We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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A suitably scathing book review David Gordon, a US writer, has a good review of a book called, unambiguously, The Case for Big Government by Jeff Madrick.
I liked Gordon’s final paragraph, which is worth waiting for. Assuming his review is fairly based, it is amazing how lame, or downright thin, are the arguments for big government. It is a sort of backhanded compliment to the efforts of free marketeers that collectivists should still feel the need to write such works defending their views at all. Whenever we get grumpy and depressed about the way the world is going, it is good to remember that the other side cares enough about our views to want to try and deal with them, however shabbily.
Update: thanks to a reader for spotting my error in the name of the reviewer. My bad. Now fixed.
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The book is by Jeff Madrick. The review is by David Gordon.
[Doh. Corrected by editor: Pierce spanked]
[Pearce, not Pierce: Editor spanked]
David Gordon is great. His reviews are very good, and he debates much more rigourously than many mises.org writers.
The book’s author, whoever he finally turns out to be, makes the classic statist justification of expenisve government programs—
1) some form of “public need” was identified,
2) the state had to step forward and fix the problem or fill the need because,
3) it never, ever could have been taken care of any other way, and most emphatically not by any private action.
This argument is ubiquitous throughout the late 19th and all of the 20th centuries, justifying everything from water and sanitation projects to the latest financial bailouts and statist energy legislation.
I even read a bit from the New York Times today calling for a government program to provide for the maintanence of retired racing horses, funded by a special tax on betters and race tracks.
As I have mentioned on other occasions, there is no problem, perceived or actual, for which the statist mind cannot devise a new state program at taxpayers expense.
Indeed, that is their only acceptable course of action, regardless of the situation.
Beneath the rhetoric and mythology of nuance and open-mindedness, the statist is the very definition of a one-trick pony.
There’s alot of people who believe in big government, especially inside the disgusting, treasonous vampire that is the Pentagon, and in incompetent companies like Lockheed and Halliburton who sponge off the taxpayer, and greedy bloodsucking banks like Goldman Sachs. If they can afford to pay bonuses they obviously did not need any bailouts. The financial sector can go **** itself.
The US deficit could be easily curtailed by slashing the Pentagon’s utterly ridiculous budget (half the US GDP!). Lest we forget the Pentagon utterly failed the American people on 9/11, has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is largely to blame for plunging the US into debt.
” . . . the Pentagon’s utterly ridiculous budget (half the US GDP!)”
What arrant nonsense! Do you even bother to read your tripe before hitting the “Post” button?
The Pentagon’s 2009 budget of $515 billion isn’t “half the US GDP”; it’s about 4%. It isn’t even “half” of the total US buget of $3.1 trillion; it’s about 1/6th. It is rougly half of budgeted “nondiscretionary” spending, but that is essentially a bogus concept; all federal spending is discretionary in the sense that every dollar must be appropriated by Congress each session.
This isn’t to suggest that there isn’t waste in the Pentagon’s budget, or that its procurement policies aren’t sometimes idiotic; of course that’s all true. But it makes no sense to assert that slashing spending on the federal government’s core Constitutional function (national defense) would eliminate the deficit.
And shouting idiocy really, really loud doesn’t make it true.
Oops, that should have been “roughly half of budgeted discretionary spending . . .”
Jesus, Regulus. To call you a tool would be an insult to a rubber mallet. Do you guys download that stuff by email or some sort of file transfer?
Yes Regulus does not bother to think before he writes – I do not bother to think about spelling and grammar, but (sadly) Regulus does not bother to think at all.
However, for the record, David Gordon is a foe of overseas interventions (not just Iraq but also Afghanistan) and most (if not all) of the Goldman Sachs crowd supported Obama/Biden not McCain/Palin.
Halve defence spending (not just the wars – everything) and you save 2% of G.D.P. – not bad, but nothing like enough.
Get rid of Halliburton and you would save no money at all – so that is silly.
The American military failed in Iraq – sorry but it was “the Islamic resistance” who failed (planting car bombs to kill civilians does not win wars my dear). The American military (unlike the British military) won.
Of course the leftist “case” (if it can be called that) rests on two basic errors.
First that perfection is to be had in the world – so that if anything falls short of perfection, if there is any poverty or other distress, someone must be to “blame” for it.
Secondly that government intervention will make health education and welfare better – rather than make them worse.
All past experience with such as the cost explosion of Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP and the counter productive (cost raising) results of regulations is ignored – because it runs counter to leftist ideology.
And yet the left call themselves “empirical” in spite of ignorning all past evidence of the failure of economic and social interventionism.
I was impressed by the review (now that I have finally read it – not only am I unable to make links I even often miss these bit of highlighted text and thus guess what a post is about).
Why cite Rothbard’s “Panic of 1819” if one has not actually read it (as the statist writer clearly had not).
Oh well I suppose it is the modern vice of “cite a lot of works in other to seem well read, and saying something without a link to a source is no good – even if what you are saying comes from personal experience or thought”.
However, blaming the (anti imperialist and deeply compassionate) Herber Spencer for such things as forced sterilizations was profoundly wicked – for all the doctrine of not being able to libel the dead.
As Dr Gordon rightly says – it was not the supporters of Laissez Faire who supported such things. It was Progressives.
The cancer that has eat away at the United States (and now may utterly destroy the United States) is the Progressive movement.