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Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Post #3062 M

Quote of the Day

Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that
most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and 
underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
Anthony Robbins  


Tweet of the Day














Climate Policy Fascism





Trade Isn't a Zero-Sum Game





Facebook Corner

One of my pet peeves on Facebook is when my comments get deleted to a post. I don't mind others disagreeing with me and/or posting contrary opinions. But if I'm a "friend" only when I agree with you, that's not much of a friendship. So when I discover a deletion, there are consequences. One of my nephews wrote a post some time back applauding Pope Francis. It's no secret to any familiar readers that I don't care for the pontiff, who has been openly hostile to free markets (which I consider to be responsible for bringing more people out of poverty than any cause in human history) and panders to the left-leaning mainstream media. He quietly deleted my comment. and I discovered it by accident and confronted him (his justification was along the lines of "it's my party and I'll cry if I want to"; he didn't like someone challenging his power of positivity). So I "unfriended" him, not because he disagrees with me on Pope Francis but because of his unacceptable deletion.

Recently I've noticed a lot fewer notifications in Facebook, particularly to my political comments. This is unusual in the sense that I tend to poke bears. I don't go out looking for bears to poke. But let me use National Review as an example. National Review during the recent Presidential campaign went #NeverTrump; the Trumpkins went batshit crazy, cancelling subscriptions, dropping their following, etc., but it was like they were obsessed with NR, and the same old same old comments repeated on numerous subsequent posts. NR wasn't playing Whac-a-Mole, and every once in a while I would push back on the Trumpkins. I used to have a bigger problem with Trumpkins on Twitter. It's died down considerably since the election. (It's not clear why Trumpkins targeted me since I have only a few dozen followers.) In any event, NR soon revisited its position as it recognized the reality of Trump and blinked in the face of a likely Clinton Presidency. Of course, the Trumpkins are rubbing NR's nose in it every chance they get.

I'm usually not obsessed enough to revisit a post to see if anyone agreed with my comment. But I haven't gotten a reaction to a comment for a while, which was not the case a few months back. Is it Facebook censorship, group censorship? Not sure; maybe just coincidental indifference. It really doesn't matter because I don''t have the time or patience to engage in a flame war.

I'm spending less time on social media. There was a long period where I averaged many more tweets and over 1000 impressions a day, most of them non-followers. The initial reason for going into social media had more to do with promoting my blog; my blog readership numbers have improved since then but little evidence social media had anything to do with that. How did I catch my nephew? The post was still in my feed when I stumbled on it a few days later--and noticed my comment wasn't  there..

WAC is a group which I've often referenced, particularly in my Image of the Day segments. To be honest, I've almost always supported their point of view. In this case they were arguing the benefits of free trade when they got heat on immigration. I responded as you see below; I captured the text for today's post, but earlier today I couldn't find my notes and searched for the original post. I couldn't find my comments (which wasn't hard to do with only a couple of dozen or so comments). As I scanned, I found WAC, in multiple cases, expressing sympathy with anti-immigrant fears of being driven from their homes by unrestricted waves of immigrants.

[I just had an exchange with the group moderator; he sent back a snapshot showing my original comment below and said that I'm not the first person who has complained about missing comments. So I've re-followed the group.]

(We Are Capitalists).  I'm concerned that the word "globalization" is being turned into a "bad" word within contemporary politics.
I understand people's apprehension towards blending political ties in a way which might threaten national sovereignty - that much I get, and I generally don't support said efforts - but in addition to that, people also use the word to reference a broadening of global trade markets. And in that regard, people are beginning to use "globalization" as a pejorative. They absolutely shouldn't.
The broadening of global trade has benefited us greatly in terms of reducing consumer expenses, thereby helping to alleviate the constraints of family budgets. That's the big picture. Now to be intellectually honest, I have no issue acknowledging that there also exists a significant negative side to global trade. Don't get me wrong. When people see less competitive American enterprises close down, they're indeed observing specific subsets of individuals experiencing considerable setbacks. What's difficult to communicate, however, is that the benefits to the broader populace offset the negatives experienced by the relatively few.
Proponents of global trade, therefore, aren't pretending that such setbacks don't occur. More importantly, we aren't arguing that they don't matter. Of course negatives occur and of course people losing their jobs matter.
We're merely trying to look at the big picture. The broader populace benefits, and specifically, the purchasing power of low-income families improves the most out of all class groups (low-income, middle class, wealthy). We must be cognizant of these facts before jumping to conclusions and believing that "globalization" is a dirty word.
Under the Trumpkin nationalists, trade deals are seen as self-serving globalist elitist conspiracies. In fact, the anti-competitive status quo reflects concentrated benefits for special interests vs. diffuse costs to consumers. Granted, all we need is for government to get out of the way, not the mercantilistic provisions of trade pacts. But to the extent trade provides competitive alternatives eventually for consumers, it's a win-win proposition.
open trade YES. open borders and the death of national self determination in deference to a murky global order NO. it's unfortunate people are confusing the two.
One cannot consistently be for open trade and be against open migration. Nationalism is the rationalization for domination by the elitist State. You don't have a damn "right" to decide with whom, what or where I do business; similarly, you don't have the right to restrict who comes to visit or work with me. Stop worshiping obscene special-interest WWI-era anti-immigration restrictions which displaced our open immigration legacy.


Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Steve Kelley via Townhall


Musical Interlude: Christmas Favorites


Dean Martin, "Let It Snow!"

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