Land of Opportunism

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. - Republican Congressman Peter Sessions

There has arisen a movement to disassemble the United States government one piece at a time. It appears to be a throwback to Confederate secessionism that focused on states’ rights and an attempt to decentralize the federal government. There are references to state sovereignty even though states are no more sovereign than Canadian territories or Afghan tribal regions. They lack the power to wage war with foreign or domestic governments, sign treaties with foreign powers or issue their own currency.

They call themselves Tea Party activists, libertarians and objectivists. This is done under the premise that the country has progressed in a manner not intended by the Founding Fathers. This is apparently done through some spiritual clairvoyance that allows them to have intimate knowledge of these Founding Fathers’ intentions. Those who advocate this philosophy play upon their own amateur interpretation of the Constitution much like religious zealots play on their own interpretation of the Bible. Their vision of America is fairly sociopathic with little regard for governance or social accountability. Although they oppose government intervention and spending, many attend rallies while being supported by unemployment insurance, social security and socialized Medicare insurance. Their direction is free market and laissez-faire driven.

Although the free market’s claim is that this is an honest pursuit of the American Dream, it has no regard for or protection of the American economy. Exploitation of support systems has gone from a scorned subculture to a way of life. Although the welfare system was overhauled and reduced during the Clinton administration, the free market has been allowed to run roughshod over the American economy. American ingenuity has been has been reduced to an empty catchphrase. Predatory marketing practices have not only become commonplace in America, it has become widely accepted by free market proponents. We have become a culture that only sells and does not excel.

Finance no longer has any allegiance to any borders or nation, even the world economy. American small businesses are suffering from this phenomenon just as much as individual Americans. It’s time to remember whose predatory methods put us into this worldwide recession. It is also time to remember that free market advocates resisted bailouts and government interventions expecting free market solutions to resolve the crisis. These so called solutions didn’t improve the situation since mid 2007 when the recession started.

Anyone who holds allegiance to the ideal that business America is a victim of government is looking in the wrong direction. The GDP was not returning before the government passed its financial regulation program. While everyone is looking to the government to solve our economic problems, we need to look to American industry to lift us out of this mess. The whole worldwide recession is a free market failure that can only be solved by returning to solid free market principles and not by rolling our government back to 1776. The current system has become parasitic upon our nation. America has created a business culture of tax dodging, political influence peddling and legal gamesmanship.

The reason that politicians are blamed so heavily is because they come under public scrutiny that businesses would not be able to withstand. It is now the responsibility of our nation to extract maximum benefit from the businesses that drain our country’s resources and equity. We need to mold business to fit America and not America to fit business.

The American economy is bloated and paper heavy. American corporations are sitting on piles of cash and not investing in America or making an effort towards excellence in their industries. The only industries where we excel are financial paper and war machines.

We need to demand more accountability, allegiance and transparency from them. Considering consumer money drives business, businesses should be as accountable to consumers as the government is to its taxpayers. Private industry has a mission to safeguard credit in this country. American companies are commercial entities that are owned properties, just like cars and homes. This ownership carries the duty to hold the public at large harmless. That is the purpose of regulation. It isn’t the role of government to correct and compensate for free market abuses. Although the task of the nation is to maintain some safeguards for our economy, it must do so without the power to control it. As a result, the free market has been assigned to create, direct and maintain the economy. Why hasn’t the private sector been held culpable for excessive gas and health costs? That is the private sector’s job, not the government’s.

The Constitution was created to protect the people of this country, not the financial interests of a select few. Hence the phrase "We the People". Nonetheless, the Constitution is not an all inclusive document that dictates every situation. It wasn’t intended to be adjudicated by Monday morning arm chair quarterbacks in the legislature. That is what the Judicial branch is for.

We need to quit acting like companies are granting us privilege because they exist. They exist to serve their own purposes and not even in the interest of the free market system overall. They hire to serve their own interests as well and not out of any sense or pretense of benevolence. There is nothing noble about their mission. As broken as the U.S. government may seem, the U.S. free market is worse.

Comments

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I was having a conversation on similar lines about the UK last night with one of my banker chums. Although he is now prepared to admit Stiglitz was right, and also that those nations which have higher taxes and better overall education systems (Sweden, Denmark etc) are managing to be generally more productive and make their citizens 'happier'; he opined that such could not scale up to work in a larger economy like the UK's.
He also was of the opinion that the Anglo-Saxon nations are far too decadent to ever right any of the problems which you list.
So folk like him, seeing no alternative, feather their own nests and let the rest of society fend for itself.
Checking out the Laffer curve, I wonder how much taxes could reasonably be increased on companies' profits and the top-earners to start a process of investing back into society, to begin to sort out some of these long-term problems?

I'm tempted to call for higher taxes: but I'm sure someone will disabuse me of such a scurrilous notion.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

They call themselves Tea Party activists, libertarians and objectivists.

Given that the Tea Party movement has only existed for about 3 years, I don't think we can blame them for the ills you're coupling them in on. This means that you're essentially blaming, generously, a minority of the population (http://criticalpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/wapoabc-poll-2007.jpg) who are willing to call themselves libertarian (the true number, as we both know, is probably much lower (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa658.pdf)) for essentially destroying everything.

The funniest part of this whole thing is how much the government, led by left-wingers and Keynesians who have limited understanding of how economies work, has kneecapped the free market, especially since the 1930s. So your post is an indictment of an economic movement that is barely in play thanks to the myriad of regulations, taxes, and restrictions put in place. For example, you complain about "sitting on piles of cash" (and we'll put aside that the money is not just "sitting there," but is in banks allowing for better investment, but we'll run with it) without asking the question as to why they've been sitting on it. You blame the market for higher gas costs when the government is doing everything (http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-02-05/news/17189021_1_energy-security-salazar-s-decision-natural-gas) possible (http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/84781-salazar-eyes-sequential-offshore-drilling-plans) to limit domestic production. You blame the market for health costs when it's one of the most regulated industries and can hardly be defined as a free market (http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/28/health-care-reform-obama-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html).

This rant may touch on plenty of the common left wing talking points, but its marriage to reality is lacking. In such a heavily regulated, big government environment, "the government has failed, thus we need more government" is not the answer. If anything, the expansion of the regulatory state and the size of the government over the last 70+ years is all the evidence we need that your way is the way that is failing us, and we need to look toward dismantling as much of the regulatory structure as is necessary to get us back on track. That, of course, is one of the key issues of the Tea Party movement, and thus it's no wonder so many on the left misunderstand that.

Read Thomas Sowell sometime.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

The US economy has run pretty far from the 1930s to the present. It doesn't appear that it has been “kneecapped” to me at all.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Read Dickens sometime, to see what life was like in a far more free market.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

I figure it's just that time again to have our face rubbed in a mess we didn't make and warned against creating.

It's hard to tell

[russj.livejournal.com]

It's hard to tell from your posting which talking points are those of "the movement" and which are those of your refutation of it.

Both you and it have a unique vision of "how things ought to be", how they are now, and how they got to be that way.

Both versions are open to many, many questions--of veracity, accuracy, etc.

In short, I cannot support your conclusions or your call to prescription to make things better.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, I see. So the rise of the USA to global superpower status under much higher taxation rates in the 1950s and 1960s never happened, did it?

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

For example, you complain about "sitting on piles of cash" (and we'll put aside that the money is not just "sitting there," but is in banks allowing for better investment, but we'll run with it)

Lending is pretty low right now. Much of that money actually is just sitting there.

without asking the question as to why they've been sitting on it.

Actually, I've shown you this before. (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/whats-holding-back-small-businesses/) It's because demand is low.

You blame the market for higher gas costs when the government is doing everything possible to limit domestic production.

Even if those links meant what you claim, domestic production has increased while Obama has been in office. And those leases would have made a tiny dent in gas prices about 20 years from now. New oil wells generally don't affect the market for a very long time. Most recent fluctuation in oil prices is due to turmoil in the Middle East and speculation.

You blame the market for health costs when it's one of the most regulated industries and can hardly be defined as a free market.

Regulation and free markets are not mutually exclusive. There can be failures due to government aspects and failures due to free market aspects. It is clear that, for a number of reasons, the free market has little incentive to reduce health care costs. And leave it to a writer from Reason to characterize the health care bill as a government takeover and 16% as "roughly a fifth." I know they're not big on numbers or empirical inquiry (or reading, I guess), but that's still pretty bad.

In such a heavily regulated, big government environment, "the government has failed, thus we need more government" is not the answer.

Sometimes it is, depending on the problem and the best solution. You provide no reason to reject all government out of hand. What is the optimal set of regulations? What are the shortcomings of free markets? Is there any economic theory of the last 80 years that applies, or should we have ceased all study after Adam Smith?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I see you need this explained to you again. Government is crime. Society is an illusion. Self-interest is the means by which all economic productivity emerges. And economic productivity is the only quantifiable -- and therefore the only real -- good.

It's all right there in the Constitution, which was written by God.

Now stop posting! It does nothing for the Gross International Product!

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Also, The Great Depression never happened, and everyone had equal opportunity for economic freedom pre-1960s.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

I have approved the content of this comment.  I have proof that his post is true.....
 

(http://pics.livejournal.com/stewstewstewdio/pic/00059bb8/)

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

Society is an illusion on all continents? Or, just some?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I like how the most serious free market as cure-all advocates keep insisting that we've "never had a free market" so we really cannot criticize past excesses or presume that the market wouldn't police itself absent a regulatory framework. Also, all the consumer information that is now mandated by law would magically be produced for consumers absent those laws even though they never were before. And abundant water quality testing kits along with alternative pipes providing tap water from dozens of providers will be there is a jiffy.

Kind of reminds me of the really passionate Communists in 1991 scrambling to assure themselves that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not indicative of any flaws in Communism itself since the USSR wasn't "really" Communist.

And yes, I am fairly confident that the comparison is extremely apt. True believers unbothered by doubts operate in the same cognitive architecture regardless of ideology.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

The problem with the communist comparison is that many of them actually advocated for the USSR as a model of efficiancy and gov't equality.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

There are 2 important differences that you are missing.


1) While communism has never existed on any measurable scale the economic Socialism of the Soviet Union was a necessary prerequisite of it and you can show in myriad of ways how that socialist economy failed even when seperated from the existence of the state. Further there are philosophical problems with a socialist economy that prevent it from working. Specifically without the price system there is no signal mechanism to direct the work of society which means chronic shortages and gluts as planners guess wrong.

2) While it is also true that a pure free market has never existed beyond a small scale it HAS existed in pockets within larger regulatory systems and those pockets can be studied.


Finally is it likely that we will ever see a pure free market? Unlikely as that would require an anarcho capitalist system but that does not mean we should not take advantage of the benefits of a free market as much as possible and when we can. Similarly we should work to recognize the failures of government where they actually occur rather than trying to blame everything on "the free market"

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"It’s time to remember whose predatory methods put us into this worldwide recession. It is also time to remember that free market advocates resisted bailouts and government interventions expecting free market solutions to resolve the crisis. These so called solutions didn’t improve the situation since mid 2007 when the recession started."

Right,it would have been so much more concise for you to type "I have no clue what a free market is"

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

I have no clue what a free market is

Considering I link directly to the dictionary definition under the link "free market failure", I would have a pretty good idea. Unless, of course, you have another definition that you just made up.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that anyone who thinks an unrestrained free market is a good idea needs only to look at the Gilded Age, the existence of large-scale populist/socialist movement, and the ability of the likes of Morgan, Carnegie, Gould, and Rockefeller to have Federal troops break up strikes and then needs to stop and consider if that is how we define freedom and success, what do we call failure? Like a pure Communist system, a pure free market would be an utter disaster bound to culminate in a de facto dictatorship.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Once again...

"I think that anyone who thinks an unrestrained free market is a good idea needs only to look at the Gilded Age, the existence of large-scale populist/socialist movement, and the ability of the likes of Morgan, Carnegie, Gould, and Rockefeller to have Federal troops break up strikes"

The use of Federal Troops to break a strike is proof that it was NOT an unrestrained Free Market but rather a Mercantlist state.

Further even when they did not use Federal Troops but rather private detectives/mercenaries as with Carnegie's use of the Pinkertons the fact that they were not charged with murder for doing so is proof that it was not a Free Market.

The very fact that corporations and industrialists were allowed to use force with impunity is the very antithesis of a Free Market whose central feature is a single consistent set of rules for EVERYBODY.

So you have made a good argument against Mercantilism but you have not touched on a Free Market system at all.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The problem as I see it is that you've conflated several seperate but overlapping philosophies as a single monolithic movement. Not all Libertarians are Tea-Baggers. Objectivists are not really Libertarians though they are often Anarcho-Capitalists.

An Athiest may not see much seperation between Eastern Orthodox Catholics and Sunni Muslims but culturally they are worlds apart.

Furthermore you've failed to adress your opponent's core assertation, namely "Power Corrupts, ergo political power should be disperesed to the greatest extent possible to prevent abuse."

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Power Corrupts, ergo political power should be disperesed to the greatest extent possible to prevent abuse

Which could also be said about financial power, you socialist

Pining for the eighteenth century

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Perhaps one reason that reactionaries hold up a romanticized version of the Founding Padres is that they have traditional values that espouse enslaving people and subjecting them to the lash. There seems to be some evidence in this by the way that they practice a certain level of self-flagellation.

Re: Pining for the eighteenth century

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

This is one of the most idiotic things you've said here.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Germany is a good example of a government crackdown during a recession. Their unemployment actually decreased during their crisis.

Germany has done well because its labor-market institutions encourage employers to cut hours not workers. Instead of laying off 20 percent of workers, say, a firm can instead lower the average hours of its employees by 20 percent. Both accomplish the same goal, but from a social point of view, cutting hours is much better because it shares the pain more equally and keeps workers tied to their jobs.

By tying unemployment into this reduced-hours program, people are able to keep their jobs and not collect as much unemployment as if they were outright fired. I can totally understand this, since everyone saves money here: the business from not paying as much but keeping the labor of the worker, the government from not having to give out as much unemployment, and of course the worker himself for keeping his job.

The German system gives employers many incentives to cut hours instead of workers. The most obvious is their "short-time work" system, which pays partial unemployment benefits to workers who have their hours reduced. German workers who lose one day of work per week are entitled to receive unemployment benefits equal to one-fifth of the usual weekly unemployment check.

Workers' rights are also very important in Europe. I mentioned it in a previous topic, explaining how Social Democratic governments work and what their goals are, but this is really a fine example of it:

Other aspects of the German system also help. Legal protections against dismissal make it cheaper for employers to reduce hours than to fire workers. And many Germans are covered by union contracts that allow flexibility around the length of the work week and the spread of hours throughout the year.

To take away from all this:

German successes suggest that one way to fight unemployment --at a relatively low cost to the federal government-- would be some modest efforts to give US employers incentives to cut hours not workers.

Expanding the small programs already in place in 20 states to allow "part-time unemployment benefits" --sometimes called "work-sharing"-- is an obvious place to start. Implementing a new tax credit to employers that expand paid time off --paid sick days or paid family leave, for example-- is another route.

Germany used variations on these kinds of policies to lower the unemployment rate during the Great Recession. Imagine how different the world would be if the unemployment rate in the United States today were, say, 4 percent, not 9 percent.

Denmark is also a good example. I'll just quote the whole thing because I can't find a way to paraphrase it:

Denmark's success is widely attributed to its "flexicurity" system, which provides flexibility to employers and security to workers. Flexibility comes in the form of limited job protections for workers. In the United States, private-sector workers have almost no legal rights to their jobs and, absent a union contract, can legally be fired for almost any reason. In Europe, however, workers have a range of legal protections against dismissal. Denmark has more protections than we do here, but noticeably less than workers in the rest of Europe.

Danish workers accept less job security because they know that national unemployment benefits are generous and the system spends real money getting unemployed workers into new jobs. This is the "security" half of the "flexicurity" system.

A key part of this system is a set of programs that provides training, education, job-search assistance, and other services and incentives to unemployed workers. Even before the Great Recession, the Danes spent over one percent of GDP on these activities. In the United States, we spent less than one-tenth of 1 percent of GDP on comparable programs.

Source (http://www.alternet.org/story/151082/there%27s_a_right_way_and_a_wrong_way_to_deal_with_a_jobs_crisis_--_why_is_germany_doing_it_so_well?page=1)

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

American corporations are sitting on piles of cash and not investing in America or making an effort towards excellence in their industries.

which, in and of itself, is very Un-American!