Friday, June 15, 2007

Economic Determinism


This poster is from the 1930's, and promotes the Nazi monthly Neues Volk (New People}, the organ of the party's racial office. The text reads: "This genetically ill person will cost our people's community 60,000 marks over his lifetime. Citizens, that is your money. Read Neues Volk, the monthly of the racial policy office of the NSDAP."
(Shorter Nazis: Poor and sick people are stealing your money! Shorter Library of Economics and Liberty: Ditto!)
Quite the libertarian, anti-immigration, pro-deportation (& you don't have to be an illegal alien to get tossed out, every one's eligible !) literacy testing, poll taxing circle jerk going on @ The Library of Economics and Liberty. It's usually trouble when you hear "economics" & "liberty" in the same sentence. Big trouble. Are these people not aware that others not in on their unfunny little joke can read their anti-democratic, un-American postings?

Commenter J. Smith @ Sadly, No! first brought it up. I'm sure by now it's sweeping the ocean.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Actually, libertarianism has nothing to do with that poster or with totalitarianism. As a matter of fact, libertarianism is the opposite of totalitarianism. The extreme form of Libertarianism says that the government should control nothing, but only protect people from force or fraud.

The extreme left wing says that the government should control the economy. In theory people should be free to do what they like in their bedrooms and with their personal lives, but since under socialism poverty grows until poverty is universal, at some point they must decide to control your personal life as well.

The extreme right wing says that the government should control people's morals, but that people should be economically free. The government should be in the bedroom but not in the boardroom. Of course this, like socialism, fails in practice, as the massive police state requires massive revenue, so the government progressively takes over the economy in order to finance the elimination of "sin".

In either the left or right case, you eventually devolve into totalitarianism, which says that the government should control you totally. Fascism and Communism look identical in practice, since they both end up trying to take all your rights, economic, political and personal. It is questionable, however, whether Nazism was ever right wing at all. They were, after all, National Socialists, and financed a gigantic welfare state with what they stole from the Jews, just as modern socialists want to finance a gigantic welfare state with what they steal from "the rich", against whom they make exactly the same accusations as the Nazis make against the Jews.

If you have never understood why Russia and Germany were so similar during WWII, you might want to look beyond the one dimensional political view we were taught in the public schools by government employees, and examine a richer two axis view at:

http://self-gov.org/

Regards,
Rich

M. Bouffant said...

The Editor Responds:
The moment(s) control of the means of production is taken by the proletariat, true economic democracy is established, & we no longer have to worry about superstitious pre-Enlightenment political/religious fundamentalists (Pat Robertson, James Dobson, etc.) terrorizing us, I'm all in favor of the state withering away. Except for the IRS, of course.
And thanks for the primer in "liberty." Since you use shots of yourself for your avatar, and neither your appearance nor nom de web are offensive, I'll give you a break on the basis of sincerity & leave it at that.
P. S. Is a "two axis view" like the two party system?