foreign aid resources...
The conditions observed in Africa's past are consistent with “state hegemony” a subtle form of economic tyranny that enables the state to present its own interests as universal while marginalizing those sectors of society that offer competition. Africa's state hegemony was legitimized by subsidies, artificially low product prices, low interest rates, and over-valued exchange rates, but at the cost of large budget deficits, high level of seignorage, high inflation, rapid accumulation of domestic and external debt, weak factor markets, crowding out of credit and macro instabilities that undermine private enterprise.

This current healthcare debate is not at all difficult to understand- it is a standard debate between freedom and tyranny. In one corner, there are conservatives and Republicans who are advocating a capitalist health care system where market forces are unleashed and people can freely choose what insurance they get and what treatments they want to receive. In other other corner, there are communists and Democrats who are advocating a state-run health care system where the state makes more decisions and puts in place bureaucrats who will make decisions about what sort of insurance or treatments that people get.

The details of this debate are not that important. If this seems as if it is simplifying the situation, then it is- the situation is simple. The only way to cut costs and make health insurance more affordable is to make it more capitalist and more free. If the system is made more communist and less free, than costs will go up and insurance will be less affordable. The current failures in the system stem from the state, and thus the state is the problem, not the solution.

At the center of this health care debate are several deeper ideas. One idea that is debated is the nature of the system. Is it the best in the world, covering almost everyone who wants to be covered, and providing unmatched service and quality? Or is it a broken system, in a crisis, needing a radical change? What is the reality of the situation?

Another idea at the center of this debate is whether people will turn down medical treatments and willingly not seek out more and more expensive cures and drugs in an 'enlightened' attempt to keep costs down for all society. Listening to liberals and Democrats talk about health care, they reject the nature of man and pretend that man can transcend to heaven and will willingly give up freedom, liberty, wants, and desires in order to keep the costs on the system down. Many liberals feel that society's needs come before individual's needs, just like Hitler did (that's a quote from Hitler). But this is not reality- the absolute truth is that man operates on the principle of enlightened self-interest, and will not willingly surrender freedom, property, and choices, and so the power of the state will be used to make him do these things unwillingly.

Think about what the Democrats in Congress want to do with the healthcare system. Do they want to free it, remove barriers to commerce, limit lawsuits from lawyers on businessman, let trade operate freely across borders, and lessen regulations and rules on doctors and insurance companies? Or do they wish to shackle commerce, control it, limit it, and regulate it? James Madison said that commercial shackles are unjust, oppressive, and impolitic, and I agree with him- the Democrats agenda is not the agenda for America, and the details to their bills only reinforce this central fact.

After the Democrats pass Obama's healthcare plan and Pelosi's cap and trade scheme, ask yourself whether you can still freely make your own decisions any more. Do you control your won destiny anymore? Do you command yourself- do you decide what you want to do and what you don't want to do? Or does someone else command you now- does someone else make decisions for you? Democrats, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and all the others are working to make you less free- Pythagoras wrote that no man is free who cannot command himself.

This healthcare argument may seem complicated and overwhelming, but don't let it be. Trust yourself. Trust your morals, knowledge, and logic. You know in your heart and mind that Obama is wrong, that the Democrats plan for our country is wrong, and that liberalism doesn't work. Don't get confused by details or sucked into claims of racism, nazism, or personal attacks. Just stick to the truth, and you'll come through this okay.

This post drew for inspiration on a powerpoint presentation put together by the Constructive Curmudgeon called The Moral Basis of Capitalism. Thank you.

Tomas Brandberg and Nima Sanandaji write:

Africa's real problem is the lack of private investment. According to the OECD, private capital flows to developing countries between 1990-97 exceeded $600 billion. However, only $10 billion of this amount went to sub-Saharan Africa of which $9 billion went to South Africa.
Africa is poor because most countries in the region lack the fundamental elements of a capitalist system: property rights, free markets, free trade and the rule of law. Africans are like everybody else, and ideas that did not work in China, North Korea and the Soviet Union will not work in Africa either. The blame for the present situation in Africa does not lie with capitalists. It lies with corrupt politicians, who have implemented bad economic policies, together with leftist intellectuals who convinced African politicians to implement anti-capitalist economic policies. The west is also responsible, by enforcing trade barriers. It is ironic that anti-globalization movements are frequently opposed to abolishing tariffs and import quotas.

via TCS

Via theblogprof I found this video of Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) questioning the Department of Energy's commitment to protecting consumer choice during consideration of Appliance/Light Bulb Energy-Efficiency Legislation. One word that he brings up several times and which I believe increasingly characterizes the liberal leftists who have seized control of the modern Democratic Party is hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie. Hypocrisy is not simply failing to practice those virtues that one preaches- perhaps one advocates or preaches certain virtues but is unable to obtain those due to lack of self-control or strength or temperament- but rather, hypocrisy is play-acting or pretending to be something which you are not.

Let us be clear- a conservative cheating on his wife while preaching conservative values is wrong but is not a hypocrite, provided he recognized that he is weak and lacked strength or self-control. But a conservative who cheats on his wife but really doesn't think that it was wrong and yet then preaches conservative values, knowing that they are incompatible with his views, is a hypocrite.

Although the right and conservatives are not immune from hypocrisy, I believe it is found more so on the left and in liberals because increasingly they are the ones who are denying the truths of the situation and are employing double-speak to advocate for their political values. A good old-fashioned communist really believed in wealth-redistribution and the evils of capitalist pigs; a modern day liberal talks about 'spreading the wealth' and 'enhancing revenue on top earners'. A modern day liberal speaks of being pro-choice, but does not allow the baby to choose and doesn't support letting people choose their light-bulbs, toilets, or energy sources. A modern day liberal talks about and preaches being environmentally friendly, yet video after video demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that when liberals gather together, they trash the environment with their 'green concerts' or 'pro-union rallies'. Liberals tell us to do as they say but not as they do- but they see no problem in this because they truly do not believe in what they are saying so have no guilt or remorse about telling us to do things which they do not do. A liberal can give a press conference about how he has expanded energy production, all the time knowing that he has not and is actually working to lower energy production, because he believes that lying is okay because there is no real truths in the world. Of course examples can be found of conservatives being hypocrites, but the Democratic party today is increasingly a party filled with unbelievable hypocrisy.

Here is the video of Senator Paul exposing the hypocrisy of one of Obama's officials...

In my post Crony Capitalism Booming Under Obama Rule in February of 2010, I wrote:

One of my biggest fears about the Obama administration is not that it is liberal and not that it is communist, but rather that it is the beginning of a renaissance of National Socialism. One of the common misconceptions that people have about National Socialism is that it was against big business, or that big business opposed it. Free markets oppose national socialism, and individuals oppose national socialism, but Big Business, threatened by government, does the logical thing, and joins in. National socialism leads to an alliance of Big Business, which enjoys government protection against challenges to its market share and in exchange transforms itself into a tool of government control over the economy. Top executives and lobbyists do very well under a National Socialist regime, while the people suffer.

At the time, I was responding to a post that I found on powerlineblog called Crony Capitalism, which itself was a response to the article from Michael Barone called: "Under Obama, crony capitalism again rules the day."

That was several months ago now, and with the passage of time, we can re-evaluate my thesis- that the Obama administration is putting place a version of fascism that you can nicely called Crony Capitalism or State Capitalism, whereby the government subverts the free market for the good of the 'state' and makes alliances with Big Business to crush smaller companies through regulation and taxation.

Gregory Scoblete updates the situation with his article Will Free Markets Give Way to State Capitalism:

State capitalism, Bremmer writes, "is a system in which the state dominates markets primarily for political gain." From state-owned corporations operating in strategic industries like natural resources or defense, to enormous sovereign wealth funds in the hands of autocrats with opaque operating principles, state capitalism has enabled the world's autocratic states to reap the benefits of capitalist enterprise while maintaining a vice-grip on political freedom.

In Bremmer's telling, the world's autocratic states learned a valuable lesson from the implosion of the Soviet Union: command economies do not work and when they fail, they can bring down the over-arching political system with them. They also watched the post Soviet experiment in crash liberalization with horror. To protect their hides and preserve their privilege, autocratic rulers in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have created a "hybrid" system that leverages many of the tools of capitalism to generate wealth while the heavy hand of the state ensures that wealth is put to the service of the elites and rulers of each country.

Here in America, we have a ruler who wants us to emulate China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia- he wants to create a 'hybrid system' here where the fascist state can leverage capitalism for the good of the all-powerful state through the heavy hand of a tyrannical government. I'd love to sugar coat this, but the evidence is piling up that this is his intention.

Last week our school had an assembly that was put on by the Family Independence Agency. You wouldn't think that a government agency would be openly promoting liberal ideas in a school, but you'd be surprised at how your taxpayer money is being used.

The speaker was a very nice African-American woman, and she started by describing all the good and wonderful things that the agency does in our society. The way that she described it, you really felt like the FIA was very productive- if only it had more money. The FIA provides help for people, who students are told, need this help because they have problems at home, are given a poor education, or are otherwise victims of this evil capitalist society that we live in. The FIA, according to this speaker, does not think that a single poor person is that way due to their own responsibility. After hearing this spin, students heard from another African-American speaker who encouraged the students to write their Congressmen to ask for more money for the FIA to distribute to these poor poor people.

Two things stood out about this required assembly, and apparently they only bothered me, for most of the students and staff were enthusiastically nodding along. The first thing that bothered me was that the presenter never once mentioned the cost of these programs. Every program was presented as a great thing- with no cost. The students are being taught on a fundamental level that government can provide all these great things to people, and to just not even think about the cost or the downsides of this government intervention into our private society.

The second thing that bothered me about this presentation by the FIA was that the students were hit with a very strong leftist slant of welfare- that it isn’t those people’s fault, that they don't have to accept any responsibility, and instead it is someone else who is at fault for their condition. This idea removes the personal responsibility from the welfare recipients- likely these people had some bad luck strike them, and I feel bad- but I think that you pick your own self up by your own bootstraps and get moving. Students are being not being taught this- instead, they are taught to rely on the state.

The good thing is that during these assemblies, students’ faces assume a vacant stare- they are not interested in this stuff and so mentally shut down, or it is even possible that they are so used to this liberal slant that they shut down mentally and thereby reject it.

Listening to the radio today, I realized that Obama is the savior, and I know how he will be the savior. Victor Davis Hanson has a good article about how everything will suddenly change, but the change in perceptions is only half of it.

All the campaign talk of the Great Depression, a Vietnam-like war, and our shredded Constitution will now thankfully subside as the Obama administration assumes office and solves problems with conciliation, dialogue, and multilateral wisdom, rather than shrillness, unilateralism, preemption, and my-way-or-the-highway dogmatism. We will hear that, by historical levels, unemployment is still not that bad, that GDP growth is not historically all that low, and that deficits, inflation, interest rates, and housing starts are all within manageable parameters. "Depression" will transmogrify into "recession" which in turn by July will be a "downturn". Indeed, almost supernaturally crises will be solved with the departure of the hated Bush.

But this will only be half of it. The country will revive, in a fake way that will be very bad in the long run for our country, as Obama burns through the rest of 350 billion dollars 'stimulating' the economy, and then spends another trillion dollars on top of that. The amount of money boggles the mind, and the expenditures of the Obama administration will dwarf any amount of money ever spent by any government ever in the history of the world. This will revive America.

But at what cost? America can not afford annual deficits of a trillion dollars. Inflation will set in. Savings will be eaten away. Obama is the perfect President for our day, because he represents the recent failures- over leveraging of resources, fake gains, using politics to disguise unprofitably, and turning our economy from a capitalist one to a fascist one. Those are the problems that led to the recent crisis, and the man we elected President is not the cure of these- he is these. He promises more of what got us into our current situation.

America will be worse off after his administration, mark my words. There will be reasons, and blame, and all that- I've been living in Michigan where we have been sucking ever since we put Democrats in power, but it's somehow not their fault- but America will be worse off. I only hope he will not destroy our great nation in 'saving' it.

Jeremy Cronin writes in Pambazuka News:

"We are told, for instance, that ‘land reform’(in Zimbabwe) did not succeed because the British failed to meet their financial obligations as agreed in the Lancaster House negotiations. But what kind of heroic anti-imperialist liberation movement is this? Can you imagine the Cubans arguing two decades after their revolutionary breakthrough that they had not implemented land reform because the US refused to subsidise it? President Mugabe’s demagogic ‘anti-imperialism’ is not an anti-imperialism that seeks to defend the interests of the peasantry, the workers (insofar as any remain employed) and the progressive professional and middle strata of Zimbabwe’s society (and indeed of our region). It is a pseudo anti-imperialism that seeks to defend the narrow interests of a rentier capitalist elite within Zanu-PF and the upper echelons of the state. It is a stratum that is entirely parasitic on state power. State power is used to pillage for the purposes of primitive accumulation. And remember, much of the recent socio-economic crisis in Zimbabwe dates back to the pillaging ‘peace mission’ to the DRC in the mid-1990s, which ended in bankruptcy and defeat for a once professional and proud Zimbabwean army."

Ah, to go undercover and explore the heart of that evil capitalist enterprise, Wal-Mart. The very symbol of what makes America bad, right? Charles Platt did go undercover at Wal-Mart, and has some pretty surprising insights in his article. To be honest, this was one of the most intesting things I've read in a while. I've pulled out the best pieces- the full article is much better- seriously, check out the full article here:

The company is rebuked and reviled by anyone claiming a social conscience, and is lambasted by legislators as if its bad behavior places it somewhere between investment bankers and the Taliban.

Considering this is a company that is helping families ride out the economic downturn, which is providing jobs and stimulus while Congress bickers, which had sales growth of 2% this last quarter while other companies struggled, you have to wonder why. At least, I wondered why. And in that spirit of curiosity, I applied for an entry-level position at my local Wal-Mart.

Getting hired turned out to be a challenge. The personnel manager told me she had received more than 100 applications during that month alone, chasing just a handful of jobs. Thus the mystery deepened. If Wal-Mart was such an exploiter of the working poor, why were the working poor so eager to be exploited? And after they were hired, why did they seem so happy to be there? Anytime I shopped at the store, blue-clad Walmartians encouraged me to "Have a nice day" with the sincerity of the pope issuing a benediction.

I was called in for an interview. I sat at a table that was covered in untrimmed fabric under a protective layer of sticky transparent vinyl, like a couch cover. I'd seen better-looking decor at firehouse bingo evenings. Was Wal-Mart going out of its way to emphasize its commitment to cost-cutting? I guessed that the utilitarian ethic was so deeply embedded, it was just taken for granted.

A friendly lady in her 50s, wearing the Wal-Mart Smile, sat opposite me and started asking questions from a printed form. I managed to satisfy her expectations, and then went through two additional interviews, followed by a drug test, before I received formal approval. It may have been one of the most intense hiring processes I've been through; hardly the schedule of a company that didn't care who it hired, or employees who didn't care about getting a job.

A week later, I found myself in an elite group of 10 successful applicants convening for two (paid) days of training in the same claustrophobic, windowless room. As we introduced ourselves, I discovered that more than half had already worked at other Wal-Marts. Having relocated to this area, they were eager for more of the same.

Why? Gradually the answer became clear. Imagine that you are young and relatively unskilled, lacking academic qualifications. Which would you prefer: standing behind the register at a local gas station, or doing the same thing in the most aggressively successful retailer in the world, where ruthless expansion is a way of life, creating a constant demand for people to fill low-level managerial positions? A future at Wal-Mart may sound a less-than-stellar prospect, but it's a whole lot better than no future at all.

In addition, despite its huge size, the corporation turned out to have an eerie resemblance to a Silicon Valley startup. There was the same gung-ho spirit, same lack of dogma, same lax dress code, same informality - and same interest in owning a piece of the company. All of my coworkers accepted the offer to buy Wal-Mart stock by setting aside $2 of every paycheck.We were given only a handful of outright prohibitions. No swearing in the store, for instance - not even the word "damn," because some people might be offended. No funny-colored hair or blatant skin piercings, because some people might be offended. In fact almost all the rules devolved to the sacred principle of never, ever offending a customer - or "guest," in Wal-Mart terminology.

The reason was clearly articulated. On average, anyone walking into Wal-Mart is likely to spend more than $200,000 at the store during the rest of his life. Therefore, any clueless employee who alienates that customer will cost the store around a quarter-million dollars. "If we don't remember that our customers are in charge," our trainer warned us, "we turn into Kmart." She made that sound like devolving into some lesser being - a toad, maybe, or an ameba.

And so we came to the Wal-Mart Pledge. Solemnly, each of us raised one hand and intoned: "If a customer comes within 10 feet of me, I'm going to look him in the eye, smile and greet him." Having pledged ourselves, we encountered the aspect of Wal-Mart employment that impressed me most: The Telxon, ronounced "Telzon," a hand-held bar-code scanner with a wireless connection to the store's computer. When pointed at any product, the Telxon would reveal astonishing amounts of information: the quantity that should be on the shelf, the availability from the nearest warehouse, the retail price, and (most amazing of all) the markup.

All of us were given access to this information, because - in theory, at least - anyone in the store could order a couple extra pallets of anything, and could discount it heavily as a Volume Producing Item (known as a VPI), competing with other departments to rack up the most profitable sales each month. Floor clerks even had portable equipment to print their own price stickers. This was how Wal-Mart detected demand and responded to it: by distributing decision-making power to grass-roots level. It was as simple yet as radical as that.

We received an inspirational talk on this subject, from an employee who reacted after the store test-marketed tents that could protect cars for people who didn't have enough garage space. He was invited to corporate HQ as a guest at a management conference. "It was totally different from what I expected," he told us. "I thought it would be these fatcats talking about money, but no one even mentioned money. All they cared about was finding new ways to satisfy customers. I met everyone including the chairman of the company."

My supervisor reminded me unfailingly to take my mandatory two (paid) quarter-hour breaks during each eight hours of working time. I was cautioned never to abbreviate my lunch hour. Most of all I was encouraged to educate myself using instructional videos on computer terminals at the back of the store.

These videos served Wal-Mart's self-interest by teaching skills ranging from customer service to the art of lifting heavy boxes without hurting your back. I was paid to view them, and was rewarded with an increased hourly rate when I finished the course.

In our free-enterprise system, employees are valued largely in terms of what they can do. This is why teenagers fresh out of high school often go to vocational training institutes to become auto mechanics or electricians. They understand a basic principle that seems to elude social commentators, politicians and union organizers. If you want better pay, you need to learn skills that are in demand.

The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don't create an equal amount of additional value, there's no net gain. All other factors remaining equal, the store will have to charge higher prices for its merchandise, and its competitive position will suffer.

To my mind, the real scandal is not that a large corporation doesn't pay people more. The scandal is that so many people have so little economic value. Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills. So why would anyone expect them to be well paid?

Based on my experience (admittedly, only at one location) I reached a conclusion which is utterly opposed to almost everything ever written about Wal-Mart. I came to regard it as one of the all-time enlightened American employers, right up there with IBM in the 1960s. Wal-Mart is not the enemy. It's the best friend we could ask for.

Anthony Hawkins writes in the Spectator:

South Africa’s political risk and investment ratings have taken a severe knock since Zuma won a stunning victory at the ruling African National Congress’s December 2007 conference in Polokwane. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that in the succeeding five months, the president-to-be should have been at such pains to dispel his anti-capitalist, populist image, not just by insisting on the reasonableness of his future administration’s economic policies, but by seeking to put Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, in his place...[continue reading]

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In 3QuarksDaily Aditya Dev Sood writes about India's 'Mela Economy'...analogues of our Jua Kali's,Nnewi's ,Suame Magazine's and other under recognized informal networks? :

In the absence of malls and supermarkets, and given the diffuse distribution of the population in the countryside, a system of local weekly markets operates, which cycles through the countryside, so that on any given day you might be able to find a local market less than five kilometers away. You might go there to buy groceries or staples or fuel or essential tools and supplies, but you might also go to sell what was cooking or pickling or spinning or weaving or otherwise in preparation within the house. Most of the buyers at such santhey-s or haat-s or peth-s or similar weekly local markets might at the same time or on other days be sellers. The relationship between buyers and sellers is direct, and in principle at least, reversible. Through the propagation of the charkha, the manual spinning wheel, Gandhi's social philosophy expressly enjoined all of us users to also be creators of value. The village market and Gandhian economy, therefore, follows a decentralized peer-to-peer model, the very antithesis of the modern retail chain, and of late capitalist consumerism in general.

Mela-s are more festive, extensive and intensified versions of local markets, conducted to an annual rather than weekly calendar, often in alignment with harvest cycles. The people must have something to trade and something to trade with, for there to be a reason for a mela. The form of the mela seems to promote a kind of critical regionalism, similar to the wine concept of terroir: the kinds and varieties of goods available can be known on the basis of where they are from, the special techniques were employed in the creation, and the distinctive natural materials of which they are constituted.

More here
Image courtesy Times of India and Global Economy

Tunde Obadina writes about the myth of Neo-colonialism "...I do not know how economic non-rationality can possibly result in development, which occurs in the material world and not the spiritual domain. Development is not abstract art, where any combination of brush strokes and colours can pass as a completed picture. What we have seen in Africa is a tragedy in which intellectual opposition to the West has prevented African thinkers from developing a coherent ideology for change. Ironically, in its penchant to criticise colonialism and defend the integrity of traditional African society, African political and economic thought has been trapped by its own myths.
The search for an alternative model continues, but it is unlikely that one will be found. It is an uncomfortable truth that if the objective is to improve the material conditions of the people, then most of the institutions and values introduced into Africa during colonialism are more conducive to modernisation than are many traditional ones. Modern institutions and principles such as representative democracy, judiciary, banking, factories, provide more effective means for meeting the new desires of Africans than what existed in pre-colonial societies. Every society, whether capitalist or socialist, that has developed has used the same set of institutions. What differentiate modern societies are the ethics and rules applied in the operation of the institutions. Leaving aside variances in ideology and cultural style, there is a single modern civilisation in the world..."

via Africa Economic Analysis

Simon Johnson from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Peter Boone from the London School of Economics predict that the world is close to inflating its final economic bubble. After this bubble bursts, the world will plunge into a long and lasting depression that we haven't seen in many centuries. The end is near, they claim, because interest rates are near zero all around the world and cutting interest rates was our best weapon to fend off collapse.

According to them, the US financial system has tripled in size over the last three decades, and each time it has gotten into trouble, the Federal Reserve would jump in and slash interest rates down to revive it. The problem is that the crises appear to be getting worse and worse, their impact is increasingly global, and interest rates around the world has been slashed already to zero. The economy is not reviving, the debt is piling up, and many countries around the world are on final trajectories to economic collapse.

According to these economists, what brought us to this failure is that the state has corrupted the free market system. Banks and capitalist institutions have been protected from risk-taking and failure by the government through subsidies and bailouts, and the government regulators who were entrusted to protect the people from these risks and failures have not done so. This has led to these banking and financial institutions to make an utter mess of things, the government to bail them out, this encourages riskier behavior and rewards failure, interest rates are cut to revive things, debt is taken on, the the cycle restarts again, each time getting worse and worse.

The only hope is for governments to begin to live within their means (no more debt), for governments to quit playing games with the market, for the regulators to do a better job, and for some bankers to be punished with failure. But, this isn't likely to happen.

Last election the second biggest contributor to the Democratic Party was Wall street, and they know that they own Obama and the Democrats and that they won't let them fail. They own the regulators and won't ever face real regulation or opening up. The other big owner of the Democratic party is the labor unions, in particular the labor union for the government workers, and they won't let government live within its means or quit playing games with the market.

So, if this analysis is correct, there is a major bubble going to burst soon, and it'll be a big one. Our only hope is that Republicans, real Republicans, conservative and libertarian Republicans, win control of every single government institution and jam through brutal austerity measures. That kind of change may indeed give us some hope for the future.

Just want to warn you- this post might not cheer you up too much. The always good Nolan Finley has this article in the Detroit News today, reproduced with some edits:

These must be glorious days to be a liberal. A stunning confluence of events has rushed the left to the political mountaintop and promises to keep it perched there for a good, long time.

Voters have placed in the White House the first truly liberal president in nearly 30 years, and he begins his tenure as no less than an Olympian god. His election is hailed as the dawn of a new age of enlightenment for America. He's expected to do everything from cooling the earth to curing our warts.

Barack Obama takes the field with no credible opposition. The botched Bush presidency destroyed the Republican Party and turned conservative into a pejorative. He can do what he wants.The nation is tenderized for his vision. The sudden collapse of home values and retirement plans and the greed of some CEOs have shaken Americans' faith in the free markets that form the foundation of America's prosperity. They're persuaded that only Big Government can spare them from living their grandparents' Depression horror stories.

The recession works in perfect tandem with the green movement's triumph over global warming skepticism. Green is now the fastest growing religion, and its followers are prepared to sacrifice their quality of life and individual freedoms for the collective good.

Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs explains in the Guardian that the convergence of the recession and global warming will destroy traditional capitalism. In the name of the environment, Sachs writes, "Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments.

That's the mission in a nutshell: Move from an economy based on free choice to one controlled by the government. And it is marching forward without critical review. The media is too heavily invested in Obama's success to even nip at his heels.

But the Obama children won't retreat to indifference, nor are they likely to abandon him when his policies collapse. That, for the left, is the greatest gift of all- Obama can't fail. When all his spending doesn't restore their jobs and saving accounts, Americans won't blame him- they'll blame Bush. It's Pavlovian.

The field is wide open for liberals to finally bring to America European-style socialism, with its low productivity, high unemployment, crushing taxes and subjugation to government. Successful or not, going back will be impossible. By moving more people from the tax rolls to the dependency rolls, the constituency for reform will disappear.

Liberals have won a great victory, indeed.

These are the very same thoughts that I have been thinking- that there will come a time when the vision is lost, when more students learn communist values than capitalist ones, when safe tyranny is desired more than liberty and freedom, and when the United States will lose that greatness, lose that special feeling, and become like most other nations of the world. And like Finley, I think that time has come- my tax dollars are now subsidizing groups like ACORN, who perpetrate voter fraud, and then judges okay it- the system might have been broken this time around. I know that conservatives and America survived Carter, but I think that this time around, this time liberals have achieved the permanent victory that will result in the total destruction of the United States of America.

Chuks Oluigbo writes:

In order to participate as equal partners in the globalization process and reap fully the fruits of globalization, Nigeria and the rest of the Third World must, as a matter of urgency, aspire towards self-sustenance and –sufficiency by developing indigenous technology, diversifying their economies, reducing importation and conversely encouraging the emergence of local industries, limiting the activities of the multinationals through strict regulations, searching for alternative roads to development where the capitalist mode of production has failed to produce results

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley described in a recent post being knocked out by a Danish cop in Copenhagen as he attended the party that was the UN Climatefest of Global Warming Believers. When he came to, he was struck with the brilliance that only can come as you realize he horror that you are in an insane asylum and the inmates are running it:

...I came to some time later (not sure exactly how long), to find my head being cradled by my friends, some of whom were doing their best to keep the police thugs at bay while the volunteer ambulance-men attended to me....

...However, the Danish police were far too free with their hands when pushing us around, and that is not acceptable in a free society. But then, Europe is no longer a free society. It is, in effect, a tyranny ruled by the unelected Kommissars of the European Union. That is perhaps one reason why police forces throughout Europe, including that in the UK, have become far more brutal than was once acceptable in their treatment of the citizens they are sworn to serve.

It is exactly this species of tyranny that the UN would like to impose upon the entire planet, in the name of saving us from ourselves – or, as Ugo Chavez would put it, saving us from Western capitalist democracy.

A few weeks ago, at a major conference in New York, I spoke about this tendency towards tyranny with Dr. Vaclav Klaus, the distinguished economist and doughty fighter for freedom and democracy who is President of the Czech Republic.

While we still have one or two statesmen of his caliber, there is hope for Europe and the world. Unfortunately, he refused to come to Copenhagen, telling me that there was no point, now that the lunatics were firmly in control of the asylum.

However, I asked him whether the draft Copenhagen Treaty’s proposal for what amounted to a communistic world government reminded him of he Communism under which he and his country had suffered for so long.He thought for a moment – as statesmen always do before answering an unusual question – and said, “Maybe it is not brutal. But in all other respects, what it proposes is far too close to Communism for comfort.”

Today, as I lay in the snow with a cut knee, a bruised back, a banged head, a ruined suit, and a written-off coat, I wondered whether the brutality of the New World Order was moving closer than President Klaus – or any of us – had realized.

Modifying a bit from what Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club says in his post on this, people have always believed that ‘they can’t do that here; they can’t foist this fraud on me; they can’t take over 15% of the US economy just like that; they can’t give my tax money to Hugo Chavez; they can’t borrow money from China in my name and give to China, etc.’ But one day the answer to those questions will be “Yes, they can”.