I read once that if you put a flea into an enclosed space, he'll only hit his head twice before accepting the reality of his situation. This makes fleas smarter than your average Leftist. How so, you ask? I'll explain.
Heritage has just posted the 2004 Index of Economic Freedom. Take a moment and peruse the list. You'll notice a pretty tight correlation between countries with economic freedom, and countries where you're likely to have running water in your hotel. There's also a strong level of coincidence between countries where you have economic freedom, and ones where you can criticize the government without losing an extremity. People live better and freer with the Free Market.
This has been the case since, I don't know. . . forever.
And yet the Left continues to hold up socialist strongmen like Castro, Chavez and Ortega as examples of enlightened 3rd World leadership. Look over the museum of history's losers at the bottom of the list. Virtually every one of them subscribes to some form of Marxism -- whether Latin liberationism, pan-Arab socialism or the outright Communism of Burma and North Korea.
No matter how many countries Leftism destroys, they never learn.
Posted by Discoshaman at janvier 13, 2004 12:49 AM | TrackBack
Right on!
What the Left fails to realise is that when a person's incentive to do something is taken away, he or she won't do it. Case in point: I recently was on a mission trip in Cuba. We went to help with the construction of a school. Amazingly, we were the only ones working, while the government-hired work crew fished all day on a near-by river. The foreman actually asked us to slow down because we were embarassing the other "workers". The reason? It was impossible for any employee to be fired, since the government guaranteed his job unless he were arrested. The crew was months and months behind on their schedule. Communism simply doesn't work.
Posted by: Ryan at janvier 12, 2004 10:30 PMRyan-
Good points! :)
There's a similar situation in Ukraine, where it's ticklish doing community cleanup projects and the like. There are piles of filth, but cleaning them up makes whomever is responsible for the area look bad, and could take away jobs. And they get paid regardless of how the place looks. So it's touchy.
"It was impossible for any employee to be fired, since the government guaranteed his job unless he were arrested."
This sounds like the Teamsters my dad used to work with. Work Less -- Work Union. :-P
Gideon Strauss-
No flaming! I know there are good unionists out there. Just none of them were Teamster truckers in Florida. :-)
Posted by: Discoshaman at janvier 14, 2004 09:14 PM