Reporter David Weigel’s feverish imaginings about the group he pretends to cover objectively have surfaced in emails sent to the liberal listserv, Journolist, according to Fishbowl DC (hat-tip to LRC blog).
Why am I not surprised?
Global-warming “scientists” turn out to be political hacks grinding over-sized axes; “educators” preaching “tolerance” and “love” turn out to be sexual Bolsheviks; green “activists” turn out to be shills for billionaire speculators….. (more…)
“Brahman is full of all perfections. And to say that Brahman has some purpose in creating the world will mean that it wants to attain through the process of creation something which it has not. And that is impossible. Hence, there can be no purpose of Brahman in creating the world. The world is a mere spontaneous creation of Brahman. It is a Lila, or sport, of Brahman. It is created out of Bliss, by Bliss and for Bliss. Lila indicates a spontaneous sportive activity of Brahman as distinguished from a self-conscious volitional effort. The concept of Lila signifies freedom as distinguished from necessity“
– Ram Shankar Mishra, in “The Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo”
Thanks to libertarian activist, financial consultant, and author of an early expose of the big banks, “Pirates of Manhattan,”(2007), Barry James Dyke, for pointing out GuideStar.org. This is a website that lets you look up financial records of registered non-profits, a handy way to see what activists and advocates of all stripes are making, what their revenues and expenditures are, and whom they employ. (more…)
Sauvik Chakravarti at Antidote on human-hating environmentalism:
“Next: look at the different “utopias” of libertarians and environmentalists. Libertarians idealise the most perfect freedom. Environmentalists idealise “pristine” Nature. They are all from cities – but they love the jungle. They love beasts – the tigers and the elephants – and never consider what life must be like for someone who lives near wild elephants and tigers. These forest-dwellers are enemies of the environmentalist. Their greatest friends are the State forest guards – the very people the forest-dwellers hate. Environmentalists are therefore enemies of Man, enemies of Freedom, and friends of the State. This should always be borne in mind. They are all “watermelons”: green outside, but red inside.
In a piece called “Tea-Party Jacobins,” NY Times, May 27, 2010, (hat-tip to LRC blog), Mark Lilla calls Tea Party activists a “libertarian mob,” since they proclaim the belief “that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone” and they have only one “Garbo-like thing to say, they want to be left alone.”
Hmmmm. Couldn’t have said it better m’self. Consider me now a card-carrying member of the libertarian mob. (more…)
Forbes on where richer than average households are moving within the USA, June 14, 2010:
No. 1: Collier County, Fla.
Arriving average income per capita: $76,161
Departing average income per capita: $26,128
Stationary household average income per capita: $49,959
Total arriving people: 15,150
Total departing people: 16,802
Top origin: Lee County, Fla. (2,987 people) (more…)
“I hate to make such a gloomy forecast, if only because people that draw wacky conclusions from sources like Nostradamus, the Bible, and the Mayan calendar are so prone to do so, ” says Doug Casey in a recent interview at The Daily Bell.
Caveat one. It’s not the sources that are the problem. It’s the people reading the sources.
Rational and sophisticated thinkers will draw rational and sophisticated conclusions from even the most speculative or imaginative texts. Idiots will only draw idiotic conclusions. But then idiots would draw idiotic conclusions even from Euclid’s Geometry….
Caveat two. One man’s ‘whacky’ is another man’s ‘wise’…….
From Rick Ackerman:
We all need to get on board with paying down debt like any responsible citizen debtor would do. We owe big-time and this is but a taste of how it may cost us:
- Major employment reductions amongst those working in the public service
- Health care services that are rationed. Fewer nurses, health practitioners and support staff
“Corporatist System
But BP’s defenders and statist critics both have it wrong. This is not the story of a well-meaning or negligent firm operating in the free market. Negligent or not, BP is a player in a corporatist system that for generations has featured a close relationship between government and major business firms. (It wouldn’t have surprised Adam Smith.) Prominent companies have always been influential at all levels of government — and no industry more so than oil, which has long been a top concern of the national policy elite, most particularly the foreign-policy establishment.
“Money, The Root Of All Good,” Atlas Shrugged, (1957) by Ayn Rand:
“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
Albert J. Nock in The Criminality of the State, March 1939:
“In this way, perhaps, our people might get into their heads some glimmering of the fact that the State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal.
A message from Ron Paul (May 29) urging you to support The Private Option Health Care Act:
Dear Friend of Liberty,
Unlike the statists in Washington, the freedom movement
understands that our health care is too important to be left to
the whims of politicians and bureaucrats.
Roderick Long on what sort of equality libertarianism entails:
“But if neither legal equality nor equality of liberty is sufficient for a free society as we understand it, in what sense can it be from our equal creation that we derive our right to liberty?
For the answer to this question we must turn from Jefferson to Jefferson’s source, John Locke, who tells us exactly what “equality” in the libertarian sense is: namely, a conditionwherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection….[3]
The artistic genius of Nina Simone found expression not only in piano playing, singing, and composing (she despised the term ‘jazz’ and always called herself a black classical pianist), but also in passionate activism for civil rights. Simone embodied an individualist and nonconformist spirit that was truly libertarian…. (more…)
Via the Independent Institute:
Freedom for What? (April 30, 2010)
The following is based on a speech given by the author, upon
receiving the “Juan de Mariana Award for an Exemplary Trajectory in the
Defense of Freedom,” Madrid, Spain, April 30, 2010. © Firmas Press.In 1980, shortly after making a dramatic exit from Cuba, the
magnificent writer Reinaldo Arenas collected in a book his more
combative articles and essays and titled it The Need for Freedom.It was a shout. Reinaldo felt the need to be free. Human beings
need to be free. He was asphyxiating in Cuba. He lived in sadness, fear
and indignation. None of those three emotions is pleasant, and sometimes
they twisted in his heart to the point of desperation.
Rothbard’s penetrating analysis of the cult of St. Ayn:
“The adoption of the central axiom of Rand’s greatness was made possible by Rand’s undoubted personal charisma, a charisma buttressed by her air of unshakeable arrogance and self-assurance. It was a charisma and an arrogance that was partially emulated by her leading disciples. Since the rank-and-file disciple knew in his heart that he was not all-wise or totally self-assured, it became all too easy to subordinate his own will and intellect to that of Rand. Rand became the living embodiment of Reason and Reality and by some quality of personality Rand was able to bring about the mind-set in her disciples that their highest value was to earn her approval while the gravest sin was to incur her displeasure. The ardent belief in Rand’s supreme originality was of course reinforced by the disciples’ not having read (or been able to read) anyone whom they might have discovered had said the same things long before.
Ejection From Paradise
The Rand cult grew and flourished until the irrevocable split between the Greatest and the Second Greatest, until Satan was ejected from Paradise in the fall of 1968. The Rand-Branden split destroyed NBI, and with it the organized Randian movement. Rand has not displayed the ability or the desire to pick up the pieces and reconstitute an equivalent organization. The Objectivist fell back to The Ayn Rand Letter, and now that too has gone.
With the death of NBI, the Randian cultists were cast adrift, for the first time in a decade, to think for themselves. Generally, their personalities rebounded to their non-robotic, pre-Randian selves. But there were some unfortunate legacies of the cult. In the first place, there is the problem of what the Thomists call invincible ignorance. For many ex-cultists remain imbued with the Randian belief that every individual is armed with the means of spinning out all truths a priori from his own head – hence there is felt to be no need to learn the concrete facts about the real world, either about contemporary history or the laws of the social sciences. Armed with axiomatic first principles, many ex-Randians see no need of learning very much else. Furthermore, lingering Randian hubris imbues many ex-members with the idea that each one is able and qualified to spin out an entire philosophy of life and of the world a priori. Such aberrations as the “Students of Objectivism for Rational Bestiality” are not far from the bizarreries of many neo-Randian philosophies, preaching to a handful of zealous partisans. On the other hand, there is another understandable but unfortunate reaction. After many years of subjection to Randian dictates in the name of “reason,” there is a tendency among some ex-cultists to bend the stick the other way, to reject reason or thinking altogether in the name of hedonistic sensation and caprice.
We conclude our analysis of the Rand cult with the observation that here was an extreme example of contradiction between the exoteric and the esoteric creed. That in the name of individuality, reason, and liberty, the Rand cult in effect preached something totally different. The Rand cult was concerned not with every man’s individuality, but only with Rand’s individuality, not with everyone’s right reason but only with Rand’s reason. The only individuality that flowered to the extent of blotting out all others, was Ayn Rand’s herself; everyone else was to become a cipher subject to Rand’s mind and will.
Nikolai Bukharin’s famous denunciation of the Stalin cult, masked during the Russia of the 1930’s as a critique of the Jesuit order, does not seem very overdrawn as a portrayal of the Randian reality:
It has been correctly said that there isn’t a meanness in the world which would not find for itself and ideological justification. The king of the Jesuits, Loyola, developed a theory of subordination, of “cadaver discipline,” every member of the order was supposed to obey his superior “like a corpse which could be turned in all directions, like a stick which follows every movement, like a ball of wax which could be changed and extended in all directions”… This corpse is characterized by three degrees of perfection: subordination by action, subordination of the will, subordination of the intellect. When the last degree is reached, when the man substitutes naked subordination for intellect, renouncing all his convictions, then you have a hundred percent Jesuit.3
It has been remarked that a curious contradiction existed with the strategic perspective of the Randian movement. For, on the one hand, disciples were not allowed to read or talk to other persons who might be quite close to them as libertarians or Objectivists. Within the broad rationalist or libertarian movement, the Randians took a 100% pure, ultra-sectarian stance. And yet, in the larger political world, the Randian strategy shifted drastically, and Rand and her disciples were willing to endorse and work with politicians who might only be one millimeter more conservative than their opponents. In the larger world, concern with purity or principles seemed to be totally abandoned. Hence, Rand’s whole-hearted endorsement of Goldwater, Nixon, and Ford, and even of Senators Henry Jackson and Daniel P. Moynihan.
Neither Liberty Nor Reason
There seems to be only one way to resolve the contradiction in the Randian strategic outlook of extreme sectarianism within the libertarian movement, coupled with extreme opportunism, and willingness to coalesce with slightly more conservative heads of State, in the outside world. That resolution, confirmed by the remainder of our analysis of the cult, holds that the guiding spirit of the Randian movement was not individual liberty – as it seemed to many young members – but rather personal power for Ayn Rand and her leading disciples. For power within the movement could be secured by totalitarian isolation and control of the minds and lives of every member; but such tactics could scarcely work outside the movement, where power could only hopefully be achieved by cozying up the President and his inner circles of dominion.
Thus, power not liberty or reason, was the central thrust of the Randian movement. despite explicit devotion to reason and individuality, are not exempt from the mystical and totalitarian cultism that pervades other ideological as well as religious movements. Hopefully, libertarians, once bitten by the virus, may now prove immune.” The major lesson of the history of the movement to libertarians is that It Can Happen Here, that libertarians,
Of the several works on Randianism, only one has concentrated on the cult itself: Leslie Hanscom, “Born Eccentric,” Newsweek (March 27, 1961), pp. 104–05. Hanscom brilliantly and wittily captured the spirit of the Rand cult from attending and reporting on one of the Branden lectures. Thus, Hanscom wrote: After three hours of heroically rapt attention to Branden’s droning delivery, the fans were rewarded by the personal apparition of Miss Rand herself – a lady with drilling black eyes and Russian accent who often wears a brooch in the shape of a dollar sign as her private icon….
“Her books,” said one member of the congregation, “are so good that most people should not be allowed to read them. I used to want to lock up nine-tenths of the world in a cage, and after reading her books, I want to lock them all up.” Later on, this same chap – a self-employed “investment counselor” of 22 – got a lash of his idol’s logic full in the face. Submitting a question from the floor – a privilege open to paying students only – the budding Baruch revealed himself as a mere visitor. Miss Rand – a lady whose glare would wilt a cactus – bawled him out from the platform as a “cheap fraud.” Other seekers of wisdom came off better. One worried disciple was told that it was permissible to celebrate Christmas and Easter so long as one rejected the religious significance (the topic of the night’s lecture was the folly of faith). A housewife was assured that she needn’t feel guilty about being a housewife so long as she chose the job for non-emotionalAlthough mysticism is one of the nastiest words in her political arsenal, there hasn’t been a she-messiah since Aimee McPherson who can so hypnotize a live audience.”
At least as revelatory as Hanscom’s article were the predictable howls of overkill outrage by the cult members. Thus, two weeks later, under the caption “Thugs and Hoodlums?”, Newsweek printed excerpts from Randian letters sent in reaction to the article. One letter stated: “Your vicious, vile, and obscene tirade against Ayn Rand is a new low, even for you. To have sanctioned such a stream of abusive invective…is an act of unprecedented moral depravity. A magazine staffed with irresponsible hoodlums has no place in my home.” Another man wrote that “one who has read the works of Miss Rand and proceeds to write an article of this caliber can only be motivated by villainy. It is the work of a literary thug.” Another warned, “Since you propose to behave like cockroaches, be prepared to be treated as such.” And finally, one Bonnie Benov revealed the inner axiom: “Ayn Rand is…the greatest individual that has ever lived.” Having fun with the cult, Newsweek printed a particularly unprepossessing picture of Rand underneath the Benov letter, and captioned it: “Greatest Ever?”5
My Comment:
I was repelled when I first read “The Fountainhead” when I was about twenty. To tell the truth, I didn’t really read it. I read about 20 pages and then got someone else to tell me about it.
That was natural, I think. I was reading a lot of Catholic philosophy and was surrounded by socialists. In India, that book and the kind of people who read it were people who lived in a different world from mine.
My friends and I tended to laugh at them, as well as at the crowd we called “JNU Marxists” (upper class and upper middle-class Indian students who affected Marxism and usually attended the Marxist dominated university, Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi). These Randian contemporaries of mine, like the JNU Marxists, were usually affluent and enamored of the West, which they saw through the eyes of Western counter-culture.
It was only 15 years later, when I reread Ayn Rand, that I came to appreciate what had first seemed repellent to me.
I thought about this when I was reading Shikha Dalmia’s recent commentary about Rand at Forbes. She writes that a love of Rand is a sign of adolescence and is something you leave behind when you become an adult with adult responsibilities. Dalmia’s criticism is a common one, but for me it’s unconvincing, because in my case, I came to admire Ayn Rand relatively late in life.
As for Rothbard, as always, he presents many useful insights, but he was perhaps temperamentally unsuited to understand a woman of Rand’s nature. There’s a whiff of male chauvinism here. Despite all her pretentiousness (and the pretentiousness of her acolytes), despite the flaws in her thinking and in her character, to reduce her to a power-hungry, narcissistic “wicked witch of Capitalism” is just mistaken.
Whatever warping of her personality took place, we have to remember when and where she grew up. She had to struggle mightily simply to maintain her vision of individualism intact, floating in a sea of collectivism and political ideology in the middle of the twentieth century. That, more than pathology, probably accounts for those ideological and personal alignments she made that seem opportunistic to us today….
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
Call this what you will but it’s not narcissism…and it is very very far from selfishness.
As for what is is that sends people screaming to the exits when they hear her name:
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.”
Let me put this as bluntly as possible. A state cannot be “compassionate.” Policies might have well-intentioned goals, but they are policies - that is, legal and administrative enactments, often backed by force, that must be followed by whoever falls under their jurisdiction, regardless of their state of mind.
On the other hand, compassion is a quality of heart and intention. An involuntary A non-voluntary action consequent to a policy cannot be compassionate. Obedience to a legal requirement cannot be compassionate. Compassion can be understood only by the context and the state of mind of an individual.
Libertarianism is not..should not be…and cannot be… compassionate.
Instead, it is the attitude to government policy and law that best allows human beings to act with the compassion each is capable of. To force “compassion” on people who don’t want to be “compassionate” is simply force, just as surely as if you were forcing anything else on them that they didn’t want. What looks like “compassion” to you might, after all, look like “expropriation” to me.
“Compassionate” policies might indeed achieve some immediate goal that makes some group of people more satisfied than they previously were. But it surely makes another group unhappy in order to do so. Now, the trade off might..or might not…be worth it. But the entity making that utilitarian calculation isn’t an individual, it’s at best a committee of hacks, at worst, a mafia of thugs….or worst of all, some economic model cooked up in a Harvard professor’s study.
By transferring “compassion” to the state, “compassionate conservatism” encourages people to become less compassionate personally. People actually become meaner. Why wouldn’t they? They’re already being taxed at a third to half their money, effectively. Even the good lord only asked for ten percent.
More on the subject by Robert Ringer, The Tea Party Goes Docile:
(Note: I don’t necessarily agree with Robert Ringer’s other views on defense. I don’t see a necessity for the US to be on a perma-war footing that involves aggressive wars overseas and an extensive network of bases. As a libertarian, I endorse a strong defense but one that’s decentralized and limited to volunteers, not mercenaries. It would be based on universal ownership of and training in firearms and would refrain from interfering in foreign internal affairs. This would go along with a decentralized government, supported by state and citizen militias. Most of all, I endorse economic freedom and prosperity as our greatest defense. The more attractive the US is as a trade partner, the less foreign states are going to hurt their own economic interests by turning hostile.
Far from strengthening the country, anti-market economic policies and a perpetually intrusive foreign policy are draining money, time, and energy from it.
(Nonetheless, I don’t think we can disarm unilaterally “at one fell swoop,” without opening up a can of worms, now that the government has actually created multiple foreign threats by its belligerence).
“I repeat what I said earlier: If anything, I believe the tea-party rally on tax day was far too docile. It once again demonstrated just how intimidating the far left can be. Not only intimidating, but clever.
How so? The BHO oligarchy has managed to change the Big Question from ”Is Obama a socialist?” to ”Is the tea-party movement dangerously immersed in racism, hate speech, and violence-prone affiliations with paramilitary groups?” Never sell the Saul Alinsky crowd short when it comes to turning every negative around and pointing it in the direction of its accusers.
I honestly believe that Der Fuhrbama believes his verbal skills are so powerful that he can embarrass the tea-party people into submission. He may be a lightweight in most respects, but he’s a lightweight with an abundance of (over)confidence. The tea-party people had better take a page from Rules from Radicals and press down twice as hard on the accelerator, lest they lose their momentum long before November 2.
Docile simply doesn’t cut it. Just ask the compassionate conservatives who are now in the process of going down in flames.”
Update:
“President Clinton weighed in that “legitimate” comparisons can be drawn between today’s grass-roots anger and resentment toward the government and the right-wing extremism 15 years ago.”
Actually, I think the Clinton statement was a pretty fair one, all in all. It didn’t equate “right-wing extremism” with tea-party goers and anti-government activists (as the SPLC did) and it did give room for people to voice their opinions, without having to “be nice.” It cautioned, correctly, that people should stop short of advocating violence.
Any discussion of the Confederacy, said the ex-Prez, should always include a mention of slavery, which doesn’t sound like an onerous requirement to me. So too any discussion of “Islamicism” should also include a complete list of US interventions in the said Islamicist state, right?
In short, more balance and less polemics. I hope I’ve always tried to do that on this blog.
The only thing is, can we hope the government will live up to this standard and stop short of advocating violence, say, in Iran, or in Michigan…or anywhere else?
ORIGINAL POST
Thanks to David Kramer at LRC blog, for this slimy listing by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of Ron Paul among the “enablers’ of the “Patriot” movement, which, if you didn’t know by now is code to our dear leaders and their cohorts for “Nazi right-wing (definitely Christian) loons-who-share-milk-shakes-’n-training-manuals- with- OsamaJohnPatrickBedellDavidKoreshRandyWeaver-bin Laden” :
1. Michele Bachmann 2. Glenn Beck 3. Paul Broun 4. Andrew Napolitano 5. Ron Paul
On the page following, you can see what a smear this is. There’s a list of incidents making up a “Patriot” timeline (love those quotation marks) that starts with President Bush’s “New World Order” remark. (He said it, didn’t he?) and is dotted with references to anti-Semitism, white supremacy and violent acts.
Note that when “cultists” or militia members are murdered, the word used is “killed” or “left dead.” When a federal agent is killed, the term is “murdered.”
From Lew Rockwell exciting news from Brazil…and also from Sweden:
“The young Brazilian financial and ideological entrepreneur, Helio Beltrão, has done something great for the Austro-libertarian movement and the cause of liberty, for his country and the whole world: establish the Instituto Ludwig von Mises Brasil, and make it flourish. The website is already significant, and this month, MisesBrasil sponsored the first Austrian Economics conference in the country’s history.
his is an all day extravaganza, starting at 8:30 am, with opening remarks from seminar host, Jayant Bhandari, and featuring:
9 to 11am: Character & a Free Society” by Lawrence W. Reed, President, Foundation for Economic Education, USA. As a journalist, Lawrence visited 69 countries; spent time with Contra rebels in Nicaragua; lived with Mozambique rebel forces; travelled with freedom activists in Poland
11 to 11:15am: Coffee
11:15 to 1:15pm: “Defending the Undefendable” by Walter Block, Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Chair in Economics and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and Senior Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute,
1:15 to 2:15pm: Lunch
“How Capitalism Tames The Vices,” Lila Rajiva, author of “The Language of Empire,” (MR Press, 2005) and “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets,” (with W R Bonner, Wiley, 2007).
(Lila: My invitation was withdrawn by the seminar hosts from fear that Canadian authorities/other seminar participants might object to opinions I’ve expressed on Israel-Palestine on my blog (I don’t believe they would have). My apologies to any readers who signed up anticipating my speaking there, but now you’ll get more time with Walter Block, Paul Geddes, and Larry Reed. Have fun!)
4 to 4:15pm: Coffee
4:15 to 4:45pm: Closing remarks by Paul Geddes, Vice-President, West Coast Libertarian Foundation, Canada
Event Rooms 1300-1500, Segal Graduate School of Business 500 Granville Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 1W6
Cost, $80, $40 for students. (Includes lunch.)
“I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is.”
From CNN, via Lew Rockwell, the latest Federal incentives for snitching and snooping on your fellow citizen:
“In 2006, the IRS really started cracking down on big time cheaters and introduced a new whistle-blower program, in which informants are paid a minimum of 15% and a maximum of 30% of the amount owed.
But there’s a catch: In order to collect a reward, the taxes, penalties and interest in dispute must add up to at least $2 million. And if the suspected tax evader is an individual, his or her annual gross income must exceed $200,000.
So far, the new incentives have been effective. The IRS has received tips from about 476 informants identifying 1,246 taxpayers in fiscal year 2008, the first full year the program was implemented………
Who snitches?: In this program, the most common informants tend to be dissatisfied middle-ranking employees in big companies, said Tim Gagnon, an academic specialist of accounting at Northeastern University……..
Stephen Whitlock, director of the IRS Whistleblower Office, said that informants have had some connection to the taxpayer but they are not always close acquaintances. They have typically been employees, investors or business associates.
He also said many claims are for substantially more than the $2 million threshold and involve businesses or very wealthy individuals.”
My Comment:
In other words, what you have is the IRS incentivizing class-warfare. By dangling a chunk of cash in front of their noses, the government encourages employees to act against their own economic interest on the basis of a non-existent public good.
Non-existent?
Well, yes. Since the government is using its tax revenues mostly to pay off its own friends, to fatten the banks and financiers, loot the tax-payer, murder foreign nationals, and generally mismanage the country, the public interest (in so far as we can ascertain one) may well be better served by not paying taxes.
Tax cheats, while clearly not heroes from a moral standpoint, are also not the villains they’re often made out to be.
The villains are those who constantly demand higher and higher taxes and destroy the productive capacity of this country in pursuit of hubristic and vain schemes that have done nothing but turned a nation built on free enterprise into one enslaved by political patronage…
Tax snitches, as I said, don’t even serve their own economic self-interest. Sure, they get their one-off reward for snitching. But they’ve effectively ended any chance of their being hired by anyone…unless they manage to evade detection.
Any taxes an employer pays to the government must inevitably be passed on to employees and customers. That’s as ineluctable an economic law as any.
Ergo, pay taxes and the Feds get the money….don’t pay and the economy, the customer, or employees eventually get it.
An employee who plumps for snitching is obviously not only treacherous and disloyal as a human being, he’s also an economic fat-head.
Jayant Bhandari in Liberty Unbound:
“Now, as I travel through India’s smaller towns and villages, I gather many impressions, both of change and of continuity.
I stay in rooms that cost me $2 a day, and purchase all-you-can-eat food for 50 cents. I pay my driver the princely sum of $7 a day. To Westerners, these prices will appear astonishingly low, but inflation of food prices in India is close to 20%. Food is very expensive for regular folks, and speculators are being blamed. I am constantly amazed that there is never any mention of the fact that the Indian government still runs one of the most efficient printing presses in the world — printing money, of course. The only thing that limits inflation is the high rate of real economic growth. Yet the Indian government is getting extremely addicted to increasing expenditures. The government’s fiscal deficit is about 12% of GDP. To me this is like addiction to heroin. What will happen if the growth rate falters?
In an isolated place, a woman sells me a 15-kilogram bag of fruit for a total of 60 cents — fruit worth about $15 in Bhopal. Her companions think she’s won a lottery. These wretched women chase me and beg me to buy some from them. I feel sorry for the little girl who had tears in her eyes. Yet I am repelled by the fact that so many Indians easily grovel and beg. The worst is when well-off people do this. A visit to a government office in India is essential if you want to understand the degradation that the Indian public accepts even today.
I meet the top management of a company constructing a major highway. The highway was deemed uneconomical, so the government and the company agreed that they would use eminent domain to confiscate a lot more land than was necessary from the farmers, at 5% of the market value. The extra land would be converted into condos or commercial space. The poor people would subsidize development. Why should they subsidize the development of the country? This is socialism in practice, although the farmers are branded communists when they rebel. Meanwhile people in the West believe there is something romantic about poverty — a view that is not only hypocritical but pathetically wrong..…”
“If the guy is such a sure loser in 2012, why all the attacks? In his quiet way, Paul must have tapped into something. And you can get an idea of that something from what Pat Buchanan wrote the other day about the CPAC poll.
After asking “how do conservatives justify borrowing hundreds of billions yearly from Europe, Japan and the Gulf states — to defend Europe, Japan and the Arab Gulf states?” Buchanan answered his own question by making the case that such policies are not conservative at all.
“Ron Paul’s victory at CPAC may be a sign the prodigal sons of the right are casting off the heresy of neoconservatism and coming home to first principles,” Buchanan concluded.
Buchanan has put his finger on why the unemotional Texas congressman produces such an emotional reaction. The party establishment has to dread the prospect of a candidate who can unite the youthful libertarian conservatives with the Buchananite America-first types. Such a character might win a plurality running against Romney, Huckabee and neocon Barbie doll Sarah Palin.
And Paul might have the most money of them all, thanks to the support of those young voters who actually understand how the internet works. I suspect this is what all the shouting is about, even though the subject of it all never raises his voice.”
Paul Mulshine, NJ Star Ledger, via Lew Rockwell.
Argentine singer Haydee Mercedes Sosa (July 9, 1935 – October 4, 2009) was dubbed “the voice of the voiceless ones” for her socially conscious music. She became popular through out Latin America as a leading exponent of nueva cancion , a type of song that combined Latin American folk music, rock rhythms, and highly politicized lyrics, and was often associated with left-wing politics. Many nuevo cancion artists went into exile in the 1970s and 1980s, when right wing military dictatorships came to power in their countries. Sosa herself went into exile in Spain.
Solo le pido a Dios
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el dolor no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to pain
Que la reseca muerte no me encuentre
May death never find me indifferent
Vacio y solo sin haber echo lo suficiente
Empty and alone without having done enough
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que lo injusto no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to injustice
Que no me abofeteen la otra mejia
So I don’t turn the other cheek
Despues que una garra me arane esta frente
When a claw has already scratched my face
Chorus:
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que la guerra no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to war
Es un monstro grande y pisa fuerte
It is the great monster that tramples
Toda la pobre inocencia de la gente
The poor innocence of the people
Es un monstro grande y pisa fuerte
Toda la pobre inocencia de la gente
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el engano no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to deceit
Si un traidor puede mas que unos quantos
If one traitor is stronger than the rest of us
Que esos quantos no lo olviden facilmente
May the rest of us not forget too easily
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el futuro no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to the future
Deshauciado esta el que tiene que marchar
Helpless are those who are forced to leave
A vivir una cultura diferente
And live in a foreign land..
P. J. O’Rourke via Samizdata:
“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. His nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.”
Frank Chodorov, on the seduction of power, from Mises.org
“For, it is said that while Saul of Tarsus was carrying out his duties as Commissar of Truth, the Messiah he had been denying appeared before him and convinced him of his error. So, after a bit of soul searching, he quit his job and thereafter dedicated himself to the task of preaching the very doctrine he had been denouncing. And because he was now the persecuted rather than the persecutor, he was effective; everywhere he went he found willing listeners, even in Rome itself. More important than their numbers was the conviction of his converts that in the eyes of God the lowliest in society was equal unto Caesar. The psalm of freedom — of the dignity of the individual — reawakened their souls. Neither the lash nor the dungeon vile nor the wild beasts in the arena could rob them of their self-esteem. By their very suffering and death they transmitted their faith to others, the sect grew, and at long last Caesar capitulated.
From the story of Saul, who came to be known as Paul, we draw the lesson: that when people want freedom they will get it. When the desire of the business man for “free enterprise” is so strong that he will risk bankruptcy for it, he cannot be denied. When youth prefers prison to the barracks, when a job in the bureaucracy is considered leprous, when the tax collector is stamped a legalized thief, when handouts from the politician are contemptuously rejected, when work on a government project is considered degrading, when, in short, the state is recognized to be the enemy of society, then only will freedom come, and the citadel of power collapse.”
Mad props to Humble Libertarian for coming up with this:
“Libertarian thought often starts with “me” and says to others “you shouldn’t violate my rights,” which is certainly true, but somewhat off-putting because it’s egocentric. Aside from being off-putting, it’s the moral low-ground. It’s moral and true, but it pushes the moral imperatives of libertarian thought off on someone else. The moral high-ground is to accept and practice the moral imperative for yourself. Libertarians would always do better to say, “I shouldn’t violate your rights- I won’t violate your rights.” In practice this makes a world of difference. On the issue of welfare and property redistribution, for example, the first approach would sound like this: “Who are you to take my hard-earned money and give it away to the poor? Even if I should give it to them, you have no right to confiscate my property from me.” The second approach is a sharp contrast to the first in both tone and content: “Who am I to take your hard-earned money and give it away to the poor when I’m likely not even giving enough myself? Even if you should give it to them, I have no right to force you to, especially when I’m not giving enough myself. How hypocritical of me would that be?” See how much more humble that is and sounds?
The first example is a challange. Its tone is antagonistic and its premise is egocentric. The second example is an invitation and a catalyst for conversation. Its tone is humble and its premise is philanthropic- motivated by love and concern for other human beings and their rights. The distinction here can ultimately boil down to these alternatives, egocentric libertarianism on the one hand, and philanthropic libertarianism on the other.“
John Mauldin in Frontline Thoughts on one off balance sheet vehicle that might get us out of this crisis faster than we think: psychic income, our dreams for our future…
“Every night we go to sleep on our psychic income, and every day we get up and try to figure out how to turn it into real income……The future is never easy for all but a few of us, at least not for long. But we figure it out. And that is why in 20 years we will be better off than we are today. Each of us, all over the world, by working out our own visions of psychic income, will make the real world a better place.”
My Comment:
In response to RobertinDC, my loyal reader, who politely calls this a “crock,” I should add the context of Mauldin´s note, which is technological change.
Mauldin argues that even if the market stays flat or depressed in real terms, even if unemployment increases and the standard of living falls, none of us can know for sure what the future holds. In ten years time, the world may very well be a better place.. in terms of possibilities… than it is today because of technological innovation.
Is this implausibly “feel good” stuff?
Well, yes.
Of course.
It takes no great courage or imagination to imagine plausible scenarios.
Imagination is the ability…the very creative and fundamentally life-giving ability..to imagine implausible..even unbelievable scenarios and then make them not only plausible but inevitable.
And, again in a fundamental sense, that is how creativity in all fields works. Focusing solely on the negative is itself a form of delusion.
I don´t mean by this that you can wish yourself into any outcome you want. There are also physical laws at work that you have to accept. You cannot wish away a contraction of the economy because of overspending, for instance. The economy has to correct.
But the effects of the contraction, the extent, and its resolution can in fact be ameliorated by a change in attitude.
And by staying alert to every possibilty, we can also sense when deterministic interpretations - such as, “this is the way capitalism is“ — are being used to cover up what is in truth a very manipulated reality.
In that case, what we should focus on is an imagined ideal, the way capitalism should be, which may be implausible or even a crock, in some views, but is our only true guide to a way out of this debacle.
This is why I wrote, in 2007, that the economy didn´t have to crash. It was in a PR piece for the book.This wasn´t because I lacked a healthy sense of reality. But reality in the sense that physicists understand it is a very different thing from the “common sense” understanding of reality. The physicists´view is actually closer to what might be called implausible or even unbelievable. But it´s none theless true. The same divergence between common sense perception and underying reality exists in the economy. Cynicism is often right. But not always. Pessimism is often warranted. But not always.
There were fundamental problems in the economy in 2006-2007, but the way the crash occured struck me then as very strange.
I suspected at the time that some of the indices were manipulated…and now the deepcapture team (and others like Pam Martens) have shown how they could have been (see prior posts).
In time, you are going to find that this is true of many of the indicators we use to read the mood of the investing public. Markets are driven by emotions. And smart crooks with the ability to manipulate that emotion can make big money from the manipulation….
And if they can, it stands to reason they will.
What is surprising is only why it took so long for supposedly tough minded financial reporters to figure that out.
In any case, whether manipulation is proved or not, what ordinary people can do is to take for their model the good trader. Good traders are people who can “keep their heads when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”..as Kipling said.
The hall mark of expert trading is to control the emotions and rein them in from succumbing to mass moods. What does that mean in practical terms?
It means when everyone is panicking, look for silver linings, and when everyone is complacent, learn to worry…
I posted this at Lew Rockwell last week:
“There are two ways to approach the world.
In one, the popular one now, you try to control the bad actors. You create laws to trip them up before hand, or round them up after. You rely on regulations and regulators.
Nothing wrong with that, except that we already have lots of regulators and it didn’t help.
Why?
The reason is so obvious you question the intelligence of anyone who can’t see it. It’s simple. People willing and able to scam the system are going to be willing and able to game the regulations too.
In a fight between regulators and scammers, my money’s on the scammers. They’re usually richer and nastier.
In the second approach, you don’t overlook the bad actors. You hope they get what they have coming to them. But you don’t rely on laws or lawyers because you’re old enough to have figured out that bit about the bad actors being bigger and nastier than the good ones.
So what do you do?
You focus on getting out of the way of the bad guys. You limit the damage they can do to you. And most of all, you figure out how to avoid them in the first place.
Here are five warnings I wish I’d heeded more:
1. Be careful whom you deal with
Don’t lie down with a dog and you won’t get up with fleas. Delousing yourself is much harder than not getting loused up in the first place.
But delousing is what we do a lot of these days. It’s practically the only thing going on in the economy now. Right now there are people all over the country delousing the SEC.. and the Congress… and the banks…and the hedge-funds. There’s even a global delousing effort going on. The fumigators are at work. Pest control is in full force and the exterminators are crawling over the baseboards in the cellar. There’s an international delousing effort at the BIS, with headquarters at Switzerland and local shops all over the world.
A Bug Czar has been crowned and fleas have been declared insecta non grata.
There - that should do it, eh? Any bug with a classical education should figure it out.
Which is another way of saying none of this will work. Or if it works, it won’t work the way you want it to.
The fact is, lice and ticks are at home on a dog. It’s R & R for them. Holiday Inn, Bed & Breakfast, and a luxury spa combined. Get them to leave? Good luck. Much better, don’t take your dog to bed in the first place. Much better, if you have a dog, let him drool in the kennel, not on your pillow.
The short version of all that is we do jack-ass things and then wonder who’s braying.
I say jack-ass with no disrespect. Some say that those who get conned “deserve what they get.”
That is the New Testament of the confidence man and the Sunday sermon of the predator.
As financial doctrine, it occasionally makes sense. As moral insight, it’s almost always junk. Very often victims are only weak, naive, or ignorant. The kind of people who wouldn’t know malice if they saw it in the dollar-bin with a white tag tied to its toe. They’re people who follow the rules, thinking other people follow them too. They’re honorable, so they believe in the honor of their fellow man.
Now, not only is being honorable not wrong, it’s the way things should be. But doves should learn not to coo at snakes, and beautiful souls have to wise up to what goes on in the rest of the world… or expect an ugly life.
So, rule number one. Research the people you plan to make your associates. And don’t dismiss your research. When you find out your prospective partner filed for bankruptcy six times in the last ten years, don’t tell yourself it will be different this time, because it won’t. One bankruptcy is a financial failure. Three is a losing streak. Six is a career decision. Follow your gut instinct.
If your boss conducts business with a wink and a leer, don’t pass it off as southern charm. He’s not Dagwood Bumstead looking for a lump of emotional candy. He’s a creep, and you’re a pawn in his narcissistic chess game. Ask for a transfer about two minutes after that. If you’re out of a job, so be it. There’s no guarantee you won’t be out of one, if you put up with it.
2. Never stop learning
Ignorance kills, as a lawyer friend of mine likes to say. Don’t be ignorant. Learn as much as you can about as many things as you can. Do your research. Know what you’re dealing with. With the internet, it’s much easier. You can do a google search on anything or anyone. You can go into google news archives and find newspaper articles and information from as far back as the 1980s.
So start reading.
Project Gutenberg has thousands of classic books online. PubMed allows you to access medical journals. LexisNexis will allow you to research law. Edgar will show you company filings. You can search houses for sale on Realtor.com and look up where a house is on Google Earth. You can go to WhoIs to find out about domain names and IP address. You can find out how well a website is doing by looking up Technorati or Alexa rankings. The Way Back Machine lets you look up old magazine articles, even when they’ve been pulled off the current site. Some sites like Zabasearch collect people’s information and put it all in one spot. That’s free information. If you pay, you can get much more.
Mind you, I find data sites downright creepy, especially when they’re online, and especially when they’re centralized and can be accessed with a key-stroke. If people have paid for their sins, why not let them start fresh? There may be a recording angel, but surely he lives farther north than DC.
On the other hand, just because the technology is already out there, it pays to keep up with what’s being done with it. Because if it’s out there, your business partner… or your employer… or your enemies ….or your friends.. probably know about it already. They might even have mined it for information to deploy against you. Shouldn’t you be prepared?
3. Limit what people know about you. Many of us from small towns grew up around trustworthy people. Our friends and our neighbors knew everything about us, and we didn’t mind, because no one was malicious enough to hurt anyone else.
The big world isn’t so nice. People who have things to hide themselves will be only too anxious to find something on you, attack being the best form of defense in their minds. If they can’t find anything wrong, they’ll hit you with whatever else they can, even a silly thing you said casually. They’ll dig out what your crazy cousin did fifteen years ago. Or perhaps you saved your husband’s latest rant about his mother online. Don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to find it in the New Yorker.
So, keep things to yourself, even among close friends and relatives.
That’s a hard one for me. I’m a verbal person. I write, I talk, even if it’s only to myself. Leave me next to a blank wall and I’ll strike up a conversation. And it will be two-way.
Fortunately, most people are unlikely to hurt you. But occasionally you’ll run into a psychopath who will. And if you work in politics, the media, or in business, psychopathy is practically the norm.
So keep track of what’s being written about you on the net with Google alerts. Write to sites that aggregate information and ask for your name to be removed from their lists. You might have to repeat that every year . Put yourself on the national do-not-call list so that your telephone number’s out of the reach of marketers.
And then limit the information you give out, even to your lawyer.
It’s taken me half a lifetime to figure out that any questionnaire shoved under my nose doesn’t automatically deserve to be filled in. Leave things blank unless you’re told it’s mandatory to fill it in. Or become creative. Develop fictitious personalities, throw-away mail addresses, exotic, non-existent addresses. Use another name when doing business. Avoid registering products or filling out questionaires in your own name. Use fake birth-dates and vary them according to a system that you, and only you, know. Change your passwords every few weeks, using a system to keep track. Write them down broken up in alternate pages in a notebook, without anything to signify what the numbers mean. If the book is lost, no one will be able to make use of the information. Neither will you, of course, but losing a little time is better than losing your savings.
Hacking email, spying on private business, blackmailing and outing people, it’s all fair game these days. Attacking the privacy of public figures has become a national pastime - witness the Letterman case. But it’s not just public life. Private business is a circus of outing and shaming too. Corporations spy on and threaten each other, as well as their employees. Employees write tell-all books.
We live in a spy state, where every half-wit believes it’s his divine right to nose into anything, no matter how little it’s his business. So, these days not only is it wise to keep your own secrets, you might be wise to keep other people’s secrets.
But what should you do if inspite of that, you become a target of an attack on your privacy?
Often, nothing, unfortunately.
I’ll give you the example of an aunt of mine who didn’t want anyone to know she was sick, in case it would prejudice employers against hiring her. A colleague not only hacked her email but forwarded details about her illness to dozens of people. A frail, sensitive woman, her health broke down under the stress.
I’ll give you the advice I gave her. Say your piece once in private, and say it once in public. Then forget about it. Move on. You’re not the first person to have been screwed over and you won’t be the last. Innocent people are constantly being ruined by the powerful and the unscrupulous. That’s the ugly truth of our system. Reputations are often lost, unjustly. Our salvation is to worry less about our reputations and more about our consciences.
What we do where no one can see and none can retaliate is the test of who we are.
As for what others think, the world is a large place. Move far away, if you need to. As for the system, stop trying to reform it. It’s beyond reform.
4. Learn to say no
Telling someone no doesn’t come naturally. We’re trained to go through life being agreeable. In fact, learning to say no might be the hardest thing you learn. But it might also be the most important, and once you learn it, it can become good sport.
Speaking for myself, I’ve come to relish saying no to pests. And the nay-saying that gives me the greatest pleasure of all is nay-saying to internet marketers. It’s not that I’m ever rude to one. I never hang up. My malice is much deeper. I let them prattle on, even asking polite questions. Then I stop them courteously and ask them why they think they have the right to call me on a weekend and waste half-an-hour selling me something I didn’t ask for. Occasionally, when they’re especially pushy, my toying becomes cruel. I turn the tables on them. Instead of selling me things, they find themselves signing petitions or supporting causes or accepting market analysis or invitations to baby showers or anything else at hand.
Can I call you, I ask. Tonight? Tomorrow? I press them to reply. Can you buy two? Now? Pretty soon, they’re begging to hang up.
Try it and see. It’s balm in gilead.
I advise you to use this technique on rude or uncooperative colleagues too. Give them a taste of their own medicine, and do it generously. Let their cup run over. You will get something better than love. You’ll get respect.
5. Learn how to retaliate
Despite all the myths propagated about forgiveness, I’ve learned that submitting meekly to injustice usually breeds weakness, resentment, and ill- health. There’s nothing that drives up your self-respect as much as socking it back to bullies. I’m not advising being unduly aggressive. Try a friendly approach as long as you can. But when that doesn’t work, time to get tough. Throw some metaphoric crockery. Thumb your nose and thumb it publicly. Turn on the spotlight and watch the cockroaches run.
In other cases, all you may need to do is wait. Time has a knack of delivering even the biggest fish to a patient angler…and when that moment comes, don’t flinch. Yank that line and watch your target flop and wriggle on the sand.
Watch with a smile. Defy the received wisdom and develop a healthy conscience about revenge. It’s highly moral. Only our wimpy but violent age derides its feline nobility.
The uncomfortable truth is the New Testament is meant for people on the same moral level of development….for family.. and for friends. But in the big, dirty world, the Old Testament works much better.
Gandhi said an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind. I say an eye for an eye, and after the first blind man, everyone else’s eyesight gets better in a hurry.
Become a moral vigilante. Why waste time going through the system if you can get better results outside of it? Use the law to warn, to shame, to threaten. But don’t labor under the delusion that a court case always helps. Your enemy will pour his time and money into creating mushroom clouds of paper. He’ll drown you in verbiage and “accidentally-on-purposes.” He’ll postpone and prevaricate and petition. He’ll appeal and block and delay…. and hide behind a fog of corporate black ink like an injured squid.
Instead, if you’re obliged by professional ethics to speak up, consider other channels of actions besides the court. Try mediation or arbitration. Perhaps you’re better off complaining to the Better Business Bureau. Or posting on a consumer forum.
Monetary compensation is often not the best justice either. It can make you look like an extortionist. Try going public. Give the bully a taste of his own medicine. Post the hacker’s private information on a website. Put him on the run. That might not make you rich, but the moral satisfaction is tremendous.
Of course, it could also be dangerous. You risk violating the law yourself. In that case, you might be best off to leave your job. Maybe even leave town. Leave the thugs to the mercies of the universe. It sometimes does a better job of retribution than it’s given credit for. Villains do not always go to jail. And if the skeptics are right, they might never go to hell. But they often get dragged into divorce court, which is a good deal worse, from all accounts.
And meanwhile, there are all those other ways the wicked verily get their reward.
Envious rivals cut their throats; the tax man cometh, and the SEC with him; and then cometh old age, failing libido, dead-beat in-laws and brain-dead grandchildren. The inheritance get squandered and the sycophants and courtiers vanish with the money. The trash-mouth gets acid reflux, the glutton gets dyspepsia and the aging lecher ends up alone, romancing his own hairless skull and wrinkled hide.
Then at the end comes the greatest punishment of all for persisting in evil deeds. You stare into the mirror and evil stares back at you, looking not so much devilish as hollow and bewildered, less like a fiend from hell and more like a Goldman CEO at a Congressional hearing.
Hannah Arendt taught us about the banality of evil. It was left to our age to practice the evil of banality. Habit, laziness, gullibility, ignorance, vanity, greed, fear, cowardice, bravado. We are duped not by heroic evil, but by humdrum vice.
The greatest and best defense we have against the charlatans and knaves who brought our society to its knees is not the law.
It is self-knowledge and discipline.”
“The Science and Ethics of Cooperation,” by Michael Townsey, Prout Institute:
“The cooperative system is fundamental to the organization and structure of a Prout (the Progressive Utilization Theory) economy. It is an expression of economic democracy in action - cooperative enterprises give workers the right of capital ownership, collective management and all the associated benefits, such as profit sharing.[i] Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the propounder of Prout, goes further and argues that an egalitarian society is actually not possible without a commitment to the cooperative system.[ii] The commitment is not just to an economic order but also to a cooperative ethic and culture. This essay explores some of the scientific evidence that humans have a predisposition to cooperation and in particular to economic cooperation. The evidence comes from a new and exciting field of research known as neuro-economics. We then turn to those insights provided by sociological studies.
Neuro-economics
Neuro-economics is the study of the neuro-physiological underpinnings of economic decision making. The field is new and providing unexpected insights into human economic behavior. Classical economic theory requires individuals to make complex calculations to maximize their personal advantage or utility. Utility, however, is a strangely ambiguous concept. On the one hand it is given a numerical value which implies the counting of something but on the other it is entirely abstract and not anchored to anything in the real world that can be counted. The advent of neurophysiology led to the idea that utility was really a surrogate for some chemical currency inside the brain, with most interest focused on serotonin molecules because these are known to be responsible for the experience of pleasure.
It turns out that a wide range of molecules of emotion[iii] impinge on the mental cost-benefit calculations that are supposed to take place inside the brain and they have unexpected effects. For example, in a ’sharing experiment’, person A was asked to share a sum of money with person B. These experiments demonstrated behavior inconsistent with neoclassical theory. People appear to put a high value on fairness. In a follow up experiment, persons A and B were placed in the same experimental scenario as before, but they were (unknowingly) given an intranasal administration of oxytocin. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in animals and causes a substantial increase in trust in humans. In these experiments the effect of oxytocin was to increase the amount of money that A gives B. The experimenters concluded that “oxytocin may be part of the human physiology that motivates cooperation.”[iv] It is worth adding that such hormone-mediated interactions are not confined to human relationships but are also likely to be involved in human-animal relationships.[v]
Oxytocin is not the only neuro-chemical to promote cooperation. Recent observations of bonobo monkeys in the jungles of the Congo reveal fascinating contrasts with chimpanzees.[vi] Bonobos are matriarchal and show little aggression compared to the patriarchal chimps. Chimps respond to strangers with aggression, while bonobos demonstrate curiosity. When under stress, chimp tribes degenerate into fighting while bonobos respond to stress by engaging in collective sexual activity. Scientists have concluded that bonobos demonstrate higher levels of trust both with each other and with strangers. Of most interest, however, from a neuro-economics point of view, is the ability of the monkeys to perform a simple task requiring cooperation in retrieving some bananas that are out of reach. Although both species are intelligent enough to work out a solution (for example, by one climbing on the shoulders of the other or by one holding a ladder for the other), the chimps fail because they cannot trust one another. On the other hand, bonobos have no trouble cooperating to retrieve the bananas.[vii]“
“We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture.
We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that the higher state be forgotten.
There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint.”
—- Henry David Thoreau, “On Practicing Economy in Life”
Roderick Long at Austro-Athenian blog has a list of principles he thinks libertarians should emphasize in public interaction to define themselves as a clear-cut alternative to either conservatives or liberals:
1. Big business and big government are (for the most part) natural allies.
2. Although conservative politicians pretend to hate big government, and liberal politicians pretend to hate big business, most mainstream policies – both liberal and conservative – involve (slightly different versions of) massive intervention on behalf of the big-business/big-government elite at the expense of ordinary people.
3. Liberal politicians cloak their intervention on behalf of the strong in the rhetoric of intervention on behalf of the weak; conservative politicians cloak their intervention on behalf of the strong in the rhetoric of non-intervention and free markets – but in both cases the rhetoric is belied by the reality.
4. A genuine policy of intervention on behalf of the weak, if liberals actually tried it, wouldn’t work either, since the nature of government power would automatically warp it toward the interests of the elite.
5. A genuine policy of non-intervention and free markets, if conservatives actually tried it, would work, since free competition would empower ordinary people at the expense of the elite.
6. Since conservative policies, despite their associated free-market rhetoric, are mostly the diametrical opposite of free-market policies, the failures of conservative policies do not constitute an objection to (but rather, if anything, a vindication of) free-market policies.
From The Guardian:
“A poll run by PoliticsHome this week revealed a fascinating result to the question: “Do you think in general, the state has too much or too little of a say in what people can and cannot do?” Nearly four-fifths of the sample (79%) answered that the state had too much of a say, while only 8% believe the state has too little say.
If the poll is an accurate reflection of the nation’s mood this is an important finding. For some time I have been aware of sharp change in the public’s attitudes to surveillance, as well as a general feeling that the government is too quick to seize personal data and tell people how to lead their lives.”
Just to rile up market fundamentalists, here’s a sharp jab from a lefty blog at “going Galt” - the fantasy nurtured by some naive libertarians that were capitalists (theorized as financiers) to take a day off, society would collapse.
(The reference to Galt is a reference to Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” a book about which I have mixed feelings. Rand is a far more complex and interesting figure than either her defenders or her critics seem to realize..)
The quote below confuses genuine capitalists and the predator financiers currently in power, but it packs some punch:
“Have you heard of the documentary, “A Day Without A Mexican?” You know why it’s not called Atlas Shrugged? Because the people who made it aren’t utterly detached from reality. Because doing actual work gives one perspective. Because spending the day going from rooftop to rooftop in a helicopter to chew the fat with other geniuses could lead you to believe you’re the glue that holds the entire planet together. People who don’t have private islands have a more realistic idea of what they do to contribute to society.
You know why the uber-wealthy don’t go on strike? Because they know there are millions of smart, hardworking people ready to take their places…..”
My Comment
What I’d like to know is why more people don’t vote with their pocket books against this predator class. For instance, I try to avoid using Microsoft Word because of my antipathy to Gates’ monopolistic practices.
The issue is not capitalism, ultimately. It’s monopoly and the absence of competition. In other words, it’s the absence of real free markets that’s the reason why “capitalism” is now synonymous with predation — and why rants like this are increasingly persuasive.
“The average age of the world’s greatest democratic nations has been 200 years. Each has been through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith. From faith to great courage. From courage to liberty. From liberty to abundance. From abundance to complacency. From complacency to selfishness. From selfishness to apathy. From apathy to dependency. And from dependency back again into bondage.”
– Alexander Tytler on the cycles of government
[Correction: I'm getting feedback that this quote exists in different versions and may not actually be from Tytler or may be attributed to him while being a pastiche from other individuals partly or wholely. No time to verify now, will be back later on this. My fault. I didn't think to google it, as I've seen it quoted so extensively].
My Comment
Tytler misses a link here. Apathy leads to cowardice and then cowardice to.
dependency. Courage is a primary spiritual virtue - it’s part of effort or action.
You don’t have anything without courage. In religious teaching the opposite of love is never posited as hate, but fear.
Fear is the source of practically every evil that comes upon us. Selfishness stems from fear. Greed stems from fear….
We have become sheep because of fear.
That’s why I’m interested in trauma in childhood. That’s where we first learn fear and learn to hold it in rigid patterns in our bodies and minds. [Thanks to Kevin Duffy for the quote from Tytler]
Update: In response to a comment, I thought I’d add this here:
Most cyclical theories are simplistic in their broad outlines, but they’re useful when you look at them from a meta-theoretical level
By metatheory I mean the overarching narrative in which they are placed - i.e., what does the schematization of the theory say about the way that particular person or age reads history…
There’s Vico - Age of God, Age of Heroes, Age of Men.
There’s the Greek republic-democracy-tyranny
There are the mahayugas and yugas (great ages) in the Hindu cycles (which are cosmic, not political)
Ravi Batra, who was the first economist to write extensively about a coming great depression (late 1980s), I believe, has a new book out which includes his cycles - he has an age of acquisitors followed by an age of intellectuals (I forget the exact name) and then a golden age..and I think it’s based on the varna (caste) system - which originally was not socially pernicious.
Correction: Robert Prechter predicted a coming great depression early on, as well. I’ll verify the dates….
An interesting exchange from The Libertarian Alliance’s website on libertarianism and scarcity, with Kevin Carson responding to Paul Marks’ critique of his work:
[Marks]
“Neither land nor capital are [sic] “artificially scarce” - they are just scarce (period). There are billions of people and only a certain amount of land and machinery? .[T]he idea that land and capital are only scarce [emphasis mine] compared to the billions of people on Earth because of either wicked governments or wicked employers (or both) is false.”
[Carson]
First, simply to get the second part of Mr Marks’ statement out of the way, I nowhere asserted that all scarcity of land and capital is artificial. I argued only that they were more scarce, as a result of state-enforced privilege, than they would otherwise be, and that returns on land and capital were therefore higher than their free market values. In any case, as Franz Oppenheimer observed, most of the scarcity of arable land comes not from natural appropriation, but from political appropriation. And the natural scarcity of capital, a good which is in elastic supply and which can be produced by applying human labor to the land, results entirely from the need for human labor for its creation; there is no fixed limit to the amount available.
But getting to his main point, that land and capital are not artificially scarce, I’m not sure Mr Marks is even aware of his sheer audacity. In making this assertion, he flies in the face of a remarkable amount of received libertarian wisdom, from eminences as great as Mises and Rothbard. As a contrarian myself, I take my hat off to him.
Still, I wonder if he ever made the effort to grasp the libertarian arguments, made by Rothbard et al, that he so blithely dismisses. Is he even aware of the logical difficulties entailed in repudiating them? Does he deny that state enforcement of titles to land that is both vacant and unimproved reduces the amount available for homesteading? Does he deny that the reduced availability of something relative to demand is the very definition of “scarcity,” or that the reduction of supply relative to demand leads to increased price? Or is his argument rather with Rothbard’s moral premises themselves, rather than the logical process by which he makes deductions from them? I.e., does he deny that property in unimproved and vacant land is an invalid grant of privilege by the state, and thereby repudiate Locke’s principle of just acquisition?
It seems unlikely, on the face of things, that Mr Marks would expressly repudiate Mises and Rothbard on these points. After all, elsewhere in his critique he cites Human Action and Man, Economy and State as authorities. Perhaps he just blanked out on the portions of their work that weren’t useful for his apologetic purposes.
In any case, if he does not repudiate either Rothbard’s premises or his reasoning, Mr Marks has dug himself into a deep hole. For by Rothbard’s Lockean premises, not only the state’s own property in land, but “private” titles to vacant and unimproved land, are illegitimate. Likewise, titles derived from state grants are illegitimate when they enable the spurious “owner” to collect rent from the rightful owner - the person who first mixed his labor with the land, his heirs and assigns. And the artificial scarcity of land resulting from such illegitimate property titles raises the marginal price of land relative to that of labor, and forces labor to pay an artificially high share of its wages for the rent or purchase of land….”
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