What is the purpose of the game Monopoly? To drive your opponents into poverty so that you get rich. This is the meaning of success that we all grew up on.
None of the elements you mentioned, Cobalt, Niobium, or Lithium, are rare earth elements. The REE's are a group of 17 elements in a particular slot in the periodic table.
“how is the ultimate result of capitalism any different from the ultimate results of communism? Or fascism? Or any political ideology ever, for that matter?”
Other than the fact that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system, while ideologies like communism, socialism, and fascism are responsible for impoverishing hundreds of millions and the worst genocides in all of human history?
I think it’s important to be able to distinguish between the evils of “crony capitalism” (which is not capitalism in any true sense) and actual capitalism, and not confuse the results of the two. To borrow from Sir Winston: Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all of the other systems ever tried.
“There is no question that capitalist societies produce inequalities. A system based on freedom of choice with reward based on merit is bound to yield different results in different circumstances. It is this very quality that reflects capitalism’s natural effectiveness and practicality. It is the freedom to choose that makes us human. It is the profit incentive that drives us to work our hardest. It is our inherent and distinct ability to reason as individuals, not as collectives, that makes us truly free.” (Matt Barnes)
Now Sir Winston himself: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Bleak! I have the tendency to look for solutions. I do not see any in your essay except to raise awareness, which you do well but a majority of Americans are asleep and Trumps administration was not successful in explaining the reasons for the moves he made to the general public.
He also allowed the distractions of race, wealth and misogyny to dominate the public narrative about him instead of explaining the situation of the REEs and China’s dominance. Nothing was made clear and his administration was unable to slow the growth of these corporate elites plans to dominate. The fact that the USA refuses to atone for past injustices and make corrections is a huge mistake. It underestimated the power that those acts alone could generate. If he plans to turn this around, that has to be done so that we the people are empowered. It has to start with disassembling the monopolies and and redistribution of the wealth back to the
people, not by stimulus money but by taxing the wealthy, eliminating tax loopholes, charging a flat tax and getting rid of the idea that corporations are individuals.
Thanks for raising these important points about rare earth elements and the environmental devastation the current extraction practices bring. I wonder if there are any countries or companies that are doing this mining in an ecologically sensitive way? Is that even possible? There are many environmental practices that do not receive proper attention because so-called climate change has taken over almost every aspect of the green agenda. There are many legitimate dissenting voices that question the scientific claims about CO2 causing climate change, but they are excluded from the debate. The parallels with Covid-1984 are ominous -- the very same hijacking of science to advance a program of political control and profit. Tony Heller at Real Climate Science does a good job of debunking much of the Climate Alarmism by reference to historical climate data. Just a note about capitalism and socialism....I believe that capitalism, properly understood, is a system of voluntary exchange and decentralization that benefits from millions of creative producers cooperating to find more efficient and profitable ways of satisfying human wants. What we have in almost every Western country is a sort of corporatism, overlaid with a massive state that taxes and regulates with unintended negative outcomes for overall prosperity. Add to this the distortions caused by lobby groups, and other special interest groups, governed by an oligarchy. Angelo Codevilla did a good job of sketching the ways that the system is perverted by the elites and special interests. If we can somehow recover true capitalism (ie. free voluntary exchange) we can return real freedom and autonomy to individuals and communities....it will be a difficult challenge. Keep up the great work, I really enjoy your insights. Best, J
I heard the lady who wrote,” Once upon a wardrobe”; a story with C S Lewis in it. She was talking about CS Lewis reason to write fiction. He needed to get around “ Defensive Dragons” by story to the heart and so get truth through.
I thought of your lyrical writing style as a great example of getting the truth round them dragons!
Thank you Karen for another well written essay. It’s so nice to find someone with a like minded worldview who can articulate and put into words as well as you do. I am grateful. This topic hits me close to home as I’m a victim of our government’s mismanagement of toxic waste from The Manhattan Project here in St. Louis and I’m one of the lucky ones. Generations of families have been wiped out by cancer. Fortunately for me I’ve only had skin cancer on my legs from standing in the toxic Coldwater Creek but I did develop a debilitating disorder called POTS. This condition often caused by radiation poisoning, toxic exposures, genetic conditions, vaccinations, and post viral. It’s been frustrating to see people develop POTS post COVID and have it called Long Covid/Hauler as if it’s a new condition. It’s been a real slap in the face to those of us who have been trying to bring awareness to this common but little known condition. Odds are good that you aren’t aware of Coldwater Creek because it was a hidden secret until a couple of women planning their high school reunion noticed an awful lot of their classmates had died of cancer and many of them from the very rare appendix cancer. This was my first experience at censorship as two documentaries were being suppressed. They are Atomic Homefront and The Safe Side of the Fence if you are interested. Looking forward to your next essay.
I do so enjoy your articles....I know they will be well researched, relevant and almost always come on the heels of some discussion I'm having with people in which your article is a perfect "answer" to send them! Did you know the original game of Monopoly was called The Landlord's Game and it was meant to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood." Funny how the game was flipped from it's original intent to, as you suggest, teach children about winning at the expense of others. Thank you for sharing your unique perspective and your excellent writing!
Great article, Karen, thank you. Interesting take on the game of monopoly. Perhaps there was an agenda behind its introduction. I think the problem is with unregulated excesses of the natural human capability to innovate. IMHO Capitalism, socialism and other isms not necessarily bad per se but if unregulated lead to catastrophic excesses. I was once I intrigued by the the idea of having a Tesla - not any more. When they a mandated we’ll know we’ve lost but I hope that won’t happen.
I use to enjoy and at the same time get depressed when I first came across an article of yours on Twitter but now I just enjoy because it reignites my passion to read and learn the actual truth about the world we live in. Most are blind and have chosen to not care about any of it because they would rather enjoy the circus than let the truth weigh them down but hey, what can one do? As the saying goes anyway, “you can lead a horse/donkey to the river but you can’t force water down its throat”…unless in most cases you are the government, you can do pretty much whatever you want. The best one can do for oneself is to work hard to develop a mindset of free thinking.. looking forward to the next essay as always.
The Magic of Rare Earth Elements & the Hypocrisy of Clean Energy
None of the elements you mentioned, Cobalt, Niobium, or Lithium, are rare earth elements. The REE's are a group of 17 elements in a particular slot in the periodic table.
Just a note but there are non mRna vaccines out there. Unfortunately if you want to travel you will need to be vaxxed.
“how is the ultimate result of capitalism any different from the ultimate results of communism? Or fascism? Or any political ideology ever, for that matter?”
Other than the fact that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system, while ideologies like communism, socialism, and fascism are responsible for impoverishing hundreds of millions and the worst genocides in all of human history?
I think it’s important to be able to distinguish between the evils of “crony capitalism” (which is not capitalism in any true sense) and actual capitalism, and not confuse the results of the two. To borrow from Sir Winston: Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all of the other systems ever tried.
“There is no question that capitalist societies produce inequalities. A system based on freedom of choice with reward based on merit is bound to yield different results in different circumstances. It is this very quality that reflects capitalism’s natural effectiveness and practicality. It is the freedom to choose that makes us human. It is the profit incentive that drives us to work our hardest. It is our inherent and distinct ability to reason as individuals, not as collectives, that makes us truly free.” (Matt Barnes)
Now Sir Winston himself: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Bleak! I have the tendency to look for solutions. I do not see any in your essay except to raise awareness, which you do well but a majority of Americans are asleep and Trumps administration was not successful in explaining the reasons for the moves he made to the general public.
He also allowed the distractions of race, wealth and misogyny to dominate the public narrative about him instead of explaining the situation of the REEs and China’s dominance. Nothing was made clear and his administration was unable to slow the growth of these corporate elites plans to dominate. The fact that the USA refuses to atone for past injustices and make corrections is a huge mistake. It underestimated the power that those acts alone could generate. If he plans to turn this around, that has to be done so that we the people are empowered. It has to start with disassembling the monopolies and and redistribution of the wealth back to the
people, not by stimulus money but by taxing the wealthy, eliminating tax loopholes, charging a flat tax and getting rid of the idea that corporations are individuals.
Thanks for raising these important points about rare earth elements and the environmental devastation the current extraction practices bring. I wonder if there are any countries or companies that are doing this mining in an ecologically sensitive way? Is that even possible? There are many environmental practices that do not receive proper attention because so-called climate change has taken over almost every aspect of the green agenda. There are many legitimate dissenting voices that question the scientific claims about CO2 causing climate change, but they are excluded from the debate. The parallels with Covid-1984 are ominous -- the very same hijacking of science to advance a program of political control and profit. Tony Heller at Real Climate Science does a good job of debunking much of the Climate Alarmism by reference to historical climate data. Just a note about capitalism and socialism....I believe that capitalism, properly understood, is a system of voluntary exchange and decentralization that benefits from millions of creative producers cooperating to find more efficient and profitable ways of satisfying human wants. What we have in almost every Western country is a sort of corporatism, overlaid with a massive state that taxes and regulates with unintended negative outcomes for overall prosperity. Add to this the distortions caused by lobby groups, and other special interest groups, governed by an oligarchy. Angelo Codevilla did a good job of sketching the ways that the system is perverted by the elites and special interests. If we can somehow recover true capitalism (ie. free voluntary exchange) we can return real freedom and autonomy to individuals and communities....it will be a difficult challenge. Keep up the great work, I really enjoy your insights. Best, J
Good morning Karen, great read, keep at it
Thanks Brian
Gday Karen
I continue to need to read your essays. Thankyou.
I heard the lady who wrote,” Once upon a wardrobe”; a story with C S Lewis in it. She was talking about CS Lewis reason to write fiction. He needed to get around “ Defensive Dragons” by story to the heart and so get truth through.
I thought of your lyrical writing style as a great example of getting the truth round them dragons!
Thanks for opening my thinking up to a whole new dimension
Wow. So glad I found you. Such fantastic views. Too bad these essays can't be publicized in our daily news.
Thank you Karen for another well written essay. It’s so nice to find someone with a like minded worldview who can articulate and put into words as well as you do. I am grateful. This topic hits me close to home as I’m a victim of our government’s mismanagement of toxic waste from The Manhattan Project here in St. Louis and I’m one of the lucky ones. Generations of families have been wiped out by cancer. Fortunately for me I’ve only had skin cancer on my legs from standing in the toxic Coldwater Creek but I did develop a debilitating disorder called POTS. This condition often caused by radiation poisoning, toxic exposures, genetic conditions, vaccinations, and post viral. It’s been frustrating to see people develop POTS post COVID and have it called Long Covid/Hauler as if it’s a new condition. It’s been a real slap in the face to those of us who have been trying to bring awareness to this common but little known condition. Odds are good that you aren’t aware of Coldwater Creek because it was a hidden secret until a couple of women planning their high school reunion noticed an awful lot of their classmates had died of cancer and many of them from the very rare appendix cancer. This was my first experience at censorship as two documentaries were being suppressed. They are Atomic Homefront and The Safe Side of the Fence if you are interested. Looking forward to your next essay.
I do so enjoy your articles....I know they will be well researched, relevant and almost always come on the heels of some discussion I'm having with people in which your article is a perfect "answer" to send them! Did you know the original game of Monopoly was called The Landlord's Game and it was meant to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood." Funny how the game was flipped from it's original intent to, as you suggest, teach children about winning at the expense of others. Thank you for sharing your unique perspective and your excellent writing!
Great Article 😀
Great article, Karen, thank you. Interesting take on the game of monopoly. Perhaps there was an agenda behind its introduction. I think the problem is with unregulated excesses of the natural human capability to innovate. IMHO Capitalism, socialism and other isms not necessarily bad per se but if unregulated lead to catastrophic excesses. I was once I intrigued by the the idea of having a Tesla - not any more. When they a mandated we’ll know we’ve lost but I hope that won’t happen.
I use to enjoy and at the same time get depressed when I first came across an article of yours on Twitter but now I just enjoy because it reignites my passion to read and learn the actual truth about the world we live in. Most are blind and have chosen to not care about any of it because they would rather enjoy the circus than let the truth weigh them down but hey, what can one do? As the saying goes anyway, “you can lead a horse/donkey to the river but you can’t force water down its throat”…unless in most cases you are the government, you can do pretty much whatever you want. The best one can do for oneself is to work hard to develop a mindset of free thinking.. looking forward to the next essay as always.