Category: Capitalism | Page 5

590 – Hating capitalism

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Jan 102019

Capitalism as an ‘unknown ideal’ continues to be demonstrated in our popular media and discussion shows daily. Common fallacies about both capitalism and variant forms of socialism persist.

Two recent on-line discussions featuring well-known personalities – one between Russell Brand and Candace Owens, and another between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson – provided perfect samplings of how both those on the ‘left’ and ‘right’ share many of the same anti-capitalistic sentiments. These myths demand a response because when acted upon, undesirable consequences arise for all of us.

‘Capitalism’ has become the word used to describe the economic condition that arises in a political and social environment of freedom. It is the ‘economic dimension’ of freedom and is only made possible when freedom’s other dimensions are in place.

Unfortunately, the word ‘capitalism’ was effectively created by Karl Marx so as to turn the idea of capitalism into a ‘political’ concept, which, unlike socialism, it is not. Whereas capitalism operates on the economic principle of supply and demand (under freedom), socialism operates by fiat. Continue reading »

Video – Capitalism vs The United Nations – The Story of Bangladesh

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Jan 092019

The failure of the United Nations model of aiding developing countries by doling out money to their governments has failed because it is a top-down model of wealth distribution not unlike the model used, with no success, by the former Soviet Union.

Bangladesh, once called a “basket case” by Henry Kissinger, suffered the same fate as every other country where the government received foreign aid. The aid never reached the people most in need of it.

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank has demonstrated that micro-lending directly to the people is the best way to break the cycle of poverty. His bottom-up model of capitalism is the success story that is modern Bangladesh.

Salim Mansur, Professor Emeritus of Western University tells the story of that once war-torn and poverty stricken country and how one man, Muhammad Yunus turned it into a prospering nation.

583 – Globalism – A national crisis

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Nov 222018

Remembrance Day ceremonies in France this past November 11 turned out to be a sad reminder of much more than the 100-year-old tragedy that was WWI.

With French president Emmanuel Macron charging that “The old demons are rising again,” one is forced to conclude that he was looking in a mirror. Citing the dangers of ‘nationalism’ and the ‘collective good’ of ‘globalism,’ Macron demonstrated loud and clear that he is among the demons.

When he acknowledged that the “traces of this war never went away,” Macron was indeed ironic; socialism is still with us to this very day – and is on the rise, just as it was prior to the last two world wars. Thus, the key lesson that should have been learned from that history still remains undefined and continues to go unheeded.

In an inappropriate attempt to address U.S. president Donald Trump’s proud declaration that he is a ‘nationalist,’ Macron again ironically chose to use the Remembrance Day ceremonies as his opportunity to promote the very collectivism that the West was forced to fight during the last two world wars. Continue reading »

The Danielle Metz Show – 025 – The last straw

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Aug 192018

Banning plastic straws is among the latest environmental fads of the Left, and it’s impossible to resist pointing out just how much this one sucks.

While one jurisdiction has imposed penalties as high as six months in jail and a $1000 fine for serving a straw with a drink in a restaurant, another jurisdiction – San Francisco – is planning to ban straws, carry-out containers and wrappers. The utter futility of the gestures is dwarfed by their hypocrisy.

San Francisco has today become a city with conditions worse than that in many impoverished third-world nations. Human feces lies on every block of the city, drug addicts openly shoot up on the streets in public, and the city dispenses hundreds of thousands of free needles also littering the streets. Poverty and homelessness abounds. In the midst of all this, its new mayor apparently believes that ‘education’ will solve the problem.

As it undeservedly adopts a moral high ground in condemning ‘plastic refuse,’ the Left simultaneously celebrates and perpetuates the human refuse in its wake. Such is the plastic politics of pollution. Continue reading »

562 – Still getting it wrong about Left and Right

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Jun 282018

If any proof is still needed that the popular notions of the political ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are completely erroneous, one need only hear those attempting to use those incorrect frames of reference in a political debate or discussion. If not so tragic, it would be humorous. The conversation will invariably disintegrate into a subjective morass of contradictory and meaningless labels that define nothing and resolve nothing.

That’s exactly what happened at the May 18th Munk Debate, featuring participants Jordan Peterson, Stephen Fry, Michael Dyson and Michelle Goldberg on a resolution about ‘political correctness.’ It also happened at the May 5th Society of Academic Freedom and Scholarship’s (SAFS) event featuring speakers David Haskell, Lindsay Shepherd, and Frances Widdowson during their discussion of free speech on campus.

The confusion arises in failing to recognize that the terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right,’ objectively defined, represent polar opposites, just like ‘north’ and ‘south.’

Unfortunately, the popular and accepted scale of Left and Right place ‘communism’ on the Left and ‘fascism’ on the Right, even though both communism and fascism are not opposites and explicitly sit on the Left. Nowhere on this scale is there a place for individual freedom or capitalism, despite beliefs that they exist on some imaginary ‘center.’ That scale looks like this: Continue reading »

546 – At war with trade / The bad Samaritan

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Mar 082018

No good deed goes unpunished, especially if that good deed results in a win-win situation. That’s the lesson being enforced by the City of London’s crackdown on one driver who offered inexpensive rides to cancer patients.

It all began when a story broke that the city had carried out a ‘sting’ operation and fined a volunteer driver for offering a personalized two-way transportation service to these patients – because she charged a nominal fee ($12) to cover her own expenses.

Though strongly supportive of the driver, the community’s collective outrage unfortunately became misdirected against bylaw enforcement officers who were merely acting in accordance with bylaws established by an elected municipal council. That rage should have been directed at the city’s controlled and regulated taxi industry, which is the source of the trade prohibition being forced upon each side – both the driver and the driver’s passengers.

Called a ‘good Samaritan’ by many, the anonymous driver (referred to as ‘Nancy’ in some media coverage) was praised for her selfless service to others. It was widely expressed that without people like ‘Nancy’ available for those in need, the needy would have no other affordable transportation options. The outpouring of support from Londoners was expressed through open-line calls, letters to the editor, complaints to city hall, and thousands of dollars raised through public funding drives. Continue reading »

535 – Left right out—A valid “political spectrum” analysis

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Dec 142017

Not all who see themselves on the Left side of the “political spectrum” actually are. Nor are many who see themselves on the Right side of that “spectrum” actually on the Right.

The true nature of the fundamental forces and ideas represented by Left and Right have been long misunderstood – both by those on the Left and Right – and this has caused a host of political misalignments that today are becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Just listen to Lindsay Shepherd and Brendan O’Neill, two voices of the Left who have come to publicly doubt their own Leftist alignments.

Lindsay Shepherd, of course, has been made famous by going public with her recent encounter with the Left at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. Brendan O’Neill, on the other hand, is a journalist who describes himself as a Marxist-Libertarian of the Left, yet expresses certain values that appear more in line with classic liberalism. Continue reading »