Man, this looks like something right out of the @NJPSU playbook.
https://townhall.com/columnists/ben...ria-ocasiocortez-school-of-economics-n2559897
On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.), sat for a discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. She dropped a number of shocking statements -- statements that elicited nothing but murmurs of agreement from Coates. AOC claimed: "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars." How, pray tell, are American billionaires responsible for such massive theft? According to AOC, the very mechanisms of capitalism mandate such theft. In her view, successful businesspeople simply exploit their workers while maximizing their profits. Hypothetically speaking about billionaires making widgets, she said: "You didn't make those widgets! You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages and, in some cases, real modern-day slavery...You made that money off the backs of undocumented people."
This, of course, is nonsense. Voluntary exchange of labor for wages is, as stated, voluntary, and the fact that there are many people willing and able to labor in the manufacture of widgets is presumably responsible for lower wages. Companies that refuse to pay their workers market wages will soon watch those workers migrate to other businesses or other industries. It is a patent violation of free market principles to utilize force in order to compel someone to work for you; blaming the free market for coercion is like blaming free speech for censorship. Exploitation in labor markets is typically accompanied by government subsidies, regulation and interventionism.
....
But according to AOC, we have nothing to fear from government, and "the government is us." The fact that Coates, one of the most prominent writers on the evils of Jim Crow, nodded along should demonstrate that those on the left do not understand the consequences of their own philosophy. The government is not "us," because we are not a collective. We are individuals with rights. But in AOC's world, we have no rights -- we have only our role as members of a collective controlled by those who agree with her. And that is exploitation and tyranny.
https://townhall.com/columnists/ben...ria-ocasiocortez-school-of-economics-n2559897
On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.), sat for a discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. She dropped a number of shocking statements -- statements that elicited nothing but murmurs of agreement from Coates. AOC claimed: "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars." How, pray tell, are American billionaires responsible for such massive theft? According to AOC, the very mechanisms of capitalism mandate such theft. In her view, successful businesspeople simply exploit their workers while maximizing their profits. Hypothetically speaking about billionaires making widgets, she said: "You didn't make those widgets! You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages and, in some cases, real modern-day slavery...You made that money off the backs of undocumented people."
This, of course, is nonsense. Voluntary exchange of labor for wages is, as stated, voluntary, and the fact that there are many people willing and able to labor in the manufacture of widgets is presumably responsible for lower wages. Companies that refuse to pay their workers market wages will soon watch those workers migrate to other businesses or other industries. It is a patent violation of free market principles to utilize force in order to compel someone to work for you; blaming the free market for coercion is like blaming free speech for censorship. Exploitation in labor markets is typically accompanied by government subsidies, regulation and interventionism.
....
But according to AOC, we have nothing to fear from government, and "the government is us." The fact that Coates, one of the most prominent writers on the evils of Jim Crow, nodded along should demonstrate that those on the left do not understand the consequences of their own philosophy. The government is not "us," because we are not a collective. We are individuals with rights. But in AOC's world, we have no rights -- we have only our role as members of a collective controlled by those who agree with her. And that is exploitation and tyranny.
