Firstly - thanks should go to Chuck DeVore and Lisa Mcclain for their thoughts / opinions! Their work has been copied and pasted below and as authors I want to acknowledge them for their "thoughts" - urm writing!
Secondly - I can expand on these - having slept on it (and also want to 'preserve' them here in a place holder for future reference)
THUS
Bear with me!!
My thoughts are that we live in an Egocentric age! I keep saying that the attitude to one's life is -
It is all about
ME;
HERE;
RIGHT NOW!!
Generally speaking that does not invite a study of the past (seen as irrelevant) nor are there considerations for the future - unless it involves me,here, right now!! Naturally - as the saying goes - if you ignore history you do not learn from it! Meaning that things have been tried before and found to be wanting - so why try that again??? As to the future, many use it as a Crutch in order to justify their own - me, here, right now - attitude/experience!! Either way - it is still about ones self - here, now! This is also reflected in the census studies where less and less folks indicate that they no longer believe in ANY religion - eg in a being greater and outside of them selves, thus give meaning to their lives!!
Both articles below by above mentioned authors are about the notion that I f only I can control matters - then life for me - and by extension for others - will get better!! The first one summaries what will happen if you start to control the freedoms (business in particular) and the second one has real life examples of similar thoughts/experiences! The imagery used (usually) is about - 'I can give a person a fish and he will not be hungry vs - I can teach him HOW to fish and he can feed himself forever! Or, one side does a hand-out while the other side gives a hands-up!'
Yes in both cases there is a thought about others. While one is charitable (and of course needs to control the 'taxes' and ' wealth' it needs in order to have the means to distribute said fish - the other is more about teaching how to be self sufficient and not reliant on Charity! Both take time and effort - yet one will always be about controlling things while the other is about eventually stepping back from the help being offered - when it is no longer needed!
I know which I would prefer!! - As an aside - having lived practically next door to the Iron curtain, and had experienced contact "from the other side" - I can affirm the witnesses listed below! For example - the east Germans (under communism) did allow religion / churches - as long as you accepted that a government official would sit in on church services and would monitor the people / sermons! Further - if you were deemed being part of a church - all higher ranking/paying employment options were barred for you - condemning you to the lowest forms of paid employment and a pretty miserable life! You could study - forbidden books - as long as you accepted a windowless room and had NO repeat NO form of note-keeping - no pencil/paper or copying - basically you could read and keep in your head!! Plus - you would have to apply months beforehand and then once being 'approved' accept constant 'vetting' by the state! Then there were the stories of "preferential" hospital treatments! Being a member of a church and need a hospital treatment - go back to the end of the Que!!
Generally speaking - any authoritarian state - whether communist or otherwise - is all about POWER and CONTROL - and of one's self! I have never known a dictator of communist leader living in poor condition compared to the subjects they control - rather they seem to live a nice life with wealth and privilege!
Looking at you Putin or pooh-bear
anywooooo
Time to brew a cuppa and have a break - then go back to the piano butchering . . .
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Chuck DeVore
Ibn Khaldun warned us about Mayor Zohan Mamdani’s ideas. I first encountered Ibn Khaldun while studying Islamic political thought at the American University in Cairo. His 1377 masterwork, the Muqaddimah (The introduction to his universal history), pioneered systematic approaches to historiography, sociology, economics, demography, and the philosophy of history.
Khaldun’s book features a clear description of what became known six centuries later as the Laffer Curve — the economic theory that, as tax rates rise there will be a peak in revenue, beyond which as rates continue to go up, revenue starts to decline as economic activity collapses.
(From this bear - the economy collapses as the environment for the free flowing businesses and wealth creation is driven out - i.e - business packs up and goes where they have a better environment to operate - eg lower taxes / regulations! Witness the 'flight' of major co-operations from California / Oregon / New York to places like Texas / Florida! - At least they are still based in USA - in New Zealand's case, they emigrate to Australia or other places! Once the 'capital / businesses / and people' have left - who will fund the 'charitable' programs in those places - yeah - lets raise the taxes again and thus the decline continues)
Per Khaldun, early in a dynasty, low taxes encourage enterprise; revenue rises and civilization flourishes. Later, rulers demand more luxury and larger armies. Taxes climb. Businessmen compare their shrinking profits to the growing burden and lose incentive. Production falls, and with it tax yields. At that point, governments often turn to subsidies and then enter commerce themselves — buying and selling, establishing monopolies, competing directly with private traders. Independent merchants are further discouraged. Many leave or quit. The tax base collapses. The empire weakens and falls.
( From this bear - This is visible not just in NY - check out California or Seattle - or indeed the Cook Islands , where their Government decided that it knows better how to run a regular ferry service to the local outer islands {and bought a corresponding boat} then a n y of the local enterprising firms offering the same service! - We shall watch this with baited breath)
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now testing a modern version of the later stages of that cycle. The mayor is advancing a plan for city-owned grocery stores — one in each borough — with the first expected to open in the Bronx in 2027 and others by the end of his term. The city will own the land, cover construction (tens of millions of dollars already allocated), waive rent and taxes, and subsidize a core basket of staples so they sell roughly 30 percent below typical retail prices. A private operator will handle day-to-day management under city-set rules on pricing and labor.
Supporters frame this as relief for high food costs. History and Khaldun suggest a different trajectory. When government subsidizes and then operates in a competitive sector, private operators face distorted competition. Capital and effort shift away from the independent businesses that generate the tax revenue governments need. Inefficiencies multiply (From this bear - not to mention corruption). Shortages and declines in quality follow. The temporary political win of cheaper eggs and bread is purchased with long-term damage to the commercial vitality that sustains cities.
Mamdani’s background makes the irony sharper. As the son of a prominent scholar of postcolonial societies, it is conceivable that he would be familiar with Islamic Golden Age thinkers who analyzed why states thrive and why they decay. Ibn Khaldun stands among the most famous. His warning was empirical, drawn from observing North African and Near Eastern dynasties: When the state moves from light taxation and order to heavy extraction and direct commercial intervention, the productive classes withdraw. Civilization contracts and then collapses.
Quoting Khaldun: "It should be known that the finances of a ruler can be increased, and his financial resources improved, only through the revenue from taxes. (The revenue from taxes) can be improved only through the equitable treatment of people with property and regard for them. … Other (measures) taken by the ruler, such as engaging in commerce or agriculture, soon turn out to be harmful to the subjects, to be ruinous to the revenues, and to decrease cultural activity." Khaldun would have strongly advised against government-run grocery stores.
New York already struggles with high costs of living, regulatory burdens, and businesses that have fled or scaled back. Layering municipal grocery stores on top of that environment does not reverse the incentives Khaldun identified. It accelerates them. Private grocers who cannot match subsidized prices will struggle. The city’s fiscal commitments grow. Taxpayers fund the difference. The cycle continues.
Khaldun’s remedy was straightforward: Keep taxes low enough that people retain the energy and desire to produce. Lower the burden, and cultural and commercial enterprises expand; revenue follows. Modern supply-side insights rest on the same foundation. Government-run stores move in the opposite direction. America’s great cities succeeded because independent enterprise created abundance, not because mayors decided to stock the shelves. New York should remember that lesson — and the 14th-century scholar who explained it long before Art Laffer sketched a curve on a napkin. Ignoring it will not make groceries cheaper for long. It risks making the city poorer.
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Lisa Mcclain
When Americans defend free markets, they analyze real-world outcomes and quote economists. When radicals defend communism, they ignore history and those who experienced it firsthand. The omissions are deliberate. Survivors of communist regimes are dangerous to the argument because they are proof of its outcome. They know what happens after the government acquires the power it promised to use only for the public good.
I recently gathered survivors of communist regimes in the Capitol to hear their stories. They came from Cuba, Venezuela, the Soviet Union and China. One endured torture in prison. Another watched grocery shelves empty as his community decayed. Others saw schools converted into instruments of indoctrination and churches treated as enemies of the state.
José Daniel Ferrer spent more than 12 years in Cuban prisons. He endured physical and psychological torture, and watched fellow citizens die from the same abuse and malnutrition he experienced. He understands the deception communists employ that made those prisons possible. "It’s the best evidence that the communists who try to get to power in democratic nations are scam artists," Ferrer said. "Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez denied what they were until they had secured power." Castro denied being a communist before consolidating power for himself. Chávez sold himself as a democratic reformer before turning Venezuela into an authoritarian state. The radical label is hidden while votes are needed, then embraced once the institutions capable of restraining them have been weakened.
We see the same deception among American politicians who call themselves "Democratic Socialists." They insist the label separates them from communism while embracing the concentration of economic and political power that has defined every communist movement. Communism’s advocates respond to witnesses like Ferrer by reaching for an excuse. They blame sanctions, corruption, foreign interference or the supposed betrayal of an otherwise noble idea. Their theory is always innocent. The people who suffered under it are somehow mistaken about what happened to them.
Daniel Di Martino’s family suffered from the same communist deception in Venezuela. Before the Bolivarian revolution, they had an apartment, steady work and an ordinary middle-class life. Then the promises were replaced by empty shelves and government rationing. Milk disappeared from stores. Meat became scarce. The government assigned citizens shopping days and required them to scan their fingerprints before determining what they were allowed to purchase. This is how communist control enters daily life. It doesn’t always begin with soldiers in the streets. Sometimes, it’s just a few regulations at the grocery store.
"The common denominator is that they destroy free enterprise," Di Martino said. "You cannot start a business, you cannot feed your family, therefore you die or you flee." When the state controls food, employment and housing, citizens lose the ability to provide for themselves without bureaucrats' permission. The government does not need to imprison every dissident. It can seize your paycheck, apartment or your next meal. People who depend on the state for sustenance live at the will and convenience of their captor.
Communism doesn’t just control your physical necessities. Mike Gonzalez shared how it wages war on faith, conscience and independent thought. As a child in Cuba in the 1970s, he was harassed for attending church and pressured to join the communist Pioneers. Regime thugs interrogated him at age 11. Communism’s advocates respond to witnesses like Ferrer by reaching for an excuse. They blame sanctions, corruption, foreign interference or the supposed betrayal of an otherwise noble idea. Their theory is always innocent. The people who suffered under it are somehow mistaken about what happened to them.
"Why did communists try to control the schools and didn’t like church?" he asked. "Because they tried to control the message."
Faith, family and national traditions remind people that the state is neither the source of truth nor the highest object of devotion. Religious freedom therefore becomes an obstacle to totalitarian control. Communists cannot tolerate independent institutions that demonstrate loyalty to something other than the state. That is why communist movements teach citizens to despise their country. Its history becomes irredeemable, its traditions oppressive and its culture illegitimate. Once people are convinced that their institutions are rotten, destroying them can be sold as an act of liberation.
Pastor Ezra Jin experienced what happens when a regime decides that even faith itself is a threat, after he and 20 other church leaders were arrested in China just last year. The Chinese Constitution formally promises religious freedom, but the Communist Party places itself above the Constitution. Jin was eventually released, but eight of his fellow pastors remain behind bars. Their only crime was worshiping something other than the party. His story exposes the emptiness of rights that exist only on paper. A constitution offers no protection when the ruling party recognizes no authority above itself. Use whatever Marxist label you want; every variation uses the same blueprint. Discredit the institutions that limit its authority. Subjugate economic freedom, education, religion and public speech. Punish those who refuse to surrender their independence.
Defenders of communism prefer abstractions because abstractions cannot contradict them. Survivors can. They’ve seen the prison cells, confiscated businesses, empty shelves, demolished churches and childhoods shaped by fear. They expose the arrogance of those who insist that this time the results will be different, even though the underlying demand for power remains unchanged.
We should be wary of politicians who call themselves "Democratic Socialists." Before believing their promises, we should listen to the people who already lived under leaders who made the very same ones.
Have fun!
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