Category Archives: Economics

Salvation through politics

How and why this false notion keeps getting enacted

Gary North often wrote that the prevailing faith in Western societies nowadays is in “salvation through politics” or “salvation through the state”.

Nearly 30 years ago, economist Thomas Sowell laid out in his book “The Vision of the Anointed” how this falsehood works in practice. Wikipedia has an entry about that book. It says that in it, Sowell “brands the anointed as promoters of a worldview concocted out of fantasy impervious to any real-world considerations.”

In an interview from 1995 (10 minutes of excerpts from it – the full 25-minute version is here) he outlines his observations.

First, he explains who the “anointed” are: The elites in leading media, universities, law and politics. One could add nowadays: in entertainment. These people believe they know better than most what needs to be done. And thus think themselves entitled to use government force to get these things done.

If an assertion is made that fits the ideas and vision of these people, they demand no evidence. They simply assume it is true and use their many and powerful channels to plant this assertion in the public’s mind.

Regarding the implementation by these people of measures to fight a perceived societal ills Sowell outlines a four-stage pattern – which we could see very clearly in action during the Covid crisis.

1. Crisis: We’re hyped to believe that something is a terrible crisis for which Something Must Be Done. Very often, the thing we are told is causing a crisis has been “getting better for years on end”. But that gets ignored.

2. A solution for this supposed crisis is suggested. The protagonists say: This will lead to beneficial results A. Critics disagree and say it will lead to detrimental results Z.

3. The suggested solution is implemented and almost immediately we get detrimental results Z.

4. Denial phase: The protagonists of the enacted measures deny that they caused Z. Because, they say, there are many factors, there’s complexities, it’s simplistic to blame it on this.

This is what we will see down the line once the media thinks it is safe to no longer suppress the evidence that lockdowns, masks and vaccines did much more harm than good.

This is what we will hear now that “saving the climate” and “supporting Ukraine” is leading to poverty and destitution.

This is what we have been hearing when discussing soaring crime rates.

And so on.

Economists tend to see through this because they are trained to think in terms of cost-benefit analysis and what is called “opportunity cost”: The cost of any action/decision is that it closes the door to other opportunities. What are they, and can we afford to lose them?

Our current elites don’t like that sort of thinking because it questions their beliefs.

Asked whether these people just don’t think their solutions might be detrimental, Sowell says there’s more to it: The solutions always gives these people more power and influence.

That is also something we see time and time again.

What needs to be done

With regard to the envrionment

Make sure everyone is earning $5,000 or more per year, because then people start thinking more long-term, beyond the question: “Where do I get the next meal for myself and my family from?”

That’s the polar opposite of the spiritual condition of the public discourse in the West nowadays, which is akin to an hysterical 13-year-old, says Jordan Peterson in this 6-minute clip of a discussion with Joe Rogan.

Land and the Sabbath

And its relevance to the ecology debate

Exodus 23:10-11 says:

“For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.”

What does it mean for us today? Four things:

1. That we should not overuse the natural resources. Give nature rest, refuge and shelter.

2. That God has given us humans the world to thrive in. It is primarily for us humans. We are stewards of the world in His name (and under His laws). But the main aim of this task is to allow us humans to thrive.

3. We must not neglect the poor.

4. We must not neglect wild animals (nature). However, notice that there is a clear hierarchy: “the wild animals may eat what is left” (by the poor people). In other words: humans first, then nature. People who think they can square the circle of protecting the environment and the poor equally will have to consider this deeply.

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

Seymour Hersh's report

“The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now“.

Most of the media say “one anonymous source” is not enough proof.

Correct. So, when are they going to start doing their job and looking for more – or to find indications that refute the above claim?

Here‘s Tucker Carlson on the whole thing.

Update (10/02/2023):

Independent Evidence Video Confirms Key Part of Sy Hersh’s Report on the Attack on Nord Stream 2

Update (13/02/2023): Tom Luongo calls Hersh a “useful idiot” who is “advancing what is clearly only half the story”. He points out that Hersh mentions the US and Norway as culprits, but never mentions the UK: “This pathological need to absolve the UK of any involvement in the Nordstream bombings and setting the world on a course for total infrastructural war, like Russia is now doing in Ukraine, borders on creepy.”

Luongo’s conclusion:

I could spin out a host of possible Act IIIs here:

  • A quid pro quo between sovereigntist US forces and NATO to keep the UK and Poland out of the story to scapegoat “Biden” and begin cleaning up the State Department of the Nulandistas and British Intelligence influences to begin winding down the war in Ukraine This is my preferred story.
  • Further put the US and Russia on a collision course by having a journalist of Sy Hersh’s reputation confirm what everyone wants to believe, the US is a rogue state. This further degrades the US’s reputation and hastening the collapse of the US (Soros’ openly stated goal) on the eve of the Munich Security Conference (next week).
  • Leave Putin with even fewer domestically-palatable political options at home other than further escalation pushing the world closer to the brink of nuclear war to effect Davos’ Great Reset

To name a few.

But what’s really clear here is that there are no Ethan Hunts or even Jason Bournes out there to swoop in at the last second and stop this runaway train of evolution through catastrophe from going off the cliff and going boom.

Update (14/02/2023):

Edward Snowden Says UFO Hysteria Is “Engineered” Distraction From Nord Stream Pipeline Bombshell

Update (15/02/2023):

Pepe Escobar has some interesting things to say about this (“The Plot Thickens“):

The Special Military Operation (SMO) was launched on February 24, almost a year ago. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 blow up happened on September 26. Hersh assures there were “more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to ‘sabotage the pipelines’”.

So that confirms that the terror attack planning preceded, by months, not only the SMO but, crucially, the letters sent by Moscow to Washington on December 2022, requesting a serious discussion on “indivisibility of security” involving NATO, Russia and the post-Soviet space. The request was met by a dismissive American non-response response.

While he was writing the story of a terror response to a serious geopolitical issue, it does raise eyebrows that a first-rate pro like Hersh does not even bother to examine the complex geopolitical background.

In a nutshell: the ultimate Mackinderian anathema for the U.S. ruling classes – and that’s bipartisan – is a Germany-Russia alliance, extended to China: that would mean the U.S. expelled from Eurasia, and that conditions everything any American government thinks and does in terms of NATO and Russia.

Hersh should also have noticed that the timing of the preparation to “sabotage the pipelines” completely blows apart the official United States government narrative, according to which this a collective West effort to help Ukraine against “unprovoked Russian aggression”.

[…]

What everyone already knew by then – as the record shows even on YouTube – is that the combo behind “Biden” were dead set on terminating the Nord Streams by whatever means necessary. After the start of the SMO, the only thing missing was to find a mechanism for plausible deniability.

Stuff you should know about Ukraine

Setting the record straight

On February 16, 2022, a full week before Putin sent combat troops into Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army began the heavy bombardment of the area (in east Ukraine) occupied by mainly ethnic Russians. Officials from the Observer Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were located in the vicinity at the time and kept a record of the shelling as it took place. What the OSCE discovered was that the bombardment dramatically intensified as the week went on until it reached a peak on February 19, when a total of 2,026 artillery strikes were recorded. Keep in mind, the Ukrainian Army was, in fact, shelling civilian areas along the Line of Contact that were occupied by other Ukrainians.

We want to emphasize that the officials from the OSCE were operating in their professional capacity gathering first-hand evidence of shelling in the area. What their data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people. This has all been documented and has not been challenged.

So, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: Is the bombardment and slaughter of one’s own people an ‘act of war’?

Continue reading here.

Jordan Peterson wants to create an anti-WEF

The famed psychologist lays out his plans and vision in a discussion with Joe Rogan.

This is a very inspiring idea. However, lately JP has been somewhat uncritical to certain kinds of interventionist ideas that dovetail nicely with what typical WEF-types might say. Paul Joseph Watson commented recently on this. So it remains to be seen in which direction the Canadian sage is moving.

Ukraine: German Tank Controversy

It's about curtailing German influence in Europe and beyond

Says the blogger Eugyppius:

This war is about Russia primarily, and about Germany only secondarily. It’s an attempt of the Global American Empire to hem in Russia via an extended proxy campaign. In the longer term, this effort will require that Europe remain an American outpost, as it was during the Cold War, and this means the economic and political influence of Germany must be sharply curtailed. America – and not Germany – must dominate the Continent. The Scholz government have gone very far in making concessions to the Americans, but they appear to have finally drawn a line of sorts, at giving the Americans a pretence to sell their tanks in Europe. It will be important to see whether they can hold out.