Be sure to read the explanatory text on the site: “One of the large motivations for Adam Smith writing The Wealth of Nations was to convince people to try to move capital away from the unproductive landlords (who at that time were mostly comprised of very wealthy landed English gentry) into the hands of entrepreneurs and workers.” and “In short, when someone tells you that you are a dirty communist for saying landlords contribute nothing and merely drain society, remind them that the idea came first from Adam Smith.”
Please, someone use this to make Republicans go all head-explodey.
Yes, Existential Comics!
I don’t have any Republican friends so I might have to hunt some down and give them the link.
I’m afraid there are a lot of Republicans who don’t know who Adam Smith is. They’d figure him for a different type of marxist.
The fake vampire should be sexier and more sparkly. That is just science.
Earlier today, an Existential Comics tweet:
Another tweet and video, this time courtesy of LeVar Burton, from a couple weeks ago:
The hashtag means “but you don’t have to take my word for it,” his catchphrase from Reading Rainbow.
“Please, someone use this to make Republicans go all head-explodey.”
IF ONLY.
Unfortunately, their skulls are made of neutronium-density unobtainium: facts just bounce off.
And you can’t get a vacuum to explode also, too.
@4
maybe then implode them by giving them more facts that also point out the basic irrationality of their stance and further contradictions of their own history.
uncle frogy
@4:
Exactly. Watch how when Trump leaves office, all the Republican scums will suddenly talk about family values and how the life style of the president should be perfect with no blemishes.
@#6, lotharloo:
shrugs Same way that when Obama left office, all the Democratic scums started talking about how badly immigrants are treated and how government surveillance and creeping authoritarianism is bad. Unfortunately, Trump’s lack of “family values” — though disgusting — never hurt anybody during his time in office, but you can’t say the same on the other side.
I’m not sure you can reason Republicans out of being idiots, since they didn’t reason themselves into being idiots in the first place.
Adam Smith was also famously in favour of government regulation of business.
Republicans don’t care for his ideals one bit.
Republicans promote Adam Smith with the same integrity they promote Christ.
As Smith’s works were mostly after 1776 and essentially every work that came from the British Empire from 1776 onward for a generation essentially went into the midden heap, his influence on the US was minimal at the initiation of our government.
I completely disagree with the assessment in the final panel though. I assert evidence to the contrary proving that disagreement as correct by using the French Revolution as evidence.
Put down that wet trout!
Yeah, essentially everyone who has ever read Smith honestly (which thereby does not include the Adam Smith Institute, CATO, and most other right-wing libertarians) has seen that Smith was actually a very nuanced thinker and not at all the naive free-market thinker that mythology has recast him as. What is funny is that we have to even discuss the views of someone from the 1820s, but I can’t just quote Bakunin and call it a day.
What is the alternative?
Not everybody is able to or wants to buy a home. Doesn’t rent help those people afford a place to stay? What else are owners supposed to do with their property?
What is the better way? Is rent control sufficient?