Buy American

An economics professor asked his class which of these two scenarios the students preferred. First scenario: Japan grows at an annual rate of 7 percent, and the Unites States grows at 4 percent. Second scenario: Japan and the United States both grow at 3 percent. Overwhelmingly, the students chose the second option.

In other words, the students accepted their own lower domestic growth rather than allow Japan — a friendly nation — to outpace us. In exchange for "equality," they chose an otherwise lower standard of living.

Students 1, Elder 0.

There is a (good) reason to buy American besides egalitarianism and yahoo patriotism. If you buy Japanese, you support a more collectivist culture at the expense of a less collectivist one.

America may not be much, but it still is the least collectivist country in the world. Although that doesn't have to mean much. I hasten to add that for me, even America is still a trillion times too collectivist. But at the moment America is all there is.

Then, how friendly is that "friendly nation" actually?

Only sixty-nine years ago, that "friendly nation" bombed Pearl Harbor. Most individuals that did the bombing may be dead, and their descendants may have been brought up in a less militaristic environment, but Japan still remains a highly collectivist society.

Yet, isn't rewarding a less competent individual American producer instead of a more competent individual Japanese producer collectivism, too?

You bet it is. But as long as all individuals are kept corralled together in countries under governments, there is no other option.

Once countries and governments have been abolished, individuals are free to deal with each other as individual anarchs, based solely on merit.



Until then, buy American.

Plus, if you buy imports, you not only give money to people who are more likely to be collectivists than Americans are, you also subsidize their fascist (i.e., nominally free but de facto state controlled) economic systems. The US economy may be only semi-free, but most others are even more statist.

Ever heard, "social market economy"? Every time the Japanese, French, or German economy outperforms the American, the looters there rejoice and boast how their fascist system is superior to greedy, exploitative, unregulated, chaotic, messy, anarchic US capitalism.

And you bankrolled their boast. Not because their products or their systems are better, but because you had to have an import for reasons of your own.

You still legitimize the system by voting? Well, I've got news for you. One vote in a couple hundred millions doesn't make as much of a difference as voting with your billfold.

So buy American. Or if you have to buy imported goods, at least buy them from capitalist countries or countries perceived as capitalist, like Hong Kong or the UK, and try to avoid the products of the worst offenders, like Japan, France, and Germany, so you don't promote their fascism/socialism.

You don't think it makes any difference? You don't care?

If you're a looter or a moocher, you won't immediately see the difference, apart from the fact that at some point there will be nothing left to loot or to mooch. But if you're planning on doing something productive yourself at some point, you should care.

That extra stack of forms to fill out before you get licensed to open a business in the "land of the free," so that the fascists can micromanage you better? Yes, that's your import coming back to bite you in the ass. If only you hadn't bought the fuehrer's car instead of a Ford!

Buy American.

Finally, there's no reason not to buy American. On average, American products are no worse than imports. If you believe otherwise, that's just some postcolonial inferiority complex Americans still suffer from. "It can't be good if it's been made in this raw, new land." Get over it.

And you wouldn't buy an import just to show off to your mentally challenged second-hander friends, would you? Then you might just as well build a wooden house in a brush-choked canyon because light frame gets you more space for your money than fireproof, you get more land for your money out there, and the view is so nice. Your "friends" will be so jealous, until the day the whole shebang goes up in smoke.

So buy American — if you don't want to see America go up in smoke and liberty be homeless on earth once more.