Nkrumahism, The Can Of Worms I Opened – Capitalism II

There are people who hate capitalism without even knowing why. Capitalism has literally become the whipping boy of every Tom, Dick and Harry who can read and write. The ironies about those who make incoherent noise all over the place don’t even know how much they owe their lives to capitalism. Their hypocrisy runs so deep. Each time they go on their demonstrations they will be smashing Nike shops while wearing Nike trainers and T-shirts. They smash a McDonald’s restaurant, and when it is repaired the next day, that very evening, you will see them having their meals there.

The notion of profit in the capitalist world makes the heads of the intellectuals spin like that of an owl. In the capitalist milieu there is both profit and loss. Lots of businesses in the capitalist world do not live to see their first birthday, and only a few live to celebrate their tenth. So people will have to realise that profit is rare. Very intelligent people talk about profit as if companies can just jack up their prices and make more profit. It is absolute silliness and childish stupidity when they talk like that. If that is the case why is it that according to U.S. Census Bureau only about half of all new establishments survive five years or more, and about one-third survives 10 years or more? The drive for profit is what makes things cheaper for the consumer and not the state legislating laws. For example, if two companies of equally matched capabilities want to increase their market share the only way one company can do it is to reduce the price of their product, which will attract more customers. And this works like magic, because as more customers are peeled away from the other competitor, it is also forced to reduce its price in order to maintain existing customers and attract more. It has never existed anywhere in the capitalist economy where a company increased its prices to make more profit, especially where there are equally good competitors. It can only happen if the government grants monopoly rights to a single company and stops others from coming in.

Regardless of the above common notion about capitalism, for the socialists, they want to regulate how much profit an industrialist should make or how big an industrial complex should be. Now, let me broach another scenario, if you are going to tax an industrialist to the level of about 80% of his profit, why should he bother to take the risk when he is the only one that will bear the risk, but socialise his profit when he gets it right. This is one of the major reasons why there was economic atrophy in Russia. The fact is there was lack of incentives for people to burn the midnight candle. On the other hand, their solution is that the government should help budding entrepreneurs to get on their feet. Though it is not a bad idea, however, this is when that deadly cancer – corruption, sticks its ugly neck out in the form of nepotism, bribery, gerrymandering and misappropriation of national resources to areas where they are not needed. Capitalism is an economic system for people with superior abilities; it does not prop up lazy and vagrant people.

I have written a few words in defence of capitalism. Now, let me analyse it through what Mr Kwarteng wrote. When it suits them they say the success of the Chinese is based on the mixed economy ideology. I have actually refuted this lie many times and I have been given so many labels that self-respecting people will not use. In his article that I have taken the pain to subject it under the electron microscope he let the cat out without knowing. He quoted the French scholar Jacques Rancière saying, ‘The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist Party that gives de-localized capitalist enterprises cheap labor to lower prizes[sic] and deprive workers of the rights of self-organization. Happily, it is possible to hope for a less absurd and more just than today’s.’ Do I need to further say anything? It is capitalism, which has made China what it is today. China lived in abject poverty for all the period of their Mao communism. It was when they instituted capitalism that they had their freedom. But the silly mistake that these idiots like that French scholar Jacques Rancière make is that he thinks the poverty created by Mao can be wiped out overnight. It is unbelievable the way these learned scholars think like children. It takes a while for unfettered capitalism to deliver economic freedom for all. Just compare the skyline of Beijing in 1992 and that of today and you will see how far the Chinese have come. And they will tell you it is called Beijing consensus – this is stupidity without boundaries.

When Mr Kwarteng wrote Patrimonial capitalism was he suggesting that while I work very hard to accumulate wealth I should bequeath my sweat to the state? I live in Britain where the state pay people to stay at home and just have sex – producing babies like baby factories. Most of the time these are the people who bring up delinquent children who become carrier criminals. I will stress again, while I work very hard, denying myself pleasures to pay for my mortgage and acquire other financial securities through thrift while others sit at home or blow up what they make now on senseless debauchery, and you are telling me not to have the right to choose my heir? Please, give me a break. Let me repeat again this is silliness without boundaries. And this is the bullshit that Piketty writes and they hail him as a genius. An idiot like that is what Mr Kwarteng wants me to read his book, because he has written about income distribution.

Mr Kwarteng wrote, ‘Has Mr. Baidoo, Jr. taken the time to assess Thomas Piketty’s work on wealth and income inequality and how it demolishes some of the major tenets of capitalism? What are we saying? Piketty has relied on data from the past 250 years to investigate how distortions in profit and economic growth rate, in the case where the former takes over the latter, in the long run lead to socioeconomic insecurity (See his work “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”). Accordingly, he has argued for progressive tax reforms to be undertaken on an international scale to neutralize the instability resulting from gross distortions between economic growth rates and profit generation. He has also blamed the rising tide of crony capitalism as constituting one of the major culprits behind socioeconomic inequalities around the globe.’ I have to instruct Mr Kwarteng to go and tell Mr Piketty that he is a mad deranged academic. These are the enemies of humanity together with the likes of Al Gore and their ilk. Mr Kwarteng, if you don’t have a mind of your own and you will behave like an erudite ape that is your cup of tea. Please don’t ask me to read a silly person like Piketty.

I can assure Mr Kwarteng that Thomas Piketty is a psychotic academic. It will be wise for him to tell Mr Piketty that Philip Kobina Baidoo Jnr. says he is nuts. I even think to suggest that he is nuts or psychotic is offering him an alibi. I honestly believe he is the devil incarnate. Is he suggesting that after the gross incompetence of our leaders in Ghana when other countries through determination, savings and deferred gratification they should come and share their income with us? God himself cannot remove poverty in the land of the free where there is freedom to choose poverty. There are Ghanaians in Britain who do menial jobs, yet they are able to buy their own properties and own state of the art cars. Yet, there are blue eyed British who are poor and live off the state even with handsome income recently capped at £26,000 per family. What can you do about a person who has been given a council flat, paid for by the state and he sublets the property on the black market and lives on the street? Is Mr Piketty suggesting that the British government should pay another bureaucrat to see to it that he lives in the property? Please!

Poverty is relative; even in the land of the billionaires a millionaire can be classified as poor, because he cannot afford all the trappings of a billionaire lifestyle like a yacht, private jet, and a Bentley or Rolls Royce costing £450,000. He might not see that he is poor, but his children will sorely see it and complain. America is the land of the free. It provides the freedom to be rich and freedom to be poor, freedom to even abuse your body with drugs like Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. If you divide all the wealth of the so called one percent and give it to the rest of Americans it is not going make any difference in their lives. What a silly person like Piketty writes is absolute abstraction; it doesn’t make any sense in the real world. What he is suggesting is a bonkers socialist ideal that makes everybody poor. And people like Mr Kwarteng who cannot think deep hail it as revelation. In America people who are classed as poor own their own cars and all the creature comforts of the 21st century. There was a statistics in America that declared a farming community not having enough food to eat based on certain criteria. These are some of the statistics that people like Piketty rely on to write their nonsense and Mr Kwarteng falls for it.

Capitalism is the way of the future, and anything else is reversion to barbarism. Science is the road to Utopia according to Francis Bacon, and who are the people who are able to translate scientific discoveries into consumer products – the capitalist. It is not communist Russia that brought you the mobile phone; it is capitalist America. All that Russian knew how to do is to produce nuclear weapons that will never be used. And if by accident they are used, it will be the end of civilisation. In effect, what communism is capable of is destruction. The underlying philosophy of Thomas Piketty reasoning is destruction. The result behind income distribution is making everybody poor, but regardless of all his intelligence he is so silly not to see it. You can earn one million pounds, which is a very respectable income. On the other hand, if you have a million dependants and you set out to distribute that one million pounds, you are not going to do them any good with a pound each and you end up poor as well. This is simple wisdom; you don’t need Phd to rationalise this. Thank you.


Philip Kobina Baidoo Jnr
London
baidoo_philip@yahoo.co.uk