Talk About “In A Nutshell!” The big picture in 75 seconds

This whole thing is worth watching – it’s great – but the BIG PICTURE is distilled down to 75 seconds from 11:34 to 12:49.*

A note on political philosophy:

From what I can tell by listening to these guys a number of times, they are socialists** who feel that the right role of government is to make sure everyone gets economic necessities. I’m an anarcho-capitalist – I could not be further from this position (see the William Graham Sumner quote at the top right of my website!) To the extent there can be a case made for socialism or other governmental responsibility for social well-being, I would say it must lie in a common value system among the populace. I think this is why a small homogeneous society like those in the Nordic countries are more likely to make socialism work than a melting pot like the United States.

I believe that my libertarian philosophy also requires a common value system, but my system is self-perpetuating and need not be based on ethnic or religious commonality, rather on the self-selection of those who choose to participate in it. The economic self-sufficiency required by my system (augmented per force by voluntary personal associations and institutions), means even immigrants will have to embrace the system and assimilate into it in order to survive. Democracy can undermine this, unfortunately. I was surprised to read recently in an essay written almost 100 years ago, that the author believed poor European immigrants were ruining America through the democratic process! He could have been right–that is when our system really passed the tipping point. Democracy can destroy the system if the basic laws can be changed. The law has to be acknowledged as objective and immigration and emigration need to be voluntary and organic.

All this by way of saying, I do think these guys are right about what’s wrong, but I think they’re wrong about what’s right!!!!

*I have not been convinced that GMOs are bad for our health or even that they will or are meant to destroy native seeds, but I do know there has been a concerted effort by the UN and others to make sure all land and food growing capability is taken out of the hands of the people. This could be part of that effort.

**I got a little pushback from a Corbett fan. (h/t John Jasper.) I guess I used the term “socialist” too cavalierly so I owe it to Mr. Corbett to investigate and clarify. I found a personal interview in which Corbett says, “I used to be on the left side of the spectrum so everything I thought had to jibe with that.” He says he is now not ideological, that he has broken out of the left-right political spectrum. That makes sense, but he does still seem to take for granted that governments should use money to help people eat. I can understand thinking of that as a baseline – I only object to it because the modern state will never limit itself to this function, rather it will use this power to control everything!! (Well, I also have a moral problem with wealth redistribution, but that’s a different subject.) To listen to James for yourself, here is his “Meet James Corbett” interview (https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-163-meet-james-corbett/).

I believe Michel Chossudovsky is a self-described socialist, or in any event that’s the impression I get from his excellent article Destroying a Country’s Standard of Living: What Libya Had Achieved, What has been Destroyed, which describes Qaddafi’s socialism without apology.