The Socialist Road to Destruction amid So-Called Good Intentions
When socialist schemes fail, as they inevitably do, our attention is immediately drawn away from the destruction they cause to the “good intentions” behind the schemes.
They meant well. Their good intentions override their disastrous results. One reason why good intentions are important to both sides of the political divide is that good intentions play well to voters. A good example of this is the national debt crisis in the United States. The economist Samuel Gregg points out that while both parties pledge to resolve the growing national debt, both parties regard the measures necessary to resolve the situation as electoral suicide: “America’s National Debt challenge constitutes a political iron cage for Democrat and Republican legislators alike. While they can talk a big game about courageously tackling the problem, the political consequences of actually doing so are deeply unattractive for both parties.” The politicians’ desire to present voters with some obviously well-intentioned schemes overrides their commitment to resolving the problem. They are well-aware that any subsequent failures will be overlooked or forgiven in light of their good intentions.
In his book Socialism, Ludwig von Mises argues that socialist good intentions are “nothing but a grandiose rationalization of petty resentments.” They depict the politics of envy as a quest for justice, and they discount any cost as necessary for the pursuit of the higher goal of justice. However, as Mises points out, the assertion that socialism promotes justice is “merely an arbitrary assertion.” He explains:
In fact Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. . . . [It] raises the consumption of the masses at the cost of existing capital wealth, and thus sacrifices the future to the present. . . . The increasing difficulties of maintaining the higher standard of living are ascribed to various causes, but never to the fact that a policy of capital consumption is being followed.
In highlighting the inherently destructive nature of socialism, Mises’s point is not that socialists necessarily set out to destroy society but that this is the inevitable result of their schemes: “Socialism has not consciously willed the destruction of society. It believed it was creating a higher form of society. But since a socialist society is not a possibility every step towards it must harm society.” Faced with the destruction of society, it is futile to divert our intention to the supposedly good intentions behind the destruction.
Mises’s concept of “destructionism” refers to “the consumption of capital” and ultimately the “destruction of what already exists.” He observes that “the policy of destructionism is the policy of the spendthrift who dissipates his inheritance regardless of the future.” The destructionism of socialism is pervasive: “Our whole life is so given over to destructionism that one can hardly name a field which it has not penetrated.” The contemporary significance of this concept is illustrated by Tom DiLorenzo in “Misesian Destructionism: Then and Now,” showing how destructionism takes effect through the “cultural Marxism” of the Frankfurt School. DiLorenzo observes:
One of my first observances of such idiocy was in the mid-1980s when that great intellectual giant Jesse Jackson led mob of Stanford University students chanting “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ Has Got to Go.” They wanted the university to drop its courses on Western Civilization and replace them with courses on “race, class, and gender studies.” The Stanford administration dutifully complied.
The same destructionism can be seen in attempts to “decolonize” history, art, culture, and all fields of academic inquiry. That the “decolonize” movement is destructive is clear from the violent rhetoric that accompanies it. Yet this too is spun in the language of good intentions. As explained by Ross Douthat in the New York Times:
A key project of the 21st-century left has been to revive and mainstream language associated with violent revolutionary struggle by turning it to mostly therapeutic uses. . . .
. . . insisting, as in the work of Frantz Fanon, that revolutionary violence itself was therapeutic, a means by which the colonized can achieve self-assertion, dignity and wholeness. . . .
. . . a promise that all the rhetoric is therapeutic and psychological, that when we talk about stolen land and ending “whiteness” and decolonizing everything, we are, of course, merely speaking culturally, symbolically, metaphorically.
The excesses of wokery are provocative, but wokery is by no means the only contemporary emanation of socialist destructionism. The same destructive effect is seen in welfare schemes such as labor legislation and social insurance that now threaten to bankrupt welfare states. Samuel Gregg observes that “spending on major entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and what is called Income Security . . . constituted 68 percent of Federal Government spending in 2023.” These welfare schemes may seem relatively beneficial compared to other forms of government spending, but they too are “a means of destructionism” as they rely on the “consumption of capital” while creating more incentives to consume and destroying all incentives to produce. Mises explains that social welfare “produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.”
Socialist legislative schemes are often lauded not only for their worthy social ideals and goals, but also because of the widespread fear that such well-meaning legislation is all that stands between vulnerable people and disaster. Even if it does not work, so the reasoning goes, it will signal the right aspirations and show what society stands for. This is the rationale behind “hate speech” legislation that is intended to “root out hate.” Hate may or may not be rooted out of the hearts wherein it lurks, but at least we will have signaled that hate is “unacceptable.” Similarly, employment protection and antidiscrimination legislation are supported by both political sides. All parties are resistant to abolishing the special “protection” given to various identity groups by legislation intended to “protect” them. In the absence of market opportunities and in the absence of charity, both of which are derided by socialists, it seems that welfare legislation and virtue signaling assume great importance as the means by which human life will flourish. In this way, destructive legislation is attributed with a lifesaving and life-affirming function, and the prospect of abolishing it becomes unthinkable.
The destructive effects of these measures, which are touted for their beneficial qualities, go unacknowledged. The causes of economic and social problems are not self-evident, and many people do not link cause and effect. The same destructive policies are repeatedly introduced as they are not viewed as causally linked to the disasters that lie in their wake. No lessons are learned. Mises explains:
To see the weakness of a policy which raises the consumption of the masses at the cost of existing capital wealth, and thus sacrifices the future to the present, and to recognize the nature of this policy, requires deeper insight than that vouchsafed to statesmen and politicians or to the masses who have put them into power. As long as the walls of the factory buildings stand, and the trains continue to run, it is supposed that all is well with the world. The increasing difficulties of maintaining the higher standard of living are ascribed to various causes, but never to the fact that a policy of capital consumption is being followed.
Mises argues that the fight against this destructionism requires more than simply correcting socialists concerning the facts:
Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. . . . From the socialist point of view, Capitalism alone is responsible for all the misery the world has had to endure in recent years. Socialists see only what they want to see and are blind to anything that might contradict their theory.
Thus, the rising cost of living is ascribed to corporate greed and profiteering, with the left-leaning Guardian informing its readers that inflation is caused by “energy prices and corporate profits” and the 2020 global economic recession was caused by covid. Simple explanations for economic crises play well to the voters, who are in that way well-primed to accept that all measures taken by the government to tackle the crises are well-intentioned.
In response, it is necessary to persuade our compatriots of the true causes of the destructionism they see unfolding around them by joining what Mises calls “the battle of ideas,” a battle based not only on pointing out the correct facts, but more so on “the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.”
Hunter Biden Found Guilty As Democrats Prepare To Flush His Poopy Pants Father Before DNC
Infowars & Alex Jones Named in ‘ENEMIES LIST’ Compiled by Ukrainian Group Linked to U.S. State Department
An “independent” Ukrainian media NGO published a list of American detractors of the Ukraine war against Russia, accusing them of pushing “Kremlin propaganda” and blaming them for recent setbacks in the conflict.
The media NGO Texty.org.ua, which specializes in web journalism, released the list last week naming 388 individuals and 76 organizations, including politicians, political movements, commentators and groups, media and journalists, policy experts, venture capitalists, and think tanks who have been critical of the Ukraine war.
“In the States, there are many public organizations, popular activists, and political observers who methodically advocate for the self-isolation of the United States and speak out against supporting Ukraine,” the group states.
“Their activities are noteworthy in view of the long war with Russia and Ukraine’s high dependence on US aid, which is becoming increasingly difficult to attract.”
“Our research is not an exhaustive list of all public figures who believe that Ukraine should be left without aid. This is only a cross section of prominent voices and common theses, which often resonate with what the Kremlin broadcasts.”
Dozens of sitting Republican politicians are named, like Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), as well as former President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), and Reps. Bob Good (R-Va.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Jim Banks (R-Ind.).
Though the list also includes various anti-war leftists, not a single Democratic lawmaker is named.
Notably, Alex Jones and Infowars are listed with Trump, Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Ron Paul as the “largest nodes” of anti-Ukraine war influence.
Among the largest “nodes” of mutual support among the participants in our study are Donald Trump and his supporters, Senator JD Vance and media personality Tucker Carlson, member of the Libertarian Party Ron Paul, The Grayzone website and its founder Max Blumenthal, the left-wing anti-war communities CODEPINK and Massachusetts Peace Action, the far-right site Infowars and its editor Alex Jones and many others. The ecosystem is current as of the beginning of May 2024.
Along with Alex Jones, Infowars writers including this journalist and Kelen McBreen, as well as contributor Chase Geiser, were also personally named in the list.
In fact, Infowars received special scrutiny in this enemies list over Alex Jones’ interviews with Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, and appearances on Russian TV, such as his discussions with host Vladimir Solovyov and businessman-turned-politician Viktor Bout.
The group also condemned this reporter and McBreen’s reporting on the U.S.-backed clandestine biolab network in Ukraine, as well as false flags and propaganda campaigns by the Ukraine government.
But it gets even more interesting.
Anatoly Bondarenko, the founder of Texty.org.ua, was an instructor for the U.S. State Department’s “TechCamp” training program, where over “60 local journalists, civil society, community leaders, and private sector partners” were taught various media skills.
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a U.S. foreign policy watchdog think tank, lambasted the State Department’s relationship to the group and its effort to intimidate individuals and groups critical of U.S. policy.
“It is completely inappropriate that a foreign institution that participates training funded by U.S. taxpayers’ money should use that money to try to limit public debate in the US on a matter of vital U.S. interest,” QI Director Anatol Lieven told the American Conservative.
This is insane. A Ukrainian NGO just put out an enemies list that includes US citizens. This list blames us for Ukraine’s issues on the battlefield.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 8, 2024
Here’s where it gets crazy… The founder of this NGO (https://t.co/I5l9UMJ39c) was TRAINED by the U.S. State Department. The list… pic.twitter.com/ALJoBnRbhx
Intimidation and suppression tactics like this list by a State Department-linked group against anti-Ukraine war critics will only escalate if Joe Biden somehow secures a second term in the White House.
Disgusting: Woman Accused of Stabbing 3-Year-Old to Death in Grocery Store Parking Lot Smirks, Giggles in Court
A female suspect accused of stabbing a toddler to death in an Ohio supermarket parking lot sparked outrage after she was seen smiling and smirking in court.
Footage showed murder suspect Bionca Ellis, 33, giggling and unable to contain smiles as charges against her were read by a judge during an arraignment Monday.
PURE EVIL: Bionca Ellis, woman accused of stabbing 3-year-old Ohio boy to death in grocery store parking lot, smirks and giggles as the charges are read to her
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 10, 2024
(Video via WEWS) pic.twitter.com/R2TTZLr2WZ
The murder suspect was criticized on X over her appalling courtroom behavior.
If you’re christian like myself, you have to believe in demons / spirits. Probably just a terrible scummy human but I believe all major criminals should have a priest bless them and expel any potential demons as a contingency for being possessed
— Lord Miles (@real_lord_miles) June 10, 2024
Demons walk amongst us
— Tammie McDonald ?? (@TammieMcDonal17) June 10, 2024
only one of them was called pure evil and labelled racist by CNN and the rest of the Big Media.
— batu (@qtomris) June 10, 2024
guess which one? pic.twitter.com/epPJ7yU750
throw the damn book at this evil woman!!
who agrees?— AmericanPapaBear (@AmericaPapaBear) June 10, 2024
Ellis’ charges, including one count of aggravated murder and two counts of murder, stemmed from an unprovoked June 2 incident at a Giant Eagle supermarket near Cleveland.
3-year-old Julian Wood died following the incident.
R.I.P. Julian Wood ? pic.twitter.com/cfRDCkCg39
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 10, 2024
The Daily Mail has more on the deadly attack on Julian and his mother, Margot, who was wounded:
Julian Wood spent the last moments of his life playing in his mother’s shopping cart as they went on a Monday afternoon grocery run.
Then a woman walked towards them at the crowded Giant Eagle in North Olmstead, Cleveland, holding a kitchen knife in her right hand.
The three-year-old boy’s mom Margot, 38, wheeled them past, but the woman stopped dead in her tracks, turned around, and followed them.
Less than six minutes later, Julian was bleeding to death on the parking lot asphalt as a badly wounded Margot pleaded with paramedics: ‘don’t worry about me’.
As first responders desperately gave the little boy CPR, his alleged murderer, Bionca Ellis, 32, was arrested a short walk away – still holding the bloodied knife.
Much of those minutes of terror from 2.58 to 3.04pm on June 2, and the chilling scenes that came before and after, were laid bare in newly released surveillance footage and police bodycam.
Ellis stole two knives earlier that day, police said, from a nearby Volunteers of America Thrift Store, and was caught on camera pacing back and forth in front of Giant Eagle.
At 2.58pm she headed inside, brandishing it as if it was a half-eaten chocolate bar, walking straight ahead and forcing Margot to swerve around her.
Barely as they passed, she immediately stopped, turned around, and followed – her sinister stalking documented from four camera angles.
Twenty-five seconds passed before Ellis emerged from a blind spot alone, and loitered awkwardly near the doors for them to catch up.
As they turned for the exit, Ellis waited for them to pass her, and was filmed on two more cameras following them outside.
Margot wheeled Julian to their red hatchback in the busy car park and popped the trunk to load the groceries inside.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ellis allegedly unleashed her vicious attack on a mother and child she never met, and for no reason police can discern.
“I hear a scream, I look back, and she’s just stabbing,” one witness reportedly recalled.
In a solemn statement read in court, Wood’s father condemned Ellis for brutally cutting his son’s life short.
“There’s nothing that could ever replace my son, or anything my wife and I and our other kids are going through. It’s horrendous,” said Jared Wood.
A county court judge set Ellis bond at $5 million and she could potentially face the death penalty if convicted.
BREAKING: Deep State Asset George Clooney Establishing Secret Police Units To Arrest Journalists
Alex Jones reveals how the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket Project is pursuing secret arrest warrants for journalists who report favorably to Russia.
BREAKING: Deep State Asset George Clooney Establishing Secret Police Units To Arrest Journalistshttps://t.co/H1uLn5JrJc pic.twitter.com/qLrwWllWEi
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 11, 2024
Also:
Employment Flatlines for Eleventh Month as Biden Claims Historic Job Gains
According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, the US economy added 272,000 jobs during May while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.0 percent. As has been repeatedly the case over the past year, the latest monthly job-growth number was described as a “blowout” or “hot” number by major media outlets like CNN. As is typical in the good-news-is-bad-news view on Wall Street, the Dow fell on Friday out of fear that the “strong” jobs report would impel the Federal Reserve to put off interest-rate cuts further into the future.
Clearly, the memo went out from the administration’s supporters that this jobs reports was to be reported as nothing but good news. The Biden White House, for example, released a statement claiming the employment situation is the best the nation has seen in “50 years.” Not surprisingly, The Washington Post soon after reported that the current US job market is “the best…since the 1950s.”
Yet, as we have seen repeatedly over the past year, reporting on monthly jobs reports have focused on a single data point within the report: the establishment survey’s total jobs number. Most reporting on May’s jobs numbers, for example, has ignored the fact that, according to the federal government’s household survey, the number of employed people in America has not increased in eleven months. Moreover, most of the “jobs” added by the establishment survey are due to made-up numbers created through the so-called “birth-death model” which simply assumes into existence hundreds of thousands of jobs created by hypothetical new businesses.
Let’s take a closer look.
Establishment Survey vs. Household Survey
The establishment survey report shows that total jobs—a total that includes both part-time and full-time jobs—increased, month over month, in May by 272,000. The establishment survey measures only total jobs, however, and does not measure the number of employed persons. That means that even when job growth comes mostly from people working multiple part-time jobs, the establishment survey shows big increases while the total number of employed persons does not. In fact, total employed persons can fall while total jobs increases. For May, as total jobs rose, total employed workers fell by 408,000 people.
In fact, total household employment was essentially unchanged from the June 2023 level. That is, total employed persons totaled 161,004,000 last June. In May 2024, the total was 161,083,000. Or, put another way, total employment has been flat for nearly a year. Yet, the public keeps hearing month after month that the nation is in the midst of a jobs “blowout.”
Moreover, if we look at the total increase in both measures over the past three years, we find a gap has opened and persisted over more than two years. Indeed, as of the May report, the gap is at 4.3 million. In other words, since January 2021, the establishment survey has shown 15.6 million new jobs while the household survey has shown only 11.2 million new jobs. And, since there was been virtually no growth in employed persons for a nearly a year, nearly all of that new growth in employed persons occurred before June 2023. The graph of this gap shows how growth in employed persons has flatlined over the past year:
Which survey offers a better picture? Note this comment on Bloomberg’s chief economist Anna Wong on Friday:
May’s jobs report presented contradictory views of the labor market, as we expected. The establishment survey shows robust gains in nonfarm payrolls — yet the unemployment rate rose to 4.0%. We believe the latter currently offers a closer approximation of reality than payrolls…
Assuming that the establishment survey is a realistic picture of the economy at all—an assumption that looks increasingly tenuous—then the current economy is producing many more jobs than actual workers.
A Recession in Full-Time Jobs
In many cases, it is indeed plausible that the economy is adding more jobs than it is adding workers. This can be seen in how the economy is apparently adding far more part-time jobs than it is adding full-time jobs. In fact, the economy is rapidly shedding full-time jobs, and full-time job measures point to recession.
Over the same eleven months that total employed persons has stagnated—and total jobs increased 2.5 million—we find primarily growth in part-time jobs. Over that same eleven months, total part-time jobs increased by 1.7 million. During the same period, full-time jobs fell by more than 1.5 million. Net job creation during that period has been all part-time. In the month of May alone, workers reported a gain of 286,000 part-time positions while full-time jobs well by 626,000. May’s drop in full-time work was the second-largest since the Covid Panic.
Year over year, total full-time employees fell 0.9 percent. Over the past two months, in fact, the year-over-year measure of full-time jobs has been recession territory. Full-time jobs have now been down, year over year, in February, March, April, and May. Over the past fifty years, three months in a row of negative growth in full-time jobs has always been a recession signal and has occurred when the United States has been in recession, or about to enter a recession:
The full-time jobs indicator now reflects what we’ve seen in temporary jobs for months. For decades, whenever temporary help services are negative, year over year, for more than three months in a row, the US is headed toward recession. This measure has now been negative in the United States for the past nineteen months.
This is to be expected in a weakening economy. Empirical studies have shown that economies tend to shift to part-time work in times of economic downturn as a means of allowing employers more flexibility in reducing costs. This has been observed internationally, and not just in the United States.
If we take a larger look around, we find plenty of worrisome data in the leading indicators: The Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is in recession territory. The same is true of the Richmond Fed’s manufacturing survey. The Conference Board’s Leading Indicators Index continues to point to recession. The yield curve points to recession. Commercial real estate is in big trouble. Net savings turned negative for only the second time in decades in 2023, and has been negative now for four quarters in a row. The economic growth we do see is being fueled by the biggest deficits since covid.
The fact that the “blowout” establishment survey is—as Bloomberg puts it—”Out of Sync With Recent Weaker Economic Data”—may be partly due to the establishment survey’s reliance on the so-called birth-death model. This model is used to estimate how many new jobs were created by new businesses—i..e, “births”—that are missed by the actual survey results. The BLS says it must use “non-sampling methods” to add in these newly created jobs. “Non-sampling methods” means the numbers made up by number crunchers. They don’t show up in any survey. In May, the establishment survey assumed the creation of 231,000 jobs. That’s a sizable number in a report that tells us 271,000 new jobs were created. Wong concludes this very large addition of hypothetical jobs to the establishment total simply doesn’t reflect the real world right now. She writes:
…BLS’ model for estimating business births and deaths – which added 231,000 jobs to the nonfarm-payrolls print in May – is lagging the reality of surging establishment closures and falling business formation. We think the underlying pace of current job gains is likely less than 100,000 per month.
Of course, none of this bothers the corporate-media reporters looking to make the regime look better. Heather McDonald of the Washington Post, for example, insists that the latest “big jobs reports” means “people keep getting jobs.” This is only true, of course, if she means “people keep getting second jobs”—most of which are part-time jobs. Moreover, when we consider the implausibility of the birth-death model, it seems many of those jobs don’t even exist.
Hunter Biden Found Guilty As Democrats Prepare To Flush His Poopy Pants Father Before DNC
Top BBC Presenter Found Dead After Vowing To Expose COVID Vaccines
The global elite and their useful idiots are scrambling to cover up the crimes against humanity they perpetrated during the Covid plandemic, as the truth emerges and threatens to destroy those who played god and […]
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