What's Mine is Mine
What's yours is mine too
To start off, we have to thank 321gold.com for cross-posting our last rant about the oversupply of racial anything in the world. Those good folks drove enough traffic this way to make me think I’m pretty clever, which we all know is untrue. In any case, thanks guys!
So, what shall we complain about today? Trump? Nah, too easy a target. Elensky and the Ukraine 2-Step? Nah, enough said about that hot mess. Let’s complain about socialism, and its red-headed stepchild fascism. Not enough can be said about those ridiculous contrivances.
What’s really baffling is that after at least 6,000 years of trial and error, governance is the one thing that has gotten worse and worse. You’d think we would have figured out how to attract the smartest, most qualified people to leadership positions. You’d also think that we would have figured out how to structure those positions to maximize individual liberty, while protecting individual wealth. Instead, we’ve perfected the exact opposite.
Indonesia is a socialist country. They can’t help it. They are overrun with NGOs telling them what’s best for everyone, and the poor credulous souls actually think their former masters have the nation’s best interests at heart.
In fact, socialists and fascists have this damnedable idea that what’s good for the collective is good for the individual, and that’s almost never the case. Maybe it works for creating a road network, but once you open that can of worms, suddenly hundreds of interest groups line up to drain the treasury for their pet projects. The projects very quickly get out of hand, and pretty soon you’re paying through the nose for things that never materialize.
In the past couple of weeks, the gummint of Indonesia, a collection of clueless halfwits who’ve been handed the keys to the vault, have decided that they can confiscate bank accounts that have been inactive for two months, and private land that has been inactive for two years. The province of Central Java tried to raise property taxes 250%, and got shouted down. Rumors are circulating that the gummint intends to confiscate privately-held stocks that aren’t being actively traded.
And if you don’t like it, then they want a rule that all your social media accounts are in your name, so they know who to knee-cap.
The published reason for this insane pile of horse puckies is that the Collective needs your assets to produce to cover the costs of insane and pointless vanity projects to glorify the State. You have an obligation to use your hard work to benefit the many, or we’ll just steal it and give it to someone more deserving. In most cases, “more deserving” means enriching insiders at the public expense, because they’ve sacrificed so much to become “leaders”.
The real reason is that Indonesia has bought a massive load of NGO Effluvium of Bull, and is up to its papayas in debt with a bunch of megaprojects that do nothing for no one and have to be paid off somehow. There’s also a matter of socialized medicine and free school lunch programs that are driving down quality and safety, while blowing costs through the roof, not to mention endemic corruption
This is the problem with socialism and its evil twin fascism. They view everything as public assets that individuals are allowed to play with, as long as they generate tax revenue to pay for the insanity.
You see, Indonesia has spent the past 10 years buying into a bunch of NGO megaprojects, like the shiny new “green” capitals, a bullet train to nowhere, dreams of cornering the market on EV batteries that no one wants, and destroying its native power sources in service to an “energy transformation” that simply saves oil and gas for the overlords, while forcing the rest of us to live on sunbeams and unicorn farts.
Because Indonesia has bought into all these collectivist daydreams, they are in hock to their corneas for things that do nothing for nobody, while the economy craters and productive people are fleeing for greener pastures.
The self-important bozos in elected office are trying to pay off the NGO/banking mafias that lent billions of dollars to buy a future that will never exist and offered only a fleeting PR bump. All of it was only to glorify and enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the country. At the same time, they have legislated and regulated the guts out of the national economy, so that they now have no revenues and are forced to steal the lifeblood of prudent and frugal folks.
Naturally, they look at the folks who have worked hard, purchased assets, and are saving them for when market forces favor a healthy profit for their prudence. This is always what socialists/fascists do. They sit on their plump unproductive arses dreaming up schemes that will make “everyone” rich, steal the wealth of productive people, and then watch as their stupidity ruins the entire nation for absolutely nothing. Kind of a reverse Midas Touch—all the wealth they touch turns to dust.
It’s not just the socialists, either. The US, one of the largest fascist nations on the planet, also has a habit of seizing property from folks they don’t like. Australia is starting to seize people’s machetes because no one needs them in a civilized country where criminal African gangs hack people to death with machetes. Britain is arresting folks for posting on social media, instead of arresting and executing rape and grooming gangs. Canada is helping folks who can’t take it anymore to kill themselves, while banning the few remaining sane folks from walking in the woods.
Once governments allow themselves to steal private property (asset forfeiture) for whatever reason, they eventually expand to seizing all wealth as a part of the national treasury. You can have a bank account or piece of land, as long as you are producing tax revenues for an ever-expanding national debt load.
Unthinking slothful citizens keep voting themselves more benefits at the expense of a shrinking group of individuals who produce stuff. They do this because governments keep expanding the list of goodies they are willing to hand out to the fleshballs who think it’s unfair they don’t have fun stuff because they don’t work.
The lumps of flesh includes politicians, who are the worst abusers of accepting freebies off the backs of good, sensible and productive folks.
As Far Siders know there’s hardly a whit’s worth of difference between socialism and fascism. In socialism, the State assumes ownership and distribution of everything, and in fascism it’s the corporations. The results are the same either way. Each of them wants you to hate and fear the other, so you defend the local brand of insidious lunacy.
The world, and certainly the bit of it that I inhabit, is well on its way to “own nothing and be grateful”.
So, the self-appointed damn fools who pretend to run things have painted themselves into an ever-shrinking corner. They’ve been bamboozled and they’ve killed the Golden Goose trying to get out of it. The only thing left is to simply steal your stuff to keep the Enforcers happy. The problem is, they’re between a rock and a hard spot. The pitchfork-and-torches brigades will be on the prowl when they figure out what these bozos did, and then the noose will come out when folks see their family fortunes stolen to save a bunch of blood-sucking leaches.
Any way you slice it, the world is heading for a dark place, and most likely the real culprits will never get their jest desserts. They will, however, find some way to get the rest of us to make sure they have the best of everything, while the rest of us have nothing.
And we’ll be happy.
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Today’s celluloid sermon comes from one of my favorite films, by one of my favorite directors — Brazil (1985) by Terry Gilliam. The production design is amazing, the direction is subtle and powerful, the performances (even that jerk De Niro) are sublime, and the script (with co-writer Tom Stoppard) is exquisite. Watch with a friend and enjoy the wide-ranging conversation that follows.
Shakin’ the bushes on the Far Side:
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Great article. My only disagreement is that, as Hitler observed, there was very little difference between fascism and communism. That's why all through the '20's-'40's socialists routinely switched sides all over the West and elsewhere. Mainly the difference is between the relationship to private property and the fascists' racialism, except for the Italian fascists.
I do have a solution to your high speed rail line issues. Bring the companies building the one in California. They've shown how truly competent they are and no doubt will build Indonesian's in no time flat.
Great article with an absolutely hilarious descriptive way of making your points. Putting it out on my email to like minded parties. As you said, it is only going to get worse before there is a chance to do better. Too many still believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. There is no free lunch. Keep at it my friend. Ever in NWMO, USA, drinks are on me.