Trump Vs Kamala? Capitalism Vs Socialism? Even My Four-Year-Old Knows the Con
A short essay on a gargantuan scam
Last week, my four-year-old son and I were winding our way through the wonderful, wild West Wales countryside, playing Would You Rather.
Concord is instinctually brilliant at this game.
Me: “Would you rather have a gigantic house or a tiny house?”
Concord: “A medium house. A big house is too expensive, and we can’t have people over in a tiny house.”
Me: “Would you rather eat a poop sandwich or a puke sandwich?”
Concord: “Neither. That’s disgusting and I would have an owie belly. You can eat a poopy puke sandwich.”
Me: “Would you rather have pineapple juice or apple juice.”
Concord: “Both. I love pineapple juice, apple juice, cranberry juice…”
He listed a dozen fruit-based beverages, then informed me the car was in third gear and calculated he’ll be 65 when I’m 100.
Like his old man, Concord has always had a killer instinct for spotting false dichotomies.
False Dichotomy:
Noun. A false dichotomy, false dilemma, or false binary is a logical fallacy that presents only two extreme, opposing options as the only possibilities, when in fact more alternatives or a spectrum of choices exist. Often used in persuasion, it forces a choice between “either-or” options to oversimplify complex issues.
I didn’t teach Concord about false dichotomies.
But boy, do I applaud him for spotting them.
He snipes them daily.
And he intuitively grasps the three correct responses to a false dichotomy:
Neither
Both
Something else
Let’s break them down…
Brock’s Law: When given two bad options, choose NEITHER.
This especially applies to two-party politics.
Republican vs Democrat, Conservative vs Liberal/Labour… these are only “choices” for sub-100 IQ folks, not for conscious adults with substantial intelligence.
Voting for the atomically-lesser of two evils is still voting for behemoth amounts of evil.
Choose Neither applies in your corporate grocery store when one option is high-priced and the other is low-quality. Just walk away.
Same for the Drake vs Kendrick feud. Or Taylor Swift vs every male she’s ever been with. Choose neither.
Same for banks when they offer you two crappy account options.
Same for insurance comparison sites.
Fox vs. CNN.
TikTok vs IG.
All junk food.
All smartphones.
The list goes on and on.
You have agency.
You have the right to say no.
Exercise it endlessly.
When given two great options, choose BOTH.
Should you love your eldest child or your youngest child?
Choose both.
If you want to get in shape and love weightlifting and basketball, why force yourself to choose?
Even my one-year-old understands this one. When I hold out a hunk of grilled beef and a slab of roasted lamb, he snatches both with his greedy little fists.
Can’t decide between two pairs of amazing shoes? Buy both and put one pair in the closet for 2028. After all, thanks to inflation, you can guarantee the price will go up and the quality will go down by then.
When given two bad options, create a THIRD OPTION.
Capitalism vs communism is the perfect example.
Extreme right-wingers would have you believe the only two options are “capitalism” (rules-free-market shareholder colonialism) or Stalinist-Nazism.
Take a hard pass on both.
I prefer a third option: Christian economics.
Instead of the compounding tyranny of individuals owning everything (capitalism) or a despotic government owning everything (communism), the world should accept the reality that God owns everything and He gets to decide how we should allocate His things. (This is all laid out in the Bible, and surprise surprise, it decentralizes wealth out of the hands of powerful individuals and out of the hands of powerful governments.)
Corporate politicians are excellent at proffering nation-destroying false dichotomies.
Two examples:
Import vs export
Establishment politicians would have you believe that the nation will collapse overnight if we don’t 1.) ink free trade deals to import cheap goods from overseas, or 2.) let corporations import an unlimited number of lower-paid workers from foreign cultures and anti-cultures.
“Prices will soar if we don’t do one of these two things,” they lie.
But there’s a third way:
Stop swamping the country with cheap foreign labor (because it suppresses domestic wages, stop exporting jobs (because it suppresses domestic wages), stop swamping the country with cheap goods (because it kills domestic businesses), and instead just let domestic wages soar.
The classic example of this is the Black Death bubonic plague that hit Scotland in 1349. Fleas on rats killed a third of the population, but because the elites couldn’t import a million daycare-scamming Somalians, the wages of Scottish commoners tripled.
Imagine if the nation couldn’t:
A.) Import cheap workers
B.) Export jobs overseas
C.) Import cheap goods
What would happen?
Goods would have to be made at home.
Shareholders would have to compete for workers to make said goods.
Parasitic shareholder profits would plummet (boo-hoo.)
Worker wages would skyrocket.
Workers would spend their massive earnings on domestic goods, which would create more high-paying domestic jobs.
Unemployment and poverty would disappear while national unity strengthened.
Or we can let shareholders continue to metastasize an economy of illegal gig workers…
Never ever ever forget: In 1970 (before the printing-money-out-of-thin-air scam really took off), the American median household income was $8,730, or 233 ounces of gold. That’s the equivalent of earning $1.16 million per year today.
(In case you’re wondering where all that wealth disappeared to, ask the 3,000-strong billionaire class that didn’t exist in 1970…)
Tax vs cut
Whether it’s the silver-tongued central bankster Mark Carney in Canada or the slithery corporate-worshipping “Labour” PM Keir Starmer in the U.K. or the fishy-rotten “fiscally responsible” Republican party in the U.S., all mainstream parties will lie through their teeth and tell you there are only two options to deal with budget deficits — raise taxes or cut services.
But there’s a third way that actually lowers taxes and improves services simultaneously: Ban banks from creating money out of thin air.
If you stop banks from inflating the money supply, inflation disappears, prices go down, and money increases in value.
When C$1/C$1/£1 is worth 1.10, you can cut taxes by ~3-5% and improve services by ~3–5%.
But corporate politicians lie and say the “only” options are to raise taxes and cut services, because their corporate sponsors want banks to retain the power to print debt-based money that has enabled the rich to capture over 80% of the world’s wealth in the past fifty years.
Run a quick thought experiment
Think of all the different people who are currently forcing you into making choices that not only aren’t the best options, but are often in diametric opposition to your wellbeing.
Politicians. Vote for us or it’s guaranteed doom.
Economists. It’s either a booming economy or a recession.
Personal finance gurus. You have to save your money or invest it.
Corporations. You have to spend through the nose for quality or buy shoddy on the cheap.
The university cartel. Go to college or you won’t succeed.
“Traditionalists” vs. “Progressives”: you cannot have both.
Entertainers. Dubious “true art” or dumbed-down mass appeal.
Culture warriors. Tolerance means accepting all viewpoints or none at all.
Activists. Ally or sworn enemy — you’re either with us or against us.
Who else is trying to make you choose against your best interests?
In conclusion
False dichotomies are a form of intentional psychological manipulation for the purposes of exploiting others.
False dichotomies are morally wrong.
False dichotomies are evil.
That’s not to say we’re all horrible parents when we give our kids two options, or that we’re trying to manipulate our spouse when we given them two dinner or movie options.
If we do these things intentionally to force a decision, that’s bad.
If we refuse to let people choose neither, both, or a third option, that’s wrong.
The Golden Rule: We should treat others the way we would want to be treated if we were in their position.
Unfortunately, capitalists and corporatists and shareholders and landlords and bankers and politicians have a different Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
Selfishness is the opposite of self-sacrificial love.
When selfishness is allowed to flourish, we end up with a society ram packed with false dichotomies across politics, economics, finance, shopping, education, entertainment, news, relationships, and the culture wars.
Selfishness needs a sturdy heel to crush its neck.
Goodness is thinking about the interests of others and seeing them as more important than ourselves.
Are you as sick and tired of living in a world with a maddening onslaught of false dichotomies as I am?
Then champion self-sacrificial love.
PS — I’m looking for beta readers for a wild book I’m writing on Christian economics. You’ll get a free PDF in exchange for honest feedback. Interested? Message me through my website.
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