Suicide by Regulation
ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) regulations are the dividing line between life and death.
Yesterday, I read where Europe is adopting ESG standards (the Western equivalent of China's social credit system) and if any company wants to do business there, ESG compliance will be required.
That means if I own a potato farm in Idaho and want to sell my spuds to McDonald's to make fries, and they are going to be shipped to European Mickie D's, my Idaho farm will be forced to comply regardless of prevailing regulation in the United States.
Of course, we all know capitalism is one of the easiest seduced "ism's" there is - and often chases hookers down 42nd Street in search of a cheap thrill, so it is possible companies will just bend the knee and comply - even though there is rising opposition to ESG in the US.
In America, we have witnessed similar forced compliance due to market share.
For example, most of the emissions requirements for cars bought in Mississippi are based on those passed in California because it is just cheaper to spread the costs of that regulation over all the vehicles made rather than make special, higher priced cars just for California. The same goes with guns and magazines – many guns are now sold with ten round mags to be compliant with states that have limited round count to that and offer a 13 or 15 round mag in states that have not.
Unwilling to give up those markets, capitalism bent to fit the regulations.
That “bending” reminds me of a couple of things:
Lenin was alleged to have said that "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev uttered the oft misunderstood quote “We will bury, you!” speaking of the eventual defeat of democracy and capitalism. On August 24, 1963, Khrushchev himself remarked, “I once said, ‘We will bury you,’ and I got into trouble with it. Of course, we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you” – a reference to the Marxist saying, “The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism”.
So, the idea that capitalism will whore itself out until it self-destructs is nothing new, in fact, the communists have counted on it for nearly two centuries.
But there may be a functional limit to capitalism’s whore chasing.
Capitalism requires market freedom to survive. Globalism is little more than Marx’s dream of global communism, a world without borders and under centralized control of a handful of “elite” communists. It represents something far less than a free market.
But could the opposite of what the Globalists want result from their actions?
I was thinking last night that while ESG is a globalist creation, the world might just go the other way, into isolationism.
Due to the additional costs associated with compliance, and some compliance aspects (like the disallowance of some forms of fertilizer) having the potential to reduce my potato yields, I may choose not to sell to any company requiring ESG and just sell to companies in the US that don't impose woke regulations.
Globalism's focus has shifted from global trade to global regulation and that shift might just be the tipping point for many producers of goods and services.
It will be interesting to see how it works out since the "E" of ESG is being used to destroy family farms and ranches and idle productive land in some of the most productive areas of Europe. The government of the Netherlands is currently in the process of buying up over three thousand farms and ranches just to mothball them in order to meet the EU’s environmental regulations.
On November 29th of last year, the Washington Examiner reported:
“The Dutch government is planning to buy out and close as many as 3,000 farms in the country, exacerbating an already-bitter dispute with growers as leaders attempt to halve the country’s nitrogen emissions by 2030.
Leaders said last week they plan to allocate some $25 billion to the buyout plan, which they will use to purchase between 2,000 and 3,000 Dutch farms and other large nitrogen emitters ‘well over’ their property values.
If farmers do not agree to the plan, the buyouts could become compulsory. ‘There is no better offer coming,’ Dutch Nitrogen Minister Christianne van der Wal told members of parliament last week.
The plan comes as the Dutch government moves to halve its nitrogen emissions by 2030 in accordance with European Union conservation rules. But to meet that target, the government estimates that 11,200 farms will have to close, and 17,600 others will have to reduce their livestock numbers significantly.”
I think Herb Stein’s Law applies here. Stein, the head of Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors, once said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”.
And suicides of choice, like what is happening in the Netherlands, cannot go on forever.
"Everything WOKE turns to shit" Donald J Trump
It makes sense that the HUGE Dutch greenhouse companies have moved to the US. Just in my area (middle VA) there is almost 200 acres UNDER ROOF. I know of another company in the Charlotte area with 100 under roof (cousins to the families in my area).
Many days I feel like we are playing "whack a mole" with all the WOKE crap. Sigh. 😕
Before the French Revolution in 1789, the French government kept pushing the French people further and further into economic despair, culminating with Marie Antoinette's famous verbal response to a lack of bread for the people stating: "Let them eat cake." When the French people decided they had finally had enough of being talked down to, dismissed, and betrayed by their own government, they started killing the people in charge, who had such little regard for their health and happiness.
I could very easily see a similar situation develop all over the world, where people who are being ruled over by the iron fist of governments who disregard their own people, suddenly find themselves on the run from their own people, only to discover that they are truly hated all over the world, with no safe haven for any of them. The rich elite ruling class needs to brush up on their history, because if they study history, they will discover that the punishment for purposely inflicting pain and suffering on your own people is death by an enraged mob. And no private security force, or even an army can stand in the way of millions of people who have been inspired to see justice done, to those who have intentionally hurt them. The rich elite ruling class are not immune to the human condition, but they just might have to learn that the hard way. Amen.