On Freedom, Communism, And Where Stuff Comes From
Where Stuff Comes From is deeply rooted in anti-communism as well as a passionate love of freedom and individual liberty. I’ve been deeply considering whether or not to start sharing my thoughts about Communism as part of my Where Stuff Comes From work… but it’s too critical to what is happening with our global stuff chain crisis (and yes, we are in the middle of one right now). I knew I had to get this out to all those who lean on this work for decoding what’s really happening with our supply chains.
Before I get started, I must recommend the book that inspired this little ditty of a blog, How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World by the Epoch Times.
Okay, now I am going to rip off the band-aide and dive right in.
Here’s my premise: From the data I have analyzed to date, we are in the current stuff chain mess that we are in because of communism — both real communist actors in the world and a more meta underlying spiritual crisis pushing people towards amoral materialism — intentionally subverting, subsidizing, enslaving, and otherwise seducing the free world into falling asleep about where our stuff comes from.
The crumbling of our stuff chains is driving us from affluence towards some serious scarcity that our country (the United States) has not known in at least 65 years. Not since the austerity needed of us during the Second World War have we so quickly moved away from affluence and towards scarcity. I will back this claim up in my next essay, where I’ll elaborate on precisely where the stuff chain is falling apart. (Quick plug to subscribe here so that future briefings and essays are delivered directly to your inbox).
As always, my natural abundance mindset lets me see massive opportunity and divine purpose in the chaos that’s looming.
- Opportunity to create new or renewed business models.
- Opportunities to use these serious problems as drivers of innovation and new technology.
- Opportunities to deploy some of the seriously cool technology we’ve built over the past 20 years to achieve true productivity and growth.
- Opportunity to reconnect with what matters and fight our addiction to stuff for materialism’s sake, rather than intentionally, purposefully, and mindfully consuming and creating stuff.
- Opportunity to achieve true flourishing, not dependence-driven overconsumption and gluttony.
- Opportunity to be better and live more divine lives.
And yet, if we let these unprecedented opportunities slip through our fingers and we instead continue to deepen our dependence on man-made, corrupt institutions to provide for us, then we will only drift further and further away from the physical underpinnings of our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Ponder this quote:
“The freedom of the West runs directly counter to the goal of communism. While masking itself with beautiful visions of a collective, egalitarian society, communism aims to enslave and destroy humanity.” – How the Spectre of Communism Is Ruling Our World, The Epoch Times.
What communism misses (or intentionally and maliciously overlooks) is that without strong underlying individual responsibility to (1) check the corrupt excess of the ‘commune’ and ‘collective’ (and there are ALWAYS evil excesses) and (2) ensure individual survival, the collective (in current terms, humanity) becomes cancerous to itself with individuals sucking the life force from others around them. This is the phenomenon at the core of the supply chain chaos that is just getting started right now.
Through corrupt ways and subversive means, global communism has historically and continues to force the collectivization of every individual person, company, and states’ supply chains. We are where we are because influential institutions corrupted and subverted by communism convinced freedom-loving individuals across the globe (particularly in the USA) that we no longer need to hold ourselves accountable for where our stuff comes from. We became convinced that we are absolved of our responsibility to act ethically and reasonably when it comes to procuring goods and consuming stuff. These nefarious efforts from communist actors effectively castrated our individual capabilities by convincing us it is completely acceptable to not know nor care where our stuff comes from.
Trade is good. Realizing opportunity cost and specialization are obligatory ways to lift up our neighbors and help our fellow people, and by extension, ourselves. International cooperation and achieving a more peaceful and divine world through international trade are great and divine. But the only way the free market system works in a sustainable and freedom-preserving way is if we as individuals remember (with gratitude and appreciation) that we are the only entity who will provide for ourselves and our families (with the grace of whatever higher power or deity you might believe in).
When we remember this with gratitude, we can then intentionally take responsibility for understanding where our stuff comes from and the implications of our stuff coming from those places. Implications for ourselves and the long-term flourishing of our families. Implications for other creations of the divine — be it those with two legs or four legs. Implications for the miraculous floating ball that we all share in a delicate meta-stable equilibrium.
Governments and massive, corrupt corporations cannot and will not provide for individuals; on the contrary, both corrupt corporations are nearly always designed to take advantage of the individual. That’s why we as individuals must ask questions and make conscious decisions about where our stuff comes from. If the individual does not do so then in due time he, his family, his community, and his country will pay the piper for his shirked responsibility, just as many of us in the US are experiencing right now.
There’s an adage we use in my work with the tech world that “if you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”
What this phrase doesn’t fully capture is that if you are paying for a product, but not paying the true price for that product. For example, if the price you are paying for the product is subsidized by Uyghurs Muslim slave labor), then you are still in part the product. In the case of products sourced with human rights violations, you are compromising your code of ethics and morals.
Alternatively, the part of you that is the product might be your net-future-flourishing (I claim coinage for this term, let’s define it as the net-present-value of your future flourishing in dollars or in happiness). To illustrate, let’s say a communist government gives geopolitically motivated subsidies to companies to make a certain set of widgets in their country. Said government does so to create a single point of stuff-chain failure that said government owns and can pull the lever on at any time to shut down industries that depend on those widgets either in their country or in an adversarial country. Assuming that these widgets help you and don’t harm you, the result of this predatory government subsidy is that your future ability to access those widgets, and the net-future-flourishing gained from said widgets, is less. Your net-future-flourishing is therefore the product.
Moral of the story: we must seize back our responsibility and right to ask, know, and intentionally decide where stuff comes from. So what can you do right now?
- Take responsibility for what you need to live and flourish.
- Ask questions about where your stuff comes from, even if the answer is painful, and changing that painful answer is more expensive in the near term.
- In business, be mindful about making silly, short-sighted sourcing decisions driven by corrupt regimes subsidizing true unit economics with slave labor, mass starvation, future geostrategic catastrophe, and disregard for the environment. More on this in my next essay.
Where Stuff Comes From, signing off.
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This Meditation on ‘Where Stuff Comes From’ breaks down why you need to immediately dive into where your stuff comes from. This meditation will help you to navigate the rapidly changing geopolitical, business, and human rights environment that we face today. Read this meditation and follow these weekly newsletters to gain the confidence that you need to avoid being caught flat-footed, unprepared, and reflecting retrospectively: “Well, I guess THAT’S where that stuff comes from.”
