From his CounterPunch article (Me in italics. - Scott)
Here’s my shot at the language for this argument.
Capitalism is admittedly an incredibly productive system that has created a flood of goods unlike anything the world has ever seen. It also is a system that is fundamentally (1) inhuman, (2) anti-democratic, and (3) unsustainable. Capitalism has given those of us in the First World lots of stuff (most of it of marginal or questionable value) in exchange for our souls, our hope for progressive politics, and the possibility of a decent future for children.
In short, either we change or we die — spiritually, politically, literally.
Boy, oh boy.
1. Capitalism is inhuman
There is a theory behind contemporary capitalism. We’re told that because we are greedy, self-interested animals, an economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior if we are to thrive economically.
Already to be interested in taking care of oneself first is "greed." But otherwise that’s about right: People are individuals and in the course of living, the choices they make - when unimpeded or subsidized by socialists - create and have created the highest standard of living in the history of the solar system.
Are we greedy and self-interested? Of course. At least I am, sometimes.
Even you?
But we also just as obviously are capable of compassion and selflessness. We certainly can act competitively and aggressively, but we also have the capacity for solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging.
So caring means to abandon individual rights in favor of state power? I am to understand that free-marketeers do not believe it within human nature to care for people?
Our actions are certainly rooted in our nature, but all we really know about that nature is that it is widely variable. In situations where compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior.
Next comes "agricultural armies."
Why is it that we must choose an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and strengthens the most inhuman? Because, we’re told, that’s just the way people are. What evidence is there of that? Look around, we’re told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed and the pursuit of self-interest. So, the proof that these greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that way. Doesn’t that seem just a bit circular?
Once the dictatorship of the Proletariat takes over and makes everything fair, people will stop thinking of themselves and become New Communist Men who work only for the love and justice of getting nothing for something.
2. Capitalism is anti-democratic
This one is easy. Capitalism is a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate wealth in a society, you concentrate power. Is there any historical example to the contrary?
This one is ridiculous. State power (our unspoken savior from freedom here) is a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate power in a society, you concentrate wealth. Is there any historical example to the contrary?
Democracy is anti-capitalistic. What right does anyone have to vote to rob anyone else? Am I free or not?
It is as plain as the clear blue sky that the growth of state power in the 20th century was nothing but a fascist plot to turn the U.S. Treasury and the governments various means of inflicting violence on people in order centralize wealth in ways that free markets never can. DUH!! Here. Take some of that money you "earned" from the taxpayer and spend it on The Triumph of Conservatism by Gabriel Kolko.
For all the trappings of formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands that the wealthy dictates the basic outlines of the public policies that are acceptable to the vast majority of elected officials. People can and do resist, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but such resistance takes extraordinary effort. Those who resist win victories, some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth continues to dominate. Is this any way to run a democracy?
So the problem is that people are free to keep their property, not that they in fact aren’t because the U.S. congress has been given unlimited powers to separate them from it and give it to others?
If we understand democracy as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful, then it’s clear that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Indeed. Democracy is the God that failed. Abolish the state!
Let’s make this concrete. In our system, we believe that regular elections with the one-person/one-vote rule, along with protections for freedom of speech and association, guarantee political equality.
And unlimited power over other people’s lives.
When I go to the polls, I have one vote. When Bill Gates goes the polls, he has one vote. Bill and I both can speak freely and associate with others for political purposes. Therefore, as equal citizens in our fine democracy, Bill and I have equal opportunities for political power. Right?
Fool! Gates never had a lobbying firm at all until the DoJ prosecuted him for competing too well. Now his interest is pleasing the state instead of his customers.
3. Capitalism is unsustainable
This one is even easier.
Easier than that?
Capitalism is a system based on the idea of unlimited growth.
Not necessarily. It’s the government (of course) inflationary monetary pyramid scheme that dictates so (while failing to deliver much of the time). Besides, doesn’t Jensen know that their are millions of starving people on the planet? He wants us to stop producing now?
The last time I checked, this is a finite planet.
Finite maybe, but big as hell too. I heard Buckminster fuller quoted as saying there’s enough for everyone forever.
There are only two ways out of this one. Perhaps we will be hopping to a new planet soon. Or perhaps, because we need to figure out ways to cope with these physical limits, we will invent ever-more complex technologies to transcend those limits.
Both those positions are equally delusional. Delusions may bring temporary comfort, but they don’t solve problems. They tend, in fact, to cause more problems. Those problems seem to be piling up.
This is just socialist religion here. I say it’s not delusional. Pretty good argument, huh? More problems? Like what? Not refrigerators right? How about Tazers in the hands of cops? Getting warmer?
Capitalism is not, of course, the only unsustainable system that humans have devised, but it is the most obviously unsustainable system, and it’s the one in which we are stuck. It’s the one that we are told is inevitable and natural, like the air.
I guess I’ll just have to argue assertion for assertion: Men are born free. It’s self evident. For example: The Americans who went to Russia to live in paradise made a choice to flee in terror when they weren’t murdered first. Being thus born free, they can do what they like with what they possess, such as, for example, let someone else use it and pay them back some dividends.
A tale of two acronyms: TGIF and TINA
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s famous response to a question about challenges to capitalism was TINA — There Is No Alternative. If there is no alternative, anyone who questions capitalism is crazy.
So what you’re saying is you have no alternative?
Here’s another, more common, acronym about life under a predatory corporate capitalism: TGIF — Thank God It’s Friday. It’s a phrase that communicates a sad reality for many working in this economy — the jobs we do are not rewarding, not enjoyable, and fundamentally not worth doing. We do them to survive. Then on Friday we go out and get drunk to forget about that reality, hoping we can find something during the weekend that makes it possible on Monday to, in the words of one songwriter, "get up and do it again."
Imagine! Having to produce goods or provide services to make one’s way! Isn’t there some great thief in the sky who can loot my neighbors for me so I can stay home and watch Dallas SWAT? Funny thing about being able to own and trade in property: If you don’t like your job, you can make your own.
Or you can just suck off the taxpayer down at the local subsidized university teaching communism to people who can afford education because their parents - choke - produce goods and provide services.
Remember, an economic system doesn’t just produce goods. It produces people as well. Our experience of work shapes us. Our experience of consuming those goods shapes us. Increasingly, we are a nation of unhappy people consuming miles of aisles of cheap consumer goods, hoping to dull the pain of unfulfilling work. Is this who we want to be?
Yeah! Stuff sucks! I have it only to dull the pain of my corporate existence!
We’re told TINA in a TGIF world. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange? Is there really no alternative to such a world? Of course there is.
Save up and take a vacation? Find a way to make money doing what you want?
Anything that is the product of human choices can be chosen differently. We don’t need to spell out a new system in all its specifics to realize there always are alternatives.
See you guys in the Gulag.
We can encourage the existing institutions that provide a site of resistance (such as labor unions)
Who "protect" the working class from those poorer - who don’t mind.
while we experiment with new forms (such as local cooperatives).
On private property.
But the first step is calling out the system for what it is,
Still waiting for that.
without guarantees of what’s to come.
In the First World, we struggle with this alienation and fear. We often don’t like the values of the world around us; we often don’t like the people we’ve become;
Communists always think everyone is as miserable as them.
we often are afraid of what’s to come of us. But in the First World, most of us eat regularly. That’s not the case everywhere. Let’s focus not only on the conditions we face within a predatory corporate capitalist system, living in the most affluent country in the history of the world, but also put this in a global context.
Half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. That’s more than 3 billion people. Just over half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives on less than $1 a day. That’s more than 300 million people.
Those people need property rights and fast!
How about one more statistic: About 500 children in Africa die from poverty-related diseases, and the majority of those deaths could be averted with simple medicines or insecticide-treated nets. That’s 500 children — not every year, or every month or every week. That’s not 500 children every day. Poverty-related diseases claim the lives of 500 children an hour in Africa.
I heard that’s because capitalism is rampant in Africa. All those free market societies with their low taxes… No wonder they’re poor.
When we try to hold onto our humanity, statistics like that can make us crazy. But don’t get any crazy ideas about changing this system. Remember TINA: There is no alternative to predatory corporate capitalism.
Is this guy for real or what?
TGILS: Thank God It’s Last Sunday
We have been gathering on Last Sunday precisely to be crazy together. We’ve come together to give voice to things that we know and feel, even when the dominant culture tells us that to believe and feel such things is crazy. Maybe everyone here is a little crazy. So, let’s make sure we’re being realistic. It’s important to be realistic.
Heh.
One of the common responses I hear when I critique capitalism is, "Well, that may all be true,
That’s what they say huh?
but we have to be realistic and do what’s possible." By that logic, to be realistic is to accept a system that is inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable. To be realistic we are told we must capitulate to a system that steals our souls, enslaves us to concentrated power, and will someday destroy the planet.
And he’s talking about liberty, trade, and capitalism here? No, it is your employer government that is all those things you say you hate.
But rejecting and resisting a predatory corporate capitalism is not crazy. It is an eminently sane position. Holding onto our humanity is not crazy. Defending democracy is not crazy. And struggling for a sustainable future is not crazy.
Believing there is any hope for American when clowns like this represent the "opposition" to the Republican Warfare State is crazy.
What is truly crazy is falling for the con that an inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable system — one that leaves half the world’s people in abject poverty — is all that there is, all that there ever can be, all that there ever will be.
God, is this thing still going? Can your Red colored glasses not observe that the world’s poverty is where the capitalism isn’t?!
If that were true, then soon there will be nothing left, for anyone.
Oh, it’s almost over!
I do not believe it is realistic to accept such a fate. If that’s being realistic, I’ll take crazy any day of the week, every Sunday of the month.
Thanks VS for the opportunity to express my exasperation at the backassward thinking of the modern day American socialist. Forgive me for treating like an email I’m angrily answering in the middle of the night.
Sounds like Scott had one Red Bull too many…
“Capitalism” is based on two fundamental principles. The first is usury and the second is cheap labor. As long as the system can keep producing an abundance of superfluous products and people are willing to go into debt to “own” them, the system works… If people in America stayed home for one month and did not feed the beast the whole thing would pretty much fall apart.
…I’ve always found it interesting that Chattel Slavery in Agrarian Economies only gave way with the advent of Economies newly founded on Industrialization…Wage Slavery being far more cost effective than its institutional predecessor…Progress? or Marx-Engels concealing an ulterior motive?
I’ve been thinking that we’d have to wait for this stupid war to be over before we can get back to seeing and calling the left as it is: totalitarian, imbecilic, and really boring.
Though the antiwar movement has made some strange bedfellows, I guess we shouldn’t shy away from telling the commie sleeping next to us to stop farting, that his feet stink, and he has bad breath.
Way to go, Scott! Keep it coming!
(By the way, I download the antiwar radio interviews all the time and put ‘em on my iPod — they keep me sane. I turn everyone I know onto your show. Thanks.)
Ken – while I fully agree with your assumptions, the capitalist economic model does not. Indeed, the model assumes that the costs of labor are determined by the laws of supply and demand, thus if labor is “cheap” (however defined) the workforce will move unto another sector of the economy in which its work is better rewarded thus creating a shortage of labor in their original sector resulting in an increase in wages. I am not saying that this is how things work in reality, only pointing out that this is what the theory says.
The same thing goes for usury. If the costs of borrowing are too high, the demand for money moves to other options until either the credit market is penetrated by more competitive offers or the terms of borrowing become more competitive.
Basically, the theory of capitalism claims that the market prices are set by supply and demand resulting in an optimal equilibrium. That’s the theory.
The reality is, of course, quite different due to a fundamentally flawed assumption of the free market theory: perfect information.
In order to make informed decision in their best self-interests consumers (of either labor or capital) need to have access to correct and complete information to compare their options. If such complete and correct information is not available all the actors are simply denied the ability to make the best decisions in their own self interest. If you do not *KNOW* that store A has better prices than store B, how would you know that shopping at store A is in your best interest? In fact, if you do not know that store B is overcharging and you shop their the extra income your business gives to store B gives store B the ability to simply drive store A out of the market. Thus, in the absence of perfect information a “free” market simply cannot exist.
Another thing to keep in mind is that when prices are set at the perfect point of equilibrium by the laws of supply and demand the profits are really made at the margin, at the very minimum to remain 1) competitive and 2) stay in business (if your prices are too high, nobody will purchase from you, and if they are too low you will go bankrupt). This makes economic sense, but for a society as a whole this leads to a highly undesirable situation in which all goods and services are designed and sold with no provisions made for the situation when unexpected (or unlikely) factors put them under stress. Think of the New Orleans levees and the costs of building levees which could resist a cat 5 hurricane versus the costs of building them only to resist a cat 4 or even 3 (nevermind that in reality only cat 1 winds hit the levees). The problem is that security designs inevitably run into issues of *diminishing marginal returns*: it costs 50% to built a levee capable of resisting a cat 4 than levees capable of resisting a cat 5 hurricane (I am making these figures up, just as an example). Same thing for electrical grids, same thing for building designs and so many other cases. Simply put, an optimal free market system *always* functions at the stress limits or it is simply not competitive.
So even setting aside all the issues raised by Jensen and you, there are fundamental built-in issues in even a purely theoretical (and thus “perfect”) free market capitalist system which cannot be simply ignored. As they saying goes, when your head is in the sand, your ass is in the air
Cheers!
VS
As a small aside: name calling, no matter how crude or sincere, is just not a credible substitute for a logical and fact-based argument. It also risk alienating those who otherwise might want to be our allies in what Scott correctly calls *the* main issue: stopping the wars of agression of the Empire.
Just my 2cts.
Point taken, vineyard. However, when (if?) this war is over they (the left) will immediately turn and call folks like Scott Horton, Justin Raimondo, Lew Rockwell, et al, fascist scumbags (or worse) who must be stopped or silenced. Scott takes the higher ground when he does his interviews by keeping things in perspective. Lord knows that Amy Goodman probably wouldn’t have him on her show, though I’m certain he’d have her on his.
Anyway, you’re right.
Next comes “agricultural armies.”
In boot camp they yell, “Will kill for food!”
Bob – I have no sympathy for the “ideological left” or for the “idelogical right” for that matter. There are always people who instead of thinking just prefer to hate the ‘”other”. Anybody letting his ideology supercede his humanity ends up violent, either verbally or physically. And, as Christ said on His Sermon on the Mount, verbal abuse *is* a form of violence. And yes, there are plenty of ideological jerks on the “left” (whatever that means) who would hate and insult any Libertarian. But Amy Goodman? I have yet to hear her insult anyone, nor have I heard Noam Chomsky or the Cockburn brothers hurl insults at anyone. I think that this is not a matter of values, but of intelligence. Those who lack the latter substitute agression for the former.
(Anyway – Fascists want a fascist state, Libertarians do not want a state of any type, thus calling Libertarians Fascists would be pain stupid. I don’t think that Amy, Chomsky or the Cockburns are stupid at all. Would Jensen insult Libertarians? I don’t know. But there is a simple way of checking this out: to have Scott give him a call and interview him.)
I would also love it if Scott got Amy on his show and I would equally love it if Amy got Scott on her show, but realistically speaking the two shows have very different formats: one, Scott’s, is an informal discussion and indepth interview show while the other one, Amy’s, is more of a formal news & commentary show. I think that having Amy on Scott’s show would therefore be way more interesting as the other way around. Amy could interview Scott as, say, part of a segment on the independent media in the USA, but Scott could have an indepth discussion with Amy about her values and his points of disagreement with them. Which would you prefer? I would much prefer Scott interviewing her than the other way around.
Jensen’s attitudes about women and female sexuality are anthetical to any understanding of free will and individual autonomy.
There’s more but I need to cut off my analytical abilities to deal with the LP.
>But Amy Goodman? I have yet to hear her insult anyone, nor have I heard Noam Chomsky or the Cockburn brothers hurl insults at anyone.
I didn’t say Amy Goodman and Chomsky hurl insults. I implied that they rarely, if ever, give libertarians or paleocons the time of day. And though Amy Goodman might not hurl insults, she certainly entertains and supports those who do. Her prerogative, no doubt. But it’s a double standard that is typical from the left. Alas, it’s never been a two way street. And that’s fine, for as I said, Scott takes the high road as do most liberty loving individuals.
>Would Jensen insult Libertarians? I don’t know. But there is a simple way of checking this out: to have Scott give him a call and interview him.)
Of course he wouldn’t even if he wanted to. It’s air time and Jensen’s probably not a fool and knows not to bite the hand that feeds him, if only for an hour.
I’m not singling out Jensen — I don’t know him from Adam — but the left in general (and “whatever it means” is definable: statist; anti-liberty; collectivist) and I’m pretty sure I’m right.
I was raised as a rabid anti-communist in a family of exiles from Eastern Europe. I was later rather heavily involved in anti-Soviet activities and even head the “priviledge” to get death threats from a KGB officer (the threats were unauthorized crap, I knew that at the time, they were no less disturbing). Later, I got involved in all sorts of shit directed at fighting the “left”. And even later I came to realize that 1) I had been used and lied to and 2) that the people at the left were not fundamentally different then those on the right. About the same Bell curve of thugs, idiots, mediocre guys, decent folks, principaled and dedicated “fighters” and selfless heroes. I know simply do not believe that labels such as “left”, “right” (or even Libertarian) say much about any individual, nor do I believe that one ideology attracts more bad or good people then another one. Notice how Scheuer speaks of Bin Laden as an honest and principled man? And so were Hitler and Trotsky. That did not make them less toxic and dangeours to their fellow human-beings, it just made any generalizations about the people following them misguided. I realize that I am unlikely to convince anyone here of my beliefs that humans on all sides of the political spectrum are pretty much alike, and that in most cases their beliefs come from one form or another of “where I sit is where I stand”. What I would hope for is that we could discuss ideas on their merits (or lack thereof) rather than indivuduals or, worse, vague and misleading labels.
Well, I am a rabid anticommunist, albeit not an ideological one, and my disease is internal and pretty benign. I mean, I hope that I’m anti-anything that fucks up so many individuals’ lives.
My beef isn’t with leftism per se. I mean there is a grand tradition of socialism that I’m actually fond of, even though I think it’s essentially boneheaded. But I kinda like reading the cranky old leftisms of Norman Thomas or Shaw or even today’s Gore Vidal. But I don’t expect the feeling to ever be mutual from folks like that.
As a small aside: name calling, no matter how crude or sincere, is just not a credible substitute for a logical and fact-based argument. It also risk alienating those who otherwise might want to be our allies in what Scott correctly calls *the* main issue: stopping the wars of agression of the Empire.
This is true, Vineyardslayer, but does it make any difference? I mean you do know that there is nothing you or I can say or do that will change any of this so why take it seriously?
I just try to look at what our government masters do and say and really all of politics and current events as just another form of entertainment. As the saying goes, “I used to be angry but now I’m just amused” or some such. Shit, you look at it any other way and you’ll go nuts. Why invest your emotional energy in things you absolutely cannot influence?
Just look at George Bush and his gang of criminals and the criminal Congress and for that matter the entire corrupt two party system as another version of “American Idol” except you don’t get to vote one of the bastards off each week. And of course Tucker Carlson is not Simon Cowell.
Well, I am a rabid anticommunist, albeit not an ideological one. I mean, I hope I’m anti-anything that messes up so many individual lives, and it certainly isn’t the free market that does economic damage.
But, I’m not necessarily opposed to individual leftists. There’s a grand socialist tradition whose advocates I’m actually kind of fond of. I like reading the cranky leftisms of Norman Thomas, or GB Shaw, or today’s Gore Vidal. But had they any feelings remotely similar toward liberty loving thinkers. Did Shaw read Nock? Nock certainly read Shaw and Marx and was able to find and praise truths as well as find and criticize the untruths. Vidal likes Bill Kauffman, apparently, but has he read Justin Raimondo or Murray Rothbard? So how far will the mutual civility go?
Bob Bogus – nothing you or I can make a difference? I am not sure about that. As Roger Waters wrote “each small candle lights a corner of the dark” and while we cannot change the big picture – at least not by ourselves – we can make a difference in the life of individuals or even small groups of people. The “system” can *only* survive through us, our passivity or, worse, our consent. There is an absolutely fantastic text written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet Union in the 1970s which, I submit, still fully applies today. I will post it on this blog right now. Hope you find it interesting.
Cheers!
VS
I do apologize for the tone, but stand by the rest.
I want to take the high road when it comes to opposing empire and so VS, please don’t take any offense. I am obviously intolerant of other opinions, but I try to be very tolerant of those who hold them.
“The reality is, of course, quite different due to a fundamentally flawed assumption of the free market theory: perfect information.”
My man, I don’t know where you ever got the idea that the theory of lazzie fair depends on all actors having perfect knowledge in the market. I think the lack of perfect information is the reason to keep the power away from the state and defer to wild market forces:
From Lawrence H. White at Mises: http://www.mises.org/mofase/ch5.asp
“But Hayek is sharply critical of the assumption of perfect information, which he recognizes as “just another way of saying that equilibrium exists but does not get us any nearer an explanation of when and how such a state will come about. It is clear that, if we want to make the assertion that, under certain conditions, people will approach that state, we must explain by what process they will acquire the necessary knowledge.”[80]
“The market economy for Hayek is an information-gathering process, and this concept springs directly from his subjectivist outlook. In the task of using “available” resources to satisfy “existing” needs, “neither the ‘available’ resources nor the ‘existing’ needs are objective facts.” Resources and needs “exist for practical purposes only through somebody knowing about them.” The fact that each individual’s knowledge is limited and specialized means that “a successful solution . . . must be based on a method of utilizing the knowledge dispersed among all members of society. . . . This is precisely the function which the various ‘markets’ perform.”[81] This analysis forms the basis for the Mises-Hayek argument concerning the impossibility of efficient socialism.
“To assume perfect information is thus to assume away the very phenomenon supposedly under study, the market process. For the market process, Hayek points out, is a process of discovery unfolding through time.”
“Later, I got involved in all sorts of shit directed at fighting the “left”. And even later I came to realize that 1) I had been used and lied to and 2) that the people at the left were not fundamentally different then those on the right.”
That’s why I’m a libertarian. The right and left are just two brands of corporate-state socialism at war.
Just look at George Bush and his gang of criminals and the criminal Congress and for that matter the entire corrupt two party system as another version of “American Idol”…
Actually, this analogy is not far off the mark, Mr. Vinyardslayer. Just got a call from a friend of mine who told me old Georgie Boy and Laura were ON American Idol last night. I’m not shittin’ ya, either. My friend told me George offered to sing and Laura mentioned Georgie’s dancin’ which you can see here:
http://thestressblog.com/2007/04/25/the-show-10/#comment-30557
“2) that the people at the left were not fundamentally different then those on the right.”
Maybe not fundamentally different, though individuals’ ideas and actions surely can be called fundamentally different. I mean, my friend’s wife, who’s a public school teacher, may be fundamentally the same as me (well, uh, sort of), but she spends her time advocating that citizens not be allowed to spank their kids and own guns. Now there’s a big difference between us and I oppose what she advocates.
Regarding “perfect information” – Probably the most basic element of economics is that all consumers want to pay the lowest possible price for their goods and all workers want to be paid the highest possible wage for their labor. If one store is selling books, milk, or gasoline for less than the one down the road, the locals will figure it out; sign technology is pretty wide spread these days. If I need just about anything, I can go online and search through a near infinite number of vendors and find a deal that makes me happy in a few minutes. Labor follows the same principles. An overseer isn’t necessary for any of this to work.
Bob – she spends her time advocating that citizens not be allowed to spank their kids and own guns. Now there’s a big difference between us and I oppose what she advocates
Not at all. The difference is, as you say, in what she *advocates*, but between you and her? She belives that spaking kids is detrimental to their education and that guns represent a danger to the people. You believe that *not* spaking kids is detrimental to their education and that the *absence* of guns represents a danger to the people (as do I, BTW). But both of you care about kids and the safety of people. All you need to be on the same side is compare notes, assumptions or experiences. But a person who does not care about kids or safety (say Cheney or his goons) is somebody truly different then the two of you. But on a human level you and your friends wife are far more similar that your difference of views might suggest. Also – is she, and are you, willing to commit acts of violence to enforce your views on others? That would also be an important thing to consider. Anyway – I found that there are many people “like me” (whether that is good or bad depends on whom you ask) on ALL sides of the political spectrum.
Scott – I don’t know where you ever got the idea that the theory of lazzie fair depends on all actors having perfect knowledge in the market
I got them from my courses while doing my Master’s Degree in International Economics at some well-known US college (actually, one very much associated with Neocons nowadays). Considering how many ignorant people graduate with all kids of degrees, this really proves nothing other than that this is what US elites are taught.
But common sense seems to also back up the concept. The term “laisser faire” comes from the French expression “to let happen” and does adequately suggest the fact that to have things happen “naturally” is not what takes place “naturally”. Wild market forces have interests which are diametrically opposed to the interest of the market and the only way to protect the consumers from these “wild market forces” is to ensure that he/she has access to all the information needed to make choices, what economists call “perfect information”. This information needs to be *proactively* promoted against the market forces whose interest is to *monopolize and distort* the free flow of useful information. Am I making sense here? Do you see what I mean?
Mises-Hayek argument explains why a central planning organism as the Soviet Gosplan (which was tasked with planning the entire Soviet economy and output plans) cannot function efficiently). However, this argument does not address the problem which I am referring to: how to prevent the corporations from taking over the “information market” the way they have in the USA. There is no Gosplan in the USA, but the ignorance of most Americans of the world outside their borders or the nature of their government is far, FAR, worse than the ones of the Soviet citizens (I can compare the two for having spent quite some time in both the USSR and the USA). Let’s face it: most Americans today watch shit, read shit (when the read at all), eat shit and know shit and that sad reality is not the result of government action, at least not directly, not in a Socialist kind of way, but the result of the actions of the puppeteers who control the government. Remove the US government and the very same puppeteers will maintain their control over the US society just through their corporations and finacials assets (which are truly huge, Walmart is bigger than most governments on the planet).
Cous Cous – If one store is selling books, milk, or gasoline for less than the one down the road, the locals will figure it out; sign technology is pretty wide spread these days. If I need just about anything, I can go online and search through a near infinite number of vendors and find a deal that makes me happy in a few minutes. Labor follows the same principles
The putative “locals” might know what is going locally, but for anything else the ONLY medium of information still free from corporate control is the Internet and God knows “they” (the governments and the lobbies controlling them) are working on all sorts of legal, technical and political plans to take control of that medium. Pull the plug on your computer and you have totally lost any means of getting good info about pretty much anything beyond the driving distance from your home (or even less).
oh crap! yet another of my posts blocked by the spam bot – I really have the skill of getting my posts blocked
Oh well – I will wait and sing “let my posts go!” in the meanwhile. Sorry guys!
>You believe that *not* spaking kids is detrimental to their education and that the *absence* of guns represents a danger to the people (as do I, BTW).
No, I believe her wanting to pass laws to forbid families from spanking their children is wrong. If she believes it’s child abuse, then she’s got a whole hell of a lot of tradition and culture to battle against, and again, more power to her if she handles it the social way instead of the political way. If she wants to go house to house encouraging parents to reason with their children, more power to her. As for guns, I don’t own one and am not really into them. But that has nothing to do with what I believe the law is or should be or whether or not the guy next door should be allowed to own one or not. It’s none of my f-ing business until he pulls it on me, and then I might consider whether my choice not to own one was the wise thing!
She may care about kids, but she also cares about butting into other people’s business via the law and I think that is the chicken-sh*t way of handling things for the most part.
“I got them from my courses while doing my Master’s Degree in International Economics at some well-known US college”
Ha! Me and my community college dropout education! What the hell do I know? Is Hayek not saying that what counts is a continual process of seeking information continually adjusting prices though? There is perfect information somewhere, just not in the possession of any one person.
(I am in over my head here. Someone from Mises.org help!)
And do prices not eventually fall in line to the real truth regardless of spin put out by the state or the corporation?
And don’t kid yourself man. Every single one of these giant corporations you despise are on the dole – most especially those property stealing sons of bitches at Wal Mart. Take away their eminent domain, their free security on the high seas, etc. and you’ll have a Wal Mart that people want, not that they are subjected to – or none.
Ha! Me and my community college dropout education!
Well don’t feel bad, Scotty. I’m a graduate of Penn State or lets see…was it State Pen?
Dear VS, Thanks for the lesson on economic theory. All of that is well and good when you are dealing with a purely objective environment. Add in greedy, ruthless crooks who will go to any end to achieve their goals and all of the theory goes out the window… This is why we find ourselves occupying Iraq, spending megabucks and extinguishing human lives with no end in sight while the government ignores the people’s will on the matter. The “marketplace” is not the determining factor in this matter, or little else that goes on in our modern, manipulated, world. It is only the will of those who control the levers of power that determines our present course… They have bet the farm on establishing a base of operations from which they can control the Middle East and they will not stop until they are stopped.
Vineyardsaker – Your comments to Scott about wild market forces were incomprehensible. Statist economic theories are frequently gobbledygook designed to make people believe they need mobsters to make their decisions for them. Markets are just supply and demand. If enough people demand something then someone will supply it; even if it’s illegal. No one can monopolize the information either. Intel can’t keep me from finding out about AMD, Nvidia, Gigabyte, Asus, et cetera.
I’ll agree that Americans are notoriously ignorant about nearly everything, but I see a different culprit. The government runs the schools and they intentionally don’t teach economics, languages, geography, or history. Instead they’re told to worship the Patron Saint of Internment Camps and taught that war is good for the economy. People who know nothing can believe anything, which means there will always be plenty of idiots willing to support whatever evil the government wants to do.
While I’m on the subject of evil: Amazon didn’t nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yahoo doesn’t run Guantanamo. I can legally tell a company “No”. I cannot legally tell the government “No”. Guess which one of those things needs to change?
Ha! Me and my community college dropout education
Well, this just goes to prove that Ivy League “education” is more about connections then about real education. I can assure you that most of your shows, in particular your “rant” ones, are at least as good or better then the best graduate courses in international relations. You could *teach* at any of those colleges and you would be among the most popular teachers, in particular among foreign students.
I have thee kids which I know homeschool and I make listen to all your (and Amy Goodman’s DemocracyNow!) shows. That’s how they get these international relations education!
Kind regards,
VS
Cous cous – Vineyardsaker – Your comments to Scott about wild market forces were incomprehensible. Statist economic theories are frequently gobbledygook
Guilty as charged: you are quite correct, my comments were poorly written, and yes, many economy theories are gobbledygook designed to sell something (though in my case, I am not selling anything, just being clumsy in expressing my thoughts).
As for Amazon vs. Hiroshima – you are correct again. However, the US government is not by any means a government “of the people for the people” but one “of the millionaires for the millionaires” and while I have no idea whether US corporations played a role in the decisions to bomb Japan, I do know for a fact that the Zionist, Oil and Military-Industrial lobbies are the three pillars of US Imperial policies and the corporations are just the visible tip of the iceberg of these lobbies. This is why the people running the government are also the people running companies like Exxon, Halliburton, Bechtel or Carlucci’s Carlyle Group. Ever since the United Fruit Company (or even before) the US foreign policy have been directed by US corporations. To disassociate the US corporate world from the government is just naive – they are two aspects of the same evil, IMHO.
Yes, the American government certainly isn’t “of the people for the people.” That isn’t what government is for. Here’s Nock: ”The general upshot of my observations, however, was to show me that whether in the hands of Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat, and whether under nominal constitutionalism, republicanism or autocracy, the mechanism of the State would work freely and naturally in but one direction, namely, against the general welfare of the people.”
The American government has trillions of dollars to spend every year, has strong criminal interests, and is allowed to commit crimes with impunity. Supply and demand dictates that someone will come forward to supply their needs: countless weapons systems, espionage, interrogation, and the propaganda necessary to use them all as often as possible.
Do some businesses ask the State to make their jobs easier? Sure. Why try to compete when you can bribe some gangsters to cripple or eliminate your competition. The worst of them are just halfway houses for former and future war criminals, but not too many people would buy what they’re selling if these ‘purchases’ were optional. I doubt you’d add a million dollar cruise missile to your cart the next time you buy something.