Month: January 2016

A New Jewish Look at US Skinheads and Neo Nazis – Are they reasonable people?

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

No, I am not a fan of Skinheads, Aryan Nation people, Neo Nazis etc. Let’s just get that out of the way. However, I did come across this 1988 clip of the Gerald Rivera brawl. If you listen to what the Aryan guys are saying, it’s actually quite reasonable. No, not when they use slurs and generally act like hateful idiots, but some of the points are reasonable.

Americans, and especially American Jews, have been conditioned and trained to demonize and totally deligitimize anyone who calls themselves Aryan. Anything they say is automatically foaming-at-the-mouth nonsense. But listen to what the guy is saying and how Gerald responds to it.

The first Aryan dodges a question about whether he endorses the murder of innocent people. The fact that he couldn’t answer the question is of course disturbing, but politicians do the same thing all the time. However, he sort of answers it by saying that blacks are not part of the Aryan agenda, whatever that agenda is, so they shouldn’t be worried. The Nazi’s name, Metzger, is ironically the same as the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, by the way.

Second, when challenged about the Holocaust, one of the other Aryan guys goes on about Stalin and the Ukraine, where Jews were also murdered. He quotes the number 30 million, not sure if it was that much, but he didn’t even mention Mao who clocks in at 45 to 55 million, and that’s not even counting the years outside ’58-’62, which would be ’48-’57 and ’63-’76.  When asked if the Holocaust happened, the Aryan asks, “Does it matter?”

Then Gerald pins him as a Holocaust denier and the whole thing descends into a brawl.

To wit, the guy responded, “I didn’t say it didn’t happen, I said it doesn’t matter,” and keeps reiterating that Stalin killed more and that nobody seems to care, or even acknowledge the point at all. Is that equally holocaust denial? Yes, it is.

I can’t call these Skinheads jolly people or anything like that. They are not nice people, that’s for sure. But neither is Gerald, Geraldo, or whatever he calls himself. I’m fairly certain that in a room with libertarians, there would be a levelheaded discussion with these Nazis instead of some dumb sensationalist fight erupting. I would agree that Hitler’s Holocaust is irrelevant to him as a non Jew, but very relevant to me as a Jew, and that Stalin’s Holocaust should be more relevant to him as a non Jew because it was directed against humans as economic beings, which is everyone. He would probably agree with that. We could go home, not necessarily liking each other, but at least understanding each other and agreeing to keep our distance.

I’m waiting for the comments calling me a Nazi sympathizer now, just because I don’t completely discount every single word coming out of their mouths. “If you listen to even a single word they say you’re guilty of committing genocide against your own people!” someone will undoubtedly say.

They are simply tired of Hitlerian Holocaust education to the detriment of Stalinist (and Maoist) Holocaust education. And if I were a non Jew, I’d probably be frustrated with that as well. Even as a Jew it annoys me.

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On the Essential Difference between Utopia and an Anarcho-Capitalist Society

rafifarber Libertarian Halacha, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Is anarcho capitalism a utopian vision? Anarcho capitalism is simply the natural state of human interaction. In most normal interactions between people, the state is not involved. Someone says good morning to you. He was not mandated to do so by law, and you are not mandated to respond. But you usually do. Not out of fear of government reprisal, but because that is the decent thing to do. If you don’t, you don’t. You lose your chance for a possibly valuable social connection, most likely to your own detriment.

Almost all exchanges are voluntarily honored with no need of government courts. Almost all salaries are paid as contracted. Almost all exchanges made without involvement of state authorities. The only question is, for those that are not honored, is it best to be resolved through private insurance companies or through government entities?

The answer is private companies.

What is a utopian vision? It is the vision of one man who thinks he knows how all of humanity should interact. He then mandates it by law, because has this idea in his head that will work, but that neglects the very idea of diversity within humanity.  His vision of how humanity should interact is what becomes law. Diversity is outlawed. Anyone who chooses to interact differently is killed or imprisoned. It is Utopia or death.

The only mechanism equipped to properly handle the diversity within human existence is the free market.

Forced communism is a utopian vision. One human believes it will be best for all humans to act this way. He forces it, and most die. A utopian vision gone awry.

Same with forced anything.

The only thing that must be enforced is lack of force, and that must be enforced by competing insurance companies. A true utopian will call on force on a whim, whenever society is not acting exactly as he personally envisions it. An anarcho capitalist society resorts to force only when force is applied in the first place, in order to neutralize it.

In my attempt to get Moshe Feiglin to agree to the principle of anarcho-libertarianism, he has accused me of being utopian. I am not utopian.

I simply believe in the right of every human being not be stolen from or forced to do what he does not want to do.

Whatever results from that, results from that. But the key point is that anarcho capitalism is not seeking an end goal. Only social engineers do that. Anarcho capitalists seek justice in a pure sense. Whatever happens happens, whether it be utopia or not. We have reason to believe it would be the best of all forms of human existence. But we are not anarcho capitalists in order to achieve a certain outcome. We are what we are because we believe it is the most just way to live.

We do not seek utopia. We only seek what is right, given the facts of human existence. And given those facts, government is wrong.

Are Communism and Libertarianism Compatible? Yes. They are.

rafifarber Libertarian Halacha, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Just to clear up a common misconception, as much as I find what we commonly call “communism” detestable, it is still possible to be a communist and a libertarian. It isn’t communism per se that libertarianism rejects, but rather the forced collectivization of goods and and services into communes.

If a group of people decided that they wanted to voluntarily live in commune where the rule “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” held sway, I’d have no problem with that. Only confused libertarians would have a problem with it. The only problem with communism is that it requires force to implement. A central authority must come in and confiscate all property to collectivize it. That means the natural state of things is private individual property and communes come in with a central authority to take all property and redistribute it by force.

That usually leads to mass starvation and death, as in Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Stalin’s rape of Ukraine etc. These examples were all communism enacted by force. There have been no greater examples of mass death than these. But if communism is enacted voluntarily by people who don’t want private property but would rather work for the commune, then it can indeed work.

The classic example is the Israeli Kibbutz. People who want to live there agree to work on a communistic basis, and that’s fine, as long as they don’t force people who want to work for themselves to live there. Kibbutzim are not particularly successful enterprises in terms of amassing wealth, but if the people who live there like them and want to continue doing as they do, then libertarianism has no objection.

The same is true even for murder societies who all agree that if you live within a certain previously homesteaded area, anyone can murder you without warning. That’s fine too, as long as everyone who lives there agrees to the rules. The key is it has to be previously homesteaded. Otherwise property is appropriated by private means and the rules of that property become subject to their owner.

A voluntary communist society wouldn’t lead to much wealth creation, but it sounds attractive to sado-masochists at least, and some people like it.  You can’t argue with what makes people happy because it is subjective.

The same is true for collectivism or socialism or whatever. Libertarians are not against team sports, because everyone on the team agrees to work as a collective. Socialism per se is not a problem as long as everyone who has to fund it fully agrees to it. As long as everyone agrees, no problem.

The only thing libertarians object to is the use of force against innocents. There is literally nothing else to it. It is one of the simplest antipolitical philosophies in the world, which is what makes it so prone to error.

Bernie Sanders Proposes a $1 Trillion Heist

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

What makes taxes not theft in the public eye? It must be the dilution.

Colonel Sanders wants to spend $1 trillion to “improve infrastructure”. Where does the trillion come from? Does he summon it ex nihilo? Perhaps in his mind yes. Because he in his idiocy thinks that the very concept of value was invented by Johann Gutenberg with the printing press. You can print dollars, so no theft needed?

But people with more than two ganglia understand you can’t get something from nothing. And most people understand Colonel Sanders is not God. The dollars he prints would only represent value which was accumulated by someone else’s work that Sanders wants to accumulate through a monopoly on what qualifies as “money”.

So he must take the value from people who have worked. At what point is it theft? If Sanders found one trillionaire and passed a bill to “tax” him of everything he has and used the money to finance 17 new Boston Style Big Dig projects, would it be theft? Yes, the public would see it as theft. What about taxing two people each worth $500B and taking everything? Would that be theft as well? Yes, and actually worse because theft is a violation against person, not inanimate objects. Theft against 2 is worse than theft against 1 even if the values are equal.

And so on to 3 confiscations of $333.3 million. What about 4 of $250M? 5 of $200M? Are we getting better or worse here?

Worse.

But what about taxation as it is, or at least at its most equitable? Colonel Sanders spends $1 trillion by taking $333 dollars from every single person in the United States of America. That would be the worst possible situation. But it’s not even taking $333 from everyone. It’s “borrowing” $166.67 from everyone and printing the other $166.7 promising you’ll pay it all back when you’re already over $18 trillion in debt in the first place and inflation is no big deal.

You’ll never pay it back. And it is a big deal, the more marginal of a producer you are.

Privatize the roads and everyone will know it’s theft when the roads company proposes to “tax” you $1 trillion dollars for a Big Dig. And you won’t be happy at all if said company decides it has a monopoly on money supply and prints a bunch for itself to partially finance its schemes. In that case it’s fairly obvious that inflation is theft just as well.

But for the government, it’s just “stimulating the economy”.

How to Really Heckle Donald Trump

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Trump has some serious game. He is an AMOG par excellence. AMOG is pickup parlance for Alpha Male of the Group. He knows how to deflect hecklers and come out on top. But AMOG’s have their weaknesses.

The last time somebody heckled Trump he threatened to have security take away his coat. Dissing Trump though is not going to work. Alphas always know how to turn hecklers to their advantage.

The only way to get Trump off his game through heckling is to praise him profusely and embarrassingly while taking his policy centerpieces to their logical conclusion.

Here’s what I mean. When I was in the Israeli army, I was stuck with a bunch of juvenile misfits. Almost all of the native Israeli kids were gross annoying obnoxious disgusting and stupid, most of them from broken homes. They stuck them with the group of new immigrants (עולים חדשים) to hopefully tame them, us being twenty-somethings, some with wives and families. I was married at the time.

It didn’t work. The obnoxious kids poisoned the rest of the group and it was just miserable. I made a few friends but I can’t say the experience was net positive. I wasn’t even a minarchist back then.

There was however one kid in particular who was especially annoying. A good looking badass from a bad neighborhood who refused to do anything the commanders told him to do and got us all collectively punished for it. Such is the State army. He was ultra cool, and extremely annoying. Imagine having to deal with the most popular teenager in camp while looking at it from the point of view of a married 26 year old who shouldn’t even be wasting time in summer camp.

One time this kid was flirting with a group of good looking female soldiers. He was doing well, they were giggling and obviously attracted to him. I was with a group of immigrant soldiers from my unit, married guys, and we were all just looking at this kid wanting to mess up his game somehow. So I volunteered to do it.

I walked up to him as he was flirting with these girls, tilted my glasses so they were a little crooked, pulled my pants up high to look as nerdy and stupid as possible, and said, in my thickest and deepest American-accented Hebrew I could pull off, “עמוס הוא החייל הכי טוב והכי מגניב בכל המחלקה! אני אוהב את עמוס מאוד מאוד, הוא חבר טוב מאד שלי ושל כולנו! שלום עמוס אתה מגניב!”

“Amos is the coolest and best soldier in our whole unit! I love Amos a lot a lot! He is my best friend and everyone’s best friend! Hi Amos, you’re really cool!”

As I was saying this I put my arm around his shoulder and tried to give him a hug, but he ran out of there too fast and by the time I finished he had already sprinted away.

That’s how you have to heckle Donald Trump. Go in there wearing a Trump shirt, Trump gear, scream profuse praise and say something like “Yay Donald! I love the Donald! No more trade with China! We don’t want China’s cheap stuff! We want to pay more for American stuff! Build a huge wall on the Mexican border! Make it like the big wall of China! Ban all immigration! Deport all the Muslims! Save America! Go Donald!”

And then try to rush the stage and give him a big hug. Make sure you’re wearing a big Donald wig.

And I promise you he won’t know how to respond. He’ll just be flustered.

 

From Going Full Retard on Communism to Full Retard on Keynesian Money Printing – Why China is About to Have an Epic Collapse

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , , ,

I have almost finished reading Professor Frank Dikotter’s “Mao’s Great Famine”. It is a history of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962. I had to get through it quickly because it is so fantastically horrific that lingering over the book and reading it slowly will be bad for my mental health. There were parts where I became nauseous and could not continue reading without a break.

Those 4 years in China encompassed the absolute worst assault on human liberty ever, resulting in the most disgusting and grotesque man-made catastrophe in all of human history. Worse than Stalin, worse than Hitler. By far.

Here is Professor Dikotter discussing his book. (Take a look at the book on the right of Dikotter, shoulder level shelf.)

What basically happened, in a nutshell, is full blown and complete communism for 4 years. Mao decided on a Great Leap Forward for China. He was going to implement communism, fully and completely, across the entire country encompassing some 600 million Chinese people. The state was going to control absolutely everything. Plan and run the entire economy, abolish all private property. The results were complete and utter chaos and destruction, resulting in the worst misallocation of resources imaginable.

The delicate balance of supply and demand, which tells entrepreneurs what to produce and how much of it to produce through the price system, was totally destroyed. With the state in charge of production and distribution and all private property confiscated and abolished, almost nothing got to where it needed to go. The environmental catastrophe resulting from intensely exploitative farming methods and irresponsible coal mining and timber felling was absolutely mindboggling.

For example, at the beginning of the Great leap Forward, Mao had this insane idea that China had to surpass Great Britain in steel production. So he had all labor move to the steel industry. To meet quotas, the Chinese burnt capital in backyard furnaces, including farming tools, door knobs, pots and pans, anything, just to increase output so Mao could boast that China produces more steel. The result was that no farming tools were left, nobody had any pots and pans or metal window frames, and not enough people were farming, with the predictable result of not enough food for the population.

Humongous irrigation systems were conceived up by idiotic central planners trying to impress the regime. The results were almost always waste, the reservoirs being useless from shoddy workmanship, and as the rainy season came on, inundated the cities because the new trenches destroyed the ability of the land to soak up rainwater.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of food rotted at government train stations because there were not enough trains to transport resources to where they were needed.

At the worst of the famine in 1960 and 1961, families traded their young children between them to slaughter and eat them. Bodies were exhumed from cemeteries and eaten for lack of food.

The brutality in many of the collectivized communes was intense and almost indescribable.

As I read this book, I look at everything the government controls in Israel. All the misallocation going on here because they care nothing about the money they spend. In everything, every road (more people die on the government roads every year than in wars and “terrorism” combined), every public school, every government institution I see the potential for the sort of absolute insanity. It was as if China was put in the hands of a group of 5 year olds who had absolute power and cared nothing for the consequences of their actions. Anywhere from 45 to 55 million people died.

I could write on and on about this, but here’s the point. China hasn’t changed much, in terms of its economic mentality and faith in political leadership. Interview Chinese who went through the Great Leap Forward and they still have no clue what happened or why. A statue of Mao still stands in the Beijing. He’s still the father of the country.

Mao went full retard on communism for four years. One more year and the death toll could have doubled to 100 million, but his cronies eventually came to their senses and shut down the communes, giving back the right to privately own land and farm it.

I go on and on about the evils of Keynesian money printing. Keynesianism is a toned down version of communism that says that the government should only intervene when the market “fails”. Since there is no such thing as a market failure, that means that practically, Keynesianism says that the government should intervene in the market whenever it feels like it. That is not conceptually very far from full blown communism at all.

The cornerstone of Keynesianism is manipulation of a government monopoly of the money supply. As much as I hate the Fed, they are ultra conservative compared with the People’s Bank of China. Here’s what I mean.

Here’s the US money supply since 1996.

united-states-money-supply-m2

It’s gone from just under $4 trillion (say $3.8T eyeballing it) to $12.453 trillion as of last week. That’s an increase by a factor of 3.3. That’s going to cause a big crash, much worse than 2008 when it stops, and it will stop when the dollar begins to hyperinflate. It’s going to be bad, but probably not result in mass starvation in the United States unless Trump is president and decides to cut of all trade with everybody to “save American jobs” and then use his Great Wall of Trump to keep all the starving masses inside the country from running to Mexico for food.

Now here’s China’s money supply since 1996.

china-money-supply-m2

It has increased from CNY5.84 trillion in 1996 to (!) CNY137.4 trillion. That’s an increase of a factor of 23.5! When the printing stops, China’s economy is going to be so misallocated and whacked out that the devastation will be intense. Not as intense as the Great Leap Forward hopefully, unless Beijing decides to lock everyone down in their jobs and save factories from going bankrupt by bailing everything out and freezing the economy in place. Then yes, mass starvation will again result.

Chinese leadership tends to go full retard on a lot things. It’s a repeating pattern. The Great Wall of China, the Great Leap Forward, and now the Keynesian insanity. When the Chinese crash really starts to take effect this time, watch what Beijing does. One billion lives will depend on it. If I were Chinese, I’d take my money and run the heck out of there now. Same with Venezuela by the way.

 

Excess Reserves on the Move, Down 11% in Two Weeks!

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Has the great migration of excess reserves out of the Federal Reserve and into the economy finally begun? It could be. Total reserves fell dramatically from $2.53 trillion to $2.28 in the last two weeks. I don’t know where they went or how the Fed sucked them out of the system. It must have something to do with the rise in interest rates but I’m not sure what.

The weekly money supply total is steady from two weeks ago, so the missing reserves so far don’t seem to be showing up in the money supply. However, the H3 release, which shows total reserves, measures until January 6 and the H6 release only through December 28. So it could be that when the H6 catches up, we will see the ripples of that $250 billion drop in total reserves starting to show up in the money supply.

The 1-week average should be carefully monitored over the next 2 weeks especially, to see if it moves up as total reserves move down. If it does, we are in for a monetary flood. If it doesn’t, then the Fed has figured out a way to drain excess reserves without affecting the money supply. If that’s true, the Fed must be selling assets in return for cash that it is retiring.

Any Fed experts out there who have a clue as to what is going on here?

The Secret $30 Minimum Wage for Jews Only

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Note to the economically illiterate: This is a joke. None of it is true.

Gentiles always want to know why Jews are so successful. The answer is, higher minimum wage. By Jewish law, Jews must be paid at least $30 an hour regardless of what they do, meaning that even Jews who sweep the floors of McDonald’s (without eating any of the Big Macs of course) can afford to buy humongous houses after only a few years of savings, while other floor sweepers can barely afford a crawl space.

Since Jews are not allowed to work for anything below $30 according to Halacha, employers are forced to pay Jews higher wages, which is why Jews are so rich. Even though non Jews who are not subject to the $30 Jewish minimum wage Halacha could theoretically undercut expensive Jewish labor, that never actually happens. Employers are glad to spend enormous sums of money on Jews just because what the hell.

We all know employers are rich enough to pay anything Jews tell them to. They own a business for God’s sake! How can you own a business but not be able to afford to pay more than your workers produce? If you own a business, you’re rich. You should pay your Jews more.

The secret to wealth is not production. It’s law. The only reason the Talmud didn’t jack up the Jewish minimum wage to $1,000,000 an hour, even though that would certainly work fine (business owners are rich after all) is that the Rabbis had pity on non Jews who wouldn’t be able to afford anything if all the Jews were earning $1 million an hour.

There would be no more Shabbos goys. It would be a terrible problem.

So, if America wants to fix its economy, all it needs to do is put people who work for and employ others at $29 an hour or below, in jail. That way, everyone will be rich, just like the Jews.

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz vs Rabbi Barry Freundel, who is worse? A lesson in inverted Tzedaka from the Rambam

rafifarber Foreign Policy, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

Here I go again, looking for trouble. Something tells me I’m going to get it. Before everyone gets all “what in blank’s name are you talking about Captain Ahab?” on me, let me set up the comparison first. I know I said I’d lay off him after he thankfully advocated organ sales, but the hypocrisy just boiled over the surface of the pot again and I can’t take it.

A spate of articles came out recently about Barry “Tom” Freundel the “Peeperer Rov” Shlitah (everyone rise). One article was published in the Washingtonian on January 3rd, brought to my attention by my wife, that brought to light even worse aspects of the case than we knew about previously. Apparently, Barry set up hidden cameras in a vacant apartment he had set up for a Haredi woman as a safe shelter who was fleeing from her abusive husband. The woman had gotten in touch with him for help and he took advantage of the opportunity to see her naked.

The schadenfreude instinct in all of us loves to squirm at the thought of something like that and denounce Barry for being even more heartless than we thought. It certainly is quite gross. From his perspective though, there wasn’t any difference between that and spying on women in the mikveh. In both cases he assumes he will never get caught, nobody will ever know, and therefore no harm will be done because none of the women will ever find out.

So practically it doesn’t matter if he’s peeping on an abused woman he himself is helping shelter from an abusive husband, or converts dunking in the mikveh or whatever. There’s no nafkah minah (practical difference) assuming he is never caught, and all criminals assume they will never be caught or they would never commit their crimes.

The Eight Levels of Tzadaka, The Eight Levels of Harm

But let’s consider harm in levels parallel to Rambam’s 8 levels of Tzadaka, or charity. Rambam, Zra’im, Hilchos Matanos Ani’im 10:7 says that the highest form of charity is giving someone a loan or a gift (notice Rambam does not differentiate between loan and gift) or a job so that he does not have to rely on charity any longer. This level is higher than the ever-praised level of giving anonymously to people who not even the giver knows the identity of, which is only the second level, and called a Mitzva Lishma, a Mitzva for its own sake, by the Rambam. The third is knowing who you give charity to but them not knowing who gave it.The lowest level is giving tzedaka grudgingly, publicly with a sour resentful face.

Conceptually, this means that employing someone at $10 an hour who needs a job is considered better than  dumping a million bucks on the same needy person who will simply consume it and continue to live off charity. Hiring someone, whether to help him (Lishma) or make money off him (Lo Lishma), is a higher level than anonymous giving. According to the Rambam then, the highest form of charity is not even charity, since it could even be a loan or employment. The highest level is to lessen the need for charity in the first place.

Before we even flip that around, it’s amazing to consider that hiring labor at any wage or extending a loan for someone to start a business (which could include buying shares in an IPO or buying corporate bonds, setting aside the issue of interest) is a greater level of charity than giving a billion dollars anonymously to anonymous people. In today’s world though, those who give away $1 billion anonymously are considered gracious selfless philanthropic saints. A business owner who hires a worker at $10 an hour, which is a higher level than giving $1 billion anonymously to charity, is considered a cheap selfish misanthropic schmuck.

Now let’s invert that. If the highest level of charity is turning unproductive people into productive people, then the highest level of harming a person or people is turning productive people into unproductive people, necessitating that they live off charity, or worse, taxpayer money. Harming anonymous people anonymously, say by being a sadist for fun and setting a bear trap for random people on a sidewalk you will never see and just reveling in the thought that someone you will never know got seriously hurt, well that would only be the second worst way to harm someone. That would be harm for the sake of harming people, “harm Lishma”, paralleling Rambam’s description of anonymous charity to anonymous people as a Mitzva Lishma, but still only second level.

The third worst way to harm someone would be to harm people anonymously, they no knowing you but you knowing who they are. The least bad way to harm someone would be to harm him grudgingly, he knowing you and you knowing him, but not really wanting to harm him at all, and the victim knowing that you don’t really want to harm him.

Barry is on level three in terms of the harm he inflicted. He inflicted it anonymously against people he knew about. He wasn’t as bad as harming anonymous people for its own sake. He wanted to see them naked. He didn’t want them to be harmed Lishma. If he did, he would have uploaded the videos so everyone could see them. Had he taken videos of anonymous women, never watched them or knew who he was videotaping, and simply uploaded them to the internet just to cause harm, that would be harm Lishma, only the second level.

Still not as bad as turning productive people into unproductive people.

But let’s face it. Had Barry recorded women in the mikveh, not knowing who they were, never watching the tapes, and uploading all of it to the internet just to harm them for fun but not watching because מסתכלין בעריות (watching pornography) is assur and he’s too frum, we would consider that even sicker than what he actually did. We would consider that really incredibly sick and bizarre. But it’s still only level 2.

That incredibly bizarre sickness of harming anonymous people only for the sake of harming them, is not nearly as bad as turning productive people into unproductive people living off charity or taxpayer money, according to the Rambam-1.

It is fascinating how the Rambam’s top level of charity is not even considered charity in the popular sense. Employing a worker or giving a loan is not generally seen as charitable, though it is, and the highest level of it. By the very same token, turning productive people into unproductive people is generally not seen as all that harmful, but it is. It is an even higher level of harm than hurting anonymous people for its own sake.

And how does one turn productive people into people dependent on charity?

Let’s take one example from the Social Justice Rav’s Facebook page. He hasn’t blocked me from seeing the page yet, even though after this post he might. (I dare him.)

I mentioned that the reason Rav Shmuly “unfriended” me years ago was that I yelled at him publicly for supporting American intervention in Syria. He was busy thwacking about trying to get politicians to send lethal weapons and training to “the Rebels” to unseat Assad. These weapons and training ultimately ended up in the hands of ISIS, and led to the civil war that caused the Syrian refugee crisis.

And now, Rav Shmuly Yanklowitz, who advocated for the very cause of the Syrian refugee crisis in the first place, is scoring even more social justice publicity points by diarrheaing about how he has personally invited Syrian refugees to his home for Thanksgiving and New Year’s and Whatever.

So not only is the Social Justice Rav advocating for turning productive people (former Syrian citizens) into unproductive people (current Syrian refugees) by rooting and lobbying for war in their former country. He now wants US taxpayers to support these people with free immigration, free healthcare, free education, food stamps and whatnot. And to add even more insult to that injury, he gets all the publicity for helping them out.

Disclaimer: Helping out refugees is a great thing. But not in this case, where he was the one who was rooting the refugee status on in the first place, and he now wants others to pay for it. In this case his hachnasas orchim (taking in guests) is manipulative self-righteous BS, which seems to be the essence of nearly every single one of Rav Shmuly’s initiatives. I support the actual act of taking in refugees, but cannot refrain from calling hypocrisy on the people who help cause the problem to begin with.

This is just the one thing that set me off this time. Shmuly tries to turn productive people into unproductive people by advocating for minimum wage laws, equal-work-equal-pay laws, and boycotting products made in third-world sweatshops. Minimum wage laws prevent the least productive workers from working at all. Equal-work-equal-pay laws prevent women from being productive. Boycotting sweatshops unemploys destitute third world kids from earning enough money so they don’t have to choose between starving to death and performing sexual favors for a piece of bread.

Shmuly spends a lot of his time advocating that unproductive people remain unproductive with labor legislation. He spends the rest of his time demanding that taxpayers support these unproductive people by force.

And then he takes the fruits of his anti labor (Syrian refugees) and manipulates the whole situation to make it look like he’s the good guy.

The harm Rabbi Shmuly “Social Justice” Yanklowitz causes is much worse than the harm that Barry “Tom” Freundel ever caused. Yes, Shmuly has good intentions, and some of his initiatives are good, like this one. and Barry’s intentions were neutral to bad. He never tried to actively harm anyone, but he did cause harm. I’m sure Barry also had some good initiatives over his career as well. They don’t count for much now, at least not in the public consciousness.

But Mao Zedong, the biggest murderer in world history who killed 45 million people in 4 years in an attempt to create a socialist utopia, was filled with good intentions just as well. Good intentions count for nothing. Zero. The only thing that matters is whether you support liberty, or control over other people’s lives. Ultimately, life and death comes down to that single question. This is reality folks, and as Ayn Rand liked to say, “Existence exists.”

If you advocate for a war in a distant country, don’t be surprised if there is a refugee problem. And when there is, don’t you dare ask that other people pay for it.