Watch South America Go Down The Tubes

At the start of the twenty-first century we know what happens when a left-wing dictator takes power and centralizes control of all resources into the political sector. It is poverty.

In 1917 left-wing thugs took power in Russia. Eighty years later, after dreadful famines and wars, it collapsed into frank poverty and failure.

In 1949 a left-wing thug took power in China. Thirty years later, after about 60 million deaths, it started to spin away from the dead hand of state capitalism and immediately the energy of the Han people set China on the road to prosperity.

And let us not forget the pathetic left-wing thug Fidel Castro who has wrecked the island of Cuba in his 45 years of misrule.

Now Evo Morales, the elected president of Bolivia has nationalized the Bolivian natural gas industry. And the left-wing Presidents of Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina have got together to say that all is well.

But with South America turning to left-wing thugs like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, we know what to expect. Poverty, thuggery, and misery. Powered by the fuel of nationalized energy industries they will strut and fret for a season. And then energy prices will go down and the people will suffer.

And the nationalized energy industry, run by incompetent political hacks, will go down the tubes.

Do we have anything to fear from the South American energy thugs? Probably not. Energy is energy. There�s a world market, and oil is fungible.

But if there is one thing that the twentieth century has taught us. Democratic capitalism works, every time it is tried. And it brings immediate and consistent prosperity to the people. Dictators don�t.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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