I Love Capitalism! I hate Socialism!

As a naturalized American by choice, I love my adopted country in which I spent my entire adult life. I grew up under a socialist republic and a socialist economic system run by the Communist Party apparatchiks. My twenty years there can help me make a clear and realistic comparison of the two economic systems.

It is obvious that I love the freedom of capitalism otherwise I would not be here. I hated socialism, the steppingstone to communism so much that I left behind everything I knew and loved, my mom and dad, my large extended family, my friends, and so many memories.

When the communist dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist for over four decades was executed in 1989, the people were elated that they did not experience the communist “paradise” Marx proposed theoretically, “to each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." They could only imagine how much worse the Communist Man would have been after the failed and miserable Socialist Man.

Under socialism, the government controls all the means of production, dictates all quotas and makes five-year plans for the economy.

Paul B. Skousen defined Socialism simply as “the government force to control and change society,” and how it “progresses like a snake eating its tail.” Skousen wrote about the seven pillars of socialism:

1.      All-powerful rulers (the government and the communist party)

2.      Societal division into castes (India) or classes (proletariat and the party members)

3.      All things in common (everything allegedly belonged to the proletariat but nothing belonged to the people if they wanted to claim it)

4.      All things regulated (by a myriad of laws and constant decrees)

5.      Compliance is forced (large standing army, police, security police, and economic police; citizens are not allowed to own arms)

6.      Control of all information (two newspapers allowed; printing only party indoctrination and opinions)

7.      No unalienable rights. (rights were given by the party and taken back at will)

Under socialism we had no rights. We could not speak our opinions to neighbors, friends, family, or at work. We could not express dissatisfaction with the regime. We disappeared overnight if we did, never to be seen again, or perhaps years later after hard labor in a gulag or in a re-education camp.

There were two papers, Scinteia (The Spark) and Romania Libera (Free Romania), the Communist Party’s platforms of misinformation and communist indoctrination. We hated them so much for the constant lies that we used them as toilet paper. It was also necessary because we could not find toilet paper on the market or it had wood chips imbedded in the sheets (ouch).

When I first stepped into an American grocery store in winter, I was shocked at the shelves bursting with food of all kinds, fruits, and vegetables. I had to remember to close my mouth. Such “evil” capitalism, providing plenty of food for its citizens and a good life!

Our socialist shelves were empty and the meat department sold bones for soup. Vegetables were not available, save for a few wrinkled and sprouted potatoes. Lines were endless every day for bread, milk, butter, flour, rice, cooking oil, and other necessities. And the quantities were rationed.

Socialized medicine was free, unlike capitalism, but doctors were overwhelmed by the number of patients, and wrote prescriptions, knowing that we would not be able to find the drugs prescribed because the pharmacy shelves were bare.

Shop clerks and pharmacists sold the few items supplied to family, close friends, and for bribes. Shortages were constant because the centrally planned economy was a failure.

The black market was alive and well, however, if marketeers were caught, they served years and years in prison, plus restitution of whatever the government decided.

Nobody must do without drugs in the capitalism system. There are many ways for people unable to buy medicine or medical care to find help in capitalism.

The socialist justice system found a person guilty as charged and a lawyer had to prove his/her innocence in a court of law overseen by the Communist Party workers and activists.

Shockingly, even though a person is innocent until proven guilty, people get away with crimes under capitalism over technicalities or a corrupt judicial system. They are innocent until proven guilty and the evidence of guilt sometimes is questionable or not enough.

I love capitalism because I was able to educate myself to the level that I wanted. I did not have to have a family with a history of Communist Party membership and activism to be allowed in college. Meritocracy was important but so was the affiliation to the Party. The children of the Party got in college first, no perfect exam scores necessary.

I love capitalism because I can attend any church I want. Nobody questions my love of country if I believe in God, own a Bible, and go to church.

Socialism frowns on people attending church and believing in God. Churches are allowed for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and as a way for priests to spy on their parishioners. Most regular church goers were old men and women.

The titles of books I could purchase and own were approved and published by the party’s printing house. If anyone owned more personal things than their neighbors, or books, tapes, records not approved by the party censors, then the economic police would come knocking and that person would go to jail after the police confiscated everything for “evidence” and disappeared the items for later distribution to party loyalists.

I can own a car or two under capitalism; I can drive a car, and I can learn to operate other vehicles if I choose. I can have my own phone, my own typewriter that is not registered with the police, my own computer, and other electronics.

In capitalism I could go on vacation if I saved enough money, I could get a passport to fly or sail anywhere in the world I desire to go. The socialist system’s police or the communist party would tell me no.

The Communist Party, not unlike the current Social Democrats, promised people “no religion, no countries, open borders, no possessions, and no worries.” What a bad life that was! If we crossed the border we were shot. The party kept us locked inside borders with high wire fences and heavily armed guards.

I can have a Christmas tree and decorations all over my lawn under capitalism, and, unless there is an HOA, I do not need permission to do so. People celebrate Christmas under capitalism, although lately the Muslim contingent of the American population is offended by our Christian symbolisms.

We had to work at Christmas time during socialism, and the government changed Santa Clause to Mos Gerila (Old Frozen Man). The communist party encouraged the celebration of New Year and forbade caroling.

Private ownership of anything in socialism was highly discouraged and punished with prison as bourgeois. I can own anything I want under capitalism if I have capital to pay for it.

Borrowing money in socialism was prohibitive and driven by extremely high interest rates in the 30-40 percent range. There was only one bank, the Party’s bank.

Every move in socialism was regulated, penalized, fined, taxed, and restricted by the Party rulers and prison was assigned at random.

Under socialism, government-sanctioned rights are the norm. As Skousen wrote, “When a government selectively protects some rights and ignores others, especially property rights, then socialism has started.”

I like capitalism because the health care system provides care to everyone, legal citizen or not, able to pay or not. They can pay later or use previously purchased health care insurance. Most doctors are well trained, and medicines are available without having to bribe the medical staff.

Under socialism, doctors were poorly paid, poorly trained, and did not care much about the outcome of patients from surgery. To this day, many who grew up under socialism are scared to go into hospital even though the medical system has vastly improved over decades of free market system.

Education was good under socialism although it had a large component of communist indoctrination. In capitalist society, unfortunately, the formerly spectacular education has turned into an indoctrination venue for socialism and socialist activism. Sadly, most young people are ignorant and lost in their devices and technology.

Over the years, the socialist indoctrination amplified in schools, slowly at first, but by now America is on its way to become a socialist country run by Socialist Democrats even though capitalism made them economically well off when compared to all other western nations.

We are at the point of no return because the Democratic Socialists of America Party has adopted the socialist platform of the twentieth century’s former Iron Curtain socialist countries run by the Communist Party. One interesting question remains; will Americans accept the government’s ownership of the means of production?

 

 

 

Equitable Distribution of Robotic Output to Non-Working Humans

As the recent riots in France organized by the Red-Green Axis and Labor Unions have shown, global communism in the twenty-first century is here to stay. It has failed miserably everywhere in the twentieth century and left behind one hundred million dead in its existence since the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. The dead were not necessarily all sent to gulags to die or were executed. The majority were starved to death by their own Marxist government.

The French and other European countries have generous social/welfare programs and spend as much as 40 percent of their GDP for that purpose. They have free health care, paid parental leave, paid family leave, free childcare, free pre-school education, five weeks of paid vacation annually, 35-hour workweek, generous unemployment, housing benefits, and heavily subsidized higher education.

As artificial intelligence and robots take over and the techno world elites promise that work will become obsolete for humans, an important question emerges, how will the spoils of robotic labor be divided among humans? What is the equity in that?

Elites have decided that a new kind of Marxism must emerge to “equitably divide” the output of the robots for all the non-working humans.

Karl Marx wrote in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme, referring to free access to goods and services, “To each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen).

A communist system will offer abundance of goods and services that would satisfy everybody’s needs and wants. In reality, no such abundance existed under socialism, the precursor to communism. People were left hungry and wanting for basic needs, services, goods, medicines, and food.

Marx wanted output to be divided equally among all, regardless of each individual’s contribution to the production process. If you complied with the ruling Marxists, then you lived and ate bones and scraps they provided after the best of everything was sent to export. If you did not, then swift prison and execution was your fate.

While the Soviet socialist republics and their satellite countries suffered economic deprivations, the free-market capitalists prospered at all levels of society. Unarmed, dispossessed of their property and lied to by their Communist Party governments, the Soviet satellite countries could not mount a serious fight against the twentieth century Marxist governments.

Marxists were materialistic in their vision, never cared much for the humanistic side. Humans like self-determination, not the promise of an „equitable“ division of robotic production.

Human objection might be silenced by the accusations of the invented „hate speech“ and „disinformation.“ The global governments define the two terms loosely because they engage themselves in similar activities. They want to twist their interpretation any which way they desire.

Free markets meritocracy not equity has allowed citizens to raise their standard of living through effort and hard work. Will they be willing to sacrifice their own desires and aspirations of a better life and subjugate themselves to a global government and their „equitable“ division of labor output? Will they submit totally to faceless robots and their technocratic owners? Will they submit willingly to the World Economic Forum’s promise that „you will own nothing and will be happy?“

The tech elites‘ Marxist vision demands that we cannot be the agents of our own lives and must give up our individual goals. But the human spirit „requires autonomy, and that cannot be replaced by automatons.“

The globalist elites pushing the new vision of „equity“ are using the main stream media to brainwash the population into believing that the system is going to work. Edmund Burke wrote that „all men have equal rights, but not to equal things.“ Since this equity among humans involves robots who do the work, how is this equity going to work? How is the economic pie resulting from the robots‘ work going to be divided?

Most importantly, will humans accept a „less than fully human life powered by robots?“ What will they do with the life they have on Earth? Additionally, will robots and techno elites care for their medical needs?

 

 

Communists Irradiating Dissidents

One hideous practice to control speech during Ceausescu's communist regime was inviting outspoken anti-communists and dissident writers and poets to meet with a Securitate colonel at the Secret Police headquarters. The invitees would show up out of fear and were shown into a bare waiting room painted in drab and depressing gray.  

After waiting patiently for a few hours in total silence, the person in question was told that the colonel was not available and the appointment had to be rescheduled. 

Six months and sometimes a year later, depending on their genetic makeup and the length of irradiation, most of those invited to Securitate headquarters came down with cancer of unusually large tumors. Few made the connection between their visits to Securitate headquarters and their devastating illnesses. 

We learned this horrible truth in 1988 from Gen. Mihai Ion Pacepa, the head of the Romanian Securitate police who defected to the west and spent the rest of his life in a secret location in the U.S. 

Gen. Pacepa revealed the existence of the evil program to kill opponents of the communist regime with lethal doses of radiation. The scary waiting room where the dissidents had been waiting for the invisible colonel to arrive was equipped with a cobalt device that radiated them.

Salt, an Element of Life

In the elements of life category: salt.

Salt, NaCl, is essential to life, in a rather precarious balance - too much is bad and can kill you and too little is dangerous and can kill you as well. Salt without iodine is also an issue.

During the Roman Empire, salt was more precious than gold and Roman soldiers were paid in both coins and salt, salarium.

The Latin word for salt, salarium, gave us the English word, salary.

We can produce salt in three different ways:

1. We can evaporate it from the ocean in a painstaking process. The neolithic people in Boulby processed salt at scale thousands of years ago.

2. Rock salt can be mined from the ground, a process that is quite old too. For example, the Khewra salt mine in Pakistan dates back to Alexander the Great. This Khewra salt is sold under the name of Himalayan pink salt. The Khewra mine is not really that close to the Himalayan foothills; it is about 200 miles away.

In north-west Austria, the Hallein mine is so old that they found within it the skeleton of a Celtic miner who had been trapped there thousands of years ago. No longer exploited, this mine is now an exploratory cavern with its own funicular railway.

3. The least difficult way to exploit underground salt is to bring it up in the form of brine, without any humans ever setting foot in the mine. This is called "solution mining." Brine is brought up from underground with pressurized water. This solution has a 30 percent salt content. To get an idea of how much salt is in this brine, compare it to sea water which only contains 3 percent salt. However, the electrolytic process to extract the salt uses a lot of energy and does release pollutants which are being carefully disposed of now, hopefully.

No dynamite or drills are used, just pressurized water.

Adakaleh, the Island that Became the Romanian Atlantis

Adakaleh, a small island on the Danube in central Europe, about 2 km in length, transported the visitor back to the time of the Ottoman Empire, a piece of land quite possibly taken from the imaginary One Thousand and One Arabian Nights stories we secretly read in high school.

The population spoke Turkish and delighted in growing roses, serving Turkish delights for dessert in the afternoon, and making unfiltered coffee in heated sand, so bitter that one’s numbed tongue failed to register the amount of caffeine poured from tiny copper pots, with enough grounds left to read one’s future in the images on the insides of the cup.

The tiny island survived wars of nations and fights against the Ottoman Empire, a no man’s land that no longer exists on any map. The entire island is now submerged in the Danube’s waters transformed into the hydro-power lake of the Iron Gates I and II (Portile de Fier).

At a depth of dozens of meters, a diver can find the fortress wall, narrow paved streets people no longer walk on, and lost homes submerged by a development agreed upon by the former Yugoslavia and Romania on which territories the Danube traversed. A few powerful men decided to drown a part of history in the name of progress.

In the twenty-first century, the Danube, the second largest river after the Volga, flows 1,775 miles from the Black Forest Mountains in Germany through (or borders) countries before it flows into the drainage basin by Black Sea – Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine. The river was once a frontier of the Roman Empire.

Close to the Romanian town of Orsova, the island was a strategic point for centuries in the conflicts that Europe had experienced, particularly the advancement and occupations of the Ottoman Empire. Fortified by Austria in the 18^th century to keep the Ottoman Empire at bay, the island was eventually occupied by the Turks, fast becoming an enclave with a strange statute unlike any other.

The Treaty of Berlin in 1878 redesigned that map of Europe but forgot about Adakaleh Island and left it off the redrawn maps. Adkaleh, between Serbia and Romania, became an autonomous entity which had no taxation on goods. The Turkish locals fished, grew roses, made rose oil for perfumes, and planted tobacco. The Adakaleh cigarettes were famous all over Europe. The lack of taxation made them more desirable.

The 600-1,000 inhabitants had a strong Turkish culture and followed the call to prayer by the central mosque. Kings and famous people visited Adakaleh for its unique culture and place in Europe. It was an interesting ethnic bridge between Serbia and Romania.  

The island’s history entered an extinction path when the communist governments of Yugoslavia and Romania decided in the 1960s to build a hydropower station and a dam exactly where Adakaleh Island was located. Nobody asked the Turkish inhabitants what they wanted to do and there was no vote. People were told that progress requires sacrifices.

Locals were given two options, they could move to Turkey, their historical homeland, or move to the region of Dobrogea by the Black Sea where there was already a Turkish community also left behind from the many incursions of the Ottoman Empire into Romania. Romania had fought the Ottoman Empire for five hundred years as a crossing portal to the rest of Europe.

A tomb and a few fortress walls were moved to Simian Island for historical reasons. Old people on the island lost everything they had ever known. In the 1970s, when the dam was completed, the deep and placid lake bore no trace of the formerly thriving island. The soul of the community, with all the homes and narrow streets, was sunk in the dam’s deep waters.

Adakaleh Island became a Romanian Atlantis deep beneath the waters of the Iron Gates I and II.

 

 

 

 

Grief and Loss

When someone passes away, the grief is overwhelming. We carry grief around for a long time and cling to all precious memories with that person.

We lose a loved one when he/she dies and a second time when we finally let go. But letting go takes a long time; each person carries this grief into every facet of life for a long time. The longer you have lived with this person, the longer and more difficult the grieving period is.

When I lost my mom four years ago, my grieving was as profound as the deepest oceanic trench. My mom lived with us my entire life except for two years when we were separated by a large ocean. By contrast, I only lived in my dad’s house for twenty years. When he died, at the age of sixty-one, the pain was equally profound. He had sacrificed himself for the good of our family and for the good of the extended family.

Each person goes through the five stages of grief in vastly different circumstances. People experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance in their own personal way. One never knows when a part of grieving comes and goes because, most importantly, there is no timeline for grieving.

Sadness, anger, guilt, fear, and confusion come and go, alternating in intensity. Insomnia, headaches, and fatigue can be quite intense in some. Concentration falters and people forget things that are less important to them when compared to their painful loss. Some cry a lot [like me], withdraw from daily life or from things that had given them satisfaction and pleasure previously, and change routine.

People grieve over the loss of loved ones, health, illness, friendship, ability, mobility, security, divorce, separation, and an empty nest.

 

 

 

 

Equality of Outcome Is Equality of Misery

“All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.” – Edmund Burke

Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian mathematician trained in physics and mathematics, was interested in many fields of study, i.e., sociology, civil engineering, economics, political science, and philosophy. As a Renaissance scholar at the Lausanne School of Economics, he contributed to elite theory.

Elite theory argues that real power in any society is held by a small group with access to high paying jobs, resources, and organizations. This group includes politicians, federal judges, corporate executives, billionaires, military high ranks, university professors, think tanks, and the mainstream media.

Pareto analyzed choices that consumers made and drew conclusions important to the area of income distribution. He helped develop the area of microeconomics. The concept of Pareto efficiency in microeconomics was established based on his claim that income follows a Pareto distribution, a composite of his observations that 80% of wealth in Italy belonged to 20% of the population.

Income distribution reflects how a nation’s total income or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is distributed across the nation’s population.

The Pareto Principle is a rule based on observations that “80 percent of effects tend to come from 20 percent of causes.” This can be money, wealth, time, or other variables.

A good expression of “misery loves company” is the communists’ effort to make everyone equal, paying them equally, and working them equally. The result was an outcome of equal misery.

The Social Democrat fringe of the left is seeking equality of outcomes and are enforcing DEI hiring practices of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Regardless of a person’s motivation, ability, achievement, training, education, the left wants equality of outcomes at all costs.

The amount of skill embodied by the workforce is defined economically as human capital. Human capital is measured by the amount of education and training. One variable that was never considered was ability and the type of education that a student pursues. It is painfully evident that many young Americans opt for higher education in fields that are not helpful in finding professional employment. They have a useless college diploma. Their levels of ability to survive as young adults in a more complex society are lower than previous generations.

The population at large produces value within any group but there are intrinsic disparities in achievement based on the dramatic differences in ability and the tendency to want to work an eight to five job.

The over-achiever 20 percent of the population have high ability and high propensity to work and thus produce most value within any group – innovations, inventions, solutions, and opportunities.

The other 80 percent of the population produces some value as well, however, regardless of their contributions, they demand the same equal reward (outcome). They want to rig the system in such a way that everybody, regardless of their individual contribution, receives the same equal reward. They demand equity in the name of fairness.

In the communist system, when the motivated workers received the same pay (reward) as those who pretended to work and hid during the workday or presented doctor’s excuses for weeks on end for non-existent illnesses (after they bribed the doctors), the high producers stopped working so hard and became slackers just like the unproductive workers. The pay remained the same and the workers, blue or white collar, followed the motto, “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”

The result was equal misery for all. Nobody contributed more than the least of them and the race to the bottom began and stayed there for decades. The enforcement of equal outcomes under socialism/communism produced equal misery, uniformity, depression, and oppression. Did the Communist Party in charge of the country care about the state of the population? No, those in power only cared about themselves and their immediate families.