Marxist college professors diligently teach their soon-to-be-brainwashed students a bedtime scare-story about the free-market called “the robber barrons,” the allegedly ‘evil’ ones that represent the epitome of ‘true” free-market capitalism in the raw.
Let’s point out a few facts about these alleged “robber-barrons.” The really “bad” robber-barrons were not free-market producers, but instead were in league with, and depended on government contracts and influence to get them special monopoly privileges to destroy their competition. The classic example was the Union Pacific Railroad, and the railroad that created a near-monopoly in California and other western states in the last half of the 19th century.
These corporations bribed Congress to get monopolies for their railroad lines. In league with corrupt state and Federal government regulators, they were able to EXCLUDE other railroads from competing with them. After they got their government-created monopoly set up, they then proceeded to gouge farmers on freight rates, hence gaining the hatred of farmers and small business owners, and earning the name of “robber barrons”.
However, there was a different brand of productive producer who never took a dime of government money, and never tried to exlude competition by using Government regulations and bribing government officials to give them monopolies over their competition. James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railroad created a superlative railroad in the northwest states without any corrupting relationship with government regulators. He beat the competition with his competence and by giving farmers and other shippers a superb railroad at fair shipping prices. Moreover, he HAD to give farmers fair-market shipping prices, because he had fierce competition by other railroads. And that is the primary point here.
Most of the “robber-barrons” who earned that reputation were just like today’s corporations that get special privilages from government regulations that help to strangle their competition, which then allows them to gouge consumers with high prices for their products. A classic example are the thousands of local electric and gas utility companies that get monopoly privilages from the cities they operate in.
Let’s talk about one of the so-called “robber-barrons” and his “evil” accomplishments, John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller, due to his superb efficiency as a businessman and oil producer and refiner, managed to reduce the price of kerosene (used to light lamps at night before we had electric lights), from about $1.50 a gallon to less than 30 cents a gallon by the 1920’s. What Rockefeller accomplished was to give Americans the night back. The vast majority of Americans were now able to afford cheap kerosene to light their lamps at night, so they didn’t have to go to bed in the dark after the sun went down, or depend on candles, or (horror of horrors) whale oil, almost making whales an, hold on to your hat, endangered species.
It seems that besides Rockefeller giving most Americans the ability to read books and stay up to at night with cheap kerosene lighting, he also saved the whales (eco-freaks rejoice!). That’s besides literally creating the oil and refining industry that we have today that employs millions of Americans, lights their houses at the flick of a switch, and drives their cars, refrigerators, and iPods. If this is ‘evil,’ then we desperately need more men like Rockefeller to get us out of the hole that Obama is putting us in.
A more modern example of a true government-created “robber-barron” was the stranglehold monopoly on long-distance telephone service held for over 20 years by AT&T. WHY did they have such a monopoly where they could charge us $1.50 a minute for a long-distance calls? It was because Federal government regulators GAVE them that monopoly by legally forbidding other competitors. The same goes today for the US Post Office. They are a governement-created monopoly on 1st class mail service, and the Federal government has SHUT DOWN the few competitors over the years who tried to create competing first-class delivery service.
So liberal-socialists, who probably love their Blackberry or iPods created by the “evil” capitalists at Microsoft or Apple, unhappily continue to mouth their marxist college professors’ rhetoric, and attack this straw man of the free-market called “robber-barrons,” to ‘prove’ the “evil” of the unfettered free-market. But in fact, they don’t condemn an unfettered capitalism as it could and should be, but the mongrel “mixed” economy, the hybrid monster of government controls and government regulators in league with corrupt corporations who are eager to use government to crush their competition. This mongrel, quasi-socialist/fascist system we now have in America, is NOT free-market capitalism, but simply a half-way house to the final abyss of a socialist/fascist America.
A true free-market would have a constitutional Amendment that created a wall between government and the economy (similar to the separation of Church and State). Congress would be forbidden from making any laws or regulations that gave special monopoly privileges, subsidies, or handouts to any business, corporation, or special-interest group (such as unions). In a true free market, free from all government controls or interference, a business would only succeed because of their competence, and how well they beat their competitors in providing the highest quality and/or lowest-priced products or services for their customers.
Every day, our liberal/socialist/marxist friends benefit from that free-market they so blithly attack. Yet, let them turn on a switch, and they immediately gets light in their rooms. Let them go to a local gas station, and they easily get fuel to drive their cars. WHERE do liberal/socialists think they get these wonderful things that give them their high standard of living? WHO do they think brings them all these marvelous goods and services that makes their lives so easy — why, from the “evil” capitalists who they like to tax to death.
Have our fuzzy liberal/socialists ever seen recent videos of the streets and cars running around Havana today? Cuba looks like a time-warp from the 1950s. Not an ounce of progress, new buildings, new cars, or a better life for its citizens. It’s as if Castro’s socialist “paradise” stopped the clock of human progress in Cuba, as it has. Is this what fuzzy liberal-socialists want for themselves and THEIR children?
Besides going to Cuba to test out the socialized-medicine paradise there, perhaps fuzzy liberal/socialists should travel back in time a few hundred years before we HAD those “evil” free-market capitalists they call “robber barrons.” Let them risk dying at average age 47 instead of the average age of 79 that Americans die today, because the “evil” capitalists at our supermarket chains, pharmaceutical companies, and water-treatment corporations now give us fresh, abundant food, antibiotics, and sanitary drinking water. Let them live in a log cabin they have to light with candles or whale oil at night. Let them have to risk their lives hunting for their food, instead of so conveniently being able to go to their local supermarkets for milk and steaks. Let them ride their cows or horses a hundred miles to town, rather than getting in their shiny cars that take them to their shiny city restaurant in a few minutes.
Liberals like to deny that they are like those bad ’socialists’ we used to have in the Soviet Union or in communist Cuba today, and all liberal-socialists shout that they hate ‘fascists.’ Sorry to burst your bubble, liberals, but there’s very little difference between a liberal, socialist, or a fascist. Liberals, if they ever get around to reading recent history, might discover that the German NAZI party stood for “National SOCIALIST” party of Germany. Yes, horror of horrors, the Nazis were primarily socialists, with a national German twist. They were for complete government control of all industries. So are socialists. They were for heavy, progressive income taxes, the same as socialists and Communists. They claimed that the individual must sacrifice himself to the “Fatherland.” Socialists in Cuba and the Soviet Union claimed that the people must sacrifice themselves to “the people.” That’s simply the same vicious socialist-collectivist notion with a different name.
Both socialists and fascists believe government should either own or totally control the economic activity and political freedom of all its citizens, in effect making them slaves of the state. Socialism and fascism are simply two sides of the same vicious coin, brothers under the skin. They espouse the same philosophy that has been responsible for murdering and torturing over 100 million people in the 20th century (by Hitler, Stalin Mao, Castro, ad nauseum). Yet fuzzy liberal/socialists still desperately cling to their woolly beliefs in the “goodness” of socialism, vs. the “evil” of the free-market that has brought them a standard of living and health care that they couldn’t even dream of in a socialist-fascist ‘paradise’ like Cuba.
Fuzzy liberal-socialists likes to see themselves as a lovers of humanity. They, unlike ‘evil’ capitalists and Republicans, “care” about people. If that’s the case, why would they embrace a philosophy responsible for the murder and torture of over 100 million people in the 20th century, and which continues to murder, torture, and starve to death tens of millions of people in Cuba, soon Venezuala, China, and dozens of other socialist-fascist “paradises” in Africa, Burma, etc., etc.?
Fuzzy socialists claim they want to “help” others, but with WHOSE money? It’s so easy to be “noble” with other people’s money. It’s so easy to “help” others by robbing millions of Americans of their hard-earned money with taxes, to then “redistirbute” (Obama’s marxist term) this stolen money to other looters who keep voting the Obama’s of this world into office.
If fuzzy liberal-socialists want to truly ‘help’ others, why don’t they donate 95% of THEIR personal income and “redistribute” THEIR money to the starving masses of Africa, Cuba, and other socialist/fascist paradises around the world? After all, I’m sure most liberals make far more money than poor people forced to live under a socialist-fascist regime. If liberal-socialists truly want to help humanity, let them PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTHS ARE, rather than promoting a vicious socialist system that let’s government looters take the earnings from productive average Americans to “redistribute” to welfare mothers, millions of illegal aliens, and hundreds of other special-interest groups who never earned that handout money?
Most of our well-fed liberal-socialists don’t give away all THEIR money to the poor and downtrodden in Africa or Appalachia, do they? So where is their true love for humanity and those less fortunate than themselves? Or are they simply vicious hypocrites who presume they have the right to spend OTHER people’s money so they can boast that they are lovers of humanity?
Excellent piece! Going to post on my FB page …