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.
