“Dear President Obama,

We at the Competitive Enterprise Institute wish to congratulate you on your victory. We look forward to working with you and your administration on the full range of policy areas we research.

We would like to offer some suggestions we believe will contribute to a more free and prosperous America. We ask you to consider them in the spirit of cooperation in which they are offered.”

The occupiers should only look across the Atlantic, when they aren’t updating Facebook or Twitter about the evils of corporations, and see the crumbling socialist model the European nations have adopted to see that  they’re peddling failed economics. It’s wrong and it’s immoral. It’s immoral that socialists de-incentivize hard work, regard citizen money as the state’s, and use it to pay for lavish programs that eventually leaves succeeding generations in a state of economic despair in the form of debt so astronomical that services previously provided are drastically cut or dissolved leaving millions destitute.  Is that the end result of the progressive utopia?  I fail to see equality of outcome as anything, but dismal.  I mean wouldn’t you go crazy of every ice cream shop just had one flavor.  I feel occupiers don’t see that the end result of their agenda, if you could call it one, would turn America into a monolithic, poorly tasting, and dull country high on “sameness.”

What the free market has done for this country is to allow an entire generation of Americans, namely our parents’ generation, to achieve a level of success that was beyond their education background.  My grandfather built a manufacturing company from scratch, which at its height, supplied windows as far south as Savannah and as far west as Chicago.  It employed 400 people and allowed my family to reap the benefits of its success.  Grandpa Vespa only had a sixth grade-level education. That’s just one story.

Deng Xiaoping

Let’s go to the far east, in my old neighborhood, to China.  China was decimated by the communist policies of Mao Zedong.  The Great Leap Forward was a calamity with millions starving due to a failed industrial initiative, namely steel production, that diverted resources from rural farmers.  In the end, the Chinese ecnomy was on the brink of destruction by the time Mao died in 1976.  It was only after Deng Xiaoping took power, that China’s economy flourished with his market-oreinted reforms.  As Michael Elliott of Time Magazine wrote:

The reforms that Deng blessed started in the countryside, where farmers were allowed to sell surplus produce and, in time, were allowed to farm their own land on long leases rather than as part of a commune. “Township and village enterprises” — small firms, many of which grew rapidly in size — sprang up. Prices were freed. As the success of reform became evident in the countryside, it was gradually extended to the cities. Deng endorsed the creation of Special Economic Zones, islands of capitalism in a communist society. (The most famous SEZ, Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, knows whom to thank for its prosperity; Deng’s statue graces a square in the city.) So China started that long run of supercharged economic growth that has made it the workshop of the world

Furthermore, The loosening of regulations on private business allowed them to flourish and outpace state-run enterprises.  The Special Economic Zones,  attracted foreign direct investment and culminated with China being the economic tiger it is today. In all, the middle class of China grew from 5-15 million to nearly 300 million during this period of economic restructuring.  Yes, these are the horrible results of capitalism and free markets.  Occupiers are either jealous, idiotic, or blissfully ignorant. I think it’s a Frankenstein creature composed of all three. However, what is clear is that capitalism works.

The online community was in an uproar about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  SOPA caused Wikipedia and Reddit blacked out their sites, Google ‘redacted’ their logo, and even some members of congress blacked out their House.gov websites.

The outcry was due to the internet censorship that could have resulted from the SOPA legislation.  The backlash caused bill sponsors to withdraw, and the legislation essentially died.  But the war on the Internet is just getting warmed up.

ACTA seems to be a nasty, dastardly Big Brother to SOPA.  ACTA is an international treaty, rather than US legislation.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) states the following on their website:

While little information has been made available by the governments negotiating ACTA a document recently leaked to the public entitled “Discussion Paper on a Possible Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement” from an unknown source gives an indication of what content industry rightsholder groups appear to be asking for – including new legal regimes to “encourage ISPs to cooperate with right holders in the removal of infringing material” criminal measures and increased border search powers. The Discussion Paper leaves open how Internet Service Providers should be encouraged to identify and remove allegedly infringing material from the Internet. However the same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers.

Take Action NOW!   Below is another video that you MUST watch, as well as more informational resources and Twitter accounts to follow for updates and breaking information regarding ACTA.

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For more information visit:

EFF’s International Issue Page on ACTA: https://www.eff.org/issues/acta

European Digital Rights’ (EDRi) coverage here: www.edri.org/stopacta

La Quadrature du Net’s coverage here: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure’s (FFII) blog on ACTA http://acta.ffii.org/

Twitter hash tags: #ACTA

Twitter accounts:

@StopActaNow

@ffii

@EDRi_org

@laquadrature