When critics point out the poverty, famine, repression, and economic stagnation that have historically accompanied communist systems, defenders often respond:

"Communism doesn't oppose private property. Just look at China."

The argument sounds persuasive until you examine what actually happened.

China is not evidence that communism works.

China is evidence that communism failed badly enough that its leaders were forced to retreat from some of its core economic principles.

For decades after the communist revolution, China attempted to organize society according to Marxist principles. The results were catastrophic. Central planning distorted production, destroyed incentives, and contributed to widespread poverty. The Great Leap Forward alone became one of the deadliest man-made disasters in human history.

The turning point came when Chinese leaders gradually allowed greater room for private enterprise, profit, investment, and market activity.

In other words, prosperity began to emerge not because China became more communist, but because it became less communist.

This is the irony that many defenders miss.

The most productive sectors of the Chinese economy are not examples of communist economics succeeding. They are examples of market mechanisms succeeding despite the continued presence of an authoritarian communist state.

The lesson is not that communism and capitalism are secretly the same thing.

The lesson is that reality imposes constraints on ideology.

A society can denounce profit, but it still needs production.

It can denounce property rights, but it still needs investment.

It can denounce markets, but it still needs a way to coordinate billions of economic decisions.

Eventually, reality demands concessions.

China's leaders discovered what countless governments before them discovered: prosperity requires incentives, ownership, investment, and trade. The more they permitted these things, the more wealth their country generated.

This creates an uncomfortable contradiction for communist advocates.

If China's success is evidence for communism, then why did that success accelerate only after market reforms were introduced?

Why do defenders constantly point to the least communist aspects of China's economy as proof that communism works?

The answer is simple.

Because the evidence points in the opposite direction.

China's economic growth does not demonstrate the strength of communist economics. It demonstrates the necessity of the principles communism was originally designed to abolish.

Pointing to China's market reforms as proof communism works is like pointing to a life raft as proof the ship isn't sinking.

The life raft is evidence that someone recognized a problem and tried to survive it.

Likewise, China's embrace of markets is not proof that communist economics succeeded.

It is proof that communist economics encountered reality and was forced to make concessions.

CHICAGO, IL — The Chicago Bears organization announced today that it will be relocating out of the city due to all of its players and fans having been killed in drive-bys.

Check out the meme on things leftists will never understand …

On the contrary: I think most leftists DO understand these things. They simply don’t care. Leftists — the serious ones — are narcissists and sociopaths. (Their supporters are simply gullible.) If their underlying psychological self-talk spoke freely, it would say: “I am right. If that’s not the way things are, that’s the way they SHOULD be. I don’t want any back talk. I am virtue — hear me roar. You will do as I say, and if there’s any back talk from you — I will shame you. And if you’re enough of a threat, I will kill you.”

Narcissism and sociopathy have been around since the first human society. These types have always polluted many families. These terms are synonymous with “tyrant.” Tyranny is as old as the hills. What’s different about today’s leftist “progressives” is they pose as something original. There’s nothing original about despots.

The post “I Am Virtue. Hear Me Roar,” Shout the Woke appeared first on Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. | Living Resources Center.

AI disarmament?

What a REAL moral leader would say

Pope Leo has urged AI “disarmament,” saying:

“ . . . merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed . . . What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating.”

A “more active political involvement” is an indecent euphemism for: the coercive power of the state. And since that’s police-backed bureaucrats issuing diktats to entrepreneurs and engineers, yes, they are more than “capable of slowing things down.” (The “everything” that “is accelerating” part refers to the accelerating ability to solve problems and create value—which is the normal result of a free, unregulated economy.)

Rather than listening to a man whose stock-in-trade is superstition, dogma, and authoritarianism, consider what a genuine moral leader would say.

We are witnessing the rise of a new power, a power of inconceivable dimensions: the power of AI.

Like all the transformative inventions before it, AI can be used for creation or for destruction, to serve human life or to crush it.

From the wheel to electricity to computers, all great advances can be and partly have been put in the service of evil.

And so it is said that AI can be used to enslave all of humanity. Or even extinguish human life on this planet.

Faced with this terrifying possibility, only one conclusion can be drawn.

The decent, humane peoples of the earth must accelerate their development of AI--in order to be certain that the good maintains superiority over the evil. The free world must not lose this epochal “arms race” to the death-worshipping Mullahs, the state-worshipping fascists and communists, or to the personal- power-worshipping Russian despot.

We can debate how to accelerate AI. We can debate whether the best path is government funding or (as I hold) de-regulating the entrepreneurs. But we cannot debate the urgent, all-consuming need for the U.S. and its allies to stay ahead—far ahead—in this new arms race.

To hold back and watch the ascendancy go to Russia, Iran, or China would be monstrous.

“Disarm”? Any call for slowing down would be obeyed by the good and laughed at by the evil.

Should the police carry nightsticks and slingshots while facing machine-gun toting criminals?

Should we have abandoned the Manhattan Project and let the Nazis develop the bomb?

Arms are not the problem, evil systems are.

Only those who care about morality would listen to a call to retard the development of AI. Regimes that slaughter their own citizens have no concern for morality.

Treaties with tyrannies have never worked. Cease-fires are broken. Hamas’ October 7th massacre came during a cease-fire. Soviet Russia cheated on every treaty it signed.

And now, after the massive bombing of Iran, after the crippling oil embargo on Iran’s oil exports, our president can’t even get the Mullahs to lie about their plans to build nuclear weapons.

The Pope’s pacifist encyclical is a call for the good to surrender to the evil.

In the name of all that is decent, humane, and morally right, I say:

Damn the Torquemadas, full speed ahead.