Freedom or Government Control — There Is No True "Third Way"

Every government intervention into the economy may not be socialism, but it is a step toward socialism.

Interventionists claim to advocate for a ‘third way’ of economic organization, one that preserves the productive nature of capitalism, while merely reining in some of its destructive excesses.

For instance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren last year described herself as a “capitalist to the bone,” even declaring “I believe in markets and the benefits they can produce when they work.”

However, she added the caveat that it is “markets with rules” that can create value and insisted “markets worked better” during the timeframe of 1935 to 1980 in large part due to “more aggressive regulation of markets.”

But is there a reasonable “third way”?

The defining difference between socialism and capitalism, as described by Ludwig von Mises in his 1950 essay “ Middle of the Road Policy Leads to Socialism,” is “the substitution of public control of the means of production for private control.”

More properly understood, socialism would eliminate the private ownership of the means of production by capitalists.

So efforts to impose “more aggressive regulation of markets” – which typically amount to more confiscatory taxes and stricter government regulations – may fall short of actual socialism, but erode the defining characteristic of capitalism, namely private ownership over the means of production.

It is important here to note that ownership implies the right to utilize, trade or otherwise dispose of property as the owner sees fit, as long as his actions don’t infringe on the rights of others.

Any restrictions on the owner’s use, therefore, represents an erosion of private property rights over the means of production, and a step in the direction of centralized, or public, control over those means.

Taxes, naturally, erode ownership rights of the capitalist by forcibly confiscating a portion of the fruits of the capitalist’s utilization of the means of production under his ownership, and shift them into the hands of a centralized authority.

https://mises.org/wire/freedom-or-government-control-%E2%80%94-there-no-true-third-way

Hey Q Israel controls the old guard!

>>6396897

kek

Nice meme

>>6396914

FFS

>>6396936

Colorado’s Bennett Makes It 22 Identical Democrats Seeking White House

WASHINGTON—Colorado’s Sen. Michael Bennett became the 22nd Democrat Thursday seeking his party’s 2020 presidential nomination and the 13th from Congress with virtually identical extremely liberal voting records.

“I think this country faces two enormous challenges, one is a lack of economic mobility and opportunity for most Americans and the other is the need to restore integrity to our government,” Bennett, 54, said during an interview with “CBS This Morning” co-anchor John Dickerson.

Asked about the fact he is just one of nearly two-dozen candidates, Bennett said he believes it is “phenomenal we have an array of candidates that we have,” and he described it as a “competition of ideas.”

Bennett was described by CBS as “a relatively moderate Democrat,” but a review by The Epoch Times of congressional voting records found little difference between the Colorado senator and any of his competitors who are also current or former members of Congress.

Voting Records

As scored by the American Conservative Union Foundation on 25 issues during 2018, Bennett received a 14 rating, supporting the group’s position three times and opposing it 17 times. Bennett missed five votes.

That tied Bennett with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) as the two most conservative congressional Democrats presently seeking the presidency. The non-congressional candidates are similarly liberal.

The other 11 all scored below 10, according to ACU, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), 9, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), 9, Sen. Amy Kloubachar (D-Minn.), 5, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), 9, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), 9, former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) 7 in 2016, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), 8, Rep. Sean Moulton (D-Mass.), 8, Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Tx.), 8, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), 4, and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), 4.

The average ACU score for the 13 is 8.3. The same pattern was found in the 2018 ratings compiled by another conservative activist group, FreedomWorks.

The liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) awarded Bennett a 90 score for voting right on 18 of 20 issues selected by the group for its 2017 scorecard, the latest available.

The ADA gave Booker a 95 score, as well as 100s for Harris, Warren, Kloubachar, and Gillibrand. Sanders, the self-described “Democratic Socialist,” was rated 95 by ADA.

Among the House Democrats, the ADA rated Delaney 85, Gabbard, 95, Moulton, 80, O’Rourke, 80, Ryan, 100, and Swalwell, 90.

The average ADA score for the 13 congressional Democrats hoping to be elected president in 2020 is 93, virtually the exact opposite of the ACU ratings.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/colorados-bennett-makes-it-22-identical-democrats-seeking-white-house_2904448.html

British MSM – Lapdog of American Military Coup (Again)

The Washington favourite in Juan Guaido has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization of Venezuela. He has been groomed for 15 years as a long-term CIA project. It was, therefore, never any surprise to those watching that this was somehow a surprise. And of course, it is no surprise that his intentions are simply as an American stooge, to return Venezuela’s oil reserves to US hegemony and control. In the meantime, the British MSM slavishly follows orders.

America has a long history of attacking countries with oil reserves with one of two things – bombs or ‘liberal democracy.’ Usually, there’s a smattering of humanitarianism thrown in and coming from America, that is to be feared. To the recipient nations rarely do things end well. Think, Iraq, Libya and countless other countries at the end of America’s greed.

And like the attack of Iraq, where the British MSM stood idly by, looking the other way, not once properly challenging the obvious lies of the Tony Blair government and its made up story of WMD, the same is happening in Venezuela. The hypocrisy of Western media and its politicians is breathtaking in every sense when after such events in our recent history, we witness them again and again and nothing is said.

There is something insidious about Britain’s media – both printed and presented. That they themselves see a blatant overt military coup, cry about the human rights abuses and turn the real story around 180 degrees against the government that is defending itself against that very coup is at its most charitable described as hypocrisy. It’s a fraud that mocks the nation as nothing more than being dumb and irrelevant.

Former British ambassador Craig Murray has some words on the matter.

Today, miraculously, the MSM line is no coup attempt happened at all, it was just a spontaneous unarmed protest, and it is the evil government of Venezuela which attempts to portray it as a coup. BBC Breakfast this morning had the headline “President Maduro has accused the opposition of mounting a coup attempt”… Yet there is no doubt at all that, as a matter of plain fact, that is what happened.

The MSM today is full of video of water cannons against “protestors” and a horrible video of a military vehicle ramming a group. But it has all been very carefully edited to exclude hours of footage of the same military vehicles being pelted and set alight with molotov cocktails, and shot at. The presentation has been truly shocking.

In any civilised country, attempting to mount a military coup would lead to incarceration for life, and that is what should now happen to Juan Guaido. The attempt by the West to protect their puppet by pretending the failed military coup never happened, must be resisted, if only in the cause of intellectual honesty.

The resort to violence forces binary choice. I have been and am a critic of Maduro in many respects. I believe the constitutional changes to bypass Parliament were wrong, and the indirectly elected Constituent Assembly is not a good form of democracy. Venezuela does have a rampant corruption problem. US sanctions exacerbate but are not the root cause of economic mismanagement. There are human rights failings. But Chavez made revolutionary changes in educating and empowering the poor, and it is a far better governed country for the mass of its population than it would ever be under a US installed CIA puppet regime. Maduro was legitimately elected. The attempt at violence forces a binary choice.

I know which side I am on. It is not Guaido and the CIA.”

https://www.globalresearch.ca/british-msm-lapdog-american-military-coup/5676335