Government Motors
Evelyn Pyburn, editor of the Billings-based Big Sky Business Journal, offers this thoughtful analysis (“An Alternative Enterprise“) of the dangers and temptations of government ownership of auto companies and other business enterprises.
Dwayne Andreas, former CEO, Archer Daniels Midland
This is the same guy who also famously told us that in business, customers are enemies, competitors friends.
It’s hard for you to see from behind your velvet curtain, protected as you are from real markets – they are destructive. The only people who really have to endure the reality of market freedom are little people who cannot control prices, buy out competitors, or enlist government protection. The very notion of forming a “corporation” is in large part to shelter oneself from market forces. The best protection of all is to own the government, as Wall Street does, and to control the “competition” between the two parties, as wealth in general does.
Large concentrations of wealth are the enemy of economic freedom, as invariably they come to control not only markets, but the regulatory apparatus as well. We live now in a society where ownership of wealth is wildly skewed in a few ahnds. As a consequence, government is being used to bail out large corporations that should never have been allowed to grow so big. SO they don’t have to pay for their mistakes, and are further emboldened to misbehave in the future.
The rstructuring of GM and 60% ownership by the government is no enemy of freedom – when GM is healthy again, it will be turned back over to its former owners, its plants moved overseas or down to Mexico. Obama will be named auto executive of the year, workers and suppliers will be screwed, and yours and Pyburn’s fanciful notion of “freedom”, which doesn’t even exist in the real world, will be restored.
What’s it like up there? The best remedy, the best way to restore economic freedom, is to break up the large concentrations of wealth via progressive taxation, estate taxation, and anti-trust laws. Since you are not in favor of any of these remedies, you are the enemy of economic freesom.
Other than that, we’re cool. Have a nice day.
I should also note here that the two parties have different roles than you might perceive. The Republicans are the front line, advancing change, while the Democrats have their rear, incorporating that change into permanent policy while at the same time neutralizing dissent by either absorbing it or demonizing it. It is also the job of the Democrats to prevent the rise of independent third parties on the left. (Oddly, Republicans don’t seen to care about third parties. I like that about them.)
Once you incorporate the idea of one super-party into your thinking, your academically pure notions of economic freedom can be further disabused. If we don’t have political freedom, economic freedom is a moot point.
More taxation will create economic freedom… that’s brilliant!
It’s also true. Life is counterintuitive. You thought it was so simple that it was obvious? That’s the problem with conservatives. Can’t handle nuance.
The world is far more complicated than your philosophy allows.
Mark T.: “It’s hard for you to see from behind your velvet curtain, protected as you are from real markets – they are destructive”
Answer: I don’t know what “curtain” might prevent me from seeing this. You forget that I worked in the private sector for many years — and Evelyn Pyburn is exposed to the reality of market competition every day, and has been for many years — much more so than you, who are protected from some competition by state licensing. (I worked both in areas that required licensing and areas that did not.)
Yes, markets are destructive. Their greatest advocates talk about how the “creative destruction” of markets makes progress possible. But, ultimately, the creation and progress and wealth-creation is far greater than the destruction, as countries and eras with relatively free markets show.
“The only people who really have to endure the reality of market freedom are little people who cannot control prices, buy out competitors, or enlist government protection.”
Correct, but those “little people” include most of the economic actors, including most of the larger corporations. No one can control the market for long unless he can get the government to do it for him. That’s one reason good constitutions sharply limit the ability of private entities to commandeer the government. The U.S. Constitution used to, but “progressives” destroyed those limits.
“The best protection of all is to own the government, as Wall Street does”. The fallacy in this statement is the same as in the statement that “corporations” want one thing or another. “Wall Street” consists of hundreds of millions of investors with all sorts of conflicting interests. Even the interests of the biggest corporations are usually not all aligned with each other. Government agencies, by contrast, although they have contending elements, are much more likely to line up in an identity of interest, especially when there are no constitutional budget or regulatory constraints, as is the case with the modern federal government.
“yours and Pyburn’s fanciful notion of “freedom”, which doesn’t even exist in the real world”.
Of course, perfect freedom — economic or otherwise — does not exist in the real world, and never has. But anyone who thinks there is no such thing as more or less freedom never visited a Communist country.
And indisputably, some societies are more economically free than others. Today, they tend to be the former nations of the British empire: Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, etc. The U.S. was far freer economically a hundred years ago than it is today. Perfection? Of course not. But freer. That’s the most important single reason we became a great nation. Of course, the American advantage is now being methodically and assiduously destroyed.
You are protected by tenure. You have a secure pension, come from a wealthy family, are guaranteed health insurance coverage, probably even after you retire.
I have a license, it is true. I had no choice about that. I do not belong to the anti-competitive societies – AICPA and Montana Society of CPA’s. I routinely tell peole who ask that tax preparation software currently available is as good as any CPA, and a whole lot cheaper. I don’t much hide behind my license.
I have to pay self-employment tax, and cannot get insurance coverage in the ‘free market’. I have the benefit of long-term relationships, but not long-term contracts. I’d say I know a little bit more about the market than you.
You admit that markets are destructive. Now take it one step further, and admit that most of commerce is about hiding from markets, as you have done.
Round and round we go. How, pray tell, does one do this? One amasses wealth. Once done, the government listens to you. Once private individuals and corporations are more powerful than government, democracy declines. It wasn’t my philosophy that did this to us. It was yours.
Your notion that things used to be a whole lot better hearkens back to a time where we had not grown the huge pockets of concentrated wealth. Our founding fathers were not wealthy by our standards. Yes, we do ahve more deomcratic rule when wealth is more equitably distributed.
I used the term “Wall Street” in the same manner as I would use the term “the White House”. It’s shorthand. It means the wealthiest players – Goldman, AIF, Lehman, Morgan Stanely, Citibank … small individual investors have no power. Surely you know that …
It’s worth repeating … the world is far more complicated than your philosophy allows.
Mark T.: What you find most worth repeating are certain mantras about me that are not true or only half true. What partially protects me from the market NOW is that I have a government job (tenure is more illusory than real). But that was not always true. You were trying to say I didn’t know about markets. I pointed out that I worked in them for many years.
You also have this idee fixe that I’m a trust fund baby and that my family is wealthy. That is not true, either, and you have been told that repeatedly, but you continue to repeat it.
Now, if we can (for once) get away from the ad hominem crap: When businesses seek special favors from government, that’s about hiding from markets, but commerce is about RESPONDING to them. If the constitutional rules regulating government are written to limit its ability to hand out favors (as they still are written at the federal level, but no longer applied), business usually is forced to respond to markets. The “progressives” destroyed those limitations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the pretext that they were fighting monopoly, preserving government from business, etc. Instead, they changed a system in which government had very restricted power to dole out special favors (limited to things like gifts of public land, defense contracts, and RR lines) to a system in which government had almost unlimited power to dole out favors.
That’s your system — not mine.
As for “Wall Street” — your explanation makes your label more precise (if unfairly so), but the fact is that even the biggest players are subjected to buffeting from all sides — from investors of very disparate interests, mutual fund managers, businesses that float new issues, government regulators, etc. etc. The large financial players’ interests are simply not as monotonic as those of government agencies, and even if they were, effective conspiracies would be almost impossible to coordinate because of the sheer number of players involved.
By the way, the much-complained of “concentration of wealth” in the U.S. is largely an illusion. Many of the concentrations are huge pools of individual investors and shareholders, pension plans, mutual funds, etc. And the much-publicized decile and quintile wealth demographics conceal the fact that at different times of life the same people are in different deciles/quintiles. Of course, some inequality is inevitable and probably desirable — but the levels of wealth inequality in earlier relatively advanced civilizations (e.g. the Roman Empire) far, far exceeded those in today’s America.
he top 1% controls 34% of all wealth, the top 5% 59%, the top 10% 71%. The bottom 90% controls 29%, as of 2004, likely more skewed since then, as the Bush tax effects only took full effect in 2003. Eventually, I presume, the Estate Tax will disappear, and we will be more so than already an aristocracy of mediocrity, as witnessed by the presidency, 2001-2009. You may be right that it is not so skewed as the Romans, or even Dickensonian England, but that’s kind of an unimportant point.
If you love the free market so much, why did you leave it? Aren’t you unhappy away from competition? Don’t you miss the great game?
Commerce is ideally about responding to markets, but in reality is about hiding from them. Businesses don’t buy each other out, enter into pricing agreements, , individuals don’t form professional societies and corporations and LLC’s and such because they love markets. they seek protection. The point is not that people despise markets, as they do, but rather who is really subject to market discipline? It is the guy who loses his job, not the executive with the golden parachute. It is the guy working for minimum wage, the sweatshop laborers especially are disciplined daily. Do explain sweatshops someday without using the word “rung”.
But we are in agreement that big business and big government go hand-in-hand. They feed on one another. Notice around you today that it is not me and my compatriots who have the protection of government, but rather Wall Street. Government can be big in democracies and still protect democratic values, but when wealth is skewed, democracy diminishes, and government is taken captive by wealth. I’m repeating, I know – it doesn’t register with you.
Regarding that expression, it refers to the big players who eat the little players. Your idea that it’s some sort of vegetable market where people are hocking their wares at the highest bid price is quaint, even charming, but a little out of touch.
I never said you were a trust fund baby. You said you came from a family of doctors, from that I gathered that your existence was comfortable and that you inherited something too. You’ll never admit as much, so I’m only speculating. I don’t mind that at all, by the way. But just as I chuckled when John Lennon sang “Imagine no possessions”, I chuckle a bit too as you cast your lot with the common man. You were raised to achieve, your family’s achievements are admirable, but you don’t know what it’s like to flip burgers, wash dishes, or look at your shoes and hide your anxiety when someone tries to form a union.
I meant “Regarding that expression “Wall Street” …
Mark, you are sounding more and more like a Chomsky trained “Troother.” And you wonder why no one engages you. The reason is that we can’t get a passport to your universe that only you inhabit.
I wonder why no one engages me? I am pretty well engaged … not by you, mind you, as you don’t have the chops, but by others. And you and I both know you’ve never read Chomsky, or you’d know he’s not a troother.
But it is possible to read someone, understand and give due credit, and yet see the world for one’s self in an independent manner. It is a fascinating place, and I’m yet to find a philosophy that describes it well enough. Certainly not conservationism or libertarianism, but not progressivism either. It’s a wonderfully complex place, and the perfesser wants it to be simple, as do you.
Anyway, if you havean’t noticed, I spend more time engaging Democrats than your brand, because they exhibit the worst tendencies towards groupthink and followship. But you’re no prize either, so do what you do so well – steer clear of me.
By “conservationism” I meant “conservatism”, as we call radical right wingers these days.
Mark, those statistics about wealth don’t mean very much in context. For example, if you look at the chart, which goes back to 1983 if memory serves, the lines are fairly flat. Up in the last few years of data but only by a couple of percent for the 20& over the entire data period going from 81.3% to 84.7% from the begining to end of the data set. My guess is that they’re back down now with the destruction of asset values – but that’s just a guess using the stock market as a proxy.
What the chart doesn’t prove is your thesis that steep marginal tax rates reduce wealth concentration. There is no data available to show that assertion. If you can show me that wealth concentrations were better in the past I’d love to see it but my guess is that the line moves around the mean by a few percentages and is not significantly different than most other economies. That too is just a guess.
But you talk in terms that makes one believe that economic strata are monolithic – which is surely false. For example, wealth may have increased it’s concentration amongst the wealthy but the number of millionaire increased at twice the rate of inflation and population growth from 1995 to 2004. Accordingly, one could say that the concentration of wealth in the top 20% is becoming more disburse.
Until you can show that high marginal tax rates actually reduce wealth concentration I think you have a very weak argument.
Oh, and I’ve read Chomsky and I’m convinced he’s a second rate intellectual, a hypocrite and cheats in his citations by footnoting his own work as if it comes from outside sources.
Now, I’m wondering if you’ve hurt your back by blowing self-laudatory smoke up yourself. O loan wolf.
Mark, I know that Chomsky is not a Troother, what I meant is that you combine the worst aspects of both sets. You remind me of my step father, who was convinced that all of life was just one big conspiracy to keep him from achieving his self defined level of wealth. After all, he was smart, he worked hard, why was he still lower middle class, and not a member of the wealthy elites? He usually would regale me with his many discovered truths about the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderblocks and the Illuminati as the root cause of all of the ills in the world.
You are no different except for the specific names of who is holding you back. The pity is, that you are just too inconsequential to ever bother anyone enough to destroy your life. They have left that task up to you.
And you have succeeded magnificently.
Oops, must have been thinking about other things when I spelled “lone” as loan. Hey, I’m in the money biz and sometimes my fingers acquire bad habits.
As a supporter of the working class have you ever wondered what Mark T and these other union appologists actually drive?
I own one Buick, three ford pickups(ranch use) and one toyota and one Jeep.
All these other supposed union/adm supporters need to put up or shut up.
Dave – I think it would actually help to look at wealth distribution in places that have high marginal tax rates, such as Canada and Denmark and the U.S in the 1950’s to make that point. These are countries that have better democratic outcomes than us, with public health care and education systems and high levels of happiness. But the change since 1983 doesn’t mean much. If I were you, I would investigate this so as to disprove my point.
It is my contention that extremes of wealth allow for democratic government to be submerged and taken over by wealth. It’s very hard to look at what is going on now, where 76% of the public wants a strong public health insurance option and won’t get it, and where Wall Street gets $700 billion in three days, and not conclude that we are already governed by wealth. In other places I have made the point that we don’t have a functioning democracy, since our only means of expressing our wills on our own government are the Democrats and Republicans, and they are financed by pretty much the same people and policies don’t change as we switch back and forth between then. So it’s already accomplished – what’s that French expression?
Also, Dave, if you Google Chomsky, you’ll see that people have criticized him for falsely citing a Truman quote, of supporting Pol Pot, of supporting a French Holocaust denier, this in addition to citing his own work. It’s boilerplate. I do not regard him as second rate – he is simply like me, suffering from an exaggerated sense of injustice – where some revel in it, and others make their living off of injustice. Chomsky wants simple democracy, and suffers indignation, as do I, when I see violence and barbarism directed at other people by our country. He also does a good job at turning the mirror on ourselves, our own activities and cruelty and unquenchable greed, and for that reason he is not thought well of in this country, though is widely admired abroad, where people know more about American foreiggn policy. Freedom of speech works fine in this country so long as one has the good sense not to actually exercise it.
Steve – you are most insulting and lack self awareness. You don’t know much about me. I don’t resent wealth – I think it fine and dandy that people can become millionaires in this country. Millionaires are not the problem. I would like to be one, but I don’t have the ability to focus on wealth accumulation. It’s not my personality type. People trying to get rich are not the problem, though the way we are constantly trying to con and cheat and fool one another gets old. I have a very nice life – incredibly nice, and I don’t go around resenting others. I have a beautiful wife and good kids, I’m self-employed and don’t answer to anyone. We travel as we please. I have a curious mind and wake each day wanting to dig into things. I love writing. I have a graduate-school level IQ – that is, I probably should have gone for a Masters, but not a PHD, as I’m not that smart. ButI, like Chomsky, have an exaggerated sense of justice, a tendency to connect dots inappropriately, and a world view that differs significantly from your own. Life is beautiful.
When I talk about “wealth”, I’m not talking about people who are comfortable and have done well for themselves. I’m talking about groups and group behavior, infinitely complex, and yet understandable from a distance. Institutionalized greed exhibits in tax policy, absence of a democratic health care system, and wars of aggression, among other things. Authority structures allow our worst traits to come through, as people giving orders to do bad things do not carry out those orders. The people who carry out these policies are each probalby unaware of their own role in a larger evil. It is not a conspiracy. Your reference to Bilderbergers and stuff like that is very insulting, and such ideas are reductionist – fodder for stupid people, a way of making the world understandable for them. I do not understand the world very well. I only try.
This I know – the truth is not obvious, and you do not grasp any part of it.
Your words are loaded with venom. You don’t like me. I get that. I don’t much like you either, as you come across as kind of a dolt. So take your shots at me if you must, but understand that no matter what you do, I’m still going to love my life and my mind and the way I use it. I can’t help it. I’m having fun.
I also love writing. Did I say that?
If I were you I would actually present the data to prove your point. It’s no one’s job but yours to prove your assertions and, since I’ve already done the “googling” I can tell you that there is almost no data to support your claim.
Terms like “better democratic outcomes” are subjective and pretty meaningless. I don’t disagree that there is corporatist fascism happening now or in the past in the U.S. I suggest that perhaps your conclusions are correct and your logic (supported with no facts) wrong.
Furthermore, I don’t care a wit of your or anyone’s admiration of Chomsky. He’s a second rate intellect who stirs the ire of young idealists without rigorously addressing the downside of such notions like the thread-bear arguments of Engles that he embraces.
Yeah, he’s tortured all right – like all tenured professors, right? And he argues what an unjust country we are as he sits in his cocoon pontificating on the evils of mankind – while sometimes making shit up – and fails to make the argument against government writ large (because he’s both a phony anarchist and left-libertarian – as he describes himself.)
That can be easily done. There. Done. Wealth distribution, bottom 99%, top 1%, 1976 – 2004:
1976 80.1% 19.9%
1979 79.5% 20.5%
1981 75.2% 24.8%
1983 69.1% 30.9%
1986 68.1% 31.9%
1989 64.3% 35.7%
1992 62.8% 37.2%
1995 61.5% 38.5%
1998 61.9% 38.1%
2001 66.6% 33.4%
2004 65.7% 34.3%
It is affected by recessions – that is, those who own financial assets profit in bubbles and not so much in crashes.
Wealth owned by top 10%, 2006:
Denmark 65.0%
France 61.0%
Sweden 58.6%
UK 56.0%
Canada 53.0%
Norway 50.5%
Germany 44.4%
Finland 42.3%
Oddly, in these countries, ordinary citizens have more power over their governments – that is, they can make effective changes in leadership that actually change government policies (UK being an exception). Are the two connected? Perhaps – parliamentary form of government also helps. But the bottom line is that the U.S. is not a functioning democracy. I say it is because we are a plutocracy, and that an effective counterbalance to restore democratic governance would be to enact high marginal tax rates on earnings above a certain level – say $5 million (a dart thrown at a dart board), to tax estates as well ($3 million seems a nice exemption), to break up large companies, and to enact social welfare programs like universal health care and secondary education subsidies.
Now, Chomsky: He doesn’t inspire disagreement, but rather contempt. You sound like Horowitz. (By the way, if you check his “self-citations” you will see that he is, most times, merely asking you to check and earlier citation of an outside source. You’re parroting.) Horowitz is an odd duck, a hateful man who went from hating people from the left to hating people from the right. He has chosen Chomsky as his a special lover. Anyway, the venom rolling off your pen is very similar.
Chomsky is not a second-rate intellect, though his major accomplishments are in the area of linguistics. His methods are open, his citations, as with all writers, selected, but usually original sources. He is one who unpacks, the role of the historian. For that reason, I think of him as a historian, and beleive his work will stand the test of time – that is, when objective researchers look back to this period, they will pay much notice to Tom Friedman, for example.
The bulk of reaction to Chomsky is identical to that of Brits to Galloway – it’s both what he says and the fact that he says it. There are certain facts that we all mostly don’t know and don’t want to know (and understand it as wise not to know), and most of you are learned enough not to know these things. When someone points out things we are mostly smart enough not to know, there are several possible responses: Embrace him and dispute his facts (just kidding! Just kidding!); ignore him; or attack him personally. And it goes without saying that a man who has the temerity to say the things we know but know not to know has a second rate intellect. Unlike you.
He’ll be the first to tell you (you have read him so you know this) that he occupies a privileged position, that he will not be murdered or arrested for the views he holds. It’s not like he is in a U.S. de facto colony or a citizen of some poor schmucky country we have rescued from tyranny. He credits ordinary peasants of Nicaragua or citizens who had to balls to challenge Pinochet as being braver than he.
But you know this. you’ve read him, you first rate poseur, you.
oops – “…they will pay much notice notto Tom Friedman, for example
Mark, it’s not that I don’t like you, as you say, I don’t know you, but I do find you tiresomely tedious and predictable. If I was to Google some of your pat phrases I am sure that I would find millions of hits calling into question your uniqueness as a thinker. You find a framework that supports your positions, and then ignore any evidence that would conflict with it.
Mostly though, I resent your quasi-morality. You rail against everything that America does or doesn’t do. This is nothing more than an attempt to avoid thinking about the issue. You enjoy your moral paralysis because it absolves you of everything while you produce nothing. That is not being morally superior, this is moral cowardice.
Original thinkers are rare. That’s not even a point worth discussing. Of course you are going to find the things I think written elsewhere – no matter what it is, somebody somewhere thought it first, said it first. I try not to parrot – when I am knowingly quoting someone else, I say so. I’ve even gone so far as to give credit for my words to anonymous callers on talk radio. I am not original. OK?
I do ignore evidence that does not support my conclusions. I don’t like this, but most of what I believe I have come to beleive by a long process that years ago found me as a Christian conservative raised in a Republican household. It was a long and painful process to undo the thought processes and beliefs instilled in my head as a youth. I beg you try the same. Change is a slow process, but since I initially abandoned the right wing in the early 90’s, I have come to accept that your side is often right about the laziness and handout expectations of many Americans, that religion makes people happy and is mostly a good thing, that most women cherish their role as nurturers and are not victims of discrimination, that knowing discrimination based on surface data itself is a rare thing … I dare you, Steve, to find in yourself the courage to accept anything on the left as worthy, and then to turn around and dispute your fellow right wingers about it. You will learn about them what I have learned about Democrats – they shun those who are not true believers. Do a little research into that log in your own eye.
I do not claim to be morally superior, although I know it certainly comes off that way. You have to dig a little deeper. I am enthralled by Hannah Arendt’s concept of “desk murdering”. Most Americans are truly unaware of the horrors we visit on the rest of the planet. For most, it is simple ignorance. I have no claim to any superiority over them. For others, it’s avoidance – who wants to look in a mirror all the time? I don’t like that either. For others still, it’s denial. I do that too. For fewer still, it is full knowledge and manipulation. This is the one area where I have what you might think a weakness, what others might think a good quality – I cannot stand having power over others. I don’t even like controlling a dog.
The reaction that people have when someone points out their faults is anger. This is the reaction that I get, quite a bit. I accept it, and my biggest character flaw of all, I enjoy it. I don’t care if you are angry at me. I care what you think, I admit, I just don’t care that I make you angry.
Someday you’ll dig a little deeper, but after you have a few encounters with me, it’s usually only small steps taken from ignorance to avoidance to denial. And this is all I have accomplished with you: 1) I made you angry, and 2) I raised you from ignorance to avoidance and put you deep in denial.
My work here is done.
“My work here is done.”
Interesting.
Yeah, I’ve read him and I know his response. Don’t assume I haven’t. I was a card carrying member of the Socialist Party until 1976 when I switched to being a Democrat. I’ve read him well into the early 1980’s. In fact, I would say that he’s the one that introduced me to libertarianism. I had a script The Nation from 1973 to 1980 (as well as Ramparts, The Berkley Barb, The Village Voice – all when they were truly leftist publications. But you assume a few things that, as the lawyers would say, are not part of the body of evidence in what I’ve written.
But I think, after my own studies, that Chomsky misinterpreted Roseau and other enlightenment philosophers as the beginnings anarchosyndicalism. He makes a leap from classical liberalism to the dissolution of private property – even using Tocqueville as a bridge – then wandering off to social evolution discussed by Kant, Engels (I use Engels rather than Marx because Engels was the sociologist of the duet) and then to Hegel (who BTW had a strong influence on Hitler) and Rocker. That’s one reason I call him a second rate intellectual (and you won’t find that critique in Horowitz’s writing. I’m also aware of his writing on the dangers of “red socialism” but in all that I’ve read of his work I cannot remember where calls that “danger” mush more than a possibility over, what I consider to be, a likelihood. And as his writing became more anti-American and less anti-government per se the more conspiratorial he becomes – quite often with the overt use of conjecture. But I see where you get you tinfoil hat when it comes to propaganda (and your continual use of conjecture.)
So, at the end of the day what I find is a fellow who insists A) that the people need to be in control of their collective destiny and B) that they are easily manipulated so saviors like him (and you I suppose) need to inform all of us of the stupidity of plebiscite. I find that contradictory (not to mention supremely arrogant.)
To this day I’m a fan of his (past) fellow traveler, Chris Hitchens. I do believe that Kissinger (and Nixon) were likely war criminals. I was and still am an ardent opponent to our actions in S.E. Asia nor do I proffer any support of excuse for our actions in South America. But I also believe in joint culpability and think the idea that our actions in Cambodia are an excuse for Khmer Rouge. That’s not to let the U.S. off the hook but to hold other despots coincidentally accountable. But you see, Mark, my point isn’t much different than yours except that I distrust all governments. You, however, trust them in the administration of domestic welfare but distrust them on foreign affairs. I find that vexing and inconstant.
And yes, my story is similar to Horowitz in that I traveled from the far-left to another place (not really conservatism) but to a point that tells me that the primary function of government is to protect us from majority rule. Absent that, the ultimate evolution of any government leads to tyranny and the marginalization of human genius.
I get my ideas on propaganda from Ellul. Chomsky is not big on it, nor on Ellul, who thought that propaganda is inevitable and can be put to good use. I agree it is unavoidable, but also know that it is easily defeated. One only need be aware of its existence.
Chomsky talks only of Bernays, who was big in the field of advertising after he coaxed us into World War I. Bernays comes from the era when the vote had been extended to the full population, which then had to be marginalized on the presumption that the public cannot be trusted with policy making (true) and therefore had to be manipulated and coaxed into policies the elite thought worthwhile (false – see, for example, Iraq Invasion, 2003). He cites Walter Lippmann, the intellectual who surmised that to avoid rule by majority, the media had to work in service of government. That’s where Chomsky got the expression “Manufacturing Consent”.
I hold the U.S. accountable for Pol Pot in the same manner as Osama bin Laden is accountable for Bush/Cheney, in that we instilled such fear and anger in the Cambodian population that they welcomed a despot in reaction. The U.S. did not actually commit the crimes – that was Pot, and he is accountable. My reaction, again, is to those who do not even know of the massive bombing and destruction of Cambodian society that the U.S. did prior to Pot. As to accountability, if the U.S. is merely held responsible for the destruction of Vietnamese society, I’ll rest easy.
Chomsky is not a savior. I have said repeatedly that I regard him as a mere chronicler, a historian. I don’t sense in him any desire to have power over others, so I am like him, and that is probably why I like him.
I disagree with you on the matter of representative democracy – I believe in it, I believe it works and is better for more people than rule by wealth. Whatever its defects, it larger impact is that there is change, however gradual, in rulers and attitudes. I give credit to representative democracy for teh advnaces of the 20th century in civil right and enviornmental law. I don’t think those things would have advanced in the society you advoate.
Genius exists everywhere in small quantities, but needs to be given a chance to express itself. Democratic rule, or Canadian/European socialism if you must, builds a platform on whcih people can attain their highest ambitions if they so desire. Your notion that human genius is marginalized by a bigger role for government in daily life is Randian, and wrong. I’ll give you a bit of Steven Weinberg, who expressed this better than I can:
…It is a cruel joke of history that in the twentieth century the passion for equality has been used to justify communist states in which everyone was reduced to an equality of poverty. Everyone, that is, except for a small number of politicians and celebrities and their families, who alone had access to good housing, good food, and good medicine. Egalitarianism is perhaps the aspect of utopian thinking that has been most discredited by the failure of communism. These days anyone who urges a more equal distribution of wealth is likely to be charged with trying to revive the class struggle.
Of course, some inequality is inevitable. Everyone knows that only a few people can be concert violinists, factory managers, or major-league pitchers. In revolutionary France the ideal of equality soon gave way to the carri’re ouverte aux talents. It was said that each soldier in Napoleon’s army carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, but no one expected that many soldiers would get to use it. For my part, I would fight against any proposal to be less selective in choosing graduate students and research associates for the physics department in which I work. But the inequalities of title and fame and authority that follow inexorably from inequalities of talent provide powerful spurs to ambition. Is it really necessary to add gross inequalities of wealth to these other incentives?
This issue cannot be judged on purely economic grounds. Economists tell us that inequality of compensation fulfills important economic functions: just as unequal prices for different foods help in allocating agricultural resources to produce what people want to eat, so unequal rewards for labor and for capital can help in directing people into jobs, and their money into investments, of the greatest economic value. The difference between these various inequalities is that in themselves, the relative prices of wheat and rye are of no importance; they only serve the economic function of helping to adjust production and resources. But whatever its economic effects, gross inequality in wealth is itself a social evil, which poisons life for millions.
Those who grew up in comfortable circumstances often have trouble understanding this. They call any effort to reduce inequality “the politics of envy.” …
By “civilization” I mean not just art museums and grand opera but the whole range of public and private goods that are there not merely to help keep us alive but to add quality to our lives. Everyone can make his or her own list; for me, civilization includes classical-music radio stations and the look of lovely old cities. It does not include telemarketing or Las Vegas. Civilization is elitist; only occasionally does it match the public taste, and for this reason it cannot prosper if not supported by individual sacrifices or government action, whether in the form of subsidy, regulation, or tax policy.
The aspect of civilization that concerns me professionally is basic scientific research, like the search for the fundamental laws of nature or for the origins of the universe or of life — research that cannot be justified by foreseeable economic benefits. Along with all the good things that have come from the opening of free-market economies in Eastern Europe, we have seen the devastation in those countries of scientific establishments that cannot turn a profit. In the United States the opening of the telephone industry to free-market forces has led to the almost complete dismantling of pure science at the Bell Laboratories, formerly among the world’s leading private scientific-research facilities.
It might be worthwhile to let equality and civilization take their chances in the free market if in return we could expect that the withering of government would serve as a guarantee against oppression. But that is an illusion. For many Americans the danger of tyranny lies not in government but in employers or insurance companies or health-maintenance organizations, from which we need government to protect us. To say that any worker is free to escape an oppressive employer by getting a different job is about as realistic as to say that any citizen is free to escape an oppressive government by emigrating.
Emphasis added.
I saved this article, Five and a half utopias, The Atlantic, January, 2000 because it expressed so well the antidote to those of you who seem to believe that wealth accumulation equals freedom, that we who advocate breaking up wealth concentration don’t really understand the impossibility of equality, and that genius can only thrive in the absence of government. I disagree on all.
Mark, goddamit, stop putting words in my (our) mouth. First, I’ve never said that I don’t like representative democracy. I’ve said that I distrust government. Big difference. Seeondly, no one here has said “wealth accumulation equals freedom”. What we’ve said is that it’s a right that’s but one part of freedom (this point of yours is a repeated straw man.) I think that you not only employ hyperbole but you think that way. I never said that genius can only exist in the absence of government. I said that government marginalizes genius. And I’ve never, not once, endorsed any form of rule by wealth.
Then you say that we can only achieve libertarian goals by use of force but you deny that completely that breaking up “wealth” – however you define it – is not done with the threat of government force at the point of a gun if necessary.
Now, let’s talk a bit about those evil HMO’s that you emphasized about. Are you aware that the industry was mandated under the Nixon administration for all employers covered under ERISA? That the law that Nixon and a Democrat controlled congress mandated that if an employer offered health insurance they had to include an HMO option? Then the government comes to the rescue and passes worthless Patient Protection Act to undo the damage they caused in the first place. The government is an institutionalized wrecking crew.
[...] 23, 2009 Dave Budge has challenged me in a number of areas, as usual, and go see Electric City Weblog to get the full dose. [...]
Here’s what you said: I traveled from the far-left to another place (not really conservatism) but to a point that tells me that the primary function of government is to protect us from majority rule.
In other threads either you or Natelson have said that economic freedom is at the base of all other freedoms.
A fine distinction, and wrong.
You don’t have to say it. No one favors fascism either. It just sort of comes about due to short-sighted policies put in place. You’re guilty, whether you openly associate with the results of your philosophy in place or not.
Last I checked, Canada and Northern and Western Europe were not holding their citizens at gun point, nor were any fleeing. Hyperbole, perhaps? On the other hand, we have a long long legacy of free trade and supposed free market economics impoverishing countries, stealing their resources, and supporting their oppressive regimes. You can disassociate yourself from the thuggery with some merit, but the policies in place are free market anti-socialist. In fact, socialism is considered the enemy of freedom.
I’ve said very little about HMO’s, but it was an industry response, and I do recall that Nixon was listening to health care people when he undertook that policy. It’s what you get when these industries hold too much sway over government. Join me in supporting campaign fiance refomr.
My emphasis is on health insurance companies, not HMO’s. Enough.
1) Representative democracy does not conflict with protecting minorities. Does the bill of rights not comport with representative democracy? Did you ever bother to study constitutional debate?
2) I can’t speak for Rob but I’ve never said that economic freedom is at the base of all other freedoms. Find it anywhere. I wouldn’t have said it because it has nothing to do with many other liberties.
3) Tell me why I’m wrong as opposed to making some dictate the begs the question.
4) As to rule by wealth – you’re just wrong as to what I think. Again, the burden of proof is on you to show I think that way.
So either prove your assertions about me or knock it off.
Force. I bet if a Canadian or European decided not to pay their taxes they would be arrested at gun point – or threat thereof. It certainly is true here and is done on a regular basis. The state enforces its rules by threat of force. That’s the tool the state has that the population doesn’t.
HMO’s – your the one who added the emphasis to the point about the tyranny of corporatism which, BTW, I reject and so does Rob as far as I can tell.
That was me making the last comment.
One more thing. Campaign finance reform will not solve the problem of appeasement of special interests. A corporation can promise to bring jobs or spending to a representative’s district – or do other favors – that have as much value if not more – to a re-election campaign. Just look at Chris Dodd’s sweetheart deal with his Irish cottage. The only real answer is term limits. You’re deluding yourself if you think this is about campaign finance.
Your point, exactly? I also agree that the sun rises in the east.
Then you and Natelson differ. Deal with him, and excuse me for conflating you two.
But you don’t think that way! You’re being obtuse. If you really thought that way, you’d by a psychotic. I’m saying that you are blind to the fallout of your philosophy.
For years and years American liberal intelligentsia supported Joe Stalin. He had a rosy glow about him because he embraced a philosophy that made sense to them. If they could see everything that was going on, and still supported him, they too would be psychotic.
You’re not a bad guy. You’re very intelligent. You’ve run headsquare into a contradiction – economic freedom leads to huge disparities of wealth which defeat representative democracy. The way to preserve representative democracy is to curtail economic freedom. That confounds you. But there are no contradictions, only faulty premises.
Reasonable people have come to terms with this apparent contradiction by realizing that they have ultimate control of government in a representative democracy. It’s very difficult to have a free society without government, which is legalized force. It’s tough, but it’s the only way it works. “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Mark, my opinions about term limits are not “circular”. A circular argument is when two premises are supported only by each other such as “the bible is true because it is the word of God. The proof of that God exists in the fact that we have a bible.
My argument is that by making elected official moving targets special interests cannot become entrenched in a candidates motivations over the long term. And it’s over the long term where the real damage is done.
Also, do you ever question your own view about concentration of wealth and other ways to sever the relationship between government and wealth?
One last thing about government’s pernicious threat to liberty as you laud the Canadian and EU “representative republics.” Have you been paying any attention to the vile attacks on free speech in those countries? Your view of liberty seems to be highly selective.
“You’ve run headsquare into a contradiction – economic freedom leads to huge disparities of wealth which defeat representative democracy. The way to preserve representative democracy is to curtail economic freedom. That confounds you. But there are no contradictions, only faulty premises.”
This is the same argument as “We had to destroy the village to save it.” This is neither logic nor argument, but dogma.
Thanks, Wulfgar. I meant that you’re solving a problem by transferring it to a new party. Perhaps I should have said “circusular”.
I know exactly what you meant – that money has no influence if a candidate does not have to stand for reelection. It has some merit. But tell me, if you know, what Tom Daschle has been doing since he was voted out of office. What is Conrad Burns doing now? I can see your idea working if 1) We limit them to one term only; and 2) prohibit them from accepting employment from contributors after leaving office. Or gifts.
It’s so much easier just to eliminate the inherent corruption and publicly finance campaign. And I must say that it’s odd that you want to solve a problem of undue influence not by removing the influence, but rather telling people who they are not allowed to vote for. Interesting that you place the rights of money over those of voters.
What an odd question. Do i walk around in certitude? No, of course not. It’s a complciated world. People vary widley, but do tend to behave predictably as groups – that’s as close as we can come to order in this world. They mostly don’t conspire – tehy don’t need to, but in the same circumstances, do tend to think alike.
Unless you’re saying that the problem is caused by their health care systems, that’s not much of a point. People are the same wherever you go. Prejudice runs deep in the lower classes.
Steve:
Mark, your ADD is getting the better of you. The comment about the diminishment of free speech is germane to my point that governments, by their nature, all move toward reducing liberty and marginalizing genius. Those “enlightened” governments of the EU and Canada are making a frontal assault on speech. Representative democracy has to be limited to protect minority rights and the closer any government moves toward pure democracy the less freedoms are provided to its citizens.
ADD? First time for that insult. I don’t see it, as I am not a hunter, and the few times I hunted, I received no gratification, and was terrible at it. Almost shot a truck. ADD is hunter v farmer, by the way. I’m not a farmer either.
There are frontal assaults on speech, and backal ones. Yes, governments don’t like to be criticized, and these last few years in the U.S. it has gotten out of hand, as people who spoke out against Bush were ostracized and in many cases arrested. And yes, those governments, any governments that cannot tolerate severe criticism on public forums deserve your criticism.
Now, take a look around you at all the pseudonyms, save you and me and Craig and a few others. Why? Why does blog traffic on weekends slow to a trickle? People are speaking up, but feel the need to do so anonymously. Why?
The answer is the oppression of the workplace. There is no more effective damper on free speech as the economic relationship.
I’ll take responsibility for mine, you do the same?
Your lumping of genius and free speech together is odd. Genius is genius. Government employs it as well as the private sector. It’s not that that I fear, but the rise of mediocrity to power due to undue influence on money that causes more problems.
Ref: Geroge W. Bush.
Names?
And genius is only genius when it produces something (does a falling tree make noise in woods if there is no one to listen?) Or as Einstein said “An ambitious idiot is smarter than a lazy genius.”
Dixie Chicks, the people who were arrested protesting the war at the White House, the journalists arrested at the Republican convention in St. Paul, Cindy Sheehan, one gal who was arrested for wearing a protest T-shirt at a Bush speech. You go look it up.
But I am reminded a bit of A Russian General who watched us attack Iraq in 1996, and said “This is the nature of democracy: You send in the planes and drop the bombs. Then you gather in the journalists and tell them to applaud. We need to study that. Similarly, and I’m too lazy (or ADD) to look this up, anotehr Russian commented that the genius of Americans was taht we allow the protests to go on, but just ignore them. In Russia, they arrested protesters.
It all serves to remind us that we are not a functioning democracy.
And I agree that genius is genius only if it produces something. You are saying taht anything government-funded will not produce genius. Several hundred college campuses and the NIH and the Pentagon (not for good) beg to differ. Most advances in pharmaceuticals, for example, are government-funded. The private sector is busy inventing new diseases that need daily doses of expensive and ineffective medicines.
So much for private sector genius.
Umm, no I’m not. Word stuffing.
“you don’t know what it’s like to flip burgers, wash dishes, or look at your shoes and hide your anxiety when someone tries to form a union.” – Mark T.
All you guys were doing so well I was going to stay out — but this example of Mark T.’s stereotyped thinking was just too precious:
Fact: I flipped burgers in McDonald’s over a very hot summer in Denver (the big one at Pennsylvania & Colfax). Also have had jobs that involved changing toilet paper, swabbing floors, carrying golf-clubs (didn’t play any), lifting crates, cleaning out refrigerators, and pulling drowners out of the water. (My wife, by the way, who shares most of my political views, got through college on a combination of a National Merit Scholarship and dish washing.)
You are right (if this is what you meant to say) that I didn’t “look at my shoes” in anxiety when someone mentioned joining a union. I joined (International Building Service Employees, AFL-CIO.) In fact, I became an organizer. In fact, I not only organized, but helped lead a job action — and was elected to and served on the negotiation team that got us all raises. (And I was a conservative then, too.)
Mark T.: You do best, as you generally have here in this series of comments, when you meet opposing arguments head on. When you try to classify other people, though, you just look really silly.