The Apollo Alliance, Marxism and Another Chance to Challenge Capitalism Explained.

Abstract: Yet another challenge to capitalism has hatched and once again those who cannot cope with this natural social phenomenon will again fail. This is the usual expectation when basic elements of human society are foolishly challenged since Nature has a way to disposing of her losers. Even the history of capitalism has been corrupted and the usual private business practices that parallel modern capitalism in ancient Rome and Egypt are ignored. This hasty truncation of history provides the anti-capitalists with a more facile task for refutation and obfuscation of the obvious benefits of capitalism. The new Apollo Alliance objective this round is to shift the power away from traditional capitalists to government types who will employ state capitalism [the “technical definition of "fascism.””[1]] to work their system. The Alliance[2] purports to change our economic basis away from oil and private control of energy and technology and strive for a cleaner environment.  For this they want to, to be blunt, control energy type and distribution and redefine transportation methods. This is a radical shift in our current infrastructure and is dangerous. At this juncture the Alliance is run by former radicals and activists from Marxist and other persuasions. Convicted criminals are among their ranks at top levels. The salient question for our current economic stance becomes defined by the query about how we can pay for this. Only more taxation, more spending and major changes in law and subsequent coercion have to follow this trend in concert. We are currently being crushed by debt and this Alliance effort seems to require an expenditure amounting to a sum exceeding our current assets and will require more debt. The analysis seems to suggest that we are in a new age of Fascism where the state will now be run by former Marxists and socialists who need to make state business succeed.  Inexpensive sources of energy and efficient business models will now be replaced by expensive energies government controls and that adds costs to every service and commodity in our economy.  Apparently, we can tax and spend our way to a new society. The Apollo Alliance is run by leftist losers of the very ordinary sort. They will fail as usual and we will have to repeal their programs as Obama is running out of political capital and time. We live in interesting times.

History of Capitalism:

Since ancient times capitalism has been the major driver for economic and social advances in most societies. It is only when such a natural process is rejected that societies and cultures regress to poverty, barbarism and disintegrate.  The many attempts to truncate the beginning of the history of capitalism argue that capitalism as we know it started around the 17^th century with the Netherlands.[3] Some admit it was in the Middle Ages. The definition of capitalism[4] requires that means of production [capital] be in private hands and be invested in the form of a risk and that labor and industrial inputs be defined by market forces and these limitations ignore the salient fact that the Romans perfected this system or something very similar to this before 500 B.C.E. Since they copied what they liked as in arches, food, war at sea, Greek literature, poetry, philosophy, mythology and statuary, it is probable that their adaptation and improvements of capitalism were a modified version of what Egypt, Greece or other places [like the aftermath of whatever the Sumerians used] left behind as these earlier societies may have shaped the significant founding branches of capitalism.  I agree with Mike Anderson on this fundamental point that the Romans were practicing capitalism in ancient times.[5] I think that capitalism is a natural human collective force and seems to work well in most places for most people until it becomes excessive. The far left believes that capitalism is evil and anti-human. History vindicates my position and not theirs. Capitalism is not faultless but socialism is worse and communism is unacceptable. Fascism is a middle case in many respects but the left is apparently willing to embrace at least parts of this system in the near future with their Apollo Alliance. The outcome may be influenced by a lack of militarism unless it sparks a civil war. Fascism was apparently born from the threat of Bolshevism[6]; the Apollo Alliance may be born from the threat of capitalism.

The Romans had mortgages [a borrowed concept from the Greeks from about 500 B.C.E.], business loans, and executive interest and principal adjustments from time to time to fix some imbalances in the wealth distribution for their citizens. Let us recall that the Romans provided the corn dole and baths and other amenities for the plebeians from their wealth and demanded little form them. Few societies have attained the power to continuously and sufficiently feed their citizens as yet. The power of created wealth eventually pushed out the Roman aristocrats who could not compete with others on a cognitive basis from the Senate and replaced them with those descendents of ex-slaves or others who had the power of business acumen. In like fashion the Industrial Revolution replaced the power of royalty in Europe with those who were more creative and intelligent and hard working.

The principal reason for the truncation of the capitalist histories, in my view, is mostly political. By starting off lessons with such failures as the “…tulip mania of 1636-1637, and according to Murray Sayle, the world's first bear raider – Isaac le Maire, who forced prices down by dumping stock and then buying it back at a discount…” they can cast dispersions on this natural human endeavor.[7] Nothing else has been more successful. More comprehensive is the history of money and investment provided to us in the book The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson.[8] The Roman government had no credit system, dealt in cash and disposable assets and used narrowly-defined contracts paid in cash with the particulars enforced by the army to build roads, buy grain and perform the usual government functions. That was capitalism.

The Roman Senate restricted members to those who had 10 years of solid military experience, were originally of aristocratic stock and prohibited any participation in commerce by any member. Thus the formal elected government had little or no direct involvement in business, but the slaves and freedmen of the Senate members and other aristocracy did and thus defined the business aspects of Rome. Commerce was private and so was the funding. Much of the commerce outside Rome was left in the hands of governors of the several provinces appointed in one year terms.  Other government functions were left in the hands of the Publicans and these people collected taxes, “…serviced the Roman military, collected port duties, and oversaw public building projects.”[9] These people were paid contractors[10]; this was capitalism. Capitalism is a natural human course of action when barter and sharing must be superseded. Capitalism can offer the very pinnacle of modern society to the few who can appreciate it. Socialism and Fascism and Communism can manage some mediocre version of capitalism for the rest of society.

Any mishandling of capitalism encourages a reflexive crusade to find an alternative:

“Several major challenges to capitalism appeared in the early part of the twentieth century. The Russian revolution in 1917 established the first communist state in the world; a decade later, the Great Depression triggered increasing criticism of the existing capitalist system. One response to this crisis was a turn to fascism, an ideology which advocated state-influenced capitalism; another response was rejection of capitalism altogether in favor of communist or socialist ideologies.”[11]—Wikipedia History of Capitalism

Our socio-economic system is clearly ordered as a pyramidal organization with those few percent of the local citizens who possess the necessary cognitive skills perched at the top organizing the economies and governments of the world. Leftist governments frequently begin at the bottom of the pyramid or work their way up spontaneously from the rubble of the disintegration of such governments and they can only then seize control of the apex with the remaining assets, but only to eventually ruin the previous effective economic structure and cause their substitute anti-capitalist pyramid to collapse in depression, war or famine. [12] Examples: USSR, PRC, Cuba, North Korea and dozens of places in Africa.

How do you start at the top of the Pyramid?

The first hurdle in working your way up into capitalist stratosphere is to ignore the petty leftist sophistries of ‘equality’ and egalitarianism. The radical left insist on equality even though it doesn’t exist.  For a sophomoric example, David Brooks of the New York Times has urged a celebrated and new pathway to success by ignoring IQ scores and concentrating on hard work. He parrots the standard egalitarian argument that equality must be attained at any cost and this is going to be successful using contemporary paralogisms. Brooks cites Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as an example of an ‘ordinary guy’ who would have not been anything special although he seems to have had an IQ of 165. [13] This is nonsense but a very serious social building block for the left. There is no reason that candidate brain surgeons cannot be selected by lot from the cheap seats at Philly games during time of high heat.

We can review the poor outcome of the Great Society that seemed to show that those with lesser cognitive skills could not compete well with their intellectual superiors. This caused frenzy as now there was a cognitive ceiling that many could not breach and this effect was confounded by analyzing standardized test scores and sorting the results according to race. The Bell Curve debunks this phony theory with numerous—nay millions—of examples.[14] President Obama is against standardized testing for the most part. Standardized testing proves the point that the phony liberal concept of equality is so much buncombe thus it cannot be allowed.

We all know that affirmative action is a tacit admission of the failure of ‘education’ to equip each or our citizens with an equivalent set of mental and entrepreneurial skills and opportunities so they can compete. Cognitive equality is an oxymoron. There is no way you can give standardized tests and ensure that everybody gets the average test grade with nobody getting a higher or a lower test result. The much maligned Bell Curve[15], sometimes accused of actually causing the ‘problem’ of cognitive distribution in the US, actually states the blunt facts about our societies and the distribution of mental skills. This salient fact that half the people who take the standardized test will score below the median is the rallying point for ‘change’ in ‘education.’[16] That is not fair. Society must be equalized.[17] Thus propaganda must replace education. The Bell Curve correctly predicts who will pass high school, college and who will excel in the work place—and who will not—on a group basis. This fact commits millions to menial jobs but is casus belli for the political left.[18] Politically, then, about half the populations are candidates for political exploitation based only on their intrinsic skills. This works well politically. That is 50% of the vote.

For a brief look at what the left offers in terms of business, education, crime and community we have only to look at the top 10 cities in the US and inspect the crime statistics.[19] There is no question that liberals [and all are black left-liberals with the exception of NYC] are fully in charge in these places. They control the ‘education’ and politics of these cities. A review of those who takes drugs is also instructive. [20] Clearly, crime and drug ingestion are not exactly proper attributes for success in the halls of capitalism. But, now, to be contrary, California wants to legalize pot. It is interesting to compare California and Washington DC to see who has the poorest educational system in the US. The same people who want to transform our society to be more egalitarian are the same people who have created the 10 worse cities in the US [9 counting Washington D. C.] in terms of failure, drug addiction, murder and taxes. We should trust these people? Look at California and tell us what they have achieved to date with a free reign on spending and taxation of things other than property.[21] They are heading for default. [22]

California has imported poverty, drugs and disease and used these leftist political assets to swamp the ballot boxes so they could decriminalize sloth, sodomy and drug addiction. They have raised political correctness to a level not envisioned by the Nazis[23] or even the Moscow Show Trials.[24] The new and novel idea for some more tax revenue is to legalize and highly tax marijuana.[25] They have what appears to be a fully degenerative society as lofty tax rates purify their state by driving out the capitalists and other non believers in their psychotic brand of governance. They are moral lepers. “[26]

“We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.“[27]—Winston Churchill

They believe that EcoNazism[28] will rescue their economy.[29] They will pull hard on the bucket handle. They are True Believers.

Throwing in some capitalism, the nostrum that California can apply a 30% tax on an illegal substance is probably the most exciting example of their willful and disparaging misunderstanding of capitalism. By staying illegal, the dope dealers can now make another 30% in profits!

To participate in capitalism avoid the left

We may summarize at this point and note that when capitalism is allowed then the capitalists will prosper and those around can benefit from a ‘trickle down’ sharing of wealth.  This imbalance and lack of ‘equality’ is based on cost and business notions and has nothing against the ‘poor.’ This point is hotly contested by the left although every time they get involved, the citizens are forced to deal with mediocrity, oppression and whatever the radical left chooses to inflict on their victims as we saw in Russia in 1918, Cambodia during the Pol Pot era, the French Revolution, The Cuban Revolutions and other examples. In all these cases the top few percent of ruling capitalists or royals were always replaced by a few percent of ruing Marxists or primitive liberals who squandered the wealth they confiscated with the promise that they would ‘spread it around.’

The effect of leftist Government: Unintelligent Design

One of the main follies in the human process is that workable ideas and social systems cannot work effectively for everybody so the necessity to redesign or improve the existing system draws power and strength from the dissatisfied.  When given a chance to vote, the lower classes always strive to vote money for themselves.[30]This process proceeds even though the disgruntled may become worse off from the effects of the new design. The solution thus, monotonously, becomes an urgent need for more government.  When we hear that we must ‘do something for the people,’ the people, whoever they are, eventually absorb the full brunt of the failure from this ‘something’ and suffer from starvation, government, poverty or disease. Part of this frantic quest for alternatives to proven viable economic and social systems has produced disasters like the French Revolution^[31], the Russian Revolution, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution^[32]  and many others. Many of the citizens of these movements fell under programs like The Reign of Terror^[33], Dekulakization^[34], The Russian Purges,^[35] the famine in the Ukraine known as Holodomor (Ukrainian: ????????? translation: death by starvation)^[36] and events such as in the sadistic genocide of innocents by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge political party in Cambodia[37], There are too many examples of this madness to even list by title. So, the quest for power and wealth by political operatives goes on under new names, the current one being ‘economic stimulus’ or, in my wording, unintelligent design and now the Apollo Alliance.[38]

Apollo Alliance is just another boiled pot of fish

There is noting new inherent in the propositions and promises of the ‘leaders’ of the Apollo Alliance. The board members[39] include Van Jones whose CV has been sanitized by Source Watch and also Wikipedia to exclude his criminality and radicalism and Marxism. [40][41] What they fail to publish is that:  “Jones, formerly a self-described "rowdy black nationalist," boasted in a 2005 interview that his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class "justice."[42]

“.. in jail, he said, "I met all these young radical people of color - I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'" Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. "I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."[43]

Van, to be fair, apparently has cast off this mantle and is now just some activist.[44] We shall see. Van joins the Clintons, Pelosi and Obama as some variation of ‘reformed’ Marxists or radicals or some approximation therein.

But, what is new? A New Leftist program designed to grab wealth and solve a lot of imaginary problems is populated with radicals and extremists? The test of this, which may be expensive, will be if they can make solar cells and windmills and such functional and at a cost that does not push inflation to the roof. They cannot do this as their promises are based on technologies that either doesn’t exist or are not efficient.

The economy is sinking, inflation is lurking and the debt is rising faster than the unemployment rates so they don’t have much time left to test out their unworkable theories.  The citizens are restless and don’t like this healthcare scam that is lied about and about to be crammed down our gullets. Van Jones and his counterparts are just puff puppets with little kazoos to honk in the grand parade of leftist adventurism. They pursue unworkable dreams and merely whoop and hop as they proffer their imbecilities to a suspicious electorate. The Apollo Alliance is based in San Francisco [get the monkey off my back!] thus we can easily predict how this group’s programs will turn out. Paraphrasing H. L. Mencken’s view of Hitler these guys are just jackasses with new green brooms.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com