As you know, I post to my blog periodically, but I’m most heavily active on Facebook and Twitter. I share many links, videos, and comments and engage in conversations on topics I feel are important. Most of my blog readers are not people who I am associated with on any social networks, so my blog readers (that’s you) don’t see the majority of my online activity. So, from time to time I like to bring stuff back from those networks to my blog readers.
Today I read the following comment on Facebook:
People complain that the economy sucks… Keep buyin crap from china and it’s gonna suck worse. It’s simple, buy American and Americans work. Remember when we use to build quality [stuff]? let’s bring it back each one of us is responsible make an effort.
The comments that followed were equally, if not more erroneous. I decided to chime in and here is what I said:
Grrr…there’s a lot of economic fallacies going on here :( I wouldn’t bother commenting but I see the whole world in a global recession, governments being overthrown, people rioting and suffering, and bad ideas are so permeated throughout society that unless more people start to relearn the fundamentals that lead to prosperity, we are in for a loooong difficult road and it’s not going to be pretty. To directly address the original post, you shouldn’t necessarily “buy local”, you should “buy the best value”. This leads to prosperity for all, not suffering. Here’s an article that further explains why: http://mises.org/daily/5283
http://tomwoods.com is another great resource for breaking down economic/political fallacies. I sure hope people start to look in the right places to find truth and not believe everything they were taught in schools and hear on the news. We’re suffering the consequences of that belief system now and it has to change. Please be open-minded enough to consider what I’m saying. I’m not trying to be dogmatic and I sincerely hope we can all learn and work together to rebuild a prosperous society. But the intellectual foundation must be rebuilt and that is what I intend to help accomplish.
If you haven’t read the Mises article I linked, please do. It’s important we don’t continue on in these types of protectionist measures. It doesn’t help America or Americans. We all want prosperity, we need to remember, relearn, and spread how that is achieved.
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