Global Revolution!

JustARandomPanda · October 19, 2011

Houses are not investments if you're living in them as a primary residence: They're a consumer durable good.

Ask anyone who's owned one - the roof needs fixing, the water heater needs to be replaced, furnaces wear out and electrical work is needed from time to time. Absent that routine addition of more capital eventually your "house" will crumble into dust!

OMFG!!! I've been making this EXACT same argument for decades to everyone around me and always get dismissed.

Encephalon · October 19, 2011

The best place to start is with action. The government's interest is obviously not in energy effeciency with all the funds being allocated into the politics from the oil companies which make them even more profit from tax write-offs.

Iceland and Norway are prime examples of making the move towards clean energy. They produce all the electricity without fossil fuels, why don't we? Even McDonalds could start salving all the grease they produce to run cleaner* bio-fuel generators to produce energy. These things should be required, not requested.

No argument from me there. I was merely pointing out that the shift from a fossil fuel-based culture to a renewable one hasn't been fully conceived yet,and it would require almost all the remaining fossil fuels to reconstruct a global green grid. As you correctly pointed out, the fossil fuel industry is not eager to participate in its own extinction, so you won't find them lending a helpful hand in this effort.

As for the two resources I mentioned, I merely offered them as tools for understanding the dilemma. Current green energy technology can't maintain anywhere near the standard of living that fossil fuels provide. Iceland and Norway are both blessed by geography and geology (tidal, thermal, hydroelectric)and small populations, but they are exceptions.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this whole story is that even if we were to suddenly agree on a consensus to rebuild a global energy grid, the whole planet has been bankrupted; there's no credit available, so healing the global financial sector actually comes first, the global energy grid second, not the other way around. Oil companies have been awfully busy buying back their own stock with record quarterly profits, so who knows, maybe they'll go green when they feel like they can corner the global alternative energy market. Similar proposals were made two decades ago; maybe they can be bribed into doing it without taking the whole planet down with them.

Edited October 19, 2011 by Encephalon

ralis · October 19, 2011

Mark Papantonio discusses the anti-intellectual and anti-science movement of the right wing. One comment he makes, is that the general population reads and comprehends at a 7th grade level and therefor has no facility to think critically.

Edited October 19, 2011 by ralis

JustARandomPanda · October 19, 2011

My personal examples are not second fiddle to the wider questions brought up by OWS and the Tea Party. Because it's precisely in the bedeviling details where we are most likely to see our beautiful beliefs fall down. Is this not the very thing the Right keep shouting that the Left ignore? That they're ignoring the details by adhering to their beautiful theories too much? Well that sword cuts both ways. Because the Left can point out where the Right's theories falls down too. Point your finger at me and 3 more are pointing right back at you. Which is precisely why we see people getting pissy with each other online. Each side is essentially telling the other "your beliefs are ignoring realities".

-K- made a good suggestion. By playing Devil's Advocate for the side we typically most disagree with it allows us to see the holes in our own beloved notions of human behavior. It's not all that easy to do. And I haven't even seen much of it in this thread. I've tried to address it a wee bit by showing why I personally don't think it's as simple as just stating "Corporations are the Problem" or "Government is the Problem". Plus it's always easier to attack someone else's beliefs and proposals than presenting and proposing your own.

But I find myself curious about the gaps. The realm where models and theories fall down.

As t.s. eliot once said in The Hollow Men (excerpt):

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

JustARandomPanda · October 19, 2011

For anyone who wants to wade into the arcane I give you the Max-Planck Institute. A think-tank based in Germany. It has a division devoted to examining economic behavior at both the micro and macro levels from the lens of evolutionary science.

Here is a link explaining their Evolutionary Economics division (along with their other division)

Here is a link to just a few of their papers submitted for their Journal. You can open in a browser or download the individual papers.

Here's the direct link to a sample paper and the abstract quoted below:

Abstract

The paper discusses recent trends in the sister sciences of evolutionary economics and complexity economics. It suggests that a unifying approach that marries the two strands is needed when reconstructing economics as a science capable of tackling the two key questions of the discipline: complex economic structure and evolutionary economic change. Physics, biology and the cultural sciences are investigated in terms of their usefulness as both paradigmatic orientation and as toolbox. The micro–meso–macro architecture delineated puts meso centre stage, highlighting its significance as structure component and as process component alike, thereby allowing us to handle the key issues of structure and change.

As an alternative you can check out the following:

1. Wiki page on assorted Economic Growth Theories being tossed around

2. Here is a link to Oded Galor's book - Unified Growth Theory

For most of the vast span of human history, economic growth was all but nonexistent. Then, about two centuries ago, some nations began to emerge from this epoch of economic stagnation, experiencing sustained economic growth that led to significant increases in standards of living and profoundly altered the level and distribution of wealth, population, education, and health across the globe. The question ever since has been--why?

This is the first book to put forward a unified theory of economic growth that accounts for the entire growth process, from the dawn of civilization to today. Oded Galor, who founded the field of unified growth theory, identifies the historical and prehistorical forces behind the differential transition timing from stagnation to growth and the emergence of income disparity around the world. Galor shows how the interaction between technological progress and population ultimately raised the importance of education in coping with the rapidly changing technological environment, brought about significant reduction in fertility rates, and enabled some economies to devote greater resources toward a steady increase in per capita income, paving the way for sustained economic growth.

Presents a unified theory of economic growth from the dawn of civilization to today

Explains the worldwide disparities in living standards and population we see today

Provides a comprehensive overview of the three phases of the development process

Analyzes the Malthusian theory and its empirical support

Examines theories of demographic transition and their empirical significance

Explores the interaction between economic development and human evolution

From the Inside Flap

"Galor's project is breathtakingly ambitious. He proposes a fairly simple, intensely human-capital-oriented model that will accommodate the millennia of Malthusian near-stagnation, the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath of rapid growth, the accompanying demographic transition, and the emergence of modern human-capital-based growth. And the model is supposed to generate endogenously the transitions from one era to the next. The resulting book is a powerful mixture of fact, theory, and interpretation."--Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics

"Unified Growth Theory is a work of unusual ambition. Full of original and daring ideas, this book will inspire, motivate, and challenge economists. Highly recommended."--Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Unified Growth Theory is Big Science at its best. It grapples with some of the broadest questions in social science, integrating state-of-the-art economic theory with a rich exploration of a wide range of empirical evidence. Galor's erudition and creativity are remarkable, and the ideas embodied in this book will have a lasting effect on economics."--Steven N. Durlauf, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Birch · October 19, 2011

JustARandomPanda · October 20, 2011

There is no 'between'. IMO/IME. However, this does not excuse us (or prevent us, apparently) from creating things that we then pretend function as if there were (or as if there weren't, but that's a bit more 'deep' than I'd like to even attempt to take myself).

Yes I think you are getting at something rather close to my own view. It's why we even have these arguments. You simply came out and said it. I've kinda been showing by process how my own thinking has led me to this-or-that over the years. I still think people get seduced by ideas and theories a lot. Seems to be something our brains like to do.

I'm still a proponent of poking holes in my own ideas and models (and other's too) of the world.

My personal take is that the 'pro/anti capitalist' thing is by now pretty proven useless at achieving anything much in positive, life-beauty-health promoting terms at all, so arguing the toss over whether to be for or against it in the future in the face of what I'd call pretty outstanding 'empirical evidence' that it's a life-sucking, ugliness-creating, death-chasing 'meme' seems to me to be old hat and not worth wasting my time trying to argue with. I'd personally rather just dump the whole thing and not have anything much more to do with it.

But I'd probably get told by the reasonable, rational folks that economists all insist we are that I'm eluding my part of responsibility for this mess and that I ought to work harder with it and do something worthwhile. On whose terms? The very same that landed us in this collective f*ckery? No way 'Hosé'.

Why -K-! I do believe you are starting to sound like Twinner! :lol:

Birch · October 20, 2011

Yes I think you are getting at something rather close to my own view. It's why we even have these arguments. You simply came out and said it. I've kinda been showing by process how my own thinking has led me to this-or-that over the years. I still think people get seduced by ideas and theories a lot. Seems to be something our brains like to do.

I'm still a proponent of poking holes in my own ideas and models (and other's too) of the world.

Why -K-! I do believe you are starting to sound like Twinner!

Well that's disappointing :lol:

I thought I had a few scraps of personality left. Bugger.

Anyways, so to irrationally tie in this thread/line of thinking with previous personal musings about how TaoMeow "knew" (but hasn't so far said) about what caused the change in the cycle of the hexagrams (that's the outside of the 'wheel' from the POV of where I sometimes sit in nothing and where all the f*ckery is taking place BTW, with and without my forays onto the edge of it)

Something happened.

What I mean is that the wheel is always there (as is the possibility of sitting in the middle of it in emptiness) but prior to this 'something happening' the wheel was quite a bit different and (from reports/idealized myths) quite a lot more harmonious/beautiful/life-promoting, as only actual harmony is wont to be.

Many ideas about 'what happened' have been floated but they almost always involve human fault/sin or agency/responsibility. Which is rather convenient, don't you think?

And the 'why this is f*cked' reasons today tend to continue along the same veins. IMO it's a very old story

Informer · October 20, 2011

No argument from me there. I was merely pointing out that the shift from a fossil fuel-based culture to a renewable one hasn't been fully conceived yet,and it would require almost all the remaining fossil fuels to reconstruct a global green grid. As you correctly pointed out, the fossil fuel industry is not eager to participate in its own extinction, so you won't find them lending a helpful hand in this effort.

As for the two resources I mentioned, I merely offered them as tools for understanding the dilemma. Current green energy technology can't maintain anywhere near the standard of living that fossil fuels provide. Iceland and Norway are both blessed by geography and geology (tidal, thermal, hydroelectric)and small populations, but they are exceptions.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this whole story is that even if we were to suddenly agree on a consensus to rebuild a global energy grid, the whole planet has been bankrupted; there's no credit available, so healing the global financial sector actually comes first, the global energy grid second, not the other way around. Oil companies have been awfully busy buying back their own stock with record quarterly profits, so who knows, maybe they'll go green when they feel like they can corner the global alternative energy market. Similar proposals were made two decades ago; maybe they can be bribed into doing it without taking the whole planet down with them.

It all comes together within now, regardless.

gendao · October 20, 2011

Do you just make this stuff up or even analyze the implications of a pure free market? What is natural about free market capitalism?

Free-market capitalism is the closest model to natural Darwinism. You know - Darwin, your beloved God of Evolution? :lol:

What you and others whom have bought into this ideology, fail to realize or even consider, is the problem of the downside of human nature that is primitive and violent! Whether it is the Koch Bros. or any other corporation, these people do not have anyone's best interest in mind! Corporations are not benevolent entities! Humans are socialized primates and exhibit primate behavior towards one another. BTW, there are data accumulated by research scientists to substantiate that statement.

Ok, so let me just briefly assume your extreme misanthropism to follow your line of logic here:

Corporations (like Apple) are primitive and violent because...humans are naturally primitive and violent.

Therefore, we must highly-regulate them with Big Gov? That are ALSO run by...naturally primitive and violent humans?

Or are career politicians/lawyers just typically wiser, less primitive, less violent and morally superior to other humans? :lol:

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Yea thanks man, but I'll pass on the purple Kool-Aid..

Edited October 20, 2011 by vortex

ralis · October 20, 2011

Free-market capitalism is the closest model to natural Darwinism. You know - Darwin, your beloved God of Evolution? :lol:Ok, so let me just briefly assume your extreme misanthropism to follow your line of logic here:

Free markets can best be described as Socialized Darwinism, given that free unregulated markets are predatory in nature. That means an imbalance of resources that a few alpha primates acquire. If you ever read any history and I assume you don't you might realize what the dark side of human nature is really about.

Corporations (like Apple) are primitive and violent because...humans are naturally primitive and violent.

Therefore, we must highly-regulate them with Big Gov? That are ALSO run by...naturally primitive and violent humans?

Can't you read? I said the downside of human nature is primitive and violent! I am talking about unregulated markets being predatory in nature. The best example to date are the predatory banks that brought about the 2008 financial crisis due to deregulation and the gutting of Glass-Steagall. The commodities bubble market in which oil is speculated on by banks and hedge funds that produce nothing. These institutions are permitted to trade at a very wide margin (10-1 or more) and are not required to take delivery of the commodity. Before deregulation, airlines and fleets could buy futures to lock in a guaranteed price so as to be able to price future airfares and trucking contracts. I suppose you enjoy paying more for gas at the pump when you fill up your car? Does that make you smile and think how benevolent these bankers and hedge funds people are as you give more of your hard earned money to them?

As far as Steve Jobs is concerned, he was an innovator and accomplished much for the evolution of information technology. However, he was a control freak, complete with ridiculous price structures, limited software, skirted anti-trust laws and required all applications, music etc. to be bought through his I Tunes store. That is a business model founded on greed and control.

Edited October 20, 2011 by ralis

ralis · October 20, 2011

Yes I think you are getting at something rather close to my own view. It's why we even have these arguments. You simply came out and said it. I've kinda been showing by process how my own thinking has led me to this-or-that over the years. I still think people get seduced by ideas and theories a lot. Seems to be something our brains like to do.

I'm still a proponent of poking holes in my own ideas and models (and other's too) of the world.

I would recommend this book by Krozybski which is an excellent way to unravel belief systems BS. :lol:

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Sanity-Introduction-Non-Aristotelian-Semantics/dp/0937298018/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1319082004&sr=8-5

For a shorter and more to the point of Korzybski's work.

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Intelligence-Self-Liberation-Non-Aristotellian-Realization/dp/1845900618/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319082103&sr=1-1

I have some natural ability to immediately jump into someone else's point of view and understand how that individual thinks and create an argument from their point of view. Maybe later I will go into more detail. Suffice it to say, there are both positive and negative attributes to that ability.

JustARandomPanda · October 20, 2011

Once Upon a Time...

I came across a book I thought breathtaking in it's analysis of poverty and how to use an untapped goldmine poor people naturally possessed for lifting themselves out of poverty.

That book was

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

by Hernando de Soto

It was a beautiful book. And for a while a lot of Influential People with ties to Influential Institutions were very taken by it.

But then History has a weird way of showing how clever humans are...

The De Soto Delusion

Peruvian Economist Hernando de Soto's ideas for helping the poor have made him a global celebrity. Now, if only those ideas worked. …

It's Davos week, which means it's time for the world's most influential people to bask in the catchy wisdom of Hernando de Soto.

Author of The Mystery of Capital and The Other Path, armchair consultant to numerous heads of state, and white knight for the cause of property formalization—Hernando de Soto is practically the patron saint of the global elite. At last year's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton, the event's unofficial king, publicly declared that de Soto was "probably the world's most important living economist." For the left, de Soto has formulated the most seemingly practical ideas for reducing global poverty. For the right, de Soto offers the most compelling way to market capitalism to the poor.

Beginning with his first projects in Peru in the mid-'90s, de Soto's ideas have been packaged and peddled all over the Third World—by the World Bank, by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and by de Soto's own Lima think tank, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy—as the new conventional wisdom for fighting poverty. On the white board, de Soto's ideas flatter the imaginations and sensibilities of Davos-types (particularly the American ones). But on the ground, it turns out that de Soto's ideas are doing very little to solve the actual problems of poor people.

De Soto's vision of the Third World is instinctively appealing. He sees industrious, entrepreneurial slum-dwellers, toiling with boundless ingenuity, yet living in homes and owning businesses that are theirs only by de facto possession and jury-rigged local agreements, not by de juredeed and title. De Soto calls all this informally held property "dead capital," because it can't be leveraged to produce growth—it can't be mortgaged, because it lacks a proper title to guarantee it as collateral. He says there are gobs and gobs of this dead stuff out there: $9.3 trillion worth, by his estimate, skulking in the ghetto.

Mindful of the fact that "the single most important source of funds for new businesses in the United States is a mortgage on the entrepreneur's house," de Soto's plan is, quite simply, to make homeowners out of the world's poor squatters. Neighborhood by neighborhood, slum by slum, he wants to formalize the vast extralegal world by dotting it with individual property titles. Once that's done, he promises, the poor will have access to credit, loans, and investment, as their dead assets are transformed—voilà!—into live capital.

De Soto is right to point out the importance of legally sorting out who owns what in the Third World. Secure property rights probably are indeed, as he puts it, the "hidden architecture" of modern economies—or something like that, anyway. On the level of gee-whiz metaphors and moving rhetoric, de Soto deserves a lot of credit: He's brought an unprecedented degree of attention and funding to the vital and fascinating issue of squatters and informal economies. But he has botched the details, especially by pushing one solution—individual property titles—for all different kinds of poor people in all different kinds of poor places.

From the field, the verdicts are rolling in: In some corners of the world, the land-titling programs inspired by de Soto's work are proving merely ineffective. In other places, they are showing themselves to be downright harmful to the poor people they set out to help.

First, the merely useless:

In various parts of the Third World, newly legalized squatters on the outskirts of cities are discovering that a property title supplies little of the benefit de Soto projects. Government studies out of de Soto's native Peru suggest that titles don't actually increase access to credit much after all. Out of the 200,313 Lima households awarded land titles in 1998 and 1999, only about 24 percent had gotten any kind of financing by 2002—and in that group, financing from private banks was almost nil. In other words, the only capital infusion—which was itself modest—was coming from the state.

Reports from Turkey, Mexico, South Africa, and Colombia suggest similar trends. "In Bogota's self-help settlements," writes Alan Gilbert, a London professor of geography who has done extensive research on land issues in Colombia and other parts of Latin America, "property titles seem to have brought neither a healthy housing market nor a regular supply of formal credit."

This is probably because banks realize they don't stand to gain much from repossessing shanties in rotten locations. Faced with a massive surge in legalized but tenuous properties owned by poor people, banks have simply adjusted their criteria for lending, and in some cases care more about stable employment than a land title. Not only that, but the actual real estate markets in many of these shantytowns on urban outskirts are stagnant, which puts a serious damper on any potential gains on capital—live or dead.

"You cannot accumulate capital if there is no market in which to trade your asset," Gilbert writes.

Now for the downright harmful:

In places where real estate markets are buoyant, titles turn out to be quite a hot commodity. Too hot, in fact. In June of 2002, for example, the World Bank kicked off a several-year project to distribute over a million titles throughout Cambodia. In Phnom Penh, the capital, untitled land near the city center has been selling for about $20 to $30 per square meter over the past few years. Titled properties nearby have been selling for around 10 times that much. For a poor squatter in the middle of the capital city, the promise of a title would seem to be a road to riches. In practice, it's more like a sign taped to his back that says, "Kick me."

In the nine months or so leading up to the project kickoff, a devastating series of slum fires and forced evictions purged 23,000 squatters from tracts of untitled land in the heart of Phnom Penh. These squatters were then plopped onto dusty relocation sites several miles outside of the city, where there were no jobs and where the price of commuting to and from central Phnom Penh (about $2 per day) surpassed whatever daily wage they had been earning in town before the fires. Meanwhile, the burned-out inner city land passed immediately to some of the wealthiest property developers in the country. (Prominent among them was this guy, Cambodia's richest thug.)

Since then, a similar pattern has continued elsewhere in the city, says Alain Durand-Lasserve, a land-management expert who has worked in Cambodia during the last couple of years. Investors have been buying squatter-occupied state land from various government officials in Phnom Penh, who pocket the money, thus looting the land both from the state and from the poor. In other cases in Phnom Penh—and also in Manila, in the Philippines—speculators or middle-income groups went out before titling programs took effect and bought land at slightly better than informal prices directly from the squatters, who happily sold off for a bit of cash. Then the investors just waited for the titling program—and the attendant leap in value and legal security—to come their way.

It turns out that titling is more useful to elite and middle-income groups who can afford to bother with financial leverage, risk, and real estate markets. For very poor squatters in the inner city—who care most about day-to-day survival, direct access to livelihood, and keeping costs down—titles make comparatively little sense. These poorer groups either fall prey to eviction or they sell out, assuming they'll find some other affordable pocket of informality that they can settle into. The problem is, with titling programs on the march, such informal pockets are disappearing fast. So, the poor sell cheap or are evicted, then can't find a decent new place to settle, losing the crucial geographic advantage they once had in the labor market.

What to do? Here's one idea: Geoffrey Payne, a British urban planning consultant with years of experience working on land-tenure issues in Cambodia and elsewhere, recommends temporarily insulating slums from the commercial land market by granting informal neighborhoods groups land rights for some period of time. During that period, he says, the neighborhood can be upgraded and basic services brought in, allowing land values to inch up toward parity with the surrounding real estate market. Then, after a number of years, the neighborhood gets a full, group land title, which can then be subdivided into individual titles if people are willing to take on the costs. By taking these incremental steps, he says, you shelter the poor from the shock of a titling gold rush.

But sadly, the Davos set doesn't have a crush on Geoffrey Payne, and de Soto has never sat down for a debate with him. Nor, in fact, does de Soto seem to pay attention to any of the lawyers, urban planners, geographers, sociologists, or economic development experts who have catalogued the real-life flaws in his ideas.

I did catch up with de Soto myself just after Davos a couple of years ago, and I asked him for his own solution to the squeeze on poor squatters brought on by formalization. He told me wealthy land-grabbers should know that it's in their best interests to have the productive power of the poor brought into the economy. When I replied that those elites don't seem to be aware of that, de Soto simply offered: "I can make them aware."

JustARandomPanda · October 20, 2011

Here's something I also considered....

Let's say you are a poor Cambodian who's home in Phnom Penh got taken by that wealthy Cambodian property developer in the article mentioned above. Then a second problem strikes. Your child has developed a devastating illness but a lifesaving treatment is available. Unfortunately the country can not afford this kind of specialized medical care for it's citizens. Neither seemingly can you.

Fortunately for you and your wife and child the free market is here to step in and save the day.

An enterprising businessman steps forward upon learning of your plight and says he will pay for your child's lifesaving treatment as well as buy your wife and child a new home...on one condition...You sell yourself into slavery to him for which he will ultimately then sell you to a slave buyer in Dubai. He will make a modest profit from selling you to his customer in Dubai but not unduly so.

You weigh the pros and cons.

Can you sell yourself into slavery? Many people object in horror that you can't. Not even for the most noble goal of saving your child's life and providing your family with a secure home again. The repercussions to the wider society would just be too costly.

But understand their objections do not rest upon rational analysis

The Libertarian Case for Slavery^*

J. Philmore

Our property in man is a right and title to human labor. And where is it that this right and title does not exist on the part of those who have money to buy it? The only difference in any two cases is the tenure.¹

Introduction

A prominent economist has quipped that free-market libertarianism is derived from liberalism by taking the limit as common sense goes to zero. There is an element of truth in this because what liberals take as "common sense" often turns out to be only a shared prejudice. The Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick has carried out this limiting process of taking liberalism to its only logical conclusion: libertarianism.² Nozick's uncompromising statement of the libertarian credo represents something of a watershed in modern social and moral philosophy because of its explicit acceptance of voluntary contractual slavery.

The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would.³

It seems to be a basic shared prejudice of liberalism that slavery is inherently involuntary, so the issue of genuinely voluntary slavery has received little scrutiny. The perfectly valid liberal argument that involuntary slavery is inherently unjust is thus taken to include voluntary slavery (in which case, the argument, by definition, does not apply). This has resulted in an abridgment of the freedom of contract in modern liberal society.

Since slavery was abolished, human earning power is forbidden by law to be capitalized. A man is not even free to sell himself: he must rent himself at a wage.⁴

People are only allowed the temporary security afforded by capitalizing a portion of their earning power (i.e., by renting or hiring themselves out for a specified time period), but are denied the freedom of obtaining a maximum of security by selling all of their human capital. The owners of nonhuman capital (e.g., money, machines, buildings, etc.) enjoy the contractual freedom of either hiring out their capital or selling it, but state interference in the marketplace prevents the owners of human capital from exercising the same liberty. And yet the principal difference between selling and only hiring out an entity is that of selling all or only a part of the services provided by the entity (i.e., the tenure of the contract).

The labourer, who receives wages sells his labour for a day, a week, a month, or a year, as the case may be. The manufacturer, who pays these wages, buys the labour, for the day, the year, or whatever period it may be. He is equally therefore the owner of the labour, with the manufacturer who operates with slaves. The only difference is, in the mode of purchasing. The owner of the slave purchases, at once, the whole of the labour, which the man can ever perform: he, who pays wages, purchases only so much of a man's labour as he can perform in a day, or any other stipulated time.⁵

For the worker's viewpoint, the "only difference" is not just the mode of selling if the slavery is involuntary, as in the customary juxtaposition of "free labor" and (involuntary) "slave labor." But we are discussing voluntary self-enslavement, i.e., people's sale of their labor by the "lifetime" (that is, up to some specified retirement age) instead of just by the hour, day, week, or year.

Warranteeism

Since the voluntary contracts to rent oneself out or to sell oneself differ primarily in their extent and duration, what are the relative advantages of the slavery contract? People enter the marketplace with different attitudes and preferences about the holding of responsibility and authority. In the colorful but blunt language of George Fitzhugh:

It would be far nearer the truth to say, "that some were born with saddles on their backs, and others booted and spurred to ride them."⁶

This needlessly abrasive (and illiberal) formulation of the insight should be recast in terms of the technical language used by the Chicago school of libertarian economics to explain the social function of the wage contract. People enter the marketplace with risk-preference differentials: some are risk averters and others are risk takers.

This fact is responsible for the most fundamental change of all in the form of organization, the system under which the confident and venturesome "assume the risk" and "insure" the doubtful and timid by guaranteeing to the latter a specified income in return for an assignment of the actual results. . . . The result of this manifold specialization of function is the enterprise and wage system of industry. Its existence in the world is a direct result of the fact of uncertainty.⁷

This specialization in the risk-bearing function is, however, incomplete in modern liberal societies.

A principal failure of liberal capitalism has been its inability to provide maximal "cradle-to-grave" economic security to those who desire it. This failure has been an important force behind the development of welfare-state capitalism (not to mention socialism), where the state forces everyone to provide security to those who cannot or will not provide it for themselves. A standard liberal argument against many free-market libertarians is that the laissez-faire market does not provide adequate security for the needy. But Robert Nozick, by strictly adhering to libertarian principles, has shown that there is a free-market solution to the problem of providing a maximum of economic security to those who desire it, namely, voluntary contractual slavery. As any libertarian would expect, the problem may be solved not by increasing government interference and coercion (as in welfare-state capitalism/socialism), but by removing the legal restrictions on the lifetime sale of labor.

If contractual slavery were legally permitted, then risk averters with little nonhuman capital could utilize the free market to obtain lifetime security by capitalizing all of their earning power. American slavery, in the antebellum era, was typically not based on an explicit contract. However, some proslavery writers, such as Reverend Samuel Seabury, gave a liberal contractarian defense of antebellum slavery by interpreting it as being based on an implicit contract like the implicit social contract of liberal political theory.

What is a competent consideration for the labor of the poor if it be not nurture in infancy, maintenance in health, support in sickness and old age, and a relief from the uncertainty and mental anxieties inseparable from the lot of those who are compelled to provide for themselves?⁸

Reverend Seabury's liberal arguments are far more sophisticated than the feudalistic appeals given by George Fitzhugh, and thus Reverend Seabury has received far less attention than Fitzhugh from liberal historians of thought.

Many proslavery writers have emphasized the risk-bearing and risk-averting roles of the master and slave. Some considered the insurance provisions to be so central to the institution that they suggested it be renamed "warranteeism."

Slavery is the duty and obligation of the slave to labor for the mutual benefit of both master and slave, under a warrant to the slave of protection, and a comfortable subsistence, under all circumstances. The person of the slave is not property, no matter what the fictions of the law may say; but the right to his labor is property, and may be transferred like any other property.... Nor is the labor of the slave solely for the benefit of the master, but for the benefit of all concerned; for himself, to repay the advances made for his support in childhood, for present subsistence, and for guardianship and protection, and to accumulate a fund for sickness, disability, and old age. The master, as the head of the system, has a right to the obedience and labor of the slave, but the slave has also his mutual rights in the master; the right of protection, the right of counsel and guidance, the right of subsistence, the right of care and attention in sickness and old age.... Such is American slavery, or as Mr. Henry Hughes happily terms it, "Warranteeism."⁹

No one would take this seriously as a description of antebellum slavery, but recent research¹⁰ indicates that the standard histories of the institution should also not be taken at face value. In any case, since so many people are slaves to the connotation of involuntariness in the word "slavery," it may be better to refer to voluntary contractual slavery as "warranteeism."

Some Historical Precedents

Contractual slavery existed from antiquity up to the Civil War. In Roman law, as codified in the Institutes of Justinian, the self-sale contract was one of the three legal means of becoming a slave. Jurists also saw some of the incidents of contract in the other two legal means of becoming a slave: being taken prisoner of war and being born of slave parentage. If the alternative was execution, a prisoner might choose instead a lifetime of servitude in return for his life. And servitude was seen as the recompense to the master for the food, clothing, and shelter advanced to the children of slaves.

In feudal times, the homage contract was a warranty arrangement whereby the vassal acquired security and protection in return for lifetime service.

While slavery is widely accepted as being an involuntarily achieved status (although there were cases of voluntary entry and sales of children in ancient and medieval Europe), other forms of what are sometimes called "forced labor" are the result of voluntary agreement. Recently economic historians have reopened the discussion of whether European serfdom represented a voluntary exchange—protection for labor services—or whether it was a form of forced labor imposed from above.¹¹

In the antebellum South, a number of voluntary contractual enslavements were secured by the passage of private bills in the state legislatures. For example, in 1858 the North Carolina legislature passed "A Bill for the Relief of Emily Hooper of Liberia," which provided

That Emily Hooper a negro, and a citizen of Liberia, be and she is hereby permitted, voluntarily, to return into a state of slavery, as the slave of her former owner, Miss Sally Mallet of Chapel Hill....¹²

In the period just before the Civil War, general legislation was passed in six states "to permit a free Negro to become a slave voluntarily."¹³ For instance in Louisiana, legislation was passed in 1859 "which would enable free persons of color to voluntarily select masters and become slaves for life."¹⁴ The racist character of these laws—and of antebellum slavery in general—would have no place in a libertarian society where the freedom contractually to alienate one's labor for any time period would extend to everyone regardless of race, creed, color, or sex.

The Classical Liberal Case Against Voluntary Slavery

What are the liberal arguments against voluntary contractual slavery? There are none that are substantial. The whole subject of voluntary slavery is usually passed over in an embarrassed silence. When liberal thinkers do attempt to argue against the permissibility of voluntary slavery, their arguments are surprisingly superficial and inconsistent with other liberal tenets. Indeed some "arguments" against voluntary slavery seem more like special pleas to the effect: "Let's just agree to rule it out for whatever reason." It quickly becomes clear that the general disapprobation of voluntary slavery is based less on rational argumentation than on an emotional reaction to the word "slavery" (with its connotation of involuntariness).

Many liberal philosophers and legal theorists have argued against voluntary slavery only because they construed slavery as entailing the master's power of life and death over the slave.

For a Man, not having the Power of his own Life, cannot, by Compact, or his own Consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the Absolute, Arbitrary Power of another, to take away his Life, when he pleases.¹⁵

Locke construes such slavery as a state of war continued between conqueror and captive. There is no need to evaluate these objections since they would not apply to a civilized form of contractual slavery where both parties had certain rights as well as obligations.

For, if once Compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited Power on the one side, and Obedience on the other, the State of War and Slavery ceases, as long as the Compact endures.... I confess, we find among the Jews, as well as other Nations, that Men did sell themselves; but, 'tis plain, this was only to Drudgery, not to Slavery. For, it is evident, the Person sold was not under an Absolute, Arbitrary, Despotical Power.¹⁶

Montesquieu attempts to criticize the self-sale contract on legalistic grounds.

Neither is it true that a freeman can sell himself. Sale implies a price; now, when a person sells himself, his whole substance immediately devolves to his master; the master, therefore, in that case, gives nothing, and the slave receives nothing.¹⁷

Blackstone introduced this argument into English common law.

Every sale implies a price, a quid pro quo (value for value); can an equivalent be given for life, and liberty, both of which (in absolute slavery) are held to be in the master's disposal? His property also, the very price he seems to receive, devolves to his master, the instant he becomes a slave. In this case, therefore, the buyer gives nothing, and the seller receives nothing: of what validity, then can a sale be, which destroys the very principles upon which all sales are founded?¹⁸

This quid pro quo argument is, at best, a shallow legalism (and, at worst, just a special plea). The quid pro quo in the warrantee contract is a lifetime guarantee of food, clothing, and shelter (or equivalent money income) in return for the lifetime right to one's labor services. Moreover, there is no more need for a warrantee to give up his personal property and political rights in the lifetime labor contract than there is for an employee to do the same in the short term labor contract.

A closer examination of Montesquieu's and Blackstone's arguments shows that they—like Locke—objected not to the lifetime labor contract but only to the absolute slavery that permits the master to kill the slave (e.g., early Roman slavery). When Montesquieu says "To sell one's freedom," he refers to "slavery in a strict sense, as it formerly existed among the Romans, and exists at present in our colonies."¹⁹ Blackstone makes a similar distinction when he discusses the contract whereby "one man sells himself to another."

This, if only meant of contracts to serve or work for another is very just: but when applied to strict slavery, in the sense of the laws of old Rome or modern Barbary, is ... impossible.²⁰

Blackstone then states that the law of England abhors slavery, and that a slave becomes a freeman the instant he lands in England.

Yet, with regard to any right which the master may have lawfully acquired to the perpetual service of John or Thomas, this will remain exactly in the same state as before: for this is no more than the same state of subjection for life, which each apprentice submits to for the space of seven years, or sometimes for a longer term.²¹

Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone (as a representative of the English common-law tradition) are among the founders of modern liberal thought. The case against voluntary slavery is often based on their authority. Yet we have seen that, upon closer examination, they only objected to a rather extreme form of slavery, and that they did not object to a civilized contract for the sale of labor services by the lifetime instead of by the day, month, or year.

Modern Arguments Against Voluntary Slavery

One modern legal argument against contractual slavery is based on the doctrine of specific performance. This doctrine holds that, except as an occasional equitable remedy, the law will generally require only material damages for breached contracts and will not enforce specific performance. It is argued that the slavery contract is null and void because it is unenforceable. It should be noted that the doctrine of specific performance applies to all contracts, not just to labor contracts. Hence, if a contract is to be void because it is unenforceable (in the sense of specific performance), then all contracts that require some future performance (i.e., all contracts) would be invalid. The doctrine, of course, implies nothing of the sort. In the case of the lifetime labor contract, the doctrine only implies that if the warrantee chooses to breach the contract then he or she must pay appropriate material damages (possibly over a period of time as in alimony payments), i.e., restore to the warrantor a portion of the purchase price and human capital investment.

Thus, if A has agreed to work for life for B in exchange for 10,000 grams of gold, he will have to return the proportionate amount of property if he terminates the arrangement and ceases to work.²²

That is effectively self-manumission, and it would be a legal possibility at any point in time.

Another argument is that a lifetime labor contract should be invalid because it involves a lifetime personal commitment. The principal counterexample to this argument is, of course, the marriage contract ("till death do us part"). Moreover, the slavery contract compares favorably with the marriage contract since the former could be dissolved at any time by the mutual agreement of both parties whereas the marriage contract cannot.

The last resort, in the liberal case against voluntary slavery, is pure and simple paternalism. People must be protected against their own judgment; people must be forced to be free.

A...basic policy that is justified this way in part is the prohibition against a person's selling or mortgaging himself: Freedom is a paramount value, and whenever a person feels that he wants to sell himself for something else offered in return, he should be protected against his own poor judgment.²³

Security—the freedom from want—is also a paramount value. By what right does the liberal state forbid the full range of voluntary trade-offs between freedom (risk bearing) and security (risk aversion) in the marketplace? Why is it good judgment for the risk-adverse human capital owner to sell his labor day by day—never knowing if he will have his job the next day, and yet "poor judgment" to finally obtain security and insure his future by selling his labor all at once?

Some reflective liberals point to an alleged analogy with suicide. Although they have no valid theoretical case against genuinely voluntary suicide, they would nevertheless be willing to coercively prevent any given suicide attempt on a paternalistic basis. But the suicide analogy is faulty because of the irreversibility of a successful attempt. As mentioned above, the slavery contract, like any contract, could be breached at any point in time by either party if that party was willing to incur the material damages.

Another reason why the paternalistic argument is given particular credence, in the case of voluntary slavery, is that slavery is only thought of in terms of the involuntary slavery of the past. That is only a failure of the imagination. It is surely not beyond the wit of man to design a civilized contract for the sale of labor by the lifetime that would contain the same safeguards as the present contract for the sale of labor by the day, week, or year.

There already exists a de facto system of lifetime employment in at least one capitalist country, Japan. This system includes many aspects of warranteeism even though it is not based on an explicit lifetime contract. For example, there are de facto penalties of social disapprobation against either party if the party "breaches" the agreement. It is most interesting that almost all observers agree that the Japanese system of lifetime employment is based on paternalism. It thus seems somewhat ironic that Western liberals should cite "paternalism" as the reason for exactly the opposite policy of prohibiting lifetime labor contracts. One suspects that the root of the matter is not "paternalism" at all but the conditions of supply and demand on the labor market. Japan had an abnormal labor shortage in the postwar years, whereas the other liberal capitalist countries have a relative surplus of labor—or, at least, of the type of labor that would be offered by potential warrantees. Why assume the risks and responsibilities involved in buying workers when they can always be rented by the day, week, month, or year?

If there are no valid legal or moral arguments against genuinely voluntary slavery, then perhaps it can be condemned on grounds of economic inefficiency. Quite to the contrary, the competitive capitalist system cannot be shown to be allocatively efficient without permitting voluntary slavery in the system. In their celebrated general equilibrium model²⁴ of a competitive capitalist economy, Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu prove the basic efficiency theorem that a competitive equilibrium is allocatively efficient (Pareto optimal). The Arrow-Debreu model utilizes complete future markets in all goods and services. Thus the model assumes that a person is legally permitted to sell all of his or her future labor services. If it was legally prohibited to sell certain commodities—such as future dated labor service—then the efficiency theorem for competitive capitalism would fail.

Given the conventional liberal prejudice against voluntary slavery, it is not surprising that neoclassical economists are loath to admit that their fundamental efficiency theorem for competitive capitalism requires the assumption that voluntary slavery is permitted. But some economists have been courageously frank about the matter.

Now it is time to state the conditions under which private property and free contract will lead to an optimal allocation of resources. . . . The institution of private property and free contract as we know it is modified to permit individuals to sell or mortgage their persons in return for present and/or future benefits.²⁵

Hence, far from voluntary slavery being condemnable on efficiency grounds, its permissibility is a necessary condition for the efficient functioning of the system of private property and free contract—as any consistent free-market libertarian would expect.

When all serious arguments fail, modern liberals are reduced to procedural fussing about the "quality of the consent." It should be clear by now that there are no valid libertarian arguments against genuinely voluntary slavery on moral, legal, or economic grounds. There are no valid reasons for prohibiting acts of enslavement between consenting adults. It must be concluded that the prohibition of contractual slavery in modern liberal societies is based on little more than an irrational and emotional reaction to the historical connotations of the word "slavery." If voluntary slavery is to be outlawed because of the violence and coercion that was a part of involuntary slavery, then shouldn't voluntary sexual intercourse be outlawed because of the violence and coercion involved in rape? The logic is the same in either case.

Constitutional Dictatorship

There is an analogous problem in political theory that should be mentioned. Just as liberals always tend to interpret slavery as being inherently involuntary, so they also tend to construe non-democratic forms of government as being coercively imposed. But that is only another shared prejudice. A dictatorship, an autocracy, an oligarchy, or some other form of nondemocratic government could be based on the consent of the governed just as well as democracy. Grotius, not to mention Hobbes, was quite explicit on this point.

A man may by his own act make himself the slave of any one: as appears by the Hebrew and the Roman law. Why then may not a people do the same, so as to transfer the whole Right of governing it to one or more persons? ... But as there are many ways of living, one better than another, and each man is free to choose which of them he pleases; so each nation may choose what form of government it will: and its right in this matter is not to be measured by the excellence of this or that form, concerning which opinions may be various, but by its choice.²⁶

The voluntaristic principles of liberalism and libertarianism do not entail that the form of government should be democratic. Rousseau saw the analogy with voluntary slavery and tried to respond.

If an individual, says Grotius, can alienate his liberty and make himself the slave of a master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a king?²⁷

Rousseau inveighed against these contractual freedoms on the basis of the quid pro quo and the "poor judgment" arguments (which we have already considered). He concluded that people should be forced to be "free." But such coercion cannot be justified on libertarian grounds. Democracy is only one among an indefinite number of voluntary forms of government, each of which embodies a different social division of authority, responsibility, and risk bearing. People should not be forced to "consent" to one form of government and thus be denied the freedom to make alternative voluntary arrangements. There is no necessary connection between libertarian principles and democracy (and thus the word "democracy" does not even appear in the index of Nozick's book).

The Employer-Employee Contract

In the free-market private enterprise system, most work is performed under the auspices of the "legal relationship normally called that of 'master and servant' or 'employer and employee."'²⁸ In order to give the "essentials of this relationship," the Chicago free-market economist Ronald Coase quotes from a legal reference book.

The master must have the right to control the servant's work, either personally or by another servant or agent. It is this right of control or interference, of being entitled to tell the servant when to work (within the hours of service) or when not to work, and what work to do and how to do it (within the terms of such service), which is the dominant characteristic in this relation and marks off the servant from an independent contractor, or from one employed merely to give to his employer the fruits or results of his labor.²⁹

Coase concludes: "We thus see that it is the fact of direction which is the essence of the legal concept of 'employer and employee.' "

The free-enterprise or capitalist firm is based on the employment relation (as Coase points out). A capitalist firm is not a democracy. In the employment contract, the employees voluntarily transfer to the employer the right of government or management of their labor (within the limits of the contract). Thus the employment contract establishes a nondemocratic form of industrial government or management—a limited Hobbesian pactum subjectionis for the workplace—that is based on the consent of the governed. In a constitutional but nondemocratic form of government, the citizens would similarly make a voluntary transfer of the general right of government to the person or persons constituting the sovereign body. Hence a constitutional nondemocratic form of political government, a peacetime constitutional dictatorship, could be seen as an extension of the existent contractual basis for the free-enterprise firm to the overall political sphere.

It was noted above that the warrantee contract for voluntary contractual slavery would be a sale of labor services by the lifetime (or up to retirement) instead of by the hour, week, or year. It would allow human capital³⁰ to be purchased as well as rented like the other forms of capital.

By outright purchase, you might avoid ever renting any kind of land. But in our society, labor is one of the few productive factors that cannot legally be bought outright. Labor can only be rented, and the wage rate is really a rental.³¹

The warrantee contract would remove this labor market imperfection by extending the duration and extent of the employer-employee contract. By allowing both the self-ownership and the absentee ownership of human capital, the full powers of free markets could be used to obtain an optimal allocation of human and nonhuman resources.

We are finally in a position to see why classical and modern liberals have not been able to express any serious arguments (ad hoc special pleas aside) against voluntary contractual slavery and its political analogue of nondemocratic government. Contractual slavery and constitutional nondemocratic government are, respectively, the individual and social extensions of the employer-employee contract. Any thorough and decisive critique of voluntary slavery or constitutional nondemocratic government would carry over to the employment contract—which is the voluntary contractual basis for the free-market free-enterprise system. Such a critique would thus be a reductio ad absurdum.

Final Remarks

There are many types of human activity that occur in both a voluntary and an involuntary form, such as the voluntary transfer of property and theft, or voluntary intercourse and rape. Since both forms occur, it is easy to separate and distinguish them, and to understand that a libertarian society would permit the voluntary form and prohibit the involuntary form. However, there are certain human institutions, such as slavery and nondemocratic government, which have, as a matter of historical fact, almost always occurred in an involuntary and coercive form. These uniformities of historical experience have led to the common liberal prejudice that those institutions are somehow intrinsically coercive. The coercive forms of these institutions have been appropriately prohibited. But the prohibition has been carried over, by the inertia of prejudice, to voluntary and noncoercive forms of the institutions.

This situation has led to what might be termed the fundamental contradiction of modern liberalism: it claims to lay the foundation for a free and just society and yet it coercively prohibits certain voluntary contractual arrangements. This basic contradiction is best summarized in the Rousseauian dictum that people must be "forced to be free."

The problem of voluntary slavery and its political analogue is the fundamental paradigmatic problem of modern social philosophy. The time has come for liberal economic and political thinkers to stop dodging this issue and to critically re-examine their shared prejudices about certain voluntary social institutions. Under the leadership of the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick and the Chicago school of free-market economists, this critical process will inexorably drive liberalism to its only logical conclusion: libertarianism that finally lays the true moral foundation for economic and political slavery.

Are you beginning to see why I keep hammering about the long reach of our Contract Law?

As John Maynard Keynes once said

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

sifusufi · October 20, 2011

What I believe to be a Post Doctorate Master Class on corruption...

It begins at the 01:00 minute mark.

If you will watch the entire film, you may wonder why (or what) the well fed U.S kids want to protest.

I just wonder with the wet cold snap in the NE how many uninsured protesters will end up with pneumonia

and in the ER on the tax dollar that should be paying for the health care of the illegal immigrant? (dammit)!

Hmm... :rolleyes:

zerostao · October 20, 2011

on my kombucha bottle i found this

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Margaret Mead

gendao · October 20, 2011

Free markets can best be described as Socialized Darwinism, given that free unregulated markets are predatory in nature. That means an imbalance of resources that a few alpha primates acquire. If you ever read any history and I assume you don't you might realize what the dark side of human nature is really about.

Not true. If different people achieve alpha status in different areas - then society as a whole actually attains a more optimized, diverse balance. This is called "firing on all cylinders."

And as long as different people have different talents and work ethics - then there will ALWAYS naturally be alphas in their respective fields. No system can fully prevent that, as much of that is inborn. And, why would they want to?

Are you vehemently against American Idol, too???

Can't you read? I said the downside of human nature is primitive and violent! I am talking about unregulated markets being predatory in nature. The best example to date are the predatory banks that brought about the 2008 financial crisis due to deregulation and the gutting of Glass-Steagall. The commodities bubble market in which oil is speculated on by banks and hedge funds that produce nothing. These institutions are permitted to trade at a very wide margin (10-1 or more) and are not required to take delivery of the commodity. Before deregulation, airlines and fleets could buy futures to lock in a guaranteed price so as to be able to price future airfares and trucking contracts. I suppose you enjoy paying more for gas at the pump when you fill up your car? Does that make you smile and think how benevolent these bankers and hedge funds people are as you give more of your hard earned money to them?

Um, a short timeline for you:

The Glass-Steagall Act was only "needed" to mitigate the government's risk after promising to insure banks in 1933. This was the equivalent of Monsanto "having" to GMO crops in order to survive...their use of Roundup. IOW, "fixing" an artifical problem you just induced. Removing only one would then cause a problem, yes - but removing both would have been even better than keeping both.

Well, then your noble politicians kept removing the FRB's fiat currency off precious metal standards over the years..

The FRB then set the 10:1 "reserve requirements" for all banks to follow. (Hence, Libertarians want to "END THE FED!")

Then, liberal politicians FORCED lenders to make high-risk NINJA loans to their voters who otherwise couldn't afford to own homes (for the past 30+ years).

In short, the GOVERNMENT stepped in and made taxpayers assume risk for banks, devalued their currency and then forced lenders to make risky bad loans to their special-interest voting block. Predictably, such high risk and defaults then got passed on to the taxpayer.

And suddenly you wonder why they got caught up in risky speculation and lost their shirts? It was government REGULATION, not the free-market, that caused all this to begin with! In a free-market, banks simply would not been 10:1 fractional banking with fiat funny money, dared to make NINJA loans and taken such risks overall. This alone would have prevented any subprime lending housing bubble & bust. DUH! :lol:

As far as Steve Jobs is concerned, he was an innovator and accomplished much for the evolution of information technology. However, he was a control freak, complete with ridiculous price structures, limited software, skirted anti-trust laws and required all applications, music etc. to be bought through his I Tunes store. That is a business model founded on greed and control.

And no one forced anyone to buy his products, either. There were always, and still are, many cheaper alternatives.

I personally agree his products were overhyped and overpriced, but that's not the point. Apparently, multi-millions still happily chose to pay more for his products because they felt they were worth it. Therefore, these 99%r's either do not believe Apple is "predatory, primitive, violent, greedy & controlling" - or they do and actively support it.

Edited October 20, 2011 by vortex

ralis · October 21, 2011

This is just preposterous!! More police state tactics in the name of fighting terrorism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm8ahsgZYtE

Birch · October 21, 2011

I'd like to say this looks suspicious.

And "VIPR"?? WTF?

gendao · October 21, 2011

JustARandomPanda · October 21, 2011

Enjoy.

The following clip's Air Date was April 3, 2011

Alan Greenspan admits there needs to be more regulation and policing to stop foreclosure fraud.

More info:

http://www.wamufraud.com/

http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/

http://www.stopfraudclosures.com/

JustARandomPanda · October 21, 2011

I am reminded of TheyRule.net

Info on Cato Institute

Also a TheoCon weighs in (recommended read. It's different than the pasted article below and is short.)

The Cato Hypocrisy

I have long held that the greatest tragedy, among countless misfortunes that recur in the long and agonizing human story, is not when evil triumphs over good, or when oppression overcomes freedom, or even the wretched loss of ten billion potential might-have-beens. No, the most devastating defect in our character -- a trait that held us down ever since the caves -- is the very same twist in our natures that makes us such fine storytellers.

I am talking about our incredible penchant for -- and creativity at -- self delusion and rationalization. The lengths that we all go to, in order to convince ourselves that we are the smart ones, virtuous and right... often in complete denial of blatant evidence to the contrary. It is the one magical act that all of us can easily perform, at near genius level.

Elsewhere I talk about the organic mechanisms of reinforcement that make us addicts to this sort of blithe, self-righteous assurance, while dismissing all opponents as vile or stupid strawmen. Indeed, I can step outside myself and watch these very tendencies play out -- the same smug assumption of privileged knowledge and superior perception -- even as I type these words. Well, we are of the same clay. This ecumenical allure tugs at even the wise. Even the shy.

Can we escape the bewitchment of solipsism and seductive self-hypnosis? For millennia, the prescription in every culture was to accept, with utter fealty, whatever mythic system was taught by local authority figures. Parents. Lords. State and church. This method replaced (or overlaid) some individually vain "realities" with shared/consensual ones. But while mantric uniformity helped to maintain peace within some communities, it absolutely guaranteed conflict against others.

Above all, the top aim was to make sure no one asked: "Isn't it just a little suspiciously pat and convenient, that my bunch just happens to be 100% right, and my opponents are so completely deluded?" One nation and culture after another imitated the same obstinacy that we see in countless individual neighbors. A steadfastness that is often portrayed as admirable, even -- especially -- in the face of contrary evidence.

Are we screwed, then? Betrayed by an utterly consistent human character flaw? Doomed to repeat the same patterns over and over, with only minor variations of cult and incantation?

Fortunately, a slim ray of light appeared. Gradually, over time, a completely different approach took shape. Instead of clutching a consensual delusion (to augment your private ones), this new method called upon human beings to adapt their subjective perceptions to evidence. By referring both to objective reality (experiment) and the cross-checking feedback of other people, we can catch a relatively high percentage of our mistakes and misperceptions.

It isn't magical. The process requires deliberate effort, overcoming our own egos, as well as humanity's greatest paradox.

THE PARADOX

If "criticism is the only known antidote to error" (CITOKATE), then suppression of criticism must be the greatest single cause of error, not only in daily life, but especially among the leaders who have been entrusted with statecraft. Name a nation or time when a society's need for cleansing information and argument did not inherently conflict with the most driving need of leaders and oligarchs - to stifle dissent and maintain confidence in their rule.

Especially their own sense of confident superiority and right-to-rule, whether they were emperors, aristocrats or commissars. This conflict of interest runs so deep, it is very likely biological. Don't all of us descend from the harems of kings, who gained reproductive advantage by seizing and holding unaccountable power?

Despite countless, contradictory definitions we've heard it seems to me that the core endeavor of the Enlightenment Experiment is quite simple -- to find ways out of this trap. To escape the paradox of criticism. All of our great accountability arenas - science, markets, justice and democracy - have their roots in this realization... that no man is trustworthy to declare what's true. As Richard Feynman said - "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."

CASE STUDY OF A MODERN CULT: THE CATO INSTITUTE

Alas, the paradox only gets worse, the higher your IQ! In every walk of life we are surrounded -- especially at all extremes of the hoary/insipid "political spectrum" -- by bright fools who wallow in sanctimonious just-so stories, blithely dismissing contrary evidence, always ignoring the suspiciously pat convenience of just-happening to be oh-so right.

Take for example* the erudite, "freedom-promoting" scholars of the Washington DC Cato Institute -- purported to be the key think tank for studying and propounding principles of libertarianism. Let me zero in on them, because right now they offer a marvelous case study illustrating our problem -- the mountain of rationalizing human nature that we must still overcome.

Why pick on Cato? I mean, other than the fact that they wear they IQs on their sleeves. You see, these passionate and articulate champions of the free market have lately found themselves in a difficult situation. A real bind.

Year after year, members and affiliates have maintained a marvelous high wire act, claiming surficially to be nonpartisan - to find equal fault between "Republicans who oppress freedom of the bedroom and Democrats who oppress freedom of the marketplace." And yet, as donations poured in from well-heeled private sources, a funny thing happened to the production line of scholarly documents and position papers. It veered right.

Oh, occasionally (for credibility's sake) Cato fellows would fire a very general - and very soft - fusillade in favor of abortion rights or against Alaska's pork "Bridge to Nowhere." Still, as the propaganda wheels turned, there appeared to be one guiding principle behind almost every missive produced by the Cato Institute.

We, who style ourselves as the defenders of a free market, shall obsessively and relentlessly ignore the market's greatest enemy. We will never mention or acknowledge the blatant fact that, for 5,000 years, the most deadly foe of free enterprise has always been conspiratorial aristocracy.

Indeed, the Cato Institute has long promoted the worst social, economic and political conflation of modern times. A delusion that Adam Smith warned against. The notion that ownership of capital is the prime correlate with wise market capitalism. A very different concept, fundamentally, than saying that markets are themselves wise at allocating, rewarding or promoting innovative goods and services.

Just scan Cato's sage and scholarly thinktank documents propounding upon the inherently superior wisdom of markets. Apparently, "pre-selecting outcomes" is a sin when it is done openly, by a nation's broadly-inclusive and constitutional deliberative process. Even (especially) when it is shown that intergenerational costs cannot be accounted-for without some regulated market tuning, this kind of accounting is dismissed as an impossibly utopian and unachievable, due to the limited knowledge and predictive power of governing bodies.

Point taken. Score one for Hayek. And yet, "pre-selecting outcomes" is somehow portrayed as perfectly okay, when it is performed by much smaller clades of secretively collusive owners, scheming in small groups to allocate resources, labor and capital as capriciously as the feudal lords of any other era. Eras that, though less trammelled by well-meaning social tinkering, somehow managed to be far, far less successful than our own.

Somehow, under those conditions, nobody speaks about "limited knowledge and predictive power." The secrecy that nearly all economists call poisonous to markets, is somehow portrayed as just fine when it is used by a few golf buddies to manipulate those same markets and squeeze out all players who aren't in-the-know.

While the obsolete, ridiculous and long-discredited spectre of socialism continues drawing ire and alarm, the Cato and its allies keep on shrilly pointing at "government" as the sole and inherent foe of enterprise, never allowing attention to drift toward those who (increasingly) control government for their own enrichment. Aristocracies who exercise extreme influence over law and regulation, ensuring that government favors elites, in ways that Adam Smith cogently denounced during his own era.

THE "FALL" OF THE GOP... WITH AN EXCUSE...

Take the most recent "Cato's Letter," issued quarterly by the Institute, this time featuring an article by Tucker Carlson (host of MSNBC's The Situation) entitled - "The Decline and Fall of the Republican Party."

Wow. With a title like that , you might think the Catoins have seen the light! That they've realized, at long last, how deeply one of our great parties - and through it, nearly all of our government institutions - is suborned by a narrow cabal of native and foreign elites. That most insatiable subset of aristocrats, imbued with a deep sense of righteous privilege, who have engaged in one of the most reckless campaigns of kleptocratic mismanagement in all of history.

Have the Catoins decided - belatedly - to rise up and help us all deal with the cakocratic fecklessness. The rampant deceit, corruption, willful ignorance, indolence, violence, and anti-scientific dogmatism that has threatened civilization at all levels?

Well... um... not quite.

In fact, the Cato guys pretty much had to issue some kind of denunciation at this point in time. The national wave of revulsion toward today's GOP has risen toward tsunami proportions. The henchman defections that I have long called for are starting to trickle and stream from a myriad cracks in the neocon edifice. Soon, when whistleblowers start feeling safe to emerge, these cracks will grow so wide that Karl Rove will no longer be able to patch his coalition with liberal... oops... I mean generous... dollops of culture war. Under circumstances like these, it is not surprising to see Cato join in, if only to hold onto a little residual relevance.

But the line they are pushing! Ah, that's where things get really cute. Hang on and watch closely. It is better than a streetcorner game of Three Card Monty!

OFFERING EXCUSES FOR THE "LESSER OF EVILS"...

For starters, it seems that the most dogmatic administration in living memory has failed because it was not dogmatic enough.

Oh, but it gets even better. For, according to Tucker Carlson -- the great sin of the Republican Party is that (horrors!) it has sunk down almost to the dissolute, immoral, spendthrift, corrupt and despicable level of Democrats!

Shudder. That low? Mea maxima culpa! If the far right does not renew itself soon, it is in serious danger of drifting down to the level of... liberals.

Talk about blame shifting legerdemain! Didn't I say these guys were bright? Prepare to hear this line more and more, as the political season advances. Let me paraphrase some more.

Yes, the neocons and their fellow travellers have proved to be disgusting, greedy and incompetent. But you must still rationalize holding your nose and continuing to vote for them, because democrats are inherently worse.

Clever, for sure. Only there's a problem with this line. It doesn't match the facts at any level. Not even when you lean upon the insipid crutch of left right cliches. Because the neocons' long road into hell did NOT take them into Democratic territory. In fact, they did it by heading - at warp drive - in diametrically opposite directions.-

by massively increasing secrecy in government, rather than reducing it. (The unambiguous trend across the nineties.)-

by massively increasing deficit spending, rather than reducing it. (Ditto.)-

by massively increasing pork barrel graft, rather than reducing it. (In fairness, the decline of pork in the nineties may have resulted from divided government, with President Clinton forced to co-habitate with the very different (and somewhat lamented) neocons of Newt Gingrich's wave.)-

by undermining America's alliances and status in the world in favor of cowboy adventurism, rather than building worldwide consensus and acceptance of mature U.S. leadership.-

by rejecting all sources of objective evidence or criticism that might conflict with doctrine, relentlessly undermining both science and the autonomy of skilled professionals, demolishing or repressing advisory panels and suppressing independent thinking in the intelligence and military officer corps.-

by crippling the Border Patrol in a blatant effort to emphasize and promote illegal immigration, in preference over legal immigration (the democrats' preference.)-

by systematically demolishing government contract-vetting and purchasing procedures, finding every excuse to grant sole-source contracts on the basis of whim or crony connections.

Will a Catoin ever do the correlation - that more actual deregulation of major industries took place during the Carter and Clinton administrations, than was ever proposed during the sum total of the Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush tenures? Never. Cognitive dissonance -- an inability to perceive that which conflicts with comfortable assumption -- will keep that from ever happening.

This list could go on and on. But the core point is clear. Tucker Carlson and the other court savants -- nay, courtesans -- of Cato and the right never look to any of these factors. In calling up an image of today's fallen GOP as nearly as bad as democrats, their sole criterion is to wag a finger and make tsk-tsk noises at the hemorrhaging federal deficit, while propounding that these conservatives have failed us, by becoming -- in effect -- liberals.

But even that tunnel-vision selection of a single litmus test fails utterly! Because it rests upon an obsolete cliche, frantically ignoring the Clintonian surpluses of the nineties... along with every other possible way of looking at a sick elephant.

SO, WHY DO I BOTHER DENOUNCING THESE BRIGHT FOOLS, ANYWAY?

Up to this point, I have been describing truly grotesque hypocrisies, putting shame to any pretense that these Cato guys are "libertarians," let along honest intellects. Their current program -- promoting clever mantras to help keep in power the most outrageously anti-market and anti Enlightenment clade of cacocrats in US history -- beggars any explanation short of complete sellout or frantic rationalization.

Nevertheless, having just colorfully vented my indignant wrath, I must recall that a truly honest man contemplates limitations to the validity of righteous anger. Especially righteous anger. So let me admit that the Catoins do have one policy difference between neocons and liberals that they can legitimately point to with favor -- from a quasi-libertarian perspective.

Tax Cuts. At the surface, one can at least envision why they'd like this Bushite obsession. For although democrats have transformed into the new puritans, calling for budgetary responsibility and fiscal prudence (as well as waste-not notions of efficiency) there is no doubt that they would begin doing this by rescinding some of the cuts that have amounted to flat out gifts to a narrow and increasingly powerful aristocratic class.

Yes, rightists offer reams of arguments for why the rich should get to keep vastly higher fractions of their passive rents (read what Adam Smith said about this!) than any average working stiff may keep from the sweat of his brow. We've all seen these incantations, so I'll not confront them here. Instead, let me counter with a challenge that is far more general, again turning our gaze to the vast majority of human generations:

While you ignore 5,000 years of human history, I look across that time and see a single failure mode that killed nearly every opportunity, almost every chance for fair market competition, every level playing field, every renaissance of freedom and fair play.

That historic foe of enterprise was not socialism or "big government"... though we should stay wary of those newer failure modes. No, across more than fifty centuries, it was nearly always some cabal of privileged owners who gave into a deeply human and completely natural temptation, to use their status and power to cheat. To stop competing and instead crush competitors, often using state power as their favored tool.

Saying this does not make me a socialist or fomenter of class warfare, any more than a physicist who mentions gravity is trying to bind people to the ground! The historical fact that I describe is blatant, irrefutable and absolutely true. Any theory of modern society must take it into account, coming up with imaginative, realistic ways to foster competition and markets without letting the winners thereupon abuse their power and maintain it by cheating.

Do your theories do that? Or do they conveniently always seem to come up with rationalizations for following the Old Road? For flattering and sucking up to new, would-be lords?

THE DISMAL STATE OF DISPUTATION AND DISCOURSE

Do I expect any kind of answer to this challenge? Of course not. (See my paper on "Disputation Arenas" for an idea about how the very idea of "challenges" may improve the level of argument, in times to come.)

Indeed, at one level, I don't even care. Because the objects of my ire are irrelevant. Because their old-fashioned ways doom them to triviality. And because -- fortunately -- the Enlightenment ain't dead yet. Indeed, it has stronger allies than its enemies can even begin to perceive.

For example, I would wager that a majority of the wealthy in America and the West "get it" far better than those bright suck-ups at Cato do. From Warren Buffett to Paul Allen, from Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos, the guys who made fortunes through the true delivery of goods, services and capital can see what kind of society made all of their opportunities possible. They realize what the parasitic cacocrats have done to America, and they do not like it one bit.

Like the abused professionals of the officer corps, like those henchmen who are starting to turn whistleblower, like thousands of bright sons and daughters who roil in shame over the selfish shortsightedness of their fathers... these market heroes will step forward when we need them most. They will stand up for a civilization that is not about left and right, after all. Or about insipid rationalizing cliches.

What are markets and enterprise and creativity and freedom really all about? They are about maximizing opportunities for individual human beings to argue and invent and reciprocally-criticize and come up with the solutions that we'll need, in order to cross the next century successfully.

Fortunately, this Enlightenment still has friends. Enough (possibly) that we still have a very good chance of making it.

ralis · October 21, 2011

Well, you know it's bad when your own supporters/highly-successful entrepreneurs are lecturing you on this!

Unfortunately, Obama didn't seem to get the message - and his new "Jobs Bill" contained none of the types of business-friendly deregulation that Jobs sternly advised.

Would you care to explain in detail what kind of deregulation? What regulations are unfavorable?

Birch · October 22, 2011

I was thinking about this thread again and I wanted to throw in a couple of things that might seem unrelated but whatever.

One is the idea of 'adaptive limitations" - I couldn't find a name for it so I called it that. Apparently economists make terms up all the time:-) I'm not one (an economist) so please bear with :-)

So basically, this idea suggest that saying that an 'all or nothing' condition exists is deceptive. A condition (I'll cherry pick the example of "regulations") could be not at all 'limiting' for certain business types and markets and very limiting for others. The point I want to make is that the regulating condition only becomes effective and limiting under certain conditions.

It could be argued 'for' by those who are in favorable (to them) conditions and 'against' by people who are in unfavorable (to them) conditions.

I'm making a reach to suggest that several of this type of conditions only kick in at specific boundaries (how to define them will be complicated, but the idea could probably be tested)

-----

The other thing was about how old this 'situation' is. I can't really define the situation but I saw a sort of a pattern when I considered stories and mythologies of 'better times'. It suddenly occurred to me that 'better times' was a total fabrication and that pretty consistently throughout history 'better times' had been instated, only to be very short-lived. Then to be heralded as an example of something to be achieved...again, by...well, taking hostage of the present.

The most recent example I thought of of "better times" was 1950's West. The only reason I thought of it was because it was my parents' childhood but I'm sure there are others heralded.

The point I'm trying to make is there has never been such a time.

JustARandomPanda · October 23, 2011

Enjoy

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."

"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Bar-Yam says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc

2. Capital Group Companies Inc

3. FMR Corporation

4. AXA

5. State Street Corporation

6. JP Morgan Chase & Co

7. Legal & General Group plc

8. Vanguard Group Inc

9. UBS AG

10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc

11. Wellington Management Co LLP

12. Deutsche Bank AG

13. Franklin Resources Inc

14. Credit Suisse Group

15. Walton Enterprises LLC

16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp

17. Natixis

18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc

19. T Rowe Price Group Inc

20. Legg Mason Inc

21. Morgan Stanley

22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc

23. Northern Trust Corporation

24. Société Générale

25. Bank of America Corporation

26. Lloyds TSB Group plc

27. Invesco plc

28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA

30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company

31. Aviva plc

32. Schroders plc

33. Dodge & Cox

34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*

35. Sun Life Financial Inc

36. Standard Life plc

37. CNCE

38. Nomura Holdings Inc

39. The Depository Trust Company

40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance

41. ING Groep NV

42. Brandes Investment Partners LP

43. Unicredito Italiano SPA

44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan

45. Vereniging Aegon

46. BNP Paribas

47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc

48. Resona Holdings Inc

49. Capital Group International Inc

50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Caption for the attached image:

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue

Global Revolution!

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