The Visible Hand

As anyone sensible knows, governments are terrible for markets, being more concerned with their own power than the economy. Democracies will tend towards socialism in order to appease the masses while authoritarian governments will tend towards excessive military buildup. What is excessive? While I am no pacifist, all states have excessive military expenditures, particularly the small and insignificant dictatorships of South America, Africa, and Asia. Truth be told, there has not been a dictatorship worth considering since the Soviet Union fell. I must concede that is one thing the Communists did well: being significant.

So yes, governments are terrible for markets, constantly manipulating them and printing money and ruining everything. Democracies, despite their socialist tendencies, tend to be the least damaging though, since the freedom they claim to offer does tend to reflect itself in freer markets and therefore greater prosperity. Just look at America: free and rich as hell.

Unfortunately a new form of government is emerging. Few call it a form of government. And yet, it wields as much power as a government.

It is the corporation.

Their massive size and wealth allow them to manipulate not just markets, but societies and countries. They have the power of a government. And they act somewhat similar as well.

In the small phase they are unstable and tend to go under the radar. They fill niche markets and are little more than potential. In the middle phase they grow and become significant, but not so much that they can entirely ignore social pressure. In this way they act as republics: semi-responsive to the desires of the people. Finally they reach the end phase in which they are so big and so powerful that they can ignore everything other than direct and immediate profit.

In this final phase they amass unimaginable profits, but since they have reached the power of governments, they are just as meddlesome and harmful to markets. They create monopolies which are not necessitated by efficiency or technology. This creates the anti-market situation of consumers being unable to decide to agree or refuse a deal, but instead being compelled to accept or starve. In this final stage the corporation ceases to be a tool of the market, but instead seeks to use the market as its tool, with devastating consequences for all but the corporation.

In the final stage, corporations, the child of the free market, become as harmful as a socialist state because they are a socialist state. And who even realizes it?

The Corporate Union needs a Gorbachev to tear it apart so that markets can thrive once again.

Socialism is not Socialism

Perhaps the greatest argument against socialism is those protesting socialism. Have you seen the idiots screaming about socialism this and that and they have no fucking clue what socialism means?

Socialism is government ownership of industry.

It's not taxes or regulations. It is welfare and medicare. Yes, medicare is socialism. As far as socialist programs go, it's not that bad, so shut the fuck up healthcare protesters who keep saying government can't run a healthcare program. It clearly can. I won't say this is good, but I will be a voice of reason and point out that you are all god damn idiots.

Also, Godwin's Law. I'll leave it at that so intelligent people can laugh at you while you stand around confused waiting for FOX to tell you what to do.

But let's get back to my point: You are for the most part brought up in a socialist educational system. You are idiots. The correlation is there. Is it causation? Does socialist education cause morons screaming ignorant comments about socialism? Maybe. I can't say for certain, but it seems like a pretty shocking coincidence.

What I'm trying to say is this: When you scream about socialism when you have no clue what it means, you make those who have actual reasonable problems with socialism look bad as well. Please, if you love your country, shut up. Take advantage of the socialism to get a free, if poor, education. Put it so some use such as by reading or thinking.

Should we be worried about socialist indoctrination? No. We should watch out for it, but the fact is, Obama isn't spreading socialism or a cult of personality. It's the so-called free-market people who are creating cults and demanding your obedience. Stop pointing fingers at the socialists when you are actually being more stupid and more damaging to America than they could ever be.

Gevlon is a leeching socialist

Shameful.

Someone works hard to build themselves up. They spend their money to buy something valuable. That is what keeps the economy going. Surely as someone who places value on economics he can understand the need to buy cars.

And surely he understands that that which is given for free has less value. He has never held back from criticizing the lazy leeches who take and take and do nothing to earn it. And yet... there he goes and brags about it.

Don't believe me? See his own words. When speaking of pets, he encourages us to leech off the spending of others.

But why do you have to own them? I mean I find Lamborghinies beautiful, yet I'm not planning to buy one. Not even to rent one for a weekend, although I could afford that easily. Every time I see one on the street, I turn after it, admire it, and move on my way smiling (not ironically, but filled with beauty). So, why do you have to buy it to receive its "cuteness". You could just walk to any pet in Dalaran and watch it!

Oh but he goes further. He admits, brags, to having gained personal benefit from the work of others while he adds nothing more than having walked down the street. What's next, watching high-def TV through the windows of neighbors?

This is no mere innocent act. Oh no, this is the foundation of socialism. What, you say? How can that be? Simple! He does not buy the car because he gains no benefit from it; he can get sufficient admiration from seeing it drive by. What we see here is a private resource being used, without permission, for the enjoyment of non-owners. Make the argument that the owners intended to show off, fine.

Gelvon is still being a socialist. How so? By encouraging others to not buy, but instead to use that which is free. It is efficient, sure; sharing is certainly efficient. We could be so much more efficient with our pets by coordinating who buys which one. Spread the burden among those who really like to see pets and those who have a mere passing interest. But to maximize the number of possible pets out at once, we must all be part of the system. It is for the greater good and also to the greater individual good for anyone who likes the sight of a pet. We could coordinate which pet with when people are on to ensure that at all times of the day there is likely to be a diverse array of pets. Maybe Blizzard could coordinate this for us.

Oh yes, Blizzard. Big Brother Blizzard, always there to show us the way to work together for the greater good.

Did I not warn you? I told you! Enchanters first! Who would follow? I must admit I did not expect pet owners to be next in line. But there they are. Or at least they would be if closet socialists like Gevlon had their way.

Be warned, he might pull out some narrow argument about his relative benefit from buying a car or pet or mount compared to other purchases. He won't be wrong. But he will be missing the point: he only has a DR on the beauty or cuteness because of the work of others which is benefits from at no expense to himself. Of course he places low value on that which he can simply steal.

In unrelated news, he's a fucking moron: "Most people will sooner or later buy minipets because they feel they are looked down by peers if they wouldn't."

Nerd Raging!1!

Nerds are funny. They get outraged so easily. They exaggerate everything. "I got banned from a video game forum, this is an outrage! I will not be silenced!" As if this is a matter of free speech. It's a private company enforcing rules on its own property. But oh, how could I forget, they were so rude about it! So terrible.

This is the same person who tried to turn a change to a profession in a video game into part of the larger war against Communism. As if Communists could successfully run a company in a competitive market, let alone make such impressive profits.

Accept it, nerds, sometimes bad stuff happens to you. It's nothing more than that. It's not even particularly bad stuff: "oh noes but my video game!" It's not part of some overall trend or conspiracy. It's not a world gone mad. The Soviet Union was defeated and with it, the last major threat to freedom. I swear, nerds are as bad as Fox News, thinking everything is part of some gay or terrorist conspiracy. For them it's all about the latest doom and gloom. Idiots. Capitalism and freedom won.

Well except for one area: somehow the Internet is still being regulated out of some misplaced desire for equality. Net neutrality is bad and should end. Why should corporations not be able to restrict access based on payment? If the open exchange of ideas is so valuable, then people will be more than willing to pay whatever Comcast charges. And they will have to charge quite a bit since buying senators isn't cheap. They gotta make their profits after all.

Advertising is socialism

As I stated before, and then promptly derived terrible conclusions from, advertising exists to employ the otherwise unemployable. If you don't want to reread all of it, here's the summary: technology made us productive enough that most of the world can not work and we'll still survive and distributing the wealth from technology is a difficult task. Keep in mind that when I talk about the world I only mean the developed world. The rest is almost entirely irrelevant to this unless I explicitly mention it.

Advertising is socialism with a thin veneer of hard work to make it seem okay.

Without the useless half there would be twice the productivity and prosperity. They are by definition a drain on society. Currently there are three major ways to deal with them, two of which failed and the third of which is currently in progress.

The first is socialism: taking from those who work to give to the idle. This has all sorts of problems such as being blatant theft.

The second is extermination: killing the useless half. This has been tried but tends to fail due to poor identification techniques and popular outrage even among those who actually work. They might work, but clearly have no concept of self-interest.

The third is the current method of advertising: Trick those who work into working twice as much in order to buy the useless crap made by the otherwise idle. This is consumerism and debt and it creates cycles which will destroy the world as they drain resources both natural and human. The way this works is to 'employ' the useless half making unneeded junk: new purses and clothes and marginally better (or worse but restyled) cars. Convinced that they need these items, the working half works even more to buy them.

The net result is almost the same as socialism: The useful half works to sustain the useless half. However it has a different appearance because it keeps the useless half busy. Don't confuse busy with useful since they're still making worthless crap on par with macaroni art from children, but more expensive and lacking the slightest hint of educational or developmental value. In other words, the useful half is tricked into thinking that the useless half is not actually useless. The outrage that they would have over socialism is prevented despite supporting them exactly as they would under socialism.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all advertising is bad. It is good to be made aware of new and better products. However the persuasive advertising is damaging, manipulating emotions and society to empty the pockets of the useful half of the world.

The strange irony of this all is the loss of 'jobs' to overseas labor. The potentially useful people in other countries are taking up the practice of making useless crap. Since they aren't socialists, they work for more sensible prices; though considering what they make has no value, they're still overpaid (unless we're considering that what they make has relative value to the factory owner who can sell them to the tricked half). This could potentially be a great advantage of the developed world, allowing it to maintain its power by infecting the poorer nations with useless labor.

Instead it just makes things worse. The useful half is still buying the useless crap. However the useless half of the work force is increasingly unemployed and therefore switching to direct socialism and is howling about their loss of jobs. This confuses me because they are still paid to be useless but they don't even have to pretend to be useful; they benefit and yet they complain. Sadly, the shift overseas also means that money which used to flow to the domestic useless half and was then taxed and partially returned to the useful half is now going entirely overseas and being lost to uselessness.

Yes, money overseas is wasted entirely. How? Well consider that they also have, or will have, a useless and useful half, the same split as in all developed societies. Their potentially useful half is making crap and is therefore useless. Their other half, the naturally useless one, is never useful regardless of what they do or don't make (since it's never anything useful) and therefore the entire society is useless and destined to remain poor forever.

Take your neo-Marxist world system theory and shove it. It is only the 'exploitation' of the rest of the world that keeps it from collapsing entirely. I'm amazed that they survived at all before we started handing them money in exchange for crap.