Free Markets
“For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people.”
This high minded account called I, Pencil by Leonard Reed is how elites have packaged "free market- invisible hand" ideology for gullible saps (without mentioning any names). It is in truth a theological account of how economic activity self-organizes through a mysterious and beautiful power and uses a wonderfully simplistic tautology- freedom= free people = freedom. Thinking people, on the other hand, understand that raw Power is inserted into each unmentioned crevice at every stage of the loop but if you kind of squint just right you can pretend it simply doesn't exist. And we live in a permanently squinting society chock full of saps. (one born every minute according to P. T.)
Things are deteriorating so rapidly even progressives are getting in on the act. This is John Nichols ( Nation magazine) who has been energized by Wisconsin and has written a new book titled How Socialists Built America; "America has always been and should continue to be informed by socialist ideals and a socialist critique of society."
Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, he qualifies it with: "The point here is not to defend socialism." Heavens no! He just likes those social ideals like equality and justice and solidarity.He has no intention of democratizing the economy in any radical sense. Still.
Another prominent liberal, E.J. Dionne, has just written this: "An enlightened ruling class understands that it can get richer and it's riches will be more secure if prosperity is broadly shared.." This is the Great Accommodation I have written about. He has never used the term "ruling class" before but he clearly senses the extreme nature of the historical moment as he goes on:
"The influence of the ruling class comes from it's position in the economy and it's ability to pay for the politicians campaigns" So far so good... "And I'd underscore that I am not using the term to argue for a Marxist economy."
Ohhh, dang. The liberal continues as though he reads Pagan's blog: "We need the market. We need incentives. We don't need our current levels of inequality." In other words, he is sensitive to EXTREME inequality.He just wants the rich to be more responsible and what could be more responsible, reasonable, rational than that? He just wants to rebuild the middle class and that's why he gets the Big Bucks. Liberals can only take baby steps but you can see a shift none the less.
posted by troutsky @ 5:47 AM
16 comments
16 Comments:
People like E. J. Dionne are starting to see the handwriting on the wall. Yes, they want some level of free markets, because they understand that free markets lead to a GENERAL prosperity. And they know that without promoting that GENERAL prosperity, they'll never be able to promote any kind of UNIVERSAL prosperity.
In other words, they understand they have to make sure I have a bulging wallet before the motherfuckers can pick it. And when they do, they end up picking it almost dry in the name of imposing some kind of makeshift, non-existent equality and "fairness".
So in the long-run, any prosperity promoted by liberals like E. J. Dionne and his ilk is going to be ephemeral and transitory at best, because I understand my money is better off under my fucking mattress than it is invested in their brand of economic growth.
Stand aside, invisible hand here:
"Governor Paul LePage wants to roll back child labor laws," says the narrator of the spot, which is sponsored by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and the progressive Maine People's Alliance (MPA). "He supports legislation to have kids work longer hours, later at night and for less than minimum wage."
In fact he is proposing that anyone under 21 can be paid as little as $4.75 an hour. Wal-Mart's loving this bill. Time to get rid of some of those older workers even though they don't get health benefits.
This guy was only elected with 30% of the vote and I think the people of Maine are seeing the handwriting on the wall and it says, "FU" signed The Invisible Hand.
There's handwriting Pagan, Kapital can only continue increasing profits with its favorite trick, increased "productivity" (i.e. screw you, your raise won't even match inflation and we just raised you health premiums). Thank you Master Rand, may I have another.
Big freaking train in the tunnel.
Wrong, "Kapital" can only increase its profits through an increased subservience and dependency on "Kapitol", and once it is through kicking up to the government dons, THEN it has to do all those things to increase productivity to make up the balance.
Which is why I am against "Capitalism" and in favor of the free market with a minimum of government intervention, and subsidies, and regulations.
Note that the operative phrase here is "a minimum of", as opposed to what you falsely accuse me of favoring, "a complete absence of".
But then you guys demonstrate everyday that you are closet Stalinists. You just don't realize it yet. Give you enough power though, and it would be pretty plain why I would dread any of you getting anywhere near the reins of power.
Pagan: You keep making that point about fearing "our" totalitarian streak and yet the Koch Bros ( net worth 40 billion and climbing) , who own you and your brain, don't seem to bother you much.
We (the left) are the new/old trope of "Jewish plot" and those guys ( not just Kochs but ruling class more generally) are masters at using fear. A classic bait and switch which the EJ Dionnes of the world see but don't know how to stop.
Just putting fairness in scare quotes demonstrates perfectly the degree to which you are infected.
Ducky:Those kids should be "free" to work all night! They could be equal to kids in Mexico and China.To keep it fair we won't force them to join a union.
You still haven't addressed my main point, Troutsky. Why should I invest money in the economy in the form of a business which would create jobs? What in the hell is in it for me? By your own admission, I only deserve to achieve a limited amount of success, and once I get so big, if I manage to be that "lucky", you're going to take it all away from me and give it to the people I employ. Do I get a damn thing out of it? If I create a business at all, it would definitely be a labor of love, because otherwise I wouldn't put up with the hassles that go into it. Maybe I want more than "fair market value" for all my time and trouble. And who decides what fair market value is? You obviously don't believe in private wealth, so that would not be reassuring. And even if I did get a considerable payment, what good is that if the economy tanks. You are supporting policies that are guaranteed to lead to economic ruin, which is another reason I would be hard pressed to invest in a business.
So, depending on how successful my business might ordinarily be, the policies you support are depriving as few as three or four, to as many as two or three hundred, or maybe considerably more people out of a job, in many cases possibly a very well paying career.
And for what? For the sake of an idiotic concept. For something that has never been successfully achieved, anywhere its ever been tried. The one time it was successfully implemented, it led to such an unmitigated economic disaster one of your major gods, Lenin, implemented capitalist reforms.
You know that history well, yet you are clueless as to its implications.
Now, on to why I call you Stalinists. That's an easy one, and should be obvious to anyone watching from the outside. You rail about local control, about citizens councils and militias, yet look at the crap you support, shit that could only be implemented and maintained by government intervention. Big government intervention. How are local citizens councils, or soviets, even working in tandem, going to impose universal health care? Or even free universal education. It can't be done. How are you going to go about the process of expropriating large businesses. How does what is in effect a city council manage that? The only way it can be done is by nationalization, and that means a central bureaucracy, whether you like it or not.
And once it became clear that that is what it would take, you would have no trouble whatsoever adapting to that new reality. You know it, and I know it.
You can delude yourself all you want to with this fucking bullshit about how the state would eventually "wither away". I just find it hard to believe you're really stupid enough to believe that.
Why should I invest money in the economy in the form of a business which would create jobs? What in the hell is in it for me?
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Because with The Full Ayn Rand your alternatives would be:
1. Starve
2. Come work for my production company. In fact I bet you'd be a hun with a steadycam harness.
Ducky, what kind of production company? Do you make short films?
"What is in it for me?"
That's a hard one to answer, Pagan. What gives your life meaning? Are you mainly worried about getting cheated, about not being rewarded for your input? About developing your full potential?
As for your worry about centralism, it is totally justified and partly why I think global capitalism has become the Leviathon, a form of global governance with no controls or accountability.
The question is: Does sheer size of an organization impel it towards totalitarian ends? Or is it more complex? The world wide web extends further than anything in history. Is it serving totalitarian aims? Would the sheer size of a health insurance pool drive it to become a totalitarian bureaucracy? Or is it profit that countermands democratic governance of such a pool?
If you were on a global health system council would you use your position to gain power over others? Is that your "human nature"?
If so, could democratic checks be put into the system to prevent you from becoming Stalin?
You obviously believe that history proves empirically that no such checks can exist. I don't think you could construct such a proof.
Pagan, it's a post processing unit. Sound, simple special effects, animation, editing.
No filming, per se.
The main point is, once any governing body acquires the power necessary to enforce your aims, it is not now, nor is it ever, going to "wither away". It's going to find a way to perpetuate itself and regenerate. It will do so through terror if necessary, but it will do it by any means at its disposal. And by giving it that much power, you are giving it all the means it needs. And once two, three, four decades are past, that will become the norm. It will have become entrenched. The only way it can fail at that point is by either revolution, or by collapsing of the sheer weight of its own inefficiency. And when and if that happens, it will not be a peaceful, natural transition, but, although ii might be cathartic, it will also be very traumatic. What will follow in its place will in most cases by another group of power mongers, with probably elements of the old bureaucracy still in place.
The irony is you complain about the Tea Party and conservatives who honestly desire small, limited government, which is the closest to "withering away" you'll ever achieve.
Ducky-
That's interesting. I'd like to do something like that myself, with video discs.
Pagan: Is capitalism declining in your view?
Ren-
It depends on what you mean by capitalism. There is no such thing as free markets in the current system. There may have never been, but arguably there was a period from the 1870's to the 1920's when there was a limited degree of free markets.
If you are talking about state capitalism like exists in China, or state subsidized capitalism like exists in Europe and Japan, and to a lesser extent in the US, I'd say that is in the decline, and the chief operatives of that system are desperate to prop it up. Its been a cash cow but one that's about all out of milk.
In real life, there is no such thing as "too big to fail". When you start hearing talk like that, you know the end is near. The current system is based on an illusion of prosperity, and it leads to desperate tactics like Ben Bernanke printing money and flooding the system with it.
They know its going to come to an end. They are just trying to cushion the blow, for themselves. That seems pretty obvious. The people that tell you there needs to be more taxes and more regulations are like a doctor seeing a patient who has swallowed a dose of strychnine, telling him he needs to swallow some more.
All right,this is continued from the post above. The reason the current "capitalist" system is in decline, and is destined to crash and burn, is because that's just the motherfucking nature of things. That's life. I know no one here wants to here this, but if socialism ever was successfully implemented, it would go through the same thing, eventually. This airy-fairy thought process you all have that the state would eventually wither away and then the world would live in some permanent, peaceful world of abundance and cooperation is a pipe dream. I don't know what kind of opium Marx was smoking when he dreamed it up but it had to be some powerful shit.
HERE'S THE TRUE REALITY-
Have you ever seen graphs that contain upward spikes followed by a set of downward spikes, and it keeps alternating that way?
That's called "Reality". That's what life is, and that's what life is always going to be like. And that's why a free market system-not like what we have now, but a REAL free market system-is superior to what we have now, or anything else you're going to dream up.
It recognizes the reality that there are going to be successes and failures, and when something fails, there is always going to be something else to take its place. It also recognizes that there is no such thing as "too big to fail".
In reality, if we had ever had a real free market system, there would likely be very few Proctor and Gambles and Coca-Colas. There would be a few, but they would be exceptions, and if they continued to prosper, they would be obliged to do so under a far more competitive system than the one that currently has given them free rein-or should I say subsidized rein-to "corner the market".
Taken as a whole, you are proposing to literally throw what is still basically a toddler out with the dirty, grimy bathwater.
This high minded account called I, Pencil by Leonard Reed is how elites have packaged "free market- invisible hand" ideology for gullible saps (without mentioning any names).
I'm sure Leonard Reed would be deeply amused to learn that he was a member of the elites. On the contrary, he was a member of a remnant of libertarians who tried to inform the American people of the importance of markets as we drifted toward plutocracy.
Anyway, you're missing the whole point of his essay. If we had a primitive economy, socialism might work reasonably well. It would face the customary problems; why should I work if my production will be taken from me? Why should I not loaf if I can still consume goods? But if the number of goods were limited, it might be practicable to plan an economy.
This is not the case with our economy. Even something so simple as a pencil could not be produced by a cartel; it requires the coordination of various producers as provided by the market. No one as ever been able to successfully explain how socialism could possibly produce a plan which ensures that consumer demands are met.
Does sheer size of an organization impel it towards totalitarian ends? Or is it more complex?
The reason you and your ilk are totalitarians is that you fail to recognize any realm where people may choose to engage in voluntary exchange. If I cannot start a pencil company because this would necessitate exploitation of my workers, than your socialist paradise must provide pencils. Since men are reluctant to work when stripped of the fruits of their labor, this will necessitate a planning board. Force will be needed to punish wreckers, and freedom of movement will be curtailed, lest the productive citizens try to escape the country.
It's not as if Lenin woke up one day and decided to be a monster. His barbarism became necessary because he was wedded to a pernicious ideology, one which, unfortunately, you share.
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