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Ever Heard of “Fully Automated Luxury Communism”? Didn’t Think So.

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Ever Heard of “Fully Automated Luxury Communism”? Didn’t Think So.

The NY Times Has Been White Washing Communism Since the 1930’s – The latest attempt is their glowing review of : Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto a book by Aaron Bastani. It is remindful of Walter Duranty from the decade of 1930’s.

While people were dying under the Stalin regime, the NY Times was printing reports from its Russian reporter, Walter Duranty, on the wonders of Communism under the butcher- Josef Stalin.

In 1932, Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize for his thirteen 1931 articles. In the same year, farming region citizens of the Ukraine were systematically being starved to death by Stalin for resisting the collectivism of Communism. Eventually, 7 million were intentionally starved to death by Stalin.

Remind you of the Washington Post’s Pulitzer for its reporting on the Russia Collusion perhaps? Nothing more than a white washed lie.

A New White Wash Strategy

Now, its the idyllic dream world of “Fully Automated Luxury Communism“.

This label is taken from a book by Aaron Bastani with the same name.

It is yet another example of the Left’s ongoing campaign to affiliate socialism with anything…….except real-life socialist societies as in Venezuela today. Socialists, of course, are never responsible for their results.

They are now attempting to pin the blame on the U.S. because of its sanctions, citing a report by the CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research.)

Pointedly, what the CEPR fails to mention is that the they are funded by George Soros’ Tides Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a number of other decidedly left leaning and Communist friendly sources.

Communism dug the graves of over 100 million people during the 20th Century- more than all previous centuries combined when all deaths are totaled. Totalitarian Communism was the poster boy of tyranny and democide (R.J Rummel’s term for death by government).

Bastani’s Attempt to Whitewash

The author, Aaron Bastani, is now attempting to sell Communism under a different name with his book: Fully Automated Luxury Communism.

Bastani praises successive waves of economic advancement, generated under free market capitalism, to help resolve issues like:

Technological Unemployment
Global Poverty
Societal Aging
Climate Change
Resource Scarcity

and other social ills which he acknowledges is the “very essence of humanity” that is “to constantly build new worlds“.

However, in place of crediting a free market capitalist approach, Bastani claims that this advancement has plunged the global system into a crisis only slightly less pressing than the Black Death writing:

We inhabit a world of low growth, low productivity and low wages, of climate breakdown and the collapse of democratic politics. A world where billions, mostly in the global south, live in poverty. A world defined by inequality.
Aaron Bastani- Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism

The implication is that the free market system, which he credited growth of all of the above, is somehow also responsible for the lows.

However as pointed out by the Acton Institute book review:

Candidates, like Jeremy Hunt, for Prime Minister in the UK hail America’s roaring GDP growth which has been made possible by a reduction of regulatory control and the taxation of Corporations and businesses- the opposite of the Communist planned (government controlled) economy.

Bastani admits capitalism “created the newly emerging abundance“, but he somehow believes free enterprise artificially restricts access:

A system where things are produced only for profit, capitalism seeks to ration resources to ensure returns. Just like today’s, companies of the future will form monopolies and seek rents.

The result will be imposed scarcity – where there’s not enough food, health care or energy to go around.
Aaron Bastani- Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism

How that happens under free market capitalism is apparently not fully explained, just assumed to be true.

His prescription is to go beyond capitalism by reducing our carbon footprint (through government control of course), increasing automation (a capitalist development) and “socialized medical care”.

What he does not acknowledge is that it is the national health care systems that are the one’s who are rationing resources.

Free Economies Benefit the Poor

While Bastani wants to revert to a planned economy, the reality is that free economies greatly aid the poor rather than impoverish them as in the planned economies.

The Fraser Institutes, 2017 Economic Freedom of the World report found that:

People in the most economically free nations live 16 years longer (80.7 years vs. 64.4 years) than those in the least free;
The poorest tenth of the population in free countries earns 10-times as much money as the same cohort of poor people living in unfree nations ($11,998 vs. $1,124);
“Interestingly, the average income of the poorest 10 percent in the most economically free nations is almost twice the average per capita income in the least free nations,” the report says. That is, the least fortunate citizens of free countries make more money than the average person in unfree nations;
The average person makes six times as much money in free nations as unfree ones ($42,463 vs. $6,036). Since people in the free market enjoy considerable economic mobility, the poor have a better opportunity of moving into the economic mainstream, significantly pulling ahead of their disadvantaged counterparts in stifling environments;
Citizens of free nations enjoy greater civil liberties, gender equality, and reported levels of happiness. These social advantages benefit people of every social standing.
The literacy rate is 30 percent higher in freer countries than in more restrictive economies (93 percent in free nations vs. 65 percent or lower in unfree ones).

See the video below for a 2 minute summary of the report.

[youtube_advanced url=”https://youtu.be/3_HnZa2XSrc” controls=”no” rel=”no” theme=”light”]

Bastani’s Unacknowledged Advancement

Bastani is likely writing to sell Communism to our younger generations with academically acceptable rhetoric. He admits that his Fully Automated Luxury Communism is “utopian in horizon”.

However, he is also forced to admit that the system which brought the human race from ignorant tribes huddling in caves to the most technologically advanced point in world history is the free market.

As pointed out above, the market based freedom maximized both human freedom and societal well-being.

Unfortunately, the message Bastani and his ilk push through our indoctrination system inaccurately called education is socialist based collectivism.

This is why the younger generation is buying into the socialist line of b.s. that is being pushed by the Democratic Socialist left and the Democratic Party in general. They haven’t had to examine both sides of the story.

Instead, Communism is sold as flowers and butterflies when it’s reality is as blood red as the field in the hammer and sickle flag.

Unfortunately, the ones who fall prey to its idyllic lure don’t get that part of the dream………until after it’s too late.