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It’s Not “Just Property”: How Looting Destroys Lives and Low-Income Neighborhoods | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on September 4, 2020

When looters destroy these stores and remove their merchandise, among those most impacted are the ordinary staff members. Without any merchandise, there’s nothing to sell. And with nothing to sell, there’s no revenue that can be used to support a wage for the sales staff.

Although many news stories about looting in recent weeks have focused on the looting of high-end retail outlets in places like Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, the fact is that looting more often occurs in neighborhoods where residents are working class or low income.

This, is why businesses often tend to shut down and leave riot-affected neighborhoods after being looted. Insurance doesn’t just make a business owner’s problems go away. Looting and rioting also signal to other businesses to stay away.

https://mises.org/wire/its-not-just-property-how-looting-destroys-lives-and-low-income-neighborhoods?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=99076b7d0c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-99076b7d0c-228343965

It’s now become fashionable on the left to defend looting as a means of redistributing wealth from allegedly unworthy business owners to the more deserving looters themselves.

“It’s just property!” is the refrain, with the implication being that property owners should not defend their property with coercive means—such as calling in the police or using privately owned weapons against looters.1

This is the philosophy behind a recent declaration from a Black Lives Matter organizer. As the New York Post reported on August 11:

“I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci’s or a Macy’s or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes,” [BLM organizer] Ariel Atkins said at a rally outside the South Loop police station Monday, local outlets reported….“That’s a reparation,” Atkins said.

A more full apologia for looting now comes in the form of a new book titled In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil, who identifies herself as “a writer, editor, and agitator based in Philadelphia.”

In an interview with National Public Radio, Osterweil states:

When I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot….

It tends to be an attack on a business, a commercial space, maybe a government building—taking those things that would otherwise be commodified and controlled and sharing them for free.

Osterweil then goes on to assert that looting is basically a poverty relief program and that it liberates the looters from having to work for a living:

It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage.

And most fundamentally of all, looting is an attack on private property itself. If only there were more looting, we could all “have things for free”:

[Looting] attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that’s unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.

This sort of thing may seem convincing to those who prefer to live in the realm of pure theory. Big words like “commodify” and “oppression” might strike beginner-level dissidents as impressive. But once we start to look at the real-world details of how looting works, we quickly find that looting your local auto parts store or Nike outlet isn’t going to bring down Wall Street hedge funders any time soon. What it will do is hurt ordinary people who own businesses and work in shops that are targeted by looters. Moreover, once the smoke has cleared, we’ll find that low-income neighborhoods have suffered the most.

Specifically, there are three reasons why looting will only serve to hurt exactly the ordinary people for whom looting advocates pretend to be champions.

One: Regular People Work at Looted Businesses

Retail stores provide jobs to ordinary working people, including those who lack formal education. What’s more, these jobs are often desirable jobs, offering a workplace that’s air conditioned, clean, and far safer than more dangerous jobs like driving a bus or construction. This is especially true of high-end retail shops. But selling handbags and gadgets to rich clients doesn’t make the salesperson wealthy even if it can provide a decent living.

When looters destroy these stores and remove their merchandise, among those most impacted are the ordinary staff members. Without any merchandise, there’s nothing to sell. And with nothing to sell, there’s no revenue that can be used to support a wage for the sales staff.

Looters may pat themselves on the back for “liberating” these workers from their “wage slavery,” but it’s unlikely the newly unemployed workers will see things this way when they show up in the morning and find their place of work torched and ransacked.

Two: Looting Victimizes Immigrant Families and Others Who Aren’t Exactly Members of the Ruling Class

Although many news stories about looting in recent weeks have focused on the looting of high-end retail outlets in places like Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, the fact is that looting more often occurs in neighborhoods where residents are working class or low income.

And in these neighborhoods, the owners of the local shops and small businesses tend to be immigrant families and other ordinary small-time entrepreneurs who are hardly members of the Wall Street elite. According to a report on entrepreneurship in low-income areas by the Small Business Administration, self-employed workers in low-income areas are “less likely to be U.S. citizens and English speakers” relative to other areas and have less formal education. Higher proportions of the self-employed are black and Hispanic relative to other areas as well. Moreover, “The vast majority of self-employed workers in low-income areas operate a business in their area of residence.”2 These business owners tend to face hardship themselves. Part of the reason they live and work in a low-income neighborhood is because they have relatively less access to working capital and business loans than people in higher-income neighborhoods.

Lower-income neighborhoods are not entirely without advantages. Competition is often less robust in lower-income neighborhoods, as many larger firms prefer to not take on the added risk of placing their offices and stores in these areas. This leaves more room for smaller, independent firms where owners are more willing to take on the risk in exchange for lower rents and lower up-front operating costs. The downside comes from the higher potential for crime, including robberies, looting, and vandalism. But because they have few other choices, many entrepreneurs in these areas choose to take their chances. When they are successful, they bring to their neighborhoods more employment and greater access to goods and services for residents.

But it is precisely these immigrant-owned, minority-owned, and family businesses that tend to be most victimized by looters.

Three: Looting Hurts Low-Income Neighborhoods the Most

Naturally, at the level of the independent business, looting can be disastrous for business owners. The notion that looting is “no big deal” because businesses often have insurance is tone deaf to the point of being laughable. Most businesses in lower-income areas can barely afford the premiums necessary to cover the replacement value of their businesses—if they can afford them at all. Many businesses are underinsured. Nor is the recovery process effortless. Months after businesses were torched in Minneapolis’s riots, “Just 20% of all riot-related insurance claims have been paid so far.” Moreover, insurance premiums are higher in areas where there is high risk of crime and looting. Premiums will be even higher following the latest round of riots and looting.

This, is why businesses often tend to shut down and leave riot-affected neighborhoods after being looted. Insurance doesn’t just make a business owner’s problems go away. Looting and rioting also signal to other businesses to stay away.

Over time, this means fewer businesses, fewer employers, and more urban blight. It’s why after the 1977 blackout and looting in New York City countless businesses packed up shop and never returned. These areas remained economically depressed for decades afterward.

Put another way, looting and riots lead to “divestment” in lower-income neighborhoods.3

Needless to say, looting doesn’t help the situation. And it only makes poverty worse for those who think they’re liberating themselves and others by ripping off iPhones and athletic shoes.

This goes beyond just the neighborhood level as well. The recent looting in Chicago—even the looting in posh business districts—only serves to cut citywide tax revenues:

“This downtown base of residents and business generates almost $2 billion for the City of Chicago,” [Magnificent Mile Association spokesman Adam] Skaf said. “If those types of retailers leave in the future, that leaves a huge hole in our tax base downtown and that affects the whole city.”

Those business don’t need to have locations in Chicago. There are plenty of other markets in America where looting is much more rare or even nonexistent. So, many business may simply leave, and this means less tax revenue for spending on infrastructure, public transportation, and social services. In other words, it means less spending on just the sorts of programs and amenities that defenders of looting tend to want.

No, looting stores is not something about which we just shrug our shoulders and say “Golly gee, it’s just property. No one got hurt. Lighten up!” Looting hurts lots of people: especially the poor, and especially those who do the most to bring capital, employment, and prosperity to lower-income neighborhoods.

  • 1. Perhaps the most famous case of this is the “rooftop Koreans” who defended their shops with handguns, rifles, and shotguns during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
  • 2. Maurice Kugler, Marios Michaelides, Neha Nanda, and Cassandra Agbayani, “Entrepreneurship in Low-Income Areas” (Columbia, MD: IMPAQ International, 2017), p. 21–22
  • 3. High-risk neighborhoods are caught in a cycle of low capital investment thanks to the perceived risk. As noted in an April 2019 story by National Public Radio: “You have a cycle that kind of perpetuates that neighborhood being less friendly to business,” says Spencer Cowan, the researcher who compiled the data. “Businesses don’t get started. So employment stays depressed. The job opportunities aren’t there in the neighborhood. Businesses that are there don’t expand.”
Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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The Truth About the West: It’s the Only Non-Oppressive Civilization – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 3, 2020

In some Islamic countries, for example, women are still forced to wear hijabs and burqas and are known to be raped as punishment for refusing to cover themselves. These women cannot walk by themselves in the street, open a bank account or own property. In Saudi Arabia women were only recently allowed to drive a car. In certain Muslim countries women are not allowed to get proper education.

In contrast consider this telling statistic from the United States:

Women, as a percentage of college degrees: 56%
Women, as a percentage of medical school students: 50.5%
Women, as a percentage of law school students: 51.3%

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/vasko-kohlmayer/truth-about-the-west-the-only-non-oppressive-civilization/

By

“Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”

— Jesse Jackson

“Western Civilization is not, for me, a curriculum of democracy and reason and greatness; it is a history of inequality and oppression,” writes Scott Ross, a teacher. Mr. Ross is by no means a rare ideological outlier among his peers. The view he holds has been taught and propagated at universities across the United States and Western Europe for decades. The situation has become so dire that Yale University has recently cancelled its formerly excellent course called “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present,” because it was allegedly too Eurocentric. Some among the shrinking number of universities that still offer such courses use them merely as a platform to attack the very culture whose achievements they are supposed to teach. The alleged oppressiveness of the West is the leitmotif that dominates their critiques. This view has boiled over into the larger society and is commonly held today by those on the political Left. We have seen a disturbing display of this mindset during the recent riots when “protesters” kept methodically attacking and destroying symbols of Western culture.

Although it is true that various forms of oppression have been practiced in the West over time, oppression is by no means unique to the West. Oppression has been, in fact, a feature of every civilization that has appeared on the face of this earth. We could say that human history is – in one way – a history of oppression: It has common for those with power to exploit, trample upon and take advantage of their fellow human beings. There is nothing particularly surprising about this, since selfishness and rapaciousness are prominent aspects of human nature.

What makes the West unique, however, is that it is the only civilization to reject oppression and deem it both wrong and immoral. Western civilization stands as the only culture that has had the compassion and humanness to make a deliberate and systematic effort to eliminate oppression and tyranny not only from within its own territories but also in other parts of the world. Central to this enterprise has been the concept of human rights. It was Western thinkers who came up with the unprecedented and novel idea that all men (and women) are entitled to certain fundamental inalienable rights which they possess simply by virtue of being human.

This is how Encyclopedia Wikipedia sums up the evolution of this revolutionary concept:

“Ancient peoples did not have the same modern-day conception of universal human rights. The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition that became prominent during the European Enlightenment with such philosophers as John Locke, Francis Hutcheson and Jean-Jacques Burlamaquiand which featured prominently in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half of the 20th century possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide and war crimes, as a realisation of inherent human vulnerability and as being a precondition for the possibility of a just society.”

Please note carefully: The concept of universal human rights was developed wholly and exclusively within the Western Tradition. Some of the landmark public declarations where this singularly western principle has been annunciated include the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No other civilization has had the inclination and generosity to extend such rights to the common man. Most of them have, in fact, strongly resisted such efforts in the past, and they still do so today.

Universal human rights are a quintessentially western project. The idea that the king and the pauper, the great and the small, the rich and the poor have the same intrinsic worth and as such are entitled to the same considerations and privileges is not only uniquely western but also inimical to the mindset of every other civilizational streams. Thankfully, Western civilization did not stay with theory only. Over the centuries it has managed – with fits and starts – to evolve a system of governance which translated its lofty ideals into social reality. This achievement has been effected through a form of government which is today known as Western democracy.

According to Encyclopedia Wikipedia, the characteristic feature of Western democracy is “equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people.” This is a reasonably fair and accurate description of this distinctly Western form of government. Notice especially the phrase “all people,” which means every person regardless of their social standing, gender, race, creed or sexual orientation.

Thanks to its highly evolved institutions based on respect for the inherent dignity of every individual, Western democracies today treat all people equally before the law and protect the rights of every person regardless of their status or accidents of birth. To ensure maximum fairness, western societies take special care to protect the civil rights of those who belong to groups that have historically found themselves at increased risk of oppression. By instituting the rule of law and guaranteeing the equality of rights, Western democracy has for the first time in history relieved the common man from his long-standing legacy of oppression. Having suffered millennia of domination and tyranny, ordinary people fortunate enough to live in Western style democracies can be free at last.

Not only has the West succeeded in eliminating oppression and extending equal rights to all, it is the only civilization that has seriously attempted to embark on such an enterprise. In all other civilizations, human rights and privileges were the domain of only the privileged few. And those privileged few were invariably black, brown and yellow males, depending on the geographic location of the civilization in question. It apparently rarely occurred to these men that other classes of people in their societies may also be entitled to the same rights and considerations they themselves enjoyed. Instead they treated the rest of the population as objects to be used and exploited for their own benefit and pleasure. And more often than not, those powerful black, brown and yellow males exercised their power over their fellow men (and women) with considerable selfishness and ruthlessness. That’s why tyranny, systemic oppression, exploitation, abuse, and discrimination have always been part and parcel of every civilization save for the sole bright exception of the West. It seems that among all privileged male classes across racial groups, it was only white men who possessed the sufficient empathy and compassion to consider their fellow citizens worthy of the same human rights they themselves felt entitled to.

Perhaps the best way to quickly illustrate the immense difference between the West and other civilizational streams is to contrast the situation of some classes of people in Western democracies with their counterparts who live in societies based on nonwestern values.

Islamic civilization: Women in hijab, 21st century

In some Islamic countries, for example, women are still forced to wear hijabs and burqas and are known to be raped as punishment for refusing to cover themselves. These women cannot walk by themselves in the street, open a bank account or own property. In Saudi Arabia women were only recently allowed to drive a car. In certain Muslim countries women are not allowed to get proper education.

Oppressed? Young western females partying

In contrast consider this telling statistic from the United States:

Women, as a percentage of college degrees: 56%
Women, as a percentage of medical school students: 50.5%
Women, as a percentage of law school students: 51.3%

In a number of African countries where the influence of indigenous African civilization is still strong women are subjected to female circumcision. There are no known health benefits to this practice which in many cases results in severe complications and side effects. The primary purpose behind this procedure is apparently to deprive women of the possibility of experiencing sexual pleasure. Thus, these unfortunate African women are reduced to being sexual objects for the pleasure of men and receptacles for their sperm as child bearers.

African civilization: Young women forced to undergo circumcision, 21st century Read the rest of this entry »

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The Primary Mechanism Of Your Oppression Is Not Hidden At All – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on February 3, 2020

…we see not public accountability, nor demands for sweeping systemic changes to prevent such malfeasance from reoccurring, but a bunch of narrative management from the political/media class.

This narrative management is used to shift attention away from the information that was revealed and onto the fact that the person who revealed it broke the law or misbehaved in some way. It’s used to convince people that the revelations aren’t actually a big deal, or that it was already basically public knowledge anyway.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02/02/the-primary-mechanism-of-your-oppression-is-not-hidden-at-all/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

I write a lot about government secrecy and the importance of whistleblowers, leakers and leak publishers, and for good reason: governments which can hide their wicked deeds from public accountability will do so whenever possible. It’s impossible for the public to use democracy for ensuring their government behaves in the way they desire if they aren’t allowed to be informed about what that behavior even is.

These things get lots of attention in conspiracy circles and dissident political factions. Quite a few eyes are fixed on the veil of government opacity and the persecution of those brave souls who try to shed light on what’s going on behind it. Not enough eyes, but quite a few.

What gets less attention, much to our detriment, is the fact that the primary mechanism of our oppression and exploitation is happening right out in front of our faces.

The nonstop campaign by bought politicians, owned news outlets, and manipulated social media platforms to control the dominant narratives about what’s going on in the world contribute vastly more to the sickness of our society than government secrecy does. We know this from experience: any time a whistleblower exposes secret information about the malfeasance of powerful governments like NSA surveillance or Collateral Murder, we see not public accountability, nor demands for sweeping systemic changes to prevent such malfeasance from reoccurring, but a bunch of narrative management from the political/media class.

This narrative management is used to shift attention away from the information that was revealed and onto the fact that the person who revealed it broke the law or misbehaved in some way. It’s used to convince people that the revelations aren’t actually a big deal, or that it was already basically public knowledge anyway. And it’s used to manipulate public attention on to the next hot story of the day and memory hole it underneath the white noise of the media news churn. And nothing changes.

We’ve seen it happening over and over and over again. The narrative management machine has gotten so effective and efficient that it’s been able to completely ignore the recent revelation that the US, UK and France almost certainly bombed Syria in 2018 for a completely false reason. A few half-assed Bellingcat spin jobs and an otherwise total media blackout, and it’s like the whole thing never happened.

What this tells us is that our first and foremost problem is not the fact that conspiracies are happening behind a curtain of government secrecy, but that the way people think, act and vote is being actively manipulated right out in the open. Government secrecy is indeed one aspect of establishment narrative control, but controlling the public’s access to information is only one aspect. The bigger part of it is controlling how the public thinks about information.

The reason people never use the power of their superior numbers to force real change, even though they’re being exploited and oppressed in myriad ways by the ruling class, is because they’ve been propagandized into accepting the status quo as desirable (or at least normal). The propaganda of the political/media class is therefore the establishment’s front line of defense. Its most powerful, and essential, weapon.

This is important for dissidents of all stripes to understand, because it means we’re not just passively waiting around for another Manning or Snowden or an Ian Henderson to give us information which we can use to fight the oppression machine. Those individuals have done a great public service, but the battle to awaken human consciousness to what’s really going on in our world is in no way limited to leakers and whistleblowers. It is not at the mercy of government secrecy.

If you are engaged in any type of media, you are engaging the narrative matrix which keeps the public asleep and complacent. It doesn’t matter if you have a Twitter account, a Youtube account, some flyers or a can of spray paint: if you are capable of getting any kind of message out there, you are able to directly influence the mechanism of your oppression. You are able to inform people that they are being lied to, you are able to explain why, and you are able to point them to where they can find more information.

This is extremely empowering. You do not need to wait around hoping that some bombshell piece of information makes it past all the various security checks and spinmeisters and triggers a real social awakening. You can be that information. You can become a catalyst for that awakening.

The key to turning this ship around does not lie hidden somewhere behind a veil of government opacity. It lies in you. It lies in all of us. We can begin awakening our fellow humans right now by attacking the narrative management of the propaganda machine that sits right in front of us, unarmored and unhidden.

____________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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