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The Weaponization of Economic Theory
This is an excellent article by Michael Hudson. The very end is a powerful commentary on the neoliberal ideology, defined in Wiki as "based on the advocacy of economic liberalizations, free trade, and open markets. Neoliberalism supports privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation of markets, and promotion of the private sector's role in society. In the 1980s, much of neoliberal theory was incorporated into mainstream economics."
This doctrine has been used to shift power, money and other resources to the members at the very top of our society, with great support from the non-top who have been successfully misled into thinking they are supporting an equitable system. It's not, at the very foundations. If you read nothing else, read the final section in which Michael explains why neoliberalism is a weaponization of economic theory - a "doctrine of power and autocracy combined with deregulation and dismantling of democratic law" - aimed at replacing the government's power to protect the people with an oligarchic power to oppress them. It is not about free markets and free trade, as the terms were traditionally used by economists. It is about central planning by financial centers, and it requires deregulation and a tax structure favoring banking and financial institutions, and their major customers, real estate interests and monopolies. We have that now.
Michael argues that "the result is a doctrine of financial war not only against labor but also against industry and government. Gaining the financial power to indebt economies at increasing speed, the banking and financial sector is siphoning resources away from the real economy. Its business plan is not based on employing labor to expand output, but simply to transfer as much of the existing flow of revenue as possible into its own hands, by capitalizing all such revenue into interest payments, on loans collateralized and pledged to creditors." In his conclusion, Michael compares our state to the economic polarization characterizing ancient Rome before its ruin. ~ Ilene
The Weaponization of Economic Theory
Courtesy of Michael Hudson
Europe’s three needs: a debt write-down, a real central bank, and a more efficient tax system
Brussels Talk, Madariaga College, Governing Globalisation in a World Economy in Transition, June 27, 2012
What can Europe learn from the United States?
First, the United States – like Canada, England and China – have central banks that do what central banks outside of Europe were created to do: finance the budget deficit directly.
I have found that it is hard to explain to continental Europe just how different the English-speaking countries are in this respect. There is a prejudice here that central bank financing of a domestic spending deficit by government is inflationary. This is nonsense, as demonstrated by recent U.S. experience: the largest money creation in American history has gone hand in hand with debt deflation.
It is the commercial banks that have created the Bubble Economy’s inflation, from North America to Europe. They have recklessly lent mortgage credit and other credit far beyond the ability of domestic economies to pay. A real central bank can create credit on its electronic keyboards just as easily as commercial banks can do. But central banks do not create credit for speculative purposes. They do not make junk mortgages based on “liars’ loans” (the liars are the banks, not the borrowers), based on fictitious evaluations by crooked appraisers, and sold fraudulently to investment banks to package and sell to gullible Europeans, pension funds and other customers.
In short, there is no need for the present austerity. If Europe acted like the United States, it could bail out the banks.
But would this be a good thing? My second point is that there are good reasons not to fund a dysfunctional debt overhead, financial and tax system. It is preferable to change these systems.
In the United States, Paul Krugman has urged the Federal Reserve to simply lend banks an amount equal to their bad loans and negative equity (debts in excess of the market price of assets). He urges a “Keynesian” program of spending to re-inflate the economy back to bubble levels. This is the liberal answer: to throw money at the problem, without seeking structural reform.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) disagreed last week in its annual report. It said – and I believe that it is right – that monetary policy alone cannot solve an insolvency problem. And that is what Europe has now: not merely illiquidity for government bonds and corporate debt, but insolvency when it comes to the ability to pay.
In such circumstances, the BIS explains, it is necessary to write down the debt to the amount that can be paid – and to undertake structural reforms to prevent the Bubble Economy from recurring.
The Canadian postal workers union has an informal slogan: “A job that’s not worth doing is not worth doing well.” I might apply this to Europe by saying that a badly structured economy is not worth subsidizing or saving. It should be made well.
This entails, for starters, writing down the debt overhead. That is what created the German Economic Miracle of 1948: the Allied Monetary Reform that wiped out debts over and above minimum working balances, and wages debts owed by employers to employees. It was easy to write down debts that were owed to Nazis. It is much harder to do so when the debts are owed to powerful and entrenched institutions – especially to banks.
Take the case of a Greek debt writedown. This would hurt the Greek banks first and foremost, and also more innocent German insurance companies and banks.I have a modest suggestion as to how to handle this. First, let the Greek banks go under. They helped stymie the Greek government’s attempt to stop tax evasion and money laundering. They have been described as co-conspirators and corrupt. Of course their depositors should be made whole by a standardized, public bank insurance scheme. But bank bondholders and stockholders, and even non-insured depositors, are another matter.
As for the German institutions, if a Greek Clean Slate pushes them into insolvency, the German Government should do what the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) is empowered to do: take them over, make all the depositors and policy holders whole, and operate these institutions as a public option – either temporarily or permanently.
The alternative is austerity and debt deflation that will leave European markets shrinking, living standards falling, and turn Europe into what U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has said so often: “Old Europe,” as if it is too late to be saved. Any discussion of the U.S. economy necessarily involves the global context. So it is necessary to discuss not only domestic U.S. developments, but also relations with Europe and the BRICS countries.
The most important dynamic is financial. A continued decline in real estate prices, coupled with local government debts, has led to debt deflation. As personal and corporate income are diverted to pay debt service, spending on new consumption and investment goods is cut back. Sales and employment opportunities are falling off, especially for new entrants into the labor force. Major categories of debt cannot be repaid in Europe and the United States, except by foreclosures transferring property to creditors. Short-term financial aims overshadow the long-term adjustments that ultimately will be needed: debt writedowns in the public and private sectors. The alternative to this “business as usual” scenario is for the U.S. and European economies to look increasingly like the Baltics – austerity aggravating economic shrinkage.
The U.S. Government as well as European governments have taken bad bank debts onto the public balance sheet. This is not a problem for the United States, whose Federal Reserve can simply create the credit to roll over its debt. But for Europe, public debts simply cannot be paid under current central bank constraints. Instead of changing the central bank rules, the European Union is willing to plunge the continent into depression and economic shrinkage.
U.S. Austerity and deeper Negative Equity
The U.S. economy is free of the monetary constraint that Europeans impose on themselves. The Federal Reserve does what central banks are supposed to do: monetize government deficit spending by buying public debt. However, the increase in new government debt creation has not been mainly to finance deficit spending to increase economic activity and employment, to invest in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure or providing states and cities with the revenue sharing that in the past enabled them to balance their local budgets. Instead, the government has created debt in an attempt to re-inflate real estate markets back toward Bubble Economy levels. The idea was for the economy to “borrow its way out of debt.”
In practice, there was not much hope of success. The banks sent the $800 billion of Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing (QE2) in 2012 abroad, mainly to the BRICS economies in the form of interest rate and currency arbitrage. The banks’ idea was to earn their way out of their own negative equity, but not by lending to a real estate market whose prices continue to decline. This is forcing more properties into negative equity – and that leaves the banks themselves in a negative equity position. So there is little new lending for real estate, to consumers, or to business. Markets are being shrunk by debt deflation.
States and cities also face a shrinking tax base, and many are subject to constitutional requirements for balanced budgets. The path of least resistance has been to underfund their pension plans – which have fallen far behind, especially inasmuch as most plans assume an 8% annual rate of return. This rate – assuming a savings doubling time of just nine years – has become even more fictitious today than it was a decade ago. So some localities have taken risks and lost – with their loss being the counterpart to earnings by the largest banks on derivatives.
The bottom line here is that the U.S. economy is not in a position to “borrow its way out of debt.” The outlook thus is for a similar austerity to that of Europe.
Financial fraud has been effectively decriminalized in the United States. In a nutshell, people have lost trust in the banks – and the financial sector itself mistrusts its fellow institutions. So the non-bank money market funding has dried up for business, and individuals are afraid to invest in the stock market.
President Obama retains his progressive rhetoric, but actually is neoliberal. (His Senate mentor was Joe Lieberman who helped him go for the money and choose Rubinomics advisors.) Mitt Romney pretends to be a right-wing extremist, but seems reasonable on economic policy. However, he may feel under pressure to support right-wing Republican lobbyists in the Congressional leadership. Even if he does, there will not be much difference from the Obama administration. The U.S. situation thus is much like that of Britain under Labour party leadership in recent years: centrist or even left-wing rhetoric on social policies, but neoliberal financial policy favoring the banks.
BOTTOM LINE: Neither the U.S. nor European economies can “grow their way out of debt.” Their debt deflation will worsen, and their budget deficits will widen.
The U.S. Political Outlook
As in Europe, there is little alternative from the ostensible left – from the Democratic Party, the labor unions and allied interests. President Obama seems likely to win this November’s presidential elections, and he is a neoliberal – probably more so than the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
The common backers of the Republican and Democratic Parties – mainly, Wall Street and real estate interests – realize that a Democratic President is in a better position than a Republican to neutralize Congressional or Senate opposition to scaling back and privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Democratic politicians are more likely to counter Republican proposals along these lines than proposals put forth by their party’s own president. The situation is much like Tony Blair out-Thatchering Britain’s Conservatives in trying to privatize British rail and tube infrastructure and promoting the Public-Private Partnership plan. This is essentially the Rubinomics position supported by the Democratic leadership.
Many voters simply will stay home, so Mr. Romney may have a chance to win, based on support in the South and the West – and even perhaps some Midwestern swing states. In either case, the 2013-16 administration looks like it will be a bipartisan neoliberal austerity.
From the U.S. vantage point, Europe is a dead zone. It looks to me like financial and fiscal self-destruction.
There would be some hope for progress if the financial crisis was used to clean up bureaucracy and shift the tax system off the cost of living and doing business to a land tax on economic rent. This would prevent a new real estate bubble from developing, by holding down the “free” site value that could be capitalized into bank loans. This would lower the cost of housing, and also free employment from taxation. And it could go hand in hand with reducing the size of the Greek bureaucracy, for instance.
But I don’t see this happening in Europe. So financial austerity is likely to aggravate the budget deficits rather than help them. European economies are likely to grow “surprisingly” less than forecasts suggest, and news media will report this as “unanticipated slowdown” “to everyone’s surprise” and so forth.
The likely political reaction in Europe is likely to be a nationalistic opposition to relinquishing government power. But this opposition is likely to come more from the right than from the left of the political spectrum. This is what is so striking about today’s political situation both in Europe and the United States: the failure of the left to provide an economic alternative, and of the right to reform the tax system and corruption.
BOTTOM LINE: The U.S. trade balance may improve as consumer budgets are squeezed, limiting imports, and as domestic shale gas cuts import demand. But capital inflows are unlikely to increase. And until interest rates begin to rise, capital outflows will continue (much as was the case in Japan after 1990). The U.S. is thus suffering a “Japan syndrome.”
Increasing global fracture into regional blocks
Instead of international “cooperation,” I see a regional rivalry among blocs polarizing between the U.S.-centered NATO bloc and the BRICS, expanding their influence. Europe looks pretty much left out, as its markets are not growing and it is not a prime investment area. The BRICS countries are likely to start erecting capital controls against easy-credit policies in the United States funding a takeover of their assets.
Financial flows and capital flight are putting upward currency pressure on the BRICS at the expense of the euro and the dollar. If the euro does not decline against the dollar, it is largely because both currencies are equally weak together and share similar problems. Both economies will shrink, leading to more insolvency for real estate and also for government budgets. This Euro-American shrinkage is likely to spur moves in China and other BRICS to rely more on growth of their internal market. China’s wage levels are likely to rise, prompting production to aim more to satisfy domestic consumer demand than foreign export demand.
The main problem for China is that one of the first expenditures of families with rising revenue is to buy autos. The government’s response is to invest more in public transportation, and is likely to impose an environmental tax. More dispersion of urban centers is likely in order to minimize transportation costs – and more infrastructure spending in general.
Capital controls are likely, and also a denomination of foreign trade and investment in BRICS currencies rather than the U.S. dollar or euro. This tendency will accelerate if U.S. and European military policy continues to expand into Asia and other regions. As matters look at present, U.S. military diplomacy will focus more on trying to recover influence in Latin America, including privatization of key infrastructure to buyers (on credit) who will engage in rent extraction, adding to the price level. The result of debt deflation is thus to raise the cost of living and doing business for much of the economy, squeezing labor and commerce alike.
These policies are likely to be characterized as “muddling through.” This means postponing what looks like the inevitable end game: a large write-down of government debt, a shift away from the dollar as global currency (quite possibly with a re-introduction of gold to settle balance-of-payments deficits). Diplomatically, these changes will constrain U.S. military spending, while pressuring Europe to re-orient its geographic focus if it is to resume economic growth and pull itself out of a feedback of debt deflation, unemployment and even emigration.
The neoliberal challenge
The term “neoliberalism” misrepresents and even inverts the classical liberal idea of free markets. It is a weaponization of economic theory, kidnapping the original liberal ethic that sought to defend against special privilege and unearned income. To classical economists, a free market meant one free of unearned income, defined as land rent, natural resource rent, monopoly rent and rent-extracting privilege. But to neoliberals a free market is one free from taxes or regulation of such rentier income, and indeed gives it tax favoritism over wages and profits.
Neoliberalism and neo-conservatism are complementary doctrines of power and autocracy combined with deregulation and dismantling of democratic law. The aim is to replace government power as used to protect the people with an oligarchic power to oppress the people.
Today, the neoliberal aim is to cripple government power, enabling a free-for-all for the financial sector. Protecting civil freedoms are also heavily signposted, but the high price of legal representation is a barrier for most. A doctrine primarily of the financial sector, the aim is to un-tax banks and financial institutions and their major customers: real estate and monopolies.
Neoliberalism is a doctrine of central planning, which is to be shifted from governments to the more highly centralized financial centers. This requires disabling public power to regulate and tax banking and finance. As a transition, ideological deregulators such as Alan Greenspan and Tim Geithner have been appointed to the key regulatory positions in the United States.
The result is a doctrine of financial war not only against labor but also against industry and government. Gaining the financial power to indebt economies at increasing speed, the banking and financial sector is siphoning resources away from the real economy. Its business plan is not based on employing labor to expand output, but simply to transfer as much of the existing flow of revenue as possible into its own hands, by capitalizing all such revenue into interest payments, on loans collateralized and pledged to creditors.
The effect is no more democratic than the Roman democracy, which arranged voting by “centuries” headed by the largest landowners – essentially an acre-per-vote, to make an analogy. In the U.S. case, votes are bought not by land as such, but by dollars – mainly from the financial sector. In the end, to be sure, most dollars come from rent extraction.
The result must be economic polarization, above all between creditors and debtors as in Rome. So the end stage of neoliberalism threatens a Dark Age of poverty/immiseration – most characteristically, one of debt peonage. And just as Rome’s creditor class and its predatory imperial expansion brought down the Roman Empire and reduced it to mere subsistence, so the combination of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism today seeks to globalize itself, spreading austerity even as it brings technological progress to sovereign debtors.
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Nobody, and I do mean nobody, is promoting the proper action which Dr. Hudson explains here. Defaulting on any debt at all is totally unacceptable to the financial elite, as they are the ones who will lose everything if that happens. Half of us in the US are worth nothing, so we could really give a shit what happens in the bond market. The other half of us are the ones who are expected to pay back the debt we had no part in creating. It is odious debt, meant to force the world's citizens into perpetual slavery.
Fuck these bankers and politicians who should be brought up on RICO charges.
MrBoompi
Well, some local governments are considering using "eminent domain" to seize underwater properties at "market value" (and then resell them to the occupants).
That's a form of default the banks strongly oppose.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/21-1
To the collapse. To the collapse. Onward into the collapse. To the collapse. To the collapse.
The collapse has already happened, we just have not felt the full impact.
Guest Post after Guest Post, years of them here-- Genius! --yet Not One to mention the unmentionable and its Ubermenschen
same again here: no Dearth Of Salesmen, ever, all such posterboyz seem entirely selfsatisfied with what scholarship as seems sufficient enough to circumlocumulate the globe with so much rigorous obfuscation and it's so complicated as to leave the impression that, again and again after the selfsame SalesPitch, all's left or ever existed in fact Sells Itself
SALES: "ideological deregulators such as Alan Greenspan and Tim Geithner have been appointed to the key regulatory positions in the United States."
appointed __by Who
SALES: "The result is a doctrine of financial war not only . . . simply to transfer as much of the existing flow of revenue as possible into its own hands"
Whose Hands
WHOSE WAR you mouthy motherfucker
kill the suspense if not the fucking incessant Re:
dun
dun
dun
dun
Dancy, with the stars: rome, the dark ages and the rest of your desultory scholasticism and echolalia you high-grade cretin
whodunnit
NAME IT!
or
suffer more
results like
this, Insult:
"the combination of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism
today seeks to globalize itself"
by Itself?
. . . a totally platonic plague issuing from its cave-- The Idea --the Idea of Itself alone enough to murder millions, in your own time, dr pangloss, right in front of your own eyes, as you leave us with . . .
I D E A immutable ubiquitous MassMurder committing autonomous anonymous MURDER, ITSELF
you selfaggrandizing fucking fool
You like the article, if I understand you correctly?
LOL.
I was thinking this looked like something out of the rambling Ted Kaczynski manifesto.
First, let the Greek banks go under. They helped stymie the Greek government’s attempt to stop tax evasion and money laundering.
*************
Wasn't the Greek government itself elbow deep in debt swaps with the squid to cover up unreported debt in order for them to be eligible for a seat in the Euro-
fixing debt and fixing the money supply issues will not fix our current predicament... I realize that you can't tackle every subject in an article, but to not mention offshoring while talking about standards of living is near sighted at best. Of course, we've got the resource glass ceiling to deal with too.
The monetary prolifigacy and cooperation amongst the worlds central banks has gone on for so long that standard solutions do not apply. Of course debtors the world over should be able to default and, likewise, their creditors be forced to eat the losses... there should be no plea to legislators to cover the losses...
Now, where would this put us? Well... those who managed to squirrel away enough wealth before the crash should come out smelling like roses after the fire sale. What would this do to the wealth gap? Help? I'll posit that our present monetary prolifigacy, albeit ill fated, is actually what's keeping up the standard of living... although the standard is continuously eroded via price increases in necessities. Ok, so we have the jubilee and then wake up tomorrow with no jobs, no manufacturing base, and a world away that will still do it cheaper? Does the currency survive in your scenario??? If so, how would this help with redevelopment of a job base? What is our future growth mechanism?
The article simply leaves too much to be desired... at best.
this comment is better than the article. indeed it really is just an equalization of living standards globally. the financialization of that difference / spread in the west has maintained the 'illusion' that equalization hasnt yet occured when it already has. there is your deficit. there is your debt.
the fact that americans have an extremely elevated opinion of themselves and their worth only makes it funnier. to think that they are actually (on average) worth even the current minimum wage is laughable.
current wages i pay my people runs about $120 a month for full time staff and that is about 30% more than my competition. this is reality.
One thing left out was a detailed plan for the appropriate debt write off that he clearly favors. Of course, most of the article focused upon what he expects to actually happen, not what he would wish.
I don't get the feeling (and you're right, it's left open) that he would wish for a "crash" unwind process . . . which very well could be hell on Earth.
I'd like to hear more from him, too.
Sounds complicated and borders on apolitical, must be a conspiracy theory.
good find, good article!!!
the weaponisation of decadent society. Period. 12 dead for no rhyme or reason. Except the defense of 2nd amendment rights as casus belli to exert ones inalienable rights in a theater and it leads to the killing of innocents; never to killing the despots.
Something wrong there; is it just human nature or indulgence of perverse delusion?
Killing the despots does not need a second amendment it needs collective purpose. All the private guns in the world will never achieve what collective will does. Lone rangers are good in comics and bad in cinema theater reality.
PS : Neo liberalism and neo conseravtism = RR+Bushes +BC + BO. Neoliberal as I undrstand it is used as the european term and not the US term. It corresponds to neo libertarian in the US jargon; aka RR>Bush>Greenspan>GWB.
A collective of unarmed citizens will be killed in an instant by their government who has a smaller heavily armed collective which is paid by them.
The horrendous and insane killing of 12 in a theater has nothing to do with lawfull gun ownership. Other than by those who use senseless and vile acts by clearly deranged individuals to gin up support for their political agendas.
There is an agenda alright and it has nothing to do with f r e e d o m OR truth.
News headlines: Batman Premiere Massacre Was A Neuromarketing Experiment
Read history guerilla war of attrition brings down all governments. People's revolutions start without guns. The 20th century proves it time and time again. The Vietcong got the guns once they had the WILL to fight the french and then the US. French revolution the same. Guns never win wars alone. People do. And they find the guns and even the resources to bring down empires more armed than they. Many decisive battles were won by smaller more determined armies. Even in the nuclear age. In democratic societies the vote brings down despots. If the will is there.
As for the private gun culture fueling anarchy; ask yourself if that is not the case in Mexico today and maybe elsewhere tomorrow, in first world.
+1 FP
If guns are responsible for murders,
Then pencils are responsible for spelling errors.
And spoons made Rosie O'Donnell FAT !!
GOA
The weaponization is at a much lower level- using government to institutionalize and sustain a money system built on infinite debt and to bring all aspects of economic activity into a fiat-money regime coupled with a tax on nominal income. This enables infinite expansion of the money supply, and defining any increase in nominal terms as taxable income. It also enables issuing pre-defaulted debt instruments, which is government debt that was never intended to be repaid value for value, but at best on nominal terms.
If we think the LIBOR scam was the biggest fraud that mainly benefitted banks, it is but a fraction of the fiat money, nominal income taxation scam that mainly benefits governments.
Speaking of weaponization n' shit.....anyone see the new "Batman" movie?
Not quite deep enough.
The sad truth is that neoliberals (conservatives) have joined forces with progressives (liberals) to enrich both government and corporations at the expense of individuals; thus the Kleptoligarchy.
The decimation of the rule of law has been pivotal; it is the reason CORZINE and all the other crooks walk free while small time players like Madoff are jailed.
The Supine Court has aided and abetted the Kleptoligarchy by giving corporations the rights of individuals, and taking away the rights of individuals in decisions such as KELO vs. City of New London.
This is not a political battle but one of Collectivists and Money-Grubbers colluding against the individual and the middle class. Arguing that the left or the right will save us, or that the government or free markets are the answer, is moot.
Supposed champions of free markets have colluded with government collectivists to give us the worst of both worlds. The two-headed hydra of corporations and government united to eat the middle class and punish responsible individuals. It enriches both the Kleptocrats and the Oligarchs, enslaves the dull and indolent, and crushes the spirit of the individual.
Free markets work when there are consequences for failure and the rule of law is enforced.
Government works when there is no reward for failure and the rule of law is enforced.
The Kleptoligarchy relishes rewarding failure and not enforcing the rule of law as it ensures their continued power and wealth building at the bottom and top of society while crushing individual choice, rights, liberty, and responsibility.
We have never seen a free market from our birth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ITkCCLKqM&feature=related
There is nothing wrong with neoliberal ideology provided you stick to the other rule conveniently forgotten by pretty much every bullshitting asswipe that passes off as a political figure these days:
NO BAILOUTS for ANYBODY, EVER.
Without failure there can be no real success. You hit the main theme of the FED and central banks-bailouts for failure. Capitalism functions only when creative destruction provide the fertilizer for future growth. We should have tried in in 2008. No, AIG, C, GM, etc.
and NO monopoly or dominant position to allow Big Business to clean out the others. But who will bell the cat if it ain't honest government? We need honest government to be the rule maker, umpire and policeman.
"We need honest government to be the rule maker, umpire and policeman."
"Honest government" is an oxymoron by definition. As congresscritter Virginia Fox "honestly" said in defense of a colleague's pork-barrel spending bill, "We legally steal," the point being that while one can legally steal, one cannot morally steal. Thus the inherent dishonesty of government, which has no other form of sustenance than legalized theft, and thus the reason why government is the worst form of governance:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-governance-free-society
The state can kiss my ass.
Then you deny three thousand years of western civilization from Socrates to today. The state is us!
We have to make that work as civic minded politically alive citizens. YOU have no solution other than going back to cave man logic! Civilization teaches us that the tuff guy wins in that logic and takes it all for himself.
Its called monarchy, oligarchy, military dicatatorship, despotism; you name it.
Anarchy and small man's rights never win as human nature is the deciding element in civilization and it, as well the power quest that emanates from collective living, hates a vacuum and loves to encourage the weak and under-organised to become sheeple to the tuff guy. Sad but true; this is history on an incessantly recurrent basis; aka Greek city states and Italian city states prisoners to larger empires for centuries. The USA does not want to go back to a mosaic of selfish inward looking units as they will be sitting ducks to local wars and DISUNION. It will be regression as for ancient Greece and Italian city states in the face of new empires.
The search for good governance, the separation of powers to ensure human nature does not coalesce into monopoly/oligarchy power groups, stays our best bet againt political regression to despotism and tyranny. Its always been an uphill task and a never ending quest. We know no other route. We are truly collectively Sisyphus's sons when the going gets tuff!
Don't go back to thinking cave man ways; aka gold, guns and bullets in your personal hide-out. It is NOT the nation's collective solution. Never will be! It only leads to delusional acts where people living in virtual hopium turn their personal arsenal, including assault guns, on the innocent; thus becoming the instruments of anarchy that the despots love to see propagated as it feeds the collective psyche and aids their own distorted agenda of solidifying the police state!
"Then you deny three thousand years of western civilization from Socrates to today. The state is us!"
No, I don't deny it. Rather, I accept the fact that three millennia, and more, of conquest, subjugation, death, destruction, and impoverishment have taken a horrific toll on humanity. Which is to say that the state is only "us" insofar as that which makes us human -- i.e., our innate desire and ability to cooperate for our mutual benefit -- is either denied outright or allowed only insofar as it can feed the coffers of the state and those who control it.
"We have to make that work as civic minded politically alive citizens."
As Alfred Jay Nock rightly said, "Sending in good people to reform the state is like sending in virgins to reform whorehouse." Thus, the "civic minded" can do as they will within the confines of a Coke-or-Pepsi duopoly, but "politically alive citizens" they are not, as they are only perpetuating the status (statist) quo in the willing slavery of "representative democracy."
"YOU have no solution other than going back to cave man logic! Civilization teaches us that the tuff guy wins in that logic and takes it all for himself."
I have the same solution society has always had, and if you had bothered to read the article that I cited, you'd know that polycentric law is commonplace and needs no other law over and above it. For while the latter constitutes regimented order, and thus the stifling of the human spirit, the former constitutes spontaneous order and thus the ongoing fulfillment of the human spirit.
"Its called monarchy, oligarchy, military dictatorship, despotism; you name it."
Dystopia in each and every case, and yet you defend it. How pathetic.
"Anarchy and small man's rights never win as human nature is the deciding element in civilization and it, as well the power quest that emanates from collective living, hates a vacuum and loves to encourage the weak and under-organized to become sheeple to the tuff guy. Sad but true; this is history on an incessantly recurrent basis; aka Greek city states and Italian city states prisoners to larger empires for centuries. The USA does not want to go back to a mosaic of selfish inward looking units as they will be sitting ducks to local wars and DISUNION. It will be regression as for ancient Greece and Italian city states in the face of new empires."
The forced union we have lived under for a century and a half is the cause of the "DISUNION" we are now experiencing. And only by putting an end to forced union can we unite ourselves in a matter befitting our species.
"The search for good governance, the separation of powers to ensure human nature does not coalesce into monopoly/oligarchy power groups, stays our best bet againt political regression to despotism and tyranny. Its always been an uphill task and a never ending quest. We know no other route. We are truly collectively Sisyphus's sons when the going gets tuff!"
Your jailers thank you for your support.
"Don't go back to thinking cave man ways; aka gold, guns and bullets in your personal hide-out. It is NOT the nation's collective solution. Never will be! It only leads to delusional acts where people living in virtual hopium turn their personal arsenal, including assault guns, on the innocent; thus becoming the instruments of anarchy that the despots love to see propagated as it feeds the collective psyche and aids their own distorted agenda of solidifying the police state!"
Hopium is the drug of the defeated. What a shame that you and so many millions like you are hooked on it and are thus unable to think outside your prison cells.
OUTSTANDING!!!! It is printed and will be placed bedside for a nightly re-read.
Take that Slick Willy and your Rubenesk NAFTA/WTO BS - and GHW Bush and your "New World Order" you all sold us (the American people) down the road.
The truth is leaking out - a long time victim of Corpo-media (my term). Corpo-media include both the MSM and the the right wing hot air machines of Rush/FOX/Savage/Beck and the Lefty spinners like MSNBC/Current TV. All basically spinning the same message with a little different angle for the intended audience.
Let the excellent internet blogs (this one is my favorite) set the truth free!
Thanks!
If you're interested in history, I recommend Brooks Adams "The Law of Civilization and Decay". But I have to warn you that, being a lover of freedom and fiscal prudence, I was only able to read about half of it as I constantly felt like puking. It was depressing to me. This book was written in the 1890's. Its descriptions of the Roman debt-based society and its demise made it seem like he had written a description of comtemporary America. Talk about the cycles of history!
Brooks was the brother of the better-known historian Henry Adams, both of them grandsons of President John Adams.
keep it up..and we just may get the atlas shrugged moment..the big corporations are not going to stand for the confiscationg of there profits forever..say maybe by 2015...
When the FIRE sectors produce close to half of US profits - they are the "big corporations" confiscating the Wealth.
They'd prefer that we blame the goobermint, though, I've noticed.
US austerity? if that means cutting back on leeches like cops,firemen,TSA agents,state/muni public works employees, etc. I'm all for it
You completely left out the "financial services" industry, bankseters and wall $treet parasites.
To use a name that was a nazi war criminal wanted for murdering american prisoners in ww2 is really sick dude.
Government workers, welfare mothers, bankers, military industrial complex. I'll leave it to you to put the"leeches" in order.
"That government is best which governs least" - "That government is best which governs not at all"
Henry David Thoreau
I would consider our government just an extension of the oligarchic control system - the Fed as well.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see Hudson go head-to-head with an Austrian?
Austrians are the neoliberals. They are the mouthpieces of the wondrous machine that is financialization.
You are full of shit Bob. Go back and re-sit Econ 101. There is a massive chasm between the Austrian School and Chicago School. Here is an article from Murray Rothbard clearly distancing the Austrians from the blooming neoliberals 10 years before Reagan became President.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard43.html
"The Federal Reserve does what central banks are supposed to do: monetize government deficit spending by buying public debt."
Are there really people who are stupid enough to believe that this can work? Think about what this loon is saying....The federal government is able to go on in perpetuity spending MORE than it takes in in revenue because the central bank prints money FROM THIN AIR to buy the Treasury's unfunded obligations?
What this means is that, by definition, the money supply grows every year by AT LEAST the full amount of the deficit PLUS the cost of servicing previous borrowings---while the economy grows at a far lower rate. That's how we have the federal govt spending a deficit equal to 10% of GDP to sustain GDP growth of barely 1% today.
But in practice, with the fractional reserve multiplier, the money supply is growing even faster than that. This will inevitably ramp into higher and higher consumer prices once the Fed declares the TBTF banks adequately capitalized and surplus reserves move out of Fed reserve accts. Once again we get to learn the old lesson of why fiat currencies always fail eventually.
"As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return."
Thats exactly how it happens.
One of the largest socio-economic frauds ever perpetuated and very very seductive by its Machiavellian nature. It allows those truly responsible to escape unseen while profiting from it.
Wealth without labor...good deeds without personal charity...strength without honor...pride without dignity, through the slow steady drip of fiat decay, which, again, only enriches the elite few...the real parasites. Ultimately it impoverishes an entire society (those who still cling to its measure) when it finally collapses of its own weight.
A big bold lie.
I call it the war & welfare lie...without it, neither are really financially possible on this scale no matter how many pleadings for "social justice" are issued.
We are at the point now where 200k is called "rich" by the ponzi carnival barkers...lol. Tomorrow it will be 100k...the next day fifty...at that point (perhaps) "social justice" will have been exposed as the companion lie to socio-economic theory.
I ask again, why is anyone taxed when they can just print us into social/societal nirvana?
You hit the nail square on the head with your last sentence.
Thanks...its a very complicated thing to understand for everyone (because of emotion) but I believe I do.
Control and profit is derived by pitting us against ourselves, as a third party reaps the rewards of our discontent.
Unsustainable war & welfare...pretty insidious.
Sure, the Chicago School has been labeled as The Neoliberals. What we're seeing, now that financialization has ripened under the control of Friedmanites to the point where the wheels are falling off the real economy, is the Austrians stepping in to pitch Austerity. (I can never understand their vitriol for goobermint per se; that seems to be their own religion.)
Just because Rothbard found bitter disagreement with Friedman doesn't mean he wasn't a real neoliberal. Neoliberalism has "evolved" now that government is becoming a risky debtor--now it's the Austrian's turn. The baton has been passed. It's simply becoming more extreme than Friedman (note Rothbard's bitter criticism of monopolies being broken up.) By far. It has to or the financialization party is over.
Check Ilene's definition of neoliberalism:
Please let me know if there is an Austrian who doesn't fit that definition today.
As to the distant past, Rothbard v Friedman was just a family spat, imo, a sibling squabble. It was bitter.
But where we're at today, I see the Austrians pitching neoliberalism real hard.
So neo-liberal is the new neo-con, eh? Whatevers.
Capital and talent will always see "we wuz wobbed of owr wightful wivewihood" whining for the damage that it is, and route around it.
If you don't like that, make sure your people's republical paradise covers the whole damn globe, with nowhere to escape.
I can conjur no more horrifyingly dystopic vision.
As horrifying as you find that vision (and it's nothing more than a vision), it's essential that you keep it in the forefront of your mind at all times. You must Never Forget.
Like the Jews who continue to beat into the minds of their children the visions of mass starvation, gas chambers and mass graves you must never forget.
You must believe that others are relentlessly dedicated to making your self-reinforced nightmares return to real life. No matter how old they are and unlikely they have become.
You must support anything that claims to further that goal and reject all who do not believe. Never allow a single doubt about your cause: The end justifies the means.
Never Again. We must never rest while a communist yet draws breath.
Communism must be defeated forever! And it's profoundly sick enabling sister, Social Justice, must be kept begging in the streets where she belongs.
Otherwise all will be lost. Never forget.
you are contradicting yourself. If you believe in NO government you've got it today! As, in your own words you add 'extension of oligarchic control system', aka no government in substance, just handmen of the private sector oligarchs.
Ever seen a B western about the wild west; where the sheriff does the dirty errands of Mr Big? Thats where we are today. Thats not government that private mafia system. And that is the opposite of good government.
You cannot NOT have BOTH, thats anarchy! You either have Oligarchy rule and fake crony, subservient government or you have strong, honest government and oligarchs regulated. Thoreau's phrase is an idealised vision, true in pure form in utopia, not in real world. Sitting on the fence is not a solution. Neither is mixing your metaphors.