Comparable Worth

 

Comparable Worth

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: This article was submitted in 1984 for the “Southern National Newsletter” of the Southern National Party. The article has been slightly edited.]

“Comparable worth” is beginning to replace the chimera of “equal pay for equal work.” (The reason that equal pay for equal work is losing to comparable worth is that it has failed to transfer enough wealth from the productive to the politically powerful.) But what is comparable worth? How should wages be determined?

In a free market, the consumer determines wages. Wages are paid according to how much one contributes to society. Everyone is paid what he is worth. (If a person believes that he is underpaid, he is free to find a job that pays more.) However, government intervention distorts a worker’s real worth.

The government can distort wages in many different ways. It can do it indirectly by granting monopolistic privileges to labor unions and public utilities. Most of its economic regulations distort wages to some degree. These regulations create nonproductive and otherwise unnecessary positions. Businesses are forced to hire people who do nothing but placate governmental officials. Taxes can have both an indirect and a direct impact on wage rates.

Besides taxes, the government directly distorts wages in several other ways. The most obvious is to fix wages as was done during the wage freeze of the 1970s. Also, the government fixes a minimum wage and forbids anyone from working if his economic contribution to society falls below this arbitrary number. Further, it distorts wages by forcing businesses to hire a minimum number of politically privileged groups (commonly called minorities, although they may not be in the minority and although many minorities are not so privileged). Moreover, it dictates equal pay for equal work. (No two people do equal work because no two people are equal. No two people can be equal because no two people are identical. Only identical people can do equal work. Yet, the government does not let the facts stand in the way of its lust for power.) Now, it is pushing an idea that will give it complete control over the workers and the economy — comparable worth.

Comparable worth is an arbitrary and subjective approach that attempts to compare the tens of thousands of different occupations in the United States and to determine the relative value of each when compared with all other occupations. The comparable worth approach subjectively determines the economic contribution of each occupation to society. This means that one’s political influence determines one’s economic worth. White-collar workers develop comparable worth schemes. Not unexpectedly, these schemes always elevate white-collar jobs and lower blue-collar jobs. The subjective approach of comparable worth would replace the objective approach of the free market in determining wages. Bureaucrats would determine wages instead of consumers.

The outcome of the comparable worth approach would be economic chaos. The government would gain complete control over the lives of every worker. Class conflict, the lifeblood of democracy, would be encouraged. Thus, the blue-collar worker, who is normally discriminated against by comparable worth, would be pitted against the white-collar worker. Courts would be filled with litigation. The wealth of the politically powerful would rise, although their economic contribution to their fellow man would decline. Of course, the government would grow astronomically as it tried to administer this draconian program. All this would be the result of using the arbitrary and subjective approach of comparable worth to determine wages instead of the objective and unbiased approach of the free market.

If the desired goal is tyranny and a larger and more powerful government, then wages should be determined by comparable worth. If one should be paid according to his political influence, then wages should be determined by comparable worth. If the desired goal is liberty and justice, then wages should be determined by the free market. If one should be paid according to his economic contribution to his fellow man, then wages should be determined by the free market.

Copyright © 1984, 2026 by Thomas C. Allen.

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Tariffs as Revenue

Tariffs as Revenue

Thomas Allen

Some people, like President Trump, suggest replacing the federal income tax with tariffs. Tariffs are heralded as a means to increase employment and wages and to reduce, if not eliminate, dependency on foreign sources.

The primary benefit of replacing income tax with tariffs is that the federal government's size would need to be reduced by 80 to 90 percent. That is about the size of the federal government that tariffs could support without exploding debt that would dwarf the current federal debt — this assumes that the tariff is for revenue and not protectionism. 

Replacing the income tax with tariffs will, at least in the short run, result in a large-scale loss of jobs. More than a million federal employees will lose their jobs. Likewise, a much larger number of people whose livelihoods depend on federal contracts will lose theirs. Also, many State and local employees will lose their jobs because these jobs depend on federal grant money. Many people whose jobs depend on the federal government will become unemployed.

Additionally, if the goal of the tariff is to promote and protect domestic companies, the federal government will collect even less revenue. The more effective that a tariff is at protecting domestic companies, the less the country imports. Fewer imports result in less revenue for the federal government.

Exports buy imports. The less the country imports, the less it can export. Conversely, the less the country exports, the less it can import. If the country imports less, the federal government collects less revenue. As the country approaches autarky, the federal government becomes smaller for want of revenue — if tariffs are the primary source of revenue. By then, most of the federal government’s budget will be used to prevent smuggling.

Also, many people believe that the exporters pay the tariffs. They do not. Consumers of the importing country pay the tariffs. In this respect, tariffs are like sales taxes; the buyer pays the tax; the seller does not.

One great advantage resulting from abandoning the income tax is that it frees the slaves from the largest slave owner in the country, the US government. Slavery is defined as one party or person owning the labor of another. The income tax is a tax on labor; that is, the amount of labor that it takes a person to pay his taxes is the amount of labor owned by the US government.

If the purpose of tariffs is revenue, then the same percentage should be levied on all imported goods without considering the product imported or the country of origin. Thus, the federal government does not pick favorites or winners and losers by levying higher tariffs on some imports than on others.

Appendix 1. Reciprocal Tariffs

President Trump has implemented reciprocal tariffs on countries that levy tariffs on imports from the United States. His goal is for these countries to eliminate their tariffs on imports from the United States in exchange for the United States eliminating their tariffs on imports from their countries. However, such reciprocal tariffs are unconstitutional — at least under the Constitution that the Founding Fathers gave the United States.

The Constitution delegates to Congress the authority to levy tariffs. It does not delegate the President such power. Consequently, Congress would have to levy the reciprocal tariffs and give the President the authority to implement them. Even if Congress enacted such a law, it would be unconstitutional. According to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, the Constitution authorizes Congress to levy tariffs for revenue and for no other reasons, such as protectionism or reciprocity. The goal of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs is to eliminate tariffs and, consequently, eliminate raising revenue from tariffs.

Appendix 2. Replacing the Income Tax with a National Sales Tax

For years, some people have been promoting replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax. If a sales tax is to replace the income tax, it needs to be done by constitutional amendment. This amendment must clearly prohibit all taxes on income from whatever source (wages, salaries, tips, dividends, interest, capital gains, etc.). Also, it must fix the maximum tax rate. Further, it must clearly define in great detail what can be taxed and what cannot be taxed. Moreover, it must not provide any outs, such as national or economic emergencies or war. Most importantly, the amendment needs to be written so that someone with an IQ of 70, which is about the average IQ of federal judges, can understand it.

Appendix 3. Eliminating the Corporate Income Tax

The North Carolina General Assembly is moving toward eliminating the corporate income tax. If it retains an income tax, it should eliminate the personal income tax instead of the corporate income tax. Why? Corporations (C corporations, S corporations, B corporations, limited liability companies, nonprofits, closed corporations, professional corporations, etc.), unlike a natural person, are creatures of the government and have privileges that individuals do not have. Moreover, the personal income tax enslaves people. Corporate income taxes do not because corporations are not living beings (contrary to what the US Supreme Court and many libertarians believe).

Moreover, a natural person has a natural law right to privacy. The income tax is a massive invasion of privacy. On the other hand, being creatures of the government, corporations have no right to privacy; the government has every right to know what its creatures are doing. (If we have a government of, by, and for the people, and if the people are the masters and the government is the servant — as our politicians continuously remind us — then the people have the right to know everything about the government, including information classified as top secret; the government has no right to secrecy. By extension, the people also have a right to know everything that a corporation does.)

Proprietaries, partnerships, and associations that do not have a charter from a government should be treated as individuals. Likewise, churches that are not incorporated should be exempt from income taxes. Individuals and organizations exempt from income tax should not report any kind of income to the government.

Copyright © 2025 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Why I am not a White Nationalist — Where They Are Wrong Economically

Why I am not a White Nationalist — 

Where They Are Wrong Economically

Thomas Allen

White Nationalists advocate adopting highly invasive, liberty-destroying, and immensely destructive economic and monetary programs. A discussion of some of them follows.

– Managed economy. White Nationalists have a low opinion of the free market, free enterprise economic system; like most people, they confuse it with capitalism. (See “Capitalists and Socialists” by Thomas Allen.) Even those who do not confuse it with capitalism have an especially low opinion of it. Since White Nationalists have more trust and confidence in bureaucrats than they have in the people, even White people, they prefer a governmentally managed economy to a free market, free enterprise economy.

– Communist threat to capitalists. Contrary to what many White Nationalists believe, capitalists do not have to be threatened with communism. Few White Nationalists know that if it were not for capitalists’ succor, communism would have died a stillbirth. (See “Soviet Union” and “China” by Thomas Allen.)

– Welfare. Although White Nationalists oppose Martin Luther King’s social justice (discrimination against Whites and special privileges for Blacks and other nonwhites), they not only want to implement his economic justice but also expand it. Like King, they are proponents of the welfare state. They seem to admire President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society (except the civil rights and immigration parts of it). Their primary objection to the Great Society is the recipients of the benefits. The principal problem that White Nationalists seem to have with King’s economic justice is that he did not go far enough. Like King, they have no qualms about forcibly taking property from producers and giving it to nonproducers.

Most White Nationalists advocate a welfare state for the benefit of the working and middle classes. Contrary to what many of them believe, mostly the working and middle classes will pay for this welfare state. Moreover, the welfare state benefits the oligarchs more than anyone else since it makes the working and middle classes more dependent on the government, which the oligarchs control. When a person is receiving financial benefits from the government, he is less likely to object to governmental actions even if they are detrimental to him because he fears losing his benefits. Some White Nationalists find such control desirable.

– Protectionism. Like many statists, White Nationalists are proponents of protectionism. They want to protect politically favored industries from competition. Thus, they are enamored with government-business partnerships, i.e., corporate welfare; protectionism is just a form of corporate welfare.

Protectionism may give workers in the protected industry higher pay, but it does so at the expense of other workers with higher prices, which lowers their standard of living. Protectionism is of little benefit to construction workers, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, medical faculty workers, teachers, hospitality workers, and most service providers. Often, protectionism adversely affects workers in the protected industries. Owners of the protected industries are the primary beneficiaries. (For more discussion on protectionism, see “Questions for Protectionists,” “Do We Really Need to Return to Hamilton,” and “A Letter: Tariffs” by Thomas Allen.)

Instead of giving politically favored industries special advantages with tariffs and quotas at the expense of consumers, a more prudent approach that would save taxpayers money and encourage manufacturers not to build their plants overseas should be used. This approach ends all subsidies that encourage them to locate their factories overseas. Moreover, the US armed forces would not be used to protect their property in foreign countries. Also, reducing regulations on domestic manufacturers would reduce the incentive to move outside the country. One thing that most people forget is that imports are bought with exports. The more a country imports, the more it must export. (Currently, a major export of the United States is the fiat US dollar.)

– Interest. Some White Nationalists want to outlaw interest. When the government suppresses the rate of interest, the country consumes its capital. As a country uses its capital for consumption, its economy deteriorates and poverty grows. Eventually, all its capital is consumed and it returns to the hunter-gatherer stage. (For a more detailed discussion on interest, see “Usury” and “Questions for Anti-Usurers” by Thomas Allen.)

– Fiat money. Like all statists, White Nationalists adore fiat money and abhor commodity money (gold and silver). (For the difference between fiat money and commodity money, see “What Is the Difference Between Commodity and Fiat Money” by Thomas Allen.) Unlike the founding fathers, who trusted the people and left control of the money supply directly in the hands of the people, White Nationalists trust politicians and bureaucrats to regulate and control the money supply. Under the gold coin standard contained in the US Constitution, the people decided how many gold coins were needed by the quantity of gold they brought to the mint for coinage and the quantity of gold coins they melted for nonmonetary uses. (See "Constitutional Money" by Thomas Allen.) The same is true for the silver standard. (For more on the gold standard, see “What is the Gold Standard?” by Thomas Allen.) Moreover, gold extinguishes debt, while fiat money merely discharges debt by passing it to another. (See “Extinguishing Debt” by Thomas Allen.) A major reason that fiat money adherents hate the true gold-coin standard is that the government cannot control the money under the gold-coin standard.

When accompanied by the real bills doctrine, enough money is created to clear the market of newly produced goods. Most of the money created under the real bills doctrine goes initially to the workers and suppliers of material used to manufacture the products. Further, when money created under the real bills doctrine has done its work, it is automatically removed from the market and does not cause inflation. A chief flaw of all fiat monetary systems is a lack of a mechanism to remove excess money from the economy; consequently, fiat monetary systems nearly always have problems with inflation. (For more discussion on the real bills doctrine, see “Real Bills Doctrine” by Thomas Allen.)

– Social credits. Some White Nationalists prefer the social credit fiat monetary system. This system is highly flawed and will fail to do what its supporters claim it will do. It is highly invasive and greatly swells the ranks of governmental bureaucrats. Moreover, it demands enormous amounts of record-keeping, reporting, and data analysis. Nevertheless, most White Nationalists probably know nothing about the social credit system, and many have never heard of it. (For a detailed discussion of the social credit system, see “Analysis of Richard Cook’s Monetary Reforms as Presented in We Hold These Truths” by Thomas Allen.)

Central bank digital currency is ideal for the social credit economy because it makes tracking private spending transparent and, therefore, easier. Further, it reduces the time between collecting and analyzing data and the injection of new currency. Also, it can be used to force people to spend by directly stealing their savings. (Most social credit advocates despise savings.)

Moreover, since the social credit economy requires an administrative state, it is compatible with an administrative state. (An administrative state is a state ruled by experts and technocrats for the benefit of the oligarchs.) Most other fiat monetary reform schemes also require an administrative state. Furthermore, the administrative state eliminates checks and balances by merging the executive, legislative, and judicial functions into one agency, which is what many White Nationalists seem to want.

– Guaranteed income. Like King, White Nationalists promote a guaranteed annual income. A guaranteed annual income is the foundation of the social credit system.

– Economic summary. The difference between the monetary and economic system that White Nationalism promotes and that fascism and socialism promote is difficult to distinguish. (Since the United States have adopted at least 80 percent of the planks in the Communist Manifesto, distinguishing between the US government and a communist government is often difficult. See “Are the United States a Communist Country?” by Thomas Allen.) All want to use the government to force people, ultimately under the penalty of death, to do what most people do not naturally want to do. 

Conclusion

Many White Nationalists seem to overlook the necessity of a firm moral foundation. Christianity used to provide this foundation. However, between World War I and World War II, it began earnestly to be phased out. During the civil rights era, this foundation has been nearly eradicated as Christian denominations replaced the gospel of Jesus with the gospel of King and wokeism. To replace dying Christianity, a few White Nationalists promote paganism, especially Nordic paganism. Yet, paganism offers no firm moral foundation. Various forms of paganism are prominent in America today; the three most popular are the worship of Hermes (sports), Gaia (climate change), and Moloch (abortion). Most White Nationalists seem to want to replace Christianity with the welfare state and the worship of the state.

Only a few White Nationalists seem to realize that the political and economic policies and programs that they advocate lead to despotic tyranny even if the country is entirely White. Although they deplore totalitarianism, their worship of the state and their proposed economic system leads to totalitarianism.

Their love of statism, support of the welfare state, and the proposed monetary and economic system disqualify me from being a White Nationalist. Nevertheless, they are generally correct in their solution to racial problems and many other social issues. However, their ignorance of economics knows no bounds. As abysmal as the current monetary and economic system is in the US, the proposals of White Nationalists are far worse.

Further, the primary difference between the typical White Nationalist and the typical left-winger is racial and social issues. Other than these issues, they mostly agree on other issues at least in principle although they may differ in details.

In summary, the foreign and social policies of White Nationalism are excellent. However, its political and economic policies are horrendous.

Copyright © 2025 by Thomas Coley Allen.

 Part 2

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Chodorov on Joseph

Chodorov on Joseph

Thomas Allen

In One Is Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist (New York: The Devin-Adair Company,  1952, pages 104-108), Frank Chodorov explains how Joseph became a statist. The following paraphrases Chodorov’s explanation.

Chodorov begins his story about how Joseph ended up in Egypt. Soon after he arrived, Potiphar, an Egyptian bigwig, acquired Joseph. Because of his cleverness, Joseph soon became the chief foreman of Potiphar’s estate. However, Potiphar’s sex-starved wife, whom Chodorov speculates was a homely woman whose husband misunderstood her, attempted to seduce Joseph. He rebuffed her advances. Like a scorned female, she framed her jilter, and her husband sent Joseph to jail.

While in jail, Joseph acquired a reputation as an interpreter of dreams — thus, beating Freud by many centuries. (He began his dream interpreting years earlier at home. His interpretations got him in trouble with his brothers, and they sold him to a caravan going to Egypt.)

Pharaoh began having disturbing dreams. None of his advisors had the psychiatric skills to help him. Then, one of his servants remembered that Joseph had correctly interpreted his dream when he and Joseph were fellow prisoners, and recommended Joseph to Pharaoh.

Joseph cleaned himself up and offered his services to Pharaoh. Pharaoh described his dream, and Joseph replied that the answer was simple. He explained that Egypt was about to experience the well-known business cycle, commonly called the “boom and bust” cycle. “‘The knowledge came to him by divine revelation,’ he said, which was far more reliable than the wisdom of the Harvard school of economics” (p. 105).

Joseph’s positiveness of his prediction astonished Pharaoh. Showing his true statist mantles, Joseph presented Pharaoh with a plan to solve the problem, that is, a plan to cheat Jehovah out of his bust. Joseph’s plan called for laying up a reserve during the years of plenty. To execute the plan, Pharaoh appointed Joseph as Secretary of Agriculture. Since the Senate did not exist in those days, Pharaoh did not have to wait for Senatorial approval, so his appointment was immediate. Having no Bible or Constitution to swear by, “Pharaoh made the appointment stick by putting his own signet ring on Joseph’s hand and a solid gold chain around his neck. For lack of an automobile, an official chariot was assigned to the new dignitary” (p. 106).

No longer did Joseph need to interpret dreams. He was now an administrator who had a plan to execute. Because Egypt’s economy was completely agricultural, Joseph’s position made him the top commissar, the real boss of the economy.

“The first thing he did was to pass laws; without them no plan can work. And the first law on his agenda was, quite naturally, a tax-law. One-fifth of all that these profligate farmers should produce, during the years of plenty, must be taken from them and put under lock and key. It is reported that this 20 percent income tax yielded quite an amount; the grain piled up ‘as sand of the sea,’ and undoubtedly there was a shortage of bins, barns and elevators, for ‘it was without number’” (p. 106).

After seven years of boom, the depression hit. However, whether the depression resulted from overproduction or underconsumption is unknown. (“[A]t that time the learned professors had not yet discovered the sun-spot theory or even the velocity theory of money. The magicians of that day were without benefit of postgraduate courses in economics” [pp. 106-107].)

This depression was called a “famine.” However, what is not told is the cause of the famine. Did a “drought, pestilence or other unforeseeable accident, or,  perhaps . . . the constant sapping of the economy by seven years of heavy taxation” (p.107) cause it?

However, the chronicler does suggest that Joseph may “have anticipated the consequence of his taxing scheme: the abject subservience of the Egyptian proletariat” (p. 107). Soon hunger filled Pharaoh’s kingdom. People came to Joseph, the Secretary of Agriculture, and begged him to return the grain that he had taken from them. Instead of giving them the grain, he sold them the grain. (Thus, he was not a proponent of the welfare state.)

When the people ran out of money, they traded their horses, cattle, and other livestock for grain. “Still the hunger was upon the people, which was natural, for their capital was all gone, and without capital there is little production” (p. 107). Joseph had brought state capitalism to Egypt. The only jobs available for the hungry masses were with the state. As the state was the sole employer, the people had to work for what the state condescended to offer. “They offered themselves as ‘servants unto Pharaoh’ in exchange for bread. Then Joseph said unto the people: ‘Behold I have brought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.’ In common parlance that means that he had nationalized the land and the labor of Egypt” (p. 107).

Joseph’s plan was great for Pharaoh and Joseph. However, most likely, “some of the proletariat were perturbed over a moral principle: the right of a man to his property” (p. 107).

Joseph ordered farmers to be moved from one part of Egypt to another. Was the migration the result of a slave revolt?  Was it Joseph executing the well-known migratory purge? The chronicler does not explain the cause.

A delegation of Egyptians came to Joseph and told him that they were willing to be Pharaoh’s servants. Thus, “the proletariat had come to terms with collectivism (since that was the only way to get by in this world) and were content with whatever security the Secretary [Joseph] would provide” (p. 108). Nevertheless, Joseph “had to make some concession to private property, perhaps to encourage more taxable production; he restored to some of the Egyptians the land he had taken from them in their adversity, on a rental basis” (p. 108). His rent was one-fifth of the annual production.

Chodorov concludes his story of Joseph:

Though the succeeding monarchs and the succeeding commissars did well under the plan introduced by Joseph, it seems (according to later historians) that it put upon the proletarians a moral blight, so that when conquerors from other lands came to Egypt they met with little resistance; those who had nothing to lose had nothing to fight for. So that even the monarchs had to beg the invaders for administrative jobs. And lots of dust fell on the civilization of Pharaoh (p. 108).

(Since statism is a form of idolatry, was Joseph an idolater?)

Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mosaic Economics

Mosaic Economics

Thomas Allen

In Moses the Economist (1947, Editor Ben Williams, Reprinted 2009, American Christian Ministries), C.F. Parker gives his understanding of Mosaic economics as described in the Pentateuch. Some of his descriptions and my comments follow.

– Value. Parker believes that the value of the labor used to provide a product or service determines its value. (Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx held this view.) The opinion of the consumer is irrelevant. Thus, if the labor value of a product is $100 and the consumer values it at $50, the product cannot be sold for $50. To sell it for $50 would cheat the workers of their due wages and would be an ill-gotten gain for the consumer, who has cheated the workers out of part of their wages. For the product to sit on the shelf and deteriorate is better than selling it for less than $100. How the workers are better off losing $100 by the product deteriorating to worthlessness than losing $50, Parker does not explain.

Like most people, he has the cost of labor and materials determining the selling price of the product backward. The cost of labor and other inputs to produce a product does not determine the selling price of the product. The marginal consumer does. What the consumer is willing to pay for a product determines the cost of the labor and other inputs in the production of the product.

– Taxes. Farmers bear the primary burden of funding the government. They pay 10 percent of their crops and increase in herds to the government. (If their herds decrease, does this the government reimburses them for 10 percent of their loss — probably not.) However, they pay their taxes in products and livestock instead of money.

To provide additional revenue (taxes) for the government, Parker extends this principle to manufacturers. Through some convoluted reasoning, he concludes that the use of tools powered by steam or electricity produced by coal, petroleum, natural gas, uranium, water, and now wind and solar makes their products equivalent to agriculture. Consequently, manufacturers would pay the government 10 percent of what they produce. Thus, applying the agricultural equivalency, an automobile manufacturer would give the government 10 percent of the cars and trucks that he produces. A spark plug manufacturer would give the government 10 percent of the spark plugs produced. In like manner, a toy manufacturer would pay the government 10 percent of the toys that he produces. And, likewise, for other manufacturers.

However, if furniture manufacturers or seamstresses used no power tools in producing their furniture or apparel, they pay no taxes. Yet, if they use power tools, such as electric saws and drills and electric sowing machines, they pay 10 percent of their products to the government.

Providers of services are exempted from taxation. For some strange reason, Parker puts miners, who extract God-given ore from the ground, in the nontaxpaying category. Although he is unclear whether extractors of petroleum, natural gas, and coal pay taxes or not, he seems to place them in the nontaxpaying category.

Parker does not address solar and wind energy because when he wrote his book, they were not used to produce electricity, although the wind was used to grind grain, pump water, and move ships. However, based on his agricultural principle, since God provides the wind and sun, people who use them to produce electricity should give the government 10 percent of the electricity that they produce.

– Land. Parker is a proponent of the jubilee where all land returns to the original owner every 50 years. For the Western Hemisphere, this means that all land return to the Indians (who gets the land of the extinct Indian tribes?). Or, it returns to the monarchs of Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Russia. If the principle of the right of conquest, the land belongs to whoever conquers it, is applied as it is applied to the Israelite’s conquest of Canaan, then the aforementioned monarchs are the original owners since the land was conquered for them and in their name. Consequently, the Indians have no claim. (See “Jubilee” by Thomas Allen.)

– Usury, Loans, and Debt. Of course, charging interest including fees, which is interest by another name, on loans is prohibited. Moreover, all debts are canceled after seven years —not seven years from when the loan is made but a fixed calendar seven years for all loans. Thus, a loan may be canceled a year after it is made. (See “Questions for Anti-Usurers” by Thomas Allen.)

If all debt is canceled every seven years, then all paper money and its electronic equivalent including checkbook money become void every seven years. These types of money are obligations, i.e., debts. Parker seems not to recognize this cancellation of credit or representative money, which he believes is real money like full-weight gold and silver coins. His confusion about money derives from his belief that money is a mere token. (See “What Is Money?”,  "What Are the Functions of Money,” and “What Is the Difference Between Commodity and Fiat Money” by Thomas Allen)

Although Parker does not realize it, his anti-usury stance if carried to its logical conclusion forbids farmers from saving part of their crop as seed for the next season. Deciding how much to consume now and how much to save for future consumption involves interest, usury.

Furthermore, even the holdings of Social Security, of which Parker approves, would cease to exist every seven years because they are obligations (debts) owed to the participants.

– Money. Further, Parker has little understanding of commodity money, e.g., gold and silver, and a commodity monetary system, e.g., the gold standard. He believes that the monetary commodity has a different value, usually, a lower value, from the commodity stamped as a coin. Under a true commodity standard, the commodity has approximately the same value as an equivalent weight of the commodity when stamped as a coin. Money has value in and of itself that is independent of any image, words, or numbers stamped on it. The weight of the commodity in the coin is what gives it value and not what is stamped on it. (If the monetary value of a currency exceeds the commodity of which it is made, as with paper money, it represents real commodity money and is, therefore, an obligation to pay real commodity money, i.e., it is a debt payable in real commodity money.)

If he had looked in Genesis, he would have found the attributes of real money, which are quantity, a measure of weight, and substance. According to Genesis 23:16, Abraham bought a burial plot. He paid 400 (quantity) shekels (measurement of weight) of silver (substance). All commodity money has these three attributes, which makes money more than a mere token.

Therefore, a token even if used as a medium of exchange is not Biblical money. When used as a medium of exchange, token money represents money and passes the obligation to pay real money from one person to another. When the seven-year debt cancellation comes, token money becomes a canceled debt, and the person holding it is cheated out of whatever value it had as a medium of exchange.

Nevertheless, Parker is correct about money itself not being wealth. However, the gold in a gold coin is wealth as gold bullion. (See “What is the Gold Standard?” by Thomas Allen.)

– Banks. Banking as known today would cease to exist. People who wanted to save their money in a secured vault would have to pay someone to protect their money in a vault.

As for checking accounts, people would have to pay a depositary to hold their money against which they could write checks. They may also have to pay when a check is cashed or money is transferred from one account to another account. A return to yesteryear where bill collectors visited people’s houses or businesses to collect payment may return. Most likely, people may have to visit centralized offices to pay their bills as that would be the cheapest way of making payments.

– Wages. According to Parker, people should be paid according to their effective endeavors. Also, he seems to argue for a wage system that is akin to what progressives promote from time to time. Some governmental bureaucrats establish a relative pay scale for each type of job based on their opinion of its importance and on the labor required for that job. 

Nevertheless, he maintains that workers who work more efficiently acquire more wealth than less efficient workers. The incompetent and slackers become impoverished. He is a proponent of meritocracy in the workplace, which the free market generally provides when the government does not interfere with employment.

According to Parker’s understanding of Mosaic economics, wealth is fixed and is the aggregate of the rivers, lakes, oceans, soil, plants, animals, atmosphere, and the like. Wealth has nothing to do with human intelligence in organizing and using these resources. Thus, African countries rich in resources should be wealthier than Singapore, which is extremely poor in natural resources, but most are not.

– Stocks. Corporations with publicly traded stock would cease to exist under Parker’s Mosaic economics. Paying dividends on stock is outlawed because the owner of the stock did not earn the money. Moreover, one could never sell a stock for more than he paid for it because that is ill-gotten gain. Likewise, apparently, one could never sell a stock for less than what he paid for it because that would be an ill-gotten gain for the buyer. 

– Abundances and Scarcities. Buying items such as generators and food in a region of plenty and selling them in a region of want because of a natural disaster, war, or otherwise at a price above what existed before the disaster is forbidden. One must sell the item at the predisaster market price. (Higher prices mean stronger demand relative to the supply and are a signal for more supply. By fixing prices, Parker denies this signal. He appears to have a great deal of confidence in the integrity and the subjective opinions of governmental bureaucrats to move products from a region of abundance to a region of scarcity. He seems to want to eliminate the free market.)

Moreover, in a region that has an abundance of agricultural products, he would prohibit selling the products below the pre-abundant price. To do so would cheat the farmer. Apparently, the farmer and presumably the consumer benefit more from the excess crops rotting away than from selling them at a lower price.

– Selling Used Items. Selling a used product, including antiques and old masterpiece paintings, for a profit is forbidden. One cannot sell a used product for more than what he paid for it (or the original price if the original price is lower). Consequently, if a person inherits a painting, jewelry, furniture, or anything else whose original price is unknown, he cannot sell it.

Moreover, stamp and coin collecting as an investment would cease to exist. One can never sell a stamp or coin for more than its face value.

– Insurance. Private insurance is verboten. Nevertheless, Parker accepts governmentally run Ponzi schemes like social security, which is often called insurance.

– Conclusions. If implemented, Mosaic economics, as Parker explains it, would be detrimental to today’s economy. A small minority of the country, the farmers and manufacturers, bear the tax burden; the remainder remains untaxed. This dearth of taxes does keep the government small and, therefore, limited. The government could not make up for the shortfall by deficient spending as the cancellation of debt every seven years and the illegality of charging interest would prevent most people from lending to the government.

Further, his explanation of money is flawed. Also, his requirement for governmental price fixing is highly destructive and would create continuous surplus and shortages. He asserts that the value or price of labor in producing and distributing products fixes their value or price; the subjective opinion of the consumer, i.e., what the consumer is willing to pay for the product is irrelevant in fixing its value or price. His demand to abolish interest would cause the consumption of capital until society reverts to the hunter-gatherer stage. (See “Usury” by Thomas Allen.) 

Moreover, Mosaic economics, as Parker explains it, relies heavily on the wisdom, integrity, altruism, and near omniscience of governmental bureaucrats. Although historically and biblically, governments have been much more doers of evil than doers of good, Parker displays a childlike trust and confidence in governments always being doers of good.

Parker is convinced that Mosaic economics as he understands it will eliminate poverty. However, instead of making the country prosperous as he claims, his proposals would impoverish the country.

Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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A Letter: Tariffs

A Letter: Tariffs

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1986 responding to two articles published in The New American magazine, which is associated with the John Birch Society.]

    There seems to be some disagreement between two articles in your April 21 issue. Chamberlain argues correctly that tariffs, especially protective tariffs, are detrimental to the economy. Lockman, apparently in agreement with Ellis and Kurowski, whose book he reviews, argues in favor of tariffs as a primary source of revenue for the U. S. government. He evens favors protective tariffs.
    Lockman surely favors taxing imported oil heavily to subsidize domestic oil producers. U.S. industry and military run on oil. They certainly should not rely on foreign supplies. Let us have autarky for everything that the U.S. government considers essential — especially chrome, platinum, and other strategic metals for which there is little or no domestic sources.
    Certainly, not all the Founding Fathers favored protective tariffs. John Taylor of Caroline and many other leading Southern statesmen and agriculturalists realized that tariffs made the farmer a serf and the agricultural Southern States colonies of the Northern bankers and industrialists.
    To rely on Hamilton’s arguments in The Federalist Papers is to rely on the representative of the bankers and industrialists. Hamilton, the author of the federal deficit, was part of what the JBS [John Birch Society] would call the Insiders.
    Another fallacy of Lockman is that tariffs on imports are paid by foreigners. Tariffs on imports are no more paid by foreigners than sales taxes are paid by retailers. If the objective is to get foreigners to support the U.S. government, an impost on exports would be much more effective.
    Tariffs may be an acceptable source of revenue for government — as long as the tariff is uniform without favor to product or country and is no more than about five percent. Once a tariff becomes protective in nature, it subsidizes inefficiency, incompetence, and the politically powerful. It injures the economy in the ways Chamberlain points out — and worse.
    The Southern colonies have but one hope of regaining their lost liberties, free trade, and low taxes. That hope is to follow the example of the Founding Fathers, who seceded from England. The time has come for a free and independent confederation of free and independent Southern States.

Copyright © 1986 by Thomas C. Allen.

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Indirect Taxes and Direct Taxes

Indirect Taxes and Direct Taxes

Thomas Allen

In Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1962), Frank Chodorov gives a good comparison of indirect taxation with direct taxation, pages 219–227. A summary of that comparison follows.

Taxes fall into two categories: indirect taxes and direct taxes. Indirect taxes are levied on goods and services before they reach the consumer. Examples of indirect taxes are sales taxes, excise taxes, value-added taxes, and tariffs. Direct taxes are mostly levied on the accumulation of wealth. Examples of direct taxes are property taxes, income taxes, social security taxes, inheritance taxes, and poll taxes.

Chodorov describes indirect taxation as “a permission-to-live price.” Numerous indirect taxes are hidden in the price of every good and service that is for sale. People can only avoid these taxes by refusing to buy and, thus, depriving themselves of the meaning of life and even life itself. Consequently, they pay the tax to survive and to give their life meaning. “The inevitability of this charge on existence is expressed in the popular association of death and taxes.” For most products, taxation is the largest single item in the cost.

Indirect taxes impact the poor much more than the rich. Because there are more low-income people than high-income people, low-income people consume more overall and, therefore, pay a greater share of the indirect taxes.

The state prefers indirect taxes to direct taxes because they are usually hidden. “It is taking, so to speak, while the victim is not looking.” About people who justify taxation as moral, Chodorov writes, “Those who strain themselves to give taxation a moral character are under obligation to explain the State’s preoccupation with hiding taxes in the price of goods. Is there a confession of guilt in that?”

Unlike indirect taxes, the taxpayer cannot pass direct taxes onto others. Direct taxation taxes people on what they have instead of something that they buy. It taxes people “on the proceeds of enterprise or the returns from services already rendered, not on anticipated revenue.” Consequently, the taxpayer has no way of shifting the burden of a direct tax.

The envious have always supported direct taxes because they believe the “soak-the-rich propaganda.” Also, among the adherents of direct taxation are the promoters of democracy; they see it, along with universal suffrage, as necessary to the achievement of democracy.

As history has shown, the greed of the state does not stop with taxing the rich. Its direct taxation spreads to cover the lowest-paid workers. Because in the aggregate, the poor generally have more to be taken than the rich; consequently, the state soon goes after the poor. As with indirect taxes, low-income people bear a much higher burden under direct taxation than do the rich. A small tax on the income of a low-income earner causes more hardship than a larger tax on a high-income earner.

Because direct taxes directly deny “the sanctity of private property,” they are more vicious than indirect taxes. “By its very surreptition the indirect tax is a back-handed recognition of the right of the individual to his earnings.” Thus, the state covertly takes what it needs, “but it does not have the temerity to question the right of the owner to his goods.” However, with direct taxation, the state claims, without embarrassment or shame, the right to all property. Thus, with direct taxation, “private ownership becomes a temporary and revocable stewardship.” Direct taxation leads to the Marxist concept of state supremacy replacing the Jeffersonian ideal of inalienable rights.

About taxation, Chodorov writes:

Taxes of all kinds discourage production. Man works to satisfy his desires, not to support the State. When the results of his labors are taken from him, whether by brigands or organized society, his inclination is to limit his production to the amount he can keep and enjoy.

Replacing the Federal Income Tax with a National Sales Tax
Some tax reformers are proposing to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. Typically, they propose a rate of 20-some percent to make the revenue from the sales tax to be approximately equal to that from the income tax. Further, they provide an out for war, national emergencies, etc. Congress can use these outs to raise the tax rate, apparently without limit. Most of these proposals do not prevent Congress from reimposing the income tax other than the integrity of Congress.

These proposals are highly flawed and do not improve the tax situation. Worst, most fail to prevent the return of the income tax. Consequently, Americans end up paying the new sales tax along with an income tax.

If a sales tax is to replace the income tax, it needs to be done by a constitutional amendment, which includes repealing the income tax amendment. Moreover, the repeal amendment or the sales tax amendment should specifically prohibit an income tax and any other similar taxes. Also, the tax amendment should cap the sales tax at a low rate, say 2 percent. It should have no outs; Congress could not exceed the cap even because of war or a national emergency. Another provision should prohibit the federal government from borrowing so that it cannot avoid the tax restrictions with the inflation tax. (This provision must also prevent the issuance of government notes, such as US notes, which is borrowing with noninterest paying loans.)

How could the federal government survive under such revenue restraint? It would have to eliminate all unconstitutional programs that it is currently administrating. This would include the elimination of nearly all the programs that the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, and Transportation administer. It would also require ending the undeclared wars that the United States are involved in and ending the American Empire.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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A Look at a Libertarian Theory on Economics and Immigration

A Look at a Libertarian Theory on Economics and Immigration

Thomas Allen

One reason that some libertarians give for supporting open borders and unrestricted immigration is that it results in an economic boom for the country receiving the immigrants. That massive unrestricted immigration is economically beneficial is questionable. Most of the time it benefits most of the immigrants until they become so numerous and diverse that they bring the country down. That unrestricted immigration benefits the natives is questionable. To the extent that it benefits the natives, its benefits are more on the macro-level (economics on the national and global level) than the micro-level (economics on the individual and family level). Ironically, libertarian economists generally prefer the micro-level while the statist and central planning economists generally prefer the macro-level.

Libertarians assert that unrestricted immigration of aliens is a great economic benefit for the United States. Is it a great benefit to the natives who are not hired because the aliens will work cheaper? Doubtfully, the natives who are not hired would consider it a great economic benefit.

When the employees of Disney had to train foreigners, who worked for less pay, to do their jobs or forgo severance pay, did they consider the importation of these foreigners an economic benefit? Doubtfully, any of them replaced considered it a great economic benefit.

Some workers do not receive a pay raise or even receive a pay cut because of the large supply of workers resulting from unrestricted immigration. Do they consider unrestricted immigration an economic benefit? Doubtfully, any of these native workers would consider the large influx of aliens as a great economic benefit. (Henry George, whom Edward Harwood, the founder of the American Institute of Economic Research, esteemed, argued that Chinese immigrants during the nineteenth century pushed wages down.)

(Objecting to the great economic boom resulting from massive immigration just proves that these native workers are racists [but who is going to call a Negro racist when he objects to a Mexican replacing him], short-sighted, and selfish. Yet, according to the Randian Objectivist libertarians, selfishness is a great virtue.)

To these objections, libertarians counter that a growing population leads to an increase in demand for goods and services, which results in driving up wages and the standard of living. If a country were an autarky, this argument may have merit. However, since most goods are imported into the United States and many services are outsourced, this argument is weak.

If the libertarian theory that a large and growing population equals economic prosperity and, thus, a large per capita income and per capita wealth, then China and India should have the largest per capita income and per capita wealth. Yet, they do not. Many countries with much smaller populations have much higher per capita income and per capita wealth. (To the common man, per capita income and per capita wealth are more important than the country’s absolute income and wealth.)

Also, if the libertarian theory that immigration equals economic prosperity is true, then the opposite must also be true: A declining population reduces the demand for goods and services and, thus, reduces wages and increases poverty. Yet, the Black Death, which killed 30 to 50 percent of the population of Europe, greatly reduced the workforce and cause wages to rise sharply instead of devastating wages. Wages rose so much that governments fixed maximum wages.

Based on its theory of immigration equaling economic prosperity, libertarians must hate third world countries because they want to transfer a large number of their people to the United States. As a result, these third world countries become ever more impoverished. (This is especially true if the immigrants are highly educated and skilled.) Based on the libertarian argument, if libertarians really cared about the economic well-being of third world countries, they would be at the forefront demanding the prohibition of third-world immigration.

If the libertarian assertion that immigrants are a great economic benefit for the country to which they migrate, and if they really cared about nonwhite countries, then libertarians should be in the forefront demanding that all nonwhites be deported and repatriated to the countries of their ancestors. This great influx of immigrants should greatly improve the economies of these countries. Moreover, if the libertarian assertion is true, the mass exit of people (about 40 percent of the population of the United States) would cause an economic collapse of the United States and, consequently, giving the despicable, evil Whites left behind their comeuppance. Such a mass exit of people from the United States would plunge the economy to such a low level that even Haiti would look like the land of prosperity as the United States become a fifth world country. Moreover, if nonwhites left the United States and other White countries, they could quarantine the horrible, debilitating disease of whitism and protect themselves from it while bringing White countries to economic ruin.

Libertarians are not the only ones who preach that unrestricted immigration is a great economic benefit for the United States. Neoconservatives also use this economic argument to support unrestricted immigration.

Liberals and progressives do not believe this libertarian malarkey about unrestricted immigration being economically beneficial. Unlike libertarians, they are well aware of its destructive effects, which is the primary reason that they support unrestricted immigration. Moreover, as a side benefit, liberals and progressives use these immigrants to enhance their political power — just as the Republicans used freedmen to enhance their political power. (For the most part, Blacks supported the Republican party until Franklin Roosevelt and, especially, Lyndon Johnson bought them with the welfare state and civil rights.)

Many libertarians object to political borders. Consequently, they are globalists at heart. Therefore, they support the objective of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Bushes, the Clintons, Kissinger, Brzezinski, and other globalists to destroy political borders and, by that, reduce the world to one. However, libertarians do oppose the political and economic policies of these globalists.

Although many libertarians object to national borders, they do not object to all collectives controlling their borders. If one collective can take action to control its territory, then why cannot other collectives do likewise? Libertarians have no problems with corporations, which are governmentally created collectives, a fact that most libertarians like to ignore, taking action to prevent outsiders from entering their territory. Yet, most libertarians object to countries, which are also collectives, from taking action to prevent outsiders from entering their territory.

Addendum
Nearly all economists believe in the economic law of supply and demand: If supply increases faster than demand, prices decline. However, some economists make an exception with labor. They argue that as the supply of workers rises, wages, the price of labor, rises because workers are also consumers. These additional consumers increase the demand for goods and services and, by that, the prices of goods and services, which increases their supply. This increasing supply of goods and services leads to an increase in wages.

When labor is scarce, more capital is invested in machine to do the work of labor. Thus, productivity rises. With the rise of productivity, wages and the standard of living of workers rise.

When labor is plentiful, little incentive exists to substitute machines for labor. More labor is used to increase the supply of goods and services. To substitute machines for labor is not economical. Thus, wages and the standard of living stagnate. If wages do rise, they rise much more slowly. However, they are likely to decline because of the high competition for jobs resulting from the large supply of labor.

Consequently, a small labor pool or a decline in workers leads to a rise in wages and the standard of living of workers. Machines are substituted for labor, which increases productivity per unit of labor and, by that, increases the wages of labor. A large labor pool leads either to a decline in wages or to no increase in wages, and therefore, a decline or stagnation in the standard of living for workers. For example, where labor is plentiful, hiring more workers to dig a canal with shovels is more economical than paying a worker ten times as much as a man with a shovel and hiring his capital, a power shovel, to dig the canal. Yet, the power shovel operator may do the work of 100 or more workers with their shovels.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Allen.

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Rebuttals to Some Unlimited Immigration Arguments

Rebuttals to Some Unlimited Immigration Arguments

Thomas Allen

Below are rebuttals to arguments that immigration helps the economy and does not destroy languages or genocide people.

Destructiveness of Uncontrolled Immigration
Ask the Tasmanians how much immigrants helped their economy. Oh, I forgot, immigrants drove the Tasmanians to extinction. One would need a seance to ask them.

Ask the Indians of Hispaniola how much immigrants helped their economy. Again, I forgot that immigrants, mostly from Africa, drove them out of existence; what was not killed off were bred out of existence.

How well are the Chinese immigrants, who are genociding the Tibetans, helping the Tibetans economically? It may help the Chinese, but it is driving the Tibetans to extinction.

Then there are the Palestinians. Jewish immigrants have taken much of the land of the Palestinians and drove most Palestinians into large-scale concentration camps into which the Israelis fire missiles. Immigration may have helped the immigrant Jews economically, but it has done little for the native Palestinians.

Immigration was a great benefit to the Roman Empire. It so utterly destroyed the Roman Empire that nearly a thousand years were needed before the economy of the area covered by the old Empire returned to where it was before immigration destroyed it.

Mexico lost Texas to Anglo-American settlers primarily because they came as colonists and not as immigrants. They were of a different culture and language than Mexico and came in such numbers that they did not have to assimilate.

Immigration and Language
Some opponents of open-borders-unrestricted immigration claim that unrestricted immigration can change, corrupt, and even obliterate the language of a country. Some supporters of unrestricted immigration claim that such a notion is nonsense.

As evidence to support their assertion that unrestricted immigration does not destroy language, they point to the French-speaking Canadians. French-speaking Canadians have preserved their language for centuries in a sea of English speakers.

The proponents overlook the North American Indians. The North American Indians drowned in a flood of unrestricted immigration from Europe. As a result, many Indian languages are now extinct. Furthermore, many tribes became extinct — having been genocided by disease, war, and miscegenation. Moreover, not only do many remaining tribes no longer speak the language of their ancestors, none know how to speak it.

The Romans offer another example that supports those who oppose unrestricted immigration. Failing to control immigration, the Romans lost their Empire. If it were not for the Catholic Church adopting Latin as its official language, Latin would have died with the Empire. It would have gone the way of Gothic, Doric, Hittite, Babylonian, Assyrian, Punic, Egyptian, Coptic, and many other dead ancient languages.

Both the opponents and proponents of unrestricted immigration can find examples to support their argument. Nevertheless, the weight of the evidence supports the opponents.

North American Indians
As discussed above, many Indian languages and even Indian tribes have perished under the weight of uncontrolled immigration. Moreover, as a result of uncontrolled immigration, some Indian tribes have deteriorated so much that they no longer use genetics to decide who is a member of the tribe. Instead, they use cultural identity: Anyone who identifies with the culture of the tribe is a member. (In this respect, they are like many Southerners, Paul Gottfried [a Northerner], and some writers of Abbeville Institute. They identify Southerners, a term that they use to cover not only Whites, but also Blacks and presumably other races, by culture instead of genetics. Thus, they err. Correctly speaking, “Southerner” is an ethnic group, i.e., a genetic and cultural group, and identifies Whites born and reared in the South and Whites who have lived in the South so long that they are indistinguishable from native Southern Whites. Moreover, Blacks in the South differ culturally from Southerners and, also, from Whites.)

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Economic Advantage

Economic Advantage

Thomas Allen

One argument that libertarians and other proponents of free trade use is economic advantage. That is, if country A excels in producing agricultural products and country B excels in producing agricultural implements, A benefits from trading its agricultural products for country B’s agricultural implements instead of manufacturing them itself — and vice versa.

For example, the South excelled in producing cotton and tobacco. Great Britain excelled in manufacturing fabric, tools, and other manufactured products. So, the South traded its agricultural products for British manufactured goods and vice versa. For that reason, the North imposed protective tariffs on manufactured products to give itself an economic advantage over Great Britain.

However, few libertarians and other proponents of economic advantage see any advantage of one race or culture over another. To them, all cultures and, especially, races are equal. If they acknowledge that races and cultures cause economic advantage, then they would have to advocate policies to protect and preserve racial and cultural differences and, consequently, racial and cultural advantages. To keep the advantages of different races and cultures from disappearing, they would have to promote segregation and separation, which is highly politically incorrect.

Libertarians and other proponents of free trade either ignore or fail to realize the importance of race and culture. Race determines culture, and culture determines economic advantage.

Although the natural resources of a country are important, race and culture are more important. They decide if anything is done with them and what is done with them. Africa is a prime example of race and culture determining economic advantage. Great mineral treasures and agricultural potential lie in Sub-Sahara Africa. From their creation, Negroes and Khoisans have inhabited this region. Yet, they did little to develop it. Until the Aryan settlers arrived, the Negro’s most important export was slaves — first to the Melanochroi and then to the Aryans of Europe and later New England. Aryans developed Africa’s mineral resources and agricultural potential.

An example of cultural impact on economic advantage occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages. The Church prohibited the charging of interest on loans. So, if a clergyman, king, nobleman, or merchant needed to borrow money, they had to borrow from the Jews, who were not covered under the Church’s anti-usury edict. Thus, culture gave Jews an economic advantage in lending and later banking.

To retain and maintain economic advantage, racial and cultural advantages, i.e., differences, have to be protected and preserved because economic advantage grows out of racial and cultural advantages. To retain and maintain cultural advantage, races have to be protected and preserved because culture grows out of race. (Race precedes culture and, therefore, makes a culture.) Segregation and separation are the only sure way to preserve and protect the races, and, thus, they are the only ways to maintain economic advantage. Goods and services can cross borders without people (immigrants) crossing borders freely — especially, immigrants of different races and alien cultures.

Contrary to what libertarians and other proponents of free trade may believe, racial and cultural diversity and, therefore, advantages and differences are at least as important as, if not more important than, economic advantage. All are necessary for the well-being of mankind. Economic advantage depends heavily on culture, and culture is the product of race. Therefore, if economic advantage is to be retained and maintained, the races have to be protected and preserved. Only segregation and separation can protect and preserve them, and, by that, retain and maintain economic advantage.

Copyright © 2019, by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Libertarianism and Social Issues

Libertarianism and Social Issues

Thomas Allen

Below, some flaws of libertarianism related to social issues are exposed. Discussed are libertarian views on contagious diseases, discrimination, transgenderism, the nature of man, morality, and adultery. The flaws discussed below may be more perception and image than reality. However, perception and image are often more controlling and important than reality.

Contagious Diseases
The underlying principle of libertarianism is that everyone should be allowed to do whatever he pleases that he can afford if he does not trespass against another person or his property.
If a person with a contagious disease transmits that disease to another person, has he trespassed against the person whom he infects? Can the person who is infected sue the person who infected him? Should a community be allowed to protect itself from a carrier of a contagious disease by preventing the infected person from entering their community? Since a significant number of illegal immigrants entering the United States have contagious diseases, these are important questions that libertarians need to answer.
Since libertarians seem to express no concern about letting an unknown, but significant, number of people into the country with contagious diseases, they must have a great deal of confidence that vaccines will protect them, even from diseases for which no vaccines have been developed. (This faith is not surprising when the esteem that libertarians have for multinational corporations is considered.)

Discrimination
With one exception, most libertarians object to discrimination. Although most libertarians abhor discriminating against people based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, or political orientation, they oppose the government prohibiting people and companies from discriminating based on these reasons. Nevertheless, more libertarians seem to oppose discrimination based on race or sex than on religion or politics.
However, few libertarians object to discrimination based on wealth with many finding such discrimination agreeable. (This is a typical Yankee attitude.) For example, most libertarians object to “fair housing” laws that forbid private owners refusing to sell to a person because of race or putting restrictions in deeds to prohibit selling to people of specific races, although most libertarians find such practices reprehensible. However, few object of gated communities with high association fees designed to price nearly all of the undesirables out with extremely high housing cost. Thus, they find discrimination because of wealth acceptable. However, the person discriminated against is discriminated against and feels discriminated against; the reason for the discrimination is of secondary importance.
Another example is that most people discriminate in favor of family members. Most libertarians probably would not object to such discrimination if economics is not involved. For libertarians, economic trumps everything. It is the only acceptable reason for discrimination. Perhaps some libertarians find some exception to this dictum. They may object to discrimination against Blacks or homosexuals even if such discrimination is more profitable.

Transgenderism
All libertarians should oppose transgenderism because it is an act of fraud, but most do not. When a biological male (has a Y chromosome) tries to pass as a female (has no Y chromosome), that is a fraud. Likewise, the same is true when a biological female attempts to pass as a male. Nevertheless, how many libertarians really do consider transgenderism a fraud? (How long will it be before a person who dates a new person will require the date to provide a genetic test to prove his or her sex and sign a contract identifying what is accepted as conceptual sex?)

Nature of Man
In agreement with Rousseau, many libertarians, especially the anarcho-libertarians, believe that man by nature is good, unselfish (except the Randian Objectivists, who consider selfishness a great virtue), and wise. However, the government has corrupted and degraded him. How could wise, good, and unselfish people create something as corrupting and degrading as government? Is it not more reasonable and logical to consider people to be naturally sinners and that government is corrupted and degraded because sinners created and run it?
For that reason, power should be decentralized and dispersed instead of centralized and concentrated. Nevertheless, most libertarians who may believe that man is by nature sinful believe that a free market is sufficient not only to suppress that sin in the economic sphere but also in the political and social spheres.
A free market does a fairly good job of regulating sin in the economic realm because it usually disperses and decentralizes economic power. However, Marxism in all its forms, including progressivism, communism, socialism, and fascism, does a poor job because it consolidates and concentrates economic power. Nevertheless, a free market does little to regulate and suppress sin in the political sphere and especially the social sphere, where it is often in the forefront of sin.

Morality
As the old saying goes, in general, libertarians agree with conservatives on economic issues and with liberals on social issues. Thus, libertarians believe that the free market economy can exist and even thrive in a morally degraded society. Therefore, most libertarians oppose outlawing or even treating as mental disorders, homosexual acts, transgenderism, miscegenation, and other formerly sexual immoralities and such fraudulent perversions as “homosexual marriages.” (What is being referred to here are primarily public acts of sexual immorality and not private acts.) Most favor, or at least do not oppose, banning the God of the Christians and His Son and Messiah, Jesus, from public life. Yet, few seem to object to moving the god of Islam and Judaism and the gods of Hinduism and paganism to the forefront of public life, because these religions are far more compatible with secular humanism than is Christianity (although Muslim currently offers more resistance to homosexuals and transgenders than do most Christian.) Most progressives and liberals and many libertarians are secular humanists.
Strange is that libertarians, who claim to be great lovers of liberty, turn against the teaching of true Christianity, which is the only religion compatible with true liberty. Libertarianism grew out of Western Civilization, which grew out of Christianity and is or used to be a Christian society. No other religion, not even secular humanism, is compatible with libertarian ideals. Yet, most libertarians want to jettison Christianity’s teachings on morality. However, libertarians have not gone as far as Marxists, progressives, and their kindred in rejecting Christianity’s moral teaching of “thou shalt not steal.”  Nevertheless, in agreement with Marxists, progressives, and their kindred, most libertarians condone abortion, which is a violation of the moral law “thou shalt not murder.”
Libertarians fail to realize that abandoning one of God’s moral laws easily leads to abandoning the others. Marxists, progressives, and their kindred know this. That is why they eagerly push sexual immorality. (Next to lying, sexual morality is the easiest for humans to violate.) They know that abandoning sexual morality weakens and even destroys the family and makes stealing, murder, and even abandoning God, which is the ultimate goal, much easier. They know that sexual immorality makes establishing a socialist or a communist utopia much easier. So, why do so many libertarians join the Marxists in breaking down morality when the result is the death of the free market economy? The only real resistance that libertarians offer to the degradation of society is their opposition to using taxpayers’ money to do it.
Most libertarians seem not to recognize that liberties come from the God of the Christians. (Unfortunately, throughout the ages, Christians have been highly destructive of these liberties and have at times rivaled the Marxists in destroying liberties.) Secular man is the enemy of liberty, and Marxists and their kindred are secular men, who have elevated man above his Creator (just as the US government has been elevated above its creators, the States).

Adultery
Libertarians believe in the sacredness of contracts. Therefore, libertarians should be in the forefront in condemning adultery, which is a violation of the marriage contract. However, they are not. Contrariwise, they give the condemnation of adultery an extremely low priority. Some even find adultery acceptable, and almost no libertarian believes that the marriage contract should be enforced where adultery is involved. Their solution is to void the contract, i.e., divorce.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Libertarians Versus Marxists

Libertarians Versus Marxists

Thomas Allen

Libertarians and Marxists are more alike than many realize. Libertarians agree with Marxists on at least one thing: economics is the most important factor in life and takes precedence over everything else. Like Marxists, libertarians believe that economics is the principal cause of social organization. Both treat economics like a religion. To them, country (a territory), nation (an ethnicity), race, culture, and the like have little or no value, especially if it conflicts with economics. (However, unlike libertarians, Marxists find some value in these collectives as tools to create turmoil.)
    Marxists and most libertarians believe that people need to be liberated from nationality, ethnicity, sex (distinguishing between male and female), and religion. Marxists believe that the best way to accomplish this goal is through socialism, whereas libertarians believe that capitalism is the best way.
A major difference between libertarians and Marxists is that Marxists know that they must impose their will on their opponents and proceed to do so. For the most part, libertarians fail to realize that they must force their will on Marxists and other statists and suppress them to establish a libertarian society. Persuasion will not stop those who feel compelled to run other people’s lives. Only force will stop them.
Another real difference between libertarians and Marxists is that libertarians favor little or no government while Marxists favor absolute government. Still, this difference is highly important, for a Libertarian regime guarantees much more liberty than a Marxist regime, which guarantees none. While Marxists want to use the government to destroy culture, etc., Libertarians object to using the government to protect and preserve culture, etc.
Unlike Marxists, who are nearly always wrong about economic issues, libertarians are usually right. However, on social issues and other noneconomic matters, both are usually wrong.
While Marxists promote homosexuality and other sexual perversions, unlimited immigration, and miscegenation to destroy society, Libertarians offer no objection to such destruction, especially when their beloved multinational corporations are promoting the destruction of society. However, libertarians seem to value the family more than Marxists do; at least, they are not as negative toward the family as Marxists are.
Genocide is another similarity between Marxists and libertarians. Genocide by Marxist is obvious. With mass murder, deportation, and integration, genocide by Marxist is too overt to ignore. On the other hand, Libertarians genocide in more subtle ways. For example, few libertarians would object to the Chinese overwhelming the Tibetans in such numbers that the Tibetans would cease to exist. However, most would object to the Tibetans trying to protect their ethnicity by such actions as prohibiting intermarriage and keeping the Chinese out of their community. Most libertarians object to using governmental power to protect and preserve races and ethnicities.
Whereas Marxists see the government as the priesthood of their god, libertarians view government as the priesthood of Satan (even if they do not believe in Satan). On the other hand, libertarians view corporations as angels, while Marxists present them as pure evil (although most Marxists are owned, directly or indirectly, by these corporations). As long as corporations promote the destruction of society and the enslavement of the people, libertarians do not object if the corporations do not collaborate directly with the government in the destruction. Likewise, Marxists do not object. Only when a corporation collaborates with the government to gain a market advantage do libertarians criticize the actions of a corporation.
However, libertarians and Marxists do disagree on some political correctness. Marxists favor political correctness no matter who imposes it because it is an effective weapon in destroying a society and a country. Libertarians only object to political correctness if the government imposes it. Yet, if their beloved corporations promote political correctness, they find it acceptable.
In summary, neither Marxists nor libertarians oppose the annihilation of noneconomic collectives, such as country, nation, race, religion, and culture. Whereas Marxists do not oppose using the government to destroy these noneconomic collectives, libertarians do. Nevertheless, libertarians have no objection to the government allowing and even encouraging, their destruction. Moreover, libertarians promote preventing the government from doing anything to protect them.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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