One side ran iAdamSmith and the other one was rebooted under MS-DAS Kapital, and just look how different the same hardware performed! In the words of a former resident:
Guess which half of the country had to put up barbed wire and minefields after a few years to keep its population from fleeing to the other half? Guess which half of the country ran its economy and environment into the ground?Despite the fact that running the experiment under controlled conditions has always produced the same results, there's never any shortage of chuckleheaded douchebags, campus revolutionaries, and bored children of privilege ready to #occupywhatever.
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Your characterizations of operating systems is the most insightful thing I've read in a very, very long time....kudos!
ReplyDeleteIt might be noted that the same experiment, involving a people who are NOT notoriously fond of order and discipline, has produced even more striking results.
ReplyDeleteBut if they only had the right people in charge, it would have had a different out come!
ReplyDeleteThe great fallacy of the left.
Great post by Marko.
Gerry
We could get it right if we do it hard enough!!!
ReplyDeleteI actually had a woman tell me one time 'Nothing will be right until the workers control the means of production" When I responded it had been tried and failed, she said "No, it never ever has". Those people cannot be reasoned with, and cannot be convinced, and are useful only as food or fertilizer.
The Reason article is unintentionally funny. It bashes Rolling Stone for being a watered-down version of a music/culture magazine, while it is a watered-down version of "Apollo and Dionysus" by Ayn Rand.
ReplyDeleteLike most things Baby Boom, Rolling Stone got things exactly right for its generation and stayed there. It's why I've never bought an issue of Rolling Stone but had a subscription to SPIN for nearly ten years, until it too went past its Best-By date.
Well, Tam, yes to all that you wrote, but knowing what the problem is (people who think that stuff) and knowing how to solve it without going all genocidal on them for their ideas and voting patterns is where we find ourselves now.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know how to change their minds, or how to determine if that is really impossible.
At least before I put on a wookie suit and buy a spray can of hippie killer.
I will be stealing your OS / Hardware examples.
ReplyDeleteI was shocked to learn that pre-WWII, North Korea was the industrial heart of Korea while the south was mainly agricultural. That new OS didn't just stifle growth, it destroyed more effectively than any bombing campaign.
I'd read Marko's post a few days ago, and now yours adds a brilliant touch.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem is the mindset that seems to think that there is no irony at all in a hippy becoming a successful capitalist by owning a store that sells Che tee-shirts, Lenin & Marx portraits, and Mao's little red book & red-star hats to the masses. "Because, like...they were SO cool!" seems to be their only reason for doing so. Such minds have a serious disconnect somewhere and seem at the least quite allergic to facts, reason, and logic.
iAdamSmith and MS-DAS Kapital,
ReplyDeleteThis is the reason your blog is a daily read. And another is that your commenters have not devolved into an Apple/MS fanboi flamewar.
Thank you,
rd
The trouble is getting the people who espouse these ideas to understand (and then admit) the link between the failed socialist experiments of yesterday and the "modern movement" of today.
ReplyDeletes
I don't understand all of the non-believers that read you blog, Tam. We just need some re-education camps to help Das Kapitalists understand how iAdamSmith is much better and must be embraced by all correct thinking people.
ReplyDeleteKerry
This experiment has been run *lots* of times. Compare:
ReplyDeleteSwitzerland and Bohemia
Austria and Hungary
Spain and Poland
Portugal and Romania
Reasonably similar populations and GDPs in 1930. By 1990 the GDP of the right hand group was 15% - 20% of the GDP of the left hand ones.
But you're arguing facts and logic to a bunch of non-theist religious fanatics. These people won't let a bunch of heretical facts and logical arguments get in the way of building the New Jerusalem.
By a strange coincidence, tomorrow is the anniversary of the last man to be killed for Blasphemy in the British Isles.
"But they didn't do it hard enough! We'll try 240 million casualties this time around."
ReplyDeleteOnly content n RS that was EVER worthwhile was PJ O'Rourke.
ReplyDeleteM
global village idiot said...
ReplyDeleteThe Reason article is unintentionally funny. It bashes Rolling Stone for being a watered-down version of a music/culture magazine, while it is a watered-down version of "Apollo and Dionysus" by Ayn Rand.
You're living up to your name. Libertarianism and Objectivism are two completely separate philosophies; while they may look superficially similar and sometimes come up with the same answers, they do so using very different first principles. An objectivist, for instance, wouldn't find anything wrong with a powerful central government so long as it strongly adheres to objectivist policy, while a powerful central government is completely and utterly antithetical to libertarianism.
That is some Grade A snark - thanks for linking to it. A lot of truth to that.
ReplyDeleteHappens every time, EVERY TIME ! Stupidity at this level should be punishable by death. Actually in their system it is.
ReplyDelete"You're living up to your name."
ReplyDeleteThat's very kind of you.
If I were to make the point - as you believe I was doing - that libertarianism (a political system) and objectivism (a philosophical system) are the same thing, I'd only be living up to the last third of my username.
If, however, I make the point - as I attempted to do - that Ayn Rand was a better observer of and writer about the generation who came of age in the 60s than the author of the Reason article, then I believe the post indicates a level of erudition consistent with the play-on-words I choose for my username.
gvi
Holey Moley, that was the best thing I've read in I don't know when. :-)
ReplyDeleteEpic post Tam.
If I don't see this on instapundit tomorrow, something is terribly, terribly wrong.
og: She was probably just ignorant, but perhaps she is aware that in no communist country have the workers actually controlled production. It's always been nomenklatura who _claim_ to represent the workers - the American equivalent is union leaders...
ReplyDeleteAs an engineer with 23 years of experience in manufacturing, I can see that there never will be a factory actually controlled by the less-skilled workers, for the same reason Tibet never implemented a mass transit system utilizing levitating monks. It's not possible. Many of our workers could learn to run at least parts of the plant, but by the time they've learned all that, they're no longer proles. And neither is anyone who has imbibed enough Marxist theory to falsely imagine that he can guide a workers' collective.
But there are workers who control the means of production: independent farmers and craftsmen. The funny thing is, to be successful, they have to be small businessmen - that is, capitalists. And they can only function within the systems advocated by the left if the rulers have the wisdom to ignore them and the black markets they sell to. They're suffering in our system too, sometimes due to the economic inefficiency of too small of a business, but also because leftists have enabled government policies that favor large corporations.