It's time to get 2009 kicked off properly - by bashing socialism and proclaiming the virtue of manly qualities like perseverance, taking responsibility for one's own actions, honoring agreements, and living within one's means.
The UAW, along with a lot of other unions, do none of that. Thus, the UAW is unmanly, and unmanliness is not tolerated here. After the most recent $17.3 billion bail-out (it has always been a 'bail-out' and not a 'stimulus package'), it has come to my attention that these funds were not to bail out the companies, but to save the unions who have a stranglehold on them. Such a relationship as what the UAW has with the Big Three is any organized labor fan's wet dream: dictate to a company its hiring/firing policies, dictate non-market wages, be able to "negotiate" paid vacations for workers on disciplinary leave, bleed the company dry, and then get rescued by the government (unions donate heavily to Democratic candidates, who they know will shore up their positions) when their disastrous relationship nearly sinks the company.
The Obama administration's soft spot for organized labor will ensure more handouts if any other large unionized industries start to go belly-up. Sympathy for habitual screw-ups is the favored tone for the Democratic party.
One thing I discovered about the UAW is that they built a posh resort and golf course in northern Michigan (top part of the 'mitten'), of course using union dues to pay for the whole thing. The website is HERE. Your average factory worker probably couldn't/wouldn't cough up the $55 for 18 holes on the off-season, unless they went twice a year and didn't bring anyone else. A decent cable subscription, a few 6-packs and some large pizzas will be easier on the wallet than trying to take 8 blue-collar guys to a swank golf resort at $55 per head. To compound the sarcasm, there's a nice little "Public Always Welcome", even though union members get preferential tee times. The resort, in actuality, is pretty far out in the hinterlands, relative to your average rich-snob country club, thus making it perfect for the fat cats of the UAW to live very well off of factory workers and taxpayers.
Sadly (trying to keep a straight face here, folks) the resort is losing money, to the tune of a cool $23 million over the last 5 years. It's estimated that the whole thing was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $33 million earlier in 2008. This is where some of that bailout money is likely going.
People were livid about the Big 3 leadership flying to the Congressional hearings by private jet, but not a peep out of those same detractors regarding the patrician lifestyles of the UAW leadership.
Here's a nice article written by an ex-supervisor at a GM plant, who pulls no punches in her descriptions of the rampant corruption and ineptitude that the UAW encouraged: HERE
"To put it bluntly, the UAW takes the hard earned money of the best workers and spends it defending the very worst workers while tying up the industry with thousands of pages of work rules that make it impossible to be competitive. And the spineless management often makes short sighted decisions to satisfy the union and maximize immediate benefits over long term sustainability."
In other words, organized labor is protecting those who cannot do their manual labor jobs properly in order to score points with neo-socialists (who will be running our country come January 20th), squandering union dues on multi-million dollar country clubs, and then shifting the blame to the management who would never stand up to a political and economic force like the UAW.
"The strength of the union and the weakness of management made it impossible to conduct business properly at any level. For instance, I had an employee who punched in his time card and then disappeared. The rules were such that I had to spend hours documenting that this man was not in his three foot by three foot work area. I needed witnesses, timed reports, calls over the intercom and a plant wide search all documented in detail. After this absurdity I decided to go my own route; I called the corner bar and paged him and he came to the phone. I gave him a 30 day unpaid disciplinary lay off because he was a “repeat offender”. When he returned he thanked me for the PAID vacation. I scoffed, until he explained: (1) He had tried to get the lay-off because it was fishing season; (2) The UAW negotiated with GM Labor Relations Department to give him the time WITH PAY."
This is the same kind of mindset that perpetuates our growing welfare state: subsidize poor performance, mollycoddle the immature and stupid, and then blame someone else when the whole three-ring circus goes down in flames. I cannot bring myself to even fathom the utter intellectual nebulosity that occurs inside the heads of those who consider centralized goverment involvement in industry and large bureacratic unions to be "good things", especially when they consider corporations with the same kind of bureaucracy and luxurious golf resorts to be "bad things".
As St. Milton (Friedman) once said, "Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it." What is so different about corporations and unions? The leadership of each have their own interests in mind - economic, and personal, respectively. If we also would like to look at government, the chief interest of a government is its institutions and positions of leadership, and not necessarily the ordinary people who compose it - yet Leftists will throw tantrums because there's "not enough" self-interested institutions and bureacracies with their involvement in our economy.
[aside: Leftists like to talk about "good" and "bad" in very concrete terms, yet they will dialectically invert themselves in the same breath and declare that one's value judgments are solely based on perspective, whether it be geographical, cultural, class/gender/race-based, or otherwise.]
Back to the article.
"I supervised a loading dock and 21 UAW workers who worked approximately five hours per day for eight hours pay. They could easily load one third more rail cars and still maintain their union negotiated break times, but when I tried to make them increase production ever so slightly they sabotaged my ability to make even the current production levels by hiding stock, calling in sick, feigning equipment problems, and even once, as a show of force, used a fork lift truck and pallets and racks to create a car part prison where they trapped me while I was conducting inventory. The reaction of upper management to my request to boost production was that I should 'not be naïve'."
They act like welfare leeches and dreadlocked trust-funded Community Studies majors - wanting to be given everything, but suddenly getting very defensive and even outright hostile when they are expected to actually work for what they're given.
Even with the $17 billion, the UAW has now refused to make any concessions, despite its statements prior to the bailout money being awarded.
Screw the UAW. It's too bad the Bush administration won't be around much longer to rescind the loans, because I have a feeling that Zero is going to want to appease union fat cats by letting them keep their change, so they can fix up their golf courses, pay incompetent workers full benefits, and give the finger to the American taxpayers.
If capitalism and market forces were allowed to take their course, we wouldn't be having this problem. It's not simply about "deregulation" or "overregulation" - it's about who's doing the "regulation": the market, the government, or unions? Markets are self-correcting. They do not lend themselves to the rapid increases or decreases that result from government involvement. Letting go of useless baggage like workers who mouth off and harass the management is a manly thing. Excusing and rewarding that kind of behavior is UNmanly.
Enough With That Peace Bullshit, Give Capitalism A Chance!
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
1.1.09
20.11.08
Feeling nostalgic...
Scrooge Mcduck And Money Disney cartoon short Part 1
Scrooge Mcduck And Money Disney cartoon short Part 2
It is truly a shame that media companies have never put out anything remotely educational like this for years. The sooner that kids learn how to handle money wisely, the less inclinations they will have to spend with reckless abandon. Instead, they learn useless stuff like "self-esteem" (wow, I didn't know I could only gain respect for myself through someone else telling me so!) or how everyone is all the same. All this watered-down namby-pamby utopian drivel is turning our kids into whiny, spineless wastes of carbon who are more concerned with not making others feel bad or how many minorities and handicapped people are in their group.
The biggest problem I see with the middle class is that everyone is obsessed with either spending or saving. How many of them are paying attention to mutual funds? How many of them do something as simple as looking at the stock tickers for the NASDAQ or the DJIA or the S&P 500 while they check the news or their email?
The recent financial upsets on the personal level are not because the economy's going to hell in a handbasket (a recession is defined as 2 consecutive quarters of NEGATIVE growth, and the last time I checked our economy still has POSITIVE growth - morons!), but rather that people are spending way outside their means. This is not necessarily something to pin on 'evil, predatory loan sharks', but simply a lack of self-control on the part of the middle class and poor. Sure, lots of people are "rich", with lots of cool stuff filling their junky and more-or-less-useless SUVs each time they come back from the mall. They present a glamorous front, but that glamour is purchased with borrowed money that they may not be able to repay if they keep buying and borrowing time and time again.
Again, this is a problem of individual self-control, not something to be pinned on media execs and corporate marketing divisions. I have noticed that increasing numbers of parents refuse to say 'no' to their children. As infrequently as I visit shopping malls (my social claustrophobia and avoidance complex has kept me away from what probably has been a wealth of study opportunities), I have seen this trend.
To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, Detective John Kimball, in Kindergarten Cop: "You lack discipline!" Kids run around screaming in stores, talk back to their parents, and generally behave like little savages. Parents are not supposed to be your friend. Friends won't give you a well-deserved and sharp smack on the behind when you're out of line. Parents are supposed to teach good behavior to their children, not mollycoddle them and leave them unprepared to face a world that is, to wax Hobbesian, nasty and brutish at times.
When parents do not set limits for their children, this creates an expectation that often stays with them for a long time. We can see this with the 'Generation ME', with the people in their late 20s/early 30s who expected the ability to own a brand new car along with a high five-figure income right out of college. These are also the kinds of people who spend their money on superficial accessories for their cars, cheaply-made designer knockoff clothes, wear UGG boots, listen to Coldplay, and drink Bud Light, because nothing says "I'm classy" like mass-produced domestic piss-water.
These kinds of people do not spend within their means. They likely have more than three credit cards, have no money invested, and perhaps enough money saved to last them a month or two if they found themselves without a job.
There is also a big difference between being "rich" and being "wealthy". The former implies that someone either has lots of disposable income, lots of expensive stuff, or both. Wealth is gauged by the kind of financial capital that one has available, usually in the form of a business, property (houses/land, classic cars, and other things that appreciate in value). It also denotes that one has money invested in lieu of letting it essentially lay stagnant in savings.
If I had to explain investing to someone with no economic knowledge, I would put it this way:
Investing is more like spending than saving. You want to watch for good deals, and take a shrewd risk. The money you invest is no longer part of your disposable income for the time being, but it is being injected into the economy - also like spending moreso than saving. The best part is that the money you invested will grow, and you will have more than what you started with because the company or companies used the investments of people just like you to expand their production, conduct research, and become more profitable - if you made a good decision regarding which company or companies to invest in.
You're probably thinking, "who has time for all of this research and reading, Mr. Viking?"
I say to that "TURN OFF YOUR DAMN TELEVISION AND STOP DOING USELESS THINGS LIKE THAT." The Internet has made investing so much easier. You don't have to deal with a living, breathing stockbroker anymore. Companies like Scottrade and Ameritrade allow people all over the world to invest money and keep tabs on their stocks from nearly any computer with an Internet connection. Technology is a huge advantage that humans have, but we need to learn how to utilize it wisely.
Spend less.
Keep up with your savings.
Invest more.
The economy (and your wallet!) will thank you.
Scrooge Mcduck And Money Disney cartoon short Part 2
It is truly a shame that media companies have never put out anything remotely educational like this for years. The sooner that kids learn how to handle money wisely, the less inclinations they will have to spend with reckless abandon. Instead, they learn useless stuff like "self-esteem" (wow, I didn't know I could only gain respect for myself through someone else telling me so!) or how everyone is all the same. All this watered-down namby-pamby utopian drivel is turning our kids into whiny, spineless wastes of carbon who are more concerned with not making others feel bad or how many minorities and handicapped people are in their group.
The biggest problem I see with the middle class is that everyone is obsessed with either spending or saving. How many of them are paying attention to mutual funds? How many of them do something as simple as looking at the stock tickers for the NASDAQ or the DJIA or the S&P 500 while they check the news or their email?
The recent financial upsets on the personal level are not because the economy's going to hell in a handbasket (a recession is defined as 2 consecutive quarters of NEGATIVE growth, and the last time I checked our economy still has POSITIVE growth - morons!), but rather that people are spending way outside their means. This is not necessarily something to pin on 'evil, predatory loan sharks', but simply a lack of self-control on the part of the middle class and poor. Sure, lots of people are "rich", with lots of cool stuff filling their junky and more-or-less-useless SUVs each time they come back from the mall. They present a glamorous front, but that glamour is purchased with borrowed money that they may not be able to repay if they keep buying and borrowing time and time again.
Again, this is a problem of individual self-control, not something to be pinned on media execs and corporate marketing divisions. I have noticed that increasing numbers of parents refuse to say 'no' to their children. As infrequently as I visit shopping malls (my social claustrophobia and avoidance complex has kept me away from what probably has been a wealth of study opportunities), I have seen this trend.
To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, Detective John Kimball, in Kindergarten Cop: "You lack discipline!" Kids run around screaming in stores, talk back to their parents, and generally behave like little savages. Parents are not supposed to be your friend. Friends won't give you a well-deserved and sharp smack on the behind when you're out of line. Parents are supposed to teach good behavior to their children, not mollycoddle them and leave them unprepared to face a world that is, to wax Hobbesian, nasty and brutish at times.
When parents do not set limits for their children, this creates an expectation that often stays with them for a long time. We can see this with the 'Generation ME', with the people in their late 20s/early 30s who expected the ability to own a brand new car along with a high five-figure income right out of college. These are also the kinds of people who spend their money on superficial accessories for their cars, cheaply-made designer knockoff clothes, wear UGG boots, listen to Coldplay, and drink Bud Light, because nothing says "I'm classy" like mass-produced domestic piss-water.
These kinds of people do not spend within their means. They likely have more than three credit cards, have no money invested, and perhaps enough money saved to last them a month or two if they found themselves without a job.
There is also a big difference between being "rich" and being "wealthy". The former implies that someone either has lots of disposable income, lots of expensive stuff, or both. Wealth is gauged by the kind of financial capital that one has available, usually in the form of a business, property (houses/land, classic cars, and other things that appreciate in value). It also denotes that one has money invested in lieu of letting it essentially lay stagnant in savings.
If I had to explain investing to someone with no economic knowledge, I would put it this way:
Investing is more like spending than saving. You want to watch for good deals, and take a shrewd risk. The money you invest is no longer part of your disposable income for the time being, but it is being injected into the economy - also like spending moreso than saving. The best part is that the money you invested will grow, and you will have more than what you started with because the company or companies used the investments of people just like you to expand their production, conduct research, and become more profitable - if you made a good decision regarding which company or companies to invest in.
You're probably thinking, "who has time for all of this research and reading, Mr. Viking?"
I say to that "TURN OFF YOUR DAMN TELEVISION AND STOP DOING USELESS THINGS LIKE THAT." The Internet has made investing so much easier. You don't have to deal with a living, breathing stockbroker anymore. Companies like Scottrade and Ameritrade allow people all over the world to invest money and keep tabs on their stocks from nearly any computer with an Internet connection. Technology is a huge advantage that humans have, but we need to learn how to utilize it wisely.
Spend less.
Keep up with your savings.
Invest more.
The economy (and your wallet!) will thank you.
30.7.08
"I completely agree."
If you want to know what the average student at UC Santa Cruz is thinking, it's exactly that. The so-called 'critical mind' is not the least bit critical. Perhaps critical of the "establishment", but as far as the student-professor relation is concerned, they are preaching to the choir. As John J. Ray states, "The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present."
It's almost as if I am back in community college, where the professor continues with her lecture in front of a silent class - half of them drank too much the previous night, didn't get enough sleep, or are busy thinking about other things. The other half are bored out of their minds.
Here, it's different. The students are not silent because they are bored. They are silent because they have no objection to what the professor is saying.
The university system and all of academia have this unhealthy fixation with diversity. What does it really mean? Sure, you can paint each robot in your robot army all different colors. You can change their shapes and sizes, but fundamentally they are all still robots. Academia loves to speak their volumes about how having lots of people who look different make higher education better, even if all those people are more or less ideologically homogeneous. If we're all thinking and doing the same things, does it really matter how we look?
Today the instructor (feminist studies graduate student, mind you) put on a DVD of a Noam Chomsky lecture, complete with a packed lecture hall of wide-eyed and attentive college students ready to greedily lap up everything that St. Noam speaks without hesitation or question.
The theme of the lecture was that the world's terrorists are the US and Israel. No mention of the centuries of terror and slaughter that Jews and Christians have faced as a result of their dhimmitude in the Middle East. No mention of the massive bombing campaigns carried out by Hezbollah against anyone associated with the US or Israel. No, the world's worst terrorists are the US and Israel, which have only become world and regional superpowers, respectively, in the last 30 years. Chomsky has a very limited view of history, and refuses to acknowledge his double standards.
His "thesis #1" was that we are all hypocrites in regard to our views on terrorism. Well, if that's true Mr. Chomsky, where do you fit into the subject of "we all"? Are you a hypocrite as well, or are you conveniently shielded from criticism because you're the one lecturing? Are you so focused on the speck in the eyes of others that you can't or won't see the log embedded in your own short-sighted vision of global politics?
Chomsky may be aware that is was CIA-backed Lebanese that detonated the car bomb that killed 80 worshippers as they left a Beiruit mosque instead of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, an ex-leader of Hezbollah, yet frames the claim that the attempt was directly done by the CIA and in the context of total Lebanese innocence and not retaliation for attacks by Hezbollah.
Chomsky rationalizes, excuses, and downplays terrorism that is not committed by the US or Israel. It seems that one finds it easier to point the fingers at large things than at small things, no matter how minor or grievous the acts in question are. He is opposed to US "hegemony", yet sees no problem with UN hegemony. To Chomsky, the UN can do no wrong. He is still highly critical of US action in the former Yugoslavia, yet finds little to say about the same UN that essentially allowed the Srebrenica massacre (of Muslims, no doubt!) to occur under Dutch auspices.
Chomsky is the type who slams the US on its foreign policy in Iraq, but would join the legions of drones in condemning the US for not doing anything to free Iraq from the murderous Baathists had the US instead gone the diplomatic route, just as we are with the genocide in Darfur. US refusal to intervene in Iraq would probably have prompted hemp-wearing Community Studies majors across the US to add a "Free Iraq" bumper sticker to the back of the Prius their parents bought (so they could look hip and environmentally responsible, all while allowing Toyota to use massive amounts of toxins and heavy metals in the manufacture of the batteries) for them, alongside the Obama '08 and "Free Darfur" "Free Burma" and "Free Tibet" stickers.
That's what the aggregation of international law, "condemnation", and UN Resolutions have culminated in: bumper stickers. That's the only thing they have to show. It's a big boost for capitalism. I mean, who wouldn't delight in making the adage "a fool and his money are soon parted" a reality?
Chomsky's beloved international law and the UN are somehow institutions to be respected, yet no other nation or coalition of nations have ever been able to put pressure on the US or Israel. Condemnation and scorn are the only tools the UN has at its disposal, as if the multiple failed resolutions commanding Saddam Hussein to allow weapons inspectors free reign of all Iraqi facilities weren't enough evidence to showcase the toothlessness of the UN.
If Chomsky is so concerned about double standards, berates others for having them, and then refuses to acknowledge his own, why have standards in the first place? Leftism rejects all objectivity, and standards would imply some form of objectivity. If he is so concerned about US hegemony, wouldn't it have a better net result for the European Union, the African Union, the Arab League, and the Asian states to bring the US down on its knees either through economic or military force? Chomsky is opposed to violence, but that all depends on who is carrying out the violence and how well Chomsky is prepared to rationalize it.
Chomsky has been quick to declare that Israeli and US leadership should be detained, charged with war crimes, and then sentenced, but Keith Windschuttle says in a New Criterion article:
"No matter how great the crimes of the regimes he has favored, such as China, Vietnam, and Cambodia under the communists, Chomsky has never demanded their leaders be captured and tried for war crimes. Instead, he has defended these regimes for many years to the best of his ability through the use of evidence he must have realized was selective, deceptive, and in some cases invented."
He has downplayed the horrific acts of Slobodan Milosevič's regime, citing Western "aggression" as a catalyst for the subsequent attempts at ethnic cleansing. Chomsky is not averse to making up information that suits his views, no matter how fiercely he criticizes others for the same behaviour. His statements that the US attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory caused "tens of thousands of deaths" was strongly refuted by Human Rights Watch - who never made an official investigation to determine the number of dead as a direct result of the attack. Here, Chomsky is practically pulling figures out of thin air. The Tomahawk missile strike disrupted food distribution, not to mention the hostility against US aid groups working in the Sudan, so the "tens of thousands of deaths" still would have occured due to the Sudan's internal condition of civil war and famine.
Chomsky frequently uses the word "obvious" in describing unverified and uncited statements about events that he makes. Anyone who criticizes his description of those events would be identified as someone who cannot see the obvious; someone who is ignorant - that old word that the Left loves to throw at anyone they disagree with. Who's going to take you seriously if you're IGNORANT? It's just another way of shutting down criticism and establishing Chomsky-ites and other members of the Left as the omniscient ones. He uses the phrase "too obvious to talk about" as if to say "this is not open to discussion", yet such an assumption is in direct violation of his first thesis of "we are all hypocrites". I found, and continue to find to this present moment, his glaring hypocrisy and narcissism to be absolutely sickening.
Here is a man who is fabulously wealthy - in a First World nation, not an authoritarian Third World country like the ones he so zealously defends without little regard to their own behavior - who decries tax shelters and concentration of wealth, yet the Hoover Institute clearly shows that Chomsky himself has made use of trusts to guard his ill-gotten wealth (what else can you call a massive sum of money made in a capitalist nation by a mainstream critic of capitalism?). When confronted about his tax shelter, Chomsky rationalized his hypocrisy by stating that he is setting aside the money for his children and grandchildren, which I'm pretty sure those other rich people are doing, too. He went on to shift the attention away from himself in saying that he and his family shouldn't be criticized because they are "trying to help suffering people".
Does he think about the environmental destruction that comes as a result from the trees cut down to make the paper for his books? Does he even care? Like so many other authors and celebrities on the Left, it's not likely they really care as long as they can get their point across. It's a "necessary sacrifice" or "using the system against itself", much like Al Gore's 221,000 kWh-using mansion/office along with the private jets that he takes to and from colleges when giving commencement speeches.
Speaking of taxes and the "rich", the IRS data still adamantly refuses to corroborate the claims of the wealth redistributionists. New data points to the fact that while the top 1% of income earners receive 22% of all income, they end up paying 40% of income taxes. If that isn't enough, the entire top 50% pay 97% of all income taxes. Who's really isn't paying their "fair share"? The poor use the most social services, yet most of them are receiving aid that they did not and will not pay for.
On top of that, the US has a higher corporate tax rate than the "sustainable and progressive" EU! It's easy to stop businesses from moving jobs overseas: we lower the cost of doing business. The purpose of a business is to supply a product and to offer an attractive target for investors. Businesses should have no allegiance to a government, and they should be able to do business with whomever they want, at least within legal boundaries. Stop taxing profitability and the efficient use of resources at present levels, and we can at least slow down the rate of outsourcing. Just as labor will look for the best possible wages and operating conditions, business will do the same.
What is Chomsky's complaint with the wealthy, who would still be financing the overwhelming bulk (and even more so than now!) of an expanded welfare state under an Obama administration? Wouldn't this be his dream come true - the evil and exploitive capitalists getting their just desserts at the hands of a black socialist? Chomsky is in favor of the estate tax and income redistribution, but only on the condition that it's not his own estate or his own income. After all, he has to support his family and "suffering people", so making an exception for him is completely legitimate.
The sad reality that the rest of my class took Chomsky's words at face value and without objection points to a greater problem - the refusal to criticize their own views and the "revolutionary" views that are presented to them by instructors who are presenting it as the Gospel truth, and nothing less. Just as David Horowitz said, there are plenty of feminists who have written critiques on their own movements, yet the bulk of Feminist Studies (or Womens' Studies, as it's called at most universities) majors will only read texts extolling the virtues of feminism and doing nothing but tearing down any legitimacy of masculinity. Like Chomsky implies, it should just be "obvious". To go against the "revolutionary" doctrine is to admit that one is uneducated, ignorant, racist/sexist/classist/ageist/homophobic/Islamophobic/et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
The Left pushes the doctrine of self-criticism and self-reflection, on the condition that they are exempt from the same activities.
It's almost as if I am back in community college, where the professor continues with her lecture in front of a silent class - half of them drank too much the previous night, didn't get enough sleep, or are busy thinking about other things. The other half are bored out of their minds.
Here, it's different. The students are not silent because they are bored. They are silent because they have no objection to what the professor is saying.
The university system and all of academia have this unhealthy fixation with diversity. What does it really mean? Sure, you can paint each robot in your robot army all different colors. You can change their shapes and sizes, but fundamentally they are all still robots. Academia loves to speak their volumes about how having lots of people who look different make higher education better, even if all those people are more or less ideologically homogeneous. If we're all thinking and doing the same things, does it really matter how we look?
Today the instructor (feminist studies graduate student, mind you) put on a DVD of a Noam Chomsky lecture, complete with a packed lecture hall of wide-eyed and attentive college students ready to greedily lap up everything that St. Noam speaks without hesitation or question.
The theme of the lecture was that the world's terrorists are the US and Israel. No mention of the centuries of terror and slaughter that Jews and Christians have faced as a result of their dhimmitude in the Middle East. No mention of the massive bombing campaigns carried out by Hezbollah against anyone associated with the US or Israel. No, the world's worst terrorists are the US and Israel, which have only become world and regional superpowers, respectively, in the last 30 years. Chomsky has a very limited view of history, and refuses to acknowledge his double standards.
His "thesis #1" was that we are all hypocrites in regard to our views on terrorism. Well, if that's true Mr. Chomsky, where do you fit into the subject of "we all"? Are you a hypocrite as well, or are you conveniently shielded from criticism because you're the one lecturing? Are you so focused on the speck in the eyes of others that you can't or won't see the log embedded in your own short-sighted vision of global politics?
Chomsky may be aware that is was CIA-backed Lebanese that detonated the car bomb that killed 80 worshippers as they left a Beiruit mosque instead of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, an ex-leader of Hezbollah, yet frames the claim that the attempt was directly done by the CIA and in the context of total Lebanese innocence and not retaliation for attacks by Hezbollah.
Chomsky rationalizes, excuses, and downplays terrorism that is not committed by the US or Israel. It seems that one finds it easier to point the fingers at large things than at small things, no matter how minor or grievous the acts in question are. He is opposed to US "hegemony", yet sees no problem with UN hegemony. To Chomsky, the UN can do no wrong. He is still highly critical of US action in the former Yugoslavia, yet finds little to say about the same UN that essentially allowed the Srebrenica massacre (of Muslims, no doubt!) to occur under Dutch auspices.
Chomsky is the type who slams the US on its foreign policy in Iraq, but would join the legions of drones in condemning the US for not doing anything to free Iraq from the murderous Baathists had the US instead gone the diplomatic route, just as we are with the genocide in Darfur. US refusal to intervene in Iraq would probably have prompted hemp-wearing Community Studies majors across the US to add a "Free Iraq" bumper sticker to the back of the Prius their parents bought (so they could look hip and environmentally responsible, all while allowing Toyota to use massive amounts of toxins and heavy metals in the manufacture of the batteries) for them, alongside the Obama '08 and "Free Darfur" "Free Burma" and "Free Tibet" stickers.
That's what the aggregation of international law, "condemnation", and UN Resolutions have culminated in: bumper stickers. That's the only thing they have to show. It's a big boost for capitalism. I mean, who wouldn't delight in making the adage "a fool and his money are soon parted" a reality?
Chomsky's beloved international law and the UN are somehow institutions to be respected, yet no other nation or coalition of nations have ever been able to put pressure on the US or Israel. Condemnation and scorn are the only tools the UN has at its disposal, as if the multiple failed resolutions commanding Saddam Hussein to allow weapons inspectors free reign of all Iraqi facilities weren't enough evidence to showcase the toothlessness of the UN.
If Chomsky is so concerned about double standards, berates others for having them, and then refuses to acknowledge his own, why have standards in the first place? Leftism rejects all objectivity, and standards would imply some form of objectivity. If he is so concerned about US hegemony, wouldn't it have a better net result for the European Union, the African Union, the Arab League, and the Asian states to bring the US down on its knees either through economic or military force? Chomsky is opposed to violence, but that all depends on who is carrying out the violence and how well Chomsky is prepared to rationalize it.
Chomsky has been quick to declare that Israeli and US leadership should be detained, charged with war crimes, and then sentenced, but Keith Windschuttle says in a New Criterion article:
"No matter how great the crimes of the regimes he has favored, such as China, Vietnam, and Cambodia under the communists, Chomsky has never demanded their leaders be captured and tried for war crimes. Instead, he has defended these regimes for many years to the best of his ability through the use of evidence he must have realized was selective, deceptive, and in some cases invented."
He has downplayed the horrific acts of Slobodan Milosevič's regime, citing Western "aggression" as a catalyst for the subsequent attempts at ethnic cleansing. Chomsky is not averse to making up information that suits his views, no matter how fiercely he criticizes others for the same behaviour. His statements that the US attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory caused "tens of thousands of deaths" was strongly refuted by Human Rights Watch - who never made an official investigation to determine the number of dead as a direct result of the attack. Here, Chomsky is practically pulling figures out of thin air. The Tomahawk missile strike disrupted food distribution, not to mention the hostility against US aid groups working in the Sudan, so the "tens of thousands of deaths" still would have occured due to the Sudan's internal condition of civil war and famine.
Chomsky frequently uses the word "obvious" in describing unverified and uncited statements about events that he makes. Anyone who criticizes his description of those events would be identified as someone who cannot see the obvious; someone who is ignorant - that old word that the Left loves to throw at anyone they disagree with. Who's going to take you seriously if you're IGNORANT? It's just another way of shutting down criticism and establishing Chomsky-ites and other members of the Left as the omniscient ones. He uses the phrase "too obvious to talk about" as if to say "this is not open to discussion", yet such an assumption is in direct violation of his first thesis of "we are all hypocrites". I found, and continue to find to this present moment, his glaring hypocrisy and narcissism to be absolutely sickening.
Here is a man who is fabulously wealthy - in a First World nation, not an authoritarian Third World country like the ones he so zealously defends without little regard to their own behavior - who decries tax shelters and concentration of wealth, yet the Hoover Institute clearly shows that Chomsky himself has made use of trusts to guard his ill-gotten wealth (what else can you call a massive sum of money made in a capitalist nation by a mainstream critic of capitalism?). When confronted about his tax shelter, Chomsky rationalized his hypocrisy by stating that he is setting aside the money for his children and grandchildren, which I'm pretty sure those other rich people are doing, too. He went on to shift the attention away from himself in saying that he and his family shouldn't be criticized because they are "trying to help suffering people".
Does he think about the environmental destruction that comes as a result from the trees cut down to make the paper for his books? Does he even care? Like so many other authors and celebrities on the Left, it's not likely they really care as long as they can get their point across. It's a "necessary sacrifice" or "using the system against itself", much like Al Gore's 221,000 kWh-using mansion/office along with the private jets that he takes to and from colleges when giving commencement speeches.
Speaking of taxes and the "rich", the IRS data still adamantly refuses to corroborate the claims of the wealth redistributionists. New data points to the fact that while the top 1% of income earners receive 22% of all income, they end up paying 40% of income taxes. If that isn't enough, the entire top 50% pay 97% of all income taxes. Who's really isn't paying their "fair share"? The poor use the most social services, yet most of them are receiving aid that they did not and will not pay for.
On top of that, the US has a higher corporate tax rate than the "sustainable and progressive" EU! It's easy to stop businesses from moving jobs overseas: we lower the cost of doing business. The purpose of a business is to supply a product and to offer an attractive target for investors. Businesses should have no allegiance to a government, and they should be able to do business with whomever they want, at least within legal boundaries. Stop taxing profitability and the efficient use of resources at present levels, and we can at least slow down the rate of outsourcing. Just as labor will look for the best possible wages and operating conditions, business will do the same.
What is Chomsky's complaint with the wealthy, who would still be financing the overwhelming bulk (and even more so than now!) of an expanded welfare state under an Obama administration? Wouldn't this be his dream come true - the evil and exploitive capitalists getting their just desserts at the hands of a black socialist? Chomsky is in favor of the estate tax and income redistribution, but only on the condition that it's not his own estate or his own income. After all, he has to support his family and "suffering people", so making an exception for him is completely legitimate.
The sad reality that the rest of my class took Chomsky's words at face value and without objection points to a greater problem - the refusal to criticize their own views and the "revolutionary" views that are presented to them by instructors who are presenting it as the Gospel truth, and nothing less. Just as David Horowitz said, there are plenty of feminists who have written critiques on their own movements, yet the bulk of Feminist Studies (or Womens' Studies, as it's called at most universities) majors will only read texts extolling the virtues of feminism and doing nothing but tearing down any legitimacy of masculinity. Like Chomsky implies, it should just be "obvious". To go against the "revolutionary" doctrine is to admit that one is uneducated, ignorant, racist/sexist/classist/ageist/homophobic/Islamophobic/et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
The Left pushes the doctrine of self-criticism and self-reflection, on the condition that they are exempt from the same activities.
18.5.08
The Failure of Capitalism in Russia
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, soon followed by the Soviet regime itself, Russians were clearly sick and tired of Communism. Under perestroika, Western influence was allowed into Russia. This influence came in the form of pop culture - fashion, music, cinema, and food, among others. This was all fine and dandy in and of itself, but the commodities did not bring with them the Western concepts and values that allowed aviator glasses, Converse sneakers, Levi jeans, and Paramount films to be created the way that they are in the West.
The national mindset of Russia may forever be locked in a binary. Iu Lotman and Boris Uspenskii wrote an excellent article explaining the origins of the Russian binary model. It is largely based in the heaven/hell dichotomy of the Eastern Orthodox church, which has no concept of purgatory that the Catholic church adopted. The opposite of heaven is hell, and vice versa, so when Russian society seems to be in "hell", its opposite - "heaven" - will be implemented by force. The October revolution was a "revolution from above" - party elites implemented the mechanisms of communism and kept them in place. The same was done for "capitalism". It was shoddily implemented by people who are still caught in a binary, elite as they are.
In the West, the rise of capitalism and industrialism did not come from government mandates and elites governing the situation. It was a direct result of the endeavors of common people, engaging the in the free flow of goods and services. A lack of state ownership preceding the concretization of the concept of free market principles was the framework (or lack thereof) that allowed capitalism to flourish and benefit Western societies. Like democracy in the majority of the Middle East, capitalism cannot expect itself to change anything in Russia unless the mentality of the Russian people changes. Only binaries exist: leading and following, complaining and making jokes (which is manifested in the differences between women and men in Nancy Ries' Russian Talk), among others. There is no concept of the 'individual' undivorced from some sort of collective, and thus Russian individuals are more subject to a herd mentality. That mentality is absolutely incompatible with real capitalism, which requires individual effort and sacrifice, the decision to take risks and accept the consequences, and to go out on a limb and make something different and unique.
Alien concepts, no matter how much they have benefitted others, cannot be forced upon a population by mandate. Give democracy to the Palestinians, and they'll elect Hamas again. Give copies of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations to Russia, and they will commission all sorts of committees and ask party officials to implement the ideas that sound good, defeating the whole purpose. The 'invisible hand' becomes visible, and continues to manifest itself in incompatible ways as long as the state and the fundamentals of a free market are intertwined.
Now playing: Duobetic Homunkulus - 'Části a mechanismy strojů'
The national mindset of Russia may forever be locked in a binary. Iu Lotman and Boris Uspenskii wrote an excellent article explaining the origins of the Russian binary model. It is largely based in the heaven/hell dichotomy of the Eastern Orthodox church, which has no concept of purgatory that the Catholic church adopted. The opposite of heaven is hell, and vice versa, so when Russian society seems to be in "hell", its opposite - "heaven" - will be implemented by force. The October revolution was a "revolution from above" - party elites implemented the mechanisms of communism and kept them in place. The same was done for "capitalism". It was shoddily implemented by people who are still caught in a binary, elite as they are.
In the West, the rise of capitalism and industrialism did not come from government mandates and elites governing the situation. It was a direct result of the endeavors of common people, engaging the in the free flow of goods and services. A lack of state ownership preceding the concretization of the concept of free market principles was the framework (or lack thereof) that allowed capitalism to flourish and benefit Western societies. Like democracy in the majority of the Middle East, capitalism cannot expect itself to change anything in Russia unless the mentality of the Russian people changes. Only binaries exist: leading and following, complaining and making jokes (which is manifested in the differences between women and men in Nancy Ries' Russian Talk), among others. There is no concept of the 'individual' undivorced from some sort of collective, and thus Russian individuals are more subject to a herd mentality. That mentality is absolutely incompatible with real capitalism, which requires individual effort and sacrifice, the decision to take risks and accept the consequences, and to go out on a limb and make something different and unique.
Alien concepts, no matter how much they have benefitted others, cannot be forced upon a population by mandate. Give democracy to the Palestinians, and they'll elect Hamas again. Give copies of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations to Russia, and they will commission all sorts of committees and ask party officials to implement the ideas that sound good, defeating the whole purpose. The 'invisible hand' becomes visible, and continues to manifest itself in incompatible ways as long as the state and the fundamentals of a free market are intertwined.
Now playing: Duobetic Homunkulus - 'Části a mechanismy strojů'
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