Linked in previous item, worth reprinting.
= = = = = START 2014 PARTIAL REPRINT:
What’s the moral of the story?
Self-sufficiency.
(1) When kids are educated through HANDS and MUSCLE MEMORY, they gain a deep and unremovable knowledge. Soviet math and science education did this. American math and science education relied on rote memory, which is shallow and removable. (Our response to Sputnik led to even more rote memory of even crazier theories.)
When you’ve learned through direct sensory and muscle experience, you know how things work. You can thus develop new strategies when you encounter new situations. You are SELF-SUFFICIENT.
(2) Making things. Before WW2 Americans made everything we used, and paid Americans to make things. After WW2 America started outsourcing. Solid-state electronics was the pioneer of outsourcing. At the same moment as Sputnik, Japan became very good at making transistor radios, and we unconditionally surrendered to them. We allowed our own radio industry to collapse, because the Sacred Theory Of Open Borders must be obeyed AT ALL COSTS, especially including national suicide. Russia didn’t make the same mistake. A close examination of the internal parts of this gadget, and the internal parts of the VEF shortwave radio, shows that all the components are Russian-made. They look different from American (Chinese) parts.
= = = = =
When you make things internally and repair things internally and educate for self-sufficiency, you maximize your survival.
And we can see the difference RIGHT NOW. BBC reports that Russian farmers and manufacturers are quickly picking up the slack now that imported food has been stopped by our sanctions. (By the way, isn’t it just wonderfully ethical that we attack Russia and then slap Russia with sanctions for DARING to answer our attack? Fucking chutzpah as fucking always.)
From BBC:
But there has been no broader backlash. In fact one poll published this week revealed that most Russians believe sanctions can actually boost the economy; two in five told the Levada Centre they would accept an even bigger ban on foreign imports if necessary. That is partly because supermarket shelves have not emptied here – it is their content that has changed. At one central Moscow store this week the dairy counter was full of packages labelled Edam, Gouda and Ricotta – but on closer inspection much of it was made here in Russia.
Protectionism protects more than your industries and jobs and economy. Above all it protects your CIVILIZATION and your HUMAN CAPITAL. If you’re accustomed to making things and fixing things internally, you KNOW HOW to make things and fix things, and you KNOW HOW to adapt to new situations. Those skills don’t disappear quickly.
Polistra's Mill 