The European ruling elites are struggling to hold the whole project together...
But the real problems emerge from the technocratic mind-set, from the arrogant gray men who believe they can engineer society, oblivious to history, language, culture, values and place. (NY Times - Brooks)Nobody has all the answers. And no single person or body needs all the answers. That’s the fallacy: That government must be omnipotent and omniscient. It is neither, and vesting it with power and control as if it were is crazy.
The more concentrated power and decision-making becomes, the more information is needed to feed into the power center. Free markets make decisions and evolve solutions organically; static control centers cannot.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Also, as you make one-size-fits-all decisions for larger and larger groups of people, discontent can only grow among those you are trying to help. We argue over everything because government has pushed everything in to the collective, making your rights negotiable and subject to snotty bickering.
For example, imagine a Friday night alone. You’re going to settle in for a night of movie watching and you decide to order pizza. Easy. Now imagine you’re snuggled in with your loved one. The decision on movie-night fare is now a shared one. Take it a step further and imagine a houseful of people. They cannot decide on the toppings, or even which takeout place to order from. Worse, some are on a gluten-free diet and want BBQ, while other clamor for Chinese food. The bigger the crowd, the harder it is to reach a decision.
So we are better off making our individual decisions for ourselves and allowing the spontaneous economy to bloom. It works. Don’t believe me? There are literally billions of people in this world who know nothing of growing crops or killing animals, yet they do not want for food.
People and nations can capitalize on specialization, making things that others want, while not worrying about making necessities they know they can buy from others. And governments' involvement is limited to providing some infrastructure and mediating trade agreements.
How We Got Here
Every emergency has been used by the federal government as an opportunity to take another bite out of our liberties, with expediency as the excuse. As Hayek predicted, "our freedom" has been "destroyed by piecemeal encroachments."
Hayek was a big proponent of governing from broad principles where possible rather than from narrow, specific laws.
"The argument for liberty, in the last resort, is indeed an argument for principles and against expediency in collective action..."He foresaw the "fatal weakness" of government leaving free people alone with their liberties: Uncertain outcomes and glaring inequalities would scare us off our freedoms and into the arms of big daddy government. Liberty cannot compare to concrete promises and "definite gifts offered to particular individuals" in exchange for some "curtailment of freedom."
That is the fatal seduction. Not treating freedom as the "supreme principle..."
"...would inevitably prove a fatal weakness and lead to its slow erosion."Meanwhile, here in America, where Obama ignored the rule of law and saved GM from a richly-deserved bankruptcy...
The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price.Add in the special tax breaks, and...
This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. (Reason)Europe is playing a shell game, and they're running out of suckers. Here in the US, we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The elites have stolen our freedoms in the name of expediency and progress, but their promises of equality and prosperity are just chaff in the wind. They've led us to the brink of collapse. As Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"
Or, to Paraphrase Ben Franklin, "Those who trade liberty for security end up with neither."
Quotes Taken from Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty," pp 129-130.
32 comments:
Europe is playing a shell game, and they're running out of suckers. Here in the US, we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
It seems that the entire global economy is in uncharted territory right now.
So we are better off making our individual decisions for ourselves and allowing the spontaneous economy to bloom. It works. Don’t believe me?
-----------
No. Since you used film as an example, I'll go back to the late 50's and early 60's when film was often partially subsidized outside the U.S.
Te "free market" (LMFAO) will regress to the mean, always. Regress to the common denominator and you can see that in the choice today.
Much more product, much more homogeneity and a drop in quality.
Every so often directors like to do a film that's nostalgic about the roots of film. Compare Scorcese's rather blah "Hugo" with Rivette's "Celine and Julie Go Boating" ... well you probably can't because Rivette isn't easily available in the U.S.
There are more films now and much much less variety let alone substance.
The "free market" (LMFAO) provides choice, true. Go into a supermarket and you will see aisles upon aisles of chips and soda. ll kinds of chips and soda. You get my drift.
Ducky: You are upset because the powers that be "allowed" people to make crappy films and too many varieties of chips?
Your mindset is exactly what I am talking about. Thank you for being exhibit A.
I think your railing against the one size fits all mentality is spot on.
I cringe every time I read or hear someone say "the needs of the few should never outweight the needs of the many."
People don't realize that that's just a fancy slogan for utilitarianism. People think that we have to achieve the greater good, implying that there are lesser goods that have to be sacrificed. But what we should really be striving for is the common good, that set of conditions without which there can be no individual good.
These are tough times for any American who believes in the Constitution. One party (Democrats) no longer even pretend to give it heed while the other party (Republicans, AKA Democrat-lite) pretend to love the Constitution but in reality just do what the Democrats want them to.
Hopefully our Constitution will survive.
"Also, as you make one-size-fits-all decisions for larger and larger groups of people, discontent can only grow among those you are trying to help."
Great description....interesting to me because I think we can all see that discontent's growing even more among the people who don't want help.
And the discontent among those you are trying to help is exhibited mostly by those who could help themselves but would rather not.
One of your very best posts since I climbed on board several months ago -- possibly your best, SilverFiddle.
Too often we are expected to back up virtually everything we say with myriad facts and figures -- quotations from primary sources, charts, graphs, pages of statistics -- and so find ourselves drowning in a sea of specifics. It's too easy to lose sight of the fundamental principles on which these structures of Byzantine complexity are built -- i.e. we fail to see the forest for the trees.
The Ten Commandments, and The Sermon on the Mount -- all of which are synthesized in The Golden Rule -- give us everything we need to go on. Really they do, if one stops to think about their vast implications.
So what do we do?
We continually argue and rationalize, and create all sorts of problems for ourselves in an effort to deny the validity of Holy Writ, and justify self-righteousness, selfishness, indolence, insolence, self-indulgence, greed, envy, sloth and lust.
~ FreeThinke
(CONTINUED)
PART TWO
Our efforts to supplant the eternal verities with vain attempts to obviate or circumvent them -- always to gain some sort of edge or advantage for our puny little selves -- or to win nasty games of one-upsmanship the bullies among us impose on those within their small spheres of influence -- result in WAR -- destruction -- constipation or curtailment of creativity and productivity -- endless frustration. A huge vicious cycle from which there seems no escape.
Refer to basic principles, and right away you are apt to be accused of "generalizing," or being "simplistic," or not backing up your thesis, etc.
I don't think so! You, yourself, describe economic realities and state economic principles with uncommon elegance, SilverFiddle. It should be up to your readers, if they want to argue against the precepts you've stated, to come up with "specifics" of their own in an attempt to refute what you have said.
Frankly, I doubt it could be done legitimately.
I never hesitate to talk in broad general terms. Why should I? After all, the Declaration of Independence, itself, tells us "We hold these truths to be self-evident, doesn't it?
What you are most apt to get from the leftists in their militant intransigence and inanity are insults, unfounded accusations and moronic catcalls -- never reasoned argument.
The strength of the left is drawn from their sheer obduracy. They will not listen to Reason. Instead they mock it, scorn it and shout it down with satanically well-crafted counterfeits of righteous indignation and empathy.
There are no easy answers. Often we don't even know what questions we ought to be asking.
Life is fundamentally unfair. Equality is a myth. Humanity is full of pain.
I think every sensible person would admit that.
What, if anything, that could be done to ameliorate the situation is the area in which all the battles began -- and will probably never end.
I am certain of only one thing: A strict adherence to The Golden Rule in all transactions great and small would do more to advance Civilization than any attempt to appoint mere men to act as gods in an environment of ever-increasing centralized power where all important decisions are made for the individual.
If you remember from Nineteen-Eighty-Four, only the PROLES -- those ignorant peasant-like beings who lived in primitive conditions outside The System -- expressed even the faintest semblance of happiness and contentment.
Surely there's a great lesson to be learned from that?
What else could it have been but the desire for freedom and self-determination that caused the Pilgrims to board the Mayflower, the pioneers to travel westward in their Conestoga wagons, and many of our grandparents and great-grandparents to leave Europe ragged and penniless to come to these shores in the hope of starting afresh?
Look at the risks they took -- the privation they must have suffered! They had no Government Assistance and certainly no Supervision from Central Command other than the Rules of Order they devised among and for themselves.
And LOOK WHAT THEY WERE ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH in practically no time at all!
Shakespeare said early in Macbeth through the lips of the witch Hecate, "Security is mortals' chiefest enemy."
My God! What a world of wisdom and truth is contained in those few words!
To Live is to Risk. There's no escaping it.
~ FreeThinke
Well done sir. I wonder how the History books in the future will tell our tale? No doubt this episode on Earth will be expunged as a misadventure.
No Silverfiddle, I don't blame the powers to be. I BLAME THE MARKET.
Unregulated and unfettered, it leads to monopoly and a lack of choice.
Should we, perhaps, return to this? At least it was based on the accumulation and holding of something tangible --i.e. gold
mer·can·til·ism
1. The theory and system of political economy prevailing in Europe after the decline of feudalism, based on national policies of accumulating bullion, establishing colonies and a merchant marine, and developing industry and mining to attain a favorable balance of trade.
2. The practice, methods, or spirit of merchants; commercialism.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
mercantilism
1. a theory prevalent in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries asserting that the wealth of a nation depends on its possession of precious metals and therefore that the government of a nation must maximize the foreign trade surplus, and foster national commercial interests, a merchant marine, the establishment of colonies, etc.
2. (Business / Commerce) a rare word for commercialism
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
mercantilism
a political and economic policy seeking to advance a state above others by accumulating large quantities of precious metals and by exporting in large quantity while importing in small.
They say it encouraged colonization, the establishment of a merchant marine, and increased industrialization -- the inference we are supposed to draw, I think, is that these things were "bad."
Were they really?
Mercantilism brought us our of feudalism and into the Modern Era, didn't it?
~ FreeThinke
Also, as you make one-size-fits-all decisions for larger and larger groups of people, discontent can only grow among those you are trying to help.
-----------
Trying to help? Please.
That trying only goes so far and not very far at that.
It's like the Old Testament morality that the religious right tries to push. The rules are very clear about what is allowed within the group.
Outside the group, anything goes.
Now this situation may suggest to some that it is wise to enlarge the size of the group. But the right is going kicking and screaming as rights have been expanded within the nation.
Outside the nation, well if you aren't Britain or Israel, screw you.
You back a very restrictive world view, Silverfiddle. You'll limit all kinds of choice and also isolate the nation.
This is a real winning formula. When will you learn indeed.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his back.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Ducky and all his Marxist ilk refuse to recognize is that unbridled, unfettered GOVERNMENT -- i.e. Centrally Planned Economies managed by Dictocrats are the greatest and most evil MONOPOLY of them all.
Governments like corporations are made up of human beings, and are, therefore, subject to all the ills that flesh is heir to.
Nevertheless, I would agree that huge, overmastering corporate entities -- probably best represented in our age by the machinations of the Super-Bully extraordinaire liberal Dictocrat Bill Gates -- that make it all-but impossible for better, innovative products developed independent of the Master Corporate Aegis to succeed should be encouraged in every way to forego maximum profit in the interests of yielding to the ascent of better quality products.
Any force that stifles competition is evil.
How this could hope to be accomplished without government assuming too much power -- as it has done exponentially since the Trust Busting days of TR, I can't imagine.
Naive though it may sound, we desperately need to abide by The Golden Rule.
Capitalism without honest guidance by Christian Precepts is as impossible as any other system based on ruthless exploitation of the helpless.
But the very worst form of such exploitation comes with government by dictatorship -- any variety.
~ FreeThinke
Ducky, when are you going to put your money where your great big "mouth" is, and freely donate your three-million dollars to "the poor, the aged, the infirm, the downtrodden and the disenfranchised?"
As long as you're all mouth, you're nothing but a hypocrite.
Sell all you have, then book passage to darkest Africa or India or North Africa or Central America to spread The Gospel According to St. Marx where you think it's needed most.
Meanwhile, why don't you drop your most un-amusing, un-enlightening Saul-Alinsky-Herbert Marcuse-Armand Hammer-Michael Moore-George Soros Act, and quit trying to undermine the country and the economic system that made it possible for you to achieve your self-vaunted "success."
If you love the gritty, grotty, grubby side of life so much, by all means embrace it. Dedicate the rest of your life to licking the Great Unwashed Clean. None of us would mind in the last I'm sure.
I know it just tickles you to death to hear it, but your insistence on playing a jagged stabbing counterpoint in Gb-Major on your Mouth Organ while the rest of us are trying to enjoy a well-composed symphony in the key of F-major gets very old, very fast.
Besides, it's downright embarrassing to see anyone make such an egregious ass of himself as you do routinely.
~ FreeThinke
Ducky: Your outbursts today are especially fatuous and bereft of any specifics.
Monopoly? Prove it!
A very restrictive worldviw? Prove it!
That's especially rich coming from one who hates the idea of free people exercising their own judgments in the free market.
You have said absolutely nothing that refutes anything in this post.
Christian precepts?
Just what are those? Leviticus?
Are they unique to "Christian" nations?
I say they aren't.
As for government, well I am Catholic so a little authoritarianism doesn't completely freak me but governments power does need to be distributed.
Right now government is nothing but a middle man and Kapital wants to shrink the vigorish the middle man takes and keep it for itself.
So as the fringe right conceives it, reducing government is only going to streamline the upward transfer of wealth and the destruction of the country.
And they call themselves patriots, go figure.
There are non so blind as those who refuse to open their eyes.
You really ought to read what others write, Ducky, instead of assuming you could know without examining the text.
Your persistent jousting with the rag dolls and clay figures of your vain an childish imaginings is irksome. It's like watching someone masturbate in public.
As I said, it's embarrassing.
No one despises the Pentateuch more than I. I've made that abundantly clear on numerous occasions.
Mounting a defense against empty, mindless opposition is not worth the time it takes.
That's what you practitioners of Critical Theory do -- you hope to wear opposition down with your persistent irrational fusillade of ferociously fatuous fanfarinade.
It's BAAAAAAWRING.
~ Ft
PEE YES:
Every one of us here the right is vehemently opposed to Crony Capitalism -- which is exactly what pisses you off so much -- so why the relentless antagonism, Ducky?
Crony Capitalism is to genuine Capitalism what Coney Island is to Tahiti.
And once more -- even though it probably alienates many conservatives here -- my view of Christianity is that Christ came to show what a bunch of crap all that mean-spirited, authoritarian, legalistic balderdash in the Old Testament really is.
He came to give us the Truth in order to set us free. The Jews rejected Him, because they favored then -- and still favor -- establishing DOMINION over the other peoples of the earth first by military conquest and more latterly by intellectual aggression. They want to call the shots, which is why they attract resentment like a magnet and keep suffering rejection and punishment. Jesus Christ tells us to conquer our egotism, our selfishness, our desire to dominate, punish and condemn -- and to curb our fleshly appetites -- not to conquer other people. Gaining control of Self is the object -- never gaining control of Others.
All that aside, it should be self-evident to anyone but an imbecile or a pervert that the many permutations of Civilization that grew under the aegis of Christianity -- even in its most distorted or diluted forms -- are clearly superior to anything that developed outside Europe and the continent of North America.
The West has been a howling success. The rest of the world has lived -- and continues to live -- in relative degrees of darkness and desolation.
It' a pity people who think as you do want to throw it all away instead of building on it.
~ FreeThinke
WHOOPS!
The word is FAN-FA-RO-NADE. I misspelled it. Sorry.
Informally it means making a holy show of yourself.
Cheerio!
~ FreeThinke
One of many great quotations from Hayek:
"To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.
~ Friedrich August von Hayek
And ain't DAT de troof?
~ FT
The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.
We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.
LEO TOLSTOY
Tolstoy is the last person a "marxist-socialist" (ROFLMFAO) should be quoting.
You guys are all completely off base.
The main reason the US and Europe are sinking now is untaxed, unregulated, "free" trade. There are American and European businessmen who happily cannibalize their own countries for a buck. Great guys, huh conservatives? Sycophants.
JMJ
"The elites have stolen our freedoms in the name of expediency and progress, but their promises of equality and prosperity are just chaff in the wind. They've led us to the brink of collapse. As Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"
First I will answer Peter, Paul and Mary. The answer is NEVER.
Now for the news, the elites have stolen one more of our rights, Habeas Corpus,the right to trial. This constitutionally-protected right was nullified through a new Department of Defense bill.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 – S 1867 — crafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) declares the entire United States of America as a military battlefield, where individuals — American citizens and non-citizens alike — are subject to arrest and indefinite detention by the military on orders of the President without the right to step into a courtroom. The Bill was passed today.
Jersey, I'm glad to see that you put "free" in quotes, recognizing that under the current corporatist progressive state there is no such thing as a free market.
Untaxed... like GE?
Unregulated... like Solyndra?
How about those politicians who happily cannibalize their own citizens for a buck, and power.
Like... GM?
Like.... the UAW?
Given yesterdays discussion on education and todays on government elites, I offer this, the perfect example of what's wrong with both education and progressives:
Arlene Ackerman, Philadelphia Schools Superintendent after scandal, budget deficits, and racial violence is removed from office.
The price to get rid of her? $905,000
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/08/22/report-ackerman-out-as-philadelphia-schools-chief/
She then turns around and files for unemployment benefits of $573 a week.
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/11/29/former-philadelphia-schools-chief-arlene-ackerman-files-unemployment-claim/
There in all it's glory is everything that is wrong with liberal progressive statists and their damn entitlement programs.
Cheers!
Every one of us here the right is vehemently opposed to Crony Capitalism -- which is exactly what pisses you off so much -- so why the relentless antagonism, Ducky?
--------------
Well I'd say it's pretty freaking obvious Freethinker.
Crony capitalism is nothing but laissez-faire with a middleman (government) taking a cut. Eliminating government gives the oligarchy bigger cut and doesn't solve a freaking thing. Simple, even a Libertarian can understand it.
Arlene Ackerman, Philadelphia Schools Superintendent after scandal, budget deficits, and racial violence is removed from office.
The price to get rid of her? $905,000
----------
Tie a can on the useless aphorisms, Finntann.
That's freaking tip money compared to what Wall Street is stealing from us.
Man catch a clue. That's the invisible hand of the market in your pocket.
My god Ducky you're right... we should simply ignore all the problems of progressive statism and socialism, I mean, it's worked so well everywhere else it has been tried.
Why shouldn't we follow in the footsteps of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, Tito, Ceausescu.
Your workers paradise awaits.
Man catch a clue. That's the dagger of your marxist brethren in your back.
Ducky,
It is the power of Industrialists and Bankers combined with the power of an Almighty State that makes the situation deadly.
I get read the riot act and have my head handed to me every time I mention The Oligarchs -- the Illuminati -- The Bohemian Grove Crowd -- whatever the hell you want to call the de facto cabal of Industrial Titans, International Bankers, Financiers and the Owners and Suppliers of Raw Materials, who most certainly do control things behind the scenes.
These monstrous characters have been striving toward the dissolution of American democracy and everyone's national sovereignty for about a century in favor of establishing One World Government -- a Socialist-style Dictatorship -- owned and operated by Guess Who? -- and to Whose Advantage?
Once Unionism rose to power, and Government began to interfere with Business, Business had no choice but to fight back by JOINING forces WITH Government in an effort to neutralize Government's power. The result has been the creation of the deadly amalgam that is picking us up by the scruff of our necks and shaking the stuffing out of us.
So, you are partly right, Ducky.
THERE! That's more than you've ever given me.
My greatest complaint -- and greatest fear -- has to do with POWER, itself -- something you unwilling or unable to comprehend.
You and your kind, apparently, want to entrust control of our lives entirely to the forces of Government, and wrongly assume that Conservatives and Libertarians want to entrust it entirely to unprincipled, unregulated, greedy, rapacious, thoroughly immoral, capitalistic entrepreneurs-- even when we tell you that Capitalism untempered by Christian morality can be just about as evil as anything else .
How wrong you are!
I can't speak for everyone on board, of course, but my own dearest wish would be to find a way to BREAK UP large POWER BLOCS and thus DE-CENTRALIZE POWER as much as possible.
Among many other things, Hayek said:
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers."
"Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order."
It is the dense aggregation of Power that we must fight -- the kind of Power knows no allegiance to any nation, and cares not at all for people as individuals, but sees them only as SUBJECTS -- potentially useful PAWNS in winning battle after battle for ever-increasing ability to hold the power of life and death over every one outside The Oligarchy, itself.
The Oligarchs -- Oh yes, Virginia, they do indeed exist -- have been incredibly clever in playing ALL ends against the middle always to their specific advantage.
The joke is on you, Ducky, and everyone else stuck in the obsolete Left-Right paradigm, which has not existed in truth for a very long time.
If this were not so, why the HELL do you suppose it never seems to matter who wins elections?
BOTH parties are in on it. BOTH parties work ceaselessly against your best interests and mine.
~ FreeThinke
FT,
why the HELL do you suppose it never seems to matter who wins elections?
BOTH parties are in on it. BOTH parties work ceaselessly against your best interests and mine.
And that's the sorry truth.
The days of statesmen and elected public servants have gone by the wayside. **sigh*
Ducky says - I sit on a man's back,(oppressive Big Government) choking him and making him carry me, (Unsustainable Entitlements) and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means (Progressive Liberal Fundamentalist Media) -- except by getting off his back. (Public Sector Unions)
OK. Now, it looks right.
Jersey McJones says -The main reason the US and Europe are sinking now is untaxed, unregulated, "free" trade. There are American and European businessmen who happily cannibalize their own countries for a buck. Great guys, huh conservatives? Sycophants.
Even your worshipped Eurocrats don't peddle that kimchee.
Finntan says - Why shouldn't we follow in the footsteps of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, Tito, Ceausescu.
Your workers paradise awaits.
They'll do it right, this time.
Honest.
No Silverfiddle, I don't blame the powers to be.
You should.
Man catch a clue. That's the invisible hand of the market in your pocket.
Right. A corrupt and thoroughly incompetent schools superintendent, contracted by the city and paid in tax dollars is an example of the evil free market. Since the mayor has decided to solicit "donations" to pay this cretin off, I would say it is more a failure of city government (imagine that) to properly vet and supervise this dolt. Or, were they waiting for the all-knowing and all wonderful Department of Education to do it for them? I guess we'll have to wait to find out how the despicable "invisible hand" created that situation. I'm sure there is an explanation somewhere.
Why don't you put your hand up and snag one of those clues for yourself, huh? However, in your defense, I can understand where a concise statement of priciple would elude you. Terse statements of truth are anathema to Marxists.
@ Ducky: Crony capitalism is nothing but laissez-faire with a middleman (government) taking a cut.
Wrong. Government active participation (Chrysler and GM bailouts, denying Boeing the use of its plant, killing the pipeline, etc) is not laissez-faire.
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