Source link: http://archive.mises.org/18801/former-soviet-citizen-confronts-crazed-ows-commies/
Former Soviet Citizen Confronts Crazed OWS Commies
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That was pretty sad…a perfect example of the results of propaganda.
I agree, shows the enormous challenge ahead.
But I wouldn’t overblow it either. It was a nothing more than a street fight, whose fisticuffs were animated cliches (from both sides).
I like how they just throw out that he’s racist at the end.
Perhaps they classify themselves (socialists) as some sort of a race. You know, post-modern communist humans
Ironic that a self styled former soviet does not know the difference between socialism and communism. Equally ironic is all cannot see that what they are protesting is not capitalism. It is socialism for the banking monopolies. Please people, can we begin by basic word definition?
Maybe you should tell them exactly what it is their protesting, since they don’t seem to know.
What is the difference between socialism and communism?
Answer: none. Communism was socialism put in practice, socialism is a model in the heads of the economist.
Actually it’s the other way around – Communism was the ideal model of an idyllic future classless society, while socialism was what you were stuck with until that future arrived.
Or as summed up by The People from one of those nominally communist countries:
“The stage between communism and socialism is called alcoholism.”
He changed nobody’s mind.
When someone won’t accept basic facts, it’s almost impossible to convince them of anything. You really have to pick your fights. Where do you start with someone who thinks North Korea is a wonderful place? Trying to convince them of even the smallest point is a waste of breath.
However, publicly humiliating them for other YouTube viewers might do some good. People should know that such ignorance on the status of North Korea is socially unacceptable and in fact insulting to people that suffered under communism.
THOSE WHO KNOW
Those who always
know what’s best
are
a universal pest.
MEETING THE EYE
You’ll probably find
that it suits your book
to be a bit cleverer
than you look.
Observe that the easiest
method by far
is to look a bit stupider
than you are.
(http://www.archimedes-lab.org/grooks.html)
I think North Korea is a wonderful place (to send all the lefties).
Seems like the OWN are still at the “Four legs good, two legs bad” level. They have not yet figured out why Washington DC is booming and everywhere else is in the tank.
This is quite accurate. About a year or so ago, I was listening to the sympathetic talking heads on CNN chat about the current economic malaise and the frustration of the inside-the-Beltway supporters. Many of them, naturally, were government agency professionals and DC policy wonks (err, not Cato of couse). The reporter was describing their tone, “almost pleading that people should see the improvement, the new construction and activity…”
Those DC insiders were correct, of course, from their angle. As I went in and out of Washington over the past two years I was often amazed at the amount of economic activity (completely anecdotal, I admit). But there was building and working everywhere.
And there was.
There.
Not here.
Not where most of us are.
What a surprise. Feh…
that will be fun when im going to do this in Hamburg the next days; I’m from the former GDR and the west-german leftists need their lecture on the “Real-existierender Sozialismus” very badly. and it will be fun just to read the signs: i even saw two guys the one holding a sign. “AGAINST MONOPOLY!” and the other: “DOWN WITH THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM!” LOL
That is priceless.
And what a nice image for a cartoonist to leverage.
Funny how leftists are always against private “monopoly” (loosely using the term), while supporting a government run monopoly, which is a real monopoly- they use force to keep control.
These people want a revolution. Imagine this crowd in a serious fight with folks who know HOW TO MAKE THINGS. They they wouldn’t last 5 min.
The people in the top 1% don’t MAKE anything.
Go ahead, billwald. Make something without the resources or capital to make it.
How do you know what “they” do?
More omniscient hocus pocus?
So sad.
You don’t get it.
And you never will.
I agree that there is a LOT of rent-seeking among the top 1%. They lend a lot of money to the government in exchange for tax free income. They also disproportionately benefit from the existence of the banking cartel, since the issuance of government debt goes through the insider financiers. They benefit from finance laws that lock out competition.
But merely being in the 1% is not, in and of itself, an economic problem.
What do they make (when they’re not rent-seeking)?
They make capital allocations. They make decisions (or hire people who do it for them) about where there are unmet economic wants and needs. They look for ways to meet those wants and needs more efficiently than anyone else is currently meeting them. They organize people to work together to produce desired goods and services. They lend money to entrepreneurs to do all of the above.
The OWS children should be complaining about the cronyism, not the capitalism.
How much rent-seeking?
Not true – in the past, Steve Jobs built a lot of stuff himself. Restaurants do make food. Probably true that nobody in the Forbes 400 actually makes anything themselves.
The real problem is that the public sector has become bloated. It is not that they do not produce anything – they just tend to produce things that people do not want to buy (..like the Chevy Volt)
I’m sure that many in the top 1% have more real knowledge and work harder than all the OWS protesters combined. And always have.
What would be really great would be for the USA to actually be the Semi-Free Market Based country that obeyed the Constitution.
What would be really-really-really great would be for the USA to be an actual Free Market and respect the Non-Aggression Principal and Private Property.
Didn’t the fellow asking the question sound like Yakov Smirnoff? Was taht Mr. Smirnoff?
In Soviet Russia, capitalists protest YOU!
I’d like to further add this comment, which I found elsewhere (so its not mine), on the Occupy-guys in Germany, which adresses a point i seldom hear in the american discussion, namely the execrable number “99%”:
“I think these protests are highly overrated, at least the ones in Germany. It is the usual suspects, Attac, the far left, sometimes the greens and the unions. What they are shouting isn’t new at all, only their claim to represent 99% of the German population, who are according to the protesters all against capitalism. The last time anybody claimed to represent 99% of the Germans who supposedly all disliked capitalism, was during “elections” in East Germany which where “won” by 99,7% by the SED (communist party).”
I find it hard to believe that many in the OWS crowd would actually hold up North Korea as an example to follow. At the very least, they would say something like the North Koreans dictatorship instead of democracy resulted in bad leadership. I think these particular useful idiots had to be searched out to make this video.
I would expect a typical OWSer would point to some of the Nordic countries as better candidates to emulate. They can point at higher levels of socialism and lower levels of income inquality while ignoring that their citizens have been voting for less and less socialism over the past couple of decades.
If a number of the protesters think socialism is so great, why don’t they just hop over the Berlin Wall and…oh, it’s not there any more?
I believe that people who understand economics, like you all here on the Mises blog, need to start posting rational, non-attacking, educational information on liberal sites. And, we need to call in to liberal or progressive talk shows to argue our side.
Don’t give up on american’s ability to see the light once it is turned on. Left wing education has a stranglehold on the minds of this country. The Mises Institute was founded to educate. Let’s do that.
You may only change a few minds, or get one person to investigate what you have said, but the truth will spread like a virus as they then try to educate others.
Support Ron Paul and spread the knowledge!
This has to be fake.
Well, libertarians have heard it all before – “It’s earlier than you think.”
It’s worth noting here – if the worst thinkers gather in New York City and other cities around the country and ask what their country will do for them – is it any different than it was yesterday?
I’d suggest, as I did today, re-reading Karl Hess’ classic – http://mises.org/daily/3768
“This is not a time of radical, revolutionary politics. Not yet. Unrest, riot, dissent, and chaos notwithstanding, today’s politics is reactionary. Both Left and Right are reactionary and authoritarian. That is to say, both are political. They seek only to revise current methods of acquiring and wielding political power. Radical and revolutionary movements seek not to revise but to revoke. The target of revocation should be obvious. The target is politics itself.”
When I was a young man my father told me never to argue with a fool,because eventually people watching the argument wouldn’t be able to pick out who the real fool was. Trying to Argue with Communists,Socialists,nazis,religious zealots etc. is a waste of time. These types of people gave up listening to logic and reason a long time ago. Better not to waste your time and raise your blood pressure. Every once in a while,though,these fanatics gain political power and can do real harm to a society. When this occurs the only kind of persuasion they understand comes out of the barrel of a gun. This is why the Founders put the 2nd Amendment into our Constitution.
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