Capitalism Is Not Racist; Capitalism Undermines Racism

From Mises.org (May 31, 2022):

Anticapitalist intellectuals have infused mainstream discourse with the idea that racial discrimination is baked into the DNA of capitalism. Usually, evidence of racial disparities in professional quarters is cited to buttress the narrative that capitalism is penalizing minority groups. Though it has become commonplace to argue that disparities constitute racism, the issue is more complex.

Racial discrimination is not an entrenched feature of capitalism, yet businesses must discriminate to remain competitive. Failing to reward the right competencies will result in failure. Therefore, discrimination is a legitimate policy that only becomes objectionable when done for nonmarket reasons. Even consumers discriminate on a daily basis, although they might not recognize it as such.

When parents insist that their children attend schools managed by capable educators, this is a form of discrimination because they are rejecting inferior schools. Secondly, other consumers prefer employing the services of formally educated workmen in contrast to their self-taught peers and are willing to pay a premium to obtain that labor. An unwillingness to discriminate is tantamount to incompetence, since the costs of inaction are detrimental to one’s business and well-being.

Using this pragmatic model of discrimination, it becomes easier to appreciate why some groups are less likely to be employed in white-collar jobs. Robert J. Morris presents data showing that the paucity of minorities in white-collar jobs is possibly a consequence of the achievement gap:

Black students made up less than three percent of the approximately 330,000 students from the graduating class of 2020 who took the ACT and were considered to be ‘‘STEM ready’’ students based on their Science and Math scores. Hispanics made up eight percent of the “STEM ready” students, whereas white students and Asian students made up 64 percent and 11 percent respectively.

Mediocre scores automatically disqualify minority students from attending elite colleges and becoming white-collar professionals. Likewise, in reading, the performance gap between whites and minority groups is abysmal. In Florida’s Alachua County public school district white pupils are reporting 72 percent achievement in reading and black students are reporting a paltry 25 percent.

Activist Tia Leather in an interview viscerally explained the implications of inept reading skills:

The reading level can mean that there are certain jobs, you can’t apply for. Certain levels of life, you just will never get to…. And as we know, through the research, it could mean jail time. And that’s how they’re building our prisons based on how well you’re reading by … third or fourth grade. So, the issue is there’s so many layers to unpack.

Moreover, Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf was recently vilified for observing that reaching diversity targets might be impossible due to the shortage of qualified minority talent. If the intellectual achievements of some minority groups are too meagre for them to join the ranks of the elite, then this is a problem to be solved by minority communities. Sociologists have penned compelling narratives linking the fortunes of students to family stability, and others assert that equivalent family patterns would narrow the racial wealth gap, but despite a treasure trove of evidence contradicting the racialist theory of capitalism, it continues to wield enormous clout in policy circles.

However, the sharpest evidence against the theory of racial capitalism is the preference for black workers during an era shaped by virulent racism. If capitalism is judging people on the basis of race, then in an environment where racism is acceptable, racist businessmen should refrain from conducting business with blacks. But this is not what we observe when studying the history of slavery.

Unsurprisingly, entrepreneurs are motivated by money, so even when they are racist, the pressure to accumulate wealth propels them to engage blacks. On slave plantations, overseers were responsible for executing important tasks requiring managerial competence. They supervised junior staff, disciplined slaves, and reported to planters. Overseers had to possess intimate knowledge of plantation management to reap success, hence planters selected for highly intelligent people.

Yet in the American South, black overseers were favored due to the deficiencies of their white peers, as Laura Sandy points out in a research article:

When compared with white overseers, the enslaved were not simply viewed as equivalent, and publicly advertised as “known to be equal to the management” capabilities of their white counterparts, but they were frequently considered to be superior.

Sandy’s account is corroborated by primary sources:

In 1784, Alexander Rose posted an advertisement in the Gazette of the State of South Carolina, which praised an enslaved man named Jonathan as having “more general or better knowledge of planting” than the majority of “White Men” in the state. Later in the decade another planter, who claimed to have purchased “perhaps one of the most valuable Negroes” in the Lowcountry, broadcasted the use of an enslaved man to manage his plantation without a white overseer present. With the enslaved at the helm, “any manager or overseer” was unnecessary; the enslaved overseer could direct plantation operations very profitably, independent of white supervision.

Relying on incompetent whites to manage estates was a losing strategy for planters, so to avert the demise of their plantations, they eagerly employed the services of blacks. Other than managing estates, enslaved workers were so competent at the trades that by the eighteenth century they were outperforming white men. Such findings are not peculiar to the American South: in Bridgetown, Barbados, free blacks dominated the market for skilled labor to the detriment of white artisans.

Irrespective of ideological positions, employers will prefer quality labor to inferior substitutes. Racist planters chose competent blacks over incompetent whites to the chagrin of their colleagues when racism was tolerable, so why would employers in an age where racism is perceived as deplorable penalize employees because of race?

Luckily, we don’t need to belabor the debate because the issue is indeed simple—some minority groups fail to attain parity with whites due to lower levels of human capital. In short, only lagging groups and their leaders can correct the achievement gap but a fixation on dubious theories of racial capitalism is sure to distract them from achieving worthwhile goals. [source]

Sad to say, the Left will still say the free-market system is racist.

How American Soldiers Invented GPS On Labor Day Weekend In 1973

From The Federalist.com (Aug. 31, 2023):

With the letters GPS, we instantly recognize an innovation that has revolutionized our lives. The concept was born half a century ago in a sweltering room at the Pentagon over Labor Day weekend in 1973.

That’s the genesis of the concept for a constellation of platforms orbiting the Earth, transmitting radio signals to determine location. Many years of calculation, experiment, and miniaturization led to the Navigation Signal Timing and Ranging (NAVSTAR) satellites that became known as the Global Positioning System (GPS).

The dedication and intellect of the engineers, scientists, and technicians involved led the way to worldwide freedom from getting lost — and governments’ ability to always know where you are if you’re carrying a phone.

……..

The Beginnings of Satellite Positioning

So how did that all change? A few days after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik a few hundred miles above the Earth’s surface, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory realized the satellite could be tracked from the ground merely by the radio signals its transmitters emitted by exploiting the Doppler shift as it passed.

In August 1966, the U.S. Air Force submitted proposal 621B to engage these principles in reverse: using the satellite to locate a ground position, such as for search-and-rescue operations. Although useful for military use, that was not economically scalable. It also required an enormous quantity of satellites for global coverage from low-Earth orbit.

Then over Labor Day weekend in 1973, a group of U.S. Air Force officers led by Col. Bradford Parkinson met in empty Pentagon rooms to bring this idea to fruition. Ground receivers had to be passive, with no feedback to the transmitters in orbit. The system had to operate worldwide. Intersection from four separate signal emitters within the line-of-sight would correspond to a single receiver location.

Measuring the time elapsed can calculate the distance between the satellite and the receiver. Depending on these time delays, the intersection of the spheres corresponds to the receiver’s location, allowing trilateration plus time offset to compensate for the receiver’s temporal inaccuracy. The convergence in this example points to a location in northern Europe.

Configuring GPS

The Atlas booster then available constrained the payload mass for reaching medium orbit. The teams chose a constellation of at least 24 platforms with 12-hour orbital passes at 12,500-mile altitude to satisfy payload requirements, mapped into six orbital planes with four or five satellites per plane.

To distinguish multiple satellites operating on the same frequency, James Spilker at the company Aerospace created code division multiple access, or CDMA. This technique assigns a particular identifier to each transmitter.

Richard Schwartz and Hugo Fruehauf at Rockwell miniaturized and radiation-hardened rubidium vapor oscillators to serve as the NAVSTAR atomic clocks. These achievements from Air Force, Rockwell, and Aerospace teams are summarized in the Lonely Halls documentary.

Fixing What Went Wrong with the Concept

Sources of errors for this plan abounded. Among these included space-time dilation, revealed by Albert Einstein in 1905 and 1915. Due to special relativity, the NAVSTAR satellite’s orbital speed of 2.4 miles per second decelerates the clocks by seven microseconds per day.

By contrast, general relativity speeds up those same clocks by 45 microseconds per day due to the GPS satellite’s greater distance from the Earth’s core. That reduces that gravitational influence compared to the surface.

Together, failure to compensate for these effects induces an error of more than six miles per day. So before launch, the satellite clocks are slowed down by 0.000000045 percent to synchronize with ground stations.

Additional sources of error include free electrons in the ionosphere, Sagnac distortion, and Earth’s axis perturbations called the Chandler wobble. GPS compensates for these by incorporating two separate transmit frequencies, calibrated against each other, as well as atmospheric modeling and coordinate transformation between transmitter and receiver.

GPS Finally Launches in the 1970s

Led by Roger Easton, Naval Research Laboratory developed a pair of proof-of-concept satellites to test time-based navigation. These were launched in 1974 and 1977.

Starting in February 1978 and continuing until October 1985, the Air Force launched 10 prototype Block-I NAVSTAR satellites aboard Atlas F rockets for testing. From February 1989 through November 1997, it launched nine Block-II and 19 Block-IIA by Rockwell aboard Delta-II rockets (after the exclusion of the Space Shuttle). This formed the initial GPS constellation.

Today, 31 GPS satellites remain operational, not counting four reserve or spare platforms. Various improvements have been incorporated.

Throughout their development, GPS satellites have shared common features. Shown below is the Block-II configuration, weighing about one ton (about double the prototype Block-I). Louvers on the side dissipate excess heat via thermal radiation to maintain consistent internal temperature. Attitude thrusters adjust satellite orientation. Photovoltaic solar arrays convert sunlight into electrical power. [read more]

Interesting military history.

Woman’s mystery illness turns out to be 3-inch snake parasite in her brain

From Ars Technica.com (Aug. 28, 2023):

A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled a wriggling 3-inch roundworm from the brain of a 64-year-old woman last year—which was quite the surprise to the woman’s team of doctors and infectious disease experts, who had spent over a year trying to identify the cause of her recurring and varied symptoms.

A close study of the extracted worm made clear why the diagnosis was so hard to pin down: the roundworm was one known to infect snakes—specifically carpet pythons endemic to the area where the woman lived—as well as the pythons’ mammalian prey. The woman is thought to be the first reported human to ever have an infection with this snake-adapted worm, and it is the first time the worm has been found burrowing through a mammalian brain.

When the woman’s illness began, “trying to identify the microscopic larvae, which had never previously been identified as causing human infection, was a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Karina Kennedy, a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) Medical School and Director of Clinical Microbiology at Canberra Hospital, said in a press release.

The case, reported in the latest issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, began in January 2021. The woman went to a local hospital in southeastern New South Wales, Australia, with a three-week history of abdominal pain, diarrhea, dry cough, and night sweats. Her blood work indicated an infection of some kind, and scans showed signs of pneumonia in her lungs as well as lesions in her spleen and liver. But tests for known microorganisms and parasites came up negative, as did tests for cancers and autoimmune disease. She was diagnosed with an unexplained case of pneumonia and given a corticosteroid, prednisolone.

Three weeks later, she was admitted to another hospital for recurrent fever and persistent cough. Again, doctors found the lung, liver, and spleen injuries as well as signs of an infection. Her blood had high levels of eosinophils, white blood cells known to fight off parasitic infections. They treated her for the high eosinophil levels and, out of concern there was a false-negative for a human roundworm infection, treated her with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.

From mid-2021 to early 2022, the woman’s liver and lungs improved. With the addition of another drug to help keep her eosinophil counts down, she was able to lower the dose of prednisolone.  [read more]

Glad the doctors got the worm out in time.

Former US Marine Held in Russia for More Than 4 Years Has Been Released

From Newsmax.com (Aug. 11):

Russia has released an American military veteran who spent more than four years in prison on disputed charges under abusive conditions and was said to be gravely ill and at risk of dying, a group advocating for him said Tuesday.

Robert Gilman was on his way to a U.S. military hospital in Texas, where he will be medically and psychologically assessed and treated, said Eric ‌Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, a group that’s been working to free him and other American detainees abroad.

Gilman’s family has flown to Texas to be with him, including his mother, who was in Russia attempting to see him at a hospital.

President Donald Trump, however, posted on social media that Gilman will arrive at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland outside of Washington on Tuesday evening.

“I just spoke to him, and he had one request — A GREAT cheeseburger when he lands,” Trump wrote. “I will take care of that!”

Trump said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin before Gilman's release, which Trump said was “very much on a Humanitarian Basis.”

“We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return — No exchange took place,” Trump said.

Gilman, a 32-year-old teacher detained since 2022, was initially handed a 3 1/2-year sentence when he was convicted of beating a police officer after being taken off a train for causing a disturbance.

He later was convicted of attacking a prison inspector during a cell check, beating an investigator and assaulting a guard, and he was sentenced in October 2024 to eight years and one month. His sentence was extended last year to 10 years after he was found guilty of assaulting prison guards.

Gilman’s father has disputed the charges against him.

Gilman's sister, Lexie Hudson, credited Trump and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts with bringing about the former Marine's release.

“There is no other reason that Robert is alive today other than that President Trump heard about the case and took action,” said Hudson, who thanked Markey “for leading our advocacy efforts in Congress.”

“The Russians treated my brother so badly," Hudson said. "They hurt him for no reason, other than that he was both an American and a Marine. What did they get out of this? Why did they do this to such a wonderful person?”

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service did not respond to a request for comment on Gilman’s health deteriorating behind bars.

Arrests of Americans have become increasingly common in Russia in recent years. Concern has risen that Russia could be targeting U.S. nationals for arrest to use later as bargaining chips in talks to bring back Russians convicted of crimes in the U.S. and Europe.

The State Department also said Gilman, who had been determined recently to have been wrongfully detained, was released on humanitarian grounds and “was not part of an exchange, and no other concessions were provided.”

“This as a welcome step that we hope leads to the release of Americans unjustly held in Russia, such as wrongful detainee Stephen Hubbard,” it said.

During Gilman’s December 2025 trial in the southwestern city of Voronezh, where he was found guilty of beating two prison guards and had his term extended to 10 years, Russian media reported that he pleaded guilty to the charges and apologized to the guards he was charged with assaulting.

The business daily Kommersant said he explained his actions by saying he wanted to stay in the prison where he was serving his sentence and avoid being moved to another penitentiary.

Gilman’s lawyer Irina Brazhnikova told the Russian news agency Interfax on Friday that Gilman was in a psychiatric ward of a civilian hospital, where he’s been since early July.

He was there “due to a psychiatric condition,” and according to doctors, his condition has worsened, but neither his defense lawyers, nor his family were allowed to visit, she said.

Before Gilman was flown out of Russia, he had been in “a dissociative stupor” for 47 days due to the abuse he had suffered in prison, Lebson said. After he was moved to the hospital, he was hooked up to a feeding tube and handcuffed to a bed.

Hospital reports conveyed Gilman’s condition “as dire and life-threatening,” pushing the U.S. government into action and leading to his release, Lebson said.

Markey had called on Russia and the U.S. to work together to get the Massachusetts resident released. Gilman was among at least eight Americans who remained in Russian custody after a series of high-profile prisoner exchanges with the U.S. in recent years.

Markey blamed Russia for Gilman's poor health, saying his return to the U.S. was long overdue.

“It is a tragedy that it took Robert’s near-death condition for his case to receive the attention that it required for his release to be negotiated," Markey said. "Throughout his detention, Robert was subjected to physical torture, forced medication, and provocations by Russian authorities. There is no doubt that his treatment by Russian authorities is the reason Robert is in this precarious state today.” [source]

Good to know! Welcome back home.  Get well and enjoy your cheeseburger.

Another person released:

President Trump Brings Another American Home-Announces Return of Christian Missionary Kevin Rideout Who Was Kidnapped and Held by Jihadi Terrorists in West Africa

Texts: Fauci Gave Mixed Message on Vax Miscarriage Risk

From Newsmax.com (Aug. 10):

Text messages obtained from the government-issued cellphone of Dr. Anthony Fauci show the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases privately raised the possibility that a reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine could theoretically be associated with miscarriages.

Days later, he publicly said regulators had found "no red flags" involving pregnant women.

The messages, released Monday by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., were among more than 34,000 texts obtained by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Paul chairs. The government-issued iPhone also contained more than 522 voicemails.

Paul and Johnson said in a news release that only three contacts were listed and that all other text messages were identified only with phone numbers rather than contact names. They said it was too early to determine whether any data was deleted.

Johnson referred to the revelations as "a major scandal" during an appearance Monday night on Newsmax's "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE." He added that the information was found after a "quick little search" and that lawmakers have yet to go through the full trove of texts and voicemails.

"I thought we better release this one right away because it impacts public health today," Johnson said.

Fauci, then-CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and then-Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy discussed potential risks of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, including whether the timing of vaccination could affect those risks.

"I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of," Fauci wrote in a Jan. 25, 2021, text exchange with Walensky and Murthy.

"Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester," Fauci added.

Walensky replied: "Definitely a good point, esp. after dose two."

Murthy replied: "This is really helpful, thanks. I've been hearing the concern about the mRNA causing mutations in the developing fetus as well. That's a really good point re the cytokine storm post second dose."

Other messages showed Fauci, Murthy, and Walensky weighing potential vaccination risks against the risks COVID-19 posed to pregnant women.

Fauci noted that more than 10,000 pregnant women had been vaccinated at the time without reported problems and that animal toxicology studies had raised no red flags.

A day later, Murthy mentioned in a text to Fauci and Walensky that he was "surprised to see WHO [World Health Organization] put out a strong [line] saying they do not recommend moderna in pregnant women."

"That's a strong statement to make and potentially quite damaging to public confidence among pregnant women," Murthy wrote.

On Feb. 3, 2021, Fauci said during a question-and-answer livestream with the Journal of the American Medical Association that the FDA had "found thus far, and we have to be careful, but thus far no red flags about that, about pregnant women."

On Aug. 30, 2021, Fauci, who also served as chief medical adviser to the Biden White House, told pregnancy expert Heidi Murkoff, "[If] you look at the literally — literally — tens and tens and tens of thousands of women who have been followed by the CDC, who have been vaccinated when they were pregnant, there's no indication whatsoever that there's any increase of any adverse issues in a pregnant woman who was vaccinated compared to a pregnant woman who wasn't vaccinated … it's pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated."

Paul's committee last week voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during a July 29 hearing, even though Fauci received a broad pardon from former President Joe Biden.

Paul then referred the contempt finding to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution.

Newsmax reached out to Fauci's attorney for comment. [source]

The Fauci dark saga continues... Just seems to get worse and worse.

More on the texts:

Texts: Fauci And Friends Covered Up Concerns About The Covid Vax And Miscarriages

My truth, your truth, or the truth? How wokeness undermines the concept of truth itself

From Breakpoint.org (Jan. 19, 2024):

In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, the disgraced plagiarist and ex-president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, used some interesting language about “truth” — language that should make any Christian’s eyebrows pop up.

She said, “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged …Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth.”

But the use of the phrase “my truth” isn’t only found among the progressive left these days. In one of the Republican presidential primary debates, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, outlined her (rather weak) position on abortion and claimed to be pro-life. Later, when facing criticism for not being pro-life enough at a candidates forum in Iowa, she said “What you heard me say at the debate was very much my truth.”

This raises a serious question: Since when did truth become something that needs to be modified with a personal possessive pronoun?

Christian apologist Frank Turek, perhaps having witnessed these strange personal modifications to the concept of truth, recently asked on X (formerly Twitter), “What do you say to people when they talk about ‘their truth?’”

Ryan Helfenbein, Executive Director of the Standing for Freedom Center, gave an excellent answer:

“There is no ‘your’ truth or ‘my’ truth. There is only ever one universal and absolute truth. The language of postmodernity and indeed Wokism, is a total affront and assault on truth.

Jesus said, ‘I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ John 14:6. Appreciate this question from @DrFrankTurek.”

There is no “your” truth or “my” truth. There is only ever one universal and absolute truth. The language of postmodernity and indeed Wokism, is a total affront and assault on truth.

Jesus said, “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through… https://t.co/kCNfgAluj9

— Ryan Helfenbein (@RHelfenbein) January 3, 2024

Ryan is right. There is only “one universal and absolute truth.” And there is only one being in the universe who has a right to make a personal claim on that truth — the Triune Creator God.

But in today’s increasingly secular world, the concept of truth has become blurred. The rise of postmodernism and its offspring, wokeness, have contributed significantly to this confusion. As Christians, it is essential to understand the implications of these ideologies and how they impact our understanding of truth. Let’s explore the concept of this sort of subjective truth from a Christian worldview and examine how wokeness undermines the very idea of objective truth.

The Christian understanding of truth

The Bible, as the foundation of the Christian faith, provides a clear understanding of truth. In John 14:6, as Ryan referenced, Jesus declares, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” This statement reveals that Jesus is the embodiment of truth and that truth is not a concept or an abstract idea but a fixed reality determined by God and miraculously embodied in Jesus Christ through the incarnation.

Moreover, the Bible teaches that truth is not relative but absolute. In John 8:32, Jesus says,

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

This statement teaches us in no uncertain terms that there is a single, objective truth that can be known and that this truth has the power to liberate us from the chaos and confusion of the world — and, more importantly, from our sin and rebellion against the God of truth. [read more]

Wokeness like Marxism (which wokeness is a variation actually) is a mental virus which needs to be eliminated.

The WHO’s Pandemic Treaty: The End of National Sovereignty and Freedom

From Mises.org (June 2, 2022):

Even as much of the world continues to move past the covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) is already looking ahead and preparing for the emergence of “other pandemics and other major health emergencies.” To ensure that the world is adequately prepared for future pandemics, “the World Health Assembly” held a special session, on December 1, 2021, entitled The World Together.

The World Health Assembly is “the decision-making body of WHO” and “is attended by delegations from all WHO Member States and focuses on a specific health agenda prepared by the Executive Board.” In this special session, which was actually only “the second-ever since WHO’s founding in 1948,” participants agreed to “draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” This would come to be known as the Pandemic Treaty, which was the main focus of discussions at the Seventy-Fifth World Health Assembly, which was held in Geneva during May 22–28, 2022.

According to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the first director-general of the WHO and who is not actually a medical doctor, this treaty represents an “opportunity to strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people.” If passed, the Pandemic Treaty will allow the WHO to make radical changes to the healthcare systems of its member countries starting in 2024.

In particular, this agreement will grant the WHO the power to declare a pandemic, based on its own vaguely defined criteria, in any of its 194 member countries at any point in the future. It will also permit the WHO to unilaterally determine what measures will be imposed in response to these future declared pandemics, including lockdown policies, mandatory masking, social distancing, and coercing the population into undergoing medical treatments and vaccinations.

Contrary to popular opinion, the WHO is not an independent, unbiased, and ethical organization that aims to achieve the common good. In reality, its goals and agendas are set by its donors, including some of the world’s richest countries and most influential philanthropists. For decades, “philanthropists and their foundations have [gained] increasing influence” when it comes to shaping the global health agenda by “placing people in international organizations, and gaining privileged access to scientific, business and political elites.”

For example, as Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz explain in Philanthropic Power and Development: Who Shapes the Agenda?,“ the Gates Foundation and earlier the Rockefeller Foundation, have been shaping global health policies not only through their direct grant-making but also through the provision of matching funds, the support of selected research programmes, the creation of global health partnerships with Foundation’s staff in their decision-making bodies, and by direct advocacy at the highest political level.” In fact, back in 2006, The Guardian reported that “the Gates foundation is now the second largest donor to the World Health Organization after the US, as well as one of the world’s largest single investors in biotechnology for farming and pharmaceuticals.” Unfortunately, when philanthropists and their foundations advance their own interests, they do so at the expense of the common interests of society. There is no reason to believe that this dynamic will be any different in the case of the Pandemic Treaty.

The Pandemic Treaty has the potential to be extremely detrimental to the future of humanity, because it will allow the WHO’s most powerful contributors to shape universal pandemic measures instead of recognizing the importance of developing specific policies and approaches based on the social, economic, and physical realities and needs of each individual country. The treaty will eliminate the national will and sovereignty of member countries, as it will dictate their health policies based on abstraction, as opposed to considering the realities that prevail in each place.

Even if the Pandemic Treaty genuinely aimed to achieve purely noble humanitarian outcomes, it still has to be opposed on the basis of liberal thought, which maintains that the individual alone must possess absolute responsibility for his own well-being, assuming that he is of mature age and of sound mind. That is to say, the individual is the only one permitted to make decisions that affect his body, his life, and his future, absent the coercive power of any external authority.

However, the Pandemic Treaty will not allow individuals to rely on their own physical, spiritual, and intellectual faculties in order to achieve their own well-being. Instead, it will impose treatments and vaccination on individuals against their own will, thereby violating bodily freedom on a global scale. History is a testament to the fact that violating bodily freedom leads to slavery and retrogression in society.

The Pandemic Treaty will also give the WHO the authority to issue dictates within the private spheres of individuals and to exercise control over their social and public lives, the institutions of their society, and their governments, all in the name of public health. In doing so, it will suppress civil liberties, economic freedom, positive freedom (freedom to), and negative freedom (freedom from). All these forms of freedom are intended to be constructive forces in society that contribute to the achievement of social progress. Once these freedoms are stifled, the foundations of progress and advancement also vanish.

Through the Pandemic Treaty, the WHO will impose its own value judgment on the world population, thereby ignoring the fact that values differ significantly between people, cultures, traditions, and nations. In other words, it will disregard the diversity of people when it comes to making decisions about their own bodies based on their own religious beliefs, commitments, views, commitments, and cultural and traditional values. It will also violate inclusiveness, as the imposition of a single value judgment; namely, the “One Health” approach, means that the WHO does not treat other value judgments, nor cultural and traditional practices, fairly and equally.

The Pandemic Treaty ignores the fact that, as Joseph Schumpeter noted, there is no “unambiguous standpoint with regard to the social whole, upon general welfare and so forth; nor would such a unitary standpoint exist if all individuals and groups wished to act and evaluate on this basis, since the general good and the social ideal appears differently to each and every one.”1

When it comes to medicine, Schumpeter continues, even though people “sufficiently recognize what good health is and generally seek to achieve such a condition,” “it cannot be proved to anyone that health should be positively valued,” as health cannot “be unambiguously defined.”2  In reality, people pursue “good health with very different levels of commitment, valuing this good in relation to others very differently; nor that their aims are not all exactly the same—the health regimes followed by the boxer and the singer are very clearly not identical.”3  Even surgeons trained in the same area would not necessarily agree on the same treatment and operation.

For example, writes Schumpeter, “faced with the option of removing an ulcer, or avoiding the damage associated with surgical intervention, two physicians can argue about whether the one or the other would achieve the desired recovery in the same way.” Moreover, within a particular nation-state, “between people of the same political, social, economic, and cultural interest and with the same perspective on the social world there can always be differences over what is worth striving for.” Accordingly, why would any person or organization that purports to support liberal democratic values back the Pandemic Treaty?

Those that support the Pandemic Treaty ignore the core principles of liberal thought and the principles of democratic governance, as they do not , as Ludwig von Mises put it, “see any reason why they should not by means of force coerce other people to do what these people are not prepared to do of their own accord.” The treaty’s advocates believe that it is acceptable to employ large-scale central planning to coerce people into doing “the right thing” based on value judgments that are not theirs. It does not matter to them, continues Mises, that “the apparatus of physical compulsion resorted to in such endeavors is that of the government’s police power or an illegal “picket” force whose violence the government tolerates…. What matters is the substitution of compulsion for voluntary action.”

Supporters of the Pandemic Treaty should remember the words of John Stuart Mill:

Neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He is the person most interested in his own well-being, the interest which any other person, except in cases of strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that which he himself has; the interest which society has in him individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else.

That is to say, the individual is in the best position to be the final judge of action when it comes to his bodily autonomy, his private sphere, and his freedom. [source]

Scary. One step closer to the One World Order.