Today’s blacklisted American: Unvaccinated students at Quinnipac University to be punished
Rounding up the unclean unvaccinated: coming soon to America.
Genocide is coming: Quinnipac University in Connecticut, having reimposed an indoor mask requirement, has now announced that it will fine and punish any students who do not provide proof that they have either been vaccinated against COVID or have a proper exemption.
Quinnipiac students may be fined up to $200 per week eventually until they prove their vaccination status. Fines for students who don’t supply vaccination proof will begin at $100 per week for the first two weeks. The penalty will increase by increments of $25 every two weeks until a max fine of $200 per week.
Currently non-complying students can avoid the fines if they show the proper documentation by Sept. 14. If they fail to meet the directive by then, they will lose access to the campus internet network.
No longer is the left screaming “My body! My choice!” Then that mantra for abortion worked to garner it political support from naive followers. Now the mantra is “Your body is ours! Let us do to it what we want or we will oppress you!”
It is a very short leap from merely punishing those who refuse a vaccine to rounding them up in camps to isolate them from the rest of society. From there, it is an even shorter leap to imposing mass executions to keep society clean from such unpure individuals.
This is the direction the left is heading. And if you doubt me try to remember how the demands to fight the Wuhan flu have steadily morphed in the past eighteen months. First we were just supposed to social distance for only two weeks to “flatten the curve” and avoid our hospitals from being overrun with millions of patients.
No flood of patients ever arrived, but we were then called upon to lock down all society for several months to keep the deaths from raising in the millions.
The deaths never came close to the predicted numbers, staying relatively comparable to a normal but bad flu season. No matter! Things could get even worse! Everyone was now ordered to mask up, until the vaccines became available.
Over time the demand for masks widened and became more intrusive. Instead of demanding one wear them in public or in situations where social distancing was impossible, the demand was to wear them everywhere, even when you were alone at home. It did not matter that masks have never been shown to do anything to prevent COVID. Nor did it matter that there is evidence their routinely improper and unsanitary widespread use may have actually caused spikes in the COVID infection rate.
The orders were given and all must obey. But only until we all can be vaccinated!
The vaccines finally arrived, yet suddenly masks were still necessary, along with the many so-called lockdowns and restrictions in normal life that before were only supposed to be temporary.
Now vaccine mandates are becoming common, with the unvaccinated increasingly being treated as lower class scum who must be shunned.
Is this the America you want to live in? Is this how you want to treat your fellow citizens?
Increasingly in recent months it appears that more and more Americans are saying “No!” to this madness. Whether there are enough however remains unknown at this time. What is certain is that unless Americans fight back, the tyrants among us have every intention of pushing their tyranny as far as they can. And Quinnipac’s new odious rules illustrate that fact most starkly.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Rounding up the unclean unvaccinated: coming soon to America.
Genocide is coming: Quinnipac University in Connecticut, having reimposed an indoor mask requirement, has now announced that it will fine and punish any students who do not provide proof that they have either been vaccinated against COVID or have a proper exemption.
Quinnipiac students may be fined up to $200 per week eventually until they prove their vaccination status. Fines for students who don’t supply vaccination proof will begin at $100 per week for the first two weeks. The penalty will increase by increments of $25 every two weeks until a max fine of $200 per week.
Currently non-complying students can avoid the fines if they show the proper documentation by Sept. 14. If they fail to meet the directive by then, they will lose access to the campus internet network.
No longer is the left screaming “My body! My choice!” Then that mantra for abortion worked to garner it political support from naive followers. Now the mantra is “Your body is ours! Let us do to it what we want or we will oppress you!”
It is a very short leap from merely punishing those who refuse a vaccine to rounding them up in camps to isolate them from the rest of society. From there, it is an even shorter leap to imposing mass executions to keep society clean from such unpure individuals.
This is the direction the left is heading. And if you doubt me try to remember how the demands to fight the Wuhan flu have steadily morphed in the past eighteen months. First we were just supposed to social distance for only two weeks to “flatten the curve” and avoid our hospitals from being overrun with millions of patients.
No flood of patients ever arrived, but we were then called upon to lock down all society for several months to keep the deaths from raising in the millions.
The deaths never came close to the predicted numbers, staying relatively comparable to a normal but bad flu season. No matter! Things could get even worse! Everyone was now ordered to mask up, until the vaccines became available.
Over time the demand for masks widened and became more intrusive. Instead of demanding one wear them in public or in situations where social distancing was impossible, the demand was to wear them everywhere, even when you were alone at home. It did not matter that masks have never been shown to do anything to prevent COVID. Nor did it matter that there is evidence their routinely improper and unsanitary widespread use may have actually caused spikes in the COVID infection rate.
The orders were given and all must obey. But only until we all can be vaccinated!
The vaccines finally arrived, yet suddenly masks were still necessary, along with the many so-called lockdowns and restrictions in normal life that before were only supposed to be temporary.
Now vaccine mandates are becoming common, with the unvaccinated increasingly being treated as lower class scum who must be shunned.
Is this the America you want to live in? Is this how you want to treat your fellow citizens?
Increasingly in recent months it appears that more and more Americans are saying “No!” to this madness. Whether there are enough however remains unknown at this time. What is certain is that unless Americans fight back, the tyrants among us have every intention of pushing their tyranny as far as they can. And Quinnipac’s new odious rules illustrate that fact most starkly.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
R.Z.: “…staying relatively comparable to a normal but bad flu season.” [What does that even mean? A “normal” flu season is by definition not a “bad” flu season. A “bad” flu season is by definition not normal.]
The covid-19 virus has been roughly 15 times as lethal as “ordinary flu” (among the same susceptible groups as “ordinary flu”); this is more than just a particularly bad flu season, as Zimmerman continues to pretend, and refuses to admit.
Resulting in roughly 1/2 million additional total yearly deaths as compared to recent yearly averages, regardless of how biased the attributions may be, and it is re-emerging…even with vaccines available. [The ordinary flu season kills about 36,000/year averaged over the last decade]
Resulting in a roughly 17 percent increase in total US deaths during this pandemic.
Zimmerman was wrong by at least an order of magnitude to predict covid would be “quite comparable to the ORDINARY flu”.
It would be expected that he would in hindsight simply admit this. But I suspect admitting error is not his forte.
Note that in the reference link sited by RZ:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/covid-19-the-unwarranted-panic/
is the quote “This is a death rate[in S. Korea] of 0.9%, higher than the flu’s 0.1% but not horribly so.”
Thus, an early confirmation from RZ himself that Covid-19 might be roughly a factor of 10 worse than “common” flu viruses, and not “quite comparable to the ordinary flu”.
But I can agree with one overriding sentiment of the post. The number of people in the U.S. mortally threatened (ie needing hospitalization) of covid was about 4 in 1000 per year. The number of covid-19 induced deaths is about half of that…hardly an existential crisis warranting the egregious devastation of an economy, personal finances, private businesses, education, and the social health and happiness of entire societies.
My brother a physician, sent me this link.
we have a viable treatment option but it is being ignored.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/indias-ivermectin-blackout
Mr. Zimmerman:
Anyone who is not significantly math-impaired should have long ago realized that single-layer cloth or paper masks simply cannot do anything to stop or even slow the spread of a virus.
Given that the size of human respirable aerosols are typically in the range of 2 to 5 microns, and that the opening size of a typical cloth or paper mask is on the order of 1/500th to 1/1000th of an inch (and knowing that a micron is roughly, on the order of 1/25,000th of an inch) this means that you are not trying to keep mosquitoes out of the house with a chain-link fence, you’re trying to keep out gnats with burglar bars. We won’t even go into the nanometers-scale of the virus itself.
I won’t go into the other issues like the complete and utter lack of seals of mask-to-face which means that the huge majority of inhaled and exhaled aerosols simply by-pass the “filter media”, or the fact that the masks are causing huge numbers of other problems and diseases.
The distraction of mask usage is simply to conceal the drive for power and control by collectivist, statist authoritarians, and a social-virtue marker for the idiots who wear them.
The distraction of mask usage is simply to conceal the drive for power and control by collectivist, statist authoritarians
Blackwing1, I don’t think that most of them are snickering like a cartoon villain when it comes to coercing compliance, as though they don’t really believe what they are pushing on us but push it to gain control over the rest of our lives.
But what most do sincerely believe, in their hubris, is that they can eradicate COVID and reduce its risk to zero, if they impose enough rules on us … because they are the Smart People, the allegedly Best and Brightest Among Us, and they want to prove that to us so we will fall in line behind their One True Way “for the good of all”.
That makes most of them less like Snidely Whplash, and more like myopic, hubris-driven bulls running through the china shops of our lives.
Much like it is with cancel culture, we have to pick our spots to confront them and push back, lest any victory on our part is rendered Pyrrhic. But this can only go on, unconfronted, for so long.
Blackwing1: Yup. I have been saying a variation of the same things as you have now for more than a year.
One obvious example you can give the mask Nazis (and that’s what they have become) is to ask them if they can smell someone who has passed gas from across the room? Of course they can, even though that person will be wearing underwear and pants, entirely covering their lower body. And yet the particles can exit and reach your nose from five or ten feet away.
A mask is going to stop a virus? How ridiculous. And it is even more ridiculous to say so now considering that good research into masks for decades before 2020 had repeatedly confirmed their limited value. They helped keep spittle from entering open wounds during surgeries, but not much else.
So, why suddenly change those conclusions, without any solid research, suddenly in mid-2020? For political reasons, and only political reasons.
I can’t keep my mouth closed when I see bullcrap being spread
@ m d mill, covid is no doubt more deadly than “regular” flu… But the effectiveness of masks is still in debate, and I suspect will be proved not effective at all in preventing the.spread of the virus.
I include lockdown in this category, Sweden has only “recommend” masks on public transport, moved tables a little bit further apart in bars and restaurants, and we are having a remarkably successful case and death rate with covid. A high rate of vaccination has no doubt helped with this, but we are proof that lockdown is not needed to control the virus.
My main beef is that our host is now using the term “The coming genocide”….. I thought the.previously used term “The coming dark ages” was a little over the top, but. genocide”? From a secular Jew?
Bob, are you so insecure in a political system that you always claim is the best in the world, that you believe that genocide is coming?l
Tuff times are certainly coming, the world’s climate is broken. It’s down to humanity. You also deny this. How many red alerts for wild firers, floods, hurricanes and.glaciers melting ( which within your bias you never report upon ) will it take to open your eyes?
My last point,and the one I feel you should be most ashamed of is your use of the word “genocide”. You are a secular Jew. I am an atheist, and even I am offended by your misuse of the.term. Look up the definition of the word, and go have a good long think about your words. You are sounding more and more like a crazy rightwing fool. Don’t become part of the problem.
Tuff times are certainly coming, the world’s climate is broken. It’s down to humanity. You also deny this. How many red alerts for wild firers, floods, hurricanes and glaciers melting ( which within your bias you never report upon ) will it take to open your eyes?
Lee, that is over the top in its conflation of correlation and causation.
Between the Jurassic Park approach to building the case for AGW as a crisis* … the fact that the tech touted as our salvation from it is NOT up to supporting the needs of modern society for RELIABLE energy (if it was, designing off-grid power systems in my day job would be much easier) … and the blatant inconsistencies in the behavior of its proponents, who don’t ACT in their own lives like this is a crisis … the entire premise of AGW is easily questioned.
Wildfires? Irrational forest management, driven by the views of radical environmentalists who see such management as “development” and oppose it, is what has made those more significant in the USA.
Much like the mismanagement of tree trimming and removal here on Long Island was the precursor for the long power outages that resulted from Hurricane Sandy, a few years ago. I bring that up, to express the hope that the power company NOW in charge of that has done a better job as Henri approaches … and/or Sandy and the lesser storms that followed have taken down the weak trees already.
————–
* In my view, as an engineer who depends on sound science to make my living, the “proof” of AGW is built in a manner similar to what was used to produce Hammond’s dinosaurs … start with scattered pieces of evidentiary DNA from the past, glue it all together with the “frog DNA” of assumptions and computer modeling, and extrapolate it into a T-Rex of a narrative that will “find a way” to bite you and me.
Lee, do you not see how debate in the West has turned from Left vs. Right, to Normal vs. the Evil Other, in the eyes of many? THAT is what is behind all those blacklisted Americans Robert reports upon here.
Do you not see, that those who consider themselves Normal exhibit a self-righteous hubris that leads them to think that – if they make enough rules and impose them, even by coercion in the face of dissent – they can conquer COVID and climate and racism and poverty and diminish the risk posed by them to zero, as though they are omniscient and infallible?
The correlation of history for that turning bad for us, is stronger and more recent than that supporting the view that AGW is a significant crisis.
Your countryman C. S. Lewis described such as these, many years ago:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
One can have the best political system in the world, and still see it corrupted by such hubris, leading it to effectively unplug most of the distributed intellect in a society from the problem-solving processes – then turn dissenters into The Evil Other to be not merely ignored, but suppressed “for the common good.”
This is why Americans such as Robert and myself are so “obsessed” with individual liberty. It is the vaccine against the imposition of such tyrannies, soft and hard.
OTOH it is excessive trust in, and subordination as individuals to, our societal institutions opens the door to such tyrannies – in particular, the mob rule our founders referred to as the “tyranny of the majority”, that can easily ignore the principle that unalienable rights, if they are unalienable, are not subject to being overridden by even a majority vote.
The question you need to ask, is what work-arounds do you have when your leaders act to screw up YOUR life in that hubris … and how reliable are those work-arounds? For part of freedom, is the ability to work around the errors, greed, mendacity, and delusions of others when they get stuck on stupid as a “consensus”.
Dave Smith / Michael Malice
The Red Pill
https://youtu.be/8TBM0-OMsJE
2:46
“The entire meta-narrative that is constructed around you, is [expletive]. And it’s [expletive] to enslave you. It’s not [expletive] to help you, it’s [expletive] to enslave you.”
Here is the best masks for school age children. review that I’ve seen:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/the-science-of-masking-kids-at-school-remains-uncertain.html
Regarding comparing flu to Covid, there is one age group where this is relevant…from the above link:
“Out of more than 600,000 American deaths attributed to COVID-19, 361 were for kids and adolescents under age 18. In the much-shorter 2018-2019 flu season, there were 477 pediatric deaths.”
Lastly, the media and the Democrats cite Covid rates, but to me what is relevant is Covid deaths and the average age of those that die. A couple of weeks ago the age was above 80yo. When I look at my Texas residence county of about one million, one person per day is dying from Covid. I can see this going to two, but rates are about the same as my California county..both are very low. I would be curious to see a comparisons between traffic and Covid deaths.
@Jester Naybor, open your eyes, read a newspaper, climate change is occurring here and now. I am also an engineer… ( Or an ex one ), and I’m wise enough to see the world burning around us. Can you not see this yourself? It’s real, and it’s now. I have already apologised to my kids for the mess we are leaving them… Dark days are coming for sure, but the have nothing to do with Bobs laughable genocide predictions.
The loony left present much less of a risk to your wonderful democracy than climate change. I have been banging the drum for action against what we used to call “global warming” for well over 20 years. I’ve stopped bothering now. We are all screwed. I hope we can science our way out of the situation, but I am not hopeful.
And Bob predicts a genocide… Because the political pendulum has swung out of his comfort zone.
I would laugh if it wasn’t so sad.
@ Jester Naybor, quote “Lee, do you not see how debate in the West has turned from Left vs. Right, to Normal vs. the Evil Other, in the eyes of many? THAT is what is behind all those blacklisted Americans Robert reports upon here.
Do you not see, that those who consider themselves Normal exhibit a self-righteous hubris that leads them to think that – if they make enough rules and impose them, even by coercion in the face of dissent – they can conquer COVID and climate and racism and poverty and diminish the risk posed by them to zero, as though they are omniscient and infallible?”
If you would care to translate that into regular English rather than the word soup spouted here, I will be more than happy to express my opinion on your thoughts.
I guess I should explain my position as I don’t recognize some of the posters on this thread… I am a European socialist, my beliefs are a million miles away from the US, and worryingly increasingly European”loony left”, I believe in the right to free speech, to the very core of my being, I also believe in my right to argue against what I believe is wrong. I am 100% against all this “cancel culture” bullcrap. If an idea, thought, or comment is wrong, take it down with reason and logic. .
Bobs hysteria about “the coming genocide” is just hysteria. I am a single father of 2 teenagers , and I can tell you that they find the current “cancel culture” as offensive as we do. The future is owned by by children’s generation, and they are no fools.
This bullcrap will die down, and hopefully a more acceptable left wing socialist ideology will emerge, socialist in as much as it should be unacceptable that rich people live in their ivory tower while people on the street go hungry.
God knows I’m far from religious, but if he was real, I’m sure he would be a socialist.
OK Lee, I’ll make it simple …
The elite you trust so much, is full of themselves and think they have the answers for each and every one of us.
Even though they can’t tell you apart from a statistic.
And they insist upon imposing their answers – whether or not they actually work, actually apply to the problem at hand, or even if there is actually a problem there – with coercive force.
Combine that with a citizenry that has been conditioned all their lives to defer to “authority”, and you have effectively unplugged most of the distributed intellect in a nation, with predictable, visible, and dysfunctional results.
That takes more blind faith to believe in as a proper paradigm for a society, than the faith some have that leads them to dance with poisonous snakes.
My eyes are open. I’m an engineer who works with advanced batteries and solar power for applications at a scale and for conditions that actually make them viable … including the economics of the application, where they justify the higher costs in both money and time to support off-grid power relative to reliable grid-connected power. They don’t deliver what AGW alarmists are relying upon to deliver, in their ideological desire to eradicate Icky Brown Energy. Even though it is the prosperity fueled by reliable energy that gives us the breathing space to actually care about our environment, more than where our next meal is coming from.
I’ve been burned enough in my career, by jumping to conclusions without a full understanding of the problem, to see that the body of evidence associated with AGW alarmism is not sufficiently conclusive to justify trampling upon the liberty and pursuit of happiness of ordinary people.
AGW is just another stalking horse for social technocracy, when it is not a stalking horse for outright socialism.
Basing your view of global warming on reading news stories is like seeing a single picture of a house on fire a hundred years ago and comparing it to a thousand pictures of a single house on fire today on the internet.
You subconsciously assume that because you see a thousand more articles about it today that its actually a thousand times worse. You never subconsciously assume its just one house photographed 10 times and copied a hundred times each.
Now I do believe in environmental conservation.
Like https://www.ducks.org/
Not some environmental group like the Sierra club who just gathers cash and spends it on politicians and ads for more cash. https://www.sierraclub.org/
I believe we need to keep industry as clean as possible. Within reason.
And to physically go out and clean up our local environment.
@Jester Naybor,
You get me wrong, I don’t believe ANYONE at this point, I accept peer reviewed science, and I thank you for the work you are doing. Our world is full of energy, we don’t need to break it to meet our needs. And the work that you are doing brings us closer to not breaking our beautiful green and blue planet .
But my own eyes and ears see a world of forest fires, arctic tundra melting, once in a century weather events occurring everywhere.
Are we just living in a little “blip” or are we living during a major turning point in the history of the earth?
I fear for the future, not because of left wingers, there will be no genocide from your barmy left, but there very well be an awful amount of trouble from climate change, and within our lifetimes.
Excuse my typos … My kids are with their mom this weekend, so I’m sitting in my back yard, smoking a medicinal herb, and listening to a mix of Prince and Cohen.. pondering on the future of mankind, and thinking, ” my kids are brilliant, bright, and full of hope”, perhaps they can fix everything we broke.
@pzatchok, I’m not 100% sure what your point is, I’ve never even heard of “Sierra club”.… Is it a teen band?
I do not subconsciously believe in anything… I look at evidence, weigh it up, perhaps ponder for a while, then form an opinion. Or if the verdict is a fact, then I stand by it, as I do with all facts.
My opinion right now is that space tourism is gonna fail because it costs too much, ( not because of lack of money, but the rich don’t want to be called out as wealthy..
Lee,
I know that you’re mostly provocative, but haven’t you observed how the unvaxxed are called and treated in many Western countries? The insane two-tier society now in NYC, the authoritarian approach in Australia and New Zealand, the discrimination in France, Italy, Germany? Where the unvaccinated are discriminated against and leading politicians call that “self-chosen consequences.” Where politicians, journalists, medical functionaries call the unvaccinated parasites, anti-socials, dumb, lazy, a threat to society, irresponsible. Where leading editors call for exclusion from services, higher health insurance premiums or denial of cost coverage, canceling the unvaxxed’s pensions etc. Government officials say that the purpose of the discrimination is to make life increasingly inconvenient and difficult for the unvaccinated, withholding their civil liberties not for epidemiological but political reasons? Where almost everything re the pandemic is now blamed on the unvaxxed? Have you read the open hate on social media and comments below the line in the (mostly center-left) MSM, where people compete over who has the most vicious fantasies how the unvaccinated should be punished and excluded?
Genocides start with defamation and exclusion. Bob’s instinct is spot on.
Lee Stevenson wrote:
I am a European socialist, my beliefs are…
and
God knows I’m far from religious, but if he was real, I’m sure he would be a socialist.
See? It *is* a religion. That’s why you can’t debate a socialist. No amount of data will convince him, because socialism just *feels so good*.
Lee, I grew up in the era of Ehlrich’s “The Population Bomb” and its Malthusian predictions. But Norman Borlaug, among others, showed how we can adapt to changing conditions, and even end up better off for it. If climate change is a significant threat, we can and will adapt to it.
But that is far less likely to be achieved without collateral damage, – if achieved at all – when the thinking and direction are limited to an elite, credentialed few who neither understand the total picture of the ordinary citizen, nor understand the state of the art of the tech they believe to be the solution, nor bear no consequence when their decisions turn out to be harmful to at least some of those ordinary people.
Especially when they are based in less than conclusive proof of a threat. Consensus is not conclusive proof. Ask Galileo. Neither is peer-review an assurance of such proof, as seen at East Anglia.
I watched, while working for one of their subcontractors over twenty years ago, GM pour a billion dollars into the development of the EV1, in response to the Top Men … Top. Men … of the California Air Resources Board mandating fleet percentages of zero-emission vehicles … without any consideration as to whether or not the technology was there to support ZEV’s that would meet the practical needs of ordinary people. Not only CARB end up rescinding that mandate, not only did GM end up taking the cars back and destroying them to avoid liability issues, GM ended up ceding the hybrid market for years to Toyota, who didn’t take CARB’s bait.
I observe that Toyota has expressed similar skepticism about Biden’s suggestions of getting rid of fossil-fueled cars, more recently.
If liberty is an unalienable right, the only reason to restrict it via top-down, coercive mandate/regulation is if its exercise by one poses a clear-and-present danger of significant harm to others.
Urban smog met that standard. We worked to reduce that to insignificance. Toxic dumping met that standard. We spent billions cleaning up places like Love Canal and Times Beach. Acid rain probably, though with not as much certainty as those other threats, met that standard. We spent billions scrubbing sulfur out of power-plant emissions.
It has yet to be conclusively proven, to the standard of clear-and-present danger, that human production of CO2 is a significant threat.
Green tech has to meet the practical needs of the end users … or it will either not be adapted, or if coercively imposed diminish other aspects of our ability to pursue happiness.
And when people are wondering where their next meal is coming from, they are more likely to fillet a whale, than save one.
Nice Lee.
Your a human who has never heard of the oldest environmental group in the world.
The group that basically started the global warming threat.
I remember when global cooling was the front page story around the world and ten years after people realized that all their predictions were BS and the story went away global warming became the new environmental threat.
They learned from that first problem. they learned that they just needed to get a few scientists to proclaim the theory and the internet would make it look like a million agreed.
The hockey stick has been magnified ten fold.
Climate on earth has been changing since the earth formed, but the sun is the primary cause of all things climate.
Now, the hysteria generated around climate is explained here:
https://youtu.be/09maaUaRT4M
Atheism is the opium of Socialists.
@Edward_2, atheism is realising there is no sky fairy that’s gonna pull you out the poop. We are in this on our own
@pzatchok, forgive my ignorance. I am just about old enough to remember the global cooling idea. The problem with your argument is that models are many orders of magnitude better these days than they were in the 70s, and also the reality all around us kinda points in the direction that confirms climate change is a reality. I’m open to the idea it’s not all anthropogenic, but we sure as hell aren’t helping things.
@mkent, nice argument. If socialism “feels good”, perhaps you should try it.
@Ian C., A bit of a one point rant. And remember you are ranting to someone in a socialist county that has had the least “lockdown” rules in the world, and the best results health wise. The impending genocide in your and Bobs heads may be delayed.
@Jester Naybor, I like you! Your arguments make sense, and are well thought out.
My questions to you are what criteria do you need to consider anthropogenic climate change a clear and present danger? And have you considered the collateral damage of inaction to reduce greenhouse gases, should you be mistaken, Vs any collateral damage of shifting to a green and sustainable economy?
( A side note, my socialist politics are partly due to my realisation that capitalism has a finite lifespan. Growth cannot occur forever in a closed environment. At some point a sustainable model of economics will become necessary. We will all probably be dead by then, but it is very much in the post.)
Band of Brothers
Liberating a death camp
https://youtu.be/W8DReSzEtB0
5:48
“At some point a sustainable model of economics will become necessary.”
Lee– pretty bold talk for a british citizen that lives in sweden, eh?!
Your adopted Country has about the same population as the State I live in. (Michigan)
Lee — That’s like sitting in 1934 Switzerland and dismissing the dangers of possible atrocities in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. I know that you’re trolling, you cannot be that ignorant… but then there’s your advocacy for climate socialism, which might be genuine. So whatever.
Lee … acceptable proof would have a lot more historical analysis behind it, accounting for alternative causes of warming/cooling, to avoid a panic response to a geophysical blip.
It would also not be coming with error bars on the graphs that are as wide as the Long Island Expressway, compared to a sidewalk-sized trend. And it would be presented with a full accounting of the uncertainties in the underlying observations, even if that does not tickle the ears of those who fund these efforts … and an eyes-wide-open analysis of the consequences of interdiction AND non-interdiction, with neither Panic nor Pangloss tainting the analysis (though extrapolations like that are some of the least-accurate analyses one can do, especially in an environment with so many independent variables involved that it is described as “chaotic”).
And it would enhance its credibility …
… if AGW proponents would also admit the above uncertainties.
… if AGW proponents made trade-offs like support for nuclear power and expanded natural gas use (to replace coal and oil) that would reduce CO2 emissions … and teleconferencing instead of jetting to “climate conference” gala events across the globe., instead of demanding that government mandate “solutions” where the state-of-the-art will not support our economy and society and, if implemented, will lead to decline.
… if AGW proponents like Al Gore didn’t build palaces for themselves, and fly in private jets, while telling the rest of us to “curb our carbon footprint.”
… if AGW proponents exhibited as much respect for individual liberty as they do for our safety, instead of seeing climate as a crisis-not-to-waste to impose their desired command economy and “orderly” society.
At least one minor functionary let the cat out of the bag on that last point …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/07/10/feature/how-saikat-chakrabarti-became-aocs-chief-of-change/
Money quote from the link:
Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
Evidence that climate change is just a stalking horse for the Progressive agenda, in the eyes of many making policy.
If AGW is real, either it will become evident and there will be actual popular – as opposed to popular-culture – demand to deal with it, or they will adapt just as those like Borlaug led the way in adapting our society to the presence of seven billion people.
Growth cannot occur forever in a closed environment.
Actually it can, in terms of people continuously solving problems and finding better ways to meet the needs of people in that closed environment. Again, I refer to Borlaug … and Edison, Tesla, and Ford … and Jobs, Wozniak, and Berners-Lee … and now, Musk.
You get less of that, however, when you insist upon an elite few making practically all the decisions and imposing them with coercive force. You also increase both the probability and severity of errors, because in those systems much of the distributed insight and intellect is rendered irrelevant – and people are inherently limited in their ability to work around the failures of that elite few.
Which is precisely where technocracy and socialism lead.
Societies thrive, as Western society has, when as primary values …
… liberty of the individual is respected.
… responsibility from the individual is expected.
Even though that might plow up some idealists’ Field of Dreams, and plant corn in it to feed the world.
Capitalism has a finite lifespan!!!!!!
If you believe in that then you do believe in fantasies.
Capitalism includes barter, and that has lasted since before man could write. Who would ever barter to their disadvantage?
nice argument. If socialism “feels good”, perhaps you should try it.
The words of drug dealers everywhere. Why would we want to get addicted to socialist opium and ruin our economy?
GDP per capita (PPP)
$46,659 United Kingdom
$53,240 Sweden
$62,530 United States
So the average American has a 34% higher standard of living than the average Brit and a 17% higher standard of living than the average Swede. Being more like those countries would be a major step downward.
@Lee Stevenson: no, you don’t leave in a socialist country. Are ABB, Saab, IKEA state-owned? Not yet, I guess. Does that state have socialistic tendencies? It does but it’s like a parasite careful not to kill it’s host.
Now let me tell you a thing or two about socialist countries, we lived through it. It may feel good for a time, depending on resources..
Then it goes south, with cold winters (indoors), all kinds of rationing, bread lines, bribes, forced labour, beatings at the hands of the secret police, apalling working conditions & the list goes on. Including horrific environmental issues, see the Mayak accident, soviet reactors sunk at sea and on and on. I was a kid, went for a visit in another school in a small industrial city. It snowed in the middle of the summer with flakes from the nearby metallurgical plant.
The aforementioned resources would be obvious and less than obvious.
– obvious resources: natural resources & assets robbed from the most productive members of the old, “bourgeois” – as you call it – society. Those members are either sent to the gulag, made to work for the regime or sometimes made to pay their way out.
– less than obvious:
* rampant poverty, if applicable, makes it easier for the regime to treat it’s citizenry like cattle and offers a competitive advantage on the international markets.
* free countries, as a target for industrial espionage and a market for the cheap products – see poverty.
* easy to see, easy to solve, common-sense, society-wide problems. As long as those are around the “supreme leader” / soviet / whatever “people’s” council have no issue in “doing a great job”. Once those are done and subtle issues start creeping up the ruling class/party/apparatus starts messing stuff up.
@Lee Stevenson: no, you don’t live…. excuse the typo(s) :D
Jester Naybor wrote: “We spent billions scrubbing sulfur out of power-plant emissions.”
Only to discover, years later, that the acid rain that was the reason for scrubbing the sulfur was mythical. The forests where the acid rain was “discovered” turned out to have higher tree densities, and the soil (the measurement of the rain) was made more acidic by the increase in decaying leaves from the trees. The rain was not acidic, the natural process of decay was.
This is a problem of using proxy evidence, and it is a problem of using assumptions for making policy decisions. Billions of dollars were wasted when they could have instead been used to solve real problems, not imaginary ones.
The same is happening with the Wuhan flu. Not only are trillions of dollars being misspent, but trillions of dollars of productivity is being lost to poor policy making. Lives are being lost that should not have been lost. The models that the politicians used to impose lockdowns said that the lockdowns would reduce American deaths from 100,000 to 60,000, but the reality was that ten times that many were lost, associated with Wuhan flu.
So now that there is no advantage to having a Wuhan flu shot (my county treats the vexxed exactly the same as the unvexxed), who is going to bother getting the shots? It is now all risk and no reward. Then again, the county could treat the unvexxed as pariahs, as other places already do.
“Planned Chaos” (1947)
Ludwig von Mises
https://youtu.be/7EnHeZXLzTc
3:09:32
(audiobook)
“Planned Chaos” comes from Mises’s description of the reality of central planning and socialism, whether of the national variety (Nazism) or the international variety (Communism). Rather than create an orderly society, the attempt to central plan has precisely the opposite effect. By short-circuiting the price mechanism and forcing people into economic lives contrary to their own choosing, central planning destroys the capital base and creates economic randomness that eventually ends in killing prosperity.”
Socialism is a pretty extreme idiology. What you find people calling socialism is actually a socialist/capitalist hybrid
China is a better example as Xi reigns in capitalism. and has pushed his totalitarian/socialism hybrid. Unfortunatel, we now find ourselves facing war with China and Biden’s weakness has set the time frame..before he leaves office.
Ok, so many points, so little time on my commute home….
I use the term “socialist country” to describe Sweden because it is generally so… At least by American standards. Higher taxation, higher social care… subsidised health care, subsidised child care and education, help directed towards the poorest in society.
All paid for by the folks that earn the most. I consider this to be pretty socialist, especially by American standards. I can’t remember who said it, or even the exact quote, but it went something along the lines of ” the measure of a society is how it treats it’s poorest”. The USA scores pretty low on that scale. Sweden, I would say, scores considerably better.
Just to make a point which will be relevent here and in my forthcoming posts. Anyone who makes the point that I am basically wrong in my thinking, and who has not ever visited northern Europe, and experienced how life is over here is making a rookie mistake. Condemning something with no knowledge of the actual facts, and I don’t mean your “echo chamber” right wing news sources…. Come and have a look for yourselves. I’m boots on the ground. I live this life. I am a single parent who works hard, and makes ends meet every month. My life works, and as a reasonably intelligent man, see no forthcoming implosion of society that is going to disrupt this status quo. It’s a working system. Free enterprise is encouraged, even given tax breaks if it looks like a winner. It’s only that tax is higher in general. And I don’t mind paying it for clean streets, maintained green spaces, my kids getting a good education without bankrupting them, good healthcare for all, a good public transport system, all in all, a pleasant place to live. And there is very little wrong with that.
@Jester Naybor,
The main point I believe you are very wrong on, is that/when AMG climate change proves itself to be real, and disruptive, that it will become “popular” to make choices to mitigate it. I believe that people, especially in the western world will, ( as is evidenced in this thread) bury heads in the sand, and continue business as usual.
It’s happening. You just need to look around. The climate is changing. Stuff is melting that has been frozen for millennia, you might argue that this is all part of natural cycles, and you might very well be correct. But pumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere isn’t helping matters… And when allready barren lands see massive population movement due to the inability to live there… Who is going to take these people in?
This is a discussion we need to start having now! As good people we cannot deny the rights of “others” to live somewhere with access to drinking water… The day is coming where we have to choose.
Regarding another of your points… I’m all in on nuclear… I have no doubt that with enough political will we could have a distributed nuclear grid world wide, Thorium reactors on every block, safe, small and reliable, it.just needs the political will to make it happen. It’s the USA that has the tech and power of government to implement and prove this tech… Make it happen!
@Gary in Transit, yes….. What you in the US call “socialism” is generally misunderstood as ” communism”, over here it is just a system of greater social care paid for by higher taxation. Government and private business continue independent of each other.
@TGeorge, no, you may not tell me a thing or two about socialist countries….. Your idea about socialist countries is entirely based upon what you have read upon the internet or were taught in a right wing school.
As I mentioned before, come and have a look. You are welcome to my sofa. I sit here, outside in my.little yard, enjoying a beer ( I started my summer holidays today..nice! With paid holiday!)
I sit in a pretty stable, neutral democracy, paying my tax krona, enjoying the benefits from my tax krona, and knowing my kids are growing up and being educated in one of the world’s best educational systems, and they will not have crippling debt when they enter the real world.
And YOU, and the rest of you, who sit in the pit of corruption and real world denial that is the US, the country that promises so much, yet leaves it’s allies out to hang in world affairs, that live in a country that forces citizens to sell there homes to pay for healthcare, that honestly believe they live in the best country on earth, even though any outsider can see through the curtain of lies and bullcrap you exist behind… You all need to take a moment and reconsider your positions. I understand you probably will never “get it” , it’s in your blood.
50, 70 years ago, you were the greatest nation on earth… Today, you, the USA have the highest rate of poverty of any 1st world nation. Trying to be “the world’s police”, you have not won a war since the second world war ( I’ve said this before, but thanks for coming, sorry you were late!), Just like the UK your milltary might is fading. You are no longer the superpower you dreamed that you were.
Today’s conflicts are different. I don’t offer any solutions, but I can offer the advice that a little hubris, and a little understanding of the problems we are about to face, including climate change, would be wise.
And a very quick question for those who consider me just an antagonist…. Would you rather have someone who agrees with everything you say ( and posts a YouTube video ), or someone that engages you, and disagrees? ;-)
You conservative dudes shouldn’t live in a cave together… You need to get out more!
Y’know, Lee makes his comment here on one of my blacklist columns, but seems totally oblivious to the documented coercive behavior of his fellow travelers on the left that is the fundamental point of my essay. Instead, he tries to distract by bringing up one of the left’s big bugaboos, global warming.
I wonder what Lee would say if I decided to apply the left’s standards of free speech to him, and banned him from commenting on Behind the Black because he is expressing opinions I don’t like. I suspect he would be outraged and indignant: How dare I suppress his freedom of speech?!
Oppression of conservatives doesn’t bother him so much however. Their opinions are wrong, so its no big deal if leftists in universities, in government, in entertainment, and in social media silence them.
Of course I won’t ban Lee, because I believe in freedom. I also do not believe in using coercion to get what I want, which is the standard operating tactic of the left and socialists. Too bad Lee seems unable to recognize that basic fact about the ideology he loves so much. It might help him combat its tendency towards oppression, something he is now incapable of doing because he remains in denial.
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “I wonder what Lee would say if I decided to apply the left’s standards of free speech to him, and banned him from commenting on Behind the Black because he is expressing opinions I don’t like.”
Lee has expressed, in the past, that he was appalled at the silencing of voices here in America, even if they were conservative voices. I don’t know if he has changed his mind about that, but at least at one time he was in favor of free speech even for those with whom he disagrees. Too bad the other leftists of the world don’t hold that view.
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/what-ever-you-do-dont-shut-up
Lee’s real problem is that he only goes by feelings rather than reality. We can present evidence of validity our arguments, but he cannot present any counter evidence or any evidence supporting the validity his opinions. It is similar to the leftist belief in science, in which someone is what he says he is and not what our eyes and measurements would determine to be true. That way a man can be a woman, and that is validated by leftist science: Lysenkoism.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/todays-blacklisted-american-long-time-scholar-banned-for-questioning-gender-fluidity/#more-75859
Edward: You are generally correct about Lee’s past stance. However, I have now repeatedly asked him to recognize the fundamental coercive nature of socialism (using government and taxes to impose the social policies that some think best on everyone) and he has refused to acknowledge this fact. That he has also tried to hijack this discussion from blacklisting to global warming further illustrates that he does not really want to face these fundamentals of his ideology. Jestor Naybor also asked him what plans he has to counter the possibility that his socialist leaders might begin abusing their power. Lee to this remained silent as well.
For a true discussion of socialism and its pros and cons, its reliance on coercion must be on the table, especially because we are now seeing worldwide the abuse of that socialist power for fake health policies reasons. That Sweden did not abuse its power in this one instance cannot be used as an excuse to avoid it. Sweden right now appears to be the exception that proves the rule.
@Lee Stevenson I see I haven’t made myself clear. I live in Romania, a former socialist country. I – and my family – got a taste of real socialism, not the wishy-washy feelly goody overtaxed freemarket you have there in Sweden; wasn’t “taught in a right wing school”.
While I was very young I still remember the power rationing, just to give you an example. I also gave a personal account of how bad pollution was, you seem to have glanced over it, otherwise you’d have understood it is, well, a personal account.
Robert,
You wrote: “Lee to this remained silent as well.”
Lee has demonstrated that he is unable or unwilling to answer questions. I believe that he has no answers to most or all of the questions put to him. The last I read from him, he thought that he was good at maintaining an argument and presenting facts, but in truth, he lacks facts, which explains his inability to answer questions or make reasonable responses. A successful change of topic makes the poor debater feel as though he is good at debate.
TGeorge makes a good point. Lee was appalled at the silencing of voices in America, because he does not recognize what socialism is all about. We Americans are supporting his healthcare, yet in all the times I pointed this out he never thanked us for providing the other-people’s-money that helps run the socialist healthcare system that he depends upon for his health. He pretends that his country does not depend upon other people’s money.
TGeorge-
fascinating back story!
time for a musical interlude….
Soul Asylum
“Misery” (1995)
https://youtu.be/GLQ2TIul8pI
4:01
“We could build a factory, and make misery.
We’ll create the cure, we made the disease…”
@wayne thanks & will check out that band.
Lee: This is a discussion we need to start having now
We have been discussing this for decades … and before that, other alleged crises, like global cooling, acid rain, and overpopulation, all of which turned out to diverge significantly from “expert opinion.” with respect to being dire straits.
Now, the “experts” and “leaders” want to end the discussion, declaring that “the science is settled” and impose their alleged solutions over the top of our ability to pursue happiness. Talk to these self-assured busybodies about “discussion”.
But pumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere isn’t helping matters
That activity is a precursor to other activities that have/still improve the quality of life for billions on this planet, in various ways.
You suppress that pumping, without conclusive proof that what you are observing is more than a geophysical blip that we have nothing of significance to do that … and you pose a significant risk to suppression, or even reversal, of that improvement.
And do so, against the will of billions of people who value that improvement.
That risk increases, when the distributed intellect applied to the alleged problem is limited to an elite few.
Which is precisely where technocracy and socialism lead.
“Mises vs. Marx – The Definitive Capitalism vs. Socialism Rap Battle”
Emergent Order 2019
https://youtu.be/QwqnRYPcrl0
10:51
Robert: what plans he has to counter the possibility that his socialist leaders might begin abusing their power.
In the eyes of the Left, that abuse only comes wearing armbands and jackboots … not wearing bunny slippers under a royal robe of elitist busybody condescension, as their heroes do. They think they are simply promoting “the common good” as they trample upon all around them and suppressing/reversing the quality of life for billions.
And even those who find themselves under those bunny slippers are numb … comfortably numb … to how they grind our lives/.fortunes/future down just as well as jackboots, because the social technocracy wearing them is the only way of life they know. Not all of us have had the up-close-and-personal experience with socialism that TGeorge has, to inform them; to many, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall are just footnotes in social-studies texts.
That is why the technocrats and socialists have made such inroads over us. That numbness is what has to be overcome.
(An aside … would you be kind enough to post somewhere, or point me to where you have posted, a list of what HTML tags can be used in comments?)
TGeorge-
total tangent–
I never realized the on-stage segments for this video was filmed live in Romania….
Jesus Jones –
Right Here Right Now (November 11, 1989)
https://youtu.be/MznHdJReoeo
3:22
The original MTV video, with introduction from Annie Nightingale, onstage in Romania.
(that should be “were filmed in…”)
The home-school version of the above video:
Have your student identify, compare, explain & contrast, each relevant segment.
November 9, 1989
https://youtu.be/GYPBt4fZOUI
3:17
TGeorge: Are ABB, Saab, IKEA state-owned?
This brings to mind another question …. Where is Europe’s equivalent to the 20th-century Silicon Valley, full of upstart companies that produce breakthrough innovations to compete with all these geriatric firms?
Take a look around, and you see very few of those breakthrough companies there, advancing the state of the art … it’s nearly always the same players that have been industry leaders: ABB, Saab, Siemens come to mind, though there are others. Even Nokia is many decades old.
Could this be evidence that the European regulatory state favors long-established/well-connected corporate entities and/or raises significant barriers to entry against upstarts, in the name of the bureaucrats’ opinion of what constitutes “the common good”?
Unfortunately, our Silicon Valley is enjoying that favoritism … and reciprocating by Big Tech doing our current regime’s dirty work for them … these days.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/08/25/extinction-rebellion-founder-gail-bradbrook-admits-to-driving-diesel/
Jester Naybor wrote: “We have been discussing this for decades … and before that, other alleged crises, like global cooling, acid rain, and overpopulation, all of which turned out to diverge significantly from “expert opinion.” with respect to being dire straits.”
Ah, you see that Lee has successfully distracted the discussion away from something he knows little about to something he does not even believe in yet insists vociferously is real. If he thought that global cooling/warming — climate change/weirding were a real problem then he would have stopped using powered transportation or using power in his home and workplace and would have stopped buying things made and transported using power. Instead, it is merely a topic that he can use to distract those with whom he disagrees whenever he loses an argument.
@wayne ah, the ’90s… what a wild ride :))
@Jester Naybor maybe the software industry has something in that regard, although seems like startups tend to be gobbled up by majors – Alphabet, Facebook & the like.
As an aside, we have a small company that makes locomotives & exports them into Sweden :) https://www.softronic.ro/
Speculating, it may be due to subtle differences between the anglo-saxon tradition and the continental one, dominated by the french & german influence. Also there may have been leftovers carried from feudalism into the modern times, where capital was concentrated into the hands of the nobility & guilds.
You guys in the US took the anglo-saxon way and built on it. You had a good run & we used to look up to you; many of us here still do. But older people over here now blame America for the destruction of the social fabric. It’s hard to convince them that the real America is being destroyed by the same plight. Sadly – to me – it looks like the whole thing is crumbling.
Reading threads like this however gives me a glimmer of hope, even if I expect the midterms to go the same way 2020 did. They got more brazen & in your face.
TGeorge wrote: “It’s hard to convince them that the real America is being destroyed by the same plight. Sadly – to me – it looks like the whole thing is crumbling.”
The plight being socialism, especially as practiced by the Democratic Party. This is the political party that was literally founded to defend the institution of slavery from the abolitionists, who later founded the Republican Party specifically to end the institution of slavery.
Democrats and socialists have long advocated for segregation, keeping those people over there, not here. The difference between institutionalized segregation (Democrats’s Jim Crow laws) and today is that the Democrats have convinced their undesirables to self segregate.
Democrats and socialists still favor racism and control over others. Some like being controlled, as they feel as thought they are not adult enough to survive in the real world without someone acting as mom and dad, and other like being the controllers. And for goodness sake, get an untested, unapproved “vaccine” (which isn’t even a vaccine) that does not work (otherwise my county would not have re-imposed mask mandates), otherwise you will have to be punished by your ersatz parents for your disobedience.
Oh, and if you disagree with modern Democrats, they will abuse their powers and shut you up.
@Jester Naybor: sadly having been personally exposed to socialism does not make one immune to it. The brainwashing is surreal. Two examples:
– theft & bribery: back in the day whoever followed the rules had a very hard life. You’d have to steal – generally from the workplace – barter whatever you stole and bribe people like medics & such. Everyone tells me that. Then two minutes later they tell me with a straight face “back then nobody would steal”.
– central planning: “we used to sell diesel fuel to foreign truck drivers from the company’s tanks”. Nevermind they told me earlier “nobody would steal”. That’s because “we have way more fuel alloted than needed & we ended up dumping it in the field”. So they dumped fuel to cover for the idiot that requested way more than needed.
Despite that lots of them are nostalgic. You see, everyone had a workplace and a home. Glance over the fact that apartment bldgs had tens of smokestacks because they had wood stoves, central heating being absent. And everyone had a job, where you learned how to steal and bribe; and worked in brutal – by western standards – conditions.
TGeorge: You might be amused by my 1992 essay, Czechoslovakia on the Hudson, describing my startled impressions during a trip to Czechoslovakia shortly after the Velvet Revolution.
I, a born New Yorker, was shocked how much that former communist country reminded me of New York City and its dysfunctional and corrupt government, high taxes, poor population, and failed schools. I then realized the reasons were the same.
Bob,
“Gee, I thought, just like New York. In the 1980s the city government painted fake window shades and plants on the bricked-up windows of abandoned buildings, trying to hide its failure to renovate these crumbling structures.”
Spot on. (2021)
“Hence, people move into unlikely places (a factory loft, an abandoned monastery), getting around government restrictions as best they can. Or, worse, they live in overcrowded apartments in badly maintained buildings because rent controls have created housing shortages.”
Holy hell, exactly this. (2021)
“the city has grown more and more socialistic. Even with municipal bankruptcies, a failed school system, unsafe and inefficient mass transit, stifling taxes, and a legal structure that strangles old and new businesses alike”
Welcome to Western Europe. (2021)
@Robert Zimmerman thank you for sharing the article and sorry for the late reply. I was on a short vacation and then had some catch-up to do at work.
I enjoyed reading the article, got me to reminisce about the early ’90s as I lived them here in Romania. Here we had a more rabid version of socialism thanks to our late “dear leader”. So the transition to a free-er society wasn’t quite as smooth as in other former socialist countries.
This transitioning was quite a shock. Inflation was pretty high, dad was either furloughed or his pay was late, and when it came it couldn’t buy as much as in the previous months. People’s savings evaporated. Maybe this is where that nostalgia for the old regime is coming from.
One more thing on this subject: since communism instilled a general lack of trust in the other person, starting a business with two or more partners was hampered even after ’89.
P.S. – I also read one other excellent article of yours; I’d say things haven’t improved since
https://fee.org/articles/saying-yes/
TGeorge: This essay, “Saying Yes,” encapsulates the basic philosophy of my life, which was very clearly illustrated in my new history, Conscious Choice.