Co-Ops are no substitutes for capitalism
Co-ops were the nearest thing to capitalism allowed in the old Communist Yugoslavia. Compared to state-run enterprises they did well but are no match for market forces in postwar democratic Croatia
The walls of ITAS, the last remaining co-operative factory in post-socialist Croatia, are lined with reminders of faded glories. A framed photo of Josip Broz Tito, former president of Yugoslavia, watches over a sprawling mural commemorating ITAS’s unique victory in 2005: facing a government plan for privatisation, the employees successfully occupied the factory and won a court case to continue running the plant as a worker-owned enterprise.
Beginning in 2015 and shot over the course of five years, Srdjan Kovačević’s rigorous, riveting documentary observes the troubled waters that follow this triumph. Having led the 2005 mutiny, Dragutin Varga is now the head of the factory’s union, and his steadfast idealism over ITAS’s future represents the generational divide among the workers. Dissatisfied with continuous delays in salary payments, the younger workmen are doubtful of the plant’s current organisational structure. Meanwhile, the middle-aged and older employees, who make up the majority of the workforce, still hold dear the socialist values inherited from Yugoslavia’s halcyon days.
Far from favouring one position over another, Kovačević’s documentary threads together heated arguments – either between Varga and the directorial board or among the workers themselves – to illustrate an unsolvable state of stagnancy. Lost among these gripping scenes of fervid discourse, however, is a more detailed examination of the management missteps as well as larger global issues that have driven ITAS to a financial crisis. Furthermore, by establishing a solidarity agreement where all the featured subjects have a share of the film’s profit, Factory to the Workers is a rare and commendable example of a documentary that strives to be as radical as its subject.
Still, when the chorus of justified grievances ends in forlorn silence, and Varga embarks on a hunger strike for the sake of his union, a scene where he looks out of a window and into the unknown paints a portrait of a modern-day Don Quixote, tilting at impossible windmills
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Jeff Jacoby: I used to defend Columbus as 'magnificent.' I don't anymore
IN 1997 I wrote a column for Columbus Day weekend that opened on a smart-alecky note: "Say," I asked, "is it OK to admire Christopher Columbus again?"
Ever since the quincentennial of Columbus's first voyage to the New World in 1492, denunciations of the Italian navigator as a brutal conqueror and bloody enslaver had been growing louder and more vehement. I didn't think much of the denouncers — "commissars of political correctness," I called them — and wanted to remind readers that there were good reasons why Columbus had been regarded by generations of Americans as a great man. To be sure, by present-day standards he was no sensitive, enlightened role model. Columbus was "a zealot, greedy and ambitious," I acknowledged, "capable of cruelty and deception." He and the Spaniards he led to the New World were vicious in their treatment of the indigenous people they encountered. But there was no denying his astonishing feats of seamanship or the world-changing impact of his discoveries. "For all his flaws," I concluded, "he was magnificent."
I wouldn't write that today. My view has changed.
In the past quarter-century, progressive attacks on Columbus's reputation have grown even more fervent. Statues of the explorer have been repeatedly vandalized or toppled. In at least 14 states and more than 130 cities, Columbus Day has been refashioned as Indigenous Peoples Day. Even Columbus, Ohio, no longer honors its namesake with a holiday. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote of Columbus in 1954 that "his fame and reputation may be considered secure for all time." But under the relentless pressure of revisionists, Native American activists, and woke iconoclasts, Columbus's prestige has been shredded and stomped on.
In general, I consider it dishonest and arrogant to measure individuals who lived centuries ago by standards that didn't exist in their day or to judge them pitilessly for behavior that we find detestable but that they and their world would have regarded as normal.
But what changed my mind about Columbus wasn't anything written or said by his modern detractors. It was the testimony of his contemporaries. I didn't realize in 1997 that Columbus's behavior toward the native peoples of the New World had indeed violated the principles of his own age. In fact, they violated the specific orders he had been given by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, the Spanish rulers who authorized and financed his journeys.
Columbus returned from his first voyage to what he mistakenly called the Indies with a dozen abducted natives, as well as plans to capture and exploit many more. His first trip had been rushed, he told the monarchs, but on his next he was sure he could amass "slaves in any number they may order."
The king and queen ordered him to do no such thing. In written instructions dated May 12, 1493, they directed Columbus to "endeavor to win over the inhabitants" to Christianity and not harm or coerce them. He was to ensure that everyone under his command "shall treat the Indians very well and affectionately without causing them any annoyance whatever." In fact, they told Columbus, he should present gifts to the natives "in a gracious manner and hold them in great honor."
But the Admiral of the Ocean Sea had other ideas.
During his second journey to the Caribbean, historian Edward T. Stone wrote in a 1975 essay for American Heritage, Columbus captured a large number of indigenous men, women, and children, sending them back as cargo in 12 ships to be sold in the slave market at Seville. Anticipating that the royal couple might be outraged by his failure to comply with their orders, Columbus advised the captain transporting the native people to explain that they were cannibals lacking any language with which they could be taught the elements of Christianity. Surely it would be a kindness, Columbus contended, for such heathens to be "placed in the possession of persons from whom they can best learn the language."
Perhaps that ploy worked at first. But reports of the savagery, slaughter, and enslavement committed by Columbus could not be ignored indefinitely. In 1500, the Spanish sovereigns finally lowered the boom. They commissioned Francisco de Bobadilla to investigate and report on the admiral's conduct. After gathering information from Columbus's supporters and detractors, Bobadilla filed a no-holds-barred indictment detailing the cruelties committed by Columbus and his lieutenants.
"Punishments included cutting off people's ears and noses, parading women naked through the streets, and selling them into slavery," reported The Guardian when a copy of Bobadilla's statement was discovered in 2006 in a state archive in the Spanish city of Valladolid.
The charges were taken seriously. Very seriously: Bobadilla had Columbus arrested and shipped back to Spain — in chains — to stand trial. It was, in Stone's words, a "harsh and humiliating" downfall. Columbus eventually received a royal pardon, but Ferdinand and Isabella refused to restore his position as governor of the Indies.
It wasn't woke 21st-century progressives who first found fault with Columbus's actions. It was his contemporaries. Accusations of abuse by Columbus were taken so seriously that he was arrested in 1500 and sent back to Spain in chains to answer the charges against him.
Another of Columbus's contemporaries to excoriate his deeds was Bartolomé de las Casas. He accompanied Columbus on his third voyage and participated in the violent suppression of indigenous people on the island of Hispaniola. Later he underwent a profound change of heart. Las Casas took holy orders, freed the people he had enslaved in 1514, and spent the rest of his long life passionately denouncing the "robbery, evil, and injustice" done by Columbus and the Spaniards who followed in his wake.
Five years ago I read Las Casas's most famous work, "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies," which he published in 1542. It is ferocious in its wrath and graphic in its descriptions of the horrors inflicted on the native people. He raged against the sadism, greed, and treachery of the Spaniards. No one who reads his book can cling to the belief that condemnations of Columbus are nothing but 20/20 hindsight, or that they are based on moral standards by which no one in the 1500s would have judged him. His contemporaries did judge him by the standards of their age, and found him grievously wanting.
None of this is to deny Columbus's brilliance and courage as a mariner. His name will forever be linked to what Morison called "the most spectacular and most far-reaching geographical discovery in recorded human history." In 1997, I thought that was what mattered most about Columbus. I know better now.
https://jeffjacoby.com/27260/i-used-to-defend-columbus-as-magnificent-i-dont
*********************************************EU Is the True Face of Modern Socialism
Proposals for new EU regulations on the energy performance of residential buildings are causing a stir in many European countries. Take Germany, for example: calculations show that German property owners alone would be forced to spend 200 billion euros on energy efficiency upgrades, per year! This is equivalent to four times Germany’s annual defense budget. According to estimates, the cost of an energy saving heating system and thermal insulation for a single-family house is at least 100,000 euros.
Whether the EU directive is eventually implemented in its current form is still an open question, but the debate alone is enough to unsettle hundreds of thousands of property owners. And this is just one of many examples of how the EU is increasingly turning the European economy into a planned economy. The term “planned economy” may seem exaggerated to some readers who associate it with the nationalization of means of production and real estate. However, the modern planned economy works differently: Formally, property owners remain property owners, but they are gradually stripped of control over their assets as the state increasingly determines what they are allowed or required to do with their property.
The ban on the registration of new cars with combustion engines in the EU from 2035 is another example: It is no longer companies or consumers who decide what is produced, but politicians and civil servants. This is underpinned by the belief that, when it comes to what is good for people, politicians know better than millions of consumers and entrepreneurs.
And this is precisely the difference between a market economy and a planned economy: A market economy is economic democracy in action. Every day, millions of consumers decide what is and is not produced. Prices send a signal to companies as to what products are needed – and how many – and which are not.
Coming back to the example of real estate, many countries have extensive rental legislation that prevents landlords from securing the rents that could be obtained on the free market. In Germany, for example, this is achieved via a whole package of laws: A rent increase ceiling (Kappungsgrenze) determines the percentage and level of permissible rent increases. Even when inflation hits 7% or more per year, rents in many German cities are only allowed to increase by a maximum of 5%. And the SPD, the senior partner in Germany’s ruling coalition, is now calling for the ceiling to be lowered to 2%, which in effect equates to cumulative expropriation. In real terms, the value of rents is falling year in, year out. Then there’s the Mietpreisbremse (literally, rental price brake), which determines how much rent an existing apartment’s landlord may charge when renting it out.
As a result, a property’s supposed owner is increasingly constrained: The government imposes almost unaffordable renovation obligations on landlords – see the raft of German and European energy performance directives – and forces them to comply with ever stricter and ever more expensive environmental requirements for new buildings. At the same time, it prevents landlords from securing the rents they could achieve on the free market. In effect, property owners become little more than government-appointed property managers. In the worst case, however, they also stand to lose their formal rights of ownership if the gap between what the government allows them to earn and what the government forces them to spend continues to widen.
And this regulatory frenzy not only affects real estate, it also has a significant impact on businesses: The EU is not content with regulating its member countries and the companies based in them. The so-called EU Supply Chain Directive is designed to make large companies in the EU liable if, for example, their suppliers abroad operate under occupational health and safety regulations or environmental standards that do not meet the EU’s expectations. Another European regulation, CBAM, introduces carbon tariffs on imports from around the world. If, for example, a company imports screws from India, where the EU’s climate standards do not apply, it will have to pay extra. This is how Brussels wants to reduce emissions – not only within the European Union, but all around the world.
The erosion of property rights is not, however, an exclusively European phenomenon. In the U.S., too, property rights are being steadily eroded under the banner of the Green New Deal. This will continue until the owner or manager of a company is reduced to a mere agent of bureaucracy. The government will stipulate what goods and services are to be provided (and how) by means of stricter and stricter laws. At some point, entrepreneurs will be no more than civil servants.
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How the Left Lies to Our Faces, Seemingly Without Consequence
One common denominator that explains why previously successful societies implode is their descent into fantasies. A collective denial prevents even discussion of existential threats and their solutions.
Something like that is happening in the United States. Eight million illegal immigrants have entered the United States by the deliberate erasure of the southern border.
Apparently, the Biden administration sees some unstated advantage in destroying U.S. immigration law and welcoming in would-be new constituents.
Yet, the more the millions arrive, the more President Joe Biden and his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, flat out lie that “the border is secure.”
They both live in a world of make-believe, passed off to the American people as reality.
And the more the Americans are lied to that the border is secure, the more they poll—currently 77%—that it is not.
Biden apparently has reversed course and begun using the former pejorative “Bidenomics” as a term of pride.
He now praises this three-year effort to borrow $6-$7 trillion, and spike interest rates threefold to 7% on home mortgages—even as prices on essentials like food and fuel have spiked 25%-30% since he entered office.
The more that Biden brags about what he did to the economy, the more people poll—over 60%—dissatisfaction with his alternate reality of “Bidenomics.”
Do we remember the humiliation in August 2021 in Afghanistan?
The more retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Biden assured that the American military presence was stable, the more swiftly it crumbled and descended into the worst mass flight of an American army since Vietnam.
Consider natural gas and oil. The Biden administration waged war on both by canceling pipelines, drilling on federal lands, and entire oil fields.
When the price soared and the 2022 midterms neared, Biden suddenly begged formerly shunned illiberal regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela to pump all the hated oil they could to lower the price.
A desperate Biden drained much of the strategic petroleum reserve—he has yet to refill it—simply to lower the price of gasoline and thus win voters back to the Democratic Party.
When the midterms passed, Biden resumed his attack on once bad, then good, and now bad again fossil fuels—at least until the 2024 election.
Stranger still is the denial of the current crime wave in our major cities. Predators and thugs have turned once iconic downtowns into either war zones or ghost towns or both.
Smash-and-grab swarming of stores and matter-of-fact shoplifting are destroying commerce in our major cities.
Unsustainable stores either leave or shut down. Communities that vote for politicians who defund the police blame the stores for leaving—but not the criminals whose brazen thefts made it impossible to do business in the inner city.
Now modern-day pirates with impunity storm, sink, and rob boats of all kinds in the Oakland, California, marina and estuary.
Left-wing journalists and activists, and even Democratic politicians, who all supported defunding the police, now cannot escape the resulting street violence and unleashed murderous predations.
Everyone knows the culprit is the post-George Floyd effort—with Biden administration complicity—to defund the police, end cash bail, institutionalize catch-and-release of criminals, and show more sympathy toward victimizers than victims.
Yet neither state nor local officials nor Biden himself even admits to a crime wave. The more the public is attacked and avoids major downtowns, the more it polls furor over the crime wave.
The more our officials, in gaslighting style, claim such alarm is all in our collective heads, the more they themselves are attacked by the very criminals their policies empowered.
Sometimes the fantasies extend to the trivial. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., for months has dressed like an utter slob while on the Senate floor. As a gesture of approval, Democrats junked the dress code so he could wear his sloppy cut-offs and hoodie.
Americans were to assume his slovenly costume was normal apparel—and they were hypercritical for thinking otherwise.
Recently, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., pulled a fire alarm to disrupt and delay a vote on continuing the funding of the government. But he got caught on a Capitol surveillance video committing the crime.
Bowman whined that he got confused. He preposterously claimed that by pulling the alarm, he thought he was opening a door to go vote.
All of that was pure fantasy. The alarm was clearly marked. A sign in front of the door warned not to enter. And the door itself was placarded with cautions that any attempt to open it would set off emergency alarms.
No matter. Bowman assumed by calling his critics “Nazis” and using the race card, he could invent a virtual reality.
Despite our epidemic of fantasy, there remains reality.
And we will soon rediscover it all too soon.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/06/victor-davis-hanson-lefts-lies-paint-alternate-reality/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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