One World

Coming to a Planet Near You

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague about China recently that made me think about the "One World" dream and the One World dreamers. This gentleman had spent a serious amount of time in the PRC in two stints, one in the 90's and the other more recently. In the 90's no one in China dared to talk about politics or world affairs. During his last visit everyone was excited to talk openly about politics. It was as if their eyes had been opened. In China there is a growing middle class in a society of increasing wealth (I speak in relative terms here...). China was once a backward looking nation self-isolated by an intransigent government and a hopeless population. Today, despite the hardline communist government, the future is brighter for China and the credit goes to the most unlikely hero.

What I find so ironic is that the usual crowd cooing over the concept of one big happy world without borders and nationalities is not likely to accept the force behind this dream as it literally comes true. Instead of the kumbaya crowd bringing the world together with the power of happy thoughts and karma delivered by NGO's and cultural affairs officers, it is business that is creating world harmony. Not just business in general, but big business, in fact, more precisely multi-national corporations.

All over India and China, Taiwan and Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico and South America multi-national corporations are bringing jobs and progress to people who had no chance of upward mobility before they came. In the process some Americans and Europeans will suffer, but in the long run the short term pain will make us stronger (or we will wither and die) . If government corruption can be held in check in all these places the world will be a better place.

There are places so inhospitable to "business" as we know it that it will take great change before the promise of "One World" ever comes true. The Middle East (sans Israel), Russia and parts of South America come to mind. These places are so bad for legitimate business transactions that some companies that do business in these countries have a spot for bribes on the expense report that their salesmen turn in at the end of the week.

What are the kool-aid sipping marxists and their anarchists minions going to think about a world where it is free market business that is the unifying force for world peace. Gone are the days of the people's revolution against rich capitalists. Communism as a viable transport to world harmony is dead, let's face it, as the last great communist power in the world the Chinese are the world's best capitalists right now. Hugo Chavez may be trying to revive marxisim in the western hemisphere, but he will find little traction against the tide of multi-nationals sweeping over the globe.

It is global communications, via satellites and fiber optic cables along with transportation that is the driving force behind the shrinking world that has leveled the playing field for billions of people formerly trapped in a cycle of hopeless poverty. These innovations were brought to us by... you guessed it... big multi-national corporations.

I don't even buy into this One World crap since it is eminently clear that people are not at all the same. The average American has nothing in common with a jihadist terrorist or a Tibetan monk. The average American has less and less in common with most Europeans these days. Still, if a harmonious world is possible at all it is more likely to happen at the point of pen signing a business contract than it is at the point of a gun or at the urging of the kumbaya crowd singing around the campfire spewing happy thoughts.

Thanksgiving to U(SA)

I have often wondered how the most hated man in the world feels about his plight - especially around the holidays. No, I'm not talking about President Bush, rather the unidentified man probably living somewhere in the great northwest near Seattle in the United States of America. He is a married father of four, white, Catholic, and works for Microsoft. He drives an SUV to work everyday and stops by Wal-Mart on his way home for something he doesn't really need but wants anyway. He pays his taxes in full, his mortgage on time, and contributes to the collection plate at his church every week (and to the Salvation Army when he can). After regularly putting in 50 hour weeks he plays golf with his buddies on the odd Staurday, but lives for his for his salmon fishing trips once a year. He tries to spend time with his kids but never feels like he doing enough for them, despite the football and soccer games, and the dance recitals he never misses.

Yes, he is the most hated man in the world.

When he sits down for his turkey dinner this Thanksgiving he had better realize that because of him and his decadent lifestyle millions around the world will suffer. What a bastard.

My fellow Americans we should be ashamed of ourselves. We are going to sit down, bow our heads, and thank the Lord for the goodness he has showered upon us and we will think nothing of how we are destroying this planet that is the source of this bounty. In the process of raping the world to make our lives comfortable we deprive countless third-worlders even a bare subsistence. Why the best thing we could do is throw off our prosperous shackles and join with our third-world brothers and sisters and suffer. Then and only then would the world be set right again.

[SLAP]

Whew, thanks for waking me up! For a minute there I was starting to believe the rhetoric of the left.

In all seriousness I can't take this anymore. I am fed up to here with the America haters inside and outside this great land. The answer to poverty and scarcity in the third-world is surely not a weak and impoverished America. Nothing could be further from the truth. The answer to poverty is prosperity. Yes, what is needed is more rich people and people who want to be rich.

It is constantly pointed out that America with only 5-6% of the world population uses 25% of it's resources. It's been said that if China and India used the planet's resources in the the same ratio that Americans do the planet would be completely denuded. This, of course, is a specious argument, it doesn't work that way. In fact if you want a lesson in how resource allocation really works one has to look no further than the oil industry right now. China's appetite for oil is increasing exponentially and so too is the price per barrel. Currently it is still the most cost efficient energy source for powering a modern industrial economy, but at some point it won't be. And then other forms of energy will take over.

As the resources that are currently pulled from the ground become scarce the cost will rise and new technologies will arise (out of necessity) to recycle what we currently disgard. This is already happening to some degree, even when the act of doing so is not actually cost efficient in today's economy. In the process we, as Americans and everyone else as well, will become ever more efficient and ever more prosperous.

Greater productivity and management of scarce resources will also have a positive benefit for the environment (if the global warming cabal doesn't shut us down first). Since America uses 25% or more of the world's resources then logic should indicate that we would also be the world's most polluted nation as well. But we are not, not even close. The capitalist West is an untouched wilderness compared to the industrial nations of the former Soviet-bloc. The current economic darlings of China and India are extremely polluted because poverty does not clean up after itself the way prosperity does. Again, the answer to pollution is not a weak and impoverished West, but rather a rich and prosperous third-world.

So, my fellow Americans as we sit down to our turkey dinner this Thanksgiving it is right to give thanks to the good Lord, but we should also put in a good word for the rest of the world in hopes that they will seek prosperity and ignore the "greens" and the "leftists" who continue to shower virtue on sickness that is poverty.


CW

LINK: Traitors Among Us

BirdBlog has an important post today that is a Must Read for everyone who cares about our country and our civilization (yes, it is that dramatic). A prominent United States Senator has committed an act of treason that may have led to the deaths of many Americans and Iraqis. He at the very least should be brought before congress and be made to explain his actions in Jan. 2002.


Read it HERE

Record Profits for Big Oil and Big Government

The one thing the media won't tell you when they run with the "Big Oil Reports Record Profits" stories is that the biggest profiteer in all of this is the government. To see those hypocrites pounding the podium over the price of oil in Washington DC makes my stomach turn.

The oil companies exist in a long term world. They were spending billions of dollars on facilities and exploration back when they were making little to no profit at all. Believe it or not they are probably not going to increase their long term spending because of a short term bump in profits.

The funny thing is even when the price for a barrel of oil does fall and oil company profits go in the tank the good old government will continue to rake in "record profits". I am not so much defending the oil companies who have gleefully enjoyed this speculation driven price increase all the way to the bank as I am chastizing the government for using their bully pulpit to berate the very industry that enriches them. Paul Sperry's revealing article in the American Spectator really says it all :

And isn't it ironic that the same town complaining about big oil's profits benefits from them big-time? Oil companies fork over 35% of their profits to Washington -- and that doesn't include the average 16% cut government takes at the pump. Perhaps it should be the pols at the witness table explaining how they're spending their own multibillion-dollar windfall.

Once again the media in this country fails to tell the whole story. The average person never complains about the huge take the government gets when he or she sees the price at the pump go up and up. But in truth the government makes more money over the long haul from oil than the oil companies do. Like the media, politicains live in a short term world - it's called the election cycle. They both benefit from the affliction of short term memory that seems to have infected nearly all Americans.

Lee Raymond, the outgoing CEO of Exxon-Mobil, was very candid in a recent interview on the Charlie Rose show. He said that the oil industry is very interested in effiency and does not oppose hybrid cars or efforts to make cars more efficient. They have spent billions making their operations more efficient and cleaner. They have studied extensively alternate energy sources with an eye on replacing oil (since they want to be in business in the future) and have absolutely concluded that oil is the most efficient, cost effective energy source for transportation. They spent billions on research in the 70's and renewed their efforts recently only to find that the laws of thermo-dynamics have not changed.

Raymond also reminded Charlie that Exxon and all the other oil companies operate in an integrated world - a global economy. Events such as Katrina and war and instability in the Middle East will affect the price oil regardless of how much or how little we pump out of the ground in America. I found that a very interesting and sobering statement. In other words we can not allow the politicians to use the stale rhetoric of severing our dependancy on Middle East oil as the holy grail to our energy woes. It just doesn't work that way.



CW

The United States of Arrogance: Or So They Say

We Americans take no delight in the situation France finds itself in...



If they stopped for a minute and took a look in the mirror they might have seen this coming, but for the French ruling class arrogance is a right. So convinced of their superiority over the dim bulbs running America they openly delighted in the misery caused by the recent acts of God visited upon President Bush and America. There were those who said that America was being paid back for it's arrogance. Well, today France burns.

Is the world shocked? Is the world thinking any less of France and the European social model because of these violent riots? I seem to remember the NYT and other left leaning media outlets delight in reprinting clips from newspapers all over the world that were expressing shock at the social mayhem caused by a catastrophic hurricane in New Orleans. Guilty as charged, yes the social fabric became unraveled in New Orleans when the infrastructure was ripped apart by a massive storm. But in France the social fabric is unraveling due to man-made actions - there is a difference.

What would seem an obvious conclusion to you and me is being varnished over by the mainstream media. Even on some of the most reliable blogs I am seeing the desire to blame this on economic reasons and a down playing of any Islamo-facist coordination. I remain skeptical.

Still, the reason America takes no delight in the events in France, home of uber America-hater Jacques Chirac, is two-fold: one, we are a compassionate people and do not partake in schadenfreude, and two, it can happen here.

(You may have noticed I have employed a little German here when talking about the French, it was intended...)

Perhaps Europe isn't as inclusive and enlightened as many have claimed. Maybe America has been just a little better at integrating many cultures into one. Yet, over the past thirty years we have moved away from the melting pot model and have taken a hard left down the road to Muticultural City, passing Diversityville along the way. I have heard that there are neighborhoods in Multicultural City that post signs that say "Americans need not apply". How sad is that?



CW