Knicks retweeted
Capitalism is perhaps the most misunderstood economic system in history, largely because it is routinely blamed for the consequences of violating its own principles.
Capitalism means private property, individual rights, voluntary trade, and a government limited to protecting those rights. It is a system in which individuals are free to produce, compete, trade, and prosper without requiring political permission or favoritism.
Cronyism, by contrast, means government granting economic privileges through subsidies, bailouts, tariffs, regulations designed to protect favored businesses, and other forms of political favoritism.
Socialism, communism, fascism, theocracy, absolute monarchy, feudalism, mercantilism, corporatism, and cronyism differ in their doctrines, methods, and objectives. Yet all have permitted political authority or privileged groups to override individual economic freedom.
The fundamental distinction is between voluntary exchange and political coercion.
Under capitalism, economic success depends on creating value that others voluntarily choose to purchase. Under cronyism, political influence can substitute for earning that success through trade.
This brings us to the mixed economy, where elements of capitalism coexist with government intervention, redistribution, regulation, and political favoritism.
When intervention produces unintended consequences, critics routinely attribute those failures to capitalism simply because they occurred in an economy containing private businesses and markets.
That is a fundamental error of causation.
The existence of private businesses does not make every government policy capitalist. Nor does the existence of wealthy businessmen make political favoritism a product of free markets.
A businessman who earns a fortune through voluntary trade and one who obtains privileges through political coercion are operating on fundamentally different principles.
Pure laissez-faire capitalism has never been fully implemented. Yet to the extent economic freedom has existed, it has demonstrated its extraordinary capacity to create wealth, increase productivity, encourage innovation, and raise living standards.
And here lies the great irony.
The remaining economic freedom continues to generate much of the wealth that makes government intervention and redistribution possible, while helping cushion society against their destructive consequences.
Critics then demand further intervention to remedy problems caused or aggravated by previous interventions, perpetuating a cycle in which political power expands while capitalism receives the blame.
Before blaming capitalism for any economic problem, establish whether that problem arose from voluntary exchange or the coercive exercise of political power.
You cannot reasonably condemn a system for the consequences of violating its principles while ignoring the benefits produced when those principles are respected.
Morons
El-Sayed launches Habibi PAC
thehill.com/homenews/campaig…
Knicks retweeted
1) Nothing is free simply because you declare it so. Resources are finite and laborers expect to be paid. If you're not paying for it, someone else is, and that's typically the taxpayer. And no, "taxing the billionaires" won't help the situation. Not only do the nation's top 1% of earners already contribute 40% of the US's tax revenue, the combined net worth of all US billionaires is about $8 trillion, so even if you confiscated all of their wealth, that would only be enough to cover all US federal spending for one year, and now you no longer have the economic value of all the businesses those billionaires owned (Elon Musk alone employs 160,000 people).
2) The US already spends $1.6 trillion dollars per year on Medicare and Medicaid, and another $1.5 trillion on Social Security. Those are by far the biggest money sinks in the US federal budget. The government also spends billions more tax dollars on other social safety nets, including Section 8 housing.
3) Because the government is already spending so much of our tax dollars on those things, they're always spending on a deficit. That's why they always have to print more money, which leads to the devaluation of the dollar, causing inflation. Put simply, it makes everything more expensive.
4) The government is notoriously inefficient, and that's by design. You know how whenever you have to do anything involving the government, you have to sign a thousand documents? That's just so a thousand government workers each have something to rubber stamp, and those jobs only exist for the sake of employing those people. The government creates entirely unnecessary jobs for no reason other than so whatever administration is in charge at the moment can say, "Look at how many jobs we created."
5) It's easy to promise "free" stuff, but actually delivering it is another matter. Canada has "free" healthcare, but there are only so many doctors and their system is so overburdened that the median wait time to see a specialist after a referral is eight months. That's why they now recommend medically assisted suicide for practically anything, and MAID now kills more people in Canada than gun violence does in the US.
Knicks retweeted
If a march calling to boycott Jewish-owned businesses, held on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, is not explicitly antisemitic, what is?
Knicks retweeted
If you are struggling to understand what is happening in American politics right now, watch this:
"Palestinization" is a concept that I developed two years ago to explain the framework that most electoral candidates, especially Islamist-aligned ones, use to align voter bases in the United States.
We saw this so evidently in the campaign messaging of the current elections.
Knicks retweeted
Let's ban the greatest advancement in human history and the transition to a post-scarcity economy, entrenching the wages and jobs that you claim to be so oppressive.
I've stayed out of politics but I'll be damned if the luddites win... it's a big world to build in.
Knicks retweeted
jesus fucking christ.
we’re potentially on the verge of the greatest scientific revolution in human history and the first instinct of some politicians is to shut it down.
i genuinely cannot comprehend this mindset.
Knicks retweeted
How about a ban on human intelligence? It’s the largest contributor to humans dominating the planet. It’s also the largest source of inequality among humans. If everyone was semi-retarded like you, we wouldn’t have these issues.
Knicks retweeted
Yesterday's stock market rally in the face of the Democratic landslide made no sense. In contrast, today's sell-off makes perfect sense. Expect more days like today. As a result of the change in the political direction of the country, the U.S. economy will be less productive, have bigger government, larger deficits, more regulations, and higher taxes, inflation, and interest rates. All of this will be bearish for the U.S. economy and the stock market.
Unfortunately, the Republicans and Fox News have no one but themselves to blame. Under Trump, we had a chance to make America great again, but we blew it by continuing the same failed policies that led to our fall from greatness in the first place. Under Democratic socialists, who will be empowered by the failure of Republican socialist policies, that fall will now accelerate rapidly.
Knicks retweeted
To those of you living in free countries, watching the images coming out of Europe, Canada, and America, I feel there's an experience I need to share. Because today's news to you reminds us of a catastrophe we've been paying for for decades. I'm Iranian.
47 years ago, Iran was rich in natural resources, with an educated workforce and rapid development. Living conditions were improving. Women participated freely in public and political life.
Iran helped maintain regional security, commanded international respect, and was a model for developing countries. Then, an Islamist ideology arrived disguised as justice for the oppressed. Islamists, communists, and the radical left formed a deadly alliance and took power.
Then, the Islamists crushed their former allies. The regime imposed Sharia law, stripped away freedoms, and survived through imprisonment, torture, and execution. A country with enormous potential fell into corruption, economic crisis, and mass emigration.
Today, it's known as the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. From the start, the regime openly declared its ambition to export its dark ideology, a threat your governments didn't take seriously. For about 30 years, generations born after the revolution have repeatedly risen up to take their country back.
While we paid with imprisonment, torture, and massacres, your government signed political and economic deals with our oppressors. The regime expanded its networks of influence and propaganda. Today, you see the results in your cities.
Movements like the pro-Palestine movement and socialist Islamists claiming to defend the oppressed while spreading hatred and destruction. I'm Iranian and I'm speaking directly to you. Don't let Islamists use your freedom of speech, your tolerance, and your democratic rights to gain power and then take those freedoms away.
We've paid the price for their promises. Stand with the people still fighting to end this regime. Don't let what happened to us become your future.
Knicks retweeted
When a Muslim Brotherhood member wins a Senate race, that’s NOT DEMOCRACY; that’s USEFUL IDIOTS hating their own country. When the mullahs in Iran took over, socialists helped them, and later, the Islamists killed them all. This is the most dangerous moment for Western civilization. GOD BLESS AMERICA.
U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is a dark chapter in this great nation’s history.
And as the Bible warns:
“For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” — Galatians 6:7 (KJV)
Be careful what you plant in the name of democracy. You may not enjoy the harvest.
Knicks retweeted
Sometimes, letting Muslim Brotherhood Islamists win elections in the West may be the harshest lesson democracy can teach its own voters. Let people discover the true face of the ideology they voted for: the intolerance disguised as tolerance, the extremism dressed up as progress, and the backwardness sold as a brighter future.
Look at the turmoil in France. Look at the political battles unfolding in Britain, or “Britainstan,” as some now call it. One day, those who voted for extremism may discover that the ballot they cast in the name of progress became a vote against their own freedoms.
The tragedy of democracy is that people sometimes have to experience the consequences of their choices before they understand the value of what they had.
Civilization is easy to take for granted until you realize what it takes to defend it.
Knicks retweeted
Awkward for Democrats.
The leader of the Islamic Republic sees their victory as a sign of the collapse of the USA.
Knicks retweeted
this is my favorite collectivist conciet:
"imagine if this <insert rich person> had used their <amount of money> on this issue we have spent billions and trillions on for decades with zero positive effect. they could have solved the whole thing!"
it's such a fetching confluence of delusion and a weird faith that if you take the money of effective people and give it to the same people who have squandered every cent they have seen for decades, the money itself will somehow remain impactful as though tripling public school spending has worked to improve education.
it seems to underpin a profound misunderstanding of how to usefully allocate capital combined with an essentially animistic belief that outcome is somehow a property of the money itself and not of the allocator, like somehow musk has some sort of magically effective cash to which NGO's and government agencies are not generally privy.
