wes.whitman's blog

Karl Popper's critique of Marxism is equally applicable as a critique of Austrian Economics, and Hayek failed to recognize that.

First off, the bad grammar in the following is intentional, because screw grammar/spelling authoritarians! Language is the only real direct democracy dammit, so don't let the fascist English teachers take that away from you with their arbitrary rules!

Facebook says today is a "friendversary," marking the day that me and Mitchell became friends on Facebook. Normally, I ignore Facebook when it spams me with such things, but I couldn't help but notice the huge impact that Mitchell has had on my life.

People often object to land value tax because they think it will increase their taxes. However, for most working class folks, your taxes would actually go down. In reality, you probably already pay land value tax. Most of us pay a land value tax to a landlord in the form of rent or to a bank in the form of mortgage payments. This "tax" in the form of rent allows landlords and capitalists (mortgage holders) to survive and thrive without having to actually work for a living like the rest of us.

Patriotism entails loyalty to one's government. The quintessential motto of the patriot is “support our troops,” which usually just means support the government and the wars of our rulers. If you actually cared about the wellbeing of the troops, you'd be ranting and raving about unjust war and demanding that they not be put in harm's way for the sake of strengthening the power of oligarchs and the economic elite.

So, here's the real reason that older folks hate millennials:

Christopher Cantwell, former AnCap turned leader of the Alt-Right, is crying like a little snowflake on video because he's afraid to get arrested and just found out there is a warrant for his arrest. He bragged about the murder that took place in Charlottesville and then promised that the Alt-Right would kill more people.

If you're Christian, you don't have the luxury of remaining silent. If you are remaining silent, you don't have the right to call yourself "Christian." Speak up! Condemn racism and fascist or stop pretending to be anything other than just another rotten horrible person. SILENCE IS A SIN! I'm ashamed of "Christians". Most of them are really just terrible people.

There is a sense in which I will concede that a society with private ownership can be socialist.

Soviet Russia was not socialist because it lacked the two primary features of socialism.
The two main features or socialism are (1) social ownership wherein each member of society has a relatively equal share of social wealth and (2) industrial democracy in which workers participate in decision-making processes, either directly or though elected delegates.

My views fall somewhere between social democracy and market socialism. What I have in mind by "market socialism" is the model advocated by Fred M. Taylor, Oskar Lange, and Abba Lerner. (This parallels the RICH economy proposal of Robert Anton Wilson too.)