Redneck Review!
No. 110 – 5/29/2017
What more proof does a person need?  Past articles have argued the impossibility of an economy stressing security over efficiency to survive. Common sense tells us this is true. Be it a football team or a business concern, success demands that all must produce. The existence of laggards guarantees the entity is destined to fail!
Current events paint a realistic picture of the results.  Consider again, the news from our southern neighbor, Venezuela. Blessed with one of the highest standards of living a half century ago, socialist governments since stressing economic equality have resulted in dire conditions there, described by Laura Hollis in May's MARKET UPDATE as follows:
"Venezuela has degenerated into a hellhole of widespread starvation: Venezuelans are forced to forage through garbage looking for something edible...eleven percent of the children in some of the poorest areas are at risk of death from severe malnutrition..."
Another crisis is "the disastrous collapse of Venezuela's health care system...shortages of basic items like gloves and soap...patients without beds lying in pools of their own blood, and people dying because the electricity needed for respiration is cut off... Another generation has been taken in by the same empty promises trotted out by lying leftist politicians.  How many people have to suffer, starve and die under systems touted by...ivory tower academics?"
Common sense and recent events aside, history repeatedly teaches us the same lesson. Last week we looked at conditions associated with the collapse of Greek civilization.  So what about Rome, at one time historically the most powerful and influential civilization in its time, lasting nearly 800 years?  Consider the following quotations taken from the same book cited last time,  THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD in 240 pages. Author Sedillot talks of Rome's rise
to power under the Roman Republic, followed in time by a slow descent into a dictatorial government which appealed to the masses with its "bread and circuses" appealing to the eople with food giveaways, and brutal entertainment in the coliseum.
p.76: "While the status of the lower classes rose, the ranks of those who had formerly enjoyed privileges were mercilessly thinned. Crushed under a weight of taxation, they lived in constant dread of seeing what remained of their fortunes confiscated by the socialist state."
p.78: "Because it eliminated private enterprise from every sphere, because it intervened more and more in the life of the community, the machinery of State became more expensive to run.
In order to meet the drain on the Treasury, taxation was increased to a point which became intolerable. The burdens laid on private enterprise ended by killing it.  The government taxed by decree...it became the owner of immense property...it became involved in day to day trade and industry...it instituted a National Bank...it issued loans to the poor to enable them to buy land...it built up a controlled economy...to combat a rise in the cost of living, it laid down rules controlling maximum wages and prices.  But the laws of supply and demand rebelled against this pattern of arbitrary administration...The system inevitably produced inflation and also devaluation.  The denarius had its silver content reduced until it contained more of copper.
Rome's commercial budget showed a hopeless deficit...her gold and silver reserves melted away... Rome was impoverished and weakened."
p.82: "In the long run, the Roman world cracked...there was a shortage of soldiers and there was a shortage of children as well...the empire was suffering from depopulation...vice was everywhere...Once Rome had been rich, but she was rich no longer...she had ruined her middle class...she had come to hate hard work...incapable of producing, she could only consume... As a result, Rome was no longer the center of the world."
Jake Wren

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