The Weird World Of Libertarian Memes

Just a little warning, the next column is going to be kind of, well, big. So, in order to balance it out, here's a column making fun of libertarian/ancap memes. In order for this to work, I went to a bunch of right-wing libertarian twitter pages and found some "high quality" memes. Enjoy them, with my commentary. 

Because, as we all know, poverty only exists in statist countries. Hong Kong, for instance, the place with the freest market, has 1/5 of the population in poverty. 

So people who support European socialism, stay with me here, aren't socialists. Most of them are social democrats who want a hybrid system. Yet, if you support universal healthcare, people like them will still call you a socialist. 

Reminder: Bernie Sanders is still the poorest member of the Senate. If he can get 3 houses while having basically nothing by Senator standards, that's a very different problem. 




























Um . . . why would someone write the declaration of independence if they didn't want the United States to become an independent
nation? It's in the name after all. 

Notice how none of those books are about history. Mainly because no society has survived without government. After all, if they did you would think they would still exist today. 

Only anarchists don't understand the difference between economic and social issues. 

Speaking of things ancaps don't understand, no one is forcing you to vote. Maybe it would make sense if other anarchyballs were choosing, but otherwise, this is just idiotic.

It's always fun when people who don't know how loopholes work talk about how long the federal register is. Take the Volcker Rule for instance, which made it so commercial banks had to get permission to engage in investment banking. At first, it was 4 pages, when it was passed it was 892 pages. I'll give you 3 choices as to what those next 888 pages are.
A-Funny drawings of Calvin and Hobbes  
B-More Regulations
C-Loopholes
C is the correct answer. 
So in conclusion, libertarians are wrong. 

Tariffs and Trade Wars

At this point, I think saying that our president is insane may be the nicest way of putting it. The latest way of proving this seems to be by giving a voice to people who watched Roger And Me 30 years and have never shut up about it, or the man who directed Roger And Me 30 years ago and never shut up about it, by attempting to implement protectionists in the United States. So I figured we should actually look at some of his cases and talk about why he's obviously wrong.
One of the most common cases Donnie and his supporters have made is that Canada, the country Washington D.C. is currently targeting the hardest, has incredibly high tariffs on some products. What Donald seems to ignore is that many economists consider Canada's policy to be a bad thing. For instance, when IGM asked economists from many different schools of economics if "Adding new or higher import duties on products . . . to encourage producers to make them in the US - would be a good idea" 0% of them said yes. And before anyone mentions it, this includes David Autor, who wrote The China Shock.
Caroline Hoxby, an economist from Stanford, commented that "tariffs would make the average American worse off". This is a  statement that is so obvious that it shouldn't take a Stanford economist to explain that. Why do I say that? Well just look at the definition of tariffs. 
Tariffs, as defined by the Merriam Webster online dictionary are "a schedule of duties imposed . . . on imported or . . . exported goods". Basically, a tax that increases the cost of goods from a certain country. Now here's the question no tariff supporter is willing to answer, who pays that tax? The answer is, obviously the consumer. And while the average virtuous middle-class liberal may go on about how "I wouldn't mind paying more", he never thinks that some people can't pay more. Those are the people who are hurt the most. 
So the President is right when he says Canada has a high tariff rate. But as the old saying goes, if your friend (or in this case, someone you're trying to make an enemy) jumped off a bridge, would you? 
So it's been established that protectionism hurts people, that's obvious. However, does free trade help people? The answer is also as obvious, but in this case, it's a yes.
While it's very easy to imagine that free trade only helps the big companies that ship jobs over to China, that's far from the case. What the people who support protectionism never tell you is that said "outsourcing" lowers the price of products and, as such, gives us greater purchasing power. 
YouTuber Shane Killian (who I don't agree with on most issues, but has made informative and entertaining content on free trade) calculated that in 1993, one year before the implementation of NAFTA, it would have cost someone over $17,000 to have all of the features present in your average iPhone. And that's ignoring the features that he couldn't calculate because they didn't even exist in any form back in the 1990's. Don't believe me, how many times did you video call someone over the course of that entire decade? Post NAFTA, the iPhone X is so easy to get people can line up around the block, regardless of income, to buy the newest model. This is only because they use so much oversea labor. 
Now, some may respond that this will cost the country a large number of jobs. This is true, but putting the economy in a vacuum like this is never a good idea. The fact is, the elimination of these jobs from the United States economy has been nothing but a positive for the average worker for all the reasons listed above. The fact is, the economy will adjust. In fact, it already has adjusted. At least, that's what the Trumpers keep telling me. After all, more jobs left this country in Trump's first year than Obama's last. So the prices of products only go up but that doesn't matter because it will create jobs the economy doesn't need.
So now there's only one thing that the president and his supporters have left to rely on, the old idea of the trade deficit. This is one his supporters, including many this blog has already covered, have left to rely on. For this, all you really need to do is understand what the "trade deficit" is to understand why this doesn't make any sense.       
A trade deficit, as defined by Investopedia, is "an economic measure of international trade in which a country's imports exceeds its exports". Basically, a trade deficit is when a country buys more from another country than it gives out. However, what the anti-free trade crowd never tell you is that this number is 100% meaningless.
Let me show you what I mean. Did you know you have a trade deficit with any store you go to? You give them money, but they never give you any money. Do you care? Of course not, they gave you what you bought. 
What I'm getting at is, the trade deficit is also a pretty silly argument. 
All of this makes one thing perfectly clear, the United States needs free trade to survive and continue to be prosperous.  

Will Italy Make The Right Give Up On Capitalism?

In case you haven't heard, Italy is going to have a far right "populist" (in quotes because Republicans are almost never populist) government soon, at least that's what you'll hear if you listen to conservatives. Most notably, Infowars editor and chief Paul Joseph Watson. 
In his recent video, The Truth About Italy Paul spends more time than expected for a conservative praising welfare and going against capitalism. In fact, here's a list of some more liberal views Paul seems to have adapted. 
-Getting angry at EU commission president Juncker for saying "Italians need to work harder and stop blaming the EU for there problems" 
-Praising democracy (remember these are the same people who complained about "tyranny of the majority" when Trump was "elected") 
-Supporting welfare for mothers and child care provided by the government (I wonder how much longer until he supports Universal Healthcare)
-Most notability, the man who once made a video called Why Capitalism is Great seems to have given up on capitalism in exchange for, nationalist socialism I think. 
(Note: I'm not calling Paul a national socialist as in NAZI with that last statement. I'm simply saying he seems to have a nationalist social view while having an economic view similar to socialism. For as much as I disagree with Paul, calling him a NAZI would obviously be inaccurate.)
Of course, Paul also praises the new governments view that abortion and gay marriage are plots to depopulate the world or something. Did Paul become a secret liberal and is currently trying to re-redpill his audience while throwing in some harder right views in the hope they don't notice? But what I find most interesting, as already mentioned, is Paul giving up on capitalism. I mean it's not like he's the king of principles.

Twitter has suspended known Alt-Right extremist Steven Crowder. Wait, what? Crowder? Yes, Crowder. . . Censorship of conservatives MUST be addressed by lawmaker. #FreeCrowder

No one should be forced to provide a service. Just as a gay-owned print shop shouldn't be forced to make signs for the Westboro Baptist Church. 

His rationalwiki article (yes, I'm that kind of liberal) even has a whole section about his flip-flops. But what are his newfound issues with capitalism? I'm going to paraphrase, I linked the video a little earlier in the post if you're really curious:

Global capitalism has ruined culture and identity by allowing other cultures to exist together. 

 Of course, the idea that capitalism ruins culture is straight out of the views of Karl Marx himself. The idea that capitalism erodes culture is something that communists have been pushing for a long time. Paul is also happy that the new Italian government will make Italy full of Italian culture. It seems like someone who is angry about Miss America becoming communist (I'm not joking) seems to also not know about Stalin's Russification plan.
So have social conservatives given up on capitalism in order to keep the good old fashion views? Well honestly at this point I'm not even sure they had it. 
I remember back when wife with a purpose (you know, that really silly Paleoconserative) had a twitter account she posted an image that was farms back to back with cities and simply asked: "what went wrong?". Of course, the answer is obviously a free market that allowed such cities to happen. I also recall her conspiracy mongering about child tax credits leading to the great replacement (it's a very long story) but don't quote me on that. 
The fact is the new right has long given up on the free market in replace for moralism. And it's my hope that maybe the sane can slap some sense into them like we used to.