Posted on 06/29/2019 4:10:04 PM PDT by Paal Gulli
by Baruch Pletner - June 29, 2019
Our opinion page has been critical of President Trump’s policy towards Iran and America’s love affair with capitalism to the point of placing that economic system, which bears a name given to it by none other than Karl Marx, on a pedestal reserved for the Founding Fathers of the Republic. There is, however, one thing that Trump understands, one true path that he can lead America on and that is the path away from discredited 19th century “isms” and back to the human values of family, community, nation, tradition, and God.
The one thing that cannot be denied when you look at the world today is that all the political theories that sprung up in the wake of the industrial revolution have failed miserably. Be it liberalism, socialism, communism, and yes, capitalism, they have all proven to be dehumanizing, alienating, destructive, and at utter odds with the human spirit.
Human beings need a financial system that allows them to maximize their potential, be it a split ranch in the suburbs or a sprawling ocean-front mansion. If we wish to call this system capitalism, so be it. But let us not forget those other human needs, needs that are even more fundamental to our happiness; the need to have a family, a community, to be surrounded by people with whom we can identify, who think and believe the same way as we do when it comes to the most important things in life. The formation of stable communities that are based on stable families, the maintenance of nations that are formed from strong communities, is an absolute need of the human spirit and a fundamental human right, the right upon which, first and foremost, America was founded.
Our economic system, must balance our individual right to reach our peak potential with the needs of our nation to remain free and prosperous for generations to come. Our private business must be balanced with our public business, or as the Romans would say our res publica, our republic. Viewed from that perspective, it makes perfect sense to subsidize farming by tariffs and other means because farms, especially the smaller family ones, create our landscapes and guarantee our food safety. Perhaps we pay a little more in the grocery store, but Vermont still has its green pastures dotted with beautiful Holstein cattle and we can all still enjoy great dairy products made right here at home.Other countries like Canada and Switzerland will of course do the same and that is just fine.
We must stop looking at people as interchangeable units of labor, be it for picking strawberries or for writing code. People are not computer chips, they are our brothers and sisters, our countrymen and women. The people who are currently running America from both parties are in the pocket of those who have forgotten about the thing public, who care not about the republic and hide behind concepts like “shareholder value” while they decimate our morals, our families, our communities, and our places of worship.
Our well-being does not live in the all but meaningless dots and spaces that we look at when we check our 401(k) balance. We have zero control over what these “dollars” can buy now or in the future, or even if these “dollars” will remain in our “accounts”. True happiness, true security, comes from having a large and loving family, a good set of skills, life within a community of like-minded people that care about you, and a belief in God.
Contrary to what you have been told, it is perfectly OK to dislike those who do not look like you, worship like you, or adhere to fundamentally different lifestyles. I am a Jew. If you prefer not to live in communities that have lots of my kind, it does not offend me in the least; on the contrary, it is only natural. Of course, we should never, like our crazed ideological opponents attempt to harm those we do not like in any way; physical (God forbid), but equally so by doxxing, shaming, getting them fired from their jobs, etc. Having respect for the rights of others does not mean liking them or wanting to live among them, let alone be forced to do so. It is really as simple as that. We are free to choose whom we associate with; without an explanation, without shame, openly and with pride.
I disagree with Trump’s penchant for putting the almighty dollar on a pedestal that is a few notches too high for my taste. I think that he will find it unsustainable and indeed impossible to outsource America’s role as the policeman of the world to others without extreme adverse consequences to America itself. But I am forever a Trump supporter because alone in American politics he loves America. He loves her passionately, unconditionally, with the true love of a son to his mother. That love means that the policy choices he makes, be they on domestic or foreign or economic policies are driven only by America’s interests and what he perceives them to be, nothing else. And if results do not justify the chosen policy, if they show it to be less than successful, Trump will change the policy rather than cling to some dogma like “constitutionalism”, “free market economics”, “capitalism”, or the like. There is nothing universal in how Trump perceives America. There are no universal rights. There is America the nation and Americans the people that make up that nation and it is only in their interest that Trump is acting and will continue to act. For that alone he deserves our eternal gratitude and support.
No.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land; to abandon constitutionalism is to abandon the rule of law.
DEFUND, DISMANTLE, DESTROY (as necessary) anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-individual. anti-life collectives. It’s easy to...
live - free - republic
Defend USConstitution, or perish.
What about people outside the US? To what extent if any are they our “brothers and sisters”? If the answer is “not so much,” why?
There is America the nation and Americans the people that make up that nation and it is only in their interest that Trump is acting and will continue to act.
What if Americans disagree with Pres. Trump’s assertion of what their interest is? Should they just shut up and obey?
He’s just a man.
People outside of the U.S. are our brothers and sisters but,
our first priority is to ourselves, family, neighbors and country in that order.
Then we can help beyond our duties to others.
The author is correct in the article. 4 I would emphasize that a reasonably regulated free market is what we should seek rather than the current capitalism.
Otherwise, it will be an endless and pointless debate whose only offered answers are “more than it is now” and “less than it is now.” Lots of platitudes, IOW, and no actual moral reasoning.
Before there were traditions, there was Natural Law.
That’s all right. I did it in your stead.
1. Most regulations and regulatory agencies are inherently unConstitutional - if only for violating the Tenth Amendment. That makes them unethical, if not also immoral. The persons who take an Oath to uphold that Constitution know this and do not care. They are on the take.
2. We have a massively regulated market, not a free one. That is not the worst of it: The worst is that the crony corporatists (capitalism is a Marxist term) bribe the aforementioned so that the regulations mainly hurt the small, private businesses, not the enormously powerful publicly-traded corporations supposedly subject to SEC oversight, for such things as corporate malfeasance due to damaging shareholder stock value by causing politically-motivated scandals. (NB: IPO = Initial PUBLIC Offering.)
Further, rightly or wrongly, CDA/230 is law, and requires Facebook, Twitter, et al, to operate as “open platforms” that do not act as “publishers” - in exchange for Federal protection from liability for the content that they agree not to act as publisher (editor, censor).
They violate their side of that law routinely and with literal impunity: That Federal protection helped them prosper since 1996; they have rightfully forfeited any and all protection from legal action, yet they still have it.
Laws - and regulations - are for the little guy.
Thank you for that explanation. I now understand how you believe the economy works, even though I disagree with this view, and therefore understand your desire for political regulation of the likes of Walmart and Amazon.
Why do you disagree? I would love to know.
Thank you for your question.
I disagree with your promises about how the US economy operates. To take Walmart as an example, I frequently use it in class to find out how students’ perceptions of companies and how profitable they are differ from the reality.
So I will ask you to do as I asked my students to do, and guess what Walmart’s profit rate, i.e. profits as a percentage of expenses, is. The answer is consistently less than 10%, often less than 5%. Walmart’s business model is to always be the other guys price. They get a lot of business that way, and that’s why they have built so many stores all over the world the last few decades. But there are many companies that are quite probably better long-term investments than that.
As for Amazon, there are many people (you may be among them) who view it as some kind of monopolistic predator. In fact, Amazon has made uncountable numbers of consumers much better off by giving them both more choice and better prices. I mostly use it to buy books, but the very existence of the e-book is a major convenience for someone like me who likes to read. And the company benefits consumers who are different from me in very many other ways they are largely invisible to me. The people of the United States and indeed around the world a much better off because Amazon exists, and to me this is the main thing. Jeff Bezos has many views I do not share, but customers have rewarded him and the other businesses he has bought with his billions because these companies are doing things valuable for these consumers, in part (so far) by continuously innovating. Good for him, he deserves every penny.
If you are concerned about frew expression, there is a far wider variety of opinions available to the general public than there was when I was a child. (Alas, many of these opinions are dumb, and some of them are even dangerous, but only competition among ideas can deal with this.)
In the United States most companies face intense competition to reward their owners by serving their customers. Almost every leader of every company wakes up every morning worrying intensely about what the competition is doing.
Of course there are exceptions. For example, drug manufacturers and health insurers consistently have high profit rates. I believe these are industries where competition is limited, substantially because of government intervention into the competitive process. (Health care is one of the most regulated industries in the United States.)
Free competition is not ideal, but as Churchill said in another context, it is the worst social system ever, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. When I can contrast this process of competition what I believe to be the many blunders government has made when it has attempted to rearrange the terms of this competition, I think government officials could benefit from a lot more humility. Once it has gone beyond the basics of protecting property rights and providing public security, government policing of the conduct of free men will usually do much more harm than good. “But what about...?” is seldom a compelling objection, if we think the process through to the end.
IMHO, anyway.
Thanks. Agree with much of what you say. I would like to respond more clearly, but am handicapped by being relegated to using phone.
Health care industry as business rather than profession and mission is an abomination. Greed over people.
I think Amazon is too big and even Walmart can’t compete. Walmart seems to have one loss leader in a category and rest same as, or higher than, “competition”.
My issue is promoting small business for building middle class owners and hopefully getting back to competition as different and better rather than imitative.
Finally I do not see free competition, I see monopolies.
A free market allows for more people competing.
You teach what? Are you a Libertarian?
I am coming at this as a classicle conservative and a lawyer.
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