The Paradox Of The Market

An axiom of liberal democracy is that the more open the system the more choices there are within the system. A market for widgets, if it is an open market, will have the maximum number of widget makers and widget suppliers. The marketplace of ideas, if it is open to all, will have the full range of ideas. Similarly, as long as the demand side is unrestricted, the full spectrum of demand will be represented. Every widget buyer will have the chance to demand his type of widget.

This is the starting point for modern societies. It is no longer a point to be debated and certainly not questioned. This is obvious in the non-debate over tech censorship. Any effort to discuss what is going on with companies like Google and Twitter is met with a wall of sound about the sanctity of private firms operating in the market. “Build your own platform” has become the top single in the amen chorus. The marketplace is now a god that provides what the people need and deserve.

In theory, the chorus should be right. If everyone who wants to make widgets is allowed to make widgets, then there should be a widget maker for every type of widget demanded by the public, assuming the widget can be produced at a profit. Even people wanting free widgets could be supplied by charity. Outside of the extremes, if there is a way to make a profit by meeting even the most bizarre demands for a product or service, someone will find a way to meet that demand.

Something similar should happen in public discourse. If the public space is open, then everyone can present their ideas. If everyone is free to listen, or not listen, to those ideas being offered up, the marketplace should develop in the same way as it should with a product or a service. The insane ideas will have a small audience, while the sensible ideas will gain a larger audience. The marketplace of ideas will sort and stack the ideas on offer based on the preferences of the audience.

This is a bit redundant, but it is important to think about this axiom of liberal democracy while considering current reality. If the market place for goods and services functioned as believed, then we would have more than two mobile phone makers. There would be more than one search engine. We would have lots of small car makers, rather than a handful of global operators. In fact, General Motors should have gone out of business decades ago based on market principles.

In the realm of ideas, we should have a dozen political parties flourishing to one degree or another at the state and national level. For example, there is no obvious reason why there should not be political parties that operate just as the state level. According to the axioms of liberal democracy, there should be state parties that focus just on state and local issues, maybe operating as a feeder to a national party. Yet, we have just two parties that are really just two faces of a single party.

It is a paradox of markets that the internal dynamic of the market leads to fewer choices and maybe even no choice. Take the desktop computer market, for example. The only choice is the color and the label of the Chinese slave camp that produced it. Inside, the parts all come from the same source. Alternatives to the standard PC are fringe options that exist for hobbyists and weirdos. You see this everywhere you look around the marketplace. Our markets are oligopolies now.

It goes beyond market consolidation. Another aspect of this is that as some dominant players emerge, they begin to insulate themselves from demand. In fact, it is possible that the quest for market domination is actually an effort to insulate the supplier from the pressures of the marketplace. The players initially experiencing success shift from competing for clients to competing to wall off their share of demand in order to prevent others from competing for that market share.

You see this with sports. The NASCAR phenomenon is assumed to be driven by the edicts of this weird new religion that has gripped the great and good. That may be one aspect of it, maybe even the primary aspect, but there also seems to be a desire to get rid of their own audience. That is, NASCAR would be fine with not having a live crowd and depending entirely on television money. Then they no longer have to be responsive to the demands of the customers.

The temptation here is to say that the fans will not watch, but in the realm of television these days, ratings matter very little. ESPN, for example, gets the bulk of its revenue from mandatory cable fees. If you have a TV sub through the local cable monopoly or a service like Hulu, you pay ESPN eight dollars per month. It does not matter if you watch, you pay the fee. All cable channels work off this model. Once again, the glory of the market place is to result in a monopoly and no market.

This dynamic where the dominant suppliers seek to eradicate the demand side is evident in politics. Both faces of the uniparty are now onboard with vote by mail, for example, which eliminates the pesky demands of the voters. This form of voting makes for unlimited fraud, so we will end up with Stalin’s maxim. “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” Since picking one party or the other has no effect on policy, voting will soon be entirely ceremonial.

It is always tempting to confuse a paradox with a contradiction. Critics of modern capitalism, for example, will claim that the oligarchs are not really capitalist in the free market sense. They are corrupting the system. Similarly, people will claim that the problem with politics is that a small group of highly corrupt people are subverting the democratic system. In other words, the axioms of the market place are true, it’s just that the current systems are not adhering to them.

The trouble with this line of reasoning is it suggests that the marketplace itself selects for the sorts of people who seek to subvert the marketplace. Everywhere we look, the great experiment in open markets has had the same result. Whether it is finance, technology, ideas or politics, the result is small club that controls everything, not only to their exclusive benefit, but to the detriment of the people they allegedly serve. It is almost as if the market selects for sadists who despise their customers.


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Wolf Barney
Wolf Barney
4 years ago

It’s not just the uniparty, it’s the unicorporation. If you want to buy from a corporation that does not support BLM, good luck with that.

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  Wolf Barney
4 years ago

Psychopaths are drawn to any means for harnessing people to do their bidding and give them concealment. Businesses, political apparatuses, religious organizations and the like are such means. So we end up here: It is almost as if the market selects for sadists who despise their customers. However it is your “sadists” who manipulate the market and not the other way around.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

Yes. The psychological component gets missed. Many Cloud People enjoy sadism because they have all their material needs.

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

Psychopaths have been a permanent fixture of civilization. It’s not an epithet but an actual brain condition which possibly evolved as it did in response to socialization and crowding. The existence of the condition and those psychopaths intermingled among us explains one heckuva a lot of human history (and human misery). Because those born with psychopathy tend to be also born with superior communications skills and the talent to manipulate others, normies tend to defer to them and thus psychopaths can be difficult to contain. I believe the “science” of psychology is mostly bullshite, however, it does help classify and… Read more »

Screwtape
Screwtape
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

Psychopaths need to be exposed and then have their brains opened over a fallen tree for the sake of the village. Somewhere along the way the religious, social, and cultural immune system that performed these functions was compromised. Not only do these traits now survive but they are often solved for, rewarded, and celebrated as power and material success accrues along that behavioral axis. The traits that should have been jettisoned become part of the aspirational model for the entire village/organization. The virus spreads. In business the paradox is quaint. A really good salesman is hard to find. But extrapolated… Read more »

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Screwtape
4 years ago

A good book to read is Starving The Monkeys…

sentry
sentry
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

Recommend the book to Bill Gates, I heard he really likes reading.
His vaccines were not that effective in diminishing the african birth rates, maybe “Starving the monkeys” offers a simpler solution, it’s a different perspective in how to solve his problem.

Chad Hayden
Chad Hayden
Reply to  Screwtape
4 years ago

I disagree…psycopaths are a huge benefit to a civilization in time of war. Military recruiters keep an eye out for these types as they can make ferocious and cruel warriors. I have a couple friends who are somewhat psycopathic and they’re both in our thing. They lack empathy, and so they slay with women and in their careers. As long as they can avoid being cancelled they’ll continue being hugely successful.

Last edited 4 years ago by Chad Hayden
Juri
Juri
Reply to  Chad Hayden
4 years ago

Psychos are not warriors. One reason why army basic training is so difficult, is to root out psychos. Those people like to torture others but by themselves they are such a snowflakes that even following basic discipline is too humiliating for them. Have your noticed that every last profession from army to airline pilots to ship crews, where order and discipline are demanded has almost 0 liberals.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  Chad Hayden
4 years ago

Psychopaths are only useful if you can keep them pointed at the enemy – and only so long as there is an enemy. I don’t see how they are net-positive overall when normal men can perform at 90% of their Dark Triad levels when properly motivated and they don’t present the same danger of “killing the village in order to save it” – especially your own people’s village.

Chad Hayden
Chad Hayden
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Good points.

usNthem
usNthem
Reply to  Chad Hayden
4 years ago

I would also think they’d be much more likely and willing to sacrifice those under their command, especially if it improved their chances of promotion or glory.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Screwtape
4 years ago

And to think we were told sacrifices to the corn god are a bad thing.

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

If psychopaths are genetic so are sheep, I’d wager, as are sheepdogs. We need more sheepdogs, fewer wolves and sheep.

Last edited 4 years ago by Paintersforms
Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Paintersforms
4 years ago

I would disagree and say we need more Wolfhounds… Sheepdogs spend most of their time keeping the sheep in line not killing the wolves…Also Sheepdogs do what their Masters tell them to do…

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

Splitting hairs, but wolfhounds are the sweetest dogs. They won’t hurt a fly unless told to or defending their masters, but they make terrible guard dogs.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Paintersforms
4 years ago

I disagree. My cousin has had a succession of 5 Irish Wolfhounds and all but the first have been surly and at times aggressive.

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  KGB
4 years ago

Hmmm Sounds like the DR😉

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  KGB
4 years ago

Maybe the breeder? My parents breed them, so I’ve been to several kennels and I have yet to meet an IW that’s worse than aloof.

tarstarkas
tarstarkas
Reply to  Paintersforms
4 years ago

I think it is a combination. There are some people who are genetically susceptible to being sociopaths, but it takes the right environment to bring it out. Clownworld brings out the worst aspects of people.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  tarstarkas
4 years ago

Agreed. It’s the spirit of the age. The wolf/sheep dynamic.

Last edited 4 years ago by Paintersforms
Member
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

As another one of those “hard science” types I also tend not to respect psychology much. It doesn’t help that almost everyone in it nowadays is an obnoxious female leftist either. I do pay some attention to evolutionary psychology and neurobiological based theories. The main problem with the whole field, of course, remains the inability (for obvious ethical and practical reasons) to construct controlled experiments. The only real exception to this, ironically, is experiments done entirely using computer simulations. An example would be that famous experiment years ago that showed that all you needed to produce a segregated neighborhood was… Read more »

Exile
Exile
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

Our present managerial state system rewards psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists alike with a clearer road to power. When the entire system is based on winning at all costs, the most ruthless and unethical will inevitably rise to the top.

Shit-tier humans float in this system. It needs flushed.

Last edited 4 years ago by Exile
sentry
sentry
Reply to  Wolf Barney
4 years ago

I think most corporations are aware the republicans are a bunch of traitorous cucks who won’t protect them from leftist mobs so they donate money to BLM to safeguard their businesses, just like small business owners who thanked italian mobsters for protecting their shops & restaurants, when in fact the mafiosos were extorting them.

Last edited 4 years ago by sentry
LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  sentry
4 years ago

Consider the possibility that most executives really do support BLM and are socially liberal. They don’t reject the GOP as impotent but rather because they see it as insufficiently progressive.

There are very few Hank Reardons in corporations these days.

Last edited 4 years ago by LineInTheSand
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

Agreed. The execs are not concerned with not being protected by the Republicans; rather, they are dyed-in-the-wool AWRs. AWR has coopted capitalism since the collapse of the USSR. From their sulfurous abodes in Hades, Adorno, Marcuse, Foucault and Derrida are applauding.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

“AWR”?

Apex Predator
Apex Predator
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

That is Ostei’s clever little acronym he won’t stop using that nobody gets because he is a SmartBoy™, so when you ask him he gets to prove how clever he is by telling you Anti-White Racist even though it has never been a term seen anywhere outside of his attempt to also make it a ‘thing’ on the Takimag forums years ago. But he gets an A for effort and a Gold Star like all SmartBoys should get!

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

Instead of further supporting the idea that a racist, “AWR,” is a deathblow criticism, I’d rather try to make racism acceptable.

Of course, I don’t mean that people of one race should be harsh to members of a difference race, but rather that we acknowledge that race is, for most non-whites, the deepest loyalty.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

AWR is just DR3. It needlessly confuses & complicates our message and doesn’t impress the enemy at all. They do not care about hypocrisy because the antifa types are simply sociopaths seeking power and the true believers have installed Shlomo’s firmware upgrade about “only Whites can be rayciss b/c punching down.”

Nunnya Bidnez, jr
Nunnya Bidnez, jr
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

I’m not a racist, I’m a race realist.
I believe in Darwinism, don’t you? ;>)

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Nunnya Bidnez, jr
4 years ago

I understand your distinction and agree with you, but I doubt the normies ever will. It may be easier to just detoxify “racist.”

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

Well, yeah i guess i am a racist. So what? I like that formulation.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

I use the term for one simple reason–truth in advertising. Ever since the rise of the New Left, hatred of the white race has been the motive force of liberals. They should be made to own that fact. If TPTB would simply call a spade a spade viz the War against the Statues, namely calling it a manifestation of AWR, our cause would be modestly advanced.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

In a sense, pointing out the obvious, namely that AWR is America’s master narrative, does make racism acceptable by demonstrating its banality. If we are swimming in AWR, then what’s so terrible about racism against blacks?

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

try to make racism acceptable. –I’ve tried bro. But it is like pounding on brick wall with a coconut. Racist is like concervative kyptonite.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

I’d lik AWR to get traction because it’s accurate, so I ask Osteii, please, spell it out until it takes.

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Member
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

I was puzzled by this acronym too. I always thought it meant “angry white retard” and was related to AWFL – angry white female liberal. I even tried consulting the Ultimate Reference on All Things, https://www.urbandictionary.com/ but just got “ass to waist ratio”.

Do I get an F# for effort?

Range Front Fault
Range Front Fault
Reply to  pozymandias
4 years ago

Well! Now you’ve awakened the angry white retard from her torpor! You lads with your acronyms and nyms. Jeez! Thank God a couple of you piped up and squeaked ignorance of weird letter combos. I worked with a handful of mensa goofs in the water company who hated working around us normies because their casting out the weird letter combos, name dropping, theory dropping, math formulas, dates and times, programming skills, the theory of everything, all said with nose in air, was pearls to swine, the swine being me. So spell out at least once in a post what the… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Range Front Fault
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

Anti-White Racist, i.e. “liberal.”

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  LineInTheSand
4 years ago

My perspective is from the west coast, but I’ve found that most C level types are social liberals who just want social liberalism with lower taxes.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  sentry
4 years ago

Most corporations are like water. They follow the path of least resistance to the bottom line, cynically or not.

Last edited 4 years ago by Paintersforms
sentry
sentry
Reply to  Paintersforms
4 years ago

I agree

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Paintersforms
4 years ago

Heck, they pay people to do just that, to shave the cost by passing it on.

NJ Person
NJ Person
Reply to  Wolf Barney
4 years ago

Speaking of the market, I just got my latest issue of the Economist. On the front cover is the title “The genius of Amazon”. Have not yet read the article, but I remember the Z-Man mentioning Amazon gaming the sales tax system. Also, during the lock down it is interesting that Amazon is considered “essential” whereas its local retail competitors are “non-essential”. On top of all that is the over the top support of BLM which is insulting to any white person with any common sense. There really is a hostile club.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

Amazon also games the USPS. USPS provides shipping rates that are unprofitable based on their variable costs. They do this because it supports their workforce, with taxpayers picking up the losses. If not for the taxpayers, USPS would charge market rates and have massive layoffs, like all non-subsidized businesses must do.

tarstarkas
tarstarkas
Reply to  DLS
4 years ago

I always take heat for this, but the PO is one of the few things the government does that is actually mandated in the Constitution. The PO just happens to be one of the first agencies to get converged, largely because the government ordered them to hire blacks. It costs less money to mail a check across the country to your bill company’s lock box address than to pay with online banking! Aside from the blacks working there, the PO is mandated to service every postal address and for the same price. Mailing city to city is profitable, but having… Read more »

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  tarstarkas
4 years ago

And the weirdness is international. Sometimes it is cheaper to pay for something to be sent in the mail from China than it is to have it sent domestically.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

China pays the postage for their businesses to ship to the US. It’s a multi-billion dollar subsidy. I get shit from Amazon all the time direct from China. And no, I’d buy local, but am often caught by deception as to country of origin.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  tarstarkas
4 years ago

In Mexico, you pay in person, because they’ll open the mail and steal any cash or checks. No wonder Western Union does roaring good business there.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  tarstarkas
4 years ago

Yep, and Congress has mandated that they pay the full cost of employee pensions up front, so any surplus is quickly eaten up. Where in the hell, do we find a private company that charges the same ship rate to anywhere in the US? Mail a letter across the street, same as mailing to Anchorage, Alaska.

USPS, as much as I hate them, are proof of the inability of Congress to run a business. On the other hand, as inept as they are, they have been turned into a minority jobs program, so they are never going anywhere.

Member
Reply to  DLS
4 years ago

There seem to be 2 main business models these days.

  1. Be like Amazon and figure out how to reduce your expenses for everything below what it costs to produce the stuff by buying politicians and gaming the law.
  2. Come up with a goofy idea for a startup. This breaks down into your basic underpants gnome business plan as follows:
  3. invent a technology that does not and cannot exist
  4. get funding from stupid rich people
  5. hire a bunch of hipster dipshits and buy them all a top end Mac
  6. PROFIT! – by selling your shares and leaving the country.
Last edited 4 years ago by pozymandias
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

The end result of the Kovid Krackdown will be the elimination of large swathes of small business and much larger market share for inimical entities such as Amazon. I don’t believe this is entirely coincidental.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

What fries my ass is how Amazon has been touted as a *job creator* in this time of shutdown for opening up several regional distribution centers. New one here is good for a few thousand jobs. No discussion ever made of the 100’s of thousands of jobs lost in the local communities because of Amazon over the last two decades.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

I dumped Economist years ago. Too much poz, leftist. Now I would not read it for free.

NJ Person
NJ Person
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

I read it because it is best general knowledge publication around. Outside of racial issues and U.S. politics, it is still high quality. Yes, it is becoming more left wing and biased. But the alternatives, such as The New York Times, are far worse.  

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

Ya don’t read the Economist, you hold it upon the subway for status points.

usNthem
usNthem
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

There’s a technical analysis website I follow that considers Economist front covers (as well as other business publications) to often be contrary indicators – ie., perhaps we’ve seen peak Amazon & black lies matter. Gotta love those Xmas deliveries January thru November though…

Owlman
Owlman
Reply to  Wolf Barney
4 years ago

I understand your point. However, since Burger King® endorsed hurling a “shake” at Nigel Forage, no one in my family has given them once cent of business. Same now for the chain, McDemocrat. Gave up pro sports consumption. No more tickets, etc. Got my family, former ardent sports fans, to go along with our boycott. Others I know. Sure, drops in the ocean? Perhaps. But look, to continue to support these entities feels like selling out. Like apathy, 100%. That’s USSR under the boot thinking. We, in my circle, get to say, “fuck them..” and fill in the them. Yes,… Read more »

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Owlman
4 years ago

Amen Brother all I would add is when you multiply your efforts by having a Community that does the same then real change can be accomplished…Just something to ponder…

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

It certainly works for the AWRs.

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

Exactly and we have so many examples of it working that you would think we would do the same…I think though it’s going to take more fear and pain for us to do that…

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

The problem is that those on the right side of the political spectrum are simply not as politically motivated as those on the Left. It makes us happier than them, but it also grants them a powerful political advantage over us. If we were as fanatical as them, we could put the fear of God into the corporations.

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

Well they have the state backing them as well so that helps just a wee little bit…If we were as fanatical as them without the state we would be rotting in a cell…

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

It could be that AWR fanatacism is what got the state on their side…

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Owlman
4 years ago

And your choice is one option he forgot to mention in his essay. That’s drop out completely. I realize this isn’t always possible or very expensive but for some cases withdrawing your consent is the best option for withdrawing your business.
,

Member
Reply to  Owlman
4 years ago

The Great Corporate Convergence has inadvertently created a new and huge potential market niche. The reason is that it’s gotten to the point where you can almost always safely bet that part of the price of anything that you or someone you know didn’t make is going to support the Poz. It used to be that if you really wanted to punish companies for poz you needed a blacklist. Now all you need is a whitelist of the few non-converged companies. If I were going to start a business I wouldn’t say anything political but just quietly advertise on places… Read more »

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  pozymandias
4 years ago

That’s the game Vox is playing. Hope his comics take off.

Member
Reply to  SidVic
4 years ago

I wish him well. Comics aren’t my thing but I’m glad to see someone doing this.

Penitent Man
Penitent Man
Reply to  Wolf Barney
4 years ago

Another arena Zman didn’t address but falls into this paradigm is academia and accreditation. No matter what stripe of higher education you want or an employer desires, college students today are required to submit to a myriad of Prog agitprop courses in the various grievance studies. I’m sure an engineering student would gladly pay less for a stripped down education (germaine to engineering) and the country would benefit from a greater number of engineers turned out more quickly. Cucks and Progs will argue that a college educated person of any stripe must be “well rounded.” This was fine when the… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Penitent Man
NJ Person
NJ Person
Reply to  Penitent Man
4 years ago

The left talks about “de-funding” the police. But what about “de-funding” academia, one of the main sources of our current problems? The right let this problem fester for decades without any effective push back. Unfortunately it may be too late.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

Sadly, it seems that academia’s intellectual atrocities don’t move the needle for vast majority of voters, including those on the right. Many shelves of books have been written on the subject–one by yours truly–but academia continues sailing merrily along.

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

De-fund academia? Harumphh, lets not get hasty.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Wolf Barney
4 years ago

British Lives Matter?

Woops, guess not. I denounce myself and everyone involved.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
4 years ago

The Bubba Smollett hoax is about to render NASCAR irrelevant. As for the larger point, what is about to take out sports is cord-cutting. People below 45/50 simply do not watch televised sports as did the ones before them. It’s all going down.

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

That demographic tends to obtain its endorphin spikes through social media and not a bunch of beasts slobbing around with some type of ball. It was also feminized and so contact sports like boxing do not hold appeal among them.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

And their attention spans are not much longer than that of the average teacup poodle.

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

I dated a teacup poodle once. When it was over, I sold her to a Chinese wet market and stood there as she was slowly processed.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

Normal People are terrified to publicly question any narrative where blacks are terrorized by whites. Jussie Smollet was a year ahead of the curve…no one would doubt him now.

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  ProZNoV
4 years ago

Jussie Smollet …no one would doubt him now
You would know instantly that Jussie was hoaxing if you were living through a brutal Chicago winter. The bleach would freeze solid. Nobody and I mean nobody would just stand around with a noose waiting for a victim to attack. You’d zip-tie him to a convenient lamp post and nature would do the work for you within minutes. Even the blacks here knew it was a hoax from the get-go.

Barnard
Barnard
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

If Smollett would have given a somewhat plausible story he would have gotten away with it. Everyone with the ability to think would still doubt him now, the difference would be the Chicago PD wouldn’t dare conduct the investigation they did to prove he was lying.

NJ Person
NJ Person
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

Perhaps the blacks knew, but major Democrat politicians and the MSM did support Smollet.

Captain Obvious
Captain Obvious
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

Including the State’s Attorney, Kim “so not foxy” Foxx.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  NJ Person
4 years ago

Oh heck they all know, and laugh at how stupid the “higher IQ whites” really are. We fall for the most obvious s**t.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Alzaebo
4 years ago

Yes. Just look at the imbeciles who awarded the Towson debate team the championship. Those gibbering Hutessas couldn’t speak an intelligible sentence of English, let alone construct plausible arguments, and yet…

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

Haha, you are an old crank. I’m still steamed about the Towson debate win too. But we probaly couldn’t have better advertising for our side if we payed for it. How anybody could watch that and not immediately join our thing is beyond me. Should have flipped alot of AWRs our way (see what i did there)

Last edited 4 years ago by SidVic
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  SidVic
4 years ago

As Derbyshire often says, people just can’t stomach too much reality.

Owlman
Owlman
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

I’ll see you and raise you ten. The Gen Z kids I know do not spend a cent on Netflicks and their ilk. They have been savvy enough for YEARS to steal the content these rotten companies pimp their stock prices by selling Boomers.

b123
b123
Reply to  Owlman
4 years ago

Depends. Alot of Gen Z women pay for Netflix. Of the Gen Z / late millenial men I know, not a single one pays for cable, or Netflix.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

After seeing what the Denver Broncos did during the Groyd Riots, I’ve never been happier I cut the chord on rooting for them/NFL in general a few years ago.

ExNativeSon
ExNativeSon
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Sportsball people always say kneeling during the anthem had nothing to do with disrespecting the flag. And ironically they are correct. It has to do with spitting on their white fan base and watching that base pay to come back for more. It certainly must be a dopamine high to see people you hate actually pay you to spit on them.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

“Groyd”! Nice abbreviation of George Floyd, succinct.

MemeWarVet
MemeWarVet
4 years ago

We don’t have a free market system. We have a bizarre hybrid of Libertarianism and Socialism that gives us the worst aspects of both.

Marko
Marko
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

What we have is guilded-age global capitalism but married to a social/capital surveillance system used by cloud people who hate dirt people.

MemeWarVet
MemeWarVet
Reply to  Marko
4 years ago

A Guilded-Age system indeed; and to think Trump campaigned as a new TR

Exile
Exile
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

Only to preside over TR’s statue being cancelled.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Yeah, but he was responsible for our being saddled with the Albatross of Puerto Rico. F-k him.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  3g4me
4 years ago

Who gives a dam’? He was white. Protect him.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  3g4me
4 years ago

President Grant wanted to annex Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) as a territory, and incentivize the blacks to go there.

The Dominicans agreed, but the Democrat Senate shot down the treaty. What might have been.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

I see Slate Star Codex (Scott Alexander) blog has self-cancelled due to a threatened doxxing by the NYT. This guy was apolitical, and brilliant.
Nice to go to for a challenge and something a little less end-of-western-civ-y.
Everything, and I mean everything, is being cancelled.

Official Bologna Tester
Official Bologna Tester
Reply to  Marko
4 years ago

At least Caeser can’t order you to cut your own throat. Not yet anyway.

Last edited 4 years ago by Official Bologna Tester
Glenfilthie
Glenfilthie
Member
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

Yes and no. Let us take our esteemed blog host and his example about computers: what, exactly, do you want of your computer that you’re not getting now? Be specific. Your cell phone? Hells bells – they already do everything. Some monopolies and oligopolies actually work… why mess with that. The market will indeed put the boots to Zuckerface, Bookface and twatter: in time. If I was running Gab, I’d LOVE to see the Whitehouse dump Twatter and use my platform instead. Trump alone would literally bring the nation with him. Speaking of Blab… I heard their numbers are exploding… Read more »

Vegetius
Vegetius
Reply to  Glenfilthie
4 years ago

>what, exactly, do you want of your computer that you’re not getting now?

The link to yesterday’s episode of Cotto-Gottfried.

MemeWarVet
MemeWarVet
Reply to  Glenfilthie
4 years ago

Alt Tech is a thorn in the ass of Silicon Valley that will soon become a spear

C’mon, this is Q-tier plan trusting. You’re smarter than that.

Glenfilthie
Glenfilthie
Member
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

I ascribe to no “plan” MWV. I simply acknowledge that markets are not static, they change slowly, sometimes rapidly. Sometimes they are artificially inverted as they were during prohibition, when some self righteous harpies nagged America into thinking it wanted prohibition. Believe your eyes and history: markets always correct too. Look at our esteemed blog host. When I first started posting here, he got maybe 40-50 comments a day. Today he does three times that – on a bad day. Zuck and his harpies have convinced enough Americans that they want censorship and a managed public square. I don’t know… Read more »

Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Reply to  Glenfilthie
4 years ago

If Pres. Trump dumped Twitter, Parler would be a safer and relatively more respectable home. Normies such as Candace Owen and Dan Bongino post there. Some questionable types such as neo-Nazis post on Gab.

Of course, to libs, anyone who voted for Pres. Trump is a bigoted Nazi. On Gab, some posters really are Nazis.

MemeWarVet
MemeWarVet
Reply to  Ris_Eruwaedhiel
4 years ago

Do you still get a free copy of Siege when you sign up for GAB?

Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

I didn’t.

I needed to look that book up because I never heard of it.

Glenfilthie
Glenfilthie
Member
Reply to  Ris_Eruwaedhiel
4 years ago

Candace …who? Dan….?
I care not for such buggardly poseurs and harlots. On Gab I interact with towering intellects like our blog host and Cornelius Rye!
Gab can get a little tangy… but compared to the neosocialists and sexual degenerates on Twitter… Gab wins hands down…

tremain
tremain
Reply to  Glenfilthie
4 years ago

I would like it not to have inbuilt backdoor management modules in the CPU that have their own remote connectivity.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  Glenfilthie
4 years ago

Woke Tech is the market – that’s the point of Z’s post today. They’re wearing the boots, not getting them.

One of the best things Trump could have done was make war on Woke Tech with some sort of “internet bill of rights” – but where there’s no will, there is no way.

Twitter disrespected and laughed at Trump’s empty threats in real time and Tweeting Donny laid down for them quicker than he did for BLM as they burned down D.C. He’ll never switch to GAB because he’s never been real.

tarstarkas
tarstarkas
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

I don’t disagree, but you are forgetting that for all of these things mentioned, we are not the customer. Being a customer involves paying someone money. Even in the ESPN example, we are not the customer, the cable provider is the customer. Like the tech example, not only are we not the customer, we are the product that is being sold. Comcast is offering our attention as a product to ESPN which in turn, uses our existence as Comcast customers for its own customers, the advertisers. Unfortunately, I think anti-social media is going to go down the road of cable… Read more »

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  tarstarkas
4 years ago

<i> For a flat monthly fee of X or as part of our ISP package, we will be able to access social media.</i> That’s how it worked thirty years ago, with AOL and the likes. A package came with a lot of services provided by the ISP, like search engines, webpage templates, talkboards, chat forums and so on. Then a lot of startup companies started no-frills, high-bandwith access for half the price and fuck you if you don’t know how to configure your own connection, because that’s not part of the service plan. A friend of mine did just that, made… Read more »

tarstarkas
tarstarkas
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

The early service providers were walled gardens and not on Internet. The first one I ever paid for was Q-Link for the C64 (I think it had other versions, but they were walled off from each other). AOL did the same thing. AOL for Dos was very similar to Q-Link and I think (IIRC) AOL was Q-link and the Q-Link name got tossed and they deleted all the 8-bit stuff (which was a HUGE loss IMHO) and they became AOL. In fact, when AOL started allowing you to use Internet through the AOL interface, that was basically the beginning of… Read more »

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  tarstarkas
4 years ago

<i>The Dune analogy is good, but if everything outside of the palisade enclosed cities is empty desert, it’s just a framing thing.</i> The spice is in the desert – the salt of the earth, if you will. But if you want a more apposite one, consider Mao’s revolutionary doctrine: win the countryside, and the cities will fall to you like ripe plums. Big Media is the past, they’re in a six gee inverted spin with both engines flamed out and smoke coming out of the instrument panel. As a Swedish dissident journalist noted: it’s not a law of nature, that… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

Gay, black, flying bodybuilders in space, riding rockets designed by Hutessa geniuses.

Member
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

The problem with the libertarian analysis has always been, not so much that it’s wrong, but that it never takes network effects and capital flows into account. The world is simplified down to a abstract marketplace where there are only producers and consumers. In the real world of course, capitalism requires capital. This is where (((banks))) can start to get involved and tilt the entire playing field in one direction. People will say: well that’s not an economic question, that’s part of the JQ. I’ve often said though that if Jews did not exist it would be necessary to invent… Read more »

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  pozymandias
4 years ago

<i>network effects and capital flows </i> Capital works to our advantage in this instance because the entry cost is next to zero: old-school news networks are enormous money pits, and for every coiffed, manicured, pedicured, coke-addled, child-molesting talkhead with $250,000 worth of plastic surgery and dental work, there a million aspiring geeks taking them on with nothing but a cheap webcam, and the geeks don’t have to comply with suffocating speech codes or policy dictates from the ADL. Capitalism is not perfect, but it’s the least bad solution and it works wonderfully on an open internet. <i>If your goal is to… Read more »

Member
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

coiffed, manicured, pedicured, coke-addled, child-molesting talkhead with $250,000 worth of plastic surgery and dental work I had to chuckle at this. Soon they’ll be out of work too. There’s talk of a new humanoid robot that runs on cocaine and can molest children. Once they get the price down to around a 1/4 million… Anyway, I totally agree about the whole “pull back into your bunker, turn on Fox News and keep voting Republican” mindset. The prevalence of that probably cost us 20 years of time we could have used to organize and build our alternative economies and communities. I… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by pozymandias
Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

They kept up head jabs at the 2A so they could KO the other 9.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  pozymandias
4 years ago

I think both you & Felix have a point here. You need iron to protect yourself in meatspace but you can’t use it when the feds are going to McMichael you and Charlottesville the antifa.

We have to work this problem from both sides – use alt-media to delegitimize the opposition and use self-defense to keep them from outright killing us in the streets.

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Agree, but there must be water-tight bulkheads between those spheres. Build meatspace networks to strengthen your community, it’s not where you should fight your battles. In meatspace you’re are extremely vulnerable, but as long as you have a clean troll account, one without doxing info, they can’t reach you on the internet, at least not without a warrant. Don’t start warfare in your own back yard. We’re in Stalin territory now, you can’t air your true political opinions to anyone but your closest family and friends. This is also good psychological warfare: the regressives know there are Nazis everywhere around… Read more »

Member
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

I thought the meme warfare over the “OK” hand signal was especially brilliant. It got the SJWs in a panic looking for Nazis under every rock. It also motivated them to attack normies who used the symbol innocently and were now aware of just how crazy these people are.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

Good points, Felix. A genuine internet bill of rights would delegitimize globohomo in a very short exchange. Censorship is the only way that they keep the hard White Right from winning on every issue. The amount of outright fed-posting during the Floyd riots on relatively tame sites like Breitbart would have resulted in a million-man-vanning if Our Guys were involved. As much as I support IRL community, we very much need to stay engaged on the internet as well to keep Whites coming our way. In terms of cost-benefit, it’s the best way to leave the light on for Whites… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Yup, take and hold the high ground.

Member
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Totally agree. Without the internet none of us would have gotten to where we are in our understanding today. It would be awfully nice if there was a way to streamline the process of locating other haters IRL without risking doxxing though. There are of course, clubs you can join or events you can go to like the Amren thing Z went to last year in the Tennessee hills. The problem is that a lot of that is on indefinite hold now. Gee, what a coincidence.

Captain Obvious
Captain Obvious
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

<i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i>
<b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b><b></b>
<link></link><link></link><link></link><link></link><link></link>
<I am pretty sure there’s a message in here somewhere but I am continually distracted by the manually-inserted HTML tags that nearly every person here appreciates do not parse through the input box, just a clue, H-e-e-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-o Bueller?>

</I am pretty sure there’s a message in here somewhere but I am continually distracted by the manually-inserted HTML tags that nearly every person here appreciates do not parse through the input box, just a clue, H-e-e-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-o Bueller?>

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  Captain Obvious
4 years ago

I’m trolling Zman to get him to fix it. Thanks for your contribution.

Tricky Dicky
Tricky Dicky
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

Have you emailed Z? Oh wait, I see the point of trolling. Z is not best known for his responsiveness to email messages.

Captain Obvious
Captain Obvious
Reply to  Captain Obvious
4 years ago

Oh c’mon! There is no sane reason to continue using non-working tags that are distracting. To fail and then subsequently maintain the failed behavior without relent is a sure sign that something is wrong with the poster.

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  Captain Obvious
4 years ago

I’m just fucking with you. I’m just used to typing out tags, and I only notice after I’ve clicked post.

It’s annoying as hell, so instead of editing every second post, I’ve decided to spread the misery around a bit.

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

It’s clickification of the interface, Apple thinking.

It’s great with little drawings to click on, but why disable the all-keyboard functionality of HTML – the lingua franca of the internet? If I get a mouse elbow, I’ll sue.

Captain Obvious
Captain Obvious
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

Well then, provided you are just fucking with me I understand completely. I wouldn’t want to NOT spread the misery around. Not here, where I am firmly committed to the spreading of misery. Misery, for one and for all.

Member
Reply to  Captain Obvious
4 years ago

You’re now forced to use the icons for everything.

No more <tags>allowed</tags> it seems.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Felix Krull
4 years ago

14.88 do 51 (a majority)

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
BTP
Member
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

You’re missing the point. This outcome is the one that obtains when you attempt to implement a free market system. Is the a corruption of the idealized, theoretical, unreal system we imagine might exist somewhere along with the god of the forms? Sure, but so what?

What you get is literally how capitalism works. There isn’t some other result possible.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  BTP
4 years ago

I agree. You can have markets without capitalism (an economy based on capital accumulation, growth/market expansion and usury with minimal to no constraints).

Too many people believe our economic choices are between a totally-planned economy where all goods & services are simply handed out by the State and what we call capitalism today.

There are many better choices outside that frame. Simply outlawing usury again, enforcing anti-trust principles and periodically clearing debts would do wonders to humanize the present system.

JR Wirth
JR Wirth
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

The whole point of capitalism is to create a monopoly. That’s your goal. It’s done through coercion, taxes, bribery, regulation etc. The level playing field becomes a jagged mountain. The whole point of the FTC was to eliminate this. Instead it was the FTC that was eliminated in everything but name in the mid-80s. If you want to enrage a libertarian (I’ve seen it) tell them that capitalism is not the free market, that they’re two distinct concepts. They explode like Fem-bots.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  MemeWarVet
4 years ago

More proof that we are ruled by the axioms of an alien culture. Symbiote or parasite? Hayek and Popper both went to the same school. Our main concepts and definitions are pilpul, doubletalk, we still can’t define these shuls of thought. Gilded age economics began as a distinctly political project to direct the frame of our concepts. This is the same missionaria protectiva as our concept of religion- a narrow narrative channel built on and serving political agendas. Same kosher sandwich. We will be corralled by either internationalist Kapital or Commune, and bent towards tearing down our glorious Greco-Roman statuary.… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Alzaebo
4 years ago

I must give big kudos to our host.

Instead of waving flags, he points out structural paradoxes. Postmortem diagnosis before the redesign.

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Apex Predator
Apex Predator
4 years ago

The marketplace of ideas has been proven demonstrably false so many times I think it only lives in the mind of Lolbertarians anymore. Case in point, 6 mega corporations own 90% of all media. How in holy hell are you going to get a ‘marketplace’ with such an iron grip defacto monopoly that they have slowly been consolidating over decades? Answer: you do not. Feature, not bug. Related: We have been talking ideas here but I am interested in anecdotes too especially from the past few weeks. What are you people seeing? I say this because I had to choke… Read more »

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

You did the right thing Brother those people will be a liability in the coming days… Any guy that doesn’t have a handle on his wife and I may get some downvotes on this is a liability for our thing…How can you make decisions for your people when you can’t make a decision at home…There is a balance to a home but all major decisions for the family need to be made by the man, which includes how to raise your kids, what location you need to live in, if your wife should work or stay at home, etc…

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

Anyone who gives me the “oh poor black people” gets a link from me to the Wikipedia article on the “Knoxville Horror”. There are many more horrors of course, but I haven’t gotten any come-backs for more after that.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

I work in an environment that should be rich breeding ground for the DR. Mostly male, mostly white, lots of 2A people, etc. And I’m honestly getting the impression that there’s a shit ton of resentment bubbling under the surface. We work for globohomo, so having badthink is grounds for termination, but it takes no effort at all to get them to engage in forbidden conversation. It seems that people are waiting for the dam to burst before revealing themselves. On the other hand, I talked to a good buddy of mine the other day, a childhood friend whose parents… Read more »

Falcone
Falcone
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

It starts with the guy. First, any guy whose wife works and they need that money to make ends meet, that wife is going to be able to put his nuts n a jar. He has no choice but to let her push him around and dictate things b/c he’s over the barrel. Weak willed men go hand in hand with feminism and appear to be a byproduct of it. Conversely, you may notice that strong willed men tend to also be the family’s breadwinners if not sole provider. Where you live. During Covid, I have noticed that men who… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Falcone
Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Falcone
4 years ago

Unless the rent is unreasonably high, living in an apartment is generally a black (pilling) experience since about 1960s 🙂

Last edited 4 years ago by Ben the Layabout
Exile
Exile
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

We’re not going to save them all from themselves, AP, and thankfully we don’t have to. We have to build something better with the guys we have and I’d rather have a smaller harder core than a big tent full of sheep.

On the whitepill side, we only need 20% or so of the population to move the rest if the 20% are committed.

I’m not saying we vote our way out of this but as we stand now we can be a strong enough magnet to pull those worth saving the rest of the way to where we are.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

Sir, you win the Anecdote Award for the day, if not the month 🙂

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Apex Predator
4 years ago

Hoo boy, that’s my best friend.

Like *this* (crosses fingers) for 55 years, but he’s so whipped it’s as if this former hellraising alpha is a pod person.

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
TomA
TomA
4 years ago

Once upon a time, most Americans were hard-working, decent human beings. The environment of the North American continent demanded this as a condition of survival. That was then, this is now. Our current environment is dominated by affluence and the extinction of hardship. As a result, Americans are becoming increasingly soft and stupid. That is the root of all the problems mentioned in this post. A hard people would shed itself of parasites, both at the top and bottom of the social pyramid.

Last edited 4 years ago by TomA
Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  TomA
4 years ago

A hard people that are a tribe together can do that otherwise they will get squished like a bug by those employed by the state…

TomA
TomA
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

The Jackboot State typically uses CIs that are run into closed communities in order to identify targets. Betrayal is the weakness that does you in. Conduct yourself solely within your own skull and that cannot happen. Smarter is better.

Last edited 4 years ago by TomA
Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  TomA
4 years ago

So be the last one eaten then… Sorry I have a family that I want to see grow up to a life worth living and your way is not an option for me…I will continue to build Community even though the risk is there…

Exile
Exile
Reply to  TomA
4 years ago

You can’t accomplish anything against the kind of opposition we face alone.

CI’s are not godlike – in fact they’re usually pretty easy to spot.

If we have dozens or hundreds of communities of determined White people, I don’t see how it’s possible for TPTB to play whack-a-mole with every one & not go broke.

They can’t even police D.C. effectively as things stand now.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  TomA
4 years ago

CI=?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

Confidential Informant, i.e., spy.

JerseyJeffersonian
JerseyJeffersonian
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

Confidential informant.

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  TomA
4 years ago

A defensive crouch doesn’t work. Practice discretion, but the fact is with the electronic surveillance we were all doxxed years ago. It is is sitting in a large facility in nevada awaiting a query stroke by one of our masters.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  TomA
4 years ago

TomA, will you ever acknowledge that the very people in the USA have changed significantly and that may largely explain the shortcomings that you note? You don’t really believe all races of people are interchangeable do you?

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  TomA
4 years ago

Hardship waits patiently 😈

Whitney
Member
4 years ago

“Then they no longer have to be responsive to the demands of the customers.” That’s true of more than just NASCAR. It seems to be true of everything. I am so tired of the phrase go woke go broke because it’s clear they don’t go broke. That and exhortations to vote. What world are these people living in? One thing I am enjoying about this civilization destroying moment we are living through is that there are enough people alive that called Enoch Powell a racist, called Pat Buchanan a racist, called Lawrence Auster a racist who are now faced with… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Whitney
4 years ago

Conservatism always was based on a lie about equalitarianism. Now that it is a failed ideology those who subscribed to it are coming to that realiziaton.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

Agree it should be equalitarianism but it’s actually egalitarianism. The perversities of the English language, that sounds like it’s a philosophy for being a bird of prey. 😀

Wolf Barney
Wolf Barney
Reply to  Whitney
4 years ago

It’s satisfying that Powell, Pat, Auster et al are proven right, but at the same time society is clamping down on discussing the things they’ve said. So the lies will continue…

Barnard
Barnard
4 years ago

People still have to be willing to sign up for TV services that sell ESPN as part of their bundle. There are multiple streaming services that don’t include ESPN. As interest in what ESPN offers declines, there will be a correction in both rights fees paid to leagues earnings for the participants. They can’t force people to watch the circuses. In another shocking sports development, it appears the Bubba Wallce noose incident was most likely a hoax. Given the total lack of proof it happened, speculation is turning towards the “noose” being the rope used to pull the garage door… Read more »

Liberty Mike
Member
Reply to  Barnard
4 years ago

On a related note, Richard Petty won cuck of the day yesterday.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Liberty Mike
4 years ago

Dam’ him and his mustache to hell.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Barnard
4 years ago

Yeah, when I first heard this “news” I said to myself, has there even been a noose incident that wasn’t a hoax? But that thought was depressing as well, when the reports came in on everyone virtue signaling that such bigotry could not be allowed.

The general public is indeed being conditioned to never question the narrative. We are all good little ideologues now.

Last edited 4 years ago by Compsci
Glenfilthie
Glenfilthie
Member
Reply to  Compsci
4 years ago

LOL!!!
I’m sorry, C… but I don’t see you or any of the dissidents making for good cannon fodder for the left…😆

Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Reply to  Compsci
4 years ago

Never publicly question the narrative.

We’re living in a kind of country that we used to fight.

The Booby
4 years ago

The ultimate marketplace of ideas is supposed to be the university. It completely stopped being that in the 60s and 70s when the ultra-left was allowed to assume full control of academia. No one – and the Booby means no one! – did anything or said much about it at the time, not even the people who post on here. Everyone laughed at those silly college kids and assumed the college was a self-contained loony bin that didn’t effect the rest of the world. They were wrong. The new one-party state that emerged in post-secondary seized control of all debate,… Read more »

Forever Templar
Forever Templar
Reply to  The Booby
4 years ago

I remember some the looniest college lefties from the 60-70s and they weren’t nearly as bad as today. The true believers went on to infiltrate and take academia, but also that movement bled off most of their deadweight. Those guys had a nominally-functioning society to return to. Today…there’s nothing for the, do except agitate and play video games. If we overcome this thing, all these non-functioning kidults will have to be dealt with. Public works? Military? Re-education camps? God forbid, but some global war?

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  Forever Templar
4 years ago

Nope. The CH-47 Chinook has a large tail ramp that can be deployed at altitude. Not cheap but worth it.

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

Are you offering to purchase one to help the cause 😉

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

Not in the budget. However I was an active parachutist for more than a dozen years and I still have two rigs and gopro. I’ll jump with them and record the videos. We can replay the vids each day at beer-thirty o’clock. I’d do it, too.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

I want an A10.

Just for crop-dusting, OFC.

Captain Obvious
Captain Obvious
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Perfect for corn weevils. Nothing living remains after a good crop-dusting with the A-10. You know what looks like corn weevils? Black protestors. Hmmm.

The Booby
Reply to  Forever Templar
4 years ago

All good points. That said, the Booby neglected to mention the most important act of defiance that all resisters need to do: Cut off your social justice warrior children. That may eve require divorcing your wives. Yes, it’s hard, but the future of your society depends on it. If your children have any sympathies whatsoever for our new political class, cut them off. No money for college, no help with that mortgage, nothing in the will, etc. Give your money to pursuits and causes that are in line with your values and traditions. If the parents of the baby boomers… Read more »

ChicagoRodent
ChicagoRodent
Reply to  The Booby
4 years ago

Cut off your social justice warrior children.
By the time you realize they are social justice inclined it is too late for them, the condition is a terminal illness. They already hate you. They already despise the fact you were enabled to acquire assets. Oddly, they feel entitled to those assets as soon as possible, which means you should change the locks first and then let them have it with metaphoric both barrels.

The Booby
Reply to  ChicagoRodent
4 years ago

Exactly. They need to find out for themselves that the nanny state – the matriarchy – is a sorry replacement for a real loving family. But as you said, by the time they’ve adopted the ideology they already hate you. Those of you who want to believe otherwise are deluded.

Cut them off.

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  The Booby
4 years ago

Good to see you again Booby and I agree quit playing in their rigged game and start living where you are part of a Community that cares about and thinks like you…I wonder how bad it will have to get before people realize that it’s their only option…I still get the feeling that people are still waiting for the other shoe to drop before they make that decision…

Last edited 4 years ago by Lineman
The Booby
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

Glad to be back, Lineman.

The Booby’s had a hectic six months. Family matters, getting a book out, and getting back from Nicaragua mere days before the lockdown hysteria shut the world down. The blog’s been on hiatus, too.

Hope all’s well with you and yours.

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  The Booby
4 years ago

Doing well Brother what’s your books title and I will purchase it?

The Booby
Reply to  Lineman
4 years ago

Thanks. Gotta be careful of getting doxed these days. Send an inquiry to the Booby’s email and he’ll shoot you a link:

Da*****@pr********.com

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  The Booby
4 years ago

Thanks Brother 👍…

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  The Booby
4 years ago

I am a little dissappionted that the book isn’t written using the booby nom de plume. It’s clever cause it makes the largest red pill easier to consider. Who raises thier mental barricades against a booby?

usNthem
usNthem
4 years ago

You can be their “customer” as long as you either keep your noxious bad thoughts to yourself (assuming they don’t find out about them anyway) or you slavishly toe their ideological line.

Btw, great show last night. Never heard Gottfried before – he’s very good. One of your comments really struck me, and I’m paraphrasing: this is not a revolution by the people wanting to overthrow their rulers, but one in which our rulers are revolting, saying they want a new people. Awesome!

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  usNthem
4 years ago

I didn’t hear the podcast but Z nailed it about this pseudo-revolution. It is terror for hire by the Cloud People. Take note that when Antifa came for Santa Monica, tear gas got deployed in short order.

But the thing about riding the tiger….

Some of the actual Marxists are splintering off Antifa and BLM and going rogue. Hmmm.

Federalist
Federalist
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

How do we listen to the podcast? Are we still waiting on a link? If it’s on their YouTube page, I can’t find it.

Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Ris_Eruwaedhiel
Reply to  Jack Dobson
4 years ago

The entire top 10% Cloud People or the top 1%? What the Soviets called the Nomenklatura.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Ris_Eruwaedhiel
4 years ago

And functionaries of the Deep State are apparatchiki.

Severian
4 years ago

Forgive me for getting meta for a second, but you can sum up the driver of all historical change in the Modern (>1450) period in a phrase: Communication speed. I’m certain your Lancastrian or Valois kings would’ve tormented their subjects out in the sticks the way our digital monarchs torment us, but they lacked realtime communications. Or, if you want a purely ideological example, look at Cromwell’s England or Calvin’s Geneva. They gave totalitarianism the old college try, but when it took two weeks for the fastest messenger to go from London to Glasgow, it was impossible…. It’s not the… Read more »

Basil Ransom
Basil Ransom
Reply to  Severian
4 years ago

Cuts both ways. Communication speed doth giveth the microphone and taketh it away.
What matters now is who can produce the better message for normie to swallow and it ain’t Karen.
Right now, we’re outgunned on multiple fronts but our message still manages to get through and continues to compound day by day, month by month, year by year.
The better we get at communication, the closer we will come to building a viable movement. After all the question: who are you going to believe, them or us? is a powerful one….

Sgt. Joe Friday
Sgt. Joe Friday
4 years ago

Here’s the thing: the customers are not the fans in the stands. The customers, in the eyes of NASCAR or any other spectator sport, are the sponsors. The fans in the stands are what are known as “the studio audience.”

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Sgt. Joe Friday
4 years ago

Yea I don’t know about that if there are no fans then no sponsorship…I think the NFL got hurt by the no fans and if the fans would of stuck with their boycott then the NFL wouldn’t of been able to keep going…They were able too because the down was short enough that they could cover it…Just like in business if you have enough reserve to cover the downturns then you stay in business but if your reserve runs out before it goes back up then your s#*t out of luck…

Vizzini
Vizzini
4 years ago

The “free market” theory suffers from the same defect as the “theory of evolution.” In each case, there are two or three required mechanisms, but we only actually see one functioning as described. Ironically, in both cases the functioning mechanism is the same one: “natural selection” or “survival of the fittest.” Survival of the Fittest is a winnowing function: it removes diversity. If you start with 100 companies or 100 species, and the fittest survive, soon you end up with maybe 50 companies or 50 species. Of course, those 50 companies and 50 species are *still* competing and still pushing… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Vizzini
Exile
Exile
Reply to  Vizzini
4 years ago

Viz, if you lived in a socialist Scandi country for a month you would hopefully have a more realistic outlook on how it compares with what we live in here.

You’re black-pilling because you want a perfect system where competition doesn’t lead to monopoly or socialism isn’t subject to government overreach or corruption.

We’re never going to have a perfect system that doesn’t require good faith effort by good people to run ethically and well.

If that’s what you want, you’re never going to be happy with any human social order.

Vizzini
Vizzini
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Not disagreeing with you, as long as you don’t send me to live in Malmo, Sweden. But see, the reason Scandi socialism is reasonably successful isn’t the socialism. It’s the Scandi. I won’t even bother to go into Scandi Socialism’s defects, because it was “good enough” for the time, if not perfect, and a trustworthy population made adjustments to account for defects possible. That’s what I’m trying to get at. The systems don’t particularly matter. The people do. When Minnesota was mostly Scandi immigrants, it was fantastic. They could afford to believe in leftist policies, because they could trust the… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Vizzini
1UnknownSubject
1UnknownSubject
Reply to  Vizzini
4 years ago

Spot on. Lived in and traveled to Scandi for years, grew up in Scandi town in Midwest. Wholeheartedly agree with you.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Vizzini
4 years ago

I can speak better to the evolution than to business. You seem to believe in an intelligent Creator which is certainly a major belief. I subscribe to the evolution Theory. One thing that’s notable is that even if you could prove once and for all that a God created everything, it is a valid question to ask where did God come from? As far as I know Evolution doesn’t claim to have any knowledge of a first cause, you could call it agnostic. Many Eastern philosophy sidestep the whole problem by positing and endless cycle of rebirth or creation, but… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Ben the Layabout
Vizzini
Vizzini
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

Since you can’t prove a first cause for *any* explanation for reality, it doesn’t really advantage any one explanation over any other. So it’s not a point I worry about much.

ExNativeSon
ExNativeSon
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

Whether you are taking about intelligent design vs. evolution, capitalism vs. socialism, BLM vs. ALM, etc. it has been my practice to ask very simple questions. Otherwise you get lost in the weeds very quickly and never come out. As a PK (preacher’s kid) even in elementary school my question to those who insisted that creation ex nihilo per Genesis 1:1 was true because the world was too complicated to evolve was “ how did God come into being.” If earth needed an all powerful being to be created then that all powerful being needed an even more powerful being… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

Oh gods here we are back in the second grade again.

Vizzini correctly points out that the random walk guys can’t explain anything outside their model either, and does so with style.

Enough poking holes in each other!
Fricking listen- now ask, “what is it? How does it work? Why- what’s it for?”

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Alzaebo
4 years ago

PS- when the imperious Spengler declared, “we shall never know the meaning of life”, I asked, “billions have perceived a Heaven, I cannot deny their witness- so then, why a Heaven? What’s it for?”

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Vizzini
4 years ago

A bit too specific. Species evolve to fill niches in the environment. They need not compete to the death (extinction) if the niches are separate in the environment. 100 companies may be subdivided—say some produce electronics, some specialize in retail, some build cars, etc.

Yves Vannes
Yves Vannes
Member
4 years ago

The problem with the marketplace is that we use the same word for market entities that operate differently. The marketplace was once a physical space where people could come to exchange, barter and pay for what they needed. The agora, the town square, the farmers market was until recently simply the market. You could contract services from skilled tradesmen and expect deliveries from the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the milkman….. Then commodities exchanges began to show up. A broker middleman would buy up the corn or the wheat and designate some for town A , some for town B,… Read more »

tremain
tremain
Reply to  Yves Vannes
4 years ago

Apart from at a very small level Its never really been free. That was a myth I think introduced by the same old, same old to break the aristocratic monopolies on goods (same as the free speech pushes used to break the morality restrictions). In the middle ages up to nearly Victorian times most markets were controlled explicitly by crown/govt grants that were handed out as rewards to favored people. Its why smuggling was such a massive problem in Europe and the early Americas. Approved Guilds controlled most of the trades transactions. These gave the recipients monopoly wealth in nearly… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by tremain
Yves Vannes
Yves Vannes
Member
Reply to  tremain
4 years ago

Your assessment is true but largely for the cities where only 10% of the population lived. There’s an excellent study of the period I refer to. It’s a multi volume work full of ledgers and charts. A very slow read. The Wheels of Commerce by Fernand Braudel. He is still widely read on the Continent and in East Asia…but his appeal in the Anglosphere took a hit during the Thatcher-Reagan era.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Yves Vannes
4 years ago

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ bout!

Thanks, tremain, Yves, and MelBlanc, good stuff. I’m learnin’.

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  tremain
4 years ago

One man’s smuggling is another’s Free Enterprise 🙂
The midieval guild system is alive and well; in the modern world we just call it “licensing”, “regulation”, etc.

SidVic
SidVic
Member
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

You got that. One could design a little machine with computer that would test your eyes and produce a eye prescription in 10 minutes. Boom- optometrists are obsolete. Just one example of the rent-seeking the premeates the professional classes. I talked one of my kids, probaly foolishly, out of pursuing optometry. Good hours decent money.

Last edited 4 years ago by SidVic
JR Wirth
JR Wirth
4 years ago

One of the problems with liberal democracy is that its openness is used against it by the craziest of the crazies. If a crazy goes to a city council meeting, just a crazed cat lady who wants a law on something stupid and asinine, the council is obliged to listen to her for an hour and attempt to find some common ground. You will never hear a city councilman say “beat it you dumb stupid crazy bitch.” So guess what? The crazy cat lady begins to drive the narrative. Once the narrative is driven, victory is almost assured. This is… Read more »

Balkan Fanatic
Balkan Fanatic
Reply to  JR Wirth
4 years ago

“One of the problems with liberal democracy is that its openness”

On of the problem with venomous snakes is that they are deadly`
Other than that…..

Falcone
Falcone
Reply to  JR Wirth
4 years ago

things worked when white men ran things

Nothing was perfect but it was as good as it could get in a world of human imperfection

Lurker
Lurker
4 years ago

Voltaire was verballed by a biographer who wrote,  “I may disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death to defend it. “ Is there anything more stupid than that? Fight to defend someone calling me a racist cunt. Especially multinational corporations or oligarchs who control the media megaphone and de-platform anyone who answers back. Who then use that media influence to have you fired from your job so that you lose your house, your wife, your kids and the means to earn a living!  As soon as a race submits to the unnatural rule of external law… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Lurker
Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Lurker
4 years ago

And you gain power through numbers of people moving in one direction…

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Lurker
4 years ago

I think you are unfair to Voltaire. I’ve read a good bit of his work. While he may not said exactly the quote attributed to him, it encapsulates his philosophy well. But I think he would have added the condition that what the other man was saying had some rationality behind it. His was the age of the Enlightenment, progress of Science &c. (18th century). He was a classical “Liberal” in the sense that most modern conservatives would approve (perhaps his religious opinions excepted 😀 )

Lurker
Lurker
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
4 years ago

Sometimes I come across as too strident or psychotic. I try to apprehend what is and not to lament what once was and no longer is. I used to be a racist liberal and remember that we used to say, “ it’s a free country “ or “ he’s entitled to his opinion” or “ to each his own “. Now people say, “ you best not say that “ or “ I’d not say that if I were you” or “ best not go there “.  It’s important to be irenic and not to demoralize, because we will win –… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Lurker
Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Lurker
4 years ago

What you’re saying is we can’t win the game by playing by rules only we obey. No argument here. I believe Z-man’s admonishment from some time ago is applicable. Basically, “win” and then develop your principles. (Paraphrasing from old memory).

Lurker
Lurker
Reply to  Compsci
4 years ago

Yes Compsci , however I don’t want you to think that I’m not in favour of all that is fine, noble and good – I too was steeped in personal honour and chivalry. It’s just that those are not values shared by anyone else other than what would seem to be a very small percentage of White men.  As for rules, standards, or principles I’m afraid that we’ll be given no quarter – the Bolsheviks were renowned for gratuitous cruelty, murder and genocide. They took hostages , persecuted entire families, assessed collective guilt and punishment for multiple generations of various… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Lurker
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
4 years ago

Relatedly, I saw that Johnson & Johnson will no longer manufacture skin-whiteners and sell them to Orientals. J&J is not doing this because the demand has evaporated, but because it is now an AWR corporation which loathes people who don’t despise whites. The demand side of the economy is being ignored; AWR ideology trumps it.

BadThinker
BadThinker
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

The Chinese probably already have the formulas and will quickly make it themselves. Probably with some endangered species organ in it for some extra oomph.

Drake
Drake
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

I saw that stuff in every pharmacy in south Asia. The women there do not want to look like field hands so the use the stuff religiously.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

Gilette was willing to lose $8 billion dollars. This religious takeover has gone way, way beyond profit-and-loss columns.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Alzaebo
4 years ago

Precisely. Ideology before profit. That is one the strengths of the AWRs.

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
4 years ago

How do you know they didn’t short their own stock before they did it…

Screwtape
Screwtape
4 years ago

”Almost”? Like everything else in the grand inversion, market demand – call it the will of the people, has been flipped and now resides at the bottom. What the market solves for instead is the means to control, to increase the level of captivity. It is no longer joyful competition for the opportunity to serve the needs of the people, but rather competition to ply their particular brand of coercion to the captives. Choice and preferences are not opportunities to create new ways to serve or new customers but are threats to the level of captivity. The saying “if you… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Screwtape
4 years ago

“the grand inversion”- perfect.

An entire sociological discipline in 3 words, you know Who I’m talking about, and the allies they attract like maggots to carrion.

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Dutch
Dutch
4 years ago

Markets today consist of selling things to customers who are not people; they are advertisers, other mega corporations, the media, the political parties, and so on. There are customers like you and me in there, at the bottom of the totem pole, and things filter down to us, in little boxes delivered to our doorsteps, by Amazon. But for most of the offerors of goods or ideas, their customers are their peer groups, not us. They market to each other, not us. They are woke entities trading with other woke entities. We are like the urchins in old NYC, pressing… Read more »

JR Wirth
JR Wirth
Reply to  Dutch
4 years ago

In the words of muslim extremists in the Middle East, “democracy is like a train we get on to reach the right stop.” This applies to politics, corporations, everything. The only people who don’t use democracy this way are Republicans/Conservatives, basically 99.9% of the right. Who are the stupid ones? The mantra is oh, AOC is just soooo stupid (or insert lib). That may be true, but they’re still smarter than any elected Republican these days, who think the process is the end result. When I get on a plane, it’s not to benefit Boeing or the airline.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  JR Wirth
4 years ago

I’d like to say the Republicans are just stupid (and a lot of them are) but look at what they can accomplish when they actually want to – tax cuts for Romney, whatever Israel wants, keeping the immigration pipeline open if not constantly expanding and entirely grounding out the legitimate Right-wing opposition to any of this.

JR Wirth
JR Wirth
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

I hardly ever listen to Mark Levin, I happened to have a conservative format AM station on when driving. But yesterday, with all the country burning down, it was all about over 100 congressional Republicans coming together for Israeli national security and “protecting Israel’s borders.” I just shook my head. How obvious is this hypocrisy to the audience? How many desperate people in their double-wides, without a drop of Jewish blood are still eating this up?

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  JR Wirth
4 years ago

Well if you don’t like Mark Levin, you can just change it to Benny Shapiro.

Exile
Exile
Reply to  Dutch
4 years ago

While our range of products is seemingly endless, with a typical supermarket having 30k different selections, our social choices are increasingly defined by either-or choices rather than a range of options. We have to vote Trump b/c Biden’s worse. We have to choose Woke finance capitalism b/c Communism’s worse. And the little hat guys and their collaborators benefit no matter which of those choices you make. As much as we’ve all been fence-trained on the Right to disdain government and prefer the private sector, the private sector is now the alligator that’s eating more of us than government, which is… Read more »

JR Wirth
JR Wirth
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

true.

Exile
Exile
4 years ago

It’s no surprise the “marketplace of ideas” hasn’t worked as advertised. Ideas aren’t widgets. Markets have their place and every economy features some kind of marketplace. They predate capitalism by thousands of years, despite what a lot of modern capitalism enthusiasts seem to believe. Z correctly notes that selection is an issue. Leaders, like ideas, aren’t widgets. The most popular ideas and leaders aren’t necessarily the best ones. Even if we didn’t have (((forces))) gaming the marketplace of ideas and leadership, the marketplace selects selects for midwit leadership and midwit ideas, “truthiness” over truth & status over substance. The biggest… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Exile
Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Zman’s “grey law”- some things shouldn’t be financialized or codified, yet we do both to them.

For instance, now there’s a dollar price on hurt feelings. That’s a gladitorial arena, not a marketplace.

tremain
tremain
4 years ago

As Adam Smith noted (although he was wrong on other things): “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…. 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.” He was right (apart form the bit about the law) but did not see that the sole goal of corporatism is monopoly/cartels. Any high level meeting of these sort… Read more »

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  tremain
4 years ago

I think that was always a hobby horse of Thomas Sowell’s, that for Smith’s philosophy to be properly realized eternal vigilance is required.

Irishfarmer
Irishfarmer
4 years ago

Libertarians and conservatives could stop embarrassing themselves, sort of, if they could get a grasp on a simple slogan: we live in an age of ideology not markets.

Doesnt matter what markets look like in theory or on paper, they cant survive ideology and fanaticism.

Basil Ransom
Basil Ransom
4 years ago

Is this not “The Iron Law of Oligarchy” writ large? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy Any organization, be it a corporation, church, kingdom or political party, grows until a select group within the organization takes over all the essentials and coalesces the power into their own hands. What Michels, Pareto and all those 19th century theorists realized was that the political “science” worked out by the 18th century philosophes was so much bunkum. Hierarchy happens no matter what safeguards or rules are put in place. Fighting reality gets you nowhere. What makes our age such a disaster is that we have institutions grown gargantuan… Read more »

Balkan Fanatic
Balkan Fanatic
4 years ago

If I was looking for a picture or a story to illustrates this abysmal age the providence has punished me to live in, this massacred painting would be it
An intentional destruction or an incompetence of the highest order it is not really relevant
This is the story of our age where cowardly, incompetent,corrupt and ugly are new 4 horseman of apocalypse happening in of front of our eyes

https://twitter.com/reviewwales/status/1275155163762884609

SamlAdams
SamlAdams
4 years ago

NASCAR is a good analogy. Have some acquaintance with racing as my family ran a USAC team in my youth. You could run a team reasonably cheaply, chassis and engine development was fairly incremental and with a few exceptions like Foyt, Andretti and Rutherford the drivers were only minor celebrities. Then Roger Penske moved in with corporate money–new chassis each year, lots more rules and restrictions, more exotic (and expensive) engine designs. Within a decade all the small operators were squeezed out and the remaining teams were slaves to corporate sponsors. NASCAR took a little longer, but other than a… Read more »

Falcone
Falcone
Reply to  SamlAdams
4 years ago

Isn’t the whole point of it that they drive “stock” cars off the showroom floor that pretty much anyone can drive and buy?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Falcone
4 years ago

Once upon a time. Spectators fantasized about the cars as if they could own one. Today however, the car has exactly nothing that a stock model from a car maker would have. They are built from the ground up. Only thing is the faux body style slapped on top of a racing chassis to keep the fan fantasy alive.

Gravity Denier
Gravity Denier
4 years ago

It looks like we are heading toward an oligarchy of two suppliers for each item customers want to be supplied with. It is not hard to imagine, looking a few years out, “competition” organized around two airlines, two grocery chains (like our current two drugstore empires), two car manufacturers, two real estate agencies, two brokerages, two hospital operators (unless we get government-run healthcare — one operator), two big box retailers in every specialty … you name it. But even that’s only the appearance. Really the two “competitors” will be holding hands under the table, as the Rs and Ds are… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Gravity Denier
Falcone
Falcone
Reply to  Gravity Denier
4 years ago

That’s one thing I will say about Los Angeles. There are a ton of mom and pop shops around with lots of variations and choices in products and services. I think you need a massive economy to create the market forces to breed and support them. And population density seems to be important. When I travel to smaller cities and towns i see they are dominated by the major retailers and franchise operations with but a tiny tiny segment of mom and pops. We have a new Wal Mart by me but I still have ten local butchers to choose… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Falcone
sentry
sentry
Reply to  Falcone
4 years ago

Sure, multicultural America offers great variety in terms of food, sports & porn. Circus & bread is very important to keep the masses docile.

Last edited 4 years ago by sentry
Falcone
Falcone
Reply to  sentry
4 years ago

Yep, I get to stuff my face and buy neat shiny objects in exchange for my sanity and physical safety.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Falcone
4 years ago

Yes, even worse in Mexico. While I didn’t experience crime, you don’t even have to leave your car, just come to a stop, and you can buy: a windshield cleaning, fresh vegetables and fruit, tamales, tortillas, hire the Mariachi band for your fiesta, etc. 😀

Last edited 4 years ago by Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Gravity Denier
4 years ago

Hmmm, a mass market version of the division in Ireland, different spelling of names whether you’re a Cahtolic or a Protestant. I understand this is a problem sometimes in Muslim countries; you need a real and a fake id card with Shiite or Sunni names as appropriate, lest you die at a checkpoint 🙁

BadThinker
BadThinker
4 years ago

I think the biggest problem is one of scale. People simply aren’t capable of handling mass systems, as mass systems have no built in immune systems like local tribes and communities have had against anti-social behavior (real anti-social behavior, not enforced conformity by Google).

Last edited 4 years ago by BadThinker
Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  BadThinker
4 years ago

Exactly right BT when people start to become removed from their local people then things get out of whack…

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  BadThinker
4 years ago

I ponder if all this mess is the God of Nature- which is above morality- it’s way of dispersing White genes to the greater darker populations, which may be the only effective ‘solution’. An Uplift.

We’re the only hope Gaia has, the rest have shown they’ll cannibalize Her mercilessly.

Last edited 4 years ago by Alzaebo
Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
4 years ago

Just a thought, but regardless of whether free markets naturally move toward oligarchy in a vacuum, they certainly would move to an oligarchy when combined with liberal democracy. Even a libertarian’s wet dream idea of free markets would lead to both greater materially well-being for all and greater inequality as money flowed to the most talented. And even in an Enlightenmentarian’s wet dream of a non-corrupt democracy, you would see the 51% start to vote in ways to reduce that inequality. Since it’s very difficult to regulate thousands of ever-changing businesses, the democracy would push for a small number of… Read more »

Falcone
Falcone
4 years ago

Always been a little silly for politicians et al to glorify a market. I mean it’s just a market, and a market is just a glorified bazaar. I know they can dress it up in high minded language and theories and so on and so forth, but at the end of the day it’s just a place where people buy and sell stuff, and to make that the foundation and focal point of your society was never going to inspire and hold people together Early and middle Christians figured this out when it came to building churches. Similar thing as… Read more »

Drake
Drake
4 years ago

As I make plans to flee to a freer state, I took at the mid to high end market for AR rifles (which I had ignored forever because they are verboten). Holy crap there are a lot of choices competing for my attention. Yeah for the gun market!

Vizzini
Vizzini
Reply to  Drake
4 years ago

The reason is that the AR is an open design — anyone can make one without having to pay any licensing fees.
Chalk one up for the free market.

Last edited 4 years ago by Vizzini
Exile
Exile
Reply to  Vizzini
4 years ago

This gores another sacred cow of the old Right – intellectual property protection.

American Sun had a pretty good piece a couple of weeks back that mentioned how intellectual property protections like patent and copyright serve the powers that be much more than dissidents today.

In framing the dissident mindset of the future, we need to look at establishment IP protections like Blackbeard and save the pieties for the society we’re building together.

Remember when the internet was open-source first, we disdained the idea of IP and monetization and everyone had a little pirate in them?

Better times…

Vizzini
Vizzini
Reply to  Exile
4 years ago

Agree.

G Lordon Giddy
G Lordon Giddy
4 years ago

And don’t forget the foundations and monstrosities that have followed up the work of decent men like Henry Ford and Walt Disney and many others.
Good decent capitalists left behind foundations filled with money that now support diversity committees advocating BLM for the college students and transvestite cartoon characters for the kiddies.

Glenfilthie
Glenfilthie
Member
4 years ago

I dunno, Z. You are doing alright in a marketplace that has absolutely no use for you and your ideas. Hell, you’ll be selling your books soon right in their own back yards as will others.
Getting around Zuck is as easy as learning to use and navigate alt tech. Even Yesterday Men like me are doing it; the younger dissidents are all over it.

sentry
sentry
4 years ago

I’m thinking a society which permits diversity of ideas is not sustainable, due to humans(& animals in general) being competitive & selfish creatures. It’s nice to think that the republican or the old christian monarchic values will take precedence over other ideas simply cause they are objectively better, but that’s not how reality functions. The more machiavellian & stubborn a group is the more chances it has to push its ideas forwards despite them being crappy in the first place. USA might have had an open market at some point, or it was less regulated & corrupt at least than… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by sentry
usNthem
usNthem
Reply to  sentry
4 years ago

Exactly. It might start out with a plethora of various ideas, but as soon as one or maybe two get enough adherents on their side, they first won’t pay attention to the competition, and then eventually try to stamp them out one way or another.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  sentry
4 years ago

The US bought into the idea a century or so ago, that capitalism—in the sense of unbridled/unlimited competition—was not always a general good. This pretty much started with public utilities and assigned, but ostensibly regulated, monopolies being awarded (think: electricity, phone, gas, etc.). At that point capitalism had a major leg kicked out from underneath its premise. That thinking has since expanded to any number of businesses and we see that mergers producing oligarchies allowed all the time—only now, little regulated. The only real capitalism we see from time to time (before merger and extinguish) is when a new sea… Read more »

Last edited 4 years ago by Compsci
sentry
sentry
Reply to  Compsci
4 years ago

I agree, whenever a technological breakthrough happens there’s competition for a short period before some oligarchs monopolize that specific market.