I enjoy both “Blackflag” and “rightsaidfred” – they are the types who eventually make their own blogs and join the futility frivolity.
This post is a continuation of a debate down below which went so far down the page that it got annoying to have to scroll down.
Black Flag: If private power is more powerful than government, why do they need government?
MT: Access to the commons, freedom from regulation and taxation.
Black Flag: So, to you private power is a set that includes
(1) those that resist theft; (2) those that initiation violence.
You can’t differentiate more clearly?
Power grows naturally where there are human interactions. Because of our various makeups, each of us tends to specialize and do those things that please us. But there is a small percentage of us for whom that self-pleasing involves collection of wealth and domination of others. These are our sociopaths – the barons of industry, the Mafia dons. They preside over a system of domination – you might call it choice, but the drug runner at the bottom of the pipeline doesn’t have much choice. He merely carves out space for himself to exist in the system.
This is natural and necessary to a degree, as we cannot accomplish large projects without large organizations. So we need an Exxon to supply our oil. But we do not need Exxon to dominate our climate change debate. Wal-Mart comes into being by slim-lining retailing practices, but we should not allow Wal-Mart to set labor standards or trade policies.
To overcome these natural concentrations of power, we need democratic input – that is, each system of domination must be voluntary and must justify itself. But there is no power in the land strong enough to overcome power once it has grown so concentrated as Wal-Mart of Exxon. We need a government that is more powerful than those entities.
Black Flag: So what do these entities exhibit that makes you include them into your definition?
They are victorious in the marketplace, and in an odd corruption of Darwin, should therefore be allowed to prosper unimpeded, or so goes the unspoken logic. In fact, such growth and concentration of wealth and power is a threat to democracy, and needs to be subordinated to democratic governance.
rightsaidfred: I fear that adding a comment to this long and winding thread would be aiding the commission of a crime. That is what underlies climate change denial – fear that growth cannot be unlimited. I haven’t heard anyone claim that growth can be unlimited. Some on the Left want to actively discourage growth, and if we cede too much of the debate, they will pull out their Kim Jong Il playbook and have us all sitting in the dark.
A pox on both houses, and on with real life. (It kind of scares me when you start claiming to have a handle on real life.)
The Kim Jong comment is illustrative of the Randian world-view. Ms. Rand came from Bolshevik Russia, and witnessed the brutal aftermath of that revolution where the desire to be free of monarchy led to oppression by a different set of rulers. She naturally concluded from that that the struggle for human freedom was against government oppression and for the private self.
However, the Western experience has been quite different. Democratic governments, such as they are, tend to be reined in at various stages when they become excessive. The key is that there is a mechanism in place for popular will to be translated into public policy.
However, in a Randian world, the state ceases to interfere with the sociopaths who naturally set about centralizing power and dominating others. So her rules naturally lead us to a different kind of oppression, where we live under the thumbs of social misfits, such as John Galt. In such a system, there is no mechanism to overcome the oppression other than voluntary organizations such as vigilantes or informal unions. Violence is the only effective counter force.
rightsaidfred: Interesting, but I don’t know too many governments that stand down from their relentless interference.
You perhaps missed, then, the last twenty years of the twentieth century?
rigthsaidfred: I will agree there is a “winner take all” component to some aspects of economic life. He with the best operating system gets to install it on all new computers… I’m a bit more concerned about the increased economic power flowing through the few hands in Washington DC. Obama increased the fed budget from a bloated $2.6 trillion to $3.9 trillion. Who’s going to save us from that?
The numbers are indeed daunting, but the entire issue is much more so. The economy spun out of control due to failure of government to regulate business practices and to tax at a high enough rate to remove excess capital from the markets. In addition, we have virtually destroyed our manufacturing base, transferring it to China, so there is not much in the way of physical investment opportunities here in the land of the free.
It’s all kind of a perfect storm. Obama is now carrying out the will of the sociopaths by helping them rebuild the palace that fell.
I sense in your comment that aged nonsense about there being meaningful differences between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, due to changes in policies initiated after the election of Reagan in 1980, wealth has naturally concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and democratic governance has effectively been thwarted. We now live in what Citibank referred to in a private memo as a “plutonomy“. So criticism of Obama is fine, but do understand that he is but a player in a theatrical system where various actors take turns playing the lead role.
rightsaidfred: …if we controlled our border to keep out illegal immigrants, we would have a labor shortage of blue collar workers and thus higher wages. The wage stagnation of this class in the US leads directly from the entry of unskilled immigrants. Why push for unions, which is an expensive and long term unsuccessful way to raise wages, when border control offers a more natural way to raise wages?
Exactly the point. We do not enforce border control mechanism because unregulated concentrated power wants those borders left open too allow them to avoid labor laws.
Piece of Mindful 
Probably not. But who knows?
Again, just getting the full grasp of your POV – your understanding of “power” encompasses both violent force and non-violent influence into the same definition? You do not differentiate between them?
I find few psychotic sociopaths in industry. I find most of them in government.
We either agree that a man who makes a voluntary decision has “a choice” or we end up, like you said, “Orwellian” where your definition changes depending on the hour.
There is a difference between a man forced to act by a gun to his head, and “choice”.
And neither do we need government to dominate any debate.
And neither should government set such policies either.
Democracy does not overcome concentrations of power – it centralizes it.
And I would say, any system must be voluntary. It does not need to justify itself any more than that.
Because they have the tool of legal violence that allows them to become entrenched.
Where a man by the ultimate “vote” of his dollar could easily displace errant organizations, government removes this ability by its use of legal violence – seizing that dollar instead.
It is because government has the power of legal violence that those entities become entrenched.
They are victorious in a free market – without government intrusion – only to the degree they satisfy the consumer.
It has nothing to do with Darwin whatsoever. The market place rewards those that successfully solve the consumer’s problems. The process of such functions has absolutely nothing to do with Darwin’s Theories of Evolution. This conceptual error is even more serious then the conceptual error that the Earth acts like a “Greenhouse”
The protection of democracy is a negative argument. Defending a system that justifies the destruction of human rights as an excuse to further destroy human rights, in the belief it improves human rights is incredibly contradictory and evil.
Concentrations of wealth in a free market – where free men trade voluntarily – is merely the measure of success of men solving other men’s problems.
Then hear it now.
Growth can be unlimited. The Universe is a very big place.
It isn’t just be free of monarchy that lead to oppression. It is every attempt to be free by creating another form of government that leads to oppression.
Each form of government rests upon exactly the same core – the self-declared ‘right’ to initiate violence upon the non-violent so to enforce its edicts.
It is the same disease that pollutes democracy, theocracy, oligarchy, monarchy, etc. It matters not what government form – all require the monopoly on initiation of violence to enforce itself.
Because they all justify such violence on non-violent people to enforce some edicts, all of them eventually justify such violence to enforce any edict – which always leads to tyranny.
Men have long denied any justification to initiate violence upon their non-violent brothers – hence, civilization. However, until men also deny that government has no justification to initiate violence upon their non-violent brothers, tyranny will haunt humanity.
Civilization is at war with Government. The former denies any right to initiate violence; the latter demands it.
You cannot demonstrate any example of this claim.
No such experience has ever happened. Government has grown both in size and its intrusion into the lives of the People.
As long a men justify their initiation of violence upon other men, tyranny will always be the consequence.
A sociopath is not dangerous unless he is violent.
Creating an organization the centralizes and legalizes violence will naturally attract such men.
When a man can justify using violence on non-violent men, he has built the chains of his own slavery.
I disagree. The market is “Highest bid wins”.
Mark, that is one confused understanding of USA economy.
The government has injected the economy with cheap capital. If you believe that there is too much capital, it is the fault of government.
The failure of government is, and always has been, and always will be the belief it can manage the economy.
It cannot. There is no brain or set of brains capable of making economic decisions better than the actions of free men in voluntary trade solving their own problems.
By government action, industries have found it unprofitable to operate in the USA.
Free men will tend to avoid the predator of government action upon them.
Exactly. Government is once again injecting itself into the economy in an attempt to repair the damage of the government injecting itself into the economy.
Expect ever worse damage.
Obama is now carrying out the will of the sociopaths by helping them rebuild the palace that fell.
This made me laugh.
We disagree on immigration, but I’m starting to like Black Flag. I’ll second what he said here except:
You assume Americans wanted to do the jobs these immigrants are doing.
They do not.
Thus, there exists a market for those that are willing to do those jobs.
Well, a lot of people don’t want to do jobs. That’s one reason we have a differential pay scale. It is short sighted to import labor that gives us one generation of labor. We are back to square one with the second generation. Meanwhile there are massive externality costs with immigration that are not captured in the labor market. Better we pay more for lettuce today than face the future with an immigrant cohort that is an economic sink and doesn’t have the human capital to keep us competitive in the future.
Can you explain your theory that a man can move from California to Texas to take a job destroys the economy of Texas?
Not my theory. The interstate labor movement is most often people of similar abilities and skills. Likewise immigration of high skilled foreigners is a net plus. But the immigration of persons with third world skills and mores is problematic.
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Greetings!
So be it.
Labor is another economic good like any other. As supply and demand changes for an economic good, the price rises and falls.
So there is glut of product? The price falls. So there is a glut of demand? The price rises.
There is no ‘short-sightedness’ or ‘long-sight’.
To claim that one can be short or long sighted in designing and enforcing a political action of economic policy is fraught with destructive error.
The consequence of creating such political policies will damage economic outcomes – whether it is political policies of trading corn, cars or labor.
You will always have inferior economic outcomes by making political decisions instead of economic decisions.
I would be interested in hearing such economic theory that explains the ‘problem’.
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I would be interested in hearing such economic theory that explains the ‘problem’.
It is a matter of measuring productivity and value. Labor is not a uniform commodity. When you are building a factory, do you want fast, long lasting machine tools, or shoddy merchandise that costs more to repair than it generates in revenue? Our illegal immigration costs us more than it generates in economic activity.
Opening our borders is a political decision, not an economic one. At the micro economic level, a firm can hire an illegal alien and do fine. At the macro economic level, the same illegal and his extended family accesses the transfer payments (welfare, school, hospital, criminal justice system) which are a cost imposed on the economic system by politicians, and we end up with a net loss.
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Value is wholly subjective to the individual.
I want the machine that does the best job at the lowest cost.
Fast and long lasting is not necessarily important. There is no use for a machine that outproduces its customers.
As far as long lasting…. there are still computers from the 1980’s that available in working condition. Do you think that makes them valuable?
If that was the case, the there would be less of them. But there is not. There are more of them.
People do not maintain negative economic outcomes for very long – they go bankrupt if they do.
If costs are higher than production, you will go bankrupt.
Since this not the case, these workers must be providing a postive economic return.
Actually, closing the borders is a political decision. Removing them is a reversing of that political decision.
Political decisions interfere with the freedom of men – they do not free men except by their removal.
By pointing to where government interference continues to distort the economy, as in welfare (money for not earning), public school (training at someone else’s expense), health care (health at someone else’s expense), and criminalization of non-violent actions (justice by injustice) as an excuse to invoke more government interference upon free, non-violent men is a weak argument.
Supporting the building of walls around the country is a support for building one’s own prison and cage.
Free men do not need to fear the voluntary trade between free men.
Drop the walls, stop the theft by government. Then all people, regardless of heritage will prosper.
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This is all very good – I feel like I had my say and have been rebutted, though I am not dissuaded. Anything further will be repetition. And I do emphasize that you two are the kind that keep the blogs lively. Your comments are well thought out and respectful.
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Thanks, Mark.
Your’s is one of the more intelligent “left” blogs out there. (And I’m not one to label – take the label in the best of intentions as it is meant simply to differentiate you from the ‘right’ wing blogs).
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Gentlemen,
Please explain why there are some 40,000 highly-paid lobbyists on K-Street? Are they not all asking for special policies through whatever legal and illegal means available. Who do you think pays lobbyists, government? Not hardly. Plutocrats, foreign and domestic, pay for access, influence, and control OVER government to profit from taxes collected from labor, imports and investments. Lobbyists work very hard to depress labor costs. Who rules? Everyday people don’t. So, it’s between government acting unilaterally, or another power controlling government. I vote for K-Street and its puppet-masters. Fear government if you choose, but only provides actors to keep the people from holding the real power players accountable for their crimes against humanity and the finite ecosystems upon which we all depend. When government fails, eventually, out come the pitchforks.
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