…rather than unethical and idiotic. Some of these people even supported the old fool for President.
If fact, democracy dies in fatuous logic like that quote. Jeff Bezos has no more obligation to keep the Washington Post operating than I do. It’s a money losing operation that has squandered its reputation and good will by ceasing to trading objective journalism for leftist propaganda. At least Jeff’s $500 mil. yacht and his wife’s $5 million ring were worth what he paid for them. Bernie’s statement is like saying “If Bezos can afford expensive yachts and rings, then he should build bonfires with $100 bills.” Or “If Y spends money on A because he wants A, then he should waste money on X because I like X.” Brilliant, Bernie. But typical.
Without Bezos or some other billionaire with discretionary funds, there would be no Washington Post at all. Economics, however, has never been Bernie’s long suit, being the fan of Karl Marx that he is. There are few cognitive voids in Woke World more annoying that the “It’s wrong for people to spend money on what they want and care about because they should spend their money on what I want and care about.” The corollary to that is “Therefore, I should have control of those people’s money.”
In related news, climatologist Bjorn Lomborg has calculated that worldwide, governments have spent a staggering $16 trillion at least on climate change policies that have not succeeded in lowering the world’s temperature one bit. Meanwhile, not a single life has been saved. Limiting access to fossil fuels has made poor countries poorer by blocking their access to affordable energy. To be fair, many hustlers and companies have profited from this extravagant exercise in virtue-signalling. Why doesn’t Bernie focus on all those wasted taxpayer dollars? As Stephen Moore writes,
What could we have done with $16 trillion to make the world better off? What if the $16 trillion had been spent on clean water for poor countries? Preventing avoidable deaths from diseases like malaria? Building schools in African villages to end illiteracy? Bringing reliable and affordable electric power to the more than 1 billion people who still lack access? Curing cancer?Many millions of lives could have been saved. We could have lifted millions more out of poverty. The benefits of speeding up the race for the cure for cancer could have added tens of millions of additional years of life at an economic value in the tens of trillions of dollars. Instead, we effectively poured $16 trillion down the drain.
And…and…we could have saved democracy by keeping the Washington Post staff at full strength!
Verdict: Moore is correct. Well except that instead of “we effectively poured $16 trillion down the drain, he should have written we ineffectively poured $16 trillion down the drain.
Ethics Alarms 
The Left does this all the time. “People have all this time to protest against abortion which means they don’t care about X” (I dunno, spay and neuter pets. It’s usually an apples and oranges comparison).
In this case, it’s the Old Standard of “Billionaires shouldn’t exist because they don’t spend their money the way I would spend it”.
The second rule of economics is “OTHER PEOPLE’s pattern of spending is always irrational and at least slightly immoral”.
I wonder if Bernie Sanders would complain as much had Bezos purchased the Washington Times or New York Post and subsequently axed a third of the workforce.
I bet I already know the answer to that one…
Jack, your capture of Stephen Moore’s quote is perfect…it perfectly captures the heart of the climate alarmist agenda. Those folks claim to be interested in “saving the planet”, but their implementations are mostly dangerous at heart, putting millions upon millions of people at risk, not just regarding their well-being and affluence, but for their lives.
And really, isn’t this the heart of the issue? Why give power to people lacking it? Won’t that just increase their carbon footprint? Why bring those people homes (built with fossil-fuel based products), roads (built with fossil-fuel based products), clothes (built with…well you get the picture), makeup, cell phones, or anything else? Why give anything to people that will cause population to increase and risk the planet? Why cure cancer? Why fight malaria? That involves saving the lives of millions of people, all of whom (in their minds) will continue to consume resources, fart gases out their behinds, and (in general) speed the planet’s ultimate destruction?
Didn’t the Georgia Guidestones recommend a global population of 500,000,000 people? That’s the U.S. population plus 150,000,000 more. Isn’t this what people like Bill Gates and Ted Turner and Klaus Schwab have been pushing for? Negative birth rates? Population control…population reduction?
The heart of the climate agenda is a massive eugenics movement, shuffling staggering amounts of money away from life-saving and life-improving projects and moving it to worthless projects that allow untold death for the sake of some fictitious CO2 problem.
“Why give anything to people that will cause population to increase and risk the planet?”
Funny you should ask…
Former SoS/current John Kerry, et al, see Air Conditioners as the Demon Spawn, to which I say: Do something proactive; STOP_USING_THEM!!
Side Note: The world’s desperately poor areas (Asia, Malaysia, Africa, Mexico, etc.) are on pace to add 700,000,000 AC units by 2030 and a total of 1.6 Billion (that’s Billion with a B!) by 2050.
This makes the Climate Criminals (the UNIPCC, et al) recoil in horror. They believe everyone, (EXCEPT they themselves) should cut back energy usage 50 %.
Despite Lefty trembling like dry leaves in a strong wind (made drier and stronger due to Global Warming) at the mere mention of Climate Change, a hilarious conundrum results: Suffocating White Lefty Guilt requires they feel sorry for poor people…so long as they’re not lightly complected, Southern, Religious, Y-Chromosomal Conservatives.
Lefty’s concern incuriously wilts like August lettuce juuuuuust shy of their checkbooks…and the prospect of any sacrifice of personal comfort.
Ask them three (3) simple questions:
*What have you done,
*What are you doing, and
*What will you do going forward to address this existential crisis of galactic proportions?
The great unwashed want barely a fraction of the comforts which Lefty takes for granted (improved diets, on-demand energy, above subsistence living, etc.), yet satisfying those desires will have a deleterious affect on Mother Gaia.
The (heh!) BURNING question? What can be done that won’t involve compromising a lifestyle of Brie, Chablis, & Wheat Grass Tea?
PWS
Right on, Paul…right on!
With Bernie’ millions he could fund efforts to help stupid people get a photo ID.
This is just a modification to my question why progressives who claim they want to hep people spend millions on legal fees to avoid the ID issue instead of helping these – yet to be identified- people become fully functioning members of society with a photo ID.
More to the point: Why was I forced to go through the process of getting a “Real ID” drivers license to prove I am a citizen?
Oh those pesky opportunity costs. I thought economics was interesting but mostly not critical to know. Now, I’m not so sure and am leaning towards economics and statistics needing to be taught in high school.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YBf2PU_Bvog&pp=0gcJCY4Bo7VqN5tD
The problem with economics being taught is that you know what economics will be taught. Remember, Harvard had Gorbachev teach economics after the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, has Paul Krugman actually been right about anything, ever? Even his Nobel Prize work now seems to be discredited.
The First Law of Economics is: For every economist, there is an equal and opposite economist.
I think you can argue the same with science, English Literature and history, but they are still taught in some form. Basic economics is less able to be misinterpreted. Take the cattle market for an absolutely classic example. I’m sure you’ve noticed the cost of beef is high. It is a classic supply and demand curve and yet people feel like it’s some sort of issue with the politics. Nope. Cattle (as in the physical on the hoof variety) are at a 70 year supply low, prices go up to limit demand. Basic and hard to paint any other way if you have a basic grasp of fundamentals. The premise is more people will 1. Switch to chicken or pork and therefore decrease demand and 2. Invest in beef or bring it in from elsewhere where the cost is lower and therefore increase supply.
This is happening, but economics takes time to realize. Especially with something like cattle. Any interference at this point in the market cycle (trying to artificially lower prices at the consumer market, for example, will make it worse.)
MMT and Communism are what I am talking about. Those are your mainstream economic ideas at most universities.
Socialists always assume they know the best way to spend other people’s money (usually money earned while providing wealth-building opportunities to others). We rarely see them volunteering their own. When I see Bernie donating two of his three houses as homeless shelters, I might start listening to something he says on the issue.
Lefties, even very well to do ones, are jealous of and despise anyone who’s richer than they are. There’s always someone richer than they are to target to pay for righting wrongs. Someone could be a partner in a mega-firm, or Bill or Hillary Clinton, but still consider themselves not rich because they don’t make as much money as Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or the current head of Bank of America or Goldman Sachs. This absolves them of guilt and allows them to condemn the richer people, and it’s only the people in the next higher tax bracket that should pay for everything. It’s a very widespread disease and it’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins: envy.
They REALLY hate people richer than them who they consider to be their social or moral inferiors. The Democrats who view themselves as the moral arbiters of the nation look at the ‘boorish’ Donald Trump and just go insane. Donald Trump is a low-class rich person (like a football player or a rap artist). The horror and indignation they feel when they think of the fact that he has real political power and they don’t is the source of the Trump Derangement Syndrome, in my opinion.
Agreed, I suspect they hate the poor and the lower classes, too, for similar reasons – they figure that those classes are just too stupid to take care of themselves and they resent having to do it for them.
jvb
Correct. The well to do Trump Deranged are apoplectic that they had been good little doobies all their lives, done all the right things, behaved, been nice and worked hard (or at least kinda sorta on all those fronts). And here’s this meanie who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about all that stuff, and he’s not only in charge, but he’s making a mockery of everything they stand for. It’s a collective, “This is an outrage!” And they just can’t let go of it or see how badly their expectations reflect upon themselves. They can’t acknowledge there are lots of ways to skin a cat. They also can’t acknowledge almost all really wealthy and powerful people are cutthroat meanies. They want to believe Al Gore and Bernie Sanders and the Clintons and the Obamas are actually good and nice people, they’re not meanies like Trump! Good luck with that.
I think rather than socialists actually believing they “know better” on how to spend other people’s money, they are instead leveraging guilt as a means to fleece people. Though we’ve moved into a post-Christian phase in our nation, the West was built on Christian principles, which stresses care of the poor. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” published in 1891, stated, “Once necessity and propriety have been met, the rest belongs to the poor.” While direct Christian practice has diminished, the societal belief that the rich ought to use their wealth for the care of the poor remains entrenched. A sophisticated understanding of Christianity examines the entire deposit of faith to build an economic model, though, so while in one place Jesus says to the rich young man, “Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, and come follow me,” we also have St. Paul balancing that with, “The workman is worth his wages” and “let him not eat who will not work.” Christianity has always supported private property, but holding private property in balance with the universal destination of goods (the principle that holds that the world was provided for all men to use, not simply a select few).
What socialists and Marxists have done is take advantage of the Christian principle of caring for the poor (while conveniently ignoring the right to private property) to wield as a cudgel against the Christian-minded West in order to seize power. Care of the poor is merely the pretext — after all, it has been noted that so many of the progressive causes have had well-known deleterious effects on the poor. The problem is, progressives do not actually care about the poor. They know that many people do care about the poor, though, and phrase their campaigns as trying to help the poor. And they know that many people are often envious of those who are wealthier, so it is effective to promise the fleecing of the rich in order to build a power base.
So it doesn’t really matter what Bezos does with his money. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about the right to private property, that wealthy men don’t remain wealthy by funneling all their wealth into unprofitable ventures, that distributing all the wealth of the billionaires among all the poor is not actually going to provide each individual with very much, and so on. The progressives don’t care. The facts truly don’t matter, because the point was never about caring for the poor. The point was about hijacking your desire to care for the poor. And even if you don’t care about the poor, there are plenty of people who do, and they can make your indifference a weapon against you in the public sphere. Even if you do care for the poor, the progressives will assail you as not caring of the poor because they continually phrase the issue as dilemma: either you do what they want, or you are guilty of not caring for the poor. Again, you can argue endless about how that’s a false dilemma, but the entire point is not how best to care for the poor, but to tear you down by whatever means is effective.
Great comment, Ryan. You’ve elaborated upon my theory that after destroying organized religion, the left have turned politics and public policy into the country’s religion. Faith, hope and charity have been replaced by social justice, and all that chimera entails.
As my dear, Vatican One mother told me when I was a teenaged lefty: “Bill, the poor will always be with us.” And given the endless amount of charity work she did for the less fortunate in our parish, she was in a position to know.
Agreed. Well stated.
jvb
Thirded…excellent Ryan, as usual!
“I think rather than socialists actually believing they “know better” on how to spend other people’s money, they are instead leveraging guilt as a means to fleece people.”
Don’t sell them short; they can probably do both.
But Stalin was able to abolish unemployment in 6 months! It’s true. He did it with 2 simple tricks.
(1) You don’t work, you don’t eat.
(2) If you give food to someone who isn’t working, you don’t eat either.
Six months later…no more unemployed people!
I believe the NYT admonished the US on this point, that Stalin was able to eradicate unemployment, but our system couldn’t as a reason to choose ‘the warm embrace of collectivism’.
That’s because the left-sympathizing media, like other fellow travelers, was shielded from the worst of Stalin’s policies for a long time. People who visited the U.S.S.R. during the 20s and 30s were shown only the positives. The cab drivers who refused to accept tips because they “had enough money” knew that to accept a tip would mean imprisonment or even death. It was only people who lived in the Soviet Union long-term like Emma Goldman who became disenchanted with the Bolsheviks. I shudder to think of the African-Americans who settled there after leaving the U.S. in a vain effort to be treated equally and what happened to them once Stalin began oppressing foreigners who had taken Soviet citizenship.
No, they knew. Walter Duranty intentionally lied about the Holodomor. His quote on it was “If you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs”. They knew and they covered it up. They even got Pulitzer Prizes for covering it up.
Bernie Sanders is, and has always been, a pure Marxist styled socialist propagandist, the problem is that they have been playing the long game and in the minds of an ever growing swath of the population, the propaganda is working well on indoctrinated gullible people in the 21st century that swallow this nonsense as if it’s all logical truth.
Sanders, and others like him, have got no effective public policies to offer so they try to rile up the common employee against their “rich” employers. These anti-American socialists are actively trying to undermine the fundamental cores of the United States in their effort to turn the USA into some kind of delusional socialist utopia. These socialist minded people are literally wanting to do the same ignorant things that other socialist nations have done that have directly led to their complete failures, but no… our socialist minded pompous “intellectual” morons think they’ll get different results.
Doing the same thing and expecting different results is a big red flag because it’s a sign of insanity.
In my opinion; Sanders and all the people that agree with his socialist propaganda nonsense are genuine delusional Socialist morons.
For fun, let’s take a moment to think about our relatively recent history.
Think back to all the narratives that the political left has presented to the people of the United States in the early 21st century, particularly since just before 2006 when the “Me Too” movement began where anyone claiming to be a “victim” must be believed regardless of actual facts, period. It’s been one false and/or misleading narrative after another trying to rile up the people against one thing or another, and if you as a critically thinking adult don’t believe the narrative then you are the one that’s wrong, you are the problem, and you are the one that’s publicly tarred; after all, how dare you disagree with the approved narrative. Then came the multitude of anti-Trump narratives, the ongoing decades long climate settled science narratives that floated directly over into the COVID settled science narratives! Remember who the propaganda tells us the evil ones are…
It’s literally been never ending for years!
Now think about the ideological leanings of the people who have been openly willing to swallowing all of the narratives as if they’re actual fact typically without a shred of critical thinking. It’s as if those who’s ideological views reside in the far left have been brainwashed or indoctrinated into being openly gullible for any narrative that fits their bias and absolutely paranoid of any person that has a viewpoint that differs from their own.
Being gullible and paranoid at the same time is quite an accomplishment of indoctrination, good job you immoral hacks! Gullible people have a strong tendency to prioritize emotions over logic and seem to be constantly in a state of hysteria, aka on the edge, or at least very highly stressed and accept any narrative that fits their bias; and on the flip side, these same gullible people are openly paranoid of anyone that disagrees with their point of view – dissenters of their narrative really are considered evil. Then we have the political left’s media lapdogs, aka leftist activist journalists, that are doing their part to actively target the hyped up emotional state of these gullible high stressed people and keep them on the edge of reality with their constant twisted innuendo, implications, accusations, misrepresentations, spin, and outright lies that are intertwined in their targeted propaganda thus building up as much hate as they can directed at the opposition. (yes, that was a run on sentence) This is emotional manipulation. Maybe the media is doing this for ideological reasons or monetary gains or both, but in my opinion it’s morally bankrupt to intentionally manipulate the public this way.
The result of all this indoctrination is that many of the people who’s ideological views are far to the left have allowed their political biased views to take over their active thinking. They’re so indoctrinated, emotional and psychologically gullible that they now have false beliefs that have become fixed, irrational, and (from what I see) it’s become disruptive to otherwise “normal” life functions. In the same way an alcoholic plans their life around the next drink or drunk, many of these people have planned their lives around hysteria based public outbursts and chaos, they seem to be addicted to public displays of outrage based on their fixed delusions and extreme hysteria. Many have crossed over into a psychological delusional disorder. A delusional disorder is a type of mental illness characterized by persistent, fixed, and false beliefs (delusions) that are not based in reality. These people have been turned into political drones much like in a Star Trek Borg collective, it’s like a hive mind or very much like a indoctrinated religious cult.
SIDE NOTE: Public chaos and hysteria is exactly what the socialist minded propagandists want because they know that they loose their political initiative without hysteria and chaos.
All these cultish people have been totally stripped of critical thinking and logic; how could that happen?
This is how it happened, enabling…
In the USA, we now have a wide swath of enabled socially indoctrinated emotional snowflakes that think they’re right about everything and they can do no wrong. Ask them and in some way or another, either directly or indirectly, they’ll tell you exactly that.
Remember the four tenets of the far political left indoctrination…
This is exactly what many years of psychological indoctrination from the far left has wrought.
A subset of the four tenets (Democratic Party version) would read:
Frankly, I find this more threatening. The Democrats really want single party rule. Their objective is to destroy the Republican party as soon as possible and usher in single party rule. This explains the screaming harpies of The Squad.
This has been their goal since 1860. That was the point of the KKK, the point of Antifa, the point of BLM, the point of welfare, the point of education destruction, the point of the destruction of the middle class,the point of mass immigration of communist sympathizers and anti-western people, the point of the National Recovery Act. It has always been about the destruction of the antislavery party and the imposition of slavery. That is why they turned the US city with the highest per capita income and turn it into a desolate wasteland (spending over $1 trillion to do it). These ‘undocumented’ and ‘migrants’, what do they do? They work in sweatshops for starvation wages. They are slaves. All the anti-ICE people are pro-slavery.