Posted on 11/20/2012 1:01:34 AM PST by grimalkin
In dealing with this system of economic organization — the market economy — we employ the term "economic freedom." Very often, people misunderstand what it means, believing that economic freedom is something quite apart from other freedoms, and that these other freedoms — which they hold to be more important — can be preserved even in the absence of economic freedom. The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society. The individual is able to choose his career; he is free to do what he wants to do.
In using the term freedom as applied to human beings, we think only of freedom within society. Yet, today, social freedoms are considered by many people to be independent of one another. Those who call themselves "liberals" today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the 19th century advocated in their liberal programs. The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial — that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
Republicans have been sending their kids to college to get brain washed into socialism for decades.. a few of them have remained republican RINOS though.. others morphed into democrats..
And republicans wonder what has happened?.. not to speak of republican allowing voter fraud at each and every election with not a word of outrage..
With democrats being encouraged on this scale little wonder they actually in your face STOLE outright a Presidential election.. not mentioning various State and Local elections..
The republican have been BEGGING the democrats to do this daring them.. Any outrage now is laughable.. They just totally rejected ALL conservative candidates.. and selected the inventor of Romney-Care to run against the inventor of Obama-Care..
WHO TO BLAME!?.. Well all republican voters is to blame, all of them.. UNLESS the primarys are also totally corrupted voter fraud as well.. In which case the only party more corrupt than the democrats are the republicans..
For baiting the democrats to perform this travesty.. this fiasco.. this malfeasance..
Will finish reading in more detail later. But this at the end caught my eye:
“There is something else that should be mentioned. The American consumer, the individual, is both a buyer and a boss. When you leave a store in America, you may find a sign saying, “Thank you for your patronage. Please come again.” But when you go into a shop in a totalitarian country — be it in present-day Russia, or in Germany as it was under the regime of Hitler — the shopkeeper tells you: “You have to be thankful to the great leader for giving you this.”
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Reminds me of “You didn’t build that.”
It's the difference between a peaceful, free existence as an individual and an enslaved existence as a piece of state property.
We better be grateful for Dear Leader's generosity. How frightening is that? When we do away with a truly free society (which can't exclude a free market), this is the bitter fruit. Man was not intended to live as a slave.
It is true, of course, that great painters and great writers have often had to endure great hardships. They might have succeeded in their art, but not always in getting money. Van Gogh was certainly a great painter. He had to suffer unbearable hardship and, finally, when he was 37 years old, he committed suicide. In all his life he sold only one painting and the buyer of it was his cousin. Apart from this one sale, he lived from the money of his brother, who was not an artist nor a painter. But van Gogh's brother understood a painter's needs. Today you cannot buy a van Gogh for less than $100,000 or $200,000.
Under a socialist system, van Gogh's fate might have been different. Some government official would have asked some well-known painters (whom van Gogh certainly would not have regarded as artists at all) whether this young man, half or completely crazy, was really a painter worthy to be supported. And they without a doubt, would have answered: "No, he is not a painter; he is not an artist; he is just a man who wastes paint"; and they would have sent him into a milk factory or into a home for the insane. Therefore all this enthusiasm in favor of socialism by the rising generation of painters, poets, musicians, journalists, actors, is based on an illusion. I mention this because these groups are among the most fanatical supporters of the socialist idea.
But as slaves, at least they (and we) will have affordable health care, be provided with food and shelter, and never have to make those hard decisions (including making the wrong ones with bad outcomes) that come with having too much freedom.
And sadly, most in America think that is a better way.
bookmark to read later
Bump
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