JUST as socialism only works until you run out of spending other people’s money, capitalism is now being proved to be the natural order of the planet – and not just with humans.
A recent scientific study of the humble wasp showed that boss-bugs in a nest regularly have to reward worker-wasps or else the plebs flee to rival hives, probably stinging you on the way. It’s like investing in ‘buzzing capital’, if you will.
For me, that a great analogy as it perfectly illustrates what anti-capitalists simply don’t grasp. Capitalism is not something you divvy up through state power. Instead, its power is derived from human capital.
Which brings me to a man called Rex Tillerson. Most of you may not have heard of him, but if ever there was a businessman with cojones, it is he.
Tillerson is now one of the most powerful men in the world, having just been appointed Trump’s Secretary of State.
But considering the hate campaign against the US President, that may not be the cushiest job around.
However, Tillerson doesn’t do ‘cushy’. In 2006, he was CEO of ExxonMobil when the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez made oil companies an offer they couldn’t refuse: Give the government a bigger cut, or else.
Almost all took the deal. Tillerson said stick it.
So Chavez nationalized ExxonMobil’s Venezuelan assets, valued at $10-billion. The company’s shareholders reacted as if they had been hit by a meteor. There were massive calls for Tillerson’s head. He took the blow personally.
Only Tillerson didn’t get mad. He got even.
He quietly moved his company to neighbouring Guyana, striking one of the largest offshore oil finds in history.
Today Guyana, a tiny country with a population of less than a million and the only country on the South American continent that plays cricket, is poised to become one of the world’s leading oil producers.
Basket case
In motoring terms, it has gone from 0-100km/h in a second – thanks to the foresight of one man.
Except it’s not foresight. As I said, it’s a law of the universe. When ExxonMobil was robbed of its physical assets in Venezuela, a far more valuable asset went with it – its knowledge base. That’s what Tillerson knew, while Chavez was left scratching his head.
In fact, if Guyana went from 0-100 in record time, Venezuela went from 100-0 even faster. It has the largest oil reserves in the world, yet it is a basket case – although saying that is an insult to baskets.
Its money is so worthless that many people now trade in the virtual currency Bitcoin to pay staff or buy basics. I have no idea how Bitcoin works, except that its value is its scarcity. Despots like Chavez can’t print it, which makes it a unique form of Gold Standard.
But yet … instead of being remembered as the CEO who led ExxonMobil to the top of the oil world, Tillerson is now ‘reviled’ by the hipster-elite as a Trump lackey.
This is what always stuns me about luvvies. Why do they so delight in denigrating achievers?
To take the concept of capitalism and human ingenuity further, how many people do you think know how to design from scratch a computer, a space rocket or a smart phone?
Probably only about 3-million out of a global population of 7-billion. And all of them are based in America, Europe, Japan and Russia.
But are these amazing achievers considered heroes? No, we call them geeks and nerds.
Yet that fraction-of-a-percentage of global brainpower keeps the world’s power grids sparking, business infrastructures turning, and allows you and me instant access to knowledge merely by tapping a couple of laptop keys.
Although the flip side is that the jihadists, who want to bomb us back to the Stone Age, have plenty of cheap cell phones for their IEDs.
Referring to my bafflement above about the hipster-elite vilifying genuine achievers, the reason is actually clear; lefties believe riches are mere objects to be redistributed through state-decreed largesse. They can’t comprehend that true wealth is far less tangible. It’s called human capital.
Or bug capital, in the case of wasps.
