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In a libertarian paradise, this is the price of freedom

In chapter 8 of The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek defends the idea of some people inheriting vast sums of money for the good of society as a whole. You see, we proles can’t handle “the propagation of new ideas in politics, morals, and religion” ourselves. We need people “who can back their beliefs financially” to do that sort of thing. Of course, not all of the idle rich will take it upon themselves to instruct the lower orders:

It is undeniable that such a leisured group will produce a much larger proportion of bons vivant than of scholars ad public servants and that the former will shock the public conscience by their conspicuous waste. But such waste is everywhere the price of freedom; and it would be difficult to maintain that the standard by which the consumption of the idlest of the idle rich is judged wasteful and objectionable is really different than that by which the consumption of the American masses will be judged wasteful by the Egyptian fellaheen or the Chinese coolie.

And, so we see, Rich Kids Of Instagram is not a call to man the barricades and sharpen the guillotines, it’s simply the price we have to pay to be free. This kid’s got three bottles of Dom Perignon so that our world can be a better, freer place for all.

 


There are no empirical studies that can refute this. It is pure logic. And no empirical studies are needed to prove the argument. They can’t.

Anyone using empirical data to try and prove or disprove logic is a quack.

Robert Wenzel, who seems to be some sort of libertarian economist. This is how libertarians think, going back to Von Mises in Human Action, at least. Declare actual empirical measurements of their ideas off limits. As long as it works in theory, that’s all you need, right?


I began to read widely and I read a number of free market economists like Friedrich [von] Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard and I discovered these explanations of the world worked a lot better than the philosophy I had previously. I learned that business is the greatest value creator in the world. We create value for customers, for employees, for suppliers, for investors, for the communities we’re part of. Business people are heroic. We’re not the bad guys. We’re the good guys.

John Mackey CEO of Whole Foods (via sinidentidades)

Rich white guy discovers a philosophy that flatters rich white guys like him, thinks it’s really profound.



When I’m at the Wal-mart or grocery story I typically pay with my debit card. On the pad it comes up, “EBT, Debit, Credit, Cash.” I make it a point to say loudly to the check-out clerk, “EBT, what is that for?” She inevitably says, “it’s government assistance.” I respond, “Oh, you mean welfare? Great. I work for a living. I’m paying for my food with my own hard-earned dollars. And other people get their food for free.” And I look around with disgust, making sure others in line have heard me.
I am going to step this up. I am going to do far more of this in my life. It’s going to be my personal crusade. I hope other libertarians and conservatives will eventually join me.
Eric Dondero, on his plan to make the rest of us think libertarians are even bigger self-absorbed jerks than we already do.


Hayek on The New Inquiry and Jacobin

coreyrobin:

“There are few greater dangers to political stability than the existence of an intellectual proletariat who find no outlet for their learning.” (Constitution of Liberty, p. 506)

Discovery of the day: Corey Robin (of whom I’m a fan) is now on Tumblr. Also, this quote is amazing. If there’s one thing I am, it’s an intellectual prole with only a Tumblr account as an outlet for this sort of thing. I mean, have you tried discussing politics on Facebook?

Also, the quote above is on page 383 in my copy of The Constitution of Liberty. I was really into Hayek many years ago, but never actually read more than a couple pages of it, due to how cheap the typesetting in it is. Literally difficult to read. Looks like they’ve fixed that problem, as the fact that recent economic history has shown Hayek to be completely wrong has led to a resurgence of interest in his work, and the book’s got a fancy new edition.

 


Aaron Director

From Wikipedia:

Aaron Director (September 21, 1901 – September 11, 2004), a celebrated professor at the University of Chicago Law School, played a central role in the development of the Chicago school of economics. Together with his better known brother-in-law, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, Director influenced a generation of jurists, including Robert BorkRichard PosnerAntonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Apparently, one of those guys you never hear about, but who were enormously influential in inspiring a generation of bad ideas across the fields of law and economics (or the single field of “law and economics”). I do have to wonder if law and economics tends to increase the longevity of its proponents. Director died at 102, and his associate Ronald Coase is still alive at 101.

 


Calling yourself a libertarian today is a lot like wearing a mullet back in the nineteen eighties. It sends a clear signal: business up front, party in the back.

You know, those guys who call themselves “socially liberal but fiscally conservative”? Yeah. It’s for them.

Today, the ruling class knows that they’ve lost the culture wars. And unlike with our parents, they can’t count on weeping eagles and the stars ‘n bars to get us to fall in line. So libertarianism is their last ditch effort to ensure a succession to the throne.

Republicans freak you out but think the Democrats are wimps? You must be a libertarian! Want to sound smart and thoughtful in front of your boss without alienating your “socially liberal” buds? Just say the L-word, pass the coke and everyone’s happy!

Connor Kilpatrick, “It’s Hip! It’s Cool! It’s Libertarianism!

I came to this conclusion a while ago. Libertarianism is just another variation of reactionary politics dressed up in cooler language. As Corey Robin explains in The Reactionary Mind, this is what conservatism has done since Edmund Burke and the French Revolution. Anyways, go read the article if you like libertarian-bashing as much as I do.



At its most elemental, the Ron Paul “revolution” was primarily a catchbasin for traditional nativism, goldbuggery, unreconstructed Confederatism, wishful thinking, constitutional mumbledy-peg and, on its not-too-distant fringes, some even more distasteful nuggets from American crackpottery past. (The racism in those newsletters was not accidental. It was the inevitable byproduct in history of most of the ideas that Paul promoted elsewhere. And Senator Aqua Buddha is really the pure stuff, as we will see as he ascends to the leadership of the “revolution.”) That so many progressives fell for the con is a measure of the essential intellectual bankruptcy of the Democratic party.
Charles P. Pierce, calling it the end of the road for the Ron Paul campaign’s hopes of having any further relevance in 2012.

(Source: esquire.com)



I don’t know why we’re all going around pretending that people only become businessmen to become rich. They do so for lots of reasons (John and I were discussing this the other night). Some want to become rich and then do something else fun with the money (this is, oddly, very, very rare). One reason is just that they want to boss a lot of people around. If they are intelligent enough, they can turn a profit and acquire a large pool of people whom they can order around like dogs. Not my thing, but it’s some people’s thing and I don’t see any reason to pretend it’s not. And now don’t let’s say they can have that kink and willing kinkster subs; of course they can. They want unwilling subs, otherwise it isn’t any fun at all. And in any case this isn’t about sex, this is about taking up almost every waking hour of a person’s life and enacting a miniature puppet show of state tyranny upon it. Snitches, rewards from those favored by the boss, mercurial shifts in which the favorites suddenly become lowly and can be triumphantly trodden on by the ordinary man, a whole world made of rumor, where nothing is certain…the workplace run by an evil boss is like nothing so much as a tiny Soviet satellite state. There is no death of course, only exile. But is there freedom? (Hint: NO! Libertarians, please study harder for the next test.)

Infringements on Worker’s Rights: Not Imaginary

(via anticapitalist)

This whole series of posts over on Crooked Timber about libertarianism and workplace rights has been amazing (the others so far have been ones by Chris Bertram, Alex Gourevitch, and Corey Robin, John Holbo, and Henry Farrell, the one quoted above is by Belle Waring). But I’d also like to recommend this one in particular for the comments thread, which contains a good discussion of the need for female voices in this sort of media, especially when dealing with topics such as workplace harassment. Apparently, the comments on the John Holbo post (John is Belle’s husband, as well as a fellow Crooked Timber blogger) had been almost completely male-dominated, and people actually realized that that’s not a good thing and they should try to fix it.



It’s really interesting to watch libertarians’ rising sense of disbelief and outrage over the Koch brothers’ attempt to take over the Cato Institute, the most prominent and respected libertarian think tank in the country. Suddenly, many former defenders of the Kochs are beginning to question the intellectual integrity and political purity of their benefactors.

Jane Mayer in the New Yorker. Let me just say that plenty of us on the left been questioning the “intellectual integrity and political purity” of the Koch Brothers for years. As usual, it takes a while for everyone else to catch up to the left.

Brad DeLong rounds up who’s on which side:

The Kochs’ point of view is simple: since William Niskanen’s death the shareholders’ agreement says that they own a majority of the shares of Cato, and it is their property with which they can do as they wish. It is hard to see how any true libertarian could possibly disagree, and seek to do anything other than to vindicate the Kochs’ liberty interest in what is their property. But…

I count fifteen strongly opposed to the Kochtopus, four of much lesser weight—Erick Erickson, Thomas DiLorenzo, Daniel Foster, and Robert Wenzel—climbing on the gravy train, and three—Arnold Kling, Walter Olson, and Jonah Goldberg—damning themselves to eternally chase the banners in the antechamber of hell as a result of their refusal to take sides.

If the Republicans actually manage to stop embarrassing themselves quite so much in their primary race tomorrow, this lawsuit ought to provide a decent amount of schadenfreude.

(Source: It’s really interesting to watch libertarians’ rising sense of disbelief and outrage over the Koch brothers’ attempt to take over the Cato Institute, the most prominent and respected libertarian think tank in the country. Suddenly, many former defenders of the Kochs are beginning to question the intellectual integrity and political purity of their benefactors. Read more http)



But even if this opposition were overcome — as it may well be under the pressure of the masses — the maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. Indeed, under a regime of permanent full employment, the ‘sack’ would cease to play its role as a ‘disciplinary measure’. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. It is true that profits would be higher under a regime of full employment than they are on the average under laissez-faire, and even the rise in wage rates resulting from the stronger bargaining power of the workers is less likely to reduce profits than to increase prices, and thus adversely affects only the rentier interests. But ‘discipline in the factories’ and ‘political stability’ are more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view, and that unemployment is an integral part of the ‘normal’ capitalist system.

Michał Kalecki, “Political Aspects of Full Employment

And here we have Kalecki’s take on why full employment, even if it would ever be obtained, could never last. This explains something I’ve been trying to figure out for a little while. The lapdog economists of the capitalist class have been pushing for plainly destructive policies, not just for us, but also for themselves. Today’s big businessmen aren’t the rentier interests of yesteryear, for whom price increases were painful. They ought to support a booming economy. As Kalecki predicts a little later on, though: “In this situation a powerful alliance is likely to be formed between big business and rentier interests, and they would probably find more than one economist to declare that the situation was manifestly unsound.” Which has pretty much borne out in actual fact.

I will say, though, that we seem to be shifting towards debt as the primary means of controlling the lower classes. But for now, I think Kalecki’s essay neatly draws a big, straight line connecting these issues that perfectly explains what we’re seeing now. It seems rather too cynical to just assume that everything bad in the state of economic commentary is solely a smokescreen to protect the class interests of the wealthy, but seeing our reality and Kalecki’s predictions from 1943 mesh so neatly, it’s hard not to think that he was decidedly on to something.



One might therefore expect business leaders and their experts to be more in favour of subsidising mass consumption (by means of family allowances, subsidies to keep down the prices of necessities, etc.) than of public investment; for by subsidizing consumption the government would not be embarking on any sort of enterprise. In practice, however, this is not the case. Indeed, subsidizing mass consumption is much more violently opposed by these experts than public investment. For here a moral principle of the highest importance is at stake. The fundamentals of capitalist ethics require that ‘you shall earn your bread in sweat’ — unless you happen to have private means.

Michał Kalecki, “Political Aspects of Full Employment

I skipped over the objection to the government investing in public goods, which was basically that it might compete with business. I think this quote, about the objections to government spending on helping people consume more to increase demand, largely speaks for itself. You don’t have to go far to trip over some blowhard rich white man extolling the benefits of hard work (that he’s never had to do) to lift oneself out of poverty (which he’s never been in). There’s a whole cottage industry of people explaining how food stamps and other programs make poor people lazy, while raising taxes on capital gains by a penny would destroy the willingness of plutocrats to “create jobs.” Obviously, such claims are bullshit, but people have a vested interest in maintaining their place at the top of the pyramid.



We shall deal first with the reluctance of the ‘captains of industry’ to accept government intervention in the matter of employment. Every widening of state activity is looked upon by business with suspicion, but the creation of employment by government spending has a special aspect which makes the opposition particularly intense. Under a laissez-faire system the level of employment depends to a great extent on the so-called state of confidence. If this deteriorates, private investment declines, which results in a fall of output and employment (both directly and through the secondary effect of the fall in incomes upon consumption and investment). This gives the capitalists a powerful indirect control over government policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence must be carefully avoided because it would cause an economic crisis. But once the government learns the trick of increasing employment by its own purchases, this powerful controlling device loses its effectiveness. Hence budget deficits necessary to carry out government intervention must be regarded as perilous. The social function of the doctrine of ‘sound finance’ is to make the level of employment dependent on the state of confidence.

Michał Kalecki, “Political Aspects of Full Employment

This is the first of the three reasons that Kalecki gives for the opposition of business for a program of full employment: that they object on principle to deficit-based government spending. If we don’t believe that the government could or should borrow money to put people back to work, we are much more dependent on keeping the business sector “confident.” Keep this quote in mind when the paid shills of Wall Street appear on TV worrying about “business confidence” and “consumer confidence” and all that. All they’re really doing is reminding you of the power relationship at play here between the capitalist class and the working class.



It should be first stated that, although most economists are now agreed that full employment may be achieved by government spending, this was by no means the case even in the recent past. Among the opposers of this doctrine there were (and still are) prominent so-called ‘economic experts’ closely connected with banking and industry. This suggests that there is a political background in the opposition to the full employment doctrine, even though the arguments advanced are economic. That is not to say that people who advance them do not believe in their economics, poor though this is. But obstinate ignorance is usually a manifestation of underlying political motives.

Michał Kalecki, “Political Aspects of Full Employment

Way back in 1943, Kalecki, a Polish economist who had independently worked out many of Keynes’s ideas wrote this essay about how we have the economic know-how to produce full employment through government action, but the capitalist class will always use its political power to prevent it. And that, therefore, there will support economic theories that are opposed to government action to maintain full employment.

It’s a provocative argument that hasn’t gotten too much attention in the intervening time. But the reactions to the current downturn are amply proving that his cynicism was warranted. I think it explains the fondness for and persistence of stupid ideas like “expansionary austerity” better than anything else I’ve seen.



anticapitalist:

bbcity:

libertydefender:

bbcity:

libertydefender:

A footnote taken from Austrian and Marxist Analysis by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (former Marxist).

  • “The Marxist theory of exploitation is nonsensical even if one were to absolve its proponents from having to prove the labor theory of value and, indeed, even if the labor theory of value were true. Even a generalized commodity exploitation theory provides no escape from the conclusion that the Marxist theory of exploitation is dead wrong.”
Sigh. As I said, an organizational form of work can only count as exploitative if a specific set of conditions hold. This is indeed the link between “the owner of labor services”, and “the owner of the originary factor of production.” So, again, it’s not that the exploitation arises between ->factor and output prices<- but that differential ownership of land or productive assets creates two complementary sets: an exploiting coalition and an exploited. Why? Because if you play around with different organizational forms of ownership, the only one that isn’t picked out by the conditions is the one predicated on workers’ self-management (a co-op, in common parlance).
The upshot is that if you sell something for more than you paid to have it produced, you’ve exploited. But that still begs the question.  All of the rewording doesn’t change anything.
No… It’s not that at all. I’m starting to think you’ve only read wiki articles on the LTV?  It counts as exploitative if and only if one coalition involved depends on the others’ not withdrawing with his/her per capita share. 
Hoppe doesn’t reference the article I linked. He references earlier articles by Roemer (pre-90s). Roemer didn’t disappear after 1985… 
[Snipped a whole bunch]
Wait, the guy’s using Hans-Herman Hoppe as his cite? Seriously? I thought libertarians tried to keep him hidden in the attic because it’s so easy to use him to make them look bad. Hoppe actually advocates for a neo-feudalist dystopia that us leftists claim libertarians want and they try to deny. Plus, the hatred for democracy, racism, homophobia, and advocacy of a “natural elite.” Some quotes:
There can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They-the advocates of alternative, non-family-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism-will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.
There can be no tolerance toward democrats … in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society.
In a covenant…among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism.
What the countercultural libertarians failed to recognize, and what true libertarians cannot emphasize enough, is that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social “discrimination” and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multicultural-egalitarian life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarians. In other words, libertarians must be radical and uncompromising conservatives.
A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person… but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest).
As one brief example, I referred to homosexuals as a group which, because they typically do not have children, tend to have a higher degree of time preference and are more present-oriented. I also noted – as have many other scholars – that J.M Keynes, whose economic theories were the subject of some upcoming lectures, had been a homosexual and that this might be useful to know when considering his short-run economic policy recommendation and his famous dictum “in the long run we are all dead.”
In my book Democracy, The God That Failed I not only defend the right to discrimination as implied in the right to private property, but I also emphasize the necessity of discrimination in maintaining a free society and explain its importance as a civilizing factor. In particular, the book also contains a few sentences about the importance, under clearly stated circumstances, of discriminating against communists, democrats, and habitual advocates of alternative, non-family centered lifestyles, including homosexuals.