Previously reviewed here, The PIGS will most likely be deemed 'hate speech' in the not so distant future. How can anyone, let alone a writer for the National Review, be allowed to criticize national Socialism or the cult of the state? At some point such 'thought crimes' might well be banned, but for those who are curious and who want a good overview of what constitutes Socialism [before the thought crime ban comes into effect], there are many things to like about this book, which puts the term 'Socialist' into perspective. Socialism is after all about centralized planning which can be found in programs, processes, nations and empires. National socialism which is the goal of all expansive governments, is not limited to the programs found in pre-World War II Germany or Russia, though of course they are emblematic of what happens when the State, in its desire to collectivize and neuter the individual, engages in 'Statism', or the cult of state control over all aspects of the political-social-economy:

“Soviet Socialism was nationalist socialism. This may sound odd to the American ear, which is used to thinking of Soviet socialism as the arch-enemy of national socialism – Nazism, as it was known in Germany – but what mostly transpired between Russia and Germany during World War II was a conflict in nationalisms among two governments that largely agreed on socialism.”

All true. World War II was fought along the Eastern front between two antagonistic Fascisms, or national socialisms, both of whom shared much in common. The ethos of such 'statism' or state power, is of course legion in our modern world.

Williamson explains with many examples and details, that national socialist programs are rampant within the Western world. Key sectors such as energy, agriculture, telecoms and infrastructure, to name but a few, are subjected to political oversight, power and whim. This does not indicate that the entire society or nation is 'national socialist', but certainly many programs and about half the economy can be defined as such. For example within US food production:

“Rather than engage with markets and thereby provide useful information to farmers, packagers, and other producers, socialist governments have attempted to use such clumsy tools as import-export controls to impose THE PLAN, even when the economics say otherwise. In many cases, those moves are accompanied by politically motivated seizures and nationalizations.”

In times past the American government has stockpiled food ; destroyed cropland; and paid people not to farm – all to keep prices high. Warehouses full of combustible food have been allowed to rot. Food exports are tightly governed. The system either past or present, makes little sense.

Keep in mind that the more centrally planned an economy is, the poorer the nation state. As Williamson points out, the US has 4 % of the world's population, but consumes 25 % of its resources. This is always a talking point for really clever statists. Why do we allow the immorality of 4% of Mother Earth's children consuming some 25% of all inputs? The US also happens to account for over 25% of world economic output. In other words the inputs match the outputs. The disgrace is not that the Americans consume so much. The real story is that the rest of the world is so poor:

“What is remarkable about the United States is not that so few people consume so much, but that so few people produce so much of the world's wealth. States with central-planning regimes, or those with a legacy of central-planning regimes, do tend to consume much less energy (and much less of everything else) on a per-capita basis than do Americans. There is a word for that: poverty. China's 2009 per capita GDP was about $6,600 – less than the typical New York City resident earned in three weeks....”

The question Americans have to ask themselves in the age of O'Messiah worship [more hate speech], is why are we national-socializing our country, when all the evidence proves that such systems always fail and result in impoverished citizens?

Another canard dispensed by Williamson which I like is this: Big Business is somehow representative of 'Capitalism'. It most certainly is not. In Europe the nexus of Big Labor, Big Business and Big Government all conspire against citizens, competition, wealth creation and trade. The same is true in North America. There are endless examples of the 'regulated' big businesses in a market sector, buying and bribing the 'regulators' and the politicians involved. The 2008 financial meltdown, initiated by sub-prime mortgages is one obvious example. Freddie and Fannie, US state-managed and now state-owned firms, lubricated the pockets and campaigns of many a politician including Barack Obama. The political targets of home ownership mandated lending on a corrupt scale, resulting in bad loans and as a corollary to diminish the toxic debt, derivatives which purportedly turned D rated debt magically into A rated. Big Finance Business, in bed with Big Government and their regulators – all to the detriment of the average citizen:

“In fact, Big Business is reliably against most of what must go into any modern definition of capitalism: free trade, free enterprise, free markets, and the impartial law. Big Business reliably seeks to use the state to seek advantages in trade and to crush smaller (and often more innovative) competitors.”

This is a vital point and entirely true. Adam Smith long ago recognized that business would much rather use the power of the state to guarantee profits, high prices and reduced competition, than the opposite. Big Business in any industry will bribe politicians and the bureaucracy to ensure their profit making objectives. Part of the GlobaloneyWarming scam, where every day is the hottest on record, is the reality that massive firms such as GE stand to make billions in subsidies and in protected markets, from government oversight of the economy, under the rubrics of clean, green or carbon-neutral energy consumption. GE and other Gargantua manufacture a multitude of such products, many of them subsidized of course at massive cost to the taxpayers, which can be marched and marketed directly into new 'markets' created by government fiat. This is not capitalism, it is national-socialist corruption.

Williamson goes through the above as well in some detail. He also dissects the socialisation of Obama-care, which well not exactly similar to Canadian and British socialized health, is certainly the first step in that direction. In fact in most of the speeches that I have read given by the Great Man before he was divinely appointed to guide the USA into 'broad sunlit uplands', single-payer health care was mentioned as a priority objective during his first term in office. Socialized health-care, like any other nationalized market will be a mess leading to the usual list of rationing, inefficiencies, technological destruction and ultimately higher death rates [Canadian cancer death rates are 15-30% above US levels, British are 30-40%].

“In healthcare, banking, education, and other critical areas, Uncle Same is putting his big ugly federal boot squarely on the neck of prices, choking off the lifeblood that allows economies to act efficiently and rationally: not perfectly efficiently, not perfectly rationally....but to make the best use of the best information we have.”

Williamson has provided a useful guide on why Socialism, in all its ugly permutations ultimately fails. At least he still enjoys the right to state his factual case under the First Amendment. Perhaps in the future such a thought crime might indeed be unthinkable and impossible, to publish.