Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Murdering People in the Third World
The broken windows fallacy of economics has often been discussed in these pages, but it does not go far enough. First, for those who are new to Ricochet or only read the funny stuff, the broken windows fallacy is the thought that all types of economic activity are equal. So, a restaurateur who has a brick thrown through his window has to hire people to replace the window. This is good, because he is spending money, right? Except that this is spending money that would have otherwise gone into the economy in higher value ways. Maybe he could have hired an executive chef to make his food better. Maybe he could have afforded to buy higher-quality meats. Maybe he would have used that money as a down payment on a delivery truck. Maybe he could have invested in stocks for a start-up that would have invented and marketed the next great thing. Whatever the restaurateur would have done with his money, it’s not going to happen now, because he is buying a new window and paying to have it installed. Besides his costs, that window and work installing it could have gone into a new commercial building instead of to repairing his building. Everything cascades from there. Windows may cost more because of higher demand. Installation may cost more because of higher demand. What we see of lost opportunity costs is merely the tip of the iceberg in what is lost to the overall economy because someone decided to throw a brick through a window. And we recognize that all types of economic activity are decidedly not equal.
Now, let’s multiply that by a million times by having riots across the nation. While we are at it, let’s deliver pallets of bricks to shopping areas to ensure the rioters have plenty of ammunition for breaking windows. Let’s also deliver supplies of Molotov cocktails to those same areas to ensure stores can be burned after being looted. (This is seriously happening.) Many of the businesses are not going to replace the window and move forward, because it’s not just one broken window they have. Some have been looted and others have been burned to the ground. While some may rebuild, many will not bother. Keep a store in a bad neighborhood that is prone to riots? No, thanks; it costs too much. Insurance rates will be up. Jobs are lost. It costs more for people in the riot-torn neighborhoods to reach the stores that are in another neighborhood, either until stores are rebuilt in their neighborhoods or until West Texas freezes over.
But that is not where this ends. The United States, while dancing on the economic brink as it may be, is still an extremely wealthy country. Our poor people have enough food to be fat. We do not only have a United States economy, though. We have a world economy. As jobs are lost in the United States and goods go unbought, factories in the Third World shut down, and the employees are set free of having to work for a living in countries where the choice is work or starve. And make no mistake: some of them will starve. And while it is difficult to trace the path of causation of that starving person in some hellhole country, it started with rioters in the United States burning down our places of work, our jobs, and destroying our wealth.
There are thousands of stories that could be told. A bookstore went up in flames in the Twin Cities during these riots. It was full of first editions, signed first editions, out-of-print books, and they have all gone to smoke and ash. We are all poorer this day than we were yesterday. Not just the Twin Cities, not just the United States. The whole world. Some of our history has been destroyed, never to exist again. We can’t take those ashes and reassemble books from them. Even if the insurance pays to rebuild that bookstore, the owner cannot replace that burned stock. Those special items no longer exist. But probably, it’s too much heartache to bother rebuilding, and all his employees will have to scramble to find new jobs, if they can. And at a hundred or a thousand removes, a few more people starve in the Third World.
The rioters are burning our past. They are destroying our wealth. They are leaving us with no future to look forward to. And they never count the cost. They only look forward to the glorious revolution that will fix everything in the future. They do not see that they are destroying the most glorious of all revolutions, the one that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other. That was the revolution of private property and free markets. They spit upon it and call it evil capitalism. But it is the only revolution that has brought evolution, true change. It is the only revolution that has brought fat poor people. It is the only revolution that has brought poor people with two cars in their garages. Yet, they have been taught that the private property and free-market revolution was bad, because although everyone is wealthier, the wealth is distributed unevenly. It does not accord with the Gospel according to Marx and Engels. (Where did Engels get his money again? Oh, yes, exploiting the working class in textile factories. “Do as I say, not as I do.”)
They are not revolutionaries; they are thugs, thieves, and murderers. They are regressionists. They want to take us back to the age of autocracies. They may call their czars something else, commissars and high party officials. They may give their czars titles such as General Secretary of the Communist Party or President of the People’s Republic, but the czar is still the czar. They are true monarchists, and they aren’t even smart enough or educated enough to know it. And when their day comes, they will wonder why they are now the targeted other. “If only the Czar General Secretary knew!” they’ll exclaim. But their General Secretary does know. They were expendable tools all along.
But there are some who see all of this. There are some who understand the effects these looters and rioters are having. But when we call for a whiff of grapeshot, the governors and mayors mostly ignore us. Our betters know better. They shall get out in front of the parade and lead it. Philippe Égalité tried that, too. It led to his introduction to Madame la Guillotine. So it will end for these Progressive office holders when the revolution comes. They should have tried the whiff of grapeshot.
Those who study history are doomed to repeat it, too, because everyone around them doesn’t pay attention to the history or thinks they are special and can “get it right” this time. The particular doom of those who understand history and how it applies to today is that they know what is going to happen and have no power to influence it. It is like watching a situation comedy where one knows what the character is about to do is stupid and will have ill effects, but the character cannot hear our advice as we yell at the television or movie screen. He goes ahead and does it. So it is with our leaders.
We who see the true costs, who see people starving in a year or two in countries that Antifa members cannot name and shall never care about, we know the true cure for all of this: “Looters will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.”
Published in History
Nope, definitely grapeshot.
The Directorate, temporarily.
The term, “a whiff of grape,” is a bit ambiguous. It could be referring to a good wine. After all, it was France.
Just what I was thinking. We can agree on that. 😉
I heard it from my history prof. He may have been being dramatic.
It is often shortened to “grape” when used this way.
Or inaccurate. The book is here. Nothing like original sources.
Understood, but that wasn’t the question.
I think we’ve beaten the grape to death.
More stomped it, no? 😁
I think one of the mutineers in Mutiny on the Bounty called out to give William Bligh a whiff to speed him on his way, but Marlon Brando wouldn’t let him.
With so much wrath too.
It is certainly a common provision of policies I have translated. “The firm bears no liability to provide coverage in cases of…(fill in the exclusions here)”.
I had an Indian Hindu friend who said something similar years ago and then launched into a paean to the common man in the United States that ended with the statement “You have not had many men of extraordinary greatness in this country, but you have a portion of extraordinary greatness in every man.”
Speaking of broken windows,
Brute force is a last resort, but it still a viable option, one that should start being used the moment a riot breaks out.
The rioters also know our military is highly trained to kill people too, and to do so swiftly and with overwhelming force. Our military really can walk softly but carry a big stick . . .
There is a quotation that I am unable to find at the moment. Something on the order of, Those who use force as a last resort may find that it is too late.
Exactly. This is why brute force should be used the moment rioting starts. A riot is like a fire. It’s easier to fight in the insipient stage, but once it rages, things get a lot tougher and more dangerous . . .
I touched on this in my post “Chaos on Chaos” re: James Mattis’ statement, when my attention was caught by a podcast with couple of intelligence experts (operations guys, not the talking heads on TV) talking about FBI issues, including having maybe only 5 undercover in Antifa nationwide.
Then there’s the question to AG Barr (starts around 33:45 mark) by an NBC reporter who specifically notes Washington DC’s expertise in securing large protest events like inauguration, World Bank conferences that got me to wondering with so much local expertise, why the feds were being overrun and had to call in Bureau of Prisons, ATF, DEA, etc.
It’s not just why didn’t FBI know and do something about an upcoming insurrection; why didn’t DC experts do something to protect the area close to White House (Lafayette Park) so that 114 feds were not injured, Treasury annex overrun, fed historical building burned, etc.?
Then there’s Mattis and our “free press”, who if they were not privy to this information before blasting Trump as militarizing DC, should have been…their remarks and actions go beyond PC woke to outright agit prop. Beyond irresponsible.
This is not conspiracy theory; it is conspiracy. The fight is not whether the sitting President is fit/unfit; we are dealing with the most serious threats to our republic in my lifetime (just after Bay of Pigs so I’m including Cold War). The threats are from within and without, and at their core they are the same threat for they lead to one end: the “gospel according to Marx and Engels” as @arahant phrased it (well done) by way of Mao.
Amen.