Free Republic

Exposes BS about Sweden. Not socialist, walked away from socialism, they have school choice, no minimum wage, etc...

Space X CEO Elon Musk and Argentinian President Javier Milei have met in Texas and spoke about working together to promote free markets and potential lithium projects. President Javier Milei’s chief spokesperson said that during their visit to Tesla’s Austin headquarters, the two talked about a range of issues, including the need to boost declining birth rates globally and the pursuit of technological advancement while upholding “liberty.” Musk has previously expressed his admiration for Milei’s unabashed support of private enterprise as well as his distaste for what he considers to be socialist excesses.

Eight-year-old Phung Xuan Vu and his 10-year-old brother were responsible for fetching food for their family, which was in the constant grip of hunger. They were living in Vietnam in the 1980, so this required ration cards. One of the family's most important possessions was a booklet of vouchers for food. As the older child, Vu's brother took care of the booklet, knowing that if he lost it, the family would have nothing to eat. The vouchers inside were printed on waxy yellow tissue paper. They meant the difference between going hungry and having something to eat, although it was...

Capital One announced on Monday it was acquiring a rival financial services company in a massive stock deal as Americans continue to be plagued with credit card debt, according to The New York Times. The McLean, Virginia-based bank announced it would acquire Discover Financial Services in a $35.3 billion all-stock transaction, The New York Times reported. The acquisition of Discover would give Capital One more market power due to Discover having a payments network of its own at the same time as credit card debt continues to mount for consumers, according to The Wall Street Journal. The acquisition could face...

en. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called on President Biden to keep a Missouri aluminum plant open, after it was reported that its operation would be curtailed by Jan. 28. Hawley issued a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday after reports that Magnitude 7 Metals, the second-largest U.S. aluminum smelter, is going to lay off most of its staff. “This cannot be allowed to happen,” Hawley wrote Thursday. “The plant accounts for nearly 30% of the nation’s aluminum. It’s vital to national security. President Biden must invoke the Defense Production Act and keep it open.” Hawley referenced...

Pope Francis says many things that, in my opinion, just regurgitate leftist talking points, so I have many questions for this supposedly religious man who is supposed to look out for the best interest of the people, especially the poor. The pope frequently denounces capitalism as some kind of enemy of the poor, but capitalism is the best system to lift poor people up through opportunity instead of making them dependent on the government, so I would ask him: Isn't it better to give people economic opportunities than to have them depend on a master, a powerful government, for their...

My favorite social-media post in recent weeks (from a Seattle-based engineer named Grant Slatton) seems esoteric, but is quite insightful: "We don't talk enough about how insane aluminum foil is. Imagine telling some ancient person we have so much abundance in our time that we use very thin metal as a disposable paper-like wrapping and it costs essentially nothing." Seriously, Americans are so used to our unparalleled abundance that we don't pause and appreciate what this means in the context of human existence. An NPR story on the history of aluminum notes that "it used to be more valuable than...

Major retailers have experienced a wave of store closures in 2023, an 80% surge from the year prior, Coresight Research reports. The top reasons include bankruptcy of one major chain and some stores just not performing well in certain areas. The continued growth of online shopping is another factor, and other retailers said that theft is a major reason for their decision to close some stores, according to CBS News. When Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy in April, it led to the closure of 866 stores, a Coresight report finds. The second largest number of closed stores was...

San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston claimed the city’s homelessness problems were “absolutely the result of capitalism,” and it was “counterproductive” to arrest people openly doing drugs. Preston’s District 5 includes the Tenderloin District, an area known for its open-air drug market. Nearly half of the city’s homeless population lived in this district in 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The Democratic Socialist supervisor argued his district was particularly affected by homelessness because of the country’s economic structure. “I think what you’re seeing in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at...

But just because an economic system generated wealth and innovation doesn’t mean it guarantees a good society," Obama said. "Because from the outset, market-based systems have been compatible with slavery, caste systems, colonialization, war, exploration, corruption, fraud, autocracy, the poisoning of our natural environment." As Obama listed, the audience applauded. The former president went on to credit Democratic governments for "moderating capitalism's excesses" with a "social safety net." According to him, it will take "young leaders to help us think and act anew" about "creating an economic system that supports and sustains our democratic values."

Do you feel as if everywhere you turn something else is pushing the United States closer to the brink? You’d be right. It’s by design. Called “the Cloward-Piven Strategy,” our nation is being thrust into the center of every kind of disaster, expeditiously, by whoever it actually is that is running the show. The ultimate process is to “speed-up the destruction of our economy by overwhelming it.” The goal is to foist us into an economic crisis leading to the collapse of the United States as well as capitalism. A two-class system will then rise out of the ashes –...

The Clinton Foundation is back, and it’s headed to Ukraine. Founded by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the foundation put its annual “Clinton Global Initiative” on a hiatus for a few years when their relevance ebbed and fundraising dried up, but their scandal-plagued charity has returned with a plan to provide humanitarian relief to warn-torn Ukraine, complete with a benediction from Pope Francis. The Clinton Foundation’s shady dealings were exposed in 2015 by Peter Schweizer in the bestselling book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses...

People around the world may fear the gray hairs, crows feet, and stagnation that come with a midlife crisis. But over in China, millennials fear hitting an age milestone now thought to be a death sentence for one's career: 35. These anxieties have been summed up in the phrase "Curse of 35," a concept and hashtag that's gone viral on China's Twitter-like Weibo. It refers, specifically, to the average Chinese employer's preference for hiring workers who haven't reached the sell-by date of their 35th birthday. "I am scared that I won't be able to keep my job, and then I...

Just as Japan saw a substantial increase in foreign residents in 2022, it also registered a decline in its native population of approximately 800,000 people, marking the biggest drop on the country’s record. According to the report, the local population has dropped by 0.65%, leaving the total number of Japanese nationals at 122.4 million for the year 2022. This also marks the 14th consecutive year of the population’s decline. More foreign residents: The government data also highlighted the 10.7% increase in the number of foreign residents, reaching an all-time high of nearly 3 million people. The notable surge in foreign...

RePlatform Vegas September 30th-October 1st, 2023 https://www.replatformvegas.comProduced by the Defeat the Mandates Team, RePlatform: The Parallel Economy Convention at the Flamingo, Las Vegas, Sept 30-Oct 1st is the culmination of years of working around Corporate America. We're gathering the tribes--an army of entrepreneurs, experts, visionaries, and audacious dissidents, igniting an entire ecosystem of startups and institutions who recognize the danger of corporate centralization. RePlatform is NOT a "Complain-a-con", our purpose is to sharpen the parallel economy through our conference program, keynotes, expert panels, & focus on upgrading the capabilities of everyone who joins us.

Federal regulators have sued Amazon, alleging the company for years "tricked" people into buying Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel. The Federal Trade Commission, in a legal complaint filed on Wednesday, says Amazon illegally used "manipulative, coercive, or deceptive" designs to enroll shoppers into auto-renewing Prime subscriptions. Regulators also accuse Amazon of purposefully building a convoluted, multi-step cancellation process to discourage people from quitting. "Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. The Prime membership costs $139...

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — In the metro Atlanta area, a county police department is set to hold an all-day gun buyback Event on the weekend. The Clayton County Police Department will hold the buyback on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the department headquarters in Jonesboro. According to the department, payment for the guns bought will be given through gift cards in $25 increments. Flyers for the event show pricing for different types of guns and related items. Here are the prices listed on the event flyer: $100 for rifles $75 for handguns $25 for broken frames and...

...Is distinguishing Polanski spitting in the face of all victims”? What about watching his films – does that mean tacitly endorsing that “raping women isn’t that bad”? If the film is about antisemitism, how does that affect the morality balance sheet? Of course, really all these questions amount to just one, well-worn dilemma: can we separate the art from the artist?...Woody Allen (and) his relationship with Soon Yi-Previn, adopted daughter of Allen’s ex-wife Mia Farrow, made her feel “affronted, personally somehow” since she had, as a girl, identified with Allen due to his performative fragility and neuroticism. (Allen has repeatedly...

On the Glassdoor profile of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC—the world’s biggest manufacturer of semiconductor chips—current and former U.S. employees swap messages about grueling working conditions. “People… slept in the office for a month straight,” an engineer wrote in August. “Twelve-hour days are standard, weekend shifts are common. I cannot stress… how brutal the work-life balance is here.” “TSMC is about obedience and is not ready for America,” another engineer wrote in January. TSMC says it has on-boarded nearly 2,000 staff for its Arizona plants so far, including 600 engineers. But interviews with recruiters indicate those were hard-fought hires...

I’m a capitalist. You are a capitalist. Karl Marx was a capitalist. Josef Stalin was one of the biggest capitalists ever. Bernie Sanders is a capitalist. AOC is a capitalist. All the members of Occupy Wall Street, Antifa and BLM are capitalists, even if they don’t know it or won’t admit it.Capital is anything used in production that is not a free gift of the earth like land or human effort like labor or entrepreneurship. That is a bit of a long economist way of saying capital is tools. So, if you favor using tools, you are a capitalist. Less...