DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Michael Tee on July 31, 2010, 02:09:24 AM
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I reproduced the following article in its entirety but was too lazy to mark each para with "<<." Great article. One of the funniest I've read in a long time.
The Ruling Elite Called
by Jim Quinn
http://www.lewrockwell.com/quinn/quinn32.1.html (http://www.lewrockwell.com/quinn/quinn32.1.html)
I just got off the horn with the Ruling Elite. We had an emergency conference call and to tell you the truth, they ain’t happy. You little people are not responding the way you are supposed to. A significant portion of you are not getting more optimistic because they tell you to. Instead of just reading the headline on Bloomberg that durable goods orders skyrocketed in June, you actually read the details that said durable goods orders plunged. It is getting difficult for the ruling elite to keep the masses sedated and dumbed down. These damn bloggers, with their facts and critical thinking, are throwing a wrench into the gears. Obama and his crack team are working round the clock to lock down the internet, but it will take time. Not that they are totally dissatisfied. They’ve been able to renovate their penthouses and purchase new mansions in the Hamptons with the billions in bonuses you supplied through TARP. The $1.2 trillion supplied by your children and grandchildren to buy up toxic mortgages off their balance sheets was a godsend. They will never call you suckers, to your face.
Their spirits were buoyed by the 2,600-page DONK (Dodd/Frank) financial reform bill. So many loopholes, so little time. Obama and his crack team of Obamanistas in the White House, supported by their mouthpieces in the mainstream media, have been able to easily manipulate the non-thinking masses into believing this bill would have stopped the last financial crash and will stop the next one. The Ministry of Truth has been working overtime utilizing Federal Reserve paid shill economists like Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi to perpetuate the myth that the actions taken in the last 18 months have averted a Depression, saved 8 million jobs, created a long-lasting recovery, wiped out Swine Flu, and earned Paul Krugman a Nobel Prize in fiction.
This is where we have a problem. The worshippers of Keynes, that rule the country, are pissed off at you. Don’t you realize that government spending of your money, borrowed from the Chinese, with the bill passed to your grandchildren, was supposed to reinvigorate your animal spirits? They handed you other people’s money to buy cars and homes and what do you do? You stop buying cars and homes as soon as they stop paying you to buy cars and homes. You ungrateful bastards. Bennie has been hugely successful at ruining the retirements of millions of grandmothers by paying them 0.20% on their money market accounts while forcing mortgage rates for 30 years down to 4.5%. And still you don’t buy houses. Timmy has instructed Fannie Mae to make home loans to anyone with a pulse who can make an X on a piece of paper. No money down, no proof of income, no assets. Just like the good old days. Still you don’t buy houses. What is wrong with you?
The criminal banking elite have more than bent over backwards to get this economy humming. They have patiently stood by while you haven’t made your mortgage payments for two years while still residing in the house. They’ve pretended to go along with the brilliant HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) plan, masterminded by the rocket scientists in the White House. Just because virtually no one has been able to qualify for the plan and the redefault rate is 75%, doesn’t mean it hasn’t worked wonders for the economy. The awesome part of not making people pay their mortgages is that they were able to make payments on their credit cards. That allowed the mega elite banks to pretend that consumers are flush and relieve their loan loss reserves while not writing off the bad mortgages and reporting billions in profits for the 2nd Quarter. It is good to be the ruling elite.
The ruling elite are letting you slide on your mortgages and you have the gall to withdraw $20 billion from U.S. equity funds and not buy into this fake stock rally. Don’t you realize that when the stock market goes up, the economy follows? Everyone knows this. But, instead you sit on the sidelines and refuse to invest in the stock market. The super computers of the mega-banks are getting tired of trading with each other and single-handedly making the stock market appear safe. Just because the ruling elite have vaporized $10 trillion of your net worth in the last two years, you hold a grudge? Remember the mantra “Stocks For the Long Run” that the ruling elite burned into your brains through CNBC and the rest of the shillstream media? Why are you so suspicious of our advice? Ignore the fact that the S&P 500 today is at the exact level it reached on March 24, 1998. They meant the really really long term.
Here is the message from the ruling elite to you ignorant masses: Debt got us into this mess and it sure as hell is going to get us out. They have convinced the mainstream media that the reason the economy is sputtering is because the average Joe is not doing their part. This crazy concept of saving for a rainy day seems to be catching on. This is very dangerous. Savings could lead to investment and long-term stability. The ruling elite will have none of that foolishness. The mainstream media is telling you that this new-found austerity will push us back into recession. The talking heads continue to pound away that you have reduced your spending too much, when anyone with a calculator and half a brain (Krugman doesn’t make the cut) can determine that the decrease in consumer debt outstanding is completely the result of write-offs by the mega-elite banks. Consumers are living off their credit cards at this point.
The military industrial complex continues to do the heavy lifting for this economy. If they weren’t blowing up bridges, power plants and orphanages in foreign countries and then rebuilding them at ten times the expected cost, how would they possibly spend $895 billion per year. It ain’t easy to waste that kind of money annually. Whenever some crazy dude like Ron Paul questions the need to spend as much as the rest of the world combined on the military, some potential terrorists are captured in the nick of time and the threat level is raised to Orange (thanks Tom Ridge). The “professional” journalists on the major networks then do their part in this farce by spreading fear among the general population. Rinse and repeat.
So, we now find ourselves at the edge of the abyss again. The ruling elite have a great plan. It involves more debt, more stimulus, more printing, more accounting fraud, more pain for the masses, and of course more bonuses for Wall Street. If you, the little people, will just follow this 10-step plan, the ruling elite will be just fine:
1. Stocks are undervalued according to the same "experts" who told you they were undervalued in October 2007. Take out a loan and buy mega-banks stocks, commercial real estate developers, and bankrupt car companies.
2. General Motors, in a brilliant strategic coup, has bought "subprime" auto loan company Americredit. What else does a government/union owned car company need? The fact that GMAC has lost $10 billion of taxpayer funds in the last year shouldn’t worry you about your investment in GM. If you can’t sell cars to people with no income, no job and no prospects for repaying the seven year 0% loan, who can you sell a car to? When the government pays Goldman Sachs millions to convince you to buy the stock of GM in its Fall IPO, ask no questions and just buy buy buy.
3. Ignore the fact that Citicorp, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo would be declared insolvent if the FASB had not caved in to threats from the Federal Reserve and Treasury. Just buy their stocks. Trust Wall Street.
4. Enough austerity already. You haven’t bought a new HDTV in six months. It’s like you’ve been living in a 3rd-world country. If you have any equity left in your house, borrow against it and buy something big and glitzy. Make sure you show it off to your shallowest neighbors. They will go out and buy something bigger and glitzier on credit. Before you know it we have a recovery. Keynesianism 101.
5. Stop frequenting financial blogs like Naked Capitalism, Credit Writedowns, Dollar Collapse, Market Oracle, 321Gold, Jesse’s Cafe Americain, Of Two Minds, Zero Hedge, Mike Shedlock, or Barry Ritholtz. These sites will just shower you with facts, analysis and truth. Watch CNBC, Fox, MSNBC and the other corporate media to get the ruling elite approved view of the world.
6. If you are currently renting or living in your mother’s basement, have no job, no savings and no prospects, Fannie Mae wants to put you in your very own house. Mortgage payments are optional. The 50% of Americans that pay taxes will gladly fund your new abode.
7. If you are approaching the 99th week of unemployment, have no fear. The ruling elite will use the MSM to run hundreds of sob stories about only two years on the dole being immoral and cruel. The White House will present a study from "impartial" economists that proves that extending unemployment benefits to 156 weeks will create or save 3 million jobs.
8. The stress of this recession has been too much. You need to whip out that credit card and book a trip to Disney World or Dollywood. Worry about funding that 401k sometime in the future.
9. Unquestioningly accept the fact that Iran is an imminent threat to your safety and liberty. Support the obliteration of this evil nation based upon information provided by the CIA (WMD slamdunk) and the Israelis.
10. Lastly, call your Congressman and tell them to extend the tax cuts for the rich. As you have probably concluded, the ruling elite are rich. They don’t like paying taxes. That is why they employ thousand of tax lawyers. Since the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will hurt the ruling elite the most, a full court press of disinformation is in order.
The ruling elite expect you to comply without question. Have they ever led you astray before?
July 31, 2010
http://www.lewrockwell.com/quinn/quinn32.1.html (http://www.lewrockwell.com/quinn/quinn32.1.html)
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And along those lines of a great article!!
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Many of the wonderful-sounding ideas that have been tried as government policies have failed disastrously. Because so few people bother to study history, often the same ideas and policies have been tried again, either in another country or in the same country at a later time-- and with the same disastrous results.
One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things being allowed to take their own course. It sounds so logical and plausible that demanding hard evidence would seem almost like nit-picking.
In one form or another, this idea goes back at least as far as the French Revolution in the 18th century. As J.A. Schumpeter later wrote of that era, "general well-being ought to have been the consequence," but "instead we find misery, shame and, at the end of it all, a stream of blood."
The same could be said of the Bolshevik Revolution and other revolutions of the 20th century.
The idea that the wise and knowledgeable few need to take control of the less wise and less knowledgeable many has taken milder forms-- and repeatedly with bad results as well.
One of the most easily documented examples has been economic central planning, which was tried in countries around the world at various times during the 20th century, among people of differing races and cultures, and under government ranging from democracies to dictatorships.
The people who ran central planning agencies usually had more advanced education than the population at large, and probably higher IQs as well.
The central planners also had far more statistics and other facts at their disposal than the average person had. Moreover, there were usually specialized experts such as economists and statisticians on the staffs of the central planners, and outside consultants were available when needed. Finally, the central planners had the power of government behind them, to enforce the plans they created.
It is hardly surprising that conservatives, such as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain and President Ronald Reagan in the United States, opposed this approach. What is remarkable is that, after a few decades of experience with central planning in some countries, or a few generations in others, even communists and socialists began to repudiate this approach.
As they replaced central planning with more reliance on markets, their countries' economic growth rate almost invariably increased, often dramatically. In the largest and most recent examples-- China and India-- people by the millions have risen above these countries' official poverty rates, after they freed their economies from many of their suffocating government controls.
China, where famines have repeatedly ravaged the country, now has a problem of obesity-- not a good thing in itself, but a big improvement over famines.
This has implications far beyond economics. Think about it: How was it even possible that transferring decisions from elites with more education, intellect, data and power to ordinary people could lead consistently to demonstrably better results?
One implication is that no one is smart enough to carry out social engineering, whether in the economy or in other areas where the results may not always be so easily quantifiable. We learn, not from our initial brilliance, but from trial and error adjustments to events as they unfold.
Science tells us that the human brain reaches its maximum potential in early adulthood. Why then are young adults so seldom capable of doing what people with more years of experience can do?
Because experience trumps brilliance.
Elites may have more brilliance, but those who make decisions for society as a whole cannot possibly have as much experience as the millions of people whose decisions they preempt. The education and intellects of the elites may lead them to have more sweeping presumptions, but that just makes them more dangerous to the freedom, as well as the well-being, of the people as a whole.
Telling it like it is (http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/07/27/how_smart_are_we)
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Just because the Russians did poorly on central planning does not mean that it cannot work. The PRC has managed to combine a mixed and a free economy well enough to produce a high growth rate for over a decade. Of course, an obedient labor force, with a huge reserve waiting in the countryside, and a gigantic market in the USA was required, but still, the people running the PRC are champions at central planning. I doubt that this could work in any country but China, and with a major market anywhere but in the US, but still, do not blame planning when it is bad planners who have failed.
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LOL....exactly as Sowel has opined. Yea, thay just didn't have the "right people" yet. Didn't have "enough money" to make it work. Not enough "obedient people" yet (read: not enough control)
China's economy is improving BECAUSE of injecting more capitalism and its practices, at the expense of stifling Communistic control
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There is NO stifling of Communist control in China. Every factory built to manufacture exports is approved by the local Communist Party. They have to do thi, because the utilities and highways needed are built & maintained by the State.
The Central Planners of the PRC are just better at capitalism than capitalists or anyone elsewhere. This is partly due to some unusual factors that are present, and partly because they are highly competent at what they are doing.
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The Central Planners of the PRC are just better at capitalism than capitalists or anyone elsewhere.
If it is government money, i don't think it qualifies as capitalist investment. It might be closer to fascism as i understand the differences between the economic and political definitions.
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Just because the Russians did poorly on central planning does not mean that it cannot work.
What exactly did they fail to do?
I think that the Soviet Union was run about as well as central planning could ever manage.
Note that the same country was centrally managed by Czars who did well sometimes but demonstrably not as well as the Soviets.
I think that Russians are still learning to distribute management , they stand a good chance of embraceing diversity , allowing a hundred flowers to bloom and reinventing themselves as a superpower.
If the previous sentance seemed deficient in buzzwords, feel free to add your own.
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<<Just because the Russians did poorly on central planning does not mean that it cannot work. The PRC has managed to combine a mixed and a free economy well enough to produce a high growth rate for over a decade.>>
I agree with that. Further, I would say that the central planning of the centralized government was essential to the success of the mixed economy that followed. I also agree with XO that the Party's control over the Chinese economy is as tight as ever, ready to step in at a moment's notice as and when needed to curb any excess of the "entrepreneurs" operating under the Party's watchful eye.
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The Central Planners of the PRC are just better at capitalism than capitalists or anyone elsewhere.
If it is government money, i don't think it qualifies as capitalist investment. It might be closer to fascism as i understand the differences between the economic and political definitions.
BINGO
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<<Just because the Russians did poorly on central planning does not mean that it cannot work. The PRC has managed to combine a mixed and a free economy well enough to produce a high growth rate for over a decade.>>
I agree with that. Further, I would say that the central planning of the centralized government was essential to the success of the mixed economy that followed. I also agree with XO that the Party's control over the Chinese economy is as tight as ever, ready to step in at a moment's notice as and when needed to curb any excess of the "entrepreneurs" operating under the Party's watchful eye.
Chinas recent successes are just as attribuitable to decentralised enterprise as their many failures during the Mao era are attributable to centalised controll.
When China has more millionaires than the USA it will probly be last week.
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<<Chinas recent successes are just as attribuitable to decentralised enterprise as their many failures during the Mao era are attributable to centalised controll.>>
Does anyone know of any studies that tend to prove plane's theory, or for that matter, mine?
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The Chinese government has veto power over where and in what industries money can be invested in specific industries. A lot of the money is from Taiwan, Japan South Korea and the US.
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<<Chinas recent successes are just as attribuitable to decentralised enterprise as their many failures during the Mao era are attributable to centalised controll.>>
Does anyone know of any studies that tend to prove plane's theory, or for that matter, mine?
Isn't the History of China itself the biggest scale study of this subject that there ever has been?
Centralised planning = worst period of famines in all Chinas history , surpassing in deaths even the results of Imperial Japaneese occupation.
Partial decentralised authority + minor tolerance for normal human ambition= greatest prosperity in all of Chinas history.
How is any study going have a bigger sample?
Or more definate results?
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<<Isn't the History of China itself the biggest scale study of this subject that there ever has been?>>
Not really. The Communist era is only 61 years old.
<<Centralised planning = worst period of famines in all Chinas history , surpassing in deaths even the results of Imperial Japaneese occupation.>>
I honestly don't know what on earth you are talking about. In all of China's history of communist rule, there has been only one famine, never repeated. In China's four thousand years of pre-Communist rule, famine was a regular and recurring event. It looks to me like the communists have got famine licked.
<<Partial decentralised authority + minor tolerance for normal human ambition= greatest prosperity in all of Chinas history.>>
LOL. That's a pretty selective rendition of the events of the past sixty years. A more realistic appraisal would be: overthrow of capitalist pro-American government --> Communist Chinese government --> true national independence -->solid infrastructure of healthcare, housing, education, redistribution, national pride and central planning --> world dominance.
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LOL. That's a pretty selective rendition of the events of the past sixty years. A more realistic appraisal would be: overthrow of capitalist pro-American government --> Communist Chinese government --> true national independence -->solid infrastructure of healthcare, housing, education, {to an extremely low standard}. redistribution, national pride and central planning --> world dominance.
<<Isn't the History of China itself the biggest scale study of this subject that there ever has been?>>
Not really. The Communist era is only 61 years old.
What larger scale or longer lasting study do you have in mind?
>><<Centralised planning = worst period of famines in all Chinas history , surpassing in deaths even the results of Imperial Japaneese occupation.>>
I honestly don't know what on earth you are talking about.
You certainly do not!
I am talking about the most severe famine that the human race has ever known with more deaths caused than the whole Japaneese occupation of the same territory.
You can't pass over the worst famine of all human history as just another famine in a country that has had one or two every century since pre history, Every human land has had one or two famines every century or two , the worst of them all is still the worst of them all.
What makes you think that there will never be another? That there is a strong ability to return to the same sort of central planning that they had during the worst famine they ever had?
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Whether or not central planning is a disaster or a success depends on what is planned. What is planned in turn, depends on the data about the resources, the people, the weather, all the factors that exist. The mantra is "garbage in, garbage out". In the 1950's, no one could predict much of anything, adequately. The planners of WWII ordered so much crap that it kept Army/Navy stores in business well into the 1970's. Mao's data was bad, and he lacked any way to crunch that data. And in addition, many of his premises were screwed up. The leaders of he PRC today generally do planning at a provincial or county level, and of course they have computers.
You can't blame "central planning" per se: you can blame what is planned and the facts that those plans are based upon. In China, the climate is too diverse to plan the same actions for the entire country.
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I checked out the Wikipedia article on the Great Chinese Famine at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine)
Even the article itself stated that natural disasters played a part in the famine. Under the "discussion" tab for the same article, it quickly became apparent that this was far from the simplistic "Communism = Famine" paranoid Cold War fantasies of plane and others. there does seem to be some connection between flawed agricultural policies, based on bad science (the idea that planting seeds closer together would increase yields because seeds of the same species would never compete with one another for soil nutrients, being one example) but junk science based on ideology (in this case, the collective ethic versus botanical science) is not a monopoly of communist systems.
To blame the famine entirely on communism is ludicrous.
Moreover, since then, under communism, no further famines have followed. This could not be said of the KMT regime or of any non-communist regime which preceded it. Prior to communist rule, famine followed upon famine for 4,000 years of Chinese history.
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I checked out the Wikipedia article on the Great Chinese Famine at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine)
Even the article itself stated that natural disasters played a part in the famine. Under the "discussion" tab for the same article, it quickly became apparent that this was far from the simplistic "Communism = Famine" paranoid Cold War fantasies of plane and others. there does seem to be some connection between flawed agricultural policies, based on bad science (the idea that planting seeds closer together would increase yields because seeds of the same species would never compete with one another for soil nutrients, being one example) but junk science based on ideology (in this case, the collective ethic versus botanical science) is not a monopoly of communist systems.
To blame the famine entirely on communism is ludicrous.
Moreover, since then, under communism, no further famines have followed. This could not be said of the KMT regime or of any non-communist regime which preceded it. Prior to communist rule, famine followed upon famine for 4,000 years of Chinese history.
How do you blame anything on anyone?
Prior to Communist rule there was a famine every few decades , During communist rule there was a famine that they tried mightily to keep a secret , the worst that there has ever been.
Reduction in communist practice of Marxist doctrine has reduced the potential for famine , but the passage of time is not over how can you say that famine is now banished? What is preventing the next one if the prime cause of the last one was weather?
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<<How do you blame anything on anyone?>>
You match actions to results. Hitler and the Nazis scream that the Jews are a curse, the armies that they command round up and gas the Jews, you blame Hitler and the Nazis for the Holocaust.
Had Mao promised to starve millions of Chinese to death and had the Chinese produced bumper crops but millions of Chinese starved to death regardless, you could figure out, especially if Mao's armies had locked up all the food, that the famine was caused by Mao and his Communist government. As it happens, there were record floods and storms, a bad harvest, some bad science (Lysenkoism and associated doctrines) being applied to Chinese agriculture, and there was a famine. Mistakes were made. Capitalism makes plenty of its own. Four thousand years of regular famine under non-Communist rulers were followed by ONE famine in the midst of bad weather and a correspondingly bad harvest under communism. I'd say in those circumstances, that despite the one exception, Communism has licked famine in China. Any attempt to blame Communism for Chinese famine is absurd.
<<Prior to Communist rule there was a famine every few decades , During communist rule there was a famine that they tried mightily to keep a secret , the worst that there has ever been.>>
Yeah, just ignore the weather and the crop production figures. Blame it all on communism. I blame the New Orleans flood on capitalism, how do you like that? Classic example of post hoc, propter hoc reasoning.
<<Reduction in communist practice of Marxist doctrine has reduced the potential for famine , but the passage of time is not over how can you say that famine is now banished? What is preventing the next one if the prime cause of the last one was weather?>>
Communist organization of the state has proceeded even further, the state is better prepared. Communist leadership has renounced junk science and Lysenkoism, we do not see any further famine and have no reason to suppose that the Communist system will be subject to famine ever again. Unfortunately, we note that in many African countries which have so far failed to adopt a communist system of government, that famine is still rampant. It is hard to understand why even in the 21st century, capitalism is unable to save these unfortunate folks from famine, isn't it?
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It is hard to understand why even in the 21st century, capitalism is unable to save these unfortunate folks from famine, isn't it?
Capitolism and science have this potential.
Unfortunately central planning and social justice do not , and central planning and land reform are more popular than any science or effeciency measure in production of food.
If social justice is your main aim should you even care if the accomplishment of social justice directly or indirectly causes famines and mass death?
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Forty years ago China was in the middle of the world's largest famine: between the spring of 1959 and the end of 1961 some 30 million Chinese starved to death and about the same number of births were lost or postponed. The famine had overwhelmingly ideological causes, rating alongside the two world wars as a prime example of what Richard Rhodes labelled public manmade death, perhaps the most overlooked cause of 20th century mortality.1 Two generations later China, which has been rapidly modernising since the early 1980s, is economically successful and producing adequate amounts of food. Yet it has still not undertaken an open, critical examination of this unprecedented tragedy.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/319/7225/1619 (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/319/7225/1619)
The origins of the famine can be traced to Mao Zedong's decision, supported by the leadership of China's communist party, to launch the Great Leap Forward. This mass mobilisation of the country's huge population
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For the sake of building his own brand of Chinese socialism, and as campaigns to undermine any real or imagined opposition in the party hierarchy, Mao would institute new waves of radical social transformation. The most famous of them was the Great Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. But the Great Cultural Revolution had its beginning in an earlier campaign — the Great Leap Forward of 1958-62. China's peasants were to be fully incorporated into the collective farm system and China was to launch a massive steel production campaign in every village and collective farm throughout the country to bring China into the industrial world within a handful of years.
It is this earlier Great Leap Forward campaign that is the theme of Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. That the Great Leap Forward resulted in a massive loss of human life has been known to experts in Chinese communism. R.J. Rummel, in his detailed account, China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (1991), devoted two chilling chapters to this period of Chinese history.
But Mr. Becker's book is the first account that is based on personal interviews with the survivors in many parts of China, as well as drawing upon new or recently released documents on the magnitude of this human disaster. In short, at least 30 million people died from a planned famine.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0697f.asp (http://www.fff.org/freedom/0697f.asp)
Knowing nothing about agriculture, Mao insisted that all the food China needed could be produced in less time on a fraction of the land then under cultivation. To curry favor with the "Great Helmsman" in Beijing, provincial and local party leaders throughout China drew up production plans promising to deliver fantastically unrealistic quantities of wheat and rice. No only did the harvests fall far short of the projections, but they fell far below previous levels of output. With millions of people diverted for Mao's gigantic infrastructure projects and with the basic tools needed for farm production stripped out of the peasants' hands for steel construction, it was inevitable that agricultural yields would drastically decline.
But the local and regional party leaders were determined to meet their targets for delivering what had been promised to the chairman. To meet their targets, they reduced the amount of food left for the peasants to live on. Teams of cadres were sent out to the villages to search for any hidden caches of grain not turned in to the authorities. Tens of millions were left with nothing to eat.
All the time, the peasants were in fact starving — in the millions. In their dreadful state, the peasants sank to the lowest form of human survival — they resorted to cannibalism. They dug up the bodies of the recently dead. They hid the fact that family members had died: first, to continue to obtain an extra food ration from the party distributors; and second, to hide the fact that the deceased had been eaten. Then, finally, at the lowest level of an instinct for survival, adults began to kill and eat their own children, usually trading their living child for that of a neighbor's, so they would not have to literally murder and eat their own son or daughter. Children would beg their parents not to let them be eaten.
And where was all the harvested grain seized by the provincial and local party officials? The vast majority of it was stuffed into government granaries. When some of the higher party officials received reports from relatives and friends around the country about the real state of the peasantry, Mao refused to be moved. He could not admit he had been wrong, both because it would undermine his own utopian fantasies and because it might shift power and influence away from himself to others in the party.
Finally, granaries were either opened or broken into. Peasant revolts occurred in various areas. Mao was forced to reverse course, but not publicly. All the shifts in policy were made to seem normal change and adjustment on the continuing road towards communism.
Thirty million people may have died because of his folly, but Mao would not forget that others in the party had challenged him — that they had made him admit that physical laws of nature had stood in his way of making China over in his own image. And in 1966, Mao launched the Great Cultural Revolution
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Whether or not central planning is a disaster or a success depends on what is planned.
No it doesn't ,not at all .
You have missed the point.
Consider the genius of Napoleons , who would not only found a school , he would design the students uniforms ,his genius was always busy and his trust in his generals was only that they would follow orders.
Micromanagement from on high is a loosing idea no matter how genius the small group at the top is.
No person or committee of persons , even if quite large, is going to equal the wisdom of the whole population .
Management as near to the task as possible is a good goal, and impossible to approach by Communists who depend on the charm of a central genius to hold their movement together.
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Again, so similar to what Sowell was opining. Staggering the notion of how so many think they just know better than the rest of us, that they need to control us. For our own good, of course. So well intentioned.....and so completely & eternally flawed
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<<Capitolism and science have this potential.>>
I wasn't clear on what potential you were referring to, but I took it to mean the potential to eliminate famine.
<<Unfortunately central planning and social justice do not , and central planning and land reform are more popular than any science or effeciency measure in production of food.>>
Upon what do you base such sweeping statements, that capitalism and science have the potential to eliminate famine but "central planning and social justice" do not?
The fact is that communism has already eliminated famine in China after 4,000 years of failed non-communist efforts to do so.
<<If social justice is your main aim should you even care if the accomplishment of social justice directly or indirectly causes famines and mass death?>>
Sure I'd care - - where's the social justice when millions of innocents die in a famine?
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<<Capitolism and science have this potential.>>
I wasn't clear on what potential you were referring to, but I took it to mean the potential to eliminate famine.
<<Unfortunately central planning and social justice do not , and central planning and land reform are more popular than any science or effeciency measure in production of food.>>
Upon what do you base such sweeping statements, that capitalism and science have the potential to eliminate famine but "central planning and social justice" do not?
The fact is that communism has already eliminated famine in China after 4,000 years of failed non-communist efforts to do so.
<<If social justice is your main aim should you even care if the accomplishment of social justice directly or indirectly causes famines and mass death?>>
Sure I'd care - - where's the social justice when millions of innocents die in a famine?
Mao made 30 million die (give or take five or six million) but he did acheive social justice , lots and lots of social justice Mao unquestionabley produced fatal doses of social justice for many and miserable amounts of social justice for his whole nation.
It seems sometimes as if we are not discussing real people who spent real time as actual persons.
It was for the sake of communism that Mao centralised authority , and for worship of Mao that the yes men of the CCP promised high yeilds of grain while reduceing the workforce and melting down the tools.
When the crop yeilds were low it was good communists that confiscated the crop so much that most of the starveing was happening near the farms.
This is exactly what I think about when social justice is discussed in terms of socialism, you can make it sound nice and you can make it cost the people more than their worth to stay alive.
Note that this can't happen without central planning , if each farmer was manageing his own crop he would never sell away , or give away so much that his own family was starving. Nor would any farmer fail to plant enough to sell at market as was best possible if left alone.
Even though famine had been a reoccuring happening in Chinas history , never before had there been one that lasted nearly so long and took nearly so many lives , nor was any other famine so obscured by the government.
It is as if the entire population of Kenya were to die in misery , or as if the holocaust were to be multiplied by five , and no one takes notice.
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http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_country_has_a_population_30_million_people_and_has_the_second_biggest_surface_in_the_world (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_country_has_a_population_30_million_people_and_has_the_second_biggest_surface_in_the_world)
Well then Maos crime is no greater than the murder of Canada would be if it happened now.
If we are speaking only of the great famine and none other of Maos crimes .
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<<No person or committee of persons , even if quite large, is going to equal the wisdom of the whole population .>>
That is probably true in small groups, but the point is, how do you ascertain "the wisdom of the whole population" in practice? Is it through representative democracy, so easily subjected to corruption? The U.S.A., surely the world's leader in the development of representative democracy, has also - - inevitably - - led the world in the corruption of that democracy. Today we have a situation in which the wealthiest have collaborated with the greediest; where the press, the military and the judiciary have all been corrupted in the interests of the country's real rulers, the military-industrial complex and the national security state. Don't like it and want a change? Go ahead, vote for change - - see how much change you get. LMFAO. Change. Voting. Voting for change. Lotsa luck widdat!!!
Neither has communism solved this problem. "Vanguard of the working class" sounds good, but once the Revolution is over, and you can't tell who's really sincere and who's not, because there's no more test of fire for the real revolutionaries, how do you keep the self-seeking careerists and adventurers out of the Party and its leadership? Maybe the best that the Party can do is plan for the first fifty years after the triumph of the Revolution, laying down strict principles for material development and indoctrination of the people to make it as hard as possible for careerists and self-seekers to change the course of socialism, hoping that at least some general rise in the standards of popular education and material development will best prepare the nation for what must follow in the wake of the inevitable deterioration of the Party and its rule. A population well-versed in the nature and principles of the class war will (hopefully) be less gullible, and less easily misled by demagogues and whores than one which has been indoctrinated with the idea that the class war does not even exist.
To blame one particular Chinese famine, one out of hundreds or even thousands of Chinese famines over at least four thousand years, on the evils of communism, is foolish, and to use it as "proof" of communism's inevitable failure, is totally absurd. Were every famine that occurred under capitalism to be taken as "proof" of the failures of capitalism, we could prove the failure of capitalism a thousandfold more than we could prove the failure of communism.
Did Mao (and through him, the Party) make mistakes? OF COURSE he did, who the hell didn't? Did those mistakes contribute to the causes of a famine caused by crop failure and extreme weather conditions ? Yes that is possible. Is communism then a failure? What kind of failure is it when it has not only abolished famine in China for the first time in 4,000 years, while famine continues to rage in capitalist-controlled Africa, but has positioned China for the first time in centuries as one of the world's leading powers, soon to be the first leading power? Failure my ass!!! It is capitalism which has failed, and is failing before our very eyes, and whatever frantic stop-gap measures are required to patch the failing system sufficiently together to lurch along for a few more desperate years are measures of government intervention and government management of failing capitalist institutions.
<<Management as near to the task as possible is a good goal, and impossible to approach by Communists who depend on the charm of a central genius to hold their movement together.>>
Nice straw-man, plane. The "charm of a central genius" and the theory of Communism have absolutely nothing in common.