Since the destruction of our education system, which used to teach capitalism to students, one of the fake arguments leftists make is rich people getting rich off the backs of others. This is one of the dumbest arguments economic morons commonly make and it is standard Marxist-style classism. Because the rich didn’t do all of the work themselves, their wealth is off of others, therefore making the others poor (one conclusion too far). It is the victim class of Marxist capitalism, as espoused by Karl Marx, who was one of the wrongest and most intellectually challenged leaders in history. His great contribution is to espouse an expanded class warfare, a concept adopted and spread by central governments across the planet, creating impoverished disenfranchised society to advantage the ruling class.
In fact, high performers like Steve Jobs employ the general population creating jobs and value to a degree that they would never achieve on their own or under central government control. This has been proven endlessly across the planet, but in particular in America where the country went from the lowest performing, poorest group to the most wealthy country on earth IN ONLY 200 YEARS simply by empowering individuals to make their own choices. To think that Apple hasn’t created opportunity through sales and product development, but it is rather on the backs of the poor represents a level of brainwashing that is nearly inconceivable to me.
People can be dumb, I get it, but continuing to fall for the same century old lies is really, really dumb. For the Democrats to be working to actively destroy this unique success story in the name of poverty reduction, is the height of stupidity.
the Air Vent 
It’s funny when you write a post to convince yourself of a view that’s laughably inane.
Brutal autocrats who enrich themselves by selling oil are using the money they get from selling that oil to maintain their power and continue the brutality at the expense of the people they oppress.
It’s not even remotely parallel to Apple.
Although when Apple sells products that are manufactured in Chinese sweatshops it’s arguably making money at the expense of people that are brutalized. Or when batteries for electric vehicles are mined by people working under slave-like conditions. My guess is that those other two examples might concern you whereas the people brutalized by oil-marketing autocrats won’t register for you.
I wonder why.
You’re so vain. You probably think this post is about you.
In most cases I’ve seen in my numerous travels to asia, the people with the jobs are the lucky ones. They fight to get permission to enter the special economic zones. In my several dozens of trips there, I never one time saw child labor.
So clearly you’re in favor of lifting sanctions against Cuba and Iran (in which cases we’d actually agree, because it’s not clear to me that they have positive impact)?
What does Asia have to do with Cuba or Iran?
Very odd kid.
I should have figured you wouldn’t understand.
Anyway, clearly I gave you too much credit to think you might be concerned about Chinese people working under brutal conditions to produce Apple products.
Sorry for overestimating you.
Ever been to China?
Spent 1.5 years in Asia. Never been to China. Worked with Maine dozen a Chinese executives and a couple dozen Chinese graduate students.
Why?
Maybe a dozen Chinese execs…
Brutal autocrats who enrich themselves by selling oil
Saved the whales. Shut down the markets for whale oil almost completely. Also saved the lives of many sailor/whalers — most of whom, readers of “Moby Dick” will remember, were not well trained sailors at all, but get-rich-quick adventurers.
Saved lots of (not all, but lots) of coal miners. Oil rigs were incomparably superior to coal mines — BTU for BTU extracted from the ground.
Reduced air pollution. Soot being the real problem, but sulferous compounds (remember “acid rain”?) and even CO2 being among the exhausts reduced by burning oil instead of coal.
Freed rural workers from failing industries. Remember “Grapes of Wrath” — maybe not. Hmmm… Remember TV’s “The Beverly Hillbillies”. Loadin’ up the truck and movin’ on. Oil and the IC engine in cheap used vehicles pretty much put a stake through the heart of the whole idea of serfs on latifundia. For specific virtue, consider the numbers of Blacks who moved from the Deep South, north, for better jobs in industries enabled by oil.
Aside from “oil” almost any US industry that’s ever been analysized shows the returns to investment accrue at rate of (JUST AS MARX NOTICED, AND COULD NOT EXPLAIN AWAY IN THREE BOOKS STUDYING “KAPITAL” ) of between 2 to 4 percent. The rest of the “excess value” resulting from everything from cloth mills to PCs has been widely distributed to the public. As ADAM SMITH explained: the price the consumer pays is only slightly more than the producer’s cost, but much less the value the purchaser receives — or else the (voluntary) trade would not happen.
History is interesting to those who bother to read it.
> History is interesting to those who bother to read it.
That’s funny, I don’t recall bringing up the history of whale oil.
> Brutal autocrats who enrich themselves by selling oil
>> Saved the whales. Shut down the markets for whale oil almost completely.
Not at all. First, the death of whale oil as an industry was multifactorial. Second the brutal and oppressive nature of the associated governments was largely orthogonal. It certainly wasn’t a necessary condition.
But it is interesting to see you arguing for the lack of unintended consequences arising from totalitarian governments that control practically every aspect of the lives of its citizenry. Not quite sure I’ve ever seen libertarian RWers argue so explicitly in favor of Muslim theocracies before – but as they say, there’s a first for everything.
As near as I can tell, this cherry picking selective aspects of historical events to build arguments based on false dichotomies and wild counterfactual assumptions (i.e., that we’d still be using whale oil if it weren’t for brutal autocracies) is a pattern with you?
> Reduced air pollution.
This is beautiful too – as on the other side of the fence, after arguing for the long-term beneficial outcomes of brutal, authoritarian governments, now you act as if democratic forms of government had nothing to do with less smog in LA, or rivers no longer being on fire in Pittsburgh. Again, selectivity and dichotomous reasoning at its finest.
Heh. Obviously it’s not the batteries that are mined.
Tell me, do you ever get tired of making vapid arguments?
Hi Jeff,
I appreciate your thoughts and posts. It is a bit sad that there isn’t a host of lively commentators to make a vibrant blog. Just Joshua.
Thanks Ray. Working on the rest. It takes time.
Some of try. Dumping enough valuable info into the comment stream dilutes, if not filters out, the pollution contributed by a few who make a career of haunting “climate blogs” and trolling.
You think Josh makes the blog vibrant?
No, that’s Jeff’s doing.
Josh adds nothing, not even comedic value
Don’t feed the trolls.
Troll? I don’t know.
It’s very hard to teach a leftist, or they wouldn’t be leftists.
“It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, it’s impossible to win an argument with a dumb person”
ACORN is back:
https://capitalresearch.org/article/state-voices-the-left-wing-nonprofit-that-made-140-million-voter-contacts-in-2022/
It belatedly occurs to me that two descriptors:
” rich people getting rich off the backs of others. ” and ” Brutal autocrats who enrich themselves by selling oil “
are not synonymous sets.
The first, in the context of US history and economics, includes the (falsely and unfairly accused) John D Rockefeller (who DID deal in oil, and unintentionally save the whales), plus Carnegie, Edison, Ford, Eastman… every entrepreneur from Eli Whitney to Elon Musk. The SECOND set describes Qaddafi, Pahlavi, Saddam ( of Iraq, distinct from Talal, of Jordan) Hussein, and most recently, Putin. Intersecting sets but far from identical.
Bearing that in mind, I would point out that the Rockefeller-sort of “getting rich” is winning in the more-or-less free marketplace. Arranging voluntary trades investments loans, dividends, futures contracts, etc etc. “Capitalism” if you like that term. (I don’t.) The PUTIN- sort of getting rich occurs by abusing the police powers of a giant government. It’s “autocratic” to repeat the term offered. (I’ll agree.) Autocrats suppress competition and steer trades, etc, to politically connected cronies and demand and obtain bribes, kickbacks, secret percentages, and luxury perquisites such as “offices” or “palaces” stocked with fine art and wines … Plus ten percent for the big guys.
Within US history and economics the government has from time to time interfered in the free market and enriched oil-sellers — most obviously aiding speculators when US public administrators manipulate oil reserves and logistics. The “Teapot Dome” sequence under GOP President Harding is classic. The 2022 actions of DEM White House orders about the “Strategic Oil Reserves”, the Keystone XL and (perhaps) the Nord Strom pipelines, similarly offered profit opportunities to well-informed cronies to “get rich off the backs of other” less informed, or well-connected, or more trusting citizens.
Anyhow. Both sets might be said to be getting rich by selling oil. But only one was meaningfully introduced into the intended conversation by our host. The other is a mistaken and distracting sub-example.
> But only one was meaningfully introduced into the intended conversation by our host. The other is a mistaken and distracting sub-example.
Lol. Gotta love that. You boyz never fail to amuse.
Joshua: “ Not at all. First, the death of whale oil as an industry was multifactorial.”
It’s a long time since I read on this and I no longer have the book. I have kept it in mind that it was mineral oil availability and low price which meant it rapidly substituted for diminishing and costly whale oil. What were the other factors that you refer to?
Curious –
Good catch.
Sorry, reading back I’m not sure what I was referring to with “not at all.” Certainly I agree that the petroleum industry was a critical factor in the end of the whale oil industry, for the reasons you describe. I was reacting to the notion that it was a singularly causal factor. I reflexively object to the reduction of such complex and multi-dimensional social phenomena to such simplistic causal models. The following article gets at what I was thinking of:
https://petroleumservicecompany.com/blog/the-whale-oil-myth-and-the-rise-of-petroleum/
I think maybe the “not at all” was getting at the idea of connecting “brutal autocrats” to the causal chain, not the petroleum industry per se.
Thanks for the link to that article. Strikes me as long on conjecture, short on numbers generally and lacking in actual analysis. I’d say the quoted shift to 200 million gallons of kerosene substitution in 10 years runs counter to the article’s implied conclusion on the impact of petroleum on whaling being a “myth”: they reference alcohol fuels as a factor but present no production numbers.
I can’t see named authors for the article and the reference links the article gives look like trivial search engine hits. As a piece it reads to me as an “influencer” article rather than a research piece. The book I remember had a detailed historical analysis of whale catch numbers and population levels as well as concurrent mineral oil industry production growth and lamp oil consumption. I don’t remember if it discussed taxation impacts but my recollection is that the availability of mineral oil driving the transition away from whale oil was beyond dispute. I’ll see if I can find a reference or link to the book.
Hi “Curious”. I’m pleased to meet a fellow member of the pseudonymous community.
Thanks for the link to a good source on the oil/whale connection.
Obviously, the early US, profit-seeking, mineral oil industrialists did not INTEND to save the whales. No more than our own alternative/sustainable energy wind turbine tax-subsidy harvesters intend to put the nail in the coffin of endangered species. But:
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/whale-deaths-spark-debate-new-jersey-new-york-offshore-wind-farms/
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2016/Q3/wind-turbines-killing-more-than-just-local-birds,-study-finds.html
The intentions and motives of a policy maker are no guarantee of the consequences of their policies.
Pouncer –
> Obviously, the early US, profit-seeking, mineral oil industrialists did not INTEND to save the whales.
Again with a red herring?
Who suggested that was their “intention?”
Hi Pouncer – it’s a book I wish I still had. I passed to a charity shop so I hope someone else has enjoyed it now. Quite wide ranging on whales and the history of whaling as I recall.
Curious –
I wasn’t thinking that source to be dispositive as to specifics, merely that it pointed to aspects that supported my contention that the precipitous decline of the whale oil industry (and the associated rate of slaughter of whales) was multifactorial.
Of course, Googling will turn up much that is wrong, and argument ad populum is a fallacy indeed, but many sources reference the “myth.”. Here’s another with links therein (even to a short audio): https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi3136.htm
So in your reading, have you seen support for the notion that the causality behind the transition was due to just one factor, and that it was only that [brutal autocrats selling oil] “saved the whales. Shut down the markets for whale oil almost completely.?”
Also –
> I’d say the quoted shift to 200 million gallons of kerosene substitution in 10 years runs counter to the article’s implied conclusion on the impact of petroleum on whaling being a “myth ”
I’m actually not entirely clear as to what the “myth” is supposed to be (even after reading numerous references to the “whale oil myth”) but doubt te author of that article (or the authors at the other links) thinks that it’s a myth that petroleum had an impact on whaling. In fact, the author stated:
Not that petroleum didn’t potentially have something to do with it,…
Seems a bit to strong to me to say “potentially” as it seems obvious it WAS one of the factors. But I don’t think the “myth” is mutually exclusive with petroleum being one causal influence among multiple influences.
Apologists for the Confederacy often argue race slavery was only one causal influence among multiple influences.
This minority cites the multi-factorial aspects of disputes between the North and South completely isolated from slavery. The “Tariff of Abominations” in particular; but biased application of any state’s “Nullification” powers; and the admission of California as a “free state” despite the clear text and intentions of the Missouri Compromise; and the Jacksonian Doctrine that the Federal Government had been granted power to enforce the Union by military means — (Once joined, never sundered). All are, truly, well-documented sources of extreme disagreement that are at least relevant to the secession decisions of Southern states.
It takes a peculiar mind to insist that slavery was “one causal influence among multiple influences” such that the influence must be diluted. Such minds nevertheless exist.
There’s striking correlation between state legislatures passage of Secession Ordinances and the fraction of a state’s enslaved (Not “Black”*) population. The more slaves, the more voters hated Abe Lincoln, basically.
Delaware, by the way, and contrary to repeated remarks by Joe Biden, rejected the proposal to secede, the first of states to do so in 1861. Biden stutters, you know.
No historical situation is as clear cut as the narrative set out in an elementary school textbook. But that narrative is not completely unfounded, either.
I like whales. Thank you, Standard Oil.
* Roughly two-thirds of Americans recorded in the 1860 Census as “Black” or “African” etc were free. Even in states with reversed proportions, free blacks existed, and some owned (black) slaves themselves. The narrative regarding “reparations” is just as flawed as the tales about oil barons, whales, and “appropriation of excess value” as source of wealth.
Let’s add ecological fallacy to the list.
Let’s add ecological fallacy to the list.
Exactly so!
The narrative taught in elementary school is that industry damages the landscape, the environment, Mother Nature. Which is a narrative not completely without foundation. Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Sinclair’s The Jungle, Twain’s The Gilded Age. Definitely worth reading. (Presuming one of the rare, well run, schools that actually CAN teach reading and is willing to wait a generation or so before including DeAngelo’s White Fragility into the canon.)
The fallacy is the implication that the progress of industry (Driven by profit-seeking robber barons who not only destroy the forests but also turn self-sufficient self-employed farmers and craftsmen into wage-slaves in sweat shops doomed to life in debt to the company store — narrative, chapter two) is a hockey stick of destruction.
By high school, if not before, it ought to be shown that Western history, at least, shows improvements in the ecology as production consolidates into ever-smaller footprints. A hundred farms eking out a few bushels per year above subsistence each from the labors of a dozen hired hands and a stable full of draft animals can be replaced by one modern family farm and an assortment from John Deere (and a diesel fuel tank next to the grain bins) The London ashes and smoke of the night air charmingly illustrated in Disney’s Mary Poppins (it was never that charming, let alone the cancer in children earning a living as chimney sweeps) has been getting cleaner and clearer for decades. (And childhood cancer rates are down.) Sweatshops still exist – mostly due to international politics. But in general industry trends tend to make things better and eco-damage stories are overly simplistic, un-nuanced, and fallacious.
Nikki Haley:
“One side of the Civil War was fighting for tradition and one side was fighting for change.”
Reparations are a complete sham designed to continue the class warfare previously needed by Democrats to stay in power. My Lilly-white ancestors on both sides owned no slaves, fought to free slaves and yet I am going to be forced to pay black skinned folks who have never been slaves, never met a slave and have never met a slave owner.
It will never be enough money btw because the point is to maintain the class differential.
Pouncer – given your interest in history, and the potential harms of centralized education, and the interaction between slavery and education, you might find this interesting: