Category Archives: Pols and Pundits

Vox Day: Free Trade Violates The Property Rights Of The Nation

Posted on by

Christian libertarian Vox Day turns propertarian arguments against free-traders:

“In the comments, PG constructed an interesting and effective logical argument against free trade, which I have organized thusly:

1. Free traders insist upon the existence of property rights and the sovereign exercise of those rights as axiomatic. From this foundation, they argue that all actions concerning with whom one will trade, regardless of their location or nation, are protected by those property rights and cannot be morally infringed.

2. If a group of people happen to share the rights to a property in an ownership group, they must decide together on how those rights are exercised. No single individual can sell the property or permit its use by others without the agreement of the other rights holders. The ownership group collectively has the right to decide who and what are permitted to enter their property. It is not an infringement of any one owner’s property right if the greater part of the ownership group does not wish to sell the property or to permit entry to certain parties or items.

[Lila: Libertarians and classical liberals would argue that property rights cannot be exercised by an abstract collective entity like “the nation” and can only be exercised unjustly by any government that claims to represent the nation.]

3. A nation is a group of people who share a common property that is delineated by the national borders. This group of people must therefore decide in some consensus manner how the rights to that property are exercised. They can therefore decide who and what are permitted to enter the national property in precisely the same manner that a house-owning group decide who and what are permitted to enter their house. It is not an infringement of any one individual’s property right if the greater part of the nation does not wish to sell the land possessed by the nation or permit entry to certain parties or items.

4. To deny a nation the property right to enact tariffs or refuse permission for goods, capital, or labor to cross its borders, is tantamount to either denying a) property rights or b) the nation’s existence.

[Lila: Rather than enact laws against the property rights of companies wanting to trade under the present “managed trade” regime, it might be more conducive to freedom to undo the subsidies that currently exist, whether in the form of fixed prices, welfare, preferential tax treatment,  or any other grant by the government.  Doing so, would probably make it far less beneficial for some companies to trade, discourage some movements of labor, and generally have the same effect as a sanction or tariff, without needing to invoke group property rights.]

5. However, denying the existence of nations is not only empirically false, it creates a logical contradiction for the free trader because it requires denying the individual property-owner the right to form collective property-ownership groups from which nations are made. The free trade position depends upon the idea that individuals possess property rights, but groups of more than one individual cannot.

6. Therefore, free trade doctrine requires the denial of the very property rights upon which it is founded. As PG correctly concludes, “their whole argument is an outright logical contradiction”.

As evidence in support of PG’s logical construction, I offer the following statements concerning the existence of nations from two champions of the dogma, Mr. Gary North and our own Unger.

North: “Defenders of tariffs present themselves as defenders of the nation, when in fact the nation, from the point of view of economics, is not a collective entity. The nation, from an economic standpoint, is simply a convenient name that we give to people inside invisible judicial lines known as national borders.”

Unger: “I do not consider myself an ‘American’, except as a verbal convenience, or have any care at all for ‘America’.”

Now, it can certainly be pointed out that the mere existence of a nation does not mean that all of its members are voluntary members of it and it cannot be denied that the legitimate property rights of the nation can be abused or ignored just as they are in the case of individual property rights. But PG’s logic suffices to demonstrate that the property rights argument upon which many free traders heavily rely is far from the conclusive one that they believe it to be.”

[Lila: A version of this argument was made by David Boaz in reviewing the movie, Avatar]

On Veracity As An End In Itself…

Posted on by

A libertarian-turned-royalist explains why fudging for the sake of whatever you consider “good,” will leave you on the opposite side of the field, in the enemy’s camp:

“I see this Hitler-was-a-liberal trope catching on all over the right. Of course, it is a leftist trope – in two senses. First, the tactic of tarring all political adversaries with some abstruse connection to fascism in general, and Hitler in particular, is of course a characteristic tactic of the Left. Second, the tactic of disseminating a palpable misreading of history, for political purposes – etc.

To a Carlylean, Satan is the Lord of Chaos and the Father of Lies. When you lie – intentionally or unintentionally – you sacrifice a kitten to Satan. Satan loves you for this! And, since he is not uninfluential on this earth, he does what he can for you. Which is sometimes quite a bit.

[Lila: Disbelieving in the Judeo-Christian Satan, as popularly understood, but believing very much in Saturn (Shani), I translate this as follows:

[Clarification, July 25, 2014): I don’t mean to imply that Saturn/Sani is the equivalent of Satan.  Saturn is more akin to Shiva and Rahu/Ketu (the lunar nodes or Dragon’s head and tail) to Satan.]

The limitations of time and space guarantee that a very small error (intentional or not) will end by fetching you the very opposite of your intended goal.]

The Carlylean technique accepts only absolute veracity as the basis for any political strategy.

The fact is: by sacrificing the occasional kitten or two, by twisting the truth a bit for the sake of this quarter’s sales, libertarians and other rightists get nowhere. Their enemies are (a) in power today, and (b) operating an assembly-line rhinoceros abattoir for the sole benefit of His Satanic Majesty. Surely, sir, you had not thought to out-scoundrel such a bunch of scoundrels.”

Von Mises On The State Versus Statism

Posted on by

From Monopoly Politics.com:

“Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism. The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace.

“The German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, tried to make the conception of a government limited exclusively to this sphere appear ridiculous by calling the state constituted on the basis of liberal principles the “night-watchman state.” But it is difficult to see why the night-watchman state should be any more ridiculous or worse than the state that concerns itself with the preparation of sauerkraut, with the manufacture of trouser buttons, or with the publication of newspapers. In order to understand the impression that Lassalle was seeking to create with this witticism, one must keep in mind that the Germans of his time had not yet forgotten the state of the monarchical despots, with its vast multiplicity of administrative and regulatory functions, and that they were still very much under the influence of the philosophy of Hegel, which had elevated the state to the position of a divine entity. If one looked upon the state, with Hegel, as “the self-conscious moral, substance,” as the “Universal in and for itself, the rationality of the will,” then, of course, one had to view as blasphemous any attempt to limit the function of the state to that of serving as a night watchman.”

“It is only thus that one can understand how it was possible for people to go so far as to reproach liberalism for its “hostility” or enmity towards the state. If I am of the opinion that it is inexpedient to assign to the government the task of operating railroads, hotels, or mines, I am not an “enemy of the state” any more than I can be called an enemy of sulfuric acid because I am of the opinion that, useful though it may be for many purposes, it is not suitable either for drinking or for washing one’s hands.

“It is incorrect to represent the attitude of liberalism toward the state by saying that it wishes to restrict the latter’s sphere of possible activity or that it abhors, in principle, all activity on the part of the state in relation to economic life. Such an interpretation is altogether out of the question. The stand that liberalism takes in regard to the problem of the function of the state is the necessary consequence of its advocacy of private ownership of the means of production. If one is in favor of the latter, one cannot, of course, also be in favor of communal ownership of the means of production, i.e., of placing them at the disposition of the government rather than of individual owners. Thus, the advocacy of private ownership of the means of production already implies a very severe circumscription of the functions assigned to the state.

“The socialists are sometimes wont to reproach liberalism with a lack of consistency, It is, they maintain, illogical to restrict the activity of the state in the economic sphere exclusively to the protection of property. It is difficult to see why, if the state is not to remain completely neutral, its intervention has to be limited to protecting the rights of property owners.

“This reproach would be justified only if the opposition of liberalism to all governmental activity in the economic sphere going beyond the protection of property stemmed from an aversion in principle against any activity on the part of the state. But that is by no means the case. The reason why liberalism opposes a further extension of the sphere of governmental activity is precisely that this would, in effect, abolish private ownership of the means of production. And in private property the liberal sees the principle most suitable for the organization of man’s life in society.

“Liberalism is therefore far from disputing the necessity of a machinery of state, a system of law, and a government. It is a grave misunderstanding to associate it in any way with the idea of anarchism. For the liberal, the state is an absolute necessity, since the most important tasks are incumbent upon it: the protection not only of private property, but also of peace, for in the absence of the latter the full benefits of private property cannot be reaped.

“These considerations alone suffice to determine the conditions that a state must fulfill in order to correspond to the liberal ideal. It must not only be able to protect private property; it must also be so constituted that the smooth and peaceful course of its development is never interrupted by civil wars, revolutions, or insurrections.

Mises, Liberalism (In the Classical Tradition),
pp 36-39, published by Sheed Andrews, &
McMeel, Inc. 1978

*   *   *
Epilogue
by Sam Wells

“Thus, the great Austrian economist advocated and recognized the necessity of political states, laws, and governments while he was one of history’s most powerful intellectual opponents of statism.  Contrary to a common misunderstanding by some followers of the late Murray Rothbard, “statism” is not the mere existence of a political state or when a given geographical area has one government.  Statism is the doctrine or policy of subordinating the individual unconditionally to a state or government with unlimited powers. Statism includes welfare statism (modern American “liberalism”), mercantilism, fascism, and other systems of systematic positive government interventionism on up to and including full socialism. (See Mises, Bureaucracy pp. 74-76 & 78 and Omnipotent Government pp. 5, 44-78, & 285) Statism is not the same thing as the state, and the classical liberal political system of a constitutional republic and the concomitant private property order and unhampered market economy which Mises advocated fervently until his death is not a system of statism and is in contradistinction to statism.  Under a policy of laissez faire, the scope of authority of government is limited by the rule of law to the protection of the private properties and individual liberties of peaceful citizens from violence and fraud, and the government itself is proscribed from interfering with non-violent, non-fraudulent activities of production and exchange.  Under statism, in contrast, the state may do whatever it wants to an individual or his property unconditionally and without limitation.”

Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Team

Posted on by

Joseph Sarkissian analyzes the foreign policy team to which Rand Paul, heir-apparent to his father’s flock, delivered the libertarian faithful (they-who-do-not-question-but-yet-know-all-the-answers) when, this summer, he endorsed Mr. Wall Street Mitt Romney.

1. Eliot Cohen – Special adviser, author of Romney’s foreign policy white paper.

At least Eliot Cohen doesn’t pull any punches. He has overtly called for the removal of the Iranian regime by all means necessary, sans force. Good to know, but how do we pull that off? Cohen believes soft power would do the trick, but how long before that soft power necessitates hard power once the Iranian regime begins ramping up attacks against U.S. and Israeli assets? No regime like Iran’s will stand by idly as it is picked apart from the outside, and once the retaliatory bombings, assassination attempts, and other counter-intelligence measure are begun by Iran, the U.S. and Israel won’t be able to stand by either.

2. Dov Zakheim – Special adviser

Aside from also being hawkish on Iran and Iraq, Zakheim has a proven track record of sketchy behavior. Aside from the highly controversial disappearance of a massive amount of money while comptroller of the Pentagon, he runs Foreign Policy’s “Shadow Government” blog where he argues for even more aggressive drone strikes and rails against Obama’s foreign policy. Zakheim is a staunch supporter of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying group that pushes hard for intervention in Iran and was adamant about the push for war in Iraq.

3. John Bolton – Trusted personal policy adviser, potential cabinet appointee

Mitt Romney once said of John Bolton that, “John’s wisdom, clarity and courage are qualities that should typify our foreign policy.” If this is true, be very afraid. Bolton could be the most hawkish of Romney’s advisers. He is a signatory to numerous letters to presidents past and present, including one to Bill Clinton in 1998 from the defunct Neocon think tank, “Project for a New American Century (PNAC)” urging Clinton to get rid of Saddam. In a March letter to President Obama from Romney’s foreign policy team, Bolton signed off on statements saying the president is too soft on Iran, not supportive enough of Israel’s interests, should have left troops in Iraq, and has potentially crippled the U.S. military with budget cuts.

4. Robert Kagan, Special adviser

Who’s ready for some good old-fashioned regime change? If Robert Kagan gets his way, that’s what you can expect. Aside from wanting to oust Iranian leadership and cause massive conflict, Kagan is on the board of directors for the Foreign Policy Initiative, or as I like to call it, PNAC 2.0, where he served as a project director. A quintessential Neocon, Kagan has time and time again steadfastly supported the war in Iraq, saying that the war was a good idea, that Iraq was getting more secure in 2004, and that the Arab Spring can be attributed to U.S. efforts in Iraq. It’s hard to find someone more disillusioned in the policy community.

While some could chalk up all of Romney’s rhetoric to early election cycle hogwash, his advisers haven’t changed their tunes. Given that Mitt is about as informed as a table lamp on foreign policy, I shudder to think of the consequences of his team having carte blanche. Whether they suffer from groupthink – since many of them have worked and continue to work in the same place –or just a lack of ability to see the errors of their predictions, something has to balance them out. Hopefully that something is a loss at the polls in November.”

Anarcho-Capitalism: Dead End Libertarianism

Posted on by

In The Contradiction in Anarchism Robert J. Bidinotto powerfully elaborates the central and most obvious problem with anarcho-capitalism – who will define the rules by which members of an an-cap society would abide and how competing court systems, competing police forces, and competing definitions of every term in the legal system would coordinate without degeneration into inner city gang war-fare….

[Which is of course the case already with the inter-state (international) system.]

“Today, a “legal monopoly” exists to put shady private detectives and private extortionists behind bars. It serves as a final arbiter on the use of force in society. We all agree it does a less-than-exemplary job much of the time; but it’s there. What happens when it isn’t? Or worse: when the shady detective or extortionist has replaced it, in a marketplace where profits depend on satisfying the subjective desires of emotional clients?

Anarchists say this scenario is unrealistically pessimistic: it assumes people are going to want to do the wrong thing. In fact, people “naturally” seek their rational self-interest, they declare, once government is out of the way. They would try to cooperate, work things out.

Well, if they did, why would they need any agency — governmental or private? Why wouldn’t five billion people naturally cooperate on this planet without any legal or institutional framework to resolve disputes?………

…….if the government has been constitutionally limited, the masses are typically thwarted in having their way at the expense of others.  They can’t use force to do anything they want. As private criminals, their acts are limited by the government. And government agents themselves are limited by the Constitution. Our Founders were geniuses at limiting power. It’s  taken lovers of coercion over 200 years to subvert our Founder’s system to its current state; and still, our system is far from being totalitarian.

[Lila: It is totalitarian already and became so in the last thirty years at top speed, but that’s irrelevant to his point]

In the market, by contrast, what’s to stop thugs, and by what standard? Surely no private company would deliberately handcuff itself, with separations and divisions of powers, and checks and balances. Such silly, inefficient “gridlock” and “red tape” would only make it less competitive…….

Anarchists proclaim faith that in the marketplace, all the “protection” companies would rationally work everything out. All companies in the private sector, they assert, have a vested interest in peace. Their reputations and profits, you see, rest on the need for mutual cooperation, not violence.

Oh? What about a reputation for customer satisfaction — and the profits that go with getting results? I guess anarchists have no experience in the private sector with shyster lawyers, protection rackets, software pirates and the like. Aren’t they, too, responding to market demand?

If the “demand” for peace is paramount, please explain the bloody history of the world.

Anarcho-capitalists forget their own Austrian economics. It was Von Mises who described the marketplace as the ultimate democracy, where “sovereign consumers voted with their dollars” to fulfill their desires. Not necessarily good desires, mind you: just “desires.” Whatever they happened to be. The market was itself amoral: it simply satisfied the desires of the greatest number. (That’s why Howard Stern sells better than Isaac Stern.)

[Lila: I believe that mechanisms might arise in a society of a different quality than the one we have now. That is, my disbelief in the viability of anarcho-capitalism is a practical one, resulting from my observation that people themselves lack the moral qualities and self-restraint necessary for society to function without government.  It is not a theoretical disbelief in the possibility of a functioning an-cap society, as it is with this author.]

* * *Anarchists think the “invisible hand” of the marketplace will work in the place of government. But read what Adam Smith had to say about businessmen in that famous “invisible hand” passage. Smith knew that government was a precondition of the market, and of the working of the “invisible hand.” Without government, the “invisible hand” becomes a closed fist, wielded by the most powerful gang(s) to emerge. Why? Because government prevents competing forces from defining — and enforcing — their own private “interests” subjectively and arbitrarily.

Even if 99 percent of “protection agents” behave rationally, all you’d need is one “secessionist” outlaw agency, with it’s own novel interpretation of “rights” and “justice,” tailored to appeal to some “customer base” of bigots, religious fanatics, disgruntled blue collar workers or amoral tycoons with money to burn. …..

Oops — did I say “outlaw?” Under anarchy, there is no final determiner of the law.” There would be no final standard for settling disputes, e. g., a Constitution. That would be a “monopoly legal system,” you see. That’s because anarchists support the unilateral right of any individual or group to secede from a governing framework. (After all — wrote anarchist Lysander Spooner a century ago — I didn’t sign the Constitution, did I?)

So whose laws, rules, definitions and interpretations are going to be final?

……From a practical standpoint, a “protection agency” which could not enforce retribution or restitution against a wrong-doer would be a paper tiger. Who would pay for such toothless “protection”? Who would stand to lose?

But who would stand to gain under this option? Only the thugs, who would unilaterally declare themselves immune from anyone’s arrest, prosecution or punishment. Either as individuals or in gangs, they would use force, unconstrained by the self- limitations adopted by the “good” agencies.

[Lila: That is already the case in criminal-capitalist America. The extent of judicial corruption and subversion of law by lawyers themselves, using the letter of the law to destroy its spirit, makes large parts of corporate America no more than gangland writ large.]

In short, under this option, the good would unilaterally restrain themselves, while the bad would assume the right to use force without self-limitation, and with no fear of retaliation. This option would mean de facto pacifism by the moral, in the face of the immoral.

[Lila: This is precisely what an-cap libertarians iend up advocating, whether they are aware of it or not. ]

…If you have no final arbiter, your de facto pacifism gives society’s thugs a carte blanche — which means society will be run by brute force and thugs — which is immoral.

If you do establish some final arbiter, with the power to enforce its verdicts against all “competitors,” then you have — voila! — a final “legal monopoly” on the proper use of force… which anarchists declare to be immoral.

Anarchists can’t evade this dilemma by making excursions to ancient Iceland or to science-fiction Utopias of the future. The fact that the Icelandic model didn’t last, ought to tell us something about the viability of any science-fiction model of the future.

[Lila: I have no problem with referencing ancient Icelandic or Irish or Indian societies that did not have government. In fact, I think we should be examining every possible variation of social organization we can find. But the idea that we we can eliminate government altogether when multinational corporations already operate like huge governments, as a law unto themselves, is deluded. Will these MNC’s simply restrain themselves or will their managements become more powerful, less accountable, and more likely to operate like bandits, looting from themselves as well as from their clients and rivals?  The answer is staring at us, in the form of such rapacious organizations as Goldman Sachs..]

So, who would really rule the anarcho-capitalist utopia? The same guys who rule it now. They would be elevated by the same popular constituency that now elects them. The only difference would be is that under anarcho-capitalism, there’d be no institutional limits on their behavior……

The answer to unlimited government is not the “unlimited democracy” of the Misesian marketplace. Mises knew better (read his Bureaucracy). But anarchist rationalists, like Rothbard, haven’t yet figured out that “force” is not just like any other good or service on the marketplace.

[Lila: I think Rothbard was smart enough to figure this out. I mean, this is  common sense.  No.  I figure there’s more going on with Rothbard – and the cult of Rothbard – than meets the eye.  Even David Friedman, another an-cap,  finds a certain dishonesty in the way Rothbard treats his material. And he’s not alone. I blogged a few years ago about misrepresentation of a Chinese thinker, Sima Qian, by Rothbard noted by Roderick Long. Then there is Rothbard’s treatment of Rand, and also of Adam Smith… ….]

Ron Paul Implosion: End The Fed To Technology Revolution…

Posted on by

The Pauls have lost all credibility with me.

Read their latest missive, blogged at EPJ

And reported here at Forbes: “Ron Paul Takes Up Internet Freedom with New Technology Revolution.”

They’ve abandoned the financial battle.

I guess the financial coup of 2008, completed in 2010, is now sealed and cordoned off from prosecution. Last month, as if to confirm that, the White Queen (the City)  took down the Black Knight (Gupta) that had infiltrated the highest ranks of her court, while the White Bishop (Lloyd Doing-God’s Work Blankfein) was witness for the prosecution.

“End the Fed,” which  Rand Paul converted to” Audit the Fed,” is over.

The Pauls have now skipped forward to their new, new project –  the  “Technology Revolution.”

I  never thought that much of “End the Fed,” because, as I’ve blogged previously, the elites can manufacture money from other places besides the Fed, like the BIS and the reconstituted IMF.

But, apparently,  End the Fed doesn’t even work as a popular slogan any more.

So, what do I think about the new campaign?

I think it will be about as effective as their “End the Fed” campaign, which is to say, not effective at all.

See my comment at The Daily Bell in 2010:

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 11/23/10 11:55 AM
Daily Bell: “But by pursuing his strategy, he has made his opponents look like fools and perhaps altered the course of history.”

Lila: Let’s hope. Personally, I agree with Doug Casey on this:
“As a lone voice, his father was a breath of fresh, more principled air, but he didn’t change anything at all that I can see”

(Doug Casey on Presidents, LRC)

But it will be a great platform for the Pauls to sell books, promote ideas and launch political careers for their family members.

I only hope it won’t be done on the backs of idealistic young people. There were many who put change they could hardly spare in a tough economy into the Paul’s war chest.

The new campaign, which dubs itself  “The Internet Versus The Machine” is obviously a rebranding campaign to move young people away from what Forbes calls “the archaic” (they mean arcane) issues of finance.

Instead, the Pauls will focus on the hip world of the net.

Forbes:

“Young people have been a driving force in the Paul campaign, and the focus on internet freedom should only bolster that support.”

I’m going to call foul on that.

Their new “campaign” is in support of the Technology Revolution on the Internet?

Last I looked the tech revolution has been around for a while, getting on quite well without the Pauls.

One part of  the new project is going to be defending big business from attempts by consumers to scrutinize their data collection.

I kid you not. Here is Buzzfeed on the subject.

“The Pauls also take a stand for the growing industry known (and widely criticized) as “big data.”

“They deride the notion that “private sector data collection practices must be scrutinized and tightly regulated in the name of ‘protecting consumers,’ at the same time as government’s warrantless surveillance and collection of private citizens’ Internet data has dramatically increased.”

So does this mean that Ron Paul is going to be fighting to prevent European governments or NGOs  like EFF or Asian governments from scrutinizing Google’s data collection practices?

Remember that I just blogged that Google’s CEO Larry Page should be arrested for privacy violations and espionage against foreign governments?

I was being satirical about US surveillance of foreign CEO’s and money-managers.

For instance, in the Galleon -Gupta cases, the government used wire-taps whose authorization was obtained pre-textually in violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.

I don’t recall that the Pauls said a word about that, although the Galleon insider case has dominated the financial media for a couple of years now, and is directly tied via Rajaratnam’s funding of Tamil charities to  issues like terrorist money-laundering  with which Paul adviser Bruce Fein – once employed by an alleged front group for the Tamil Tigers –  is intimately connected.

A recent Washington Post article described how the military is outsourcing surveillance in Africa to private contractors (with little accountability, significant cost over-runs, and little to show for the expense).

Densely populated China and India are both locked in battles with the West for access to resources and agricultural lands.  Indian and Chinese companies compete with American and European countries on the African continent.  China and India have also complained about American corporate espionage.  American companies in turn complain about IP theft from the Indians and Chinese.  Meanwhile the US government itself is involved in IP theft through its pervasive global surveillance.  Where does data collection for corporations end and espionage for the state begin, anyway? Where does the government end and the private sector begin, when private companies are outsourced arms of the government and the government is the enforcement arm of the companies?

Ron Paul is not oblivious to the complexities of all this. He is far too shrewd.

Rajat Gupta’s conviction shows evidence in my opinion of being a  set up by the government, with some arm-twisting from Goldman Sachs. Likely it was an important blow in the  covert psy war against India, an ostensible US ally, about which I blogged here (“Coconut Imperialism”and here, “Educating the Gentoos In India”)

The obvious response from foreign governments (such as India) would be to treat American CEO’s the same way and wire-tap them.

So, is it just coincidental that the Pauls suddenly abandon their financial campaign (which never involved a word against Goldman Sachs), and suddenly rush to head off any animosity toward Google?

On their silence on G Sachs, here is a comment I made (one among many) below the same Daily Bell article:

Posted by Lila Rajiva on 11/23/10 11:40 AM

@Pisano.

Why would it distract him?
How hard is it to say, unequivocally, “Goldman Sachs and several other banks, are involved in corrupt actions and should be investigated and prosecuted.”

There. Back to “business.”

He certainly had no problem drawing a hard line over relatively trivial things like a monument to Rosa Parks. If he was really afraid of distraction, why would he make a fuss over something like that, and then on something crucial, suddenly go silent?

Why doesn’t he state clearly – “9-11 needs to be investigated. There is credible evidence that there was some kind of conspiracy involving intelligence agencies, US and foreign.”

I like Ron Paul and want to believe the best of him.

But this excuse doesn’t hold water for two seconds.”

This looks like more material to add to the mounting evidence (see  here) that Paul fronts for financial interests.

Perhaps he cannot avoid doing it, as I’ve said.

But there’s no need to be suckered into what could well be a counter-attack against foreign governments who defend themselves against espionage by Google/Facebook/Hotmail/Skype/TOR and the rest of the government-corporate spy sector, by couching the issue as a defense of the private sector.

That explanation also takes care of Paul’s pandering to the left.

The financial world (which controls the media) is left-leaning, in contrast to non-financial businesses.  Paul’s recent moves make quite a bit of sense when understood that way.  He acts to co-opt the brand of libertarianism appropriately called the Marxism of the right by deploying what seem to be ideologically inflexible positions in the service of  larger imperial goals.

So, I have to ask. Will the two Pauls now be collecting money from young people to defend multi-billion dollar multinationals like Google from scrutiny by the governments on which they spy?

I mean, if you phrased that in the appropriately anti-state way, there will be enough libertarian lemmings who’ll rush to defend Google, I’m sure.

This theory might explain why the financial media, usually so vocal in defense of insider-trading, when it’s done by Michael Milken or Ivan Boesky, is suddenly so quiet  about South Asian insider-trading not a tenth as bad.

Does it also explain why large parts of the alternative press  have had nothing but praise for Julian Assange, another front for western financial interests? And why the Pauls have promoted Assange?

Talk about Trojan horses.

Big corporations cannot be analyzed separately from government.

When the state outsources its spying to corporations, for someone to argue that the state should not limit corporate surveillance because it’s engaged in surveillance itself is confused, at best, and downright misleading, at worst.

Especially when it comes from seasoned politicians like the Pauls.

Parts of the government are scrutinizing the private sector. Often they’re right to.

Other parts of government are much worse than the private sector when it comes to privacy violation.

Those parts of the government are often most incestuously allied with corporations. This is the corporate-state or intel-industrial complex that produces programs like Echelon.

So it’s quite bizarre for the Pauls to claim that Microsoft (or Google or Apple) are pure private-sector entities, when they gain market share directly because of concrete government actions on their behalf and because of endemic and pervasive state-created judicial/legal/financial corruption.

One more thing.  Microsoft wasn’t prescient at all about the net, as the Pauls claim in their new manifesto.

It was way behind. Gates himself admitted it.

There is, finally, another reason why the Pauls may have turned their attention to protecting Big Data,

It looks like Big Data is bankrolling him.

Here’s Reason’s Brian Doherty, making the point:

“With Peter Thiel, founder of the controversial “big data” company Panantir, having made a $2.6 million investment in the (somewhat feckless in the end) superPAC “Endorse Liberty” during campaign season, perhaps the Paul machine sees this as a cause that can energize both grassroots and big money.”

And that’s all  I want to say now about this turn of events until I learn a bit more what is really going on.

But, if you were waiting to see Ron Paul libertarianism implode, it happened this week.

Edward Feser On The Weakness of Rothbard’s Philosophy

Posted on by

[Added, July 4:  In response to a video of Rand on the Middle East, posted at Lew Rockwell.

Yes, Rand was wrong about that.

But that does not diminish the validity of her thinking in other areas, any more than Rothbard’s rightness on foreign policy validates everything else he wrote. Nor is the Middle East the reason the left hates Rand.  It detests her because her appeal to individualism and achievement is perennially powerful and popular.

And it also detests her because she dissected at least a part of the motivation behind much charity/altruism, to which the left insistently appeals.

Now, Rand owes her thought on that subject and other things  to Nietzsche, whom she adapted very originally and powerfully. In turn, Nietzsche, also an original and creative mind, owed his thinking to his studies of Eastern religion, especially Buddhism and Hinduism.

As is the case with Heidegger, Nietzsche, as far as I know, did not properly credit that influence.

(On the other hand, Yeats, also massively influenced by Nietzsche, did….]

In this way, intellectual chicanery/cultural fraud is at the heart of the modernist project.

Imagine if I were to study Christianity surreptitiously, and then go to some state in India where the villagers knew nothing about it and preach about such things as the resurrection of the body, judgement day, the fall, and original sin, passing off these notions as my own original thought, while denigrating the culture from which I took those ideas?

What kind of a fraud would that be?

What kind of damage would that do to the villagers’ understanding of the world at large, and to my own ability to reach valid conclusions about that world?]

Edward Feser on Murray Rothbard as a philosopher:

“I should also make it clear that my low opinion of Rothbard’s philosophical abilities has nothing to do with the particular conclusions he wants to defend. I certainly share his hostility to slavery, socialism, communism, and egalitarian liberalism. I also agree that much of what modern governments do is morally indefensible and that many of the taxes levied by modern governments (maybe even most of them) are unjust. And while I strongly disagree with his claims that government per se is evil and that all taxation is unjust, these are at least philosophically interesting claims. The problem is just that Rothbard seems incapable of giving a philosophically interesting argument for his claims. (Moreover, the claims in question were borrowed by Rothbard from 19th century anarchists like Lysander Spooner, so even where Rothbard is philosophically interesting he isn’t original.)”

Lila: He also borrowed from Rand, indeed, plagiarized her theory of volition, it is said, as well as a dissertation by a student, Barbara Branden. Which might explain why some Rothbardians feel the need to attack Ayn Rand all the time, usually without seeming to have read her very well. It is another way the modern libertarian movement panders to the left – by adopting its superficial reading of Rand, who, while flawed, is a giant next to most of her critics.

Feser goes on to deconstruct Rothbard’s arguments about self-ownership:
“Here, then, is the example. It is Rothbard’s main argument for the thesis of self-ownership, which is, as I have indicated, the very foundation of his moral and political philosophy, without which his moral case against taxation and government totally collapses.
I know of at least three places where he presents it (there may be others): in his book For a New Liberty (first published 1973, revised 1978); in his essay “Justice and Property Rights” (first published 1974, reprinted in his anthology Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, 2nd edition); and in his main work on moral and political philosophy, The Ethics of Liberty (1982, revised edition published in 1998). In the revised edition of For a New Liberty, the argument begins as follows:
“Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation. Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (1) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that while Class A deserves the rights of being human, Class B is in reality subhuman and therefore deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, as we shall see, allowing Class A to own Class B means that the former is allowed to exploit, and therefore to live parasitically, at the expense of the latter. But this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange.” (pp. 28-29)
The rest of the argument attempts to rule out alternative (2) and has its own problems, but I won’t bother with it because the passage quoted is enough for my purposes.
I think this argument is a very bad one; indeed, I think that to anyone with any philosophical training it will be quite obvious that it is bad. And not only is it bad, but given that Rothbard says nothing more in defense of the claims made in this passage (apart from trying to rule out alternative (2)), I think it is clear that the argument fails to be even minimally respectable in the sense described above. I suspect that most readers can immediately see at least some of the problems with it. Here are the ones that occur to me:
1. Even if it were true that “each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish” and that “the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation,” it just doesn’t follow that anyone has a right to self-ownership. For all Rothbard has shown, we might also be able to think, learn, value, etc. even if we didn’t have any rights at all. (That X could get us Z doesn’t show that Y wouldn’t get it for us too.) Or we might need some rights in order to do these things, but not all the rights entailed by the principle of self-ownership. Or we might really need all the rights entailed by self-ownership, but nevertheless just not have them. After all, the fact that you need something doesn’t entail that you have it, and (as libertarians themselves never tire of pointing out), it certainly doesn’t entail that you have a right to it. For example, wild animals need food to survive, but it doesn’t follow that they have a right to it (indeed, Rothbard himself explicitly denies that animals can have any rights).
Furthermore, why should we grant in the first place that “each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish”? Children survive and flourish very well without choosing most of their means and ends. Some adults are quite happy to let others (parents, a spouse, government officials) choose at least some of their means and ends for them. Many physically or mentally ill people couldn’t possibly survive or flourish unless others chose their means and ends for them. Even a slave or serf could obviously survive and even flourish if his master or lord was of the less brutal sort. And so forth. And if surviving and flourishing are what ground our rights, how could we have a right to suicide or to do anything contrary to our flourishing, as libertarian defenders of the thesis of self-ownership say we do?
Also, why should we grant that respect for each individual’s self-ownership really would ensure every individual’s ability to choose his means and ends, etc.? A leftist might argue that respect for self-ownership would benefit some but leave a great many others destitute and bereft of any interesting range of means or ends to choose from.
Of course, there might be some way a Rothbardian could reply to these objections; I certainly don’t find all of them compelling. But the point is that they are obvious objections to make, and yet Rothbard doesn’t even consider them, much less answer them. Even a brief acknowledgement of some of these objections and a gesture in the direction of a possible reply might have been enough to make the argument minimally respectable, but Rothbard fails to provide even this.
2. The claim that there are “only two alternatives” to denying the thesis of self-ownership is just obviously false. Here are some further alternatives that Rothbard fails to consider:
(a) no one owns anyone, including himself
(b) God owns all of us
(c) one class of people has a right to only partial ownership of another class (e.g. the former class has a right to the labor of the latter class, but may not kill members of the latter class, or refuse to provide for their sustenance, or forbid them from marrying, etc.)
(d) everyone has partial and/or unequal ownership of everyone else (e.g. everyone has an absolute right to bodily integrity, but not to the fruits of his labor, which are commonly owned; or everyone has an absolute right to bodily integrity, and an absolute right only to some percentage of the fruits of his labor, with the rest being commonly owned; or everyone has a presumptive right to bodily integrity, which might be overridden in extreme cases, with a right to a percentage of the fruits of his labor; or the weak and untalented have an absolute right to bodily integrity and to a large percentage of, though not all of, the fruits of their labor while the strong and talented have an absolute right to bodily integrity and to a much smaller percentage of the fruits of their labor; or the strong and talented, unlike the weak and untalented, have only a presumptive right to bodily integrity, which might be overridden if someone desperately needs an organ transplant; and so on and so forth).
Alternative (b) was defended by Locke (for whom talk of self-ownership was really just a kind of shorthand for our stewardship of ourselves before God) and it would also have been endorsed by natural law theorists in the Thomistic tradition. Rothbard explicitly cites both Locke on self-ownership and the Thomistic natural law tradition, so this alternative should have been obvious to him, and yet he fails even to consider it.
Lila: Chesterton has an excellent essay about the uses of the word “own,” but I think anyone with common sense can understand that the meaning of ownership itself varies with the context.
That Rothbard is not reflective about language – a lack of reflection pervasive among certain kinds of libertarians –  is immediately apparent to any reader with the slightest acquaintance with modern literature, let alone semiotics or philosophy.
“Alternative (c) was the standard view taken by defenders of slavery, most of whom would not have endorsed the unqualified ownership of other people implied by Rothbard’s alternative (1). One would think that Rothbard, who fancied himself a historian of ideas, would be aware of this, and yet here again he simply ignores what should have been another obvious possible alternative.
Some version or other of alternative (d) is arguably implicit in the views of many leftists, very few of whom (if any) would really claim that all of us have equal quotal ownership of each other. At the very least, a minimally charitable reading of left-wing arguments about taxation and redistribution would acknowledge that this, rather than Rothbard’s alternative (2), might be what egalitarian leftists are committed to. But Rothbard fails even to consider the possibility. He suggests (later on in the argument, after the passage quoted above) that “communist” ownership by everyone of everyone would entail that no one could take any action whatsoever without the permission of everyone else, but while this might be true under option (2), it would not be true under the less extreme egalitarian possibilities enshrined in (d).
Alternative (a) is one that Rothbard finally did consider – almost a decade after first giving the argument and after once again ignoring this alternative when repeating the argument in “Justice and Property Rights” – in a brief footnote in The Ethics of Liberty. (He attributes it to George Mavrodes, apart from whom, apparently, Rothbard might never have seen the obvious.) Rothbard’s reply to it is to say that “since ownership signifies range of control, this [i.e. no one’s owning anyone, including himself] would mean that no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly vanish.”
But the badness of this argument should also be obvious. While having ownership of something does imply having a range of control over it, having a range of control over it doesn’t imply ownership. I have a certain “range of control” over my neighbor’s flower bed – he couldn’t stop me if I walked over right now and pulled some flowers out of it – but it doesn’t follow that I own it. Animals have a range of control over their environment, but since ownership is a moral category implying the having of certain rights, and animals (by Rothbard’s own admission) have no rights, it follows that they have no ownership of anything. And of course, their lack of ownership of anything hasn’t caused animals as a whole to “vanish,” “quickly” or otherwise, which makes evident the absurdity of Rothbard’s claim that alternative (a) would entail the extinction of the human race.
3. Alternative (1) just obviously doesn’t imply that the members of class B are “subhuman.” Not all defenders of slavery have denied that slaves are fully human; their view is just that some human beings can justly be owned by other ones. Rothbard’s assertion that this “contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans” is just blatantly question-begging, since what is at issue is precisely whether there are any natural human rights that might rule out slavery.
4. Rothbard’s claim that the “parasitism” entailed by alternative (1) “violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange” is also just obviously false. Animals do not engage in “production and exchange,” certainly not in the laissez-faire economics sense intended by Rothbard, but they are obviously alive.

In this one brief passage, then, Rothbard commits a host of fallacies and fails even to acknowledge, much less answer, a number of obvious objections that might be raised against his argument. Nor is this some peripheral argument, which might be written off as an uncharacteristic lapse. It served as the foundation of his entire moral and political theory, and was repeated several ti”mes over the course of a decade virtually unaltered. And if things are this bad in the very foundations of his moral and political theory, you can imagine how bad the rest of his philosophical arguments are.”

Comment:

I would also add that  Rothbard’s weaknesses as a thinker are replicated in some of his most fervent acolytes, who substitute sound and fury for depth of reasoning and seem to think incorrect thinking becomes better the more violently it is articulated.

This is not a criticism of  libertarianism as such. A term broad enough to embrace everyone from Tolstoy to Milton Friedman can hardly be criticized as one.  “Libertarianism” cannot be considered a singular movement, however much, for political or marketing reasons, some anarcho-capitalists might try to drag someone like Tolstoy into their fold.

Tolstoy was a libertarian in the way Gandhi was. Profoundly anti-capitalistic. They both believed in voluntary poverty and simplicity and abhorred the complexity of modern life. I doubt either would relish becoming the mascot of the Mises or Bastiat Institutes. To try to ride their reputations for the sake of broadening one’s appeal is intellectually disingenuous.

So I have profound differences with  American-style libertarianism (of the LRC type or of the Reason Magazine type), while supporting LRC’s antiwar and anti-police state positions.

Another point. In things of which  I know something, I can clearly spot the flaws and limitations of Rothbard’s arguments, which makes me think that in areas in which I am uncertain, he must be flawed too.

Anyway, Feser’s points don’t need any great acquaintance with Rothbard’s economic reasoning to follow. They are points that have occurred to me on and off, as I’ve read the great (?) man.

But frankly, my increasing disinterest in Rothbard has grown from more intuitive roots.

First, there is something cocky, smug, and shallow in the writing itself….despite its superficial good humor and sense.

Then, there are the stories of plagiarism – something which intensely prejudices me against a writer. And there are his attacks on writers many would consider his superior, like Ayn Rand and Adam Smith.  I wonder how much of envy lay behind all that.

On the many people whom he knew and taught, he seems to have had a profound influence, which speaks well of him. But I haven’t had the pleasure of knowing him personally, so my judgement must be from what I read of him.

And from reading him, and reading of him,  I get the picture of a shallow, bright, abrasive man, who thought very highly of himself, yet plagiarized often, and covered up the lack of originality by attacking others, attacks that his followers continue, see here,

as well as here.

[Rand was the most famous instance of Rothbard’s plagiarism. But he also borrowed from Spooner, as Feser points out. And a commenter at this blog adds this:

“The first part of his book on the history of American banking drew on a report about the “Suffolk System” published by that bank, but since buried in the archives. After finding a bad microfilm copy at my university library, I paid the Adam Smith Institute to send me a good one. (I also bought one of their neckties.) Rothbard plagiarized heavily from the original Suffolk Banking System and, worse, projected his own anarchist opinions on the facts of history. As a criminologist, I am fully sympathetic to a free market in protection and adjudication, but the fact is that the Suffolk System was not destroyed by the evil machinations of Salmon P. Chase’s Treasury Department.”

So, if Rand has her flaws (and she does), Rothbard has his, analyzed at length in this piece by G. Stolyarov.

Meanwhile, in general power of reasoning, insight into the psychology of the modern mind, and overall influence, frankly, Rothbard cannot hold a candle to Rand, whatever powers he might have as a historian or economist.

There is a reason that the left attacks her, not him.

Rajat Gupta: Establishment Trying To Spin Jury’s Unholy Haste

Posted on by

Ha ha. The establishment is trying to put out some good spin to cover up for the haste with which this obviously rotten case was tried and resolved.  Good try, but people are shocked with good reason, they can see the fix is in, and all the slanted articles aren’t going to hide the stink rising from this steaming pile of dung that just got offloaded in Manhattan.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal, spinning like top:

“During the four-week trial of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat Gupta, juror David Klein often glanced in different directions than his fellow jurors.

“When they were intently focused on a witness on the stand, Mr. Klein would be eyeing Mr. Gupta,” said defense trial consultant Julie Blackman.

Mr. Klein, 53 years old, initially voted to acquit Mr. Gupta on all counts, the only holdout among the 12 jurors in the insider-trading case, according to jurors.

In an interview, Mr. Klein said he wanted to approach the case methodically. “The case was based entirely on circumstantial evidence that warranted more scrutiny,” he said. “I didn’t think it was something we should rush into.”

Ames Versus Wile

Posted on by

Winter comes, says Anthony Wile:

“This is a very important movement … this movement that is perhaps the prelude to REAL world government. And yet …

Nothing shall grow in the gardens of world government. Fairness will reign. The guilty shall be punished and those who have been oppressed will mount the Throne of Theosophy, certain of their righteousness and rejoicing in their power. See here:

“He who protests is an enemy; he who opposes is a corpse.”

“If someone is very hungry, the Angkar will take him where he will be stuffed with food.”

“If you wish to live exactly as you please, the Angkar will put aside a small piece of land for you.”

(Sayings of the Khmer Rouge: “to be “stuffed with food” is to become a corpse, fertilizing the rice fields; and the ‘small piece of land’ refers to a burial pit.)

Ever read Chronicles of Narnia? Or the descriptions of the White Queen’s winter. It is a land where all things that are good are frozen and quiescent, where rivers have ceased to run, where people have ceased to speak and even the animals have ceased to sound. No history is available but that which is approved.”

“Pus-humpers Should Writhe In Hell,” says Mark Ames, Exile journalist and former colleague of Matt Taibbi:

“In 1985, Niskanen left Reagan’s side for the comfort of a lifelong sinecure in the Koch welfare program, safely protected from the ravages of the free-market, just like Hayek, just like all the pus-humpers in the libertarian nomenklatura.

And within a year, chief pus-humper himself, William Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute, was attacking Catholic bishops for daring to allege that Christianity is not all about free-markets and enriching the 1-percent:

A former economic adviser to President Reagan says the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are ignoring the Bible as well as sound economics in their call for more government help for the poor.

…In a lengthy teaching letter approved last month, the bishops declared that significant poverty in such a rich nation is “a moral and social scandal that must not be ignored.” They said government as well as individuals and businesses should do much more to help the poor and powerless take part in economic life.

Niskanen, identifying himself as “an economist and a Protestant,” said, “one has reason to question the moral authority of a letter that has little apparent basis in the Scriptures of our shared religious heritage. The letter seeks to provide an agenda for the state. The New Testament is a message of individual salvation through Christ,” he said. “The bishops encourage us to seek justice through political action. Jesus counsels us that the Kingdom of God is not of this world.’ The central theme of the letter is economic justice. The New Testament provides no concept of secular justice, economic or otherwise,” he said.

Now William Niskanen is dead. For all I know, Niskanen may be in Heaven, bouncing on Calvin’s lap. Or maybe–one hopes–he’s dealing with a very Guantanamo-like wrathful god. The only thing we can say for sure is that William Niskanen did everything possible to create a kind of Hell on earth for the 99% of Americans who weren’t as blessed with Koch-funded sinecures as he.

May the bastard writhe in pain.”

Comment

Ames, like Taibbi, and, disappointingly, like even Bill Black, who as a former government official has an even higher standard to meet, refuses to argue honestly. Whatever you might think of an opponent,  ad hominem is the least persuasive way to make your case.

In the first place, Ames sweepingly puts all libertarians in one category.

(Of course, some libertarians do the same too).

Then he confuses the position of the minarchists Friedman, Mises and Hayek with the current Mises libertarians, who are mostly pure anarcho-capitalists.

Next, he confuses minarchists with the oligarchs who espouse  libertarianism, the Koch brothers, although the Kochs (as the libertarians have been the first and more vociferous to point out), are state capitalists or mercantilists.

Then, Koch is conflated with Alan Greenspan, who abandoned libertarianism for the state, and Greenspan is associated with Ayn Rand, who was a minarchist who expressly considered crony capitalism and criminal capitalism “looting”.

What an ignorant rant.  And in the middle of it all, Ames invokes Jesus, about whom his crowd has nothing good to say otherwise, unless it’s to get the long-suffering Galilean to brand their wretched marketing campaign to reelect whichever lame is on the ticket this time.

Jesus wouldn’t have approved of very much in modern life, left or right.   [Nov. 23: On second thoughts, I don’t think this is necessarily true, but it would take too long a digression for me to address it here]

Jesus would likely not have approved of this kind of violent debate, not Wall Street, nor DC. Who knows what he would have demanded. He could have been a mystic revolutionary, for anything we know.

But a Democrat re-election campaign funded by Soros and the ruling elites, astro-turfed by a bunch of liberal- to-left outfits and led by professional activists, that threatens global violence as a way to get the kulaks to pay for its agenda isn’t exactly a change from the status quo.

That’s exactly what the terrorist attack of 9-11 was.

It’s exactly what the financial terrorism of 2008 was.

So, this is the third time we’re hearing the mantra,  Give us what we want or else.

That’s not the population demanding. That’s Soros and assorted other elites, speaking through their intelligence and media assets, provoking and co-opting popular rage.

But guess what.

Strike three …right?

This time, it’s Mr. Soros who might be out.

Update 1: I should add that I am not on either side of this debate theoretically.

Practically, however, I believe less government is better, just because government is far too large and centralized now. But I don’t believe that a small republican government in a city is automatically the same as an empire. It is simply not true, from the evidence of history, and from my own personal experience, having lived in small villages in small countries, and in the heart of the empire in the US, in the DC area.

If force and fraud are the reasons why government coercion is wrong, then it stands to reason that force and fraud by themselves are a kind of “government,” one without legitimacy. Corporations, often, are mini-governments that depend on state-created law to protect them from the results of their actions. There is no hallowed ground anymore. It’s all rotten and so ideological arguments start from a false premise.

Both sides, like those who see terrorists everywhere and those who see them nowhere, are thus bound together in opposition. They become locked into their respective positions, which is where the elite wants them to remain, because it allows the “shadow government” to steam ahead with no opposition.

Update 2 (Nov. 23) :

In keeping with my position on ideology, I also think Jesus was not an ideologue. He was a poet, that is, someone whose “thinking” is an image of existential reality not a logical superstructure arising out of inherently flawed assumptions.

A recent piece at CNN’s Belief blog makes this point well, and suggests how something like “microfinance’ can be remedied by adapting to this reality:

“The discussion at the AEI event revolved around the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan and the problem of providing immediate relief for compounding and overwhelming needs but still being able to make the transition to sustainable development.

The concept of microfinance and microcredit, for which the founder of the Bangladeshi Grameen Bank was awarded the Nobel Peace prize, has been applied under HOPE International to 14 countries serving more than 250,000 clients. I asked Greer whether he thought microfinance could become a broken system, and about the phenomenon of loan sharks emerging in India’s microfinancing world:

“What’s happening right now in the microfinance base shows why it’s necessary to have something else than just access to capital or some new way of providing loans to the poor; that in and of itself is insufficient to see real transformation that happens in communities.

So the situation in India – we also operate in India – but have a different operating model; we make sure that the profits that we’re generating are reinvested back into those areas. We emphasize training, we emphasize savings, and we don’t have the belief that if you just give individuals 50 dollar loans that that’s gonna result in huge transformation.

That’s an important piece. It takes money to make money. But it’s only a piece of a bigger picture of what it takes to transform a community.”

I’m not certain that AEI, a neoconservative outfit, best known to the general public for its hawkish positions, is the best place to be having this discussion, and I don’t know what assumptions are at work in this discussion, but at least the authors are correct in warning against appropriating Jesus for any partisan political model.

From A Review of Julian Assange’s Biography

Posted on by

This is from a review of “Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Biography,” by Bradley Winterton at The Taipei Times.

“But the view of this reviewer is that Assange has little to worry about. The book reads not only well but in many places magnificently. If you want a version of the WikiLeaks saga from the horse’s mouth, and in addition a defense of press freedom in the tradition of John Wilkes, Tom Paine and Daniel Ellsberg, this is undoubtedly it.

As WikiLeaks is built on a belief in unfettered access to information, one expects as much of the truth as can be fitted into 250 pages from Assange. (The last 100 pages or so consist largely of extracts from the leaks themselves, generally less sensational than one might have expected.) There’s one fact of local interest close to the start — the name Assange, taken from the author’s stepfather, derives from the Chinese Ah Sang, the stepfather’s ancestor several generations back, who was “a Taiwanese pirate.”

Comment:

Two things to note.  Daniel Ellsberg (of “Pentagon Papers” fame) is considered limited hang-out by many thoughtful people, like Doug Valentine.

Interesting coincidence that Assange’s pen name derives from the Chinese Ah Sang (Taiwanese pirate) and that Wikileaks has recently been funded almost soley by Swedish micropay site Flatr, launched by the Swedish digital distributor Pirate Bay, which has been involved in copyright violations.

So, Julian, descendant and friend of pirates, fights the big pirates (national governments) with the methods of small pirates (hackers), in the process, allying himself with even bigger pirates (the cartel of pirate financiers like Soros).