Picture this, A village in a developing nation has serious hunger problems. They are desperate for any kind of help at all. In steps a western celebrity who helps an "aid" group give that village free food. Now this village is stuffed and has a surplus of food. Everybody is happy, right?
Wrong. That free food just caused a farmer to incur high debts because of the lack of sales from his crops. I mean who can compete with free food? Imagine you set up shop in the middle of Las Vegas selling gambling machines at $1,000 a machine and you're going along just fine until every other competitor starts giving them away. Who's going to buy your machines? Nobody. So you lower your prices to extreme levels and finally you're losing money and incurring high debt from the government. This is exactly what happens to that 3rd world farmer who gets bumrushed by free food. While it's great for the rich farmers of the developed world, it's horrible for the guy in Congo who now has to either totally re-think his farming methods and try and plant new crops or just go out of business.
Won't people starve if they don't get the food they need? Well, the answer is no shit sherlock, this was never in question. What was in question is why we need to dump 1st world products on 3rd world people. The answer is we don't. Many countries were extremely self-sufficient using government policies to feed their own people. For example, Haiti was once a self-sufficient country. Now they import over 80% of their rice. What was once a country that produced nearly all of its rice, now imports 4/5ths of its rice. Why is this, you might ask? Well Haiti was forced to cut import tariffs from a grand whopping 50% to just 3%. 3%! Obviously this is going to lead to massive importations of rice which would then lower the cost of locally produced rice and ultimately cutting off local rice production period. So onto the solutions......
First of all we need to stop making trade a zero-sum game. You wonder why the leftists think of it as a zero-sum game? Well look above. When you try and force other countries to open their markets, you should give in return. fruthermore free trade should actually be fucking free. This means no subsidizing your rice as you won't allow that for other nations. Then we must get onto the fact that when countries are in crisis, we should always try and help, but make sure you're stimulating the local economy over Iowa's economy. Buy rice from the locals and give it to the people in need. pretty fucking simple, no? How does it make any sense to buy foreign food to help the local economy? This is as fucked up as when you hire foreign corporations to build schools in Iraq. HIRE LOCAL WORKERS FOR FUCKS SAKE! If the goal is to allieviate poverty while also stimulating the local economy, then these 2 simple solutions will go a long way in doing that.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Anarcho-Communism and it's failures
A short while ago, I used to be an anarchist communist. This meant I believed in mutual aid and stuff being distributed based on need. This belief clouded my judgement for years until I found syndicalism and economics as a whole. This blog will hopefully cast down Anarcho communism for the complete and utter failure that it is.
Take what you need
The basis for anarcho-communism is to take what you need from the communal warehouse, but remember only take what you actually need. well this would work as well as my going to the grocery store and only getting that Loaf of bread I went there to get in the first place. In other words nobody just takes what they need, but instead would take what they want because they thought they "needed" it. This is simply human nature. If you only needed a roll of toilet paper, but saw a dozen rolls and you could tehcnically take this, what are you going to do? You're going to take the entire 12 pack. To suggest that we can have open communal warehouses where people jsut take whatever they need and have it work is simply ludicrous to say the least.
Voluntary work
This is another stupid part of Anarcho Communism, the theory that people would "voluntarily" work for the benefit of society and themselves. Oh yes, can't you see it's capitalism that inhibits us to be our true cooperative selves. I mean one day you have capitalism and with it's abolition the very next day you would all simply go to work for free for societies benefit. It works like magic. actually it works like utter shit. The reality is that maybe 5% of the population would work for free while the other 95% would sit there and reap the rewards. People need an incentive to work. People aren't going to give up all they learned just witht he abolition of capitalism, but will instead progress towards solidarity. It would be downright genocidal to go straight to voluntary work from capitalism as nobody would work and people would literally starve to death while our councils sat there and didn't know what to do. To suggest otherwise is to ignore human nature.
Conclusion
The simple fact is that if we are to ever get to a stage like this, we would need to first go through syndicalism and then build up solidarity among the masses. Even then, it is of my opinion that this would never work even if solidarity is recognized by the people. Anarcho-communism simply doesn't work economically either. You would have large shortages and stuff people need and you would be forced to go towards syndicalism either way. anarcho communists must be more realistic and work witht eh syndicalists as that's the only viable alternative to capitalism. Work should be a right and duty for all as Abraham Guillen once said. Towards syndicalism and away with anarchist communism!
Take what you need
The basis for anarcho-communism is to take what you need from the communal warehouse, but remember only take what you actually need. well this would work as well as my going to the grocery store and only getting that Loaf of bread I went there to get in the first place. In other words nobody just takes what they need, but instead would take what they want because they thought they "needed" it. This is simply human nature. If you only needed a roll of toilet paper, but saw a dozen rolls and you could tehcnically take this, what are you going to do? You're going to take the entire 12 pack. To suggest that we can have open communal warehouses where people jsut take whatever they need and have it work is simply ludicrous to say the least.
Voluntary work
This is another stupid part of Anarcho Communism, the theory that people would "voluntarily" work for the benefit of society and themselves. Oh yes, can't you see it's capitalism that inhibits us to be our true cooperative selves. I mean one day you have capitalism and with it's abolition the very next day you would all simply go to work for free for societies benefit. It works like magic. actually it works like utter shit. The reality is that maybe 5% of the population would work for free while the other 95% would sit there and reap the rewards. People need an incentive to work. People aren't going to give up all they learned just witht he abolition of capitalism, but will instead progress towards solidarity. It would be downright genocidal to go straight to voluntary work from capitalism as nobody would work and people would literally starve to death while our councils sat there and didn't know what to do. To suggest otherwise is to ignore human nature.
Conclusion
The simple fact is that if we are to ever get to a stage like this, we would need to first go through syndicalism and then build up solidarity among the masses. Even then, it is of my opinion that this would never work even if solidarity is recognized by the people. Anarcho-communism simply doesn't work economically either. You would have large shortages and stuff people need and you would be forced to go towards syndicalism either way. anarcho communists must be more realistic and work witht eh syndicalists as that's the only viable alternative to capitalism. Work should be a right and duty for all as Abraham Guillen once said. Towards syndicalism and away with anarchist communism!
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