Some recommended reading

There are two articles in  the Summer 2012 issue of The Objective Standard that I can recommend:

The first one is Why Marxism? Evil Laid Bare by C. Bradley Thompson. –  You have certainly heard such notions as “Communism is good on paper, but it doesn’t work in real life” – or “A classless society, such as Marxism envisions, is a noble ideal, but unfortunately this ideal can never be achieved” – or “Communism shouldn’t be judged by the atrocities perpetrated by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etcetera, etcetera; those are deviations, not true Communism or Marxism”. Or some variations on those themes.

You may also have heard that Socialism is dead anyway; it died with fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire; and so, Socialism is no longer a real threat. That might be true in the former Soviet empire, but Marxism is still very much alive in academia. (And, of course, there are still some pockets of Socialism in the world. They probably will collapse under their own weight, but that will take some time.)

None of this is true. Thompson explains how Marxism is evil already on paper.

I won’t attempt to summarize his reasoning; a short summary wouldn’t do it justice. So go read the whole article!

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The second article is How Would Government be Funded in a Free Society? by Craig Biddle. – This is an elaboration on Ayn Rand’s “Government Financing in a Free Society” in The Virtue of Selfishness. Biddle systematically goes through the case for a limited government and its basic functions (police, military, courts); and to Ayn Rand’s own suggestion – voluntary taxation through contract insurance – he has an interesting addition as to how this would be implemented in practice. Again, I won’t attempt to summarize: read the article!

Just one reflection of my own: In today’s world the rich are made to contribute more than the poor to the government by such measures as progressive taxation. The rationale behind this, of course, is that the rich can afford it and the poor cannot. Ayn Rand’s suggestion would mean that this problem would be solved without any coercion: Big companies have a greater stake in having their contracts insured than small companies; so they will automatically pay more for it; and the rest of us poor wouldn’t have to pay taxes at all. (Biddle writes about this, too.)

If you are not a subscriber to The Objective Standard, the articles may be downloaded as pdf-files for $3.95 each. It is worth the money.

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While I’m at it, and while I am writing about the evil of Marxism/Communism, I would also recommend an article on the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s web site: What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us by Yuri N. Maltsev. Here you can read what “universal health care” has lead to in socialist countries and where it will lead us if implemented in the US. Just one horror quote (I could give many more):

In order to receive minimal attention by doctors and nursing personnel, patients had to pay bribes. I even witnessed a case of a “nonpaying” patient who died trying to reach a lavatory at the end of the long corridor after brain surgery. Anesthesia was usually “not available” for abortions or minor ear, nose, throat, and skin surgeries. This was used as a means of extortion by unscrupulous medical bureaucrats.

To improve the statistics concerning the numbers of people dying within the system, patients were routinely shoved out the door before taking their last breath.