Tag Archives: Mass Murder

Read or listen to F. A. Hayek’s classic book “The Road to Serfdom” for free

No matter where you go, more freedom means more prosperity
No matter where you go, more freedom means more prosperity

I want to recommend to everyone a famous book about how socialism leads to mass murder by government. The book is written by Nobel prize winner F. A. Hayek. This is one of my favorite books on economics. The full PDF of the book is available for download on archive.org.

The audio version is available FOR FREE on YouTube:

Outline:

  • 00:17 Foreword
  • 37:58 Preface
  • 41:51 Preface 1976
  • 50:09 Introduction
  • 1:08:46 Ch1 The Abandoned Road
  • 1:37:31 Ch2 The Great Utopia
  • 1:54:46 Ch3 Individualism and Collectivism
  • 2:18:32 Ch4 The Inevitability of Planning
  • 2:45:52 Ch5 Planning and Democracy
  • 3:20:06 Ch6 Planning and the Rule of Law
  • 3:54:33 Ch7 Economic Control and Totalitarianism
  • 4:23:01 Ch8 Who, Whom
  • 5:00:49 Ch9 Security and Freedom
  • 5:31:27 Ch10 Why the Worst Get On Top
  • 6:11:01 Ch11 The End of Truth
  • 6:38:41 Ch12 The Socialist Roots of Nazism
  • 7:09:40 Ch13 The Totalitarians in Our Midst
  • 7:54:43 Ch14 Material Conditions and Ideal Ends
  • 8:33:17 Ch15 The Prospects of International Order
  • 9:14:55 Ch16 Conclusion

All you need is 8.5 hours to listen to it. You won’t regret it, I promise. I have listened to the audiobook at least a dozen times. If that’s too long, there is a condensed version of the book.

They Hayek Center talks about condensed version of the book:

Max Eastman and the editors of Reader’s Digest wrote the condensed version of Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” (pdf), which was read by millions of Americans at home and by servicemen all of the world when it was published in April of 1945.  It was the Reader’s Digest condensed version which turned Hayek’s little book into an American sensation — and Hayek into a public celebrity.  The Reader’s Digest had a circulation at the time of more the 5 million copies, and the little journal was provided to each American serviceman, at home and abroad.

[…]An additional 600,000 copies of the condensed version were later printed and distributed through the Book of the Month club and by non-profit civic groups.

Can you imagine what it would have been like to live at a time where everyone clearly understood the danger of letting government administrators centrally plan an economy? But the new generation of young Americans have lost that knowledge, and they are voting for the people who will lead them down the road to serfdom.

Should big government socialists take over the free enterprise system?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has some ideas about proper economic policy
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has some ideas about proper economic policy

Why did so many people vote for communist regimes in the last hundred years? Communist leaders – who had no demonstrated achievements in economic policy – simply promised voters all sorts of free stuff, e.g. – a guaranteed job, free health care, paid retirement, etc. When the expected benefits didn’t appear, the communist leaders blamed others for their failures, and naturally, those others had to die.

Think that couldn’t happen here? Well, a lot of leading Democrats sure sound like communist leaders. Promising to confiscate legally-owned firearms. Promising to abolish private health insurance. Promising to nationalize private retirement accounts. And promising to replace our current energy industry with a new government-controlled green energy industry.

Let’s look at that last one: the new government-controlled energy industry.

The Federalist reports on the Green New Deal plan.

A number of Democratic Party presidential hopefuls — including Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julián Castro, and Beto O’Rourke, for starters — have already endorsed or expressed support for the “Green New Deal” (GND). Today, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey dropped details about her plan.

[…]While some of the specifics need to be ironed out, the plan’s authors assure that this “massive transformation of our society” needs some “clear goals and a timeline.” The timeline is ten years. Here are some of the goals:

  • Ban affordable energy. GND calls for the elimination of all fossil fuel energy production, the lifeblood of American industry and life, which includes not only all oil but also natural gas — one of the cheapest sources of American energy, and one of the reasons the United States has been able to lead the world in carbon-emissions reduction.

  • Eliminate nuclear energy. The GND also calls for eliminating all nuclear power, one of the only productive and somewhat affordable “clean” energy sources available to us, in 11 years. This move would purge around 20 percent of American energy production so you can rely on intermittent wind for your energy needs.

  • Eliminate 99 percent of cars. The authors state that the GND would like to replace every “combustion-engine vehicle” — trucks, airplanes, boats, and 99 percent of cars — within ten years. Charging stations for electric vehicles will be built “everywhere,” though how power plants will provide the energy needed to charge them is a mystery.

  • Gut and rebuild every building in America. Markey and Cortez want to “retrofit every building in America” with “state of the art energy efficiency.” I repeat, “every building in America.” That includes every home, factory, and apartment building, which will all need, for starters, to have their entire working heating and cooling systems ripped out and replaced with…well, with whatever technology Democrats are going invent in their committee hearings, I guess.

  • Eliminate air travel. GND calls for building out “highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

  • A government-guaranteed job. The bill promises the United States government will provide every single American with a job that includes a “family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and a pension.” You can imagine that those left in the private sector would be funding these through some unspecified “massive” taxation.

  • Free education for life. GND promises free college or trade schools for every American.

  • A salubrious diet. The GND promises the government will provide “healthy food” to every American.

  • A house. The GND promises that the government will provide, “safe, affordable, adequate housing” for every American citizen.

  • Free money. The GND aims to provide, and I am not making this up, “economic security” for all who are “unable or unwilling” to work.

  • Ban meat. Ocasio-Cortez admits that we can’t get zero emissions in 10 years “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” The only way to get rid of farting cows is to get rid of beef.

Have any of these ideas been tried in any states? Trains seem to run over budget when they are built, and they fail to turn a profit afterwards. But most of these have not been tried anywhere, so how are we supposed to know how much they will cost to implement, and whether they will actually work?

Now, you might be wondering where the dancing bartender will get all the money for these plans. After all, the cost of the Green New Deal has been figured at $49 trillion over the first 10 years. (And that’s in addition to the government takeover of healthcare “Medicare for All”, which costs $32 trillion over 10 years). She’s going to have to take it from someone… maybe from the top earners?

Just one problem with that:

The plan itself seems to insinuate that billionaires can pay for the whole thing. Of course, best case scenario, it is estimated that instituting a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent would raise a little more than $700 billion over that decade.

Are you beginning to see where the 100 million murders by government came from? When a plan fails to work as promised, what will the communist leaders do? Will they say that communism has failed, and step down from power? Or will they find people to blame for their failures, in order to stay in power? Historically speaking, it’s always been the latter. You can even see how it happens today, in places like North Korea and Venezuela.

From "The Black Book of Communism", (Harvard University Press: 1997)
From “The Black Book of Communism”, (Harvard University Press: 1997)

The Road to Serfdom

I want to recommend to everyone a famous book about how socialism leads to mass murder by government. The book is written by Nobel prize winner F. A. Hayek. This is one of my favorite books on economics. The full PDF of the book is available for download on archive.org.

The audio version is available FOR FREE on YouTube:

Outline:

  • 00:17 Foreword
  • 37:58 Preface
  • 41:51 Preface 1976
  • 50:09 Introduction
  • 1:08:46 Ch1 The Abandoned Road
  • 1:37:31 Ch2 The Great Utopia
  • 1:54:46 Ch3 Individualism and Collectivism
  • 2:18:32 Ch4 The Inevitability of Planning
  • 2:45:52 Ch5 Planning and Democracy
  • 3:20:06 Ch6 Planning and the Rule of Law
  • 3:54:33 Ch7 Economic Control and Totalitarianism
  • 4:23:01 Ch8 Who, Whom
  • 5:00:49 Ch9 Security and Freedom
  • 5:31:27 Ch10 Why the Worst Get On Top
  • 6:11:01 Ch11 The End of Truth
  • 6:38:41 Ch12 The Socialist Roots of Nazism
  • 7:09:40 Ch13 The Totalitarians in Our Midst
  • 7:54:43 Ch14 Material Conditions and Ideal Ends
  • 8:33:17 Ch15 The Prospects of International Order
  • 9:14:55 Ch16 Conclusion

All you need is 8.5 hours to listen to it. You won’t regret it, I promise. I have listened to the audiobook at least a dozen times. If that’s too long, there is a condensed version of the book.

They Hayek Center talks about condensed version of the book:

Max Eastman and the editors of Reader’s Digest wrote the condensed version of Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” (pdf), which was read by millions of Americans at home and by servicemen all of the world when it was published in April of 1945.  It was the Reader’s Digest condensed version which turned Hayek’s little book into an American sensation — and Hayek into a public celebrity. The Reader’s Digest had a circulation at the time of more the 5 million copies, and the little journal was provided to each American serviceman, at home and abroad.

[…]An additional 600,000 copies of the condensed version were later printed and distributed through the Book of the Month club and by non-profit civic groups.

Can you imagine what it would have been like to live at a time where everyone clearly understood the danger of letting government administrators centrally plan an economy? But the new generation of young Americans have lost that knowledge, and they are voting for the people who will lead them down the road to serfdom.

Twitter says that death threats against Dana Loesch’s children are permissible

I’ve said for some time that the mainstream media and the big tech companies discriminate against Christians and conservatives because they agree with secularists and progressives. Although the mainstream media and big tech companies want to present themselves as open-minded and fair, the truth is far different.

Take a look at this death threat by a young progressive fascist:

Milan Legius threatens to murder the children of Dana Loesch
Milan Legius threatens to murder the children of Dana Loesch

I used to listen to Dana Loesch’s podcast all the time. The “Florida Man” segments are the funniest. She’s very mainstream, and a solid Christian and conservative.

And here is how Twitter responded to Dana Loesch’s husband when he complained about the death threat:

And here is how Twitter responded to the death threat
And here is how Twitter responded to the death threat

They reviewed it carefully. Threatening to murder Dana’s children isn’t in violation of Twitter Rules.

The Blaze reports:

Over the weekend, National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch received a flurry of despicable death threats on Twitter.

[…]One Twitter user wrote: “The only way these people learn is if it affects them directly. So if Dana Loesch has to have her children murdered before she’ll understand, I guess that’s what needs to happen.”

Loesch notified Twitter support who then issued this response: “Hello, Thank you for your recent report. We have reviewed your report carefully and found that there was no violation of the Twitter Rules against abusive behavior. (https://twitter.com/rules).”

That’s how the secular left works.

On the one hand, they claim to be for free speech and open debate. One the other hand, we have a secular left attorney general searching the houses of pro-lifers. We have conservative professors being fired for disagreeing with liberal professors. We have Christian businesses being dragged into court, and threatened with losing everything they own. We have a Bernie Sanders supporter shooting at Republicans at a softball game. We have a gay activist who tried to shoot up the Family Research Council building convicted of domestic terrorism. We have Barack Obama using the IRS as a weapon to persecute conservative groups ahead of his re-election bid in 2012, and using the HHS to force Christian companies like Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor to cover abortifacients. In Wisconsin, the FBI and police conducted pre-dawn raids of the homes of top aides to Scott Walker, at the request of a Democrat district attorney. ARMED FBI and police. This is just a small sample, I could go on for hours.

All we have to do to understand how far the secular left goes to force their values and worldview on others is look at what has happened in history when the secular left has seized power. We know how this ends, because it’s happened before, in different times and in different places. You can even see it today in places like North Korea, an officially atheist country, where the state owns the means of production.

How do we know if Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, Youtube, etc. agree with the progressive  who tweeted the death threat against Dana Loesch’s children? Well, at the time of writing (Monday night), his account was still functioning. Make of that what you will.