Writes John J. Duncan Jr. at the Knoxville Focus.
Category Archives: Economics
Poland: From Socialism to Prosperity
A film by Rainer Zitelmann (35 minutes).
The video shows that capitalism beats socialism on freedom, prosperity and environmental protection.
Truckers on the Frontlines of Freedom
Jordan Peterson and his wife Tammy talk to Tamara Lich, one of the leaders of the Canadian Trucker convoy to Ottawa in January 2022.
The whole conversation (particularly from 27:45 onwards to the end) shows just how fascist the Canadian dictatorship (and it is a dictatorship in all but name) has already become.
Solar Power Creates Waste and Pollution
Article by H. Sterling Burnett.
The article concentrates on the growing, and essentially disregarded problem of recycling of the panels. What the article doesn’t mention is the pollution due to the extraction of toxic metals from the ground which wouldn’t happen (certainly not to the current extent) without the artificially, government-induced boom in solar panels. Also, it doesn’t mention that solar panels get very hot in the sun and therefore increase the surrounding temperature and dryness in the atmosphere. That in turn draws moisture from the ground, and we get droughts.
Why do the nations rebel?
Psalm 2 appears to be a comment on the Tower of Babel
1 Why do the nations conspire[a]
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5 He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:
He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
8 Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will break them with a rod of iron[b];
you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”
10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear
and celebrate his rule with trembling.
12 Kiss his son, or he will be angry
and your way will lead to your destruction,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Footnotes
Exposing the Banality of ESG and the Woke Movement
Laurence Fox with James Lindsay
In this episode of #TheLaurenceFoxShow, Fox and Lindsay dissect the complexities surrounding ESG and the woke movement. Here are the key points covered in this gripping conversation:
Origins of ESG: Uncover the origins and evolution of the ESG framework, examining its impact on business practices, investment strategies, and the broader social landscape.
The Woke Movement Unveiled: Delve into the woke movement, exploring its ideological foundations, cultural influence, and the implications it has on free speech, critical thinking, and societal cohesion.
The Banality of ESG: Expose the inherent banality that underpins the ESG movement, highlighting the potential dangers of reducing complex issues to simplistic metrics and virtue signalling.
Ideological Challenges: Investigate the ideological underpinnings of both ESG and the woke movement, uncovering the potential pitfalls of dogmatic adherence to particular narratives and the suppression of dissenting voices. Critical Analysis and Solutions: Engage in a critical analysis of the ESG and woke phenomena, while exploring alternative approaches that emphasise nuance, individual autonomy, and genuine progress.
Video here. (58 minutes)
Jordan Peterson interviews Robert F. Kennedy jr.
The "rogue" Democratic candidate
Video here. (1 h 35 min)
>>>>>>
Update (24/06/2023): I heard a day or so ago that Youtube has taken the video down. Indeed it has been. No problem, see it here instead.
<<<<<<
Noteworthy points from Kennedy’s statements in the interview:
In the US, 70% of all newsshow adverts are from the pharmaceutical industry.
The pharma industry is a “criminal enterprise”. The 4 principal companies (he mentioned Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and another one I didn’t catch) have collectively paid $35 bn dollars in criminal damages and penalties over the past decade. For lying to doctors, defrauding regulators, falsifying science and killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Pharmaceutical drugs are the 3rd largest cause of death in the US after cancer and heart failure.
Medical journals have become vessels of the pharma industry. The Cochrane charitable organisation has been an important counter-balance to this situation. [They recently debunked the myth that masks help prevent covid.] However, Bill Gates has recently started funnelling money into them, so he’s probably going to undermine them.
Kennedy thinks he has a chance as a Democratic candidate for presidency because polls show he would fare better against Trump than Biden would. However, the trick is to get this information out to the public, because the elite that control the legacy media certainly don’t want Kennedy to win (nor do they want Trump to win).
Biden won’t want to debate. Neither will Trump on the Republican side. So Podcasts and other alternative media are the way forward.
JP has this question: The Right knows where its “pathological” limits on the fringe are, and that is e.g. Holocaust-denial, racism etc. The Left does not seem to know an equivalent limit. Where does Kennedy see the limit of politics that can be countenanced?
Kennedy side-steps the answer (a bit of a red flag for me), he says he’d rather think about building bridges than disassociating himself.
JP clarifies that he thinks the left-wing idea of “equity” (equality of outcome) is pathological.
On the subject of climate warming, Kennedy says he definitely believes its happening and that man-made CO2 and methane are significant culprits. However, he is strictly against fearmongering and top-down, tyrannical solutions. He would remove all subsidies for energy and “use the free market”.
He exudes some naivete when he says that once the wind and solar farms are set up they will deliver free energy, all that is missing is a proper grid. I think he’s surprisingly wrong here. Solar panels will have to be replaced from time to time, as will wind turbines (and both will become hazardous waste).
However, interestingly he says that he is an environmentalist not out of fear for the future but out of love for nature (that chimes with me a lot).
Regarding Ukraine he says we have trapped the Ukrainians in a supposedly humanitarian mission. All we are doing is extending the war, therefore shovelling money into the US military-industrial complex.
In the Great Default, What Will Happen to Local Churches?
The new brand of totalitarianism
Similar to fascism of old
Justo González in his book “The Story of Christianity” (Volume 2, p. 309), writes about the different “flavours” of fascism in the first half of the 20th century. There were many differences, but what united them was this:
“The glorification of war, dread of the free exchange of ideas, a totalitarian nationalism, and opposition to all forms of egalitarianism”
Today, we have the glorification of war (against Serbia, then Irak, then Syria, then Ukraine – and a denial that there is any glorification involved), dread of the free exchange of ideas (“cancel culture” – and a denial of its existence), a totalitarian globalisation, and a new form of racism (“whiteness is bad”), which is part of a “hierarchy of (alleged) victimhood”.
What Adam Smith had to say about conspiracies
They are quite common, especially if they are given protection by government regulation
We often hear people being dismissive about “conspiracy theories”. Yet one of the most eminent thinkers of the 18th century, who is often called the founder of economics (although there were others, see here), Adam Smith, knew that they were commonplace. Here is what he wrote in his famous book with the (abridged) title “The Wealth of Nations”:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
– The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X.
Most people who remember reading this however don’t know that the really interesting part comes after that. Smith goes on to say:
It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. . . . A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows, and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary. An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole.
– The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X.
Regarding this, Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute writes:
As Eamonn Butler has written, Smith’s point is that the only way businessmen can succeed in a ‘conspiracy against the public’ is if they are given protection by government regulation. If not, the pressures of competition will ensure that conspiring businesses are quickly undermined by their competitors.