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On Frigid Individualism and Warm Collectivism
Is NYC Mayor Mamdani crazy when he says:
We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
First of all: that’s what our liberal friends believe. They think that life without a whole array of government programs to help the helpless is indeed a life out in the cold.
But I say that there is nothing colder and more ruthless than a government program. And fortunately, in the season of Mamdani we have the example of child-care program fraud in the State of Minnesota. Yes, but the children! No doubt, but I don’t think that the folks getting grants to run childcare facilitie without children are within a country mile of “the warmth of collectivism.” The warmth they experience is the warmth of being adjacent to political power.
As with almost everything about the Age of the Educated Class the notion of collectivism as warmth comes from the simple assumption that you can transfer the culture of the hunter-gatherer band or the agricultural village to the modern state.
No you can’t. The point of the hunter-gatherer band was that nobody had the power to order people around. The men sat around and sharpened their weapons and the women worked collectively to feed the band and keep the kids alive.
As for the agricultural village, each peasant family was expected to care for its own. But, as we know, in many feudal estates a starving peasant could volunteer to become a slave of the feudal lord — “head for food.”
So what is Mamdani getting at? I think that he is repurposing the basic difference between men and women. Men live in an world of individualism: they are nothing unless they prove themselves to their fellow men. If they don’t prove themelves they are out in the cold. Women live in community, always. They may make life miserable for each other complaining about someone: “I can’t believe she said that.” But the complaint is seldom made to the guilty party. And so women live in a world where they project warmth to each other, even if their hearts are cold.
Our lefty friends make a fundamental error. They assume that the community of the hunter-gatherer band and the agricultural village — which operate without a government — can obtain in a world with governments that tax and spend and regulate up the ying-yang, and which compel you, with the power of an army, a police, and an administrative state, to obey.
Now I was reading a post on X last week critiquing capitalism because of inequality and the power of corporations and the domination of markets by the dominant supplier.
Hey, sports fans! Capitalism and the market economy aren’t perfect. They are still run by mortal men and mortal women. Things go wrong, from time to time. The difference is that a government-run economy goes wrong, all the time.
The problem is that collectivism run by a state and an administration cannot work. The Science on this is encapsulated in my Four Laws:
Collectivism run by government cannot work because it cannot compute prices (Mises).
Government administration of the collective cannot work because it is only good at pursuing a single goal, as in war (Hayek). But in a nation at peace there are millions of goals, and the administration just can’t figure them all out, not in a hundred years.
Government regulation cannot work because of “regulatory capture” of goverment by the regulated industries (Stigler). Can you spell Somali child care facilities?
Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them (Chantrill). That’s because the real purpose of every government program is the money going out to the government’s supporters. The ostensible reason for the program is just window dressing. Or “decent drapery,” if you prefer.
For over a century our lefty friends have been living in a fantasy land and have refused to confront and understand the Science. There is the fact of the horrendous famines in both the USSR and Maoist China and the poverty and economic failure that forced both regimes to allow a modicum of a market economy.
Our lefty friends have bellowed for the last generation about “climate deniers” denying the Science of climate change. And now their climate Science is crumbling to dust.
The real problem is the persistence of “economic denial” on the left, refusing to accept the Science of the market economy. And let’s be clear. The history of the last 200 years and the astonishing economic growth, all over the world, is the most extensive Scientific Experiment in world history.
But our lefty friends are still in denial. They refuse to look at the theory and they refuse to look at the evidence. And millions of people continue to suffer and die as a result.
| perm | 01/02/26 11:28 pm ET | comments |
Oh But The Children
I am paying attention as our liberal friends react to the Nick Shirley viral YouTube on political corruption in Somalian Minnesota. Or is it Minnesotan Somalia?
One non-white beauty on CNN went into a long diatribe on The Children.
Who gave this random YouTuber a lincense to go around and check for fraud.. why does he want to cut off funding for children..
Because if President Trump suspends child-care spending because of rampant fraud, little children will suffer.
This is a bit different than Minnesota Gov. Walz. He has been playing the Race Card. Here we have a headline:
Nick Shirley Explodes After Walz Brands Fraud Critics ‘Racist’ as Minnesota Scandal Erupts
What did Our Nick say?
In one clip, Shirley fired back: ‘You’re going to call a white person racist for calling out facts?’
Now, I believe that we need to do better than that. Because Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. I think that Rules 5 & 6 apply.
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”
So I think that Nick Shirely should have said something like this:
“Hey, Governor. I think you should check your wallet. Your Race Card has expired.”
See what I mean? That comment includes both ridicule and fun. There is nothing quite like a joke to get your point across.
See, the point of playing the Race Card is to humiliate and shame the other player as a mean-spirited sniveling Racist. So, if you are on the receiving end you need to jump the tracks and put the Race Card player on the defensive.
And there is nothing worse than taking someone out on a date and finding that your credit card has expired.
OK. So we have dealt with the Race Card. But I wonder about “But the Children!”
I guess that Race Card is a guy thing, because it’s an insult: You’re a Racist!” That’s fine, but attacks on people because of “The Children” and “The Poor” are clearly a girl thing because it’s a complaint.
(This is based on my deep philosophical notion, about which most philosophers have No Clue, that men have a Culture of Insult, and women have a Culture of Complaint.)
The thing about the Culture of Complaint is that women only use the direct complaint to a man or to a shop assistant. And when they do that they are playing the victim. When women are gathered together they don’t complain about anyone present. They complain about women not present, using phrases like “I can’t believe she said that.”
So my question is: how do we counter the “But the Children” complaint?
I don’t know, but I’ll ask my unconscious mind to work on it.
| perm | 01/01/26 11:39 pm ET | comments |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Liberals: a bunch of people insisting people who look different need saving — Derek Hunter
Laffer’s Five Pillars: low-rate broad-based flat tax; spending restraint; sound money; minimal regulations; free trade
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Liberal Oppression: The Liberal Hegemony
