The free enterprise system emphasizes cooperation between parties that ensures each side gets what it wants to the mutual satisfaction of both parties, whereas coercive systems such as communism force the weaker party to accept the terms of the stronger party to the satisfaction of the stronger party at the expense of the weaker party.
As a nation, the United States is greater than the sum of its parts. Each state on its own offers something of value that makes America a stronger nation, but that something of value may not by itself contribute enough to allow that state to thrive on its own. Some states excel at food production because they contain rich soil conducive to agricultural production. Other states excel at manufacturing due to their proximity to energy resources. By combining the strengths of each state into a nation with a shared identity, the Founding Fathers allowed for the specialization of each state that maximizes its contribution to the country as a whole and thus increases the wealth of our country.
The free enterprise system allows this process to happen by providing a system of trade where each party to a transaction trades some of what it has in excess for some of what it needs. Thus, both parties walk away satisfied. The colonists chaffed at being coerced by the British who sought to extract wealth from the colonies with nary a care for the desires of the colonists. Colonists were directed to grow tobacco to be shipped to Great Britain and sold by a British agent who then was directed to exchange the proceeds for British manufactured goods that were then transported back to the colonies as payment for the tobacco.
As you can well imagine under such an arrangement where the owner of the crop has no direct involvement in its sale, the process was rife with abuse. Corrupt tobacco agents colluded to fix lower prices on tobacco grown in the colonies, and they then purchased shoddy merchandise at inflated prices as payment for the tobacco. After experiencing this treatment on his first shipment of tobacco to Great Britain, George Washington switched to growing corn, which was not subject to British rules for sale. Great Britain allowed colonists to grow some crops to sustain the colonies, and corn was one of those crops.
The American colonists didn’t revolt against Great Britain because of the Stamp Act or any of the other numerous legislative acts Great Britain imposed upon them, but from the systemic coercion imposed upon them by the British Parliament. When the colonists had had enough, they opened a major can of whoop ass on the British and kicked them to the curb. Ever since then, Americans bristle at the perception that they are being told what to do. The Founders didn’t like it then, and we damn sure don’t like it now. This is the reason Americans have turned against the Popsicle administration and its heavy-handed authoritarianism attempting to force the country under the thumb of the globalists. Americans know that with globalism comes the tyranny of coercion, and we’re resisting at all costs.
The Soviet Union adopted the communist economic model described by Karl Marx. Such a system always looks good on paper with its collective model under which the people work for the benefit of everyone in a happy socialist workers’ paradise. In reality, it ignores the motivations of those workers to presume that they will happily work for the promise of sharing equally the fruits of their efforts. There is no allowance made for those who are lazy and wish to game the system knowing that they will get an equal share regardless of the effort they expend. When this situation crops up, the state becomes totalitarian to force the people to work. Those who wish to pursue a different vocation are forced to perform whatever tasks the state deems necessary regardless of their talent for that task or their desire to perform that task.
Communism quickly devolves down into a coercive totalitarian system when it encounters human nature. The people develop a bitter resentment for the system under which they are forced to live and quickly adopt the tactic of putting in the minimum effort necessary to get by. As they go through the motions, quality control is nonexistent meaning minimalist production efforts resulting in manufacturing defects pass through the system resulting in shoddy products. Those of us who lived during the Cold War well remember news accounts of empty Soviet stores with people lined up in queues for hours to get something to eat. As the system slowly collapsed in on itself, the government totalitarianism increased to keep the system going as long as possible. It’s a wonder that it lasted as long as it did.
The Soviet Union was a collection of countries with no shared identity forced together through the totalitarianism of the Soviet communist party leadership that brutally repressed all dissent. China shares the same situation as its various peoples and countries are forced into the Chinese collective and brutally repressed. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping realized that the communist model was doomed to failure and modified the Chinese version of communist rule to become a hybrid of communism and the free enterprise system where the communist party retained ultimate control of the country while allowing ordinary Chinese to engage in free enterprise efforts that increase the wealth of China and brutally repressing any dissent. While not as repressive as the old Soviet model of communism, the Chinese still live under repressive rule with their efforts directed towards increasing China’s wealth.
When America came into being after the Revolutionary War, the practice of slavery was very much in vogue among Great Britain and other colonial powers. The practice of slavery continued in the United States, especially in the South where it was utilized in the labor-intensive production of cotton. Southern cotton sowed and harvested by slave labor was sent to northern textile mills where it was woven into cloth and sold around the world. Northern textile manufacturers profited handsomely from this arrangement and were just as resistant to the prospect of newly elected President Lincoln interfering with this business model as Southern plantation owners.
To their credit, Great Britain abolished slavery through the tireless efforts of William Wilberforce, while America fought the long and bloody Civil War to finally end the practice of slavery. It should be noted that the sharecropper system and Jim Crow laws adopted in the South were arguably worse than the system of slavery they replaced through the condescension of claiming that slavery no longer existed with the reality that poor blacks were still in indentured servitude at the mercy of those in power. Chinese workers forced to live in dormitories and work long hours for little payment while their families are threatened if they exhibit dissent are no better off than blacks under the sharecropper system.
America is the wealthiest nation on the planet with Americans enjoying a standard of living much higher than any other people. We enjoy greater levels of home ownership, income, and modern conveniences than any other country. As a country, America’s vastly superior wealth has allowed it to move past the manufacturing of the Industrial Age into a service-based economy where Americans create even more wealth by providing financial, entertainment, and production services to others. America’s wealth was originally produced through agriculture and later through the manufacturing of the Industrial Age, but now its wealth is based on the service sector. American politicians created incentives for manufacturers to move their production offshore to China where they could take advantage of much lower wages to increase their profits, and they did so in droves leaving the American heartland where much of its manufacturing base existed nothing more than a hollowed out shell of its former self.
Wealthy Americans buy cheap Chinese products to preserve their wealth while ordinary Americans are forced to buy these cheap Chinese products because no other choices exist. America is a wealthy country that should be able to do better than settle for purchasing products made essentially with the modern day equivalent of slave labor. The radical lefties whine that the free enterprise system is unfair and should be abolished in America while organizing their protests on laptops and cell phones made in China with slave labor. These hypocrites bandy about the phrase “fair trade” when it comes to shaming Americans into purchasing more expensive coffee, but that doesn’t apply when it comes to their smart phone or laptop.
If they weren’t the hypocrites they so readily expose themselves at being, the radical lefties would be demanding that Americans stop purchasing products made with slave labor in China, and they would be doing so while leading by example in refusing to use those products themselves. Since hypocrisy runs amok in lefty circles, I won’t be holding my breath for that one. China and other Asian countries employ slave labor to keep their wages low as the main component of their competitive advantage, but that competitive advantage comes at the expense of slave labor. It also comes at the expense of American intellectual property which American companies are forced to provide to these coercive countries as the price of access to their lower labor costs.
Americans are willing to pay for quality products that are manufactured with higher quality and last longer, but they are no longer provided that option. Walk into any Walmart, which used to boast of proudly selling American products, and try to find anything that isn’t made in China, or Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, or any other Asian country. American companies have somewhat diversified their production away from China due to its saber-rattling over Taiwan and the tariffs imposed by President Trump, but that production is still located in Asia and still takes advantage of slave labor to keep costs low.
Given the choice, Americans would much rather pay a little more for quality drywall in their homes than use cheap Chinese drywall made with inferior materials prone to black mold that jeopardizes their health. They would much rather pay a little more for safe toothpaste than brush their teeth with cheap Chinese toothpaste, or feed their pets with unhealthy Chinese pet food, or expose their babies to inferior Chinese products.
China has taken advantage of the desire of American companies to squeeze every ounce of profitability from the bottom line by offering slave labor hidden across the vast Pacific Ocean away from American eyes not that interested in knowing where or how their fancy cell phones and laptops are produced. In doing so, China has become an economic powerhouse rivaling America. The intellectual property China has absorbed allows it to improve its own products and develop sophisticated weapons systems with which it now threatens its neighbors and even America itself. This wealth allows China to offer attractive financing to developing countries for infrastructure projects through its Belt and Road initiative that entangles these countries in debt from which they are forced to cede control of their assets to China to meet their obligations. Thus China further extends their control around the world on their path to becoming a superpower.
China has invested the wealth America has ceded to it into a modernized military with improved weapons systems including a vast expansion of its nuclear weapons. China is fighting the newest war through its economic shrewdness while also investing in the weapons systems that will allow it to keep its economic dominance. As Don Lucchesi said to Vincent Mancini in The Godfather Part III, “Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.” As China well knows, you have to have a gun before you can pull its trigger, and that gun better be as big as or bigger than your adversary’s gun.
However, China has made huge mistake because it stole the knowledge it uses instead of obtaining it by learning the lessons upon which it is based. China doesn’t understand what it is doing and is a paper tiger currently on the verge of economic collapse. The Evergrande property company default is so large that it will eventually drag China down with it. Evergrande was financed with state debt just like the rest of China’s economy, and there is no collateral supporting its loans, just like the rest of China’s economy.
When it comes to finance, China’s politicians are just as dumb as America’s politicians. Because its economy is based on the free enterprise system, America’s politicians are kept somewhat in check by the cautious nature of its bankers and business leaders. This arrangement is often threatened by the perception that these bankers and business leaders will get bailed out by the government when they throw caution to the wind, but they pay a heavy price in public opinion for their reckless behavior. The Chinese have no such institutional restraint, so their politicians financed whatever they thought would make China stronger without analyzing the ability of these projects to recoup the investments made on their behalf.
China is a totalitarian state where dissent is not tolerated, thus they lack having someone around to provide a sanity check. No dissent means no dissenters and thus nothing but yes men lackeys agreeing with whatever disastrous idea the imagination can conjure. China was successfully pursuing the economic warfare model with its Belt and Road initiative of trapping developing countries in excessive debt and taking them over through foreclosure. It’s better to buy an adversary than to have to defeat him on the battlefield. However, China let its hatred for America and its defense of Taiwan cloud its judgement into believing that it could overtake America economically in a short time span. Instead of showing America how it’s done, China is collapsing economically and will end up worse off than before it started its pursuit of global economic dominance.
Americans being herded into the totalitarianism of globalism plainly see what’s coming and are resisting it. The radical lefties have hijacked the Democrat Party and are going full commie with the Popsicle administration. Their election fraud of 2020 has been exposed with conservatives pushing back hard on all fronts and their ability to cheat in 2022 severely hampered. Conservatives have successfully defeated a number of establishment RINO candidates in the primaries and are poised to win big in November. I expect a pickup in the House of close to a hundred seats once the inevitable retirements of the old bulls avoiding the humiliation of being in the minority party have settled out. I also expect the Senate to flip in a major way to Republican control. The point is that Americans have abandoned the Popsicle administration and its globalist ambitions, and America is on the verge of an historic wave election that will see the Commiecrats pushing globalism shown the door in a massive way.
Cooperation allows parties to get what they want through a mutually beneficial transaction providing satisfaction to each side by means of the free enterprise system. Hard work and meritocracy are rewarded, thus providing incentive for people to work hard putting forth their best effort to create quality goods and services. Coercion creates apathy leading to systemic stagnation through the communist economic model. Hard work and meritocracy earn nothing extra and are not pursued as human nature dictates putting forth the least effort to obtain the same reward.
This is why the Soviet Union eventually collapsed and why globalism will eventually collapse. Americans don’t like to be told what to do, and we’ve all seen the multiple historical failures of communism around the world. We also realize that the destruction of America and the free enterprise system leaves us with nowhere to go once they’re gone. In Genesis, God stepped in to confound man’s first attempt to establish globalism with the Tower of Babel. Globalism is as flawed a concept as communism and for all the same reasons. So, get out and vote Republican this November to send the message that America isn’t interested in the coercion of globalism.
Independent Conservative 