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shadow economics
genkaku
Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
I haven't got the educational background to assess this article that was passed along in email today, but if even 50% of it is close to the truth, I think it deserves some consideration. Sorry, it's longer than a Tweet, but some subjects seem to shape themselves in that way.
Move over "feudalism!"
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Comments
This is an interesting article. And while it ultimately makes James Buchanan sound kind of insidious and out of the ordinary, I think his economic philosophy is reflective of our society's founding principles, which, under all the flowery language, was liberty for white, male property owners, and relative subjugation for everyone else.
There are many contradictions in capitalism, which Marx and others after him like David Harvey analyze in their critiques, and one of them is the antagonism between democracy and capitalism. The more democratized the economy becomes, the closer to socialism it gets.
Like a spider at the centre of its web, the logic of capitalism revolves around property rights, and from there, conditions everything from the tendency of capital to accumulate to the coercive laws of competition (between capitals for profits and between workers for wages). And capital seeks to be as autonomous as possible in this process to ensure the most efficient functioning of capitalism's web.
If there must be any state oversight (which there must to help create and maintain markets and infrastructures), then the least evil would be an oligarchy, where decisions are made directly by the capitalist class itself, making sure their interests are protected against the majority who, whether in the workplace or the nation-state, are under their control.
There are many who share this visions, chief among them free-marketeers and social darwinists who tend to be more explicit about it, but also many conservatives and libertarians, who think capitalism is the end of history and the solution to all problems, and if not, then at least the system that's going to benefit them the most.
And because the ruling ideas of any age are those of the ruling class, many working people buy into the propaganda they're fed from all sides about capitalism being the best and fairest system, and against anything that seeks to move it towards democratization or is critical of it, allowing a small minority to keep the lion's share of the wealth created by society's labour while engendering competition between the majority of working people for what's leftover.
The ruling class only adopt Keynesian ideas when things get really bad and workers are on the verge of rebelling and/or withholding their labour (e.g., during the Great Depression), biding their time long enough until they can slowly bring it back to the basics, the sacrosanctity of property rights and the supremacy of capital/wealth/money.
A very insightful post @Jason but I just wanted to add that this...
... is perhaps a little US-centric. European attitudes are more socialist in general, and a lot of the ruling ideas here are those that come from the academia. Labour protection rights are stronger as well. It’s not to say there isn’t a strong capitalist tendency and ruling class, but there is a good deal of mobility, and a good number of politicians from the middle classes.
There are countries around the world where oligarchy is expressed a lot more strongly than the European nations, but I agree that in many places democracy is being subverted and is tending more towards oligarchy. What I find odd is that the people don’t seem to care. Their rights are being eroded almost continuously, and increasingly big business is going hand in hand with government, and we are not seeing much of a protest movement.
I thought Occupy in the US was going to make a real impact, but they seem to have gone rather quiet over the years after an impressive grass roots start.
I don't think so. While Europe has strong welfare states, one can see this trend happening there as well, with growing privatization and austerity. They're still capitalist through and through. Just look at what they did to Greece. To think that money doesn't rule there as much as the US just because they have paid maternity leave and universal healthcare is a mistake.
The fact that money rules has a lot to do with a shift that has been playing out over millennia with respect to resource scarcity in agricultural societies. A few thousand years ago you could just pitch up on a piece of land and start farming. Nowadays property rights and land use laws and land ownership are so pervasive that that’s no longer true, you have to maintain your existence in other ways. Hence the labour market and the idea of wage slavery, it’s more about getting a fair price for your work in spite of the market.
But you’re quite right it’s the top 1% who reap the benefits of the technological revolution, in Europe as well as elsewhere. With a fairer distribution most of society would be better off and would experience less stress and have more time for practice
While we're on this topic, I'd like to mention that part of the conservative economic strategy involves maintaining control, and therefore--keeping the tax cut goodies, by means of ever-increasing control of the vote, i.e. voter suppression. A new book details the many ways this is achieved, citing investigations performed after various previous elections. If anyone else is interested in reading this, we could have a little book club here, to discuss it. I haven't read it yet, but I've been following the issue through several election cycles. Here's the link:https://www.amazon.com/One-Person-Vote-Suppression-Destroying/dp/1635571375/ref=sr_1_9_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1535940605&sr=8-9-spons&keywords=One+Man,+No+Vote&psc=1
One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
Follow the money documentary ...
https://www.taxjustice.net/2018/09/14/the-spiders-web-film-watch-on-youtube/
Say whatever you want about my stance, but Politics and all machinations concerning, leave me numbed and cold, like a rabbit in headlights.
I just try to do my best within the community I share, on a day-to-day basis with the tools available.
@Jason: this thread is for you to Moderate, because I can never decide whether people are debating or defaming....
Keep well and be good, folks - and as Wolfie would have said, "Power to the People!"