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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Samizdata quote of the day – late stage capitalism is really just early stage socialism Late stage capitalism is really just early stage socialism. Every problem you blame on markets comes from the state’s power to interfere, distort, and pick winners. But instead of stopping and reflecting, socialists double down. The more government creates the very conditions they complain about, the more they demand even more of the thing that caused it. It’s ideological autopilot. No thinking, no introspection, just reflexive calls for the same poison in a higher dose.
There’s no such thing as late stage capitalism, or state capitalism, there’s just capitalism.
– Rock Chartrand
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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As I have said, I strongly dislike the word capitalism, but it is important to note that these things are not black and white. It is a spectrum: on one end free markets (which, in its purest form has never actually existed) and on the other communism (which also, in its purest form has never existed.) It is a matter of where along the line you are.
Calling someone a “socialist” is a bit like calling someone old — my kids think someone over 35 is old. Age is a gradual spectrum too, and your perspective of where someone else stands on that line very much depends on where you stand on the line.
Also, it is worth commenting on this:
there is an assumption in there that is not obvious, but is extremely important and wrong, namely that we do not all have a shared agreement of what constitutes a problem. For example, if you consider a disparity of wealth in a society to be a problem in itself, then that is most certainly a problem that is caused by the free market. If you think the existence of billionaires is an intrinsic evil, it is an “evil” that comes from free markets. If you consider the dilution of a country’s native population and culture by foreign immigrants a problem, then, in the freest types of market with no restrictions on movement, is also a problem caused by this free market.
Exactly why I maintain that “libertarian” is not a point on a continuum, but rather a vector, a trend. An adjective, not a noun. Only makes relational sense.
I know that there are finer details to pick over here but I would suggest that the statement as quoted in the OP is broadly true. I know left leaning people and it pretty much sums up their mindset.
@Stonyground
Broadly true, yes. But indentured servitude, indeed chattel slavery, are things we really do not want, but they are not incompatible with capitalism.
[Pol Pot has entered the chat]
If by capitalism you mean free markets, then yes they are incompatible.
Perry
If by capitalism you mean free markets, then yes they are incompatible.
Insofar as a free market would involve the free exchange of labour for mutual gain, then yes I agree. But ‘Slave markets’ were also ‘free’, like cattle markets still are today. Just a different definition of a ‘free market’.
Well no, they are not & that stretches the definition of free market into meaning any market.
Indentured servitude is valuable as part of the penal/justice system.
It is the only alternative provided in Judaism for criminals unable to make restitution.
It has many advantages over incarceration, especially for young (supposedly rehabilitatable) first offenders.
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I understand the knee-jerk objection to any compromise of personal freedoms – but:
We are under onslaught by people who do not share our beliefs, and we have to find ways to handle them – both in terms of criminal justice, and in terms of their “rights” in larger society. Immediate, indiscriminate granting of all rights – including welfare benefits – to unvetted immigrants has caused a lot of our problems. Was my immigrant father “disenfranchised” because he could not get any social benefits for seven years, until he was completely naturalized?
The idea of different levels of citizenship and rights will reassert itself as the State takes over more roles that were previously in the realm of family and private citizenship.
For example – it’s been suggested that people living on the dole should not be allowed to vote to avoid the inevitable welfare state…. so are they in “servitude”?
Or is this part of a more clear-eyed, transactional view of relations with the state?
lmao at people attempting a beard-stroking “hmmm, but acksually” defense of slavery (indentured or not) instead of just going “Yeah, fuck slavery”.
I certainly consider them problems that come from the State, not “the free market”; in a truly Freed Market, they would both reduce to (at least) tolerable levels.
I have no particular dislike of wealth inequality per se, only that which is created by state-enabled means. In a truly Freed Market, indeed, there’s a very good chance that the mean level of wealth would reach a more (not perfectly) equal level, as the costs of keeping and maintaining that wealth would be borne by the owner, rather than passing them onto the populace at large.
Rousseau was wrong, slavery to the Collective is not better than being owned by an individual, the individual being part of the Collective does NOT change this.
On the specific point of indenture – it is also WRONG (clearly WRONG), but it is time limited – and it was the rejection of both its contractual nature and its time limited nature that was the FATAL move in American colonial courts – ironically one of the first cases was brought by a BLACK master who demanded that an indentured person be returned to him even after his period indenture was over.
As for Free Enterprise – it is based on freedom (hence the name) and thus rejects slavery, whether to an individual or to the collective.
This has long been understood – whether by Kings, such as Louis the Tenth of France back in the Middle Ages, or by Republics such as that of Bologna – which also rejected both slavery and serfdom in the Middle Ages.
Roman lawyers admitted that slavery was against natural law, natural justice, but argued that “as the law of all nations” permitted slavery, it was O.K. for Romans to practice it – which is a fancy way of saying “everyone else does this unjust thing, so we may do this unjust thing”. This view was contradicted by Pliny the Elder who claimed that there were some societies that did NOT practice slavery – it only takes ONE society not to practice slavery for the “law of all nations” legal argument to collapse.
In the Byzantine (or East Roman) military manual the “Stategikon” it mentions that the (invading) enemy they were fighting in the Danube area did not practice slavery – not even of captured Byzantine soldiers.
A society far away might have been misinterpreted by Roman writers – but a society they were in direct contact with (had been fighting for years) is far less likely to be have been misinterpreted on such a basic point.
Ironically the word “Slav” (the people the East Romans were fighting) is where the word “slave” comes from – as both the Byzantines and, even more, the Islamic powers, slave-raided them for many centuries.
The idea that in a free market income and wealth would be equal, or anything like equal, is so obviously false it need not detain us further.
Fraser Orr – Cambodia under Pol Pot was a Collectivist Egalitarian society on a large scale (millions of people) so it can be called “Communist” not just “Socialist”, about a third of the population perished in a few years. The rest of the population would have followed into death – had not the Socialist Vietnamese Dicatorship, not invaded – a rare case of a socialist invasion being a positive thing (relative to the egalitarian death cult that was in control of Cambodia before the invasion), socialism being state control of the means of production – but without egalitarianism (the defining feature of “achieved” Communism).
Free market societies, or very close to them, have existed. For example the island of Helgoland had no taxation under either Danish or British rule – the islanders were betrayed by Prime Minister Lord Salisbury who handed the island over to Germany in return for large areas of Africa.
It is true that there was some taxation in American States – but it was very low indeed before the 20th century, even as late as 1912 total taxation, Federal, State and local, was most likely only about a tenth of the economy – and regulation was also very limited, the exception being the “Jim Crow” laws which, in SOME States, forced business enterprises to discriminate on the basis of race – which was against their commercial interests to do, such laws were not formally declared unconstitutional (a violation of the 14th Amendment) till the Supreme Court decision of 1954 (although they had been in decline before this).
In Britain such laws did not exist – and had never existed.
The British state was probably at its low point, as a proportion of the economy, in about 1869 – but in some areas, which did not set up an Education Board under the Act of 1870 (it was voluntary to do so – local areas were not forced to do so till later) one can say that the state reached its low point (as a proportion of the economy) in 1874.
Kettering, where I am sitting, was one such town.
It is true that Kettering (and the rest of United Kingdom) was NOT a totally free market society in 1874 – but it was so close to it, that it makes no great difference. Although, yes, the Poor Law tax existed – which it did not in Ireland till 1838 or most of Scotland till the Act of 1845 (England and Wales already had such a local tax) – however, the Poor Law tax in England and Wales in 1869 or 1874 was not very high. In 19th century France there was no such Poor Law tax – but they had much heavier government spending on the army (so swings and roundabouts).
Lastly it should be remembered that the level of living standards is not just dependent on the degree of liberty – technology also matters.
Given modern technology living standards in 1874 would be vastly higher than they were – and vastly higher than they are now.
And with only 1874 technology people today, with the modern degree of statism (in government spending, taxation and regulation) would starve to death – society would totally collapse.
As for the general point about state interventionism – spending and regulations.
Yes it does make things worse than would otherwise be the case.
Various French writers (such as the Say family and Bastiat – but also others) showed this in the 19th century – tragically they are forgotten in modern France. And Herbert Spencer (in spite of his confusion on the matter of LAND) showed this in Britain – for example in his “Man Versus the State” (1884).
In the 20th century Ludwig Von Mises also showed this – showed that state intervention (so called “Social Reform”) makes things worse than would otherwise be the case – which is why, in the last section of his book “Socialism”, he called interventionism “Destructionism”.
An interesting case in Britain is that of John Morley – he started off as a “Social Reformer” almost a “New Liberal”, like the people who were reversing the traditional meaning of the word “liberal” (reversing it from being a person who wanted to make the state smaller, to someone who wanted to make the state bigger) such as Sir William “we are all socialists now” Harcourt.
But experience and long study showed John Morley that more government spending and regulation made things worse than would otherwise be the case – and he came to the conclusion that Gladstone had been correct (before Harcourt and others had forced him out) to oppose it – and that the failure of Gladstone to abolish the income tax (it had been abolished before – at the end of the Napoleonic Wars – it returned in the 1840s, but was meant to be temporary) was the great tragedy of Gladstone’s political life. Sadly John Morley did NOT convince his young friend Winston Churchill – who remained very much a “New Liberal” – although more moderate than many of them.
Disraeli was a sorry excuse for a statesman – pushing legislation he did not even understand (as was made obvious when, for example, he was questioned about “his” Housing Bill) – but Gladstone is more of a tragic hero (almost like a figure from the stories of Ancient Greece) who set out to reduce the size and scope of government, but, in a tragic irony, lived to see the very administrative reforms he himself had introduced (designed to make the state more efficient) used to expand (yes, eventually, actually expand) taxation and regulation.
John Morley, as the first great biographer of Gladstone, was very much aware of the tragic ironies of the man’s life – from his slave owning father (to whom Gladstone believed he has a moral duty to support, Gladstone spent most of his life regretting his first speech in the House of Commons – rarely has a maiden speech so haunted the man who made it), to his living to see income tax starting to rise (rise – not vanish) and be made “Progressive” (graduated).
John Bright (MP) did not have such complexities and contradictions in his political life – although he did see the political landscape around him radically change.
By his last years John Bright came to see the Liberal Party (which he had so passionately supported) become, arguably at least, more of a threat to liberty-and-property than the Conservatives.
John Bright is not often studied today – perhaps precisely because he was consistent, he did not have the contradictions in his political life that Gladstone did.
No, no, I’m going to detain you further, because your boldly said but unsubstantiated statement isn’t true (or you don’t understand what “mean” is).
In a truly freed market, the level of wealth held by any individual is staggeringly and incredibly obviously much more likely to be much closer to the mean than under current (non-freed market) conditions, because “the costs of keeping and maintaining that wealth would be borne by the owner, rather than passing them onto the populace at large.”
In the United States the time of President Grant, so denounced by Progressive historians, is interesting.
In spite of the massive debts of the Civil War, Income Tax was abolished and Gold Money restored – there was also a serious effort to oppose the persecution of black people in the south (an effort that collapsed after Grant left office).
An underestimated President, who far from being “corrupt” was the victim of corruption – losing almost all his money in investments that turned out to be fraudulent.
President Grant spent the last period of his life, whilst-dying-of-cancer, writing in his memoirs – in the hopes the sales of the book would provide an income for his family.
This proved to be a classic of American literature – perhaps because it was written by the man himself (it was his direct experiences) rather than by a ghost writer.
It was reading this book that gave Admiral Yamamoto serous doubts about the plan to attack the United States – his reading of it leading him to believe that Americans only appeared to be pragmatic and frivolous on the surface – but, deep down, were serious and principled. And that, therefore, an attack upon them would awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.
A “mean” is one of the three forms of “average” – the other two being the median and the mode.
The only way a large scale (large scale) society could have egalitarianism (equality of income and wealth) or anything close to it, is by terror of the Pol Pot type. Most certainly a free market, or anything approaching such liberty, will not produce any such material egalitarianism – as we know by reason and by experience.
It should also be remembered that coercion can come from private sources – for example the “offer you can not refuse” of the “Godfather” is backed up by the threat of a bullet in the head if you refuse to obey.
“Chesty” Puller (a far more honest person than General Butler – with his lies about “Fascist Plots to overthrow President Roosevelt”) is good on this in the context of some Latin American countries.
The official tax rate might be low, but both corrupt officials and “Social Reforming” rebels (really bandits) would demand everything you had – an effective tax rate of 100%.
The only way that real progress could be made is to get rid of the corrupt officials and to defeat the bandits – these days (not in his time) called by various gang names such as MS-13.
And defeat sometimes has to mean killing – as “Chesty” Puller had to put into practice.
It was much the same in the Spanish Civil War – General Franco and his Nationalists were light years from perfect (there is no perfection in this fallen world), but both the Marxists and the COMMUNAL “Anarchists” (the black flag people) would take everything a farmer (or other person) had – leaving them with nothing.
Both the Marxists and the Black Flag (Communal) “Anarchists” had to be defeated, if economic life (farming and so on) was to continue – and to defeat them, one had to be prepared to kill them, they had embraced violence (in the very core of their doctrines) so it had to be used against them.
The alternative was the collapse of society and mass starvation.
And it made no difference that the black flag (Communal) “Anarchists” said they did not believe in a “state” or “government” – their “stateless society” was really a TOTAL state, the plundering of everything.
Sometimes the Marxists and the Black Flag (Communal) “Anarchists” would indeed kill each other – but this does not alter the above, any more than two tribes of Tolkien’s orcs killing each other means that one of the two tribes of orcs is good, neither are.
J.R.R. Tolkien was well aware of the situation in Spain – and the fact that hard choices had to be made. No choice of absolute good being available – only a choice of lesser or greater evils. With the Nationalists clearly being the lesser evil – the alternative being unlimited plundering and mass starvation.
Even if one takes the, basically, free market early 19th century Northern United States – a land free of church tithes, and with little taxation or regulation, the income and wealth of, for example, Cornelius Vanderbilt, was clearly, by the end of his life, clearly much higher than the average person – whether one defines “average” as the mean, the median, or the mode. He may indeed have started off about the same as everyone else – but he did not stay the same. Freedom leads to inequality – because some people are better at business than other people (I am useless at business myself). Although it is also true that interventionism, such as the moral evil of Credit Money (as opposed to physical commodity money – such as gold or silver), can exaggerate the inequality – the Cantillon Effect, first identified by Richard Cantillon some three hundred years ago.
Flatterers told Cornelius Vanderbilt the Second that he was a much nicer man than his father – yet had made just as much money, increasing the family fortune from 100 million Dollars to 200 million Dollars – Mr Vanderbilt (the second) replied quietly that he suspected that the first 100 million was rather harder to make.
@Perry
Indeed. But I didn’t. I simply meant “private ownership of the means of production”.
Capitalism + free markets + the rule of law is what I want, but not what I get.
Clovis Sangrail.
If “owners” are not allowed to freely use their land, factories and so on – they are, as you know, not really owners.
One gets the horrible situation described in F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” or Ludwig Von Mises “Omnipotent Government” where farms, factories, and so on, remain in theory privately owned, but everything they do is dictated by the state – this was called “German Socialism” or, later, “National Socialism”.
The theory of it goes all the way back to such philosophers as Fichte – or even to some of the “Cameralists” of the 1700s (German thinkers whose reaction to Louis XIV’s “Sun King” tyranny in France was to conclude that it did-not-go-far-enough, that it should be even more extreme, as it, arguably, was more extreme in the Prussia of Frederick the Great).
General Ludendorff put these ideas into practice in Germany during the First World War. In “Nation, State and Economy” Mises shows how much more extreme state control was in Germany than in France during the First World War. He also shows how these ideas were a horrible FAILURE in Germany and in Austro-Hungary.
The National Socialists (Nazis) of Adolf Hitler put them into practice in peace time – in the 1930s.
These days?
Well everything is licensed now – one can not even be a nightwatchman (I was one for years – it would not be allowed now) without a “license”.
And there are endless regulations – which tend to favour large corporations (which have legal departments to deal with the regulations) over independent business enterprises.
And the big corporations love Credit Money – for obvious reasons (the Cantillon Effect).
So the rule of law has been replaced by a sort of “Permit Raj” where everything is controlled by endless regulations, and relationships with government are vital for large business enterprises.
But then you know all this.
Ironically regulation is sometimes even presented as “deregulation” – which is what happened to the City of London.
A tidal wave of government interventionism crushed the old private clubs (which no one was forced to trade in – trading in other forums, or indeed “off exchange” being quite legal) and associations, and self employed stock brokers, stock “jobbers” (wholesalers) and independent partnerships merchant banks, replacing them with vast international corporations joined at the hip with governments.
This tidal wave of state interventionism was (with incredible dishonesty) called “de” regulation – rather than regulation.
Anyone who looks at “The City” or “Wall Street” and thinks they are seeing free market capitalism, needs to go to an optician. It is not capitalism – because it is not really based on Real Savings (the actual sacrifice of consumption), it is MOSTLY based on Credit Money creation, and it is most certainly not a free market – it is determined by endless regulations and relations with the state.
@neonsnake
I certainly consider them problems that come from the State, not “the free market”; in a truly Freed Market, they would both reduce to (at least) tolerable levels.
What is intolerable about high levels of wealth inequality? I do take your point that state interference sometimes creates fortunes built of corruption, but most of the very richest people in our society have built their wealth entirely independently of government, in fact, in spite of it. Rockerfeller, Carnagie, Vanerbilt, Walton, Gates, Jobs, Bezos. I’ll grant you that my personal hero Musk definitely had a bit of a leg up from government subsidies, but most of his wealth is built on his incredible innovative skill, management ability and just his raw talent.
So free markets produce incredible wealth for those who leverage their skills, work hard and have a bit of luck. Governments often severely retard these companies through taxes and regulations (imagine how much further along SpaceX would be were it not busy convincing bureaucrats that their rocket engines weren’t too upsetting to the local seal population), and so in a free market no doubt that spread would have been even wider. Of course in a free market the people at the “bottom” would be vastly better off too, as per Thatcher’s famous speech: the rich get richer and the poor get richer too.
But I do definitely take your point that there are a lot of billionaires who made their money through corrupt government practices.
Whether inequality is a problem hinges on the precise definitions of ‘inequality’ and ‘problem’.
If a ‘problem’ is any state of being, or trait of a state of being, or… that has at least one negative implication, then ‘inequality’ doesn’t need a particularly broad definition to be a problem. If you live in a middle-class-or-better neighborhood, you can read reports about places you’ve literally lived in and worked in hosting rape grooming gangs that became powerful enough to send police to punish the girls who escape, and dismiss these as ‘an enormous subculture of people who, I think, are *really really* upset that life as we know that has largely continued as was, including being able to get a fucking chicken tikka masala on a Friday night, and so are now advocating now for civil war‘.
Of course, if a ‘problem’ is a status (etc.) where negative implications outweigh positive implications, then it’s not immediately obvious that ‘inequality’ is a problem, unless you cherry-pick the definition. Likewise if a ‘problem’ refers to an issue whose consideration will yield suggestions that improve the conditions of those living with said issue; most of the advice from people who insist on ‘inequality’ being a ‘problem’ ends up increasing inequality.
The concept that social equality is a nirvana to stive towards is at best quixotic.
Even in the Star Trek eutopia where there is no money* you seen the nice apartments the officers get? Occasionally you see the lower decks where the crew live in bunks. How do replicator rations work, time on the holodeck?
My point is that even if you can’t built anything like a total equality in a fantasy then…
*Well there is and there isn’t. Ask the Ferengi!
Let’s follow on in terms of popular culture…
“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man”
Sang multi-millionaire, John Lennon. I hate that dirge with a passion.
Mark Chapman. Best Music Critic Ever.
Whether inequality is a problem hinges on the precise definitions of ‘inequality’ and ‘problem’.
That’s partly true, but there is a more important truth here: we don’t all share the same values. Some people think that billionaires are pure evil, some people, including me, think billionaires are aspirational. That is nothing to do with definitions, it is to do with values, morality, ethics, which are, despite what Ayn Rand might tell us, often quite subjective.
If a ‘problem’ is any state of being, or trait of a state of being, or… that has at least one negative implication, then ‘inequality’ doesn’t need a particularly broad definition to be a problem.
I don’t think inequality is a negative implication at all. On the contrary, I think it is a positive implication — namely that if you try harder you’ll be rewarded more. Without inequality of outcome there is very little reason to put down the bag of Doritos, turn off the TV and get off the couch and do something valuable for your fellow man. And without vast inequality there is really no reason to do something galactically awesome, like invent the cell phone, or create an amazing store like Walmart, or commercialize the production of oil, or invent the automobile, or create AI, or make our species multiplanetary.
@NickM
“Imagine no possessions…
Mark Chapman. Best Music Critic Ever.
I also loathe that song, and I especially loathe the fact that it is embedded in our collective mind primarily because Lennon was murdered. But Mark Chapman was a horrible, vile lunatic who robbed the world of forty more years of Lennon’s musical genius. So I’m afraid I can’t abide words of praise for him.
It is true that Credit Money exaggerates inequality – that has been known for 300 years (since Richard Cantillon – the “Cantillon Effect”).
But even if there were no Credit Money, or other such government backed intervention, there would still be vast inequality.
People who have a problem with some people being vastly more wealthy than other people are guilty of ENVY (the desire to drag down people better off than themselves – the desire to drag them down out of SPITE) – but they dress it up as something noble.
Fraser,
I was being sarky. Chapman was and is a scumbag of the first water and should have caused a small, brief uptick in the NY State lecky bill.
I recall Ludwig Von Mises storming out of a Mont Pelerin society meeting, telling a room of free market advocates that ”You’re all a bunch of socialists.”
@Paul Marks
Well sort of. “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state,” sounds fairly controlling and similar.
@Martin
I recall Ludwig Von Mises storming out of a Mont Pelerin society meeting, telling a room of free market advocates that ”You’re all a bunch of socialists.”
Yeah, bunch of damn commies using the force of government to extract taxes to pay for the fire department and roads… What’s next? Public funding of sewage systems? Public funding of clean water systems? Before you know it they’ll be poisoning us by putting fluoride in the water for their paternalistic “health care” reasons. “What about the children” is an excuse for ANYTHING!
😉
Paul,
Yes it is envy and spite and I have no time for them. What is interesting is it’s always money isn’t it? Never anything else like talent, good looks, charm… The haters never seem to think there is any other measure of success than wealth yet affect to despise the wealthy.
Here’s a tale… Recently my wife had a financial problem. Someone was re-jigging the German/Euro electronic payment systems. This left her EUR1,400 in the hole. The agency in Germany she’d done work for were not to blame and were excellent and re-routed the payment via PayPal. Thank you Elon! I use PayPal a lot. Do I envy Mr Musk? No. Paypal has made me and my wife’s life a lot easier in many ways. The company he founded that made him a billionaire has made my life a lot easier and on that occasion (EUR1,400 – is not a minor thing for us normal folk) was extremely useful. Musk to my mind has done extremely well for himself by doing good. One day I hope to raise a glass on the occasion of the Coronation of Elon, Emperor of Barsoom!
Back to measures of success or happiness or whatever. I have something folks like Musk can never get back. I can be anonymous. Or at least not (in)famous. I wouldn’t trade that for money. Unless it was a lot of of money. And I have a background in astrophysics so I am content handling astronomical numbers.
@Fraser Orr
The power that very high levels of wealth inequality confer. They could, for example, outbid and purchase all the newly built housing, and hold it off the “sale” market, renting it out instead; given that rents are generally higher than mortgages AND that in this situation it’s not a genuinely voluntary decision to rent on the part of the rest of the community, this puts everyone else very much in that person’s power.
I’m not talking about inequality in the sense that my next-door neighbour earns considerably more than me (I mean, I hope so, because otherwise they must have enormous debt!) and has two new cars vs my one ten-year old car, and takes a lot of very expensive holidays, and has a bigger and nicer house than mine. Good for them! I genuinely don’t care, and am happy for them.
I’m talking about the levels that can be leveraged to gain coercive power over others.
Thankfully, a freed market would be very likely to the reduce the ability to accrue that level of wealth – mainly, although not wholly, by removing artificial barriers to entry for would-be competitors, which would therefore put a natural cap on just how much any individual person (or company) can accrue relative to anyone else.
Clovis Sangrail – yes Fascism is indeed state control, either by direct nationalization, Mussolini’s Italy had the second highest state ownership in Europe – first place being the Soviet Union (which was even more statist), or by endless orders and edicts.
Martin – what Ludwig Von Mises meant was “your gradual interventionism will not make the situation better, it will the situation worse – and give rise to demands for even more interventionism, thus leading to Collectivism and breakdown” – but he got angry and did not see why he should say all this, when he had already written it multiple times.
Take the example of Milton Friedman – perhaps the most cited “free market supporter” of the last century – not perhaps often cited by people round here, but if you asked most people for a free market economist – if they named anyone at all, they would say “Milton Friedman”.
Even in 1962 (his book “Capitalism and Freedom”) Milton Friedman was advocating a “Negative Income Tax” – the government to pay people in return for…. well in return for nothing at all, just pay people to bring our income up to a certain level – much like the old “Speenhamland” system that emerged in most of England and Wales during the Napoleonic Wars (it had not existed before the wars – before the wars you had to be out of work to get local government aid, being in poorly paid work was not enough) and which led to higher and higher Poor Law taxes till it was replaced by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 – so Milton Friedman was advocating a system that had been discredited 78 years before he was born in 1912.
In Wisconsin in the 1990s the basic point of “Welfare Reform” was to end this idea of paying people not to work – because this system was leading to young and able bodied people not working, and it was spreading over GENERATIONS creating an underclass – and subsidized jobs are indeed just another aspect of this terrible trap. Establish a minimum and that is where people will be stuck – because work (in most ordinary jobs) has a massive “disutility” that Milton Friedman (who had been interesting jobs all his adult life) did not grasp – “Adam’s Curse” is term he had indeed heard of, but did not fully (not – fully) grasp.
Would I go back to, for example, being a nightwatchman if it was legal for me to do so? If “licensing” (and so on) was removed? Yes I would – as suicide is harder to do in practice than in fantasy (and it leaves a decaying body for people to find – which is very bad for the person who finds it) – but not if I was paid NOT to go back to a dead end job for the rest of my life. “But I did such jobs” Milton Friedman would say – and yes he did, as a boy. Not as an adult – not knowing he would never do anything else till-he-was-dead, so he did not grasp the full “disutility”.
Did Milton Friedman support protection against being forced to join a union? No he did not – he OPPOSED such “Right to Work” laws. Even though he understood that government granted (government granted) union powers led to UNEMPLOYMENT – structural UNEMPLOYMENT.
And what about Credit Money – “boom-bust” – to Milton Friedman the problem was NOT the Credit Money “boom” – the problem was that the “boom” did not go for ever, according to him if the “boom” showed signs of the (inevitable) “bust” – then one should produce more and more Credit Money and dish it out the banks and other such to prevent them collapsing.
That this would produce every more extreme inequality (the Cantillon Effect) he ignored, and he also ignored how this “hair of the dog” policy (like an alcoholic desperately drinking more when they start to feel effects of coming of booze) would make economic distortions in the “Capital Structure” worse-and-worse, more-and-more extreme.
None of this is an attack on the late Milton Friedman – it is merely pointing out that the best “free market advocate” that most people have heard of (if they have heard of any at all) was, WITHOUT-meaning-to advocating policies of state interventionism that would inevitably lead to the breakdown of civilization.
Yes it was unfortunate that Ludwig Von Mises lost his temper – but I can understand why he did lose his temper – as he was the author of “Money and Credit” – which the “keep the Credit Money bubble going” policies Milton Friedman (and the entire establishment) supported, when Milton Friedman was one year of age.
NickM – yes indeed it is envy and spite.
And it is also stupidity – for, for example, the great wealth of an individual such as Elon Musk does not mean that he “coerces others” (like some Ms-13 member, robbing, raping and killing) – on the contrary it allows him to stand AGAINST coercion.
If there are no very rich (VERY rich) individuals, then no one can stand against the pressure of governments (“public bodies” – including tax payer funded “NHGs” – which are not really “non government” at all) and against the Corporations – the Corporations being joined at the hip with these “public bodies” (governments and other such).
No ordinary person could stand up in front of high government and corporate officials in Davos and tell them to “go fuck themselves” as Elon Musk did – and by so doing and by spending TENS OF BILLIONS of Dollars he bought Twitter – and saved at least a little Freedom of Speech for ordinary people.
The very rich (the VERY rich) person is the person who can stand up to the vast institutions of modern society – and by so doing, allowing other people to stand up to them.
Otherwise there is total domination by the “educated” establishment – both government and corporate bureaucracy.
This is not to say that some very rich people are not statists – indeed more Billionaires are pro international Collectivist establishment than are against it – but a few are against it.
And without these few VERY rich men (and they do tend to be men) – liberty for ordinary people would be utterly crushed.
There must be very rich INDIVIDUALS – or bureaucracies controlled by the “educated” establishment hive-mind will utterly crush the liberties of the ordinary people.
Individuals so rich they can tell the powers of this world to “go fuck themselves”, to their faces, and get away with it.
Without very rich, very rich indeed, INDIVIDUALS – real economic and social progress is not possible, for bureaucracy (both government and private – guilds and so on) will crush it.
This is not to say that all very rich individuals will break free of this web of strangling controls – but a few will, and without those few very rich individuals, ordinary people can not follow.
This has GOT to be satire.
I’m fully appreciative that there are many variants of Libertarianism (indeed, it’s well-known that if you ask 10 Libertarians a question, you’ll get 12 different answers), some of which are consistently “for liberty” and correct, some of which are “for liberty” but essentially incorrect in good faith (the more honest ancaps), and some of which are not “for liberty” at all (“I want to call people slurs and it’s outrageous that the gubmint tell me I can’t”), but fuck me sideways.
Outside of yer outright fascists like Hoppe and that Shlomo chap, I don’t think I’ve ever seen even a “so-called” Libertarian go with “What we need is enormously and massively rich and powerful people ruling over us! Maybe they’ll allow me a seat at the table!”
Good fucking god!
One of the most basic underlying principles of Libertarianism is to not give ourselves over to the capriciousness of people with power, but indeed to remove that power from them, so we’re not at risk of being subjected to their whims and desires.
Call it what you want, but anyone suggesting “rule of the very rich” is not “for liberty” (and I’m not surprised, this has been obvious all the time) – indeed, they are very much against it – it’s for liberty for the very rich, with a hope of getting enough breadcrumbs to survive, and be gratefully and subserviently proud that your masters gave you that much.
Couldn’t be me. I don’t lick boots.
No is not satire, it is the truth.
But then you do not like the truth – or the “fucking” truth as you would put it.
Contrary to your position, it is precisely very wealthy individuals who can stand AGAINST “power” – the bureaucracy which is indeed “capriciousness” (in spite of all its paper work – or because of it).
Without very wealthy individuals, no one could stand against the bureaucracy – neither government or corporate.
Only those people who can not be easily crushed make it possible for the rest of us to breath at all – whether on Twitter (X) or anywhere else. And it is people who have enough financial resources who can stand independently – in order to do that.
For example, to tell a room full of high government, banking and corporate officials to go “fuck” themselves when they had an advertising boycott which they said they would only end if censorship was restored, in full force, on Twitter.
It was also very wealthy individuals who created the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the British Bill of Rights – the Kit Kat club (have you heard of it?) and others. And who were behind the American War of Independence of 1776 (really it started in 1775 – but let us leave that aside) and just about everything else that has ever supported liberty.
They lead, and fund, the resistance – so ordinary folk can have the room to follow – if they choose to do so. Otherwise ordinary people would be utterly crushed by officialdom.
So, as normal Sir, what you say is the reverse (the opposite) of the truth.
It is a few rich individuals who have, in the past, PREVENTED us having to “lick boots” – whether in 1215 (Magna Carta), 877 AD (forcing King Charles the Bald of France to admit formal limits to his power) or most other times.
It was precisely by crushing (killing them or making them submit) very wealthy individuals (“Oligarchs”) that Mr Putin became the Dictator that he is.
Cut the “Tall Poppies”, the very wealthy individuals, and then you can create a Tyranny – this the Ancient Greeks knew thousands of years ago.
To turn “the people” against “the wealthy” is the standard way that a tyranny is established – and has been for thousands of years.
In France once independent nobles were crushed – the opposite of what happened in England.
Louis XIV (the Sun King – the 14th of his name) finished the process – reducing once proud families (whose power had limited the monarchy) to painted fops at Versailles – reducing real swords to toy “court swords”.
Aristotle noted (long before this) that in a real aristocracy the families stayed mostly in their own homes and followed independent lines of thought – concentrate them in one place and that is over. You either have an oligarchy (a very different thing from an aristocracy) or just puppets of a single ruler.
Under old Scots Law someone (whatever their origin) was automatically a noble if they bought an estate (that is why Dr Johnson’s friend Boswell was known by the name of his estate in Scotland – even though the law had changed by then). In England it was more difficult – but if you bought enough land, had some real independence, a title could be gained – unless you did not want it, and there were men who did NOT.
Of course, there was one great independent noble left in France by 1789 – the Duke of Orleans, but that rather counts AGAINST my thesis – as the Duke of Orleans (the richest man in France) was the man who financed the French Revolution, and the French Revolution was NOT good for the liberty – and most of its victims were quite ordinary people.
When the valet of the Duke of Orleans learned that his master had voted for the murder (execution on obviously false charges) of his cousin, the weak-willed but kindly King Louis XVI (the 16th – a very different man from the 14th), the valet took off his livery and publicly burned it.
There-was-a-man – not the Duke of Orleans (who was a traitor and a kin slayer), his valet – for men and women were being executed for doing far less than the valet did.
Like Danton, Robespierre and so many others, the Duke of Orleans was eventually executed by the very regime he had helped create (indeed he had done more than anyone to create – as he paid for the agitation and treason) – but unlike the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in the Provinces (who were murdered for such “crimes” as being Catholics), the Duke of Orleans deserved his death – indeed perhaps more than any other Revolutionary, as he had supported the murder of his own kin.
Edmund Burke (never in good health – short sighted and not strong) had gone to defend the homes of innocent people during the Gordon Riots of 1780 – musket in hand.
Mr Burke could not understand why no one even defended the innocents (whether of high status or low status) after 1789 – but the brave find the rest of us strange.
I, God forgive me, can understand (can understand only too well) why, for example, no one in the crowd tried to help Madam du Berry when she screamed for help during her public murder.
Cowardice – natural human cowardice, the crowd ran away, everyone “wanted to pretend they had not been there”.
Had there been one man of courage who had drawn a sword or pistol, perhaps others would have followed him – but no one stepped forward to risk their own life.
Out in the Provinces the victims went into the hundreds of thousands (see Doyle’s works on the French Revolution) – mostly quite ordinary people, murdered for such “crimes” as being Catholics. Although the Revolutionaries would murder anyone – regardless of their religion of lack of it.
The degeneration can be summed up in one example – once the “Blue Cordon” were knights who had sworn that a King of France would not be harmed till the blue sashes they wore had turned red with their own blood.
By 1789 they had “evolved” into a dining club – translate “Cordon Blue” into French and you will understand.
Make men small, make them no threat to you, and corrupt their morals, their SPIRIT, so they will not morally judge your own conduct (as Louis the Fortieth, and others, did to the nobility of France) and you will also find that the “men” you have created are no good to you – or to your descendants. By seeking absolute, unlimited, power – you sign the Death Warrant of your own system – perhaps not today, but eventually.
This Montesquieu (perhaps the philosopher the American Founding Fathers prized above all others) understood this – many decades before 1789.
Sorry – that should be “Sacred Blue” – not “Cordon Blue”.
@neonsnake
The power that very high levels of wealth inequality confer. They could, for example, outbid and purchase all the newly built housing, and hold it off the “sale” market, renting it out instead
But this is the standard argument in favor of antitrust laws. Consider this: when you go to a ballpark (or football stadium — not sure what your sporting preference is) you can buy your hotdog or Bovril from exactly one supplier — they have a monopoly. So why does your hotdog cost an exorbitant $5 and not $500? Because monopoly power does give you pricing power, just not unlimited pricing power. So this theoretical rich person could charge high rents, but not infinite rents. People instead find alternatives. They live with their parents, they move somewhere else, they buy a boat, they get in some cooperative agreement and so forth. This is pretty standard economic theory.
But of course your scenario is not at all real. There are no rich people who are anywhere near able to buy all the land, and, in a free market system there would be multiple rich people competing for whatever land or monopolistic good you are concerned with. Moreover, as more an more land is bought and it becomes rarer and rarer the price of that land grows exponentially, and so no matter how rich you are, you aren’t going to buy it all, and in the process of buying you are going to create a whole bunch of mini Donald Trumps to compete with you.
Now, here in the USA there is a growing problem with real estate, but that is mostly entirely due to the fact that the housing market is a very, very unfree market. It is extremely hard to build houses, mortgage rates are set to favor the rich, fiat currency is designed to make the rich richer on this very market, zoning laws and libraries full of regulations make it really hard to build houses. And here, in the USA, something like 40% of the land area is owned by the government and set aside from development, and most of the rest is so heavily zoned that you can’t build there. Look at Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. Burned to the ground. How many new houses have been built there? Practically none because the “never let a crisis go to waste” government of California is doing everything it can to transform this housing area, that has housed people for a hundred years, into public land unavailable for commercial or domestic real estate.
So I think your concern might be legitimate when Elon Musk becomes not just a trillionaire but a Quadrillionaire, but even so, by then he’ll have set up his Mars colony and there will be a whole new planet to colonize.
Fraser Orr – of course I am against the Anti Trust laws, whether the arbitrary enforcement of them by “Teddy” Roosevelt (who thought in terms of “good trusts”, his friends, and “bad trusts” – people who dared disagree with him, for example on whether endless wars are “good for the race” – which, contrary to what is taught, most of the business community thought was an utterly insane idea, because it is an utterly insane idea), or President Taft’s well meaning, but fruitless, effort to find “principles of Anti Trust law” so that enforcement would NOT be arbitrary. HOWEVER…..
I do find it odd that the defenders of “Anti Trust” or “Anti Monopoly Policy” tend to ignore who owns the shares – or rather who “manages” the shares.
For example, it is pointless to have “competing” Hollywood film and television show makers, or “competing” whatever, if a large amount of the shares, in most enterprises are under the control of BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard – and the Credit Bubble Banks.
This is one of the many things that the person who are addressing gets reversed – it is not rich individual owners who are the problem, on the contrary it the bureaucracy (both government and corporate – for they are interconnected) that is the problem – and it is precisely rich individuals are are able to stand AGAINST it.
Without rich individual owners the bureaucracy (government and corporate) would control everything – and what is left of liberty would be exterminated.
As for how BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard (which have shares in each other) got to get a stranglehold – the evil (economic and moral evil) of Credit Money has done this – the Cantillon Effect, certain entities get the Credit Money first and that leads to all this – something that F.A. Hayek understood and Milton Friedman did not understand. The money supply is not like “water” running everywhere at once, it is more like treacle, piling up in certain places.
As for housing – land is a finite resource, even Houston (which does not have Zoning) has found this – as more and more housing has been built on flood planes.
“Climate Change” scream the ignorant – unaware that this area has always been a bit low and has always had a lot of rain at certain storm-times, it did not use to flood because houses were not built in the lowest areas – in recent decades they have been, due to massive population increase.
And a lot of that is to do with mass immigration – both legal and illegal.
Once America was underpopulated – it needed more people, a lot more people, to develop. But there is an optimal size for population (not too few and not too many) – as a lot of the land is not really suitable for urban development, and that optimal size was perhaps (perhaps) reached about 60 years ago. Then came the Teddy Kennedy Immigration Act…..
Still it is debatable – perhaps in a free market, America would be a happy country with the vast population it has now – or with an even bigger population. I do not know.
And Britain? It is best not to think too much about Britain – the fate of this country will be grim indeed.
Recently a man in Hereford was sent to prison for 40 months (almost three and half years) for possessing “right wing music”.
He had a collection of four thousand records (the old way of listening to music – apart from live music which is an even older way of listening to music) and a few of these records contained “right wing songs” – he also traded his records (so there was a separate “crime” of selling the right wing music – as well as the “crime” of possessing it, both “crimes” got 40 months in prison – but the sentences are to run concurrently).
There is no suggestion that the man was “right wing” – it was the music, the records, that were the “crime”.
Who created this insane “law” and all the other insane “laws”?
Was it “late stage capitalism” – NO it was not.
Was it rich individuals such as Elon Musk – NO it was not.
The bureaucracy, the officials and “experts”, created this insane spider’s web of “laws” – and Parliament rubber stamped them, Members of Parliament (as usual) having no idea what they were voting for – and the Ministers normally have no idea either.
This is the threat to liberty – and contrary to the Collectivist who visits us on this site, rich individuals (a few of them – sadly only a minority of rich individuals) are our only hope of standing up AGAINST this tyranny of officials and “experts”.
@Paul Marks
Although I mostly agree with you, a couple of comments that might be useful.
For example, it is pointless to have “competing” Hollywood film and television show makers,
But that isn’t true. new technologies and innovation have shown again and again to break these sorts of implacable monopolies. There are thousands of independent movie and “TV” show producers. There always were but the problem was always distribution. But new technology has completely changed that, and independent producers are producing far more entertainment than the legacy producers. Look at YouTube, Rumble and many other video sites, never mind the actual subscription sites. Additionally, in the general category of “leisure pursuits” new technology has utterly overwhelmed this monopolistic dominance. Video games for example produce more than ten times the revenue.
You see this in the computer world too. It used to be that Microsoft was the utterly dominant computer technology. They are still there and still doing well but the world is bristling with alternatives — far and away the most common computer today is the phone, and Microsoft tried to use their bullying heft to dominate that market and totally failed.
And music? It used to be that artists lived and breathed by their recording contracts. Modern distribution methods are completely changed that equation.
And what about search? We are watching with our own eyes the total dominance of Google getting swept aside by start ups like OpenAI and Grok, which are beginning to dominate in the search space. As a programmer if I had questions I used to go to paper books to look things up, then it was a patchwork of web sites, and then about ten years ago a site called StackOverflow began to totally dominate this space. Probably 80-90% of all programmer questions were answered on this site, and a high rating on StackOverflow was a gleaming star on your resume. Then along came AI and it seems like in a day StackOverflow went from completely dominating the space to becoming almost irrelevant as AIs gave better, tailored answers.
Which is to say monopolies don’t last in a true free market. They are quickly overtaken unless those monopolies constantly innovate, invest and give better and better service to their customers.
BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard – and the Credit Bubble Banks.
These companies are quite troublesome for sure, though I do wonder to what degree their influence is exaggerated: their market cap is pretty small compared to the big tech companies. But they are also products of, as you say, government regulation and government currency.
As for housing – land is a finite resource, even Houston (which does not have Zoning) has found this – as more and more housing has been built on flood planes.
Land is a finite resource but so is oxygen and nobody worries too much about that. The simple fact is, to follow up on your example of Texas, if Texas had the population density of bucolic England you could fit the entire population of the United States in that one state. Certainly land is a finite resource, but its finite-ness is massively exaggerated by regulation and all sorts of other anti free market nonsense.
@Paul Marks.
Recently a man in Hereford was sent to prison for 40 months (almost three and half years) for possessing “right wing music”.
I read that and thought “No way. You must be making that up or there must be more to it than that.”
Apparently not though.
The BBC report this as if they are reporting on some guy getting a speeding ticket. It is hard to believe how bad Britain has gotten.
Must have been rap music. Right?
(I note that they don’t tell us what the lyrics said.)
@bobby b
(I note that they don’t tell us what the lyrics said.)
Well of course, because if they told you then they’d have to go to jail too.
I was going to add a smiley, but I don’t think there is much to laugh about.
Fraser Orr – you missed the context of what I was saying, I did NOT say that it was pointless to have competing studios – I said it was pointless to have “competing” studios all dominated by share “management” entities (thanks to Credit Money Cantillon Effect) BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard.
But it is a more general point – the economy is dominated by Corporations who are more concerned with a political agenda than with customers – and if a manager objects to the insanity, they are “reported to HR” and forced out of the company – this is not good.
A few big owner-managers (very wealthy individuals) are one of the few things holding back this Corporate political agenda (feminism and so on) dominating everything – regardless of what customers want.
As for making Texas as densely populated as England – that would be very unwise Sir, it would lead to incredibly bad consequences, in the end – mass death.
On censorship – yes Fraser Orr and bobby b are, sadly, correct.
But it must be stressed that the United Kingdom is just following the policies of the International Community – and the Corporate State establishment (the bureaucracy of everything from the schools and universities to BlackRock and the government – remember they are “educated” people) would like to do the same thing in the United States – the same censorship and persecution that is under way in most other nations.
There is nothing special about the British establishment – it is just the local branch of the international establishment (education system, media, government and corporate) – and the American branch of the international establishment has the same agenda of censorship and persecution.
As for clever technological ways round Corporate State domination of the media – including the entertainment media.
I am sure that Fraser Orr is correct that there are clever technological ways round all this – but society (including elections) is about MOST people.
If the Collectivist international establishment can control the education of most people and control the media (including entertainment media – films, television shows, including advertisements – ads, music, and so on) that most people see and hear, then the Collectivists win.
They do not have to control everyone – just most people. 51% will do.
Of course the totalitarian society the establishment crave, would eventually collapse – but that collapse would include mass death.
Yes, that’s pretty much what I’m saying – in a freed market there would be multiple people competing. In our (current) unfree market, however, it’s a not unlikely scenario – I don’t really care whether it’s yer Musks, yer Bezos, or yer Blackrocks (whether it’s a corporation or an individual, whilst they are obviously different, the end result to the prospective homeowner remains the same). It doesn’t have to be literally “all” the land or new-build housing in existence, just enough in any given location to tip the scales; at which point those alternatives (living with your parents etc), most of which are choices people wouldn’t necessarily make if other options were available (some would, of course), become the default for enough people for it be an issue of power imbalance – and any sense of “voluntary” decision has been collapsed into “this is realistically the only viable alternative if I don’t want to pay through the nose on rent”.
(This isn’t, by the way, meant to neglect or negate the other concerns like zoning, NIMBYism, regulatory capture etc that you bring up that turn “housing” into a very unfree market – not at all; I firmly consider that these are all EXTREMELY valid concerns, and ones that I very much share)
The only real checks upon the bureaucracy, both government and corporate (for they are joined as the hip), are individuals who have the financial resources, are RICH enough, to stand up to this system.
No ordinary person can do so – the threat of lost job or ruined small business is too much, but a rich (very rich) individual CAN – and that allows the rest of us what freedom we have left.
As for how corporations do not compete for customers – a little example is comic books.
Marvel comics ruined itself with far left cultural messaging – fewer and fewer people wanted to buy their comic books, customers turned to DC (which got the nickname “Decent Comics”).
But then DC comic books went-down-the-same-leftist-rabbit-hole as Marvel comics.
Think about that – customers meant nothing to these corporate types, only pushing a leftist agenda mattered to them, regardless of how many customers it cost.
And it is perfectly rational for executives who are NOT even leftists themselves to behave like this – after all if they said anything “right wing” (such as “this policy is going to cost us money”) they would be “creating a hostile working environment” and be “reported to HR” – they would then find themselves being marched out of the building by security, with their possessions in a paper bag.
And it is NOT just the entertainment industry.
A leftist women CEO cost Cracker Barrel – with a redesign of everything from the logo to the inside of the restaurants to the menu – a redesign that customers hated.
Yet the lady is still in her job – she has not been fired.
And this is normal – no matter how much money leftists managers (including CEOs) cost the company, they-stay-in-post.
This is NOT capitalism.
The corporations do not care about pleasing the customers – and they have no real owners, just “institutional” “owners” – hired managers supposedly in charge of other hired managers.
Milton Friedman’s vision of corporations laser focused on making money for “Aunt Agatha” style private investors, has nothing to do with how things are now.
I just find it a very odd position to hold in principle.
I might not explain this very well, but bear with me:
I am of the understanding that you do not like Big Government – regardless of who is in power, precisely for all of the obvious reasons that it might be fine if you happen to agree with the current government, but in the next election you might be dealing with a party that you fundamentally disagree with, who now have their hands on the levers of power. Also, absolute power and all that jazz. If I’ve understood this correctly, then I fully agree.
I am also of the understanding that you apply more-or-less the same, very sensible, reasoning to corporations; probably with some slightly different nuances, but essentially for the same reasons – too much power concentrated in too few hands. Again, assuming I’ve understood correctly, you’ll get no argument from me.
What I don’t understand is why the same logic and reasoning isn’t applied to individuals. If anything, I would think it would apply more to individuals, since at least in a government or corporation, you’re dealing with an aggregate of different opinions. Potentially you believe that you can “know” a given individual’s true beliefs, maybe, whereas in a corporation the people might change tomorrow? Something like that?
If so, I would offer Jeff Bezos as a counter-example – he was, if memory serves, roundly disliked here for many years. I don’t recall why, exactly, but I *do* recall that people started to praise him relatively recently (and it was noted at the time that people were “changing their mind about him”) when he made some changes to The Washington Post, to the tune of being pro-free market.
I would suggest that Jeff Bezos was not a closeted “free-market” type, at all, but he simply realised that under the current regime, it would do him good (and by him, I mean his bank balance) to pretend to be so. I would further suggest that in a regime change, he would reverse this position if he deemed it sensible to do so for his own good.
I guess, what I’m saying is that I find it hard to understand why the same logic you’d apply to governments or corporations wouldn’t apply to individuals. I get that you might, specifically, look at Elon Musk and go “yep, my kind of person”, but there are lots of extraordinarily rich people that you don’t think the same about (Gates? I think? Soros, certainly)
So, why tie yourself to a “Great Man” theory, when the more obvious answer is “we shouldn’t have a system that is set-up so that we need Great Men to dissent”? I’d certainly rather that many “small men” (as such – I do not consider them to be small, myself) dissent by removing themselves from it -whatever that looks like – than cross my fingers and hope that one Great Man is going to save me.
When?
For the record, I currently am sitting with a bookshelf behind me with, shall we say, a lot of comics on it, from the two big companies and others. I’m very aware of the market and how it’s played out since, I dunno, at least the mid-90s. I’m gonna need some evidence for that one.
WRT the negative income tax: I fail to see the difference wrt the current system (except for the complexity of the latter, which means more bureaucrats sponging off the system).
But that might be because i did not have to navigate the current system.
@Snorri Godhi
WRT the negative income tax: I fail to see the difference wrt the current system (except for the complexity of the latter, which means more bureaucrats sponging off the system).
Here in the USA we already have a negative income tax. It is called the EIC, and this particular piece of tax law owes its existence (through many legislative machinations) directly to Nixon’s attempt to implement Friedman’s negative income tax.
Of course Friedman wanted the negative income tax to be part of a reform dramatically simplifying the tax code. But I think we here will not be surprised to learn that the best laid plans o’ mice an’ men, aft gang agley. And it instead made the tax code much more complicated.
That Marvel comics ruined its comic books with far left cultural politics has often been discussed – anyone who continues deny it, might as well deny that water is wet, or that 1+1=2.
The Negative Income Tax was being pushed by Milton Friedman BEFORE the creation of the Great Society programs – so it is not correct to suggest that he wanted it as alternative to these programs. Nor would it serve as an alternative – unless the NIT was put at an absurdly high level it would NOT pay for health insurance, housing, and so on (and what about food? after all there would be nothing to stop people spending the Negative Income Tax on drink and drugs – and letting their children starve, people mostly do NOT do that because of cultural traditions – but these are precisely the cultural traditions that government programs, and cultural “liberation” propaganda, undermine over time).
Nor would creating a simple tax code – a “flat tax” change the basic issue. Cultural decline – pushed by the government and its “compassionate” “progressive” policies.
Wisconsin, and then other States, and then the Federal Government moved away from paying able bodied people in return for NOTHING – quite some decades ago, this Welfare Reform was in response to the growth of an Underclass, a growing inter generational underclass.
Although, yes, there was some backsliding under the Obama and Biden Administrations.
Indeed many government programs now (illegally) go to non citizens – thus encouraging mass immigration, mass immigration of people who are not desirable immigrants (to put the matter mildly).
There was a Poor Law report in Britain in the early 1900s.
But the wrong part of this report is followed – the “Minority Report” that was written by totalitarians (such as Mr and Mrs Webb) who had never lifted a finger to help the poor.
It is the “Majority Report”, written by people who had spent their lives helping the poor – with their own money and their own hands, that has insight.
Oh, no, I’m very aware that it’s been discussed, many times over since…well, as long as I was interested and was able to access the internet. Absolutely not denying that, at all.
I’m just mildly curious as to which specific time you’re referencing. I’ve never had you down as a comic fan or reader, hence my curiousity.
neonsnake – I apologize for misunderstanding you.
One place the matter has been discussed, at some length, is YouTube (owned by Google) most popular culture YouTube channels covered this matter – although some years ago now, it is “old news”.
However, many of the very senior executives who have cost their companies vast amounts of money are still in place – for example if the present system is really “capitalism” why are the pathetic Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy still in place a Disney?
As you know, it was Bob Iger who was the messenger boy for the Corporate State (the international Corporate State) to deliver their threats of advertising boycotts unless Elon Musk agreed to carry on with censorship and shadow banning at Twitter (now X).
Mr Musk’s reply to Mr Iger – and to the forces who used Mr Iger as their messenger boy, was rather graphic (and delivered in public).
Although it did end with clean language – “I hope that is clear”.
Nor is it just the entertainment industry – many corporations are dominated by hired managers (paid incredibly high salaries) who are totally useless – indeed actively do harm. It would be better for the companies they run if they (these “Woke” CEOs, and “consultants” and so on) just stayed home in bed, rather than came into the office to push their racial, sexual and “Green” obsessions – which they may be sincere about or (perhaps more likely) feel they have to pretend to care about.
If this system was really “capitalist” how do these useless people gain these positions, and how do they keep them?
They do not “add value” and they did not create the company.
I remember the owner of JCB (the makers of earth moving equipment) being asked why he did not “take the company public”.
He replied that “the City” (if the institutions gained ownership) would force him out (force him out of the company he created) within a year – and the company would be bankrupt within ten years.
I also remember the head of Morgan cars (Mr Morgan) having “Sir John Harvey Jones” (ex hired head of ICI) visit him for some television business show.
Sir John told Mr Morgan to spend lots of money on XYZ – and Mr Morgan asked where he would get all this money from, “borrow it of course” said Sir John. “I think it is time for you to leave” replied Mr Morgan.
@Paul
For as long as I remember, there was always discussion over whether The Big Two (Marvel and DC) should or should not have characters that didn’t “pander” to their alleged audience – the stereotype of the teenage white boy nerd. With the best will in the world, that demographic has some basis in truth, and was very loud. I’d be the last to deny that.
The issue was always two-fold – how to *not* lose that audience, whilst also expanding and bringing in new readers.
Every time the “sales have fallen because of DEI” conversation came up, it proved to be largely untrue, however. The last time I recall, that I paid any attention to (and I suspect that this is what you are talking about) was in roughly 2017 or so, when Marvel’s sales took a hit.
It was put down to “DEI” on reddit and YouTube or wherever, but anyone who actually looked at the numbers and sales figures could and should dismantle that pretty easily. It just didn’t stack up when looking at hard data.
(Essentially it was to with a load of relaunches (including name changes, which meant that people had to “actively” opt-in to their pull list), event fatigue, “wait for the trade paperback”, and other problems, but the so-called “DEI” series did pretty well. The numbers bear this out)
Marvel made the pretty classic error of promoting “very good comic writers” to management positions, without noting that the skill-sets are not the same. In the meantime, DC did very well with their “Rebirth” series.
(I’ve many more things to talk about wrt this, but it probably won’t be interesting to many people, so I’ll skip it)
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As for Musk/Iger etc – I honestly don’t really care. They can spat about advertising all they want, it only interests me in the very mildest of senses. It’s like watching a spat between two football teams, neither of whom I support. The culture wars are a pretty obviously manufactured distraction, and not one I intend to get fooled by.
Same with Kathleen Kennedy – my overall opinion on her management of Star Wars (which is what she gets shit about) is that I’m not overly bothered. The new films were pretty rubbish (The Last Jedi was the best of the bunch, but was essentially “some good ideas marred by horrible execution”), and most of the new series have been “entertaining enough, I guess, but I’m very unlikely to rewatch” – with the obvious exception of Andor, which was one of the best pieces of media to be released in recent memory.
neonsnake.
They (the high corporate managers) have cost their corporations vast amounts of money – and not just in the entertainment industry, in many industries. And they do-not-care that they have done so – and they are, mostly, still place.
Whatever this system is – capitalism it is not.