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F.A. Hayek On "The Great Utopia"
While it is hardly necessary to provide commentary to one of F.A. Hayek's timeless observations from his book, The Road To Serfdom, rereading the chapter titled The Great Utopia, in this year of what could possibly be the most important election in the history of the United States, in which the US public will be promised nothing short of utopia by virtually every candidate except the one who really knows that fixing America would require pain and sacrifice, is everyone's duty. Courtesy of the Center for Economic Liberty we recreate it below in its entirety, and urge all readers, regardless of political persuasion of economic beliefs to consider what F.A.Hayek was saying some 70 years earlier, and how very applicable it is to our current situation.
The Great Utopia
There can be no doubt that most of those in the democracies who demand a central direction of all economic activity still believe that socialism and individual freedom can be combined. Yet socialism was early recognized by many thinkers as the gravest threat to freedom.
It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be "treated as cattle."
Nobody saw more clearly than the great political thinker de Tocqueville that democracy stands in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom," he said. "Democracy attaches all possible value to each man," he said in 1848, "while socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives—the craving for freedom — socialists began increasingly to make use of the promise of a "new freedom." Socialism was to bring "economic freedom," without which political freedom was "not worth having."
To make this argument sound plausible, the word "freedom" was subjected to a subtle change in meaning. The word had formerly meant freedom from coercion, from the arbitrary power of other men. Now it was made to mean freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us. Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for a redistribution of wealth.
The claim that a planned economy would produce a substantially larger output than the competitive system is being progressively abandoned by most students of the problem. Yet it is this false hope as much as anything which drives us along the road to planning.
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under "communism" and "fascism." As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, "the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of un-freedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."
No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as "the general welfare." There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.
Democratic assemblies cannot function as planning agencies. They cannot produce agreement on everything — the whole direction of the resources of the nation-for the number of possible courses of action will be legion. Even if a congress could, by proceeding step by step and compromising at each point, agree on some scheme, it would certainly in the end satisfy nobody.
To draw up an economic plan in this fashion is even less possible than, for instance, successfully to plan a military campaign by democratic procedure. As in strategy it would become inevitable to delegate the task to experts. And even if, by this expedient, a democracy should succeed in planning every sector of economic activity, it would still have to face the problem of integrating these separate plans into a unitary whole. There will be a stronger and stronger demand that some board or some single individual should be given power to act on their own responsibility. The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning. Thus the legislative body will be reduced to choosing the persons who are to have practically absolute power. The whole system will tend toward that kind of dictatorship in which the head of the government is position by popular vote, but where he has all the powers at his command to make certain that the vote will go in the direction he desires.
Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible. There is no justification for the widespread belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; it is not the source of power which prevents it from being arbitrary; to be free from dictatorial qualities, the power must also be limited. A true "dictatorship of the proletariat," even if democratic in form, if it undertook centrally to direct the economic system, would probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done.
Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated. To a limited extent we ourselves experience this fact in wartime, when subordination of almost everything to the immediate and pressing need is the price at which we preserve our freedom in the long run. The fashionable phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what we have learned.to do for the purposes of war are completely misleading, for it is sensible temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it more secure in the future, but it is quite a different thing to sacrifice liberty permanently in the interests of a planned economy.
To those who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters, the connection between the two systems is obvious. The realization of the socialist program means the destruction of freedom. Democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is simply not achievable.
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Term limits are an essential part of the solution! They are a significant evolutionioary step in restoring America.
We need immediate action in some areas to reverse the decline of our great nation. We must eliminate budget deficits and they are not something you "outgrow". Most dismal scientists espouse the opinion that we can grow the economy enough to reduce and eliminate budget deficits. Not gonna happen.
Government officials and apparatchiks as well as their friends, families and Facebook connections are incredibly allergic to any talk of reducing the size of government. So we must, in the breath, mention the reducing and eventual elimination of the income tax. This will help all the DEA agents and desk pushers find employment in the private sector.
In order to get our house in order, we must spend a whole lot less overseas. This means less foreign aid, less intervention and no military adventurism. How much should we shrink the federl government? Right about to the limits of the US Constitution.
We must immediately begin to restore integrity to our financial system. Banks' ability to create money out of thin air must be revoked: no more fictional reserve banking. Honest money, backed by something other than a hope and a promise, would also be a good thing.
None of these can wait for the effects of term limits to kick in. It might be better to throw most of them out and elect people who can and will get it done. It matters not if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslem, Buddhist, atheist, Hispanic, Black or white, straight or gay, male or female, or get this: DEMOCRAT, REPUBLICAN, LIBERTARIAN, independent or apolitical. If you share these values then step up and vote accordingly and please consider running for public office.
A wise man.
What? You don't like life under dynastic Presidencies and legislatures that have become life-time hereditary peerages?
None. It just ups the ante needed to buy the new guy
I found this article in Smithsonian this month to be very on point and interesting. About the Puritan origins of the seperation of church and state. How the theory becomes very, very real when exiled into the New England forest in winter, or sailing BACK to England and into the maw of religious slaughter, while writing a 400-page tract to convince both King and Parliament of the most revolutionary ideas then imaginable....
Ever heard of Providence? 'Get your state out of my church!'
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/God-Government-and-Roger-Williams-Big-Idea.html
“It is the will and command of God that, since the coming of his Sonne the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships, bee granted to all men in all Nations and Countries.”
--Roger Williams, 1644
when you talk about nazi-ism please do not forget to talk about the other ism it gave rise to and nurtured, the palestinean movement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm5EHKC_lQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxCzwz7zTco&skipcontrinter=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctUJb69cxoc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrnEqHFPNcc&skipcontrinter=1
Don't forget the ties between American Nazis and the Nation of Islam. They have a lot in common. I used to live in Chicago, the epicenter of that interface.
http://www.infowars.com/the-shtf-a-long-time-ago/
I have been following him lately, mostly because I was told he has a larger viewership than CNBC and MSNBC combined.
Problem with some of his stuff is that it is too sensational/half truths. Or a form of future history telling. Case in point, that video shows bradleys headed for the scrapyard. but even if they were "being deployed" I would not be afraid of that train of 100+ uniform units. I'd be afraid of seeing two different trains each with 5 bradleys, 2 howitzers and 5 desert camo piggybacks, etc.
I wish he'd drop some of the entertainment/hyperbole stuff and keep doing good work on civil liberties (which he does do a decent job of) Even with the flaws it is still way better than "they have no idea" cramer CNBC format.
I guess that's why most people are born with the ability, through trial and error, and observation, to filter shit that doesn't make sense out, and try to find the truth through reasoning.
Some people even relearn it after 12 to 20 years of Gov't indoctrination.
Another old ZH repost..
Friedrich Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom' in 5 Minutes
We need to get a little Voltaire and Thoreau in here to make for proper weekend reading.
Utopian thinking can stem from any political ideology. One just has to erase all the disutilities (OK, J.S. Mill gets in too) of one's preferred system. So essentially by definition any Utopian construct is a straw dog (gender-correct eh?) that does not one thing to assist in logical political discourse, although it can at times facilitate effective political discourse. The Libertarian failure is not really fatal, and is much more mundane: romanticism.
A Thoreauean model of individualistic anarchy is in most respects the closest to a pure strain of pre-Libertarianism. It can serve both left and right as a jumping-off point.
The failure is to assume that all protaganists are able-bodied from the moment of their creation to their demise. Once you think through demographics and dependency ratios, the logic of individualism crumbles. However, the importance of both liberty and markets (economic liberty) is so great that a good deal of excess in their defense is preferable to a slide into soft (corporate) or hard (police state) fascism.
So it is best to be sympathetic to Libertarianism and to in fact support it, in the interest of balancing a globalizing fascism that is becoming a runaway train. We should be so lucky as to have the problems of a Libertarian society. They would be real (not Utopian), but nothing compared to the ones we have now and the ones that the ObamaRomnoid psychopaths have in store for us.
John Stuart Mill...C. Wright Mills is a bit more relevant...
Any developments in Obama's plan to open peace talks (surrender talks) with the Taliban?
Unfortunately the so called "business activist" movement has embraced the writings of this man in one great act of hypocrisy, which I have said is the first sibling of corruption.
Socialism for the rich and capitalism fo the poor is the principle that drives everything now.
Am I above or behind?
Strongly believe Orwell wrote his books to warns us. His writings were always sold as fiction. The irony, state controlled educational system has come full circle.. Just my opinion.
Fiction, well written, is a potent weapon.
I see real people. on this thread. I guess my miles on the BEACH did add up!
SUBLIME!
NOFX!
That's what makes The Power Elite such a big read WB7...In my view...There needs to be a better foundation of where people can really find themselves standing...One can easily fall in love with the Ideological Romantic Roussaeu, Tocqueville et al...I'm still in love with it...Like a high school crush that never goes away...
But that stuff lacks a certain timeliness today...Hell...If I was a teacher worth a nickel...I'd start with The Will to Power or Discipline and Punish...Throw in some 60's activist manifestos or something along those lines...The great unwashed masses really need to catch up!!!
Rand is a fucktard. This thread and the replies are evidence that we have entered an insane time and EVERYONE is on edge. God damn Chinese New Year ,,,,,
Well you've convinced me.
In resisting the impulse to reactionary name-calling, I noodled around and found this thoughtful examination of Hayek, by Christain Parenti. I hope it's helpful. Cheers.
...
In response to Hayek’s call for intellectual warfare, several wealthy industrialists joined Hunold in sponsoring right-wing education and publishing. Among them were Alan Fisher in the United Kingdom and Harold Luhnow, Pierre Goodrich and Richard Earhart in the United States. What they created, inspired by Hayek, wasn’t so much a plan as a milieu. Through steady repetition of arguments and constant production of articles, pamphlets, books, reports and conferences, these Mont Pelerin Society activists created intellectual momentum and legitimacy for their once-discredited ideology.
By the ’60s and early ’70s, Mont Pelerin Society fellow travelers had established a number of increasingly prominent think-tanks—such as the Institute for Economic Affairs in England and the Heritage Foundation in the United States—from which they waged an unrelenting assault on the idea of government intervention in the economy.
Hayek’s comrades also began cultivating rising conservative politicians, including Margaret Thatcher. By the late ’70s, Hayek’s spawn had successfully brought the Tories and the GOP to new, extreme-right positions. Likewise, many members of the Mont Pelerin Society had prominent positions in universities and the media, from which they disseminated their neo-liberal gospel. Among the list of think-tank and university players who received part of their education with the society are Michael Novak (American Enterprise Institute), Thomas Sowell (Hoover Institution) and Deepak Lal (Cato Institute).
What’s in it for progressives?Ultimately, progressives cannot and should not imitate all of Hayek’s and the Mont Pelerin Society’s methods. That worldview and tactical repertoire is intensely elitist, in that it relied more on institutional hierarchy than popular education and mobilization.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/winning_the_war_of_ideas/
Knockout contribution - thanks Dood...you so right, this subject deserves to rise above the name calling that inevitably infects a weekend thread whenever der Travesty fails to appear, and Akak does not get to unload upon his favorite nemesis.
What escapes me from having read through the thread to this point is exactly why LTER has become the focal point of all that pent up aggro tonight. Sure, he's been culpable of leading his opponents on, but lost in the woodwork until you brought up Mont Pelerin is the fact that all of the big guns being bandied about here[Hayek, Rand etc] were but popularising self promoters whose claims to fame rest on having captured the emotions of an army of enthusiasts whose wish to avoid the rigors of critical thinking dictates that they ignore the many shades of grey which LTER has done us the service of underlining in the discussion.
Shocked gasps>!?!?! Who could have the folly, the temerity to denigrate such, the swivelling heads of the gallery turn to ask one another....??...allow me to explain, fellow partisans of the struggle against the State!
Hayek is Von Mises lite: there's no little irony in the fact that the name of Hayeks' great teacher is absent from this debate - Hayek took the essence of Mises' insights and sought out surrogate parents for the germplasm from amongst the ambitious and connected (financially&politically) in order to conduct a counterattack upon the Keynesians who he bitterly hated for having won the day. The result was a simplification...and attendant obscuration of Mises premises; one which would bring about the rise of the Chigaco school of neo-liberal wolves in sheeps' clothing who all but obliterated the true libertarian current which thinkers like Rothbard would vainly try to keep alive!
You don't believe me!?!?! - fine...check out this comic book version of TRTS... http://mises.org/books/TRTS/ ...published courtesy of GM!?! That interlocking corporate directorship industrial behemoth what inherited the mantle of American technological leadership taken away from Henry Ford when he got too uppity against the Pharisees...Co-inky-dink-al right>?!?! Hayek was a popularizer who dangerously diluted Mises work and allowed for the rise of creepoids like Friedman to hijack anti-Statists dialogue...AND...[warning...ICON acid bath approaching...shut your eyes inveterate Öbjectivists! danger...danger Will Robinson!!!!]...
prepared the way for Ayn Rand:
the iconic Hebraic Trotskyite transplant precursor to Anna Vasil'yevna Chapman, the viral plague transferred into the body politic of the main enemy, America, to seduce and destroy an entire generation of intellectuals with the false gospel of 'rational self interest' that would serve to set up the mechanism by which the sleeper cells of Sabbatean Trotskyites(hi! I'm Irving Kristol, and here's my hand puppet, Billy Buckley JR-a Catholic with a cabbalistic stick up his ass!!!) would spring into action as assassins of the conservative movement and having successfully suppressed it's immune system, radically transform it into the highly toxic and malevolent "Neo-con" revolution by which Kleptocraptic-Krony-Kapitalism swept the board clear of competitors for ideological hegemony and completed the coup détat that started the moment Kennedys' brains splattered out.
I'm Sorry. Truly, I am. I wish I didn't have to burst so many bubbles. But somebody on this thread actually said...Ayn Rand never had any influence on American political or economic policy...and that was just too much. Randian acolyte and Objectivist supreme, A. Greenspan, single-handedly did more to wreck the republican experiment in populist democracy than any persons other than Allan Foster Dulles & Colonel House.
Deprogram yurself...believe nothing, nothing at all of what they 'taught' you in school, or what you read in da news....trust nothing outside of your native instinct...and above all, force yourself to read http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article29045.html by Gary North. A libertarians' Libertarian, instead of a false flag dissimulationist-collaborating abortionist of consciousness like Ayn Rand.
Allan Foster Dulles & Colonel House.
Don't forget Wild Bill Donovan, Bill Bullitt, and Carmel Offie. As for Rand she was nothing more than a narcissistic megalomaniac who proclaimed a rapist, murdering, child mutilating kidnaper named William Hickman as one of her so called supermen. Who wants to be John Gault now?
"Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should. He has no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”
---Ayn Rand, interview in May 1928, praising serial child killer W. E. Hickman.
Molotov cocktail of a post ...ooh lordy. Great links, thanks.
Don't blame Rand, blame people of poor character. It is the collectivist mindset that has this hope that people as a group can be motivated by some higher calling. If only they can be convinced .....or eventually convinced at the end of a gun. And that is how it always ends .....with the threat of force, for your own good that is.......
As for your police are we talking Mayberry or the growing militant machine gun toting crowd?
Are you talking about the teachers who educate you to become a drone or a critical thinker...
That which governs best governs least.
Now back to the Kardashians and Jersey Shore....
Critical thinking is exactly what lacks horribly today...But this must have always been so...
Corporate cronies would never be so brave as to actually use a gun...that's why they hire overweight, under-educated "overseers" to do their bidding, like Longshanks in Braveheart.
Whether it's Pinkertons or the NYPD, the principle remains the same.
Now go suck off a Koch brother or something to develop your "character" and "critical thinking" skills a bit more and come back when you can make a cogent argument.
Wouldn't it be interesting if the political equivalent of the Earth's magnetic field shifted, and all this re-crystallized into Globalists vs. Anti-Globalists? With left and right left in the mud.
Probably fifty years too late, but never say never. "I hate your views on abortion but let's GET THOSE GLOBALIST BASTARDS!"
I think the key questions are 1) whether enough on the left will comprehend that the Federal budget must be cut far lower than is conventionally presumed. Along with a lot of tax code reform. Deleveraging has to be accomodated, not resisted. And 2) whether the shift is compatible with the current two-party system or requires a New National Party (my name, no stealing--oh wait it's the Internet, never mind).
I dont think you can use "National" without offending a large part of your base. Its gotta be somthing like "common sense" "bull moose", etc. Statist sounding terms will lose you the libertarians and OWS types. here is how I get people past the left-right wedge issue bull crap. (plagarized)
Oddly enough, if that is the scenario then it will have to be a 'stealthy' feelgood party so those folks will have to get it or screen out. Ditto for hardcore Dems and Reps.
Boiling Frog Party.
Democracy does not create liberty. He really blew it on that one. If it did, then we would not need the bill of rights. Democracy always follows a trajectory of removing liberty. Our founding fathers understood that well, which is why they created America as a REPUBLIC. Please don't be one of the brainwashed sheeple that think America was created as a democracy. You won't find that word in our constitution. And that is no accident.
People are starting to get a whiff of this...The political process really has devolved into a clown show on wheels...Question is...Is it too late? Do the people have an appetite for their higher faculties? What was here today just may disappear tomorrow...
Pablum...full of logical fallacies not the least of which is that of the excluded middle. People take this ridiculous tripe as gospel?!
Should we take the writers of the US Constitution as "socialists" because they included just such a reference to "general welfare" in that hallowed document?
LOL
What Hayek describes is quite clearly state capitalism - NOT - socialism. Anyone who suggests the Nazis or soviets were socialists is abusing the term.
From Wiki:
"A self-managed decentralized economy is based upon autonomous self-regulating economic actors and a decentralized mechanism of allocation and decision-making. Historically, this manifested itself in proposals for worker-cooperatives and bottom-up planning through workplace democracy.[citation needed] A degree of self-management was practiced in the economic system of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which contrasts to the centralized planning of enterprises in Soviet-style planned economies."
"Socialists generally argue that capitalism concentrates power and wealth within a small segment of society that controls the means of production and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation. This creates a stratified society based on unequal social relations that fails to provide equal opportunities for every individual to maximize their potential,[11] and does not utilise available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public,[12] and focuses on satisfying market-induced wants as opposed to human needs.[citation needed] Socialists argue that socialism would allow for wealth to be distributed based on how much one contributes to society"
Not going to thumb you down..
Union of Soviet Socialist Republic = USSR
For your review and further comment:
Despotism (1946)
Union of Soviet Socialist Republic = USSR
USSR was socialist like the USA is democratic.
I.E. Not very much............
What we got in the USA now is more like italy in the thirties, statists and capitalists working together to gain more power for themselves at the expense of the governed, yet many on ZH seem to fall for the divide and conquer tactics they use................
Do I still get my bonus this year?
How about a free house?
Car?
snarc: Yes, but there is more. Timmay will not be continuing with the administration, It is a little known perk that all Treasury secretaries are forced to liquidate all equity holdings tax free.
What are you doing november-ish? care to tease mitt about his 14% tax rate when yours will be 0.9%? And then we can audit him 4 years straight?
Hayek was right about the dangers of socialism...but I don't think he foresaw what we have here in the US. The collusion between big gov't, Wall Street, and corporate executives leaves us with a bloated gov't, an unstable crony capitalist system, and an expensive welfare state. When shit broke in 2008, the Fed adopted central planning policies to temporarily fix the financial instabilities...but not a thing changed anywhere in the system...so the Fed has to remain in control indefinitely.
But this election means zilch. The likely Repub candidate and current Prez have demonstrated their crony preferences which leaves us with the same old song. So with an exploding US deficit, alot of returning US troops with no available jobs, and creeping inflation, things are going to get pretty interesting.
<<----- Will HamyWanger break RobotTrader's thumb down record?
<<----- Will RobotTrader retain his title?
Goodnight ZH community
Best paragraph:
"Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible. There is no justification for the widespread belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; it is not the source of power which prevents it from being arbitrary; to be free from dictatorial qualities, the power must also be limited. A true "dictatorship of the proletariat," even if democratic in form, if it undertook centrally to direct the economic system, would probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done."
Hayek gets an A+.
hey we live in a world where ideas are constantly placed on better things
.
what is the point
Communism isn't the opposite of democracy - anarchy is. Know your Plato and stick to your day-time job :)
In all of history, no government became more honest, less corrupt, or granted its citizens more rights as it grew in size.
-E.L.
Is Let Them Eat Rand troll baiting you guys enough? He's been trying these arguments for weeks now. He's got three of them: (1) there would be nothing great in the world (schools, dams, roads, bridges, The Internet, etc.) if government hadn't spent (stole) the money to build them, (2) under "pure" libertarianism or capitalism, hyper rich people would use all of their wealth to buy up armies and enslave everyone (why they would do this, he never explains), and (3) all of libertarian thought is influenced by some sort Ayn Rand/Koch brother evil alliance.
It's well-argued, but you're not going to win him over by throwing out a nuanced argument or actually linking him to copious amount of reading material that cover these points and more.
There's a really simple argument for people who put out these arguments: without governments, who would have slaughtered over 200 million people during the 20th and 21st centuries? We have them to thank for that too.
It was very embarassing during the S.C. debate. People started cheering during the foriegn policy segments before these guys finished their answers about who they were going to bomb next or why. Ron Paul got boo'ed before he explained where force would be effective and why.
Dr. Paul obviously watched the tapes, and was ready for this phenomenon in the recent (Florida) debate regarding milaristic nation building in central and south america. He cut straight past the neo-Iran Contra stuff and went to discussion of free market solutions. Santorum and the media claimed he was "crazy" because he was not answering the question asked, went off on a tangent,etc.
My one trick pony on national violence is the tax code. not because I am opposed to taxation or that the constitution requires the state to provide for a national defense, including forward engagements to protect trade and citizens abroad. I recognize the poor pay a crapload of taxes. But if 51% of citizens were required to pay taxes that funded military adventurism, there is the classic and universally proven concept of war wearyness.
Only the modern state and it's sophisticated tools is capable of manupulating God given emotions like empathy (adversion to sustained violence against others) out of the collective nature of a group. It is unnatural and an abomination. Humans would have wiped themselves out long ago without collective empathy. It is this reason we have a hard time finding some of the missing links in our evolutionary tract. Even the most brutal tribal fueds in history eventually end, and often with the tribes merging or atleast interbreeding.
The great Utopian Police State.
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2012/jan/29/pot-bust-shines-light-on-...
OBAMA NEWS INC (TM)
WASHINGTON, ZNWO:
Scientists have announced the invention of the O-Probe (TM), a surveillance probe inserted into the rectum of each citizen. In addition to its surveillance abilities, the probe corrects counterrevolutionary thoughts by an electrical charge. The probe may be removed for bodily functions but must be hung inside the toilet bowl during "breaks." Researchers said they are working on an improved probe with a shunt valve so "Obama can be "up your ass 24/7," according to the comment by one scientist.
US citizenism is so much about submission.
Reading the text, you have to submit to all the fallacies, half truths, half lies, cheap propaganda and the rest to feel in agreement with the author.
That or you dont submit.
At this point, you are outside US citizens' groups and therefore a threat for them as anything that is of theirs is a threat to them.
But the Gostak distims the doshes!
...There can be no doubt that most of those in the democracies who demand a central direction of all economic activity still believe that socialism and individual freedom can be combined. Yet socialism was early recognized by many thinkers as the gravest threat to freedom....
The key word here is "ALL economic activity". Demonstration of an axiom by pushing its opposite to the absurd limit.
Balance between centralised statism; Charybdis, and hyper oligarchic private enterprise; Scylla, is the perilous exercise of democracy, the worst of all systems barring all others.
It ain't an easy world democracy but it must subscribe to civilization's golden and silver rules : do unto others... and, do what you said or step down.
two sets all...
Einstein was a socialist. He was a pretty smart guy.
Macro and Tech analysis from C3X
http://capital3x.com/think-tank/macro-and-tech-analysis-jan-2012-moves-a...
Hey, Crockett, thanks man (carrying all that weight).
Well, everyone really... fascinating thread. Even you, LTER. I may think you're a complete wanker but I respect the effort, and your right to wank here. I actually have high hopes for your idealogical transcendence; keep thinking and reading :-)
I do not come to Aqaba for money, for Feisal or to drive away the Turks. I do it because it is my pleasure.
Best regards.
Gold charts clear breakout but consolidation in store
Gold breakout
Gold breakout
One problem to finding our cure is that many who believe themselves to be "informed", are just part of the larger group to have been successfully brainwashed by various media agencies.
It's painful to me to see how many articulate, and seemingly cogent, posters believe Social Security needs to be cut. They have been led to believe that the increase in "baby boomers", now retiring, will tax the system beyond it's capacity. The FACT is tht SS is the best program the govt. ever came up with. It was so successful in it's design, that it had a huge surplus, or what SEEMED to be a surplus. (The surplus was actually designed in to allow for the increased number of "baby boomers.') Politicians "borrowed" this "surplus" to pay for other programs (which bought them votes.) The Social Security Administration now holds IOU's from the Treasury in excess of $3.5 TRILLION dollars. The recent talk about getting away from the SS system is the way the govt. is using to avoid having to pay back this debt. It is attempting to further reduce the programs credibility by further reducing it's solvency: The contribution reduced, in the recent "payroll tax cuts", is to Soc. Sec.....how smart is that.
SS is NOT an entitlement, it is a FORCED retirement savings account. Paid into by workers and employers for the entire working life of generations of Americans. The fact that MY retirement dollars have been "borrowed" to sudsidize school food programs, computers for prisoners, or whatever other "flavor of the month" political pandering is in "vogue", doesn't mean I should be required to recieve less.
Cut the programs that were funded with MY retirement money.
Pay back the $3.5 Trillion that was "borrowed" from MY retirement money.
Remove the $108K "cap" on SS contributions. Anyone making over $108K can afford to continue to pay SS taxes on their ENTIRE income.
If SS is "underfunded" then, perhaps, THAT isn't the part of payroll taxes that should be "cut." (do ya think?)
We hear the term "class warfare', a lot these days. The "MAN" has been very successful in his attempts to get us fighting amongst ourselves, so we don't see how they are robbing us ALL. Rich Vs. Poor, GOP Vs. Dem, Old Vs. Young. If successful, with the "new" retirement savings scheme, here's the way I see it happening:
We are weened off of Social Security. The TRILLION$$$ are never paid back to the system. A new system is incorporated, where you youngsters aren't "burdered" with "footing the bill" for those evil baby boomers. In time, the new system, YOUR new system, achieves a surplus. (Which it will, because.....those guys are pretty smart, they've been stealing our money for centuries.) They will use YOUR retirement $$$ to fund programs they use to buy votes. They will convince your children and grandchildren that YOU don't deserve the money YOU have saved over your lifetime.........
In the end...Social Security will make sure somebody gets totally screwed...No doubts! Once the politicians started reaching into the cookie jar it was over...Why they were allowed to do this in the first place is beyond me...Oh well...Too late
There was a small ripple back in the early 90's from group of Xer's looking at the #'s...We could see back then this was going to be a huge problem at some point...
Democracy is about the only thing we have in place to protect the masses against the wealth and power of the few. That government has been hijacked by the .01% is no reason to throw it out altogether.
All this faith in the market place to magically make everything right is misplaced. Where has this ever happened in history, where are your right wing utopias, since you are so happy with knocking down your progressive utopia strawmen, where is your right wing heaven located?
Do most of you know that the foundations of economics and markets is all based on fairy tales and background assumptions which have no basis in reality? Your whole ideology is based on hocus pocus, yet all these blind followers and not a critical thinker in the bunch.
Government is not the end all be all, and no question it is run by the super-rich for the super-rich, but you have to give me something better than the magic of the fictitious "market" to replace it with. I can only imagine the super-rich are laughing at all the poor schleps pushing for their Austrian right-wing market place utopia. I can see nothing better for them to finally consolidate and extend their class power with.
The problem is that the upper 4th sigma of the population have the middle two sigma worrying about the lower 3rd & 4th sigmas and is paying for it all at the expense of the 7 sigmas below them.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"
I find it somewhat ironic that the majority of those here bemoaning the loss of their rights could not honestly say they agree with the statement quoted above. Well guess what folks? If you don't believe your rights come from God then you are getting exactly what you deserve, your state privileges. Enjoy. You've collectively spent the last century rejecting the foundation of your republic. Your bed is made. Now it's time for you to lie in it.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other"
John Adams
I agree....mom and dad gave me those rights and the gov't has no right to take them away!
Speaking of “the rule of law”, I wish others could understand how our patent system is more about stifling innovation for profit...
One of the more interesting chapters in this regard is Mark Twain's writings on Mary Baker Eddy's copyrighted works when she established scientology. Mary was one of the first to successfully use the law to market her “knowledge” and Twain was there to see it unfold. The US would be hard pressed to choose between her followers or Joe Smith’s as the cruelest scourge to be unleashed on an unsuspecting globe in the last hundred years or so.
It’s a sad day indeed when US law creation, interpretation and enforcement is enthralled with extending ever more protection to religious entities copyrighted archives and their access to previous, currently and ever changing future revisions in perpetuity as opposed to performing their primary roles of maintaining uniform weights and measures.
Mary Baker’s copyrighted scientologist psychobaloney and Joe Smiths version of American history delivered on a golden platter are fine and dandy “reading” and I begrudge no one the right to own, revise, sell and continue to profit from these “prophets”efforts and the marketing genius behind their movements. But Hollywood’s pet religion and the midwest’s kooky cousin in the closet are actually indicative of the misapplication of legitimate efforts to allow fair compensation to people for authentic, valuable and unique individual contributions made by a free person to society by use of patents into the degradation of social trust and disregard of personal liberty.
Political, governmental and judicial efforts would be far better harnessed in providing uniform weights and measures for producing the people’s currency and uniform bankruptcy applications.
Our elected officials have once again found themselves straining a gnat and swallowing a camel. imho.
End the fed.
A good reminder about the power of belief and belonging...How far down this country has gone...
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/luciusanna118600.html
Okay, I'm drunk now so i'll say it.
Truth is like shit. It always comes out and everyone can agree that it is nasty and stinks.
Aviod it.
Avoid my spelling also.
This is still America...You can get drunk on a sunday morning if you want...I'd like to see that taken away...Blood in the streets in days!!!
It's funny that on a thread like this...Nobody has mentioned Minsky once!
I read The Road To Serfdom recently. It seemed to address 1940's Britain, as it was intended to do. It did not seem as enduringly relevant as today's Conservatives seem to imagine. ANY pure ideology left or right tends to be utopian. Any society that concentrates on reaching ideological purity rather than solving its problems, is headed for trouble, whether that ideology worships "the workers" or "the market".
It is off-putting that, good as this is about socialism and its dangers, and it is, there is nothing in it that addresses our current problem of control and ownership of so much by so few. That, too, seems to lead to serfdom and loss of liberty, does it not? One could laugh this away as an unspoken premise of the rather silly, disorganized Occupy people, but that's too easy, and would dismiss or ignore the stultifying effects of such concentrated power on our society -- economic, educational, political. Perhaps it should not be laughed away after all. Nothing in any "political" system (say our own, where"we" elect a new president or a new senator or congressman from time to time), democratic, socialist or worse, seems to hold out promise of freeing us from the grip of these few and its adverse effects, or even of recognising that we are in such a grip and that we need to find a means of loosening it. Which, of course, we are and do.
I suggest also reading Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty" in which he discusses "the Rule of Law" as one of the requirements of freedom. Currently "the Rule of Law" is seen as an afterthought by powers that be in this country.
The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning...
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Heh..... Merkel today.
This string of forum posts shows exactly why Democracy - true, direct democracy, rather than Representative Democracy or any other form that relies on politicians - can never work.
Imagine if you will that instead of an article at the top, it was a proposed bill, and in the section below, you had all the voters posting on it, and then people vote Yea or Nay to pass the bill. Nothing would ever get done.
More people involved = exponentially more time to do anything. Fewer people involved = greater suceptibility to corruption and incompetance.
From the movie, "Julius Caesar" (2002) or "Jules Caesar" or "Caesar"
@around the 51:00 mark (Chapter 8 or @51:45 in uncut original?), approximately
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284741/quotes
[Brutus is reading]
Caesar: Ahh yes... Plato's laws? Did you read it?
Marcus Brutus: Yes.
Caesar: And?
Marcus Brutus: Well Plato thinks that democracy is doomed to failure; he thinks that a state should be run by a dictator, a dictator who's become enlightened through experience and learning.
Caesar: I don't think that Plato will get along very well with your Uncle Cato.
~//~
Julius Caesar Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wMJY6GedGw (1:16)
~//~
Julius Caesar (1/2) (German)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn6Q-JNnjmE&feature=related (1:26:00)
Julius Caesar (2/2) (German)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si_9P9fbHys&feature=related (1:24:07)
~//~
Julius Caesar Part 1 Full Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQn1dRQ0-hU&feature=related (1:09:21)
Julius Caesar Part 2 Full Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKq4AKvRQw4&feature=related (1:05:59)
Demanding that EVERY SINGLE decision is mandatorily handled by "the populace" will work as efficiently, as demanding that mandatorily every SINGLE DECISION is NOT handled by the populace.
Fuckit, can we get beyond the modern-stoneage history-rewriting of bipolar society already?
You suck - as much as the existing system.... because it desires nothing more than.... the already existing disfuctional-by-definition opposites.
I reject the initial premises of the article. The question isn't one of personal non-sacrifice versus self-sacrifice.... it simply is onw of who will bear the brunt of the sacrificies.... because, the sacrifices aren't a future decision anymore.... they're already ongoing... primarily making YOU the sucker.
What? Recovery? HAHAHA, in which alternate reality have you been living in the last 10 or more years?
"To those who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters, the connection between the two systems is obvious"
Examples?
Unless your referring to the SA (socialists) who were rounded up by the brownshirts (fascists) and murdered after Cystallnacht.
That kinda disproves your theory, unless you have some other historical analysis to back it up.
As long as there is central planning we will end up at this same position again. Who would have thought the smallest government ever created in the history of mankind would grown to have such awe inspiring power? Well Milton Firedman knew it as did Ludwig von Mises. It happened before with Britian during the enlightenment era. The English enjoyed much freedom and almost non existent taxes that is until the British Empire grew and poverty, excessive taxation, and misery with it. The only way to be free and prosperous is to have no State because it will always want more power.
"It is not incumbent on the libertarian to always proclaim his full “anarchist” position in whatever he writes; but it is incumbent upon him in no way to praise taxation or condone it; he should simply leave this perhaps glaring vacuum, and wait for the eager reader to begin to question and perhaps come to you for further enlightenment. But if the libertarian says, “Of course, some taxes must be levied,” or something of the sort, he has betrayed the cause."
- Murray Rothbard
Americans are suffering because FDR confiscated our money and forced us to transact business with debt exclusively. casas de madera