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About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

The United States has Turned into a Shithole Country

The Biden regime has turned the United States into a laughing stock. Not that the US wasn’t already a laughing matter, but now, oh boy!, even patriots are laughing.

You know those sanctions that were going to bring down Russia? Well, Biden’s sanctions drove up, not down, Russian oil shipments and revenues by 300,000 barrels a day as reported by the Wall Street Journal, and doubled the price of gasoline to Americans as reported by the American Automobile Association. https://www.rt.com/business/556989-us-fuel-prices-surge-record/

You know all those tanks and weapons promised to speed Ukraine’s defeat of Russia, well, sorry, the Russians aren’t supplying us with the titanium necessary for tank armor.

The United States government is so stupid and incompetent that the Washington morons do not yet comprehend that by becoming involved in Russia’s limited intervention in eastern Ukraine, formerly part of Russia, Washington is doing more than making the West combatants in the conflict and, thereby, potential targets. The people in Washington have to be the most stupid in the world. They are convincing Russia that her goal of demilitarizing and neutralizing Ukraine requires conquest of the entire country, not just destroying the Ukrainian army sent to reconquer the two breakaway republics in the Russian Donbass region.

In other words, by interfering in the conflict with the hope of bogging down Russia in a Vietnam-type situation, Washington is convincing the Kremlin that Russia cannot achieve her objective without conquering the entirety of Ukraine. Faced with this task, Russia is unlikely to use a go-slow-save-the-civilians war policy. “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping ahead,” warns Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, but Washington is incapable of hearing anything that sounds like truth.

With Russia strengthened by Western incompetence, Washington has turned its guns against the Republican leading candidate for the governorship of Michigan. Ryan Kelley, leading in the polls, was knocked out of the race when the Democrats had their politicized FBI arrest him for “insurrection” in the false narrative of the “January 6” plot of Trump white supremacists intending to overthrow the US government, not with weapons or armed force, but by taking selfies of themselves sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s chair. For the woke Democrats, a few people wandering around the Capitol is all it takes to overthrow the Unipower US government. https://www.rt.com/news/556900-michigan-republican-arrested-capitol/

In the South American banana republics, former presidents are subject to being arrested by their successors. In much of the world, government is just a place where interest groups fight for power, and as the saying goes, all is fair in love and war. By arresting a political candidate to keep him from being elected, the United States has now joined this third world group. The Nazified Democrats have put the writing on the wall for the wimp Republicans.

The Democrats are abusing their legislative power by conducting “hearings” that President Trump and his supporters are guilty of sedition by attempting an insurrection. In actual fact, Trump’s supporters were listening to Trump’s speech a mile or more away at the Washington Monument, when the alleged “insurrection,” a FBI-orchestrated event, occurred at the Capitol.

Bloomberg “News,” a leading presstitute lie factory, demonizes patriotic Americans as insurrectionists who attempted a coup. Be sure you understand the nonsense of the accusation. Americans who came to Washington to show their support for a presentation to Congress of evidence that the Democrats stole the election from Trump have been arrested as “insurrectionists.” There were not enough “insurrectionists” at the Capitol to overthrow a McDonalds hamburger restaurant. Even if the Capitol had been occupied by people who refused to leave, how does occupying a building amount to a coup?

The purpose of the orchestrated “insurrection” was to breakup and prevent the presentation of the evidence of a stolen election to Congress, which the orchestration succeeded in doing.
Observing the gullibility of Americans, the Democrats and the whore media that services them have turned support for an investigation of election theft into a “deadly attempt to block the transfer of power” and into an “attempted coup” that was “the bloody culmination of a seven-part plan that began before the 2020 election–a plan ultimately moved forward by one person”–Donald Trump. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-06-10/bloomberg-evening-briefing-the-jan-6-committee-makes-the-case-against-trump

Well, Trump forgot to arm his troops and he assembled them at the wrong place. 99% of the racist Trump deplorables were assembled too far away to participate in the attempted coup.

Joe Biden Meet President Calvin Coolidge

Despite the blindingly obvious leftward political bias of the press, there is a growing chorus of dissatisfaction toward President Biden, reflected in historically poor approval ratings.

It seems that everything he touches turns to dross. From inflation not seen for decades to an unprecedented expansion of the welfare state, not to mention an eagerness to evade constitutional limits and coerce Americans everywhere he looks, based on what could only be termed “political” science (though I apologize to political scientists for any perceived slur), he has been a disaster. To pile on, he tells Americans that spending trillions more dollars costs nothing and claims credit for recent growth, which largely represents recovery from what we would never have been forced to endure if Hurricane Biden hadn’t blown through the economy.

As Doug Bandow recently noted, “Internationally, the President has done no better,” summarizing Biden’s performance as having “earned an indelible record for incompetence.”

Bandow is reminded of Jimmy Carter’s struggles, reflecting an administration that was “hopelessly naïve and incompetent, and in the end, desperate.” And while that is an analogy to what Biden’s performance is like, I find an analogy to what it is not like more powerful.

That inverse analogy is to Calvin Coolidge, who, despite mediocre evaluations from historians who like Presidents who produce dramatic change, rewriting history more to their liking (perhaps why the increasingly undeniable smell of failure has even turned some of them away from Biden), produced outstanding results for Americans without sacrificing our freedoms largely because he respected their rights and liberties to live their own lives and stayed within the confines laid out in the Constitution,

What did those results include? Under Coolidge, the top income tax rate of 65 percent was eventually cut to 20 percent. The stock market began its unprecedented “Roaring 20s” climb as it became clear through 1924 that Coolidge’s tax reduction bill would pass. In both his first and last year in office, federal receipts were $3.8 billion and expenditures were $3.1 billion In between, he cut the national debt from $22.3 billion to $16.9 billion. His policies took more than a million people off the income tax rolls, and 98 percent of Americans paid no income tax at the end of his term.

As a result, America prospered under Coolidge. Real economic growth averaged 7 percent per year while he was in office, while inflation averaged only 0.4 percent. Investment, manufacturing output, and disposable income rose dramatically, and unemployment averaged 3.3 percent. That remarkable record explains why, after Coolidge outpolled his Democratic opponent by nearly 2 to 1 in 1924, he would have won in another landslide if he had run again in 1928. But unfortunately for America, he did not.

One might ask why there is such a gap between Coolidge’s success and his reputation. In large part, it is because he advocated individualism, as clearly spelled out in his speeches (which he composed himself, in sharp contrast to Biden, who can now barely deliver words written for him), and the newspaper column he wrote after leaving the Presidency. For example, his speech to mark the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is well worth people’s attention. While that seems appropriate for the only President born on the Fourth of July, it is so distant from the modern mindset that many now cannot understand why someone who, as Senator, Governor, Vice-President, and President, viewed government intervention in broad areas of life as a problem rather than a panacea.

Some people’s unduly negative evaluations of Coolidge also come from attributing the origins of the Great Depression under Herbert Hoover, who had been his Secretary of Commerce. But they have not done so because of any evidence that his policies were responsible. Along with monetary policy blunders, the Great Depression was triggered by Hoover’s abandonment of Coolidge’s policies, in favor of disasters ranging from erecting monumental trade barriers to sharply raising tax rates. Coolidge made the chasm between the two men clear when he said of Hoover:

“That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad.”

The differences between Coolidge’s results and Biden’s results are like night and day. But I believe “Silent Cal” is even more useful today in illustrating what the underlying approach the Biden administration has applied to Americans is the opposite of. Coolidge closely reflected our Founders’ insights in what he wrote and said, which we would truly profit from, given how far we have deviated from those ideas in modern America.

Consider just some of the wisdom that not so silent Cal has to offer us about our current circumstances.

On Liberty and Rights

There is no greater service we can render the oppressed of the earth than to maintain inviolate the freedom of our own citizens.

Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery.

Freedom is not only bought with a great price; it is maintained by unremitting effort.

There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.

The individual has rights…And the protection of rights is righteous.

Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing.

When once the right of the individual to liberty and equality is admitted, there is no escape from the conclusion that he alone is entitled to the rewards of his own industry. Any other conclusion would necessarily imply either privilege or servitude.

The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized, our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.

A government which requires of the people the contribution of the bulk of their substance and rewards cannot be classed as a free government.

I want the people of America to be able to work less for the Government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. That is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can re-establish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very distinct curtailment of our liberty.

If ever the citizen comes to feel that our government does not protect him in the free and equal assertion of his rights… he will withdraw his allegiance from that government.

In its main features the Declaration of Independence…is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man…are ideals.

Our doctrine of equality and liberty and humanity comes from our belief in the brotherhood of man.

On the Constitution–Defender of American Liberty

To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.

The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.

Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.

There is scarcely a word in the constitution of any of our States or of our nation that was not written there for the purpose of protecting the liberties of the people from some servitude which a despotic government had at some time imposed upon them.

[But] the matchless wisdom that is enshrined in our Constitution…needs constant effort and tireless vigilance for their protection and support.

We need not concern ourselves much about the rights of property if we will faithfully observe the rights of persons. Under our institutions their rights are supreme. It is not property but the right to hold property, both great and small, which our Constitution guarantees.

Unfortunately the Federal Government has strayed far afield from its legitimate business. It has trespassed upon fields where there should be no trespass. If we could confine our Federal expenditures to the legitimate obligations and functions of the Federal Government, a material reduction would be apparent. But far more important than this would be its effect upon the fabric of our constitutional form of government, which tends to be gradually weakened and undermined by this encroachment.

On Freedom of Commerce–Outgrowth of Liberty

Where commerce has flourished there civilization has increased. Today it is not the battle fleet, but the mercantile fleet which in the end will determine the destiny of nations.

The chief business of the American people is business…In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the encouragement of science, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it.

We cannot improve the condition of the people or reform human nature by intruding the Nation into the affairs of the States or despoiling the people of their business.

I would like it if the country could think as little as possible about the Government and give their time and attention more undividedly about the conduct of the private business of the country.

Our country is an exceedingly good example of the fact that if production be encouraged and increased, then distribution fairly well takes care of itself…no other country ever approached ours in the equal and general distribution of prosperity.

We have had many attempts at regulation of industrial activity by law. Some of it has proceeded on the theory that if those who enjoyed material prosperity used it for wrong purposes, such prosperity should be limited or abolished. That is as sound as it would be to abolish writing to prevent forgery.

An expanding prosperity requires that the largest possible amount of surplus income should be invested in productive enterprise under the direction of the best personal ability. This will not be done if the rewards of such action are largely taken away by taxation.

That tax is theoretically best which interferes least with business.

The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success but to create conditions under which every one will have a better chance to be successful.

No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay the taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil. It is your fellow workers who are ordered to work for the Government every time an appropriation bill is passed.

No complicated scheme of relief, no plan for Government fixing of prices, no resort to the public Treasury will be of any permanent value.

Government price fixing, once started, has alike no justice and no end. It is an economic folly from which this country has every right to be spared.

On A Government Consistent With Liberty

What the people cannot do their government cannot do.

After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.

I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

Of course necessary costs must be met, proper functions of the Government performed…But the people must know that their Government is placing upon them no unnecessary burden.

The success of the Government does not lie in wringing all the revenue it can from the people, but in making their burden as light and fairly distributed as possible, consistent with the proper maintenance of the necessary public functions.

Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.

The people cannot look to legislation generally for success.

There can be no perfect control of personal conduct by national legislation.

[I will not] surrender to every emotional movement seeking remedies for economic conditions by legislation.

You can display no greater wisdom than by resisting proposals for needless legislation. It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

We have got so many regulatory laws already that in general I feel that we would be just as well off if we didn’t have any more.

We do not need more law.

If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.

We cannot improve the condition of the people or reform human nature by…despoiling the people of their business.

When depression in business comes we begin to be very conservative in our financial affairs. We save our money and take no chances in its investment. Yet in our political actions we go in the opposite direction. We begin to support radical measures and cast our votes for those who advance the most reckless proposals. This is a curious and illogical reaction.

The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill…the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes.

I am not in favor of imposing any new kinds of taxes.

Whenever the state of the Treasury can permit, I believe in a reduction of taxes. But I am not advocating tax reduction merely for the benefit of the taxpayer; I am advocating it for the benefit of the country.

When one looks at Calvin Coolidge’s record and his words, particularly his close adherence to the long-since eroded principles on which America was based, it is easy to see why, despite all the historical mudslinging that he has been the victim of, he might well have been our Founders’ favorite 20th century President. It is time we looked under the blanket of obscurity and calumny that has been thrown over his record and his ideas, so that we can rediscover that wisdom. But if we do so, the vast shortcomings of the Biden administration, and how it has truly earned sharp opposition, will become even clearer.

Gary Galles

Made available by the American Institute for Economic Research.

NULLIFY the Biden Regime

“That this assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact [federal Constitution], to which the states are parties…. that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”

— The Virginia Resolution, by James Madison, arguing for state and local nullification of federal law when federal law is unconstitutional.

Is This What You Had In Mind, America?

Is this what you had in mind, America? Mass shootings one after another… Government paralyzed, not by disagreements, but by hate… The ongoing loss of constitutional rights… Inflation… Stagnation… Despondency, especially among the young… Millions caught in a seemingly unbreakable cycle of poverty.

Is this what you had in mind, America, when you said God had no place in public schools, or when you made local movie theaters a cesspool of illicit sex and explicit satanism? Was this the intent when you made the local mall something like a carnival fun house with music and imagery from the pit of hell?

You made the military a giant guinea pig for social experimentation, turned military academies into institutions of wokeness that hate fundamental American values, and you promoted the most politically correct into the highest positions of authority. Even though the rank and file of your military remains the best in the world, your leaders fail them, as in Afghanistan.

Through abortion, you taught the young that human life has no value, and you wonder why suicide is the leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 34 — or why 18-year-olds shoot up schools and supermarkets. In school, you turned sex education into an opportunity to promote sexual perversions of all kinds. And you wonder why one in five Americans is mentally ill. You shred families. You disparage the idea of that children need fathers and mothers, and you can’t figure out why they bully and cheat and turn to violence.

You made your music all about sin and sensuality — degrading rather than uplifting. You made leaders out of the loudest, least thoughtful among us. You made a god out of popularity on social media. You replaced statesmanship with the poison-pal politics of hate. You allowed the media to become your thought shepherds rather than your factfinders.

And what about you, Church? Is this what you had in mind?

Did you plan to become weak and ineffective? When you traded in Bible-infused messages with pop psychology, is this what you had in mind? Is that what you wanted when you made entertaining children the priority over teaching them?

God says, “Look to Me,” but you look instead to political saviors. In fact, you look to man first in all things, leaving God as a last resort. And why not? After all, you teach that the great God, Creator of all things, is nothing more than a friendly little Pal whose primary purpose is to help you feel good about yourself.

Is this what you had in mind, Church, when you chose to embrace the world’s definitions of prosperity and blessing rather than God’s — or chose a saccharine-sweet façade instead of the glorious reality of the omnipotent God? Is this what you had in mind when you chose to embrace evil, rather than to overcome evil with good — or when you chose cheap virtue signaling over faithful evangelism?

When you threw away reverence, did you have this in mind? You tried to make church doctrine all things to all people. You wanted to be liked and not seen as peculiar. But by watering down the Gospel, you laid your own children on Moloch’s altar.

A remnant remains — lit from within by the glowing fires of the Holy Spirit. But to a stunning extent, the Church is drowning in worldliness.

When the people of earth need more than ever for the Church to be distinct, it has emulated the world so long and with such ardor, that people have a hard time telling one from the other. But God still says, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate”! (2 Corinthians 6:17, KJV)

Hal Lindsey

Is This January 6 Show Trial Even Real Life?

Tucker Carlson’s Thursday night show was a special feature on the January 6 war crimes trial

I have mostly stopped following the whole January 6 drama. It’s just too much, and I just don’t care.

But now they are doing the actual hearings, which appear to be some kind of Nuremberg-style war crimes trial against Americans who protested the 2020 election. If you want to be more politically correct in your analysis, you could call it a “Soviet-style show trial,” but I think that would be less accurate. The Soviets built a system of laws designed to facilitate show trials, whereas Nuremberg was a drastic and totally unprecedented departure from Western norms of jurisprudence. This January 6 circus show is a drastic departure from the established laws of this country, and appears to be setting the standard for a new kind of legal system.

So, what exactly is going on here?

For some background, here is what Wikipedia has to say about January 6:

I think that pretty much sums it up.

But that isn’t enough for those in the government. They are continuing to claim that the January 6 protest was an “insurrection,” despite the fact that no one had guns.

For a bit of context, while this is the number one story in America, several other things are happening:

  • We are the closest we’ve ever been to a nuclear war in all of history
  • Inflation is increasing so rapidly that it is wrecking the ability of even well-off people to live normal lives
  • We’re headed straight toward some kind of monumental economic crisis
  • Kids are being turned into trannies on purpose by government schools
  • Crime has skyrocketed to the point where it is virtually impossible to live a normal life in any major urban center

The Sanhedrin said – and the media agreed – that “our democracy is at risk.” I don’t really understand what that means when they say it, but as a statement in a vacuum, it’s obviously true. I’m not a huge fan of democracy – at all – but it’s the system we’ve had for 150 years or so now, and it’s a system that at the very least will assure some rights of the people, even while it causes severe social degradation and corruption.

This system of democracy is now being phased out in favor of an open authoritarian system. By giving these new powers to the Congress, which effectively allows the legislative branch to take on executive powers, we’re fundamentally altering the entire structure of the government.

This is not a joke – the FBI is rounding people up for refusing to participate in this scam. Congress doesn’t have the power to order the FBI to round people up, but they’re just doing it anyway. When the FBI rounds you up, it has been, up until now, for the purpose of putting you before the judicial branch of government – not the Congress. There are various loopholes and technicalities being exploited here of course, but we are seeing the final result now, which is this Nuremberg thing. This has never happened before in American history.

You can talk about Ray Epps and the pipe bombs and the police opening the doors and the secret security camera footage – but the point is, none of that is required to be entered into the record here, because this is not a real court. It is a fake court, with a Congressional committee pretending to be a court, and it nullifies the concept of separation of powers, which if you graduated third grade, you know is the basis of our government’s structure.

So beyond simply destroying democracy, they are going back further, and wrecking the Constitutional foundation of the US government.

From this point forward, everything is going to be very different. Obviously, we’ve been seeing the erosion of all of the systems of government for a long time now, and it’s been speeding up, but this January 6 Sanhedrin is a horse of a different color.

The implications of this are that the government is in the process of solidifying total power, where they are just able to do anything they want. This obviously isn’t about January 6 – no one cares about that, including the people conducting this farce. This is about completely destroying the remnants of a civilized system of law and order.

It’s hard to believe this is even real life. It feels, on some level, like I am living in some kind of surreal false reality.

Liz Cheney should have a sign over her head reading: “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.”

From here on out, things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.

We’re going as far south as south goes.

Don’t Get Rid of Guns. Get Rid of the GOVERNMENT.

Gun owners: JUST IGNORE any gun control legislation. Our rulers are EVIL and LAWLESS.

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Secure the schools? Better idea: DEFUND THE SCHOOLS. Private schools are not killing fields; only government-run schools are.

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President Joe Biden’s approval rating with Hispanic Americans has plummeted to just 24 percent, a new Quinnipiac Poll finds.
So what? So long as we have subjective mail-in voting and a media so dishonest it would make the Soviets and the Maoists blush, we will not have any change.

None of us can do anything about election fraud. But millions of us do have the power TO IGNORE THE WILL OF THIS GOVERNMENT. Just ignore them. Bring the whole rotten system down by refusing to participate in it.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Capitalism and The Swedish Welfare State

As Ayn Rand observed, a compromise between two opposite principles – such as between freedom and government controls in a welfare state – is never sustainable,

Prompted by my recent visit to Finland, I listened to a lecture about the country’s challenges in the new world economy. It was delivered by the controversial banker and economist Björn Wahlroos at Aalto University Business School, my alma mater. (The lecture is available on YouTube, with English subtitles promised soon. Wahlroos’ talk starts at minute 37. Most comments about Sweden start about minute 65).

Dr. Wahlroos is a controversial figure in Finland, a country committed to the egalitarian welfare state, because he has been a provocative proponent of free markets and a critic of the welfare state. In this lecture, however, he argued that it is possible to have both the welfare state and market freedom if a country approaches them “sensibly.”

Wahlroos criticized the Finnish government for the zero GDP growth rate in the last 13 years and attributed it to the government’s “insensible” approach to growing the welfare state while failing to facilitate economic growth through market mechanisms. He cited Sweden as a model, where the modest annual GDP growth of 2% in the same period has financed welfare spending and avoided accumulating government debt.

In a 10-year period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, Sweden’s social democratic government recognized the unsustainability of the ever-ballooning welfare state and set to restructure it (without giving it up). According to Dr. Wahlroos, Sweden did this primarily by lowering taxes and by reforming labor laws. It abolished the wealth tax for its wealthiest citizens in 1995 and the inheritance and gift taxes for everybody about ten years later. It also increased the tax deduction for employment income and changed labor laws, which encouraged those on welfare to go to work. Finally, in 2020 the government introduced a flat state income tax of 20%.

For such improvements of people’s economic freedom, Wahlroos deservedly praised Sweden. However, his endorsement of the Swedish welfare state model which permits modest economic growth by slightly expanding economic freedom, is indefensible. He argued that Sweden (where he now lives) represents a middle ground (a compromise) between the Asian tigers (such as Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) and Venezuela. Therefore, it is “a sensible home for industry and also a tolerable home for capitalists.”

Dr. Wahlroos’ argument is indefensible because a compromise between two opposite principles – such as between freedom and government controls in a welfare state – is never sustainable, as Ayn Rand has observed.

Why? Because a system based on opposite principles is unstable and always moving toward either direction. There is no “sensible” middle to which the proponents of the principles can agree in the long term.

A welfare state based on a mixed economy, is founded on the idea that society – all its members collectively – must take care of everyone’s needs. In a welfare state, those who have more needs must be taken care of by those who are more productive and therefore can afford to help.

This principle of “to each according to his needs and from each according to his ability” is in a fundamental conflict with the opposite principle that individuals should be free to pursue their own interests. The latter includes trading with others and not being forced (through taxation and regulation) to give away the wealth they have produced so that the government can satisfy others’ needs.

The welfare state with lower taxes that incentivize production of goods and services and thereby wealth creation may be tolerable to some capitalists, as Wahlroos argued. In a world that consists mainly of welfare states of varying degrees and dictatorships of various stripes, this may be understandable.

However, why should capitalists – those who accumulate wealth by producing and invest it in further production and wealth creation – want to compromise and merely have “tolerable” conditions for production?

They do so because they have embraced the welfare state as an ideal. They have accepted that it is their duty to fulfill the needs of others by enabling the welfare state. But if the capitalists and the producers really wanted to increase everyone’s prosperity and wellbeing, they should reject this wrong ideal. Instead, they should embrace true capitalism: the principles of individual freedom and free trade. It is only such a system that can maximize and sustain economic growth and wealth creation, and therefore, human wellbeing.

The evidence, both historic and current, shows clearly that freedom leads to the greatest prosperity and wellbeing for all, and that government controls hinder them. If human flourishing is the goal, the compromise between the principles of individual freedom and the government control that is the welfare state should not be tolerated or embraced.

Jaana Woiceshyn

Jaana Woiceshyn teaches business ethics and competitive strategy at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Canada. How to Be Profitable and Moral” is her first solo-authored book. Visit her website at profitableandmoral.com.