The Jewish Libertarian Blog

My Three Year Old, Offended by Everything, Ready for University

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

If you’ve ever had to deal with a three-year-old pre-gendered person who doesn’t understand how offensive it is to say anything at all to anybody about anything involving something that could define some other thing in some way that makes it not a different thing, then you’ll understand what’s going on in college campuses today.

My three-year-old child (or as racist sexist fascist Nazi cultural appropriators would say, “boy”) Fry is totally ready to be a college student because he gets offended by everything. And when he does get offended by something, almost always literally anything unless in very rare instances it happens to be something else, I have to put him in a “safe space” where I have removed all dangerous objects within a five-foot radius where he can scream until his face turns blue and he faints.

He really does this. He gets SO offended by something that he cries and cries and screams louder and louder until he turns purple and I can see the intricate vasculature in his 3-year-old neck. Then he literally stops breathing, at which point he finally quiets down because he can no longer, you know, breathe, and therefore make any sound, at which point we begin “The Countdown”.

When “The Countdown” begins, we usually have between 5 to 7 seconds before his teetering and staggering leads to him falling over. So my wife and I clear the 5-foot radius around him of all dangerous objects he could fall on and whack himself with and while I’m doing this I tell my oldest daughter Tzivia, who is 7 and strong enough to resist his violent staggering and also doesn’t rage in response to orange cheese sticks not being blue for example (we’ll return to this shortly), to grab onto him gently so that when his knees buckle from lack of oxygen he doesn’t break his face on the floor.

Then his knees buckle, and Tzivia lets him down easy, and he arches his back violently while sort of resembling the shape of a dead caterpillar on the floor. Then we count back up to 5 and he takes a huge breath and has no idea where he is or how he got there or what he was so offended by in the first place. It’s like it never happened. That’s called “The Reset”. Sometimes we prefer resetting him because it’s easier than plotting a long circuitous path down from the current insanity fit, wrought with land mines of potential offence.

Picture dealing with a Microsoft Windows crash. A dialogue box keeps popping up telling you about an error and you keep pressing OK but it keeps reappearing no matter how seriously OK you are with this error personally as long as the computer keeps computing. Then the computer freezes up and stops breathing, and you can either try to grease it up again somehow, which could take hours, or you can just reboot the whole thing.

The last thing Fry was offended by was “blue sticks”. We didn’t know what a blue stick was so we gave him a blue marker, a blue crayon, anything that was blue but every time we gave him something he’d scream louder and say “NO!” Then we switched our focus to the stick part and tried giving him a cheese stick, but he was very offended because he wanted blue cheese, not a blue stick, but we were getting closer!

We didn’t have blue cheese, but we had blue duct tape, so we put the blue duct tape on the cheese stick. He calmed down for a second, and then remembered that he was still offended because the cheese stick with the blue duct tape on it wasn’t orange.

We told him that we are very sorry, but blue can’t be orange because colors are mutually exclusive and he fainted again, which is exactly why he’s ready to be a college student.

In college you’re not allowed to say that anything is different from anything because the fact that some things are different from other things is discrimination. The more obvious the differences are that you point out, the more offensive you are, so just like my son needs a safe space to faint in when he is told that blue cheese sticks can’t be orange, many students need safe spaces to grieve in when told that men and women have certain biological differences, like being able to read novels about a fictional husband from the 18th century who understands his wife’s emotional complexities so thoroughly that he must have a tumor somewhere, and functioning nipples.

For example, take these offended students from Portland State University.

They became offended by the fact that women are the ones who gestate and lactate and men don’t. “You can be irritated by the fact that women are the ones who have to gestate and lactate. But taking offense is a response that is rejection of reality,” said evolutionary biologist Heather Heying whose gender must not be named because it is female. The students then staged a protest, and waved around cheese sticks wrapped in blue duct tape screaming about the fact that they weren’t orange and that this was fascist.

Regarding the genderless evolutionary biologist, one student responded, “Even the women in there have been brainwashed!”, which raises the question of how this student even knew that Heying was a so-called “woman” if you can’t discriminate based on nipple functionality. Another student response also reminded me of my 3-year-old in the midst of a fainting fit only with a slathering of intellectual superiority. “We should not listen to fascism. It should not be tolerated in civil society. Nazis are not welcome in civil society!”

He then gestated and lactated in front of everyone, to the surprise and dismay of Dr. Heying.

Let us end with some cultural expropriation in the form of a politically correct Zen Haiku:

Hysterectomy

Confusion say no Nazis!

Perform it on man.

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Why We Definitely Need More Gun Control Alt Delete And Intergalactic Kama Sutra

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , , ,

Remember when we were kids and the government told us all not to do drugs? I remember it fondly because I was naturally a sedated kid and didn’t need drug sedation in order to sit in a chair for 7 hours every day for 13 years straight in order to get educated about stuff. I would supplement my education by scribbling crude scientific diagrams of various alien genitalia and their uses within the context of xenoreproductive habits. I was working on my resume for Star Fleet Academy.

In retrospect, it was rather unwise of me to craft these drawings within the margins of various workbooks, my teachers on occasion flipping through said workbooks to check periodic enrichment assignments. My margins were way too enriched, if you know what I mean. My teachers probably all thought I was on drugs.

Anyway, so we were told not to do drugs in a class called “D.A.R.E. To Keep Kids Off Drugs”. We would all wear these black goth-looking emo shirts to illustrate how D.A.R.I.N.G. we were not to do drugs, and boy did I learn a lot about drugs during that government program! It was so much fun! I specifically remember learning about LSD and how if you took it you could “taste music”, and “hear colors,” and “sing with all the voices of the mountains” and “paint with all the colors of your wind”!

I was quite a gassy kid so I was really excited about this. When I heard about that I actually stopped doodling alien genitalia for a few minutes and when I went home I further supplemented my D.A.R.E. education by learning all I could about how to make LSD. Dial-up AOL internet was really slow and pixelated though in the mid 90’s and it knocked out your phone line so I just gave up.

But then the policeman who taught us all about LSD, someone named Officer Becker, told us not to do those drugs and I went back to my xenobiology diagrams. All drugs were bad, Officer Becker taught us, except for Aderall® (amphetamine), Concerta® (methylphenidate), Desoxyn® (methamphetamine hydrochloride AKA “glass pills”), Dexedrine® (dextroamphetamine), Focalin® (dexmethylphenidate), Ritalin®, Datrana®, Vyvanse® (lisdexamphetamine dimesylate), Intuniv® (guanfacine alpha-2-adrenergic agonist), and Straterra® (atomoxetine). Those were all great drugs despite mandated FDA black box warnings of increased suicidal tendencies in children if we weren’t good at sitting still by occupying ourselves with the fine details of sketching extra-terrestrial sex positions and needed some help calming down.

I didn’t need those drugs, but I do remember they made up some complicated name for the terminal disease all these kids had that did need them. They had this serious problem where all they wanted to do was like, get up and, like, DO things instead of sit all day. They called it ADHD, for Accelerated Decrepit Hyperinsanity Disorder. Oh, and the ADHD kids were all told that the best weapon against a drug habit was a high self-esteem, and also to make sure you took all your drugs if through no fault of your own you were unable to SIT THE $%*& DOWN AND SHUT THE *#@& YOU LITTLE S*$&S!!

It was top notch education.

And while the bad drugs were bad, if, through no fault of our own we were sad all the time, we could also take fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, paroxetine, fluvoxamine, escitalopram, or guanohexadinaflarg cyanide. (OK, I made the last one up. Guanohexadinaflarg is actually a poison. But seriously, the rest, which are all real, were considered good despite additional FDA-mandated black box warnings of increased suicidality. But never mind that. All they really did apparently was prevent your brain from reabsorbing neurotransmitters like serotonin, which floods your brain with serotonin, which makes you really jumpy all the time, which means you have to double up on your dose of prescription meth to SIT STILL! I forgot to close parentheses.)

So in my D.A.R.E. class we had all these kids told that they had hyperinsanity dementia for not sitting still, on brain-chemistry-altering neurotransmitter-flooding drugs because they were sad, on more drugs to keep them sedated from the other drugs, all with black box warnings of increased risk of suicide, being told that in order not to do drugs they had to think very highly of themselves and learn about how amazing drugs like LSD are but you definitely should NOT do them. This is known as “drug control”.

Maybe I live under a jagged rock or I’m just too busy drawing aliens or I’m taking way too many drugs (probably all three), but as far as I know there is absolutely no drug problem in the US because we have drug control. I mean aside from all the drugs that we’re supposed to be on. Drugs are illegal, at least the illegal ones are, and after spending more than $1 trillion on drug control enforcement, drugs are finally a thing. Of the past.

So that’s why we need way more gun control. Because in order to stop crazy people from murdering others with assault weapons, all you need to do is make them illegal. So if the government just sits down and does something responsible for once and makes it illegal for anyone to purchase assault weapons, all the kids now on brain-altering antidepressants and ADHD drugs to make sure their antidepressants don’t make them so jumpy that they no longer have the ability to concentrate on their D.A.R.E. courses about how they shouldn’t do drugs which they can’t get anyway because of drug control, won’t go out and somehow find an assault rifle somewhere on the black market and murder people.

It really has absolutely nothing to do with all the drugs the government says these kids should be on because they need to sit and listen for 13 years straight 7 hours a day and they have hyperinsanity dysphagia, but shouldn’t be sad about it because it’s really not their fault, and won’t be as long as they’re taking all their antidepressants.

I mean think about it. When the government says you can’t buy something, like an assault rifle, how in the world are you going to find one?

I would suggest, humbly, as someone successfully educated by the government never to taste any colors with LSD, that maybe the solution to mass shootings could perhaps involve something like stop giving kids so much drugs that come with warnings of increased risk of suicide and making them sit and be lectured at for 13 years straight by law and instead let those who can’t handle such sedentary habits go to work and DO something but I’m just too busy illustrating the Star Fleet First Contact Guide to the Intergalactic Kama Sutra.

Enjoy this very serious and not sarcastic piece? Then you’ll be totally titillated by this fantastic nonsense about Libertarianism and Silicone Brain Implants.

Libertarianism and Silicone Brain Implants

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I have an announcement to make. But before I do, I want to talk about silicone brain implants.

I just learned, in what may seem surprising but in retrospect makes perfect sense considering how little people think about stuff, that you can actually cut half of a person’s brain out of his skull and aside from the opposite side of his body being numb and  the loss of side vision, the person will be fine. Maybe a bit forgetful (as in, “Hey, where did I just put my hemisphere?”) but pretty much fine.

The procedure is called a functional hemispherectomy, and it’s a real thing. The doctor basically comes at you with a really precise chainsaw and after flipping a coin for dramatic effect and making a doctorish quip or two like “Don’t worry, I know it’s the left one, right? Don’t get ahead of yourself! Just kidding! Relax!” carefully removes half of your brain. In preparation for surgery, it is recommended that you store all critical information in the remaining hemisphere, such as where you put your car keys, and remembering why the chicken crossed the corpus callosum. (Answer: to get to the other hemisphere.)

Some questions you may be asking yourself at this point:

  • Why would someone have half of his brain removed?
  • Are silicone brain implants available for these patients?
  • Where can I get a really precise chainsaw?
  • Where are my car keys?

The answer to question 1) is life-threatening childhood seizures. This is a serious non humor thing. Apparently, functional hemispherectomies have a 75% success rate in stopping these seizures which is great for 3 out of 4 people. The other 1 out of 4 apparently just feel a bit lightheaded.

Now, while it is generally known that cannabis oil can sometimes be helpful in treating seizures in children, that is only the case in jurisdictions where cannabis is not a schedule I drug that has no generally accepted medical use and has high potential for abuse. In said jurisdictions, doctors first resort to chemically engineered lab-created schedule II drugs that thankfully do have a generally accepted medical use and high potential for abuse. If those don’t work, you can always just calmly and gently remove half your brain.

At this point (.) I’d like to share a passage from a post on the interwebs that I found by googling “Cannabis hemispherectomy” because surprisingly, it didn’t lead me to a porn site. (At least not yet.) The post opens thusly thus:

Just a a (sic) quick post today. MCANZ has heard second hand anecdotal stories from an (sic) NZ Refugee to Colorado, that CBD rich Cannabis oil has worked on children for seizures where this much more drastic (and rare) [functional hemispherectomy] procedure has failed.

You hear that boys and girls and other assorted genders? After having half their child’s brains excised and the procedure failing, only then did these responsible parents try cannabis oil for their child.

Now call me old fashioned, but I’m the type of parent who, before resorting to having a doctor slice half of my child’s brain out and having to go through the trouble of finding a suitable tailor-made silicone brain implant – quite expensive from what I hear – I would first maybe try to get my hands on some cannabis oil somehow on the off chance that perhaps, possibly, it might help a bit even though it is a schedule I drug with no generally accepted medical use and high potential for abuse. That just seems more reasonable to me than cutting out half of your kid’s brain first before even trying it.

But the author has another critical point I didn’t mention, one based on the Hippocratic Oath of Do No Harm. There’s an ethical dilemma here:

So we have an ethical dilemma, the use of an experimental medicine [cannabis oil] with scant but positive scientific research and attached legal baggage, versus a rare, but extreme, and on average effective treatment for those children with life threatening seizures.

It’s a question of morality, people! If you have your child take a schedule 1 substance before first removing half his brain, he may get stoned for a few hours for nothing! After all, in three out of four cases a hemispherectomy will work just fine, so why risk it? Aside from the matter of the opposite side of the body losing feeling, at least until a suitable brain donor can be found. And on the off 25% chance it doesn’t work, just think of it this way. You won’t even have to fit him with a silicone brain implant. You can just have the doctor stuff the old hemisphere right back in there with a shovel maybe and save some money.

Don’t worry. It’s a very small precise shovel. It comes in the same do-it-yourself hemispherectomy kit as the chainsaw.

But then thinking about this again with both my hemispheres, (sorry for triggering those with only half a brain) I don’t quite get the ethical dilemma here. Maybe it’s because I’m on the “spectrum”. Perhaps I need a functional hemispherectomy in order to see things more clearly. I just don’t have the money for an implant and I’m a DD.

Anyway, here’s my announcement. After thinking long and hard and after several seizures, I’m rebranding this blog. I used to be a humor writer, even before I was a libertarian. And I used to be really good at it. It made me happy. Google “Rafi Farber hoot” and you’ll find some good stuff. (Google “Rafi Farber hemispherectomy” and you’ll end up right back here, probably at this very parenthetical sentence. (Not as in a sentence that is very parenthetical, but as in this very sentence that also happens to be metaparenthetical.))

I’m still The Jewish Libertarian, but instead of blasting righteous anger at politicians and governments like some abused half-brained chipmunk, I’m going to return to my roots and instead employ humor. Because I know politicians would never try Schedule I drugs with no generally accepted medical use.

I don’t want to be angry anymore. Anger leads to hate leads to suffering leads to Yoda leads to Hayden Christensen mumbling super creepy Attack of the Clones dialogue about sand being coarse and irritating (It gets everywhere!) and none of us want to see that movie ever again. I’m sure we’d all rather have double hemispherectomies, whether functional or not.

And a shout out to Dave Barry, who probably gets shouted out at a lot. He is the closest thing to a professional writing role model guy that I have. And I’m pretty sure he’s libertarianish, too. He runs for president every election cycle. Vote for him. I will. (I’m seriously not joking.)

And President Dave, might I add that The Silicone Brain Hemisphere Implants would be a great name for a band. Trump could probably use one. Or two.

Bonus for alert readers: Describe, in 100 detailed illustrations or less, what a cannabis-hemispherectomy-themed porn site would feature. 

Gun Control for Math Geeks

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

While four heroic government policemen were dodging bullets by staying wisely behind their cars as Nick Cruz was murdering kids, at least the police had sense to investigate a math problem. They then shot the kid for using the square root sign, which looks like a gun.

That last part about police shooting a kid for using a square root sign is a joke, but soon it might not be. From my hometown paper:

On the afternoon of Feb. 20, detectives investigated a report of terroristic threats at the school, where they learned that a student had been completing a math problem that required drawing the square-root sign.

Students in the group began commenting that the symbol, which represents a number that when multiplied by itself equals another number, looked like a gun.

The square root symbol.

After several students made comments along those lines, another student said something the sheriff’s office said could have sounded like a threat out of context.

Police searched the student’s home, where they found no guns or any evidence that he had any access to guns. Authorities also wrote there was no evidence the student had any intent to commit harm.

Another Gold Flag Waves Today

rafifarber Gold and Silver, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Stocks continue their sharp decline that began yesterday. Interest rates are on the move higher, and the dollar is down again. Gold is up.

Most notably, rates on 2-year Treasuries have moved up 69% (!) since September from 1.254% to 2.116%.

Everyone knows what I’m rooting for. Let’s bankrupt the US government and be over with it already. I do feel bad for any generally conscientious person who lives off the government dole though. They’re going to be hammered hard.

Any Parent Who Allows Her Child To Enter a Room Alone With a Male Is An Idiot

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In a world where yetzer hara (the evil inclination, AKA evolutionary biology) exists, it is best to accept its existence and live your life accordingly, rather than wishing it didn’t exist and living your life as if it didn’t.

Considering how deep of a rock I live under, I was actually surprised by the story of some doctor named Nassar (already a name I don’t like so much a la the Egyptian politician who murdered thousands of Jews) who sexually abused a bunch of female gymnasts that he was supposed to take care of as doctor of the US Olympics team. My wife is a gymnast so I take this a bit more personally than most.

The guy started out by abusing these girls under the guise of medical examinations. As a male, I can understand, though not tolerate, why a man would sexually abuse a young girl. And because I can understand it, theoretically speaking, I understand what is needed to stop this evil most effectively.

What is to understand? Women will not be able to understand it, but men reading this post will understand it very easily. Imagine that you are either an invincible alpha who can get any girl he wants, or that you are a beta and have been rejected all your life, from middle school all the way to age 40. Either you can get sex whenever you want and it’s not emotionally fulfilling, or you never had emotionally fulfilling sex because you can’t get much sex at all, never been validated as an attractive male, or your marriage is only a settled affair and your wife is dominant and you submissive and unfulfilled and you feel emasculated. Many many feel this way. Not all men with these kinds of lives become abusers, because some have very strong yetzer tov. Some, a very minor percentage, do.

Any male can theoretically have either kind of life.

Any mother (yes mother, because they make most of these sorts of decisions in actual reality) of any child should know this, and should absolutely forbid their children from being in a room with any male, unaccompanied, in any situation whatsoever. You can hope and wish and want men to behave differently and think that this is this is the “right thing” or the “feminist” thing or whatever you want, but that will not protect your children or yourself. It just won’t.

If you, a parent, allow your child in a room alone with any male at all ever, regardless of professional titles or anything else, you are absolutely negligent.

In our old neighborhood we had a girl who would come to our house every so often to hang out and play with our kids. She was 8 or 9 or so, our girls were babies or toddlers. One day my wife told me that the mother of this girl forbade her from coming over when my wife was not present in the house. At first I was slightly offended. Who would possibly think I was a child abuser? And then I accepted it and was happy about it. She’s being responsible and careful and I’m a male. I got it. No problem. Be a parent. She doesn’t know who I am and she should take no chances. It just makes sense.

No child above the age of 3 should go into any room alone with a male who is sexually mature, period, end of story, that’s it, for any reason, even medical. They should always be accompanied by a family member or 100% trusted friend, always. This is why Halacha defines sexual maturity for girls at age 3 and boys at 9. Because Chazal knew and understood the depravity of men, even the best men. Most of us control ourselves without all that much trouble. Those of us with happy marriages control ourselves better than others.

But if you are a parent, it is best not to deny that we all evolved from primitive creatures (sorry frummies), and that the instincts of these primitives are still inside us in our reptilian brains. Culture prevents most of us from doing anything abusive. But not all.

Just be careful and assume all men are pigs. ALL men, without exception, literally.

 

The Difference Between Gold and Bitcoin is Time

rafifarber Economics, Gold and Silver, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Bitcoin is crashing today, along with all cryptocurrencies. I’m not “happy” because I like bitcoin. It’s crashing today because of Asian legal worries. Eventually, all cryptocurrencies will be outlawed entirely. All of them, except government cryptocurrencies. Those will be inflated continuously and purchases using them will be tracked entirely.

Gold cannot be outlawed because it has too much support as a thing that exists in reality over time. Cryptocurrencies can be outlawed entirely because they are new, and have little support outside of core grassroots cryptoenthusiasts. If you’re playing for collapse, which I am, the play is gold, not bitcoin. All cryptocurrencies will eventually go to zero as global government bankruptcy gets closer. Only hard assets with an intrinsic market value based on use value will be worth anything. Cryptos will be firewalled and pushed into black markets at best. Those who trade them will be termed monetary terrorists and the biggest of them will be those who use cryptocurrencies for contract killing, taken to court in public trials and portrayed as if everyone who owns any amount of bitcoin makes their living killing people.

Obviously, the vast majority if digitial currency owners are innocent people who do nothing wrong whatsoever. But they will not be portrayed that way. Be very careful.

Shortage vs High Prices in Chazal

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Mdirash Rabba Breishit, Toldot 64:2 – Chazal seem to recognize the difference between high prices and a bona fide shortage. A shortage happens only when buying and/or selling at the market price is forbidden by government. If prices are mandated by government to be lower than the market price, a shortage will develop when more buyers than sellers are willing to exchange. Some buyers will not find what they want. At the market price, the amount of buyers and sellers equal out.

The Midrash here is discussing the famine that Yitzchak tried to escape from. God told him to stay in Israel and not to go down to Egypt like his father:

Is it not taught that one may not leave the land [of Israel] unless two se’ahs of wheat are being sold for a selah? Rebbi Shimon says when does this apply? When there is no wheat to by. But if there is wheat available, even one se’ah for a selah (meaning twice the price as above) one may not leave the land. Since Elimelech left the land he was punished, in that he and his sons died.

If food is very expensive in Israel, it isn’t sufficient reason to leave. But if there is a shortage and you can’t buy what you’re looking for, then you can leave. Nafka mina bewteen high cost of living and real shortage of goods due to economic intervention. Without government, there are no shortages because price always finds market level.

 

Gold Flag Forming Today

rafifarber Gold and Silver, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Took a look at the futures this morning and the S&P, Nasdaq, and the Dow all spiked down together with the dollar index and bond futures. The long term treasury ETF (TLT) is down close to 1% in premarket. Gold is up close to 1%.

When stocks, bonds, and the dollar index are all down together with gold up, that’s a gold flag. The end game will see gold flag after gold flag for weeks at a time.

What is happening with cryptocurrencies now will happen with gold. If bitcoin can move from $1,000 to $20,000 in 8 months, gold can, too. Except with gold, I believe it won’t go back down after it spikes. Cryptocurrencies will all go to zero if they ever become a popular medium of exchange because government will blame a falling dollar on bitcoin and the rest, outlaw any business from accepting any digital coins and game over, but gold will keep going up.

This is just one gold flag. Let’s see if it maintains itself and if it repeats again tomorrow.

Once price inflation hits 3-5% by government indexes, I believe the final stages in dollar hegemony will begin.

 

One Cheer for Kahlon, and A Word on Protectionism

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Moshe Kahlon, chairman of some party called “All of Us” and as the Finance Minister for some reason has the power to get rid of certain taxes singlehandedly, will be getting rid of all import taxes on products that are not produced in Israel. I’m pretty sure this means products where a tariff on them does not protect any industry in Israel.

The tagline of the article is this though, and it’s pretty stupid:

היום הוכרז המהלך שיביא להורדת יוקר המחיה על ידי הוזלת מאות מוצרי צריכה שאינם מיוצרים בארץ. שורת המוצרים עליהם בוטל המכס כלל לא מיוצרים בארץ – ולכן אין שום סיבה שהמדינה תטיל עליהם מכס

Today it was announced that a process will begin that will bring down the cost of living by cheapening consumer products that are not produced in Israel. The products that will no longer have tariffs are not produced in Israel at all – therefore there is no reason for the State to place tariffs on them.

The fact that tariffs on these products will be taken down is great, but the reasoning is idiotic. Tariffs are just a cash grab that uses protectionism as an excuse. They are not there to “protect Israeli industry”. They are there to take money away from you and put it in the hands of the government.

First of all, if the government wanted to protect domestic industry, it would just forbid imports from other countries of products that compete with Israeli industry. But it doesn’t do that. It just takes a cut from you if you buy the competition, because what the government really wants is not protected industry, but money, however it can get it and from whoever it can get it, with any excuse it can use to do so.

Second, the whole idea of protectionism is asinine. It’s easy to see if you take the extreme case. Let’s say an Israeli company can only produce widget X at a cost of a billion shekels a widget because the company produces widget X by hand and does not have the know-how to produce it via capital equipment like machines.

A Japanese company, or whatever country, can produce the same widget X for one shekel a widget, because they have a machine that can do it really quickly and cheaply. The problem with “protecting” the Israeli widget X industry by slapping a tariff of 999,999,999 shekels per Japanese widget X becomes obvious.

If any Israeli company can only produce X expensively versus a Japanese company that can produce X cheaply, it means that the Israeli company is bad at doing what it does and it should stop doing it and go out of business, and the people who worked for that bad company should do something else with their time that is more efficient, something that they are better at than the rest of the world.

To protect an Israeli producer by taking money from consumers means harming Israeli consumers.

But yeah, good for Kahlon. Even though he’s not the sharpest butter knife in the drawer, he’s doing something good here.