For a self-proclaimed Libertarian/Anarchist, Wade, you say some interesting things - some of which are very unlike that label. Prime Example: the line about "everyone can't have power; if some have it, others don't". That is as well grounded a statement as anybody could make, but it sure as hell ain't anarchist and almost as surely ain't libertarian.
Originally Posted by: texaspackerbacker
Sure it is. It is (in significant part)
because of the relationship between politics, government action, and power that I am an anarchist. [or, in any event, that variety of anarchist called a minarchist]. Government acts through coercion; it is abie to force or threaten force to get people to do things they wouldn't do voluntarily. In other words, it works through power. And politics is the process(es) whereby that power is distributed. Unless one sees the people being forced by state action as children, needing of a wise father (Republicans/conservatives) or mother (Democrats/liberals), the result is going to be a zero-sum one.
IF we do things through the mechanisms of government/politics, we can't avoid power and its zero sum "some have it, others don't" character. The anarchist, however, believes that power need not be the basis for decisionmaking. The anarchist is not a Hobbesian who believes self interest will, absent the state's power, degenerate into a situation where all are warring against all. Nor does he believe that it will operate according to some social Darwinist survival of the fittest role. (Both of these visions look at life as a zero-sum game of contesting for power.) Rather, the anarchist (and some libertarians) believes that self-interest will lead to sympathy and social cooperation (Adam Smith in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments)
As a minarchist, I recognize that there are some things for which state action (and its basis in power and its inevitable zero-sum character) is a necessary evil. Most particularly, the need for a common defense in a world where there are other states. (I believe we need national defense against state-sponsored terrorists, I am much less certain we need it for defense against individual extremists who lack the power of a state behind them.)
And I believe there are some individuals who can't be trusted with full freedom to decide what is valuable for them or who may need "protection" from those who would take advantage of their incompetence. Children and those without sufficient mental capacity.
But the list of those situations I consider far, far shorter than most would. The list of rules that would require state action is very, very short.
Contrary to the myths of popular culture, anarchists are almost never nihilists devoted to chaos and the absence of rules. They are merely believers that rules arising out of self interest and voluntary cooperation are vastly preferable to rules that are imposed via the exertion of power.
And such rules arise all the time. Most people in markets deal openly and honestly with each other, not because there are laws against fraud, but naturally out of self-interest.
Indeed, if you look closely, you'll discover that most "unfair" or "manipulative" or "exploitative" or "evil" "market activities" that people complain of (e.g., cable TV, the phone company, insurance companies, medical care, "Corporate America", unfair trade, and suchlike) are invariably happening in places where
prior state action has attempted to establish/control/force the rules of the game.
Take "big business". Contrary to myth, empirical historical evidence is pretty clear that most production and distribution does not exhibit the economies of scale claimed as a rationale for big companies. Those economies of scale come because of the securities and taxation and consumer protection and etc etc etc laws that make it prohibitive for a small enterprise to "play by the rules." And those securities and taxation, etc rules all developed because in the nineteenth century states decided that incorporation (with its limited liabliity, its grant of separate existence as a person, and, especially, the potentially infinite lifespan of that person) was somehow "necessary" to economic growth. Which of course it wasn't and still isn't: despite all that morass of expensive regulation, 99% of businesses today *still* need less than 20 employees!
I like what you say about a Zero-Sum economic situation the pie keeps getting bigger with economic growth - one person's piece doesn't have to get bigger if someone else's gets smaller. I don't think Dakota or Formo or a lot of others in here have a clue about that, and hell yeah, SOMEBODY has to provide structure and rules - your "everybody can't have the power" thing, for the system to work and keep working. I suppose it could be called "Minarchy" hahahaha. The big question is what is that minimum.
Yes. But the even bigger, the even more important, question, is the one that should be asked before we start making the list. The question of whether the presumption should be that state action is a "necessary evil" or the presumption should be that state action is "something to do good".
IMO, it is the former. Always. That is why I am an anarchist. And it is why I believe that the specific burden of proof should always be on those who would have the state act in a particular way. It is not the individuals' burden to prove that he/she should be free of exertion of power through the state. It is the burden of those who believe he/she should not be.
If someone doesn't trust me to decide, then it's their burden to prove to me that they are entitled to make a choice for me as if they were my father or my mother.
The aspect of Keynesian Economics I am mainly talking about is related to that - multiplied GROWTH through expansion of money. It has limits to its effectiveness in general, but when combined with the beauty of our dollar being the Reserve Currency, hence debt not being a problem, the benefit is basically unlimited - IMO.
In economics, this is sometimes called the "real effects" question: Can the expansion of the money supply by itself have "real" effects in terms of increased production and employment?
And my answer is: Only in the very limited situations where producers and employers and other users of money can be fooled into not seeing the increase of the money supply. For example, if some medieval king decided to shift from pure gold coins to coins that were half gold and half nickel, but was able to keep the "debasement" secret. Then that king would be able to push twice as much money into the system, people would accept it and buy and produce and employ more than before.
Of course, invariably, the people figure out that pure gold coins and nickel/gold coins don't weigh the same even if they look exactly the same. And then the nickel/gold coins start buying less and less and people demand more and more of them for the same stuff.
The demand for money, reserve currency or otherwise, is always going to be dependent on how well it is perceived to store value. As long as people around the world see the dollar as a store of value, people will continue to accept it, and, as you say, we can continue to borrow and pay people back with our Ben Franklins.
But you, and Keynes and Bernanke, are making the same error that those medieval kings made. You're assuming that people are going to be unaware that the money is being debased. Medieval merchants made and destroyed many a king who forgot that you can't borrow indefinitely if you're using the funds solely to destroy productive resources (e.g. by fighting wars), to fund consumption (solid gold tableware and aristocratic gambling), and to make transfer payments (from the poor to the rich, or from the rich to the poor).
Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Turkish -- these merchants are no less savvy to what is happening than the medieval merchants were....even more, since they have both more information and quicker information.
You and Keynes and Bernanke do have it partly right: Deficit financing by itself isn't bad. As long as there is no doubt of the borrower dying (and, like the corporation, the state has the potential for infinite life), the USA can borrow as long as it can pay the interest. But how much interest it can pay is not changed by printing more money, and it is REDUCED when the money is spent transfering itself from pocket to pocket rather than increasing production (growth).
Your very first paragraph, I think you totally misunderstood my question for you. when I asked what you thought about the "conspiracy theory" thing, I wasn't referring to the concept I call the Dakota Doctrine - the rich/middle class basically keeping the poor people down intentionally. I was referring to the ILLUMINATI thing - the concept which I used to laugh at, but I am rapidly coming around to belief in - that there are INSIDERS - maybe not all or primarily Jewish bankers, but people behind the scenes pulling the strings on politicians of both parties, basically controlling everything. And lest you turn the tables and call ME paranoid, my point of view is not the traditional conspiracy theorist John Birch Society one. I LIKE IT LIKE THAT. My position is that IF indeed this INSIDER group exists, it is NOT to put down/keep down regular people. It is to preserve our wonderful way of life. Think about it, those bankers and big-shots, those INSIDERS whatever/whoever they are would NOT do well in a Communist or Sharia Law situation. They need America to stay on top, same as we, the Good Normal people do.
I don't believe altruistic conspiracies are any more likely than evil ones. But if they did exist, I'd expect them to be self-interested first and foremost. That if they did things to preserve our way of life it would only be because they thought our way of life was best for
them.
Which brings us to the concept of STATUS QUO. I can only conclude, Wade, that we have a problem with definition of terms. Sure, we need Dynamism in some areas - Technology at the top of the list, also, arguably - even though I would and do argue strongly against it, social/moral ideas, BUT when I talk about the STATUS QUO, I mean first and foremost, America stays on Top in the world. We - America - are the primary if not only force preventing a wide variety of evil forces from taking over and reeking havoc on the lives of people everywhere. It is arguable - the Isolationist argument that "who cares what shit happens to the rabble of the rest of the world" - I'm kinda 50/50 on that hahahha, but it is UNTHINKABLE for the Status Quo to be disrupted here in America - loss of our freedom, loss of our comfortable life, loss of our security. I can't believe that when you so casually dismiss the Status Quo, you are talking about MY concept of the Status Quo - hallmarked by freedom, comfort, and security, and supported by American military power, the Constitution, and free enterprise capitalism - ALL of which are seriously under attack from the left in this country today.
Won't disagree with you on the "attack from the left" part.
But "comfort"? "Security"? These parts of the status quo have never been the driving part of American growth. Nor, for that matter, is "capitalism". (A bastard of a word, in my opinion.) I believe in markets, trade, and the "creative destruction" of entrepreneurship. Capitalists merely own stuff in a particular. Entrepreneurs, they take existing wealth and convert it into new and greater forms of wealth.
Holding wealth ("holding" is a "status quo" word) doesn't do anything. It's how you use the wealth that matters. What has made America great is not how we own stuff, but how we put what we own to use. Except for a few among the capitalist class (the occasional Hearst or Carnegie or Rockefeller), we didn't use our wealth to build castles and gardens that will be tourist attractions for centuries. We used it to build roads and canals and machine tools and railways and steel mills and semiconductor plants, each one of them making obsolete some of what came before.
And I do think you are wrong about the degree of importance you give to military power. The military is there to secure the blessings of our iiberty and to ensure that outside forces do not interfere with those processes of creative destruction. It is not there to project power upon others and it is not something valued intrinsically
Spain, Portugal, England, Russia -- they all found that the projection and maintenance of power was more destructive in the end than anything else. Even the greatest of military empires, one with a degree of superiority over its contemporaries far greater than our own -- that of Genghis Khan -- died because it couldn't afford the projection of power that GK's successors tried to maintain.
I'm not an isolationist. We can't avoid living in a global economy, and I for one wouldn't ever want to. But I also don't believe that our country, despite is military superiority AND despite what I consider its moral superiority, has the wherewithal to be the world's policeman. I would put the Marines (supplmented by the Navy and Army and Air Force and Coast Guard) up against any other country's military capacity, even China's. But it is a far cry from being able to defeat any enemy to being able to police the entire world.
I am not an isolationist. But I do agree with the sentiments of George Washington, by far our wisest of Presidents, in his Farewell Address:
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)