They know all the freebies they want won’t be covered in the texts.
Two reasons. They don’t understand it when they read the massively stupid books explaining it.
And they know all the freebies they want won’t be covered in the texts.
Of course, information is one of those freebies. Unlimited information.
They run into contradictions. For instance: “I’m a traditional conservative. People should earn their own way in life. The government can’t take over and own the economy. That would be horrible Socialism. Of course, I want information for free, for nothing, without paying a nickel for it.”
As if information is air. Everywhere. Floating. As if no one digs it up, no one finds it, no one figures it out, no one separates the cover stories from the truth.
One of the most popular “all-information” publications of the last 60 years was The Whole Earth Catalog. It offered “tools” for the rapidly spreading counter-culture. That culture spawned many “information should be free” people.
But the Catalog sold for $5. The last edition, in 1972, brought in about $7.5 million. People rarely mention this. It wasn’t free.
Lots of people hate economics when they discover the subject mentions WORKING FOR A LIVING. They were hoping a more profound understanding would somehow transcend that unpleasant fact of life.
People forget that before the Internet, you had to pay for information. In 1970, a yearly subscription to the New York Times, which allowed you to be misled and deceived on many crucial subjects, was $52.
If you wanted startling information on US government/intelligence secrets in the 1980s, you could pay $3.50 per issue of the Covert Action Information Bulletin.
Power to the People! The book adored by young socialist Lefties in 1980, The People’s History of the United States, sold for $20. Later paperback editions went for 10-15 bucks. I’m guessing the author, Howard Zinn, made $2.5 million from sales.
Many writers hate economics, because it reminds them they’re not part of the economy. They’re giving their work away for nothing. There is an economic principle involved: if you give your labor without charge, people will take it. They won’t think about how you make a living.
Here’s an interesting twist. Some people tell writers they SHOULD give away their work for nothing. If a writer then asks those people whether THEY go to a job every day and decline to accept a paycheck, he rarely gets an answer.
Many writers would take a job writing for the government if it were offered. Then the writers would feel quite comfortable giving their work away for free. Because they’re drawing a check from the government. They forget the government isn’t exactly offering free writing to the people. The government is taxing the people.
See? Dipping into the subject of economics can be unsettling, even disturbing. Contradictions appear.
I know writers who have a strange view of socialism. They consider themselves socialists. After all, they own the means of production—their own production. Then they offer it to the people for nothing. That sort of sounds like a socialist government. But no socialist government is actually poverty-stricken. It owns whatever there is to own.
You can’t really be a socialist and make money. Unless you’re a liar, like Bernie Sanders. Then you can espouse socialism and also own several homes.
Karl Marx didn’t make much money from his writing. But he wanted to make money. He wasn’t living in poverty by choice. Karl’s pal and co-author, Engels, gave him a bit of money. If Karl were writing a Substack today, he would try to make $$$ from it. He would say, “Someday, when the government is Communist, they’ll pay me.” That’s what they all say.
I fought my way through the subject of economics without reading a single book or article about it.
A guy makes a table. He sells it to another guy who wants it. That’s economics.
Everything else is bullshit.
Two major industries in America now are I CAN’T MAKE A TABLE AND HERE IS WHY and I CAN’T PAY FOR A TABLE AND HERE IS WHY. The way things are going, those industries will be bringing in more money than the people who make tables and the people who buy them.
Somebody is going to start a Substack called THIS IS WHY I CAN’T WRITE. Every day, he’ll publish words explaining why he is mentally incapable of writing. And he’ll make a living from that Substack.
My economics are: I CAN WRITE AND I DO WRITE EVERY DAY AND I OFFER SOMETHING OF EXCEPTIONAL VALUE AND THIS IS WHAT I CHARGE FOR IT.
I’m not hiding out and twisting economics like a pretzel.
-- Jon Rappoport
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