Rand, Ryan, Hayek and Other Random Stuff
This was a really interesting post over at FT Alphaville on Hayek, Rand and where Paul Ryan falls on his views of them. Cardiff Garcia highlights some quotes from Rand about Hayek showing a very deep schism between the two:
[Rand] thinks Hayek’s definition of a person’s “own sphere” in which his views are supreme could be narrowed down to “mere breathing”; Hayek’s rejection of “dogmatic laissez-faire attitude” gets him called “The God Damned abysmal fool”. When Hayek accepts that certain goods, like roads and pollution abatement, need to be supplied by government, he is “so saturated with all the bromides of collectivism that it is terrifying”. When Hayek talks of the “very defined limits” in which individualism “allows” people to follow their “own values and preferences rather than somebody else’s,” Rand thunders, “Oh God damn the total, complete, vicious bastard! This means that man does exist for others, but since he doesn’t know how to do it, the master will give him some ‘defined limits’ for himself”.
And then Hayek:
Afterward, [Hayek] took questions, which were mostly about Ayn Rand and “Atlas Shrugged.” The leading questions were “What was Rand really like?” and “What is your evaluation of ‘Atlas Shrugged’?”
Hayek’s responses took on the style of a confession. “Although I tried seriously to read the book, I failed, because there was no romance in it,” he said. “I tried even more diligently to read that fellow John Galt’s hundred-page declaration of independence, and I knew I’d be questioned on all that, but I just couldn’t get through it.”
As for Rand, he said he had met her only once, quite recently, at a party given in their honor — “and you should never have two lions at the same party.” The host eagerly brought the two together for the introduction. Here are the results, to the best of my memory: “We had a very brief exchange. She swelled in anger and spun away, remaining only long enough to say, ‘You are a compromiser.’ ”
I never knew the divide in their views was so extreme. Even to the point of there being very real animosity between the two. And then the kicker from Garcia:
Rand believed that progress is made on the backs of Great People. An individualist, capitalist system is best because it gives persons of exceptional brilliance and work ethic the space to produce. These people haven’t just earned whatever monetary rewards come their way, but also the gratitude of lesser people for the civilisational advancements they make possible.
Hayek’s view was that the market process is mysterious and unpredictable; there are too many variables whose interactions are too complex to grasp. And yet the outcomes yielded by a setting of free competition and undistorted price signals are superior to those of central planning. Government encroachment is to be resisted precisely because it would distort the price mechanisms that govern this process.
More relevant to this post, an extension of Hayek’s thinking is that the achievements of successful individuals aren’t due to their personal awesomeness (much as they’d like to believe it) but to an indecipherable combination of factors that can’t easily be untangled, explained, or anticipated. Lots of room for randomness and circumstance to play a role in this line of thinking; some might call it “luck”.
I might be more of a Hayekian than I previously thought. Rand’s views just come across to me as extreme in most cases and I am a capitalist through and through. Yes, it’s true that living standards are primarily developed by the innovative ideas of individuals. I’ve written about this extensively. But there is also an enormous support mechanism that goes into this creation that helps cultivate the environment leading to this increase in living standards. Government isn’t all bad all the time and I think it’s extreme to imply as much. Government can and does do a lot of good things for us. We didn’t create it so it could ruin our lives, though admittedly, if government becomes corrupted or abused it certainly could do that….I particularly think that once you understand the monetary system you develop a greater appreciation for the system we have and the support/facilitating mechanism that we’ve designed.
As for Ryan, I don’t know precisely where he falls on this line. Is he more reasonable like Hayek or is he an extremist type? Anyhow, read the full piece. It’s interesting….
Cullen Roche
Mr. Roche is the Founder of Orcam Financial Group, LLC. Orcam is a financial services firm offering research, private advisory, institutional consulting and educational services.
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Hayek was actually more in favor of government than many imply that he is. You should get more familiar with his work. I think you’d enjoy it and might offer some good insights given your unique understanding of the monetary system.
Nice post. Don’t feel bad though most people don’t know there’s quite a difference between Hayek and Rand. You really should take the time to read Hayek’s writings – very enlightening. Oh and Ryan is no Hayek.
Most people don’t know the difference because they have never heard of Rand or Hayek. They are not mentioned in prime time.
Ryan is first and foremost a politician. He’s not an economist, not a budget wonk, not a philosopher, and certainly not the adult in the room. His numbers (the ones he will specify, as opposed to the very important other numbers that he refuses to specify) don’t come close to adding up. How he has been anointed as a policy wonk is quite beyond me, except that I do understand the power of the machine he represents to promote him to such an inappropriate pedestal. He’s basically an ideologue and an opportunist, and probably a liar. Or perhaps just a dolt pretending to understand that about which he hasn’t got a clue.
Ryan is definitely a liar. Rachel Maddow caught him fairly and squarely to the a camera……………
Lance said he was a politician so calling him a liar is redundant.
I would have guessed he’s ultra-cynical and doesn’t believe the BS he spouts, but seeing his stock trades truly suggests an empty mind at work.
I want to know which Romney/Ryan we are getting. The guys who have said they support Keynesianism or the current guys who are pretending they never said that.
I’m starting to see the outlines of what might be their strategy.
1) Romney looks too centerist for the now fully mobilized far right, especially since he has Keynesian tendencies in his past and is a ‘wall street’ guy.
2) Bring the guy in who on paper looks like he can’t fall asleep at night without his binky (which look suspiciously like a copy of Atlas Shrugged) and says he wants to cut the deficit drastically, placating the far right and ‘uniting’ the somewhat bifurcated party.
3) However, a major hurdle is created here. Any move that brings the extremes of a party back into the fold works to alienate the party from independents (who win elections).
4) If they win the White House, immediately work to expand the deficit and use fiscal stimulus to help the economy recover.
If they get all the way to step 4 the left cries havok at their failed promises to reduce the deficit while no one else cares because Economic data (especially unemployment) is going gangbusters.
If they don’t get to step 4 GOP will continue to use the legislature to fight fiscal stimulus to perpetuate the image that Democrats can’t fix the economy.
Rand’s views should be kept in perspective of her upbringing.
The Bolshevik Revolution made a pretty big impression on her and her family loosing everything during so I think if people temper her concepts and thoughts with that in mind, it makes her more into a Hayek.
As far as Ryan goes, He lobbied for Bailouts so I wouldn’t worry about him. The economy will be much better under a Romney/Ryan because they will Give Oil Pipelines and Coal/Nat Gas producers Tax credits instead of the worthless Solar/Solyndra type companies.
Rand is a sociopath and like Hitler viewed elements of society unworthy of taking a breath. I guess her later dependence on government social programs would have made her, in her much younger mind, an expendable part of society.
Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Fienman (to name just a recent few) and countless other great minds (not to be confused by a peddler of cheap intellect displayed by ayn rand) understood that they stood on the shoulders of giants.
Turning to those who continue to believe that republicans will save our economy and our country by promoting our dependancy on carbon based fuels., I have no doubt that those who believe in the preceding sentence also believe the men in the preceding paragraph hold the same esteem as a Mike Tyson or George Bush. These men and women who doubted global warming for over a decadeand they would lift their knuckles off the ground to grasp their bellies in laughter when you told them that deregulation nearly broke this country and the only reason they have a dime in savings and the stock market isnt skidding along at 3k is due to the government steppping in and saving the private sector.
In 3000 years of monetary history we’ve only had a few who investigated money. The Schoolastics, Locke; but amongst the very few, the greatest mind of all is Silvio Gesell. His genius is easily amongst the highest ranks because he transcends an impulse among humans to impute “value.”
We seem to be biologically programmed to view credit and debts in an instinctive way that is at variance with reality. This is what he had to say about Marx, and I’m sure Hayek and Rand would have come in for considerable criticism as well:
-Marx, whose economic system is founded up a theory of value, uses almost the same words (as Gotyl, i.e. value is a hallucination, a mere product of the imagination) “Value is a phantom.”
This does not prevent Marx from conjuring up the phantom in three bulky volumes. Abstract from worked up substances, all material properties, and only one remains, namely value.-
Gessel instead says that the only thing that matters is price. He then creates a system in alignment with what money is, namely a legal device that allows people to trade their wares, and his money does not take privileges. He reduces money to that of wares (items for sale that the producer is not consuming.)
Since wares go bad due to rust, mice, weather, change in fashion, rot, etc., then money should also rust. In this way, the Capitalists (or holders of money) cannot retreat and await their advantageous time to enter the market. Indeed the change in money type means capitalists are stripped of the ability to swing and manipulate markets.
This is not a trivial point and Marx completely missed it, and hence much of what he has to say, as well as Hayek and Rand is value based false doctrine. Value is only what is imputed at the time of transaction. Therefore value can be no more than price.
Stripping money down to its essence so that it does not pervert this market transaction prevents the excesses of capitalism, and undercuts the “raison de entrée” of communism. Capitalism arose because money can retreat to safety and not rot, or be affected by the weather, etc. When capital money retreats from the markets, prices decline. The owners of money capital can then wait for the right time to pounce. Conversely, prices rise as money chases less elastic wares, and then money retreats with its gains..to not rot.
Labor and producers are put at a disadvantage. Producers are under desperate compulsion to sell their wares, as they go bad with every tick of the clock.
Marx would say, labor stop producing and riot in the street for your political rights. Gessel would say, produce real capital (wares) in abundance and drown out money capital. The productivity of Labor is astounding if given the right money system to operate in.
Money capital has now morphed into Credit that is bank money. A Pareto chart of the population, divided into 10 ranks, would show the bottom 8 ranks diverting rents (in the form of usury) to the top two ranks. At the very top, the transfer is prominent. At the top .10 of the top 10% it is a flood of interest money diverted from the producers. This cohort uses their Capital (really rent transfers) to their advantage, awaiting the right time to pounce. Of the top 500 richest, about 300 earned their income in the FIRE
sector. Capitalism of this type is parasitical as it diverts rents away from the producers. It is the money system that matters, not Marxian political force.
Ren.
I felt like I spotted a flaw in both Marxist and extreme ‘free market approaches’ – to the effect that ‘value’ is shaped by ‘culture’ (which is continuously changing), and goes way beyond any narrow definition of ‘self interest’ or even ‘utility’.
I think that you, coming from a very different direction, are saying something similar, or at least related.
My one concern is that you tend to weigh in very late in these threads, and I wonder if anyone else is still paying attention. You might want to save and/or repeat comments like this one and your other below if and when a newer thread raises the relevant issues. (The only reason I have kept following this one is that it has raised some really profound issues – I hadn’t weighed in because I couldn’t think of a concise comment or two – as opposed to an essay – to express my thoughts on them.)
OK….point taken. But, I get annoyed at great thinkers, and many who come here are, who completely miss the obvious. They look at the formation of money capital, but don’t look at the nature of money.
When I talk about 100 percent reserves, isn’t it obvious that money would change its character, in that it comes from past wealth accumulation. Bank Money also has a different character in that it is really the debtors credit. During hypothecation, debtor transfers his credit rights. Bank Money has a future tense to it, making it the opposite of reserved money. To use Marx’s terms, credit money rushes in like a cavalier at opportunity, and disappears at the moment of trouble. Gold money does the same, which has been repeatedly shown throughout history. Gissell’s money would go even further than reserved money, forcing existing money to move at high velocity.
Producers of wares really need markets that have a constant drain on them, like a river without obstructions. Therefore producers need money demand that doesn’t charge in and retreat constantly.
Market misbehavior and rent transfers…driven by the money system… gave rise to Marxist thinking.
Maybe I’m just talking to myself as these concepts are too far off of our cultures cognitive map.
Thanks for your thoughts, Ren.
I have come to thinking about economics quite late (my formal academic background is in anthropology, developmental psychology, and neurosciences, plus an ongoing interest in history). I get that a monetary system that greatly reduced or eliminated the commercial banks’ role in money creation would fundamentally alter its nature, but have at best only an intuitive grasp of what you are driving at. You also would need to provide an essay (and/or some specific references eg to something by Gessel).
I would like to see more responses from some of the more thoughtful and knowledgeable commenters here to what you are saying. If you are willing, I wonder if Cullen would consider having you do a guest posting, as he does on occasion.
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Blablablaalbalbalblablalbabla
How did the government step in and save the private sector?
Did the govt suddenly transform into private citizens and go to work everyday and spend money everyday?
Do you consider Fannie and Freddie government regulation? Basically have been around for 70+ years until now they are worthless corrupt govt institutions.
Govt is the steel rod through the spinning wheel of private industry.
1. Do we really have to think this seriously about Ryan’s intellectual capabilities?
2. Regarding: “an extension of Hayek’s thinking is that the achievements of successful individuals aren’t due to their personal awesomeness (much as they’d like to believe it) but to an indecipherable combination of factors that can’t easily be untangled, explained, or anticipated,” and CR’s statement, “there is also an enormous support mechanism…”
In other words, autonomous/individual man who is actually, materially embedded in collective social relations. To attribute the greatness of certain individuals to “luck” would be a form of mysticism.
“An individualist, capitalist system is best because it gives persons of exceptional brilliance and work ethic the space to produce.”
LOL! Umm, sure thing. Sam Walton “produced” all the Wal-Mart stores and things sold there. And Henry Ford “produced” all of Ford Motor Co.’s cars. And Steve Jobs “produced” everything Apple sells. They may have OWNED the company, but in a capitalist system, the production process is made possible by wage labor which produces ALL of the commodities/output. Otherwise, why would a capitalist have any need for workers if he is “producing” so much??? It just so happens that ownership means that the produce of the workers is not owned by them–what wage labor produces is owned by the owners. Hence the conflation in the article quoted.
I think the real point is that owners generally are the ones taking the venture risk in the first place. That’s why they’re “owners”. They come up with the ideas for the products and the ways those products will be built. Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple all by himself. But it took a visionary to come up with the specific framework for how/where/why/when production would take place. Owners take capital risk. Non-owners don’t. If your vision fails you lose 100% of your stake. Non-owners have an opportunity cost and that’s about it. HUGE difference. But yes, no one builds a company by themselves so I sympathize with the general point you’re making. As I said, there is a massive support mechanism involved in the building of any company. But importantly, when that support mechanism fails it is the capitalist who has the most to lose….
True, that is how the story goes. But venture risk does not entail much personal risk at all, does it? A loan is at stake, but if the venture fails, it’s the creditors who lose. If you dont make a profit, you just stop production. The “risk-takers” are protected from personal harm by bankruptcy law. Risks for owners and workers are different in form only, but for each group the material well-being of the individual is at stake.
More importantly, the incentive to seek profits is grounded in a prior fact–which is guaranteed and enforced by a juridical **convention** in the legal system–that the owners are guaranteed a monopoly on the product of the workers. Hence the incentive to the owners to do everything possible to squeeze more product out of their laborers, whether it’s making them work longer hours or investing in better machines. In other words, all of the risk of owners originates in a prior social condition that stipulates that the people who produce the goods do not actually own them. This is the social relation (between owners and labor) that structures a production process oriented strictly towards profit maximization. This is why the concept of private property is the absolute touchstone of any legal system in a capitalist society.
In short, there is no such thing as the overly simplistic story of a few great men who assume all the risk for society–this is a conceit of entrepreneurial ideology.
None of what I’ve said means that this process of production isn’t wildly successful at times. Rather, my post is an attempt to demystify the notion that great risk-takers are just doing what they naturally do best, what they were born to do. In reality, there is a massive and complex interplay among legal, cultural, scientific, and economic structures that make this form of entrepreneurial risk-taking possible in the first place. I suppose this my equivalent to your “massive support mechanism,” but it’s important to think through the specificity of this mechanism. It is more complex than merely the government regulating the money supply, regulating the vicissitudes of the market, and workers producing the things being sold by the owners.
Steve Jobs? What did he ever do? He networked. He got smart people involved early on. He founded Apple in order to sell it. Steve Wozniak spearheaded Apple II and Jef Raskin created the Macintosh. Raskin was apparently also the visionary for the simple, easy to use computer that would make Apple famous. Jobs may have been good at directing people. No big deal. But he would count as one of Hayek or Rand’s “exceptionally brilliant” individuals. This is ideology at work. And judging by how people lauded and heroicized him, it appeared as if he was so naturally gifted that his $8 billion fortune practically grew out of his sweat and hard work. In reality, his fortune was nothing more than a reflection of the value of Apple’s commodities produced by (mostly Chinese) wage labor.
Terrific thoughts, Marx. Individual success is so much more complicated when viewed without ideological blinders. And no doubt individual success comes too often with the price tag of unmitigated exploitation. “Communist” China is a great aider and abetter of said exploitation. We cut serious corners, turn a blind eye and export much of our manufacturing pollution/explotation their way. Lots of individual success, such as Steve Jobs, works this way. Not as pretty a picture when the veil is lifted, no?
One of the most brilliant comments I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Thank you, Marx-Reloaded.
I’m not really sure how bankruptcy can be seen as a good thing for the owner? Bankrupcty is devastating.
I didn’t say that “a few great men assume all the risk for society”. I think you’re taking my comments out of context as I explicitly stated that great men are always surrounded by great support mechanisms.
Direction and vision – isn’t that what a leader provides? He takes the risk of putting the direction of his people on his shoulders. And when he loses he goes bankrupt and is devastated. Do you think that generals in the military are unimportant? Do you think that drawing the battle plans and directing how soldiers are deployed is unimportant? Or does the opposing military want to cut off the head of the snake in all instances? Why do you think we went after Bin Laden or Lee in Virginia or Hitler? It’s the exact same premise. Of course, I am not saying that generals or leaders deserve ALL of the credit, but is it wise to just say that men like Steve Jobs did not ever do anything? I think not.
I’m not sure if I had Hayek, Rand, or your comments in mind when I wrote my post. Probably some aspects of all three, lol. My bad for any out-of-contexting.
What I meant was that in our society, we are all led to think that owners are the great risk-takers, whereas what I wanted to suggest is that, “Risks for owners and workers are different in form only, but for each group the material well-being of the individual is at stake.” Bankruptcy is of course devastating for am ambitious entrepreneur; but in concrete terms, what it actually means is that production stops, that’s all. The owner is not thrown in jail or personally harmed in any way; the “material well-being of the individual is at stake” in so far as he/she will have to go find other work or suffer the consequences of not having money. This is the same exact (bad) situation that any worker will face once he/she is out of a job.
I explicitly acknowledged your “massive support mechanism” phrase. I was just trying to emphasize that what this entails can be thought out in greater specificity and not left to “luck” or whatever, at which point it becomes something magical and not rational.
Of course great leaders should be held up! We wouldn’t get very far without them. But your examples actually make a good point: let’s not conflate great leadership with entrepreneurism in the capitalist system. In capitalist culture, the IDEAL TYPE of leader is the entrepreneur. But before capitalism there were great leaders, after capitalism there will be great leaders, during capitalism there are great leaders who have nothing to do with business. Great leadership and business acumen are two different things. Jobs has served an ideological function as an ideal hero **in our culture** because he personified the double function of both knowing how to influence people and being a CEO. But there are countless individuals who meet one or the other but not both of these social functions. Bad CEOs are still handsomely rewarded for even bad business decisions nowadays. Great leaders oftentimes get no public acclaim. The way I see it, the entire Ayn Rand thought process that collapses a great leader into the owner of a company is patently false out of the gate and not hard to refute. It’s amazing how many smart people (Greenspan, etc) looked up to her. But that’s how ideology works.
Hmmm. I am not so sure I agree there. For instance, I am in the process of starting a new small business. I’ve invested a lot of money into it. And I will continue to invest a lot of money into it. If it fails then I will be substantially worse off for having taken this risk. If I hire a bunch of people then they do not have the ownership or capital risk that I have. They just get hired and if the firm fails they move on (with part of my capital – their income earned!). Yes, we’re all out of work and income, but I am out much more than the worker. I am out my entire investment which is amounting to a great deal of time, effort and capital. Anyone I hire comes along AFTER all the infrastructure, regulatory BS and design has been built. We might build something better together and I’ll need the support mechanism for sure, but I think it’s wrong to claim that workers and owners are just on equal footing.
Gov can play a great role by funding enterprises & businesses to build things that improve standard of living (thus, negating the need to pay interest to banks for bank money creation as well as the need for ‘capital/savings’ accumulation).
Antibiotics/penicillin was developed by Dr. Fleming, a gov scientist/doc working at a gov hospital & gov university.
Britian’s conservative gov refused to further fund it’s development, where it sat unused for 12+ yrs until
USA’s huge gov money creation funded research & mass production of antibiotics during WW2
FDR’s Rural Electrification Agency (REA) created & funded the equivalent of $400+ million dollars to build power plants & electrical lines that gave electricity to 90% of Americans living outside the cities, which hugely increaseed production of farming, agribusiness, & factories outside of cities
Cullen,
He’s talking about the social implications/hierarchy of wage labor. Steve Jobs, Sam Walton, et al are nothing without this social dynamic. They produce virtually none of what they peddle. Also, workers take just as great a risk as do the Job’s of the world, albeit in a different way. They each give the time and opportunities of their lives so the industrial magnets, big and small, can prosper off their individual labor, thereby consolidating untold wealth into just a few hands. A workers boss (the entity who ultimately controls his/her fate in capitalist economies)) is a thousand times more onerous in the day to day life of said worker than any cop or other state agent for that matter, much to the libertarians chagrin.. The complex system that allows for this to happen is not of Steve Jobs making. He merely exploited the working conditions of the time for his personal gains ( in his case largely on the backs of Chinese slave labor). Without these workers he’d be sound and fury signifying nothing. Thus these workers deserve every bit the credit Steve gets for the end products, no? Unless of course they’ve been told they are half the men Steve and other wealthy capitalists are. Then they know their place in the pecking order and march to the drumbeat of this hierarchical accordingly (read John Taylor Gatto for more on this)
Hi Malmo,
I responded below. I do not necessarily agree with this idea that workers “take just as great a risk” as owners. I think the owner’s risk is substantially greater. This is a good discussion so thanks for the great comments guys. I could be wrong so I love the alternative perspectives.
Cullen
I think Cullen is right. Capitalists do take a different and greater risk, in particular in the example that he provided, namely, starting his own company with his own money. And then everything else that he said that this implies is hard to argue with. If and when he decides to hire somebody, it will be a given that whatever that person produces will be owned by Cullen (in return for the wage contract). All of the pressure and onus for realizing value from the social relation that he, as owner, and his employers, as wage labor, enter into will be his and his alone. The pressure is one of incentives for him to squeeze as much product out of his employees as possible. That’s just the nature of the relation. The more employees there are relative to owners-capitalists, the more it becomes apparent that production in our society is something that labor does, not the owners themselves. In any society, it is a definition of the system that this ratio be extreme.
And from this scale of small entrepreneurism to the scale of something like Apple, Wal-Mart, or Bank of America or whatever huge corporation we’re talking about, the “venture capital” at stake is obviously no longer the original entrepreneur’s personal money, it’s credit and investors’ resources, oftentimes investors who are not “producing” anything at all.
It’s also the case that the “risk” of success is spread out over more people through stock ownership.
So how we got to the point where CEOs and Chairmen of boards “earn” the ridiculous money that they make is beyond me. Well, they are basically paying themselves with the money earned from the product that they control…
and his employers [sic], as wage labor
obviously I meant employees
Yes MR – that’s where this conversation gets interesting. In a case like mine I will actually be incentivized to treat my employees extremely well because my company will be small, tightly knit, highly dependent on a few people, and ultimately the benefit of all involved. Where this gets more complex is when you break up the ownership structure. I was joking around the other night about a company I know of that spends rather lavishly. I was thinking about how they have sold much of the company off and how the thinking behind management changes when the firm is no longer a small business, but becomes owned by many people or many firms. The whole dynamic changes. Sometimes for the worse. This growth of a company into a larger entity degrades the intimacy of what a business is or can be. And can result in management using workers as a means to an end and nothing more.
My conclusion – the larger a business gets the more owners benefit at the expense of workers. I presume you agree from your comments above….This is a really interesting discussion given the current state of affairs….You might have better thoughts on that than I do….
In a capitalist system, it’s helpful to remember that the winning capitalists tend to eat up the losing capitalists. Sorry, but you cannot afford to be too nice to your employees, regardless of your personal ethics: the structure of the system demands that you continuously extract greater amounts of value from the labor-time being put into the production process. If you dont, your competitors will match and then better your rate of productivity, which means they, not you, will be setting the standard for the price of the commodities that you both have to sell to stay in business.
I believe “economies of scale” is how economists speak of this. Anyways, the dynamic of concentration of means of production into the hands of a fewer and fewer capitalists is a “natural” outcome of the way the system is structured. It is unavoidable, and this is precisely why it has always happened everywhere capitalism exists.
So too big too fail is inevitable by your thinking? I wonder what you think the solution is then? How does the system avoid this inevitable concentration of the means of production? By my thinking, it’s not that the capitalist system is inherently evil, but if it is not properly regulated it can become evil. I wonder how much of this is occurring before our eyes?
CR,
Re: “a design flaw in the human being. I don’t know if you fix that”
This sounds to me like biological determinism. I know this is a popular theory. It’s been around for a while. Social Darwinism was an earlier version of it.
I think about things rather differently. I would agree that there is an instinct towards self-preservation in humans. To what degree this translates into a rational presumption that people will always kill each to survive (what you seem to think) is not so obvious. There are amazing acts of self-sacrifice among humans, especially in times of crisis. So that’s one problem with the presumption of a natural “flaw” in human biology.
More importantly, however, I would say that self-preservation, although there is a biological element to it, always takes radically different and changeable forms over the course of history. There is nothing in “human nature” that is so fixed; it is all history.
Part of that history, and the third problem with assertions about what self-preservation is in human nature, is that our very conception of it is coming to us in a form of society in which humans are coerced to act in their self-interest. In other words, even our abstract concepts (of human nature, self-preservation, and competition, etc.) must be seen in relation to the social dispensation that gives rise to them. For example, the reason the ancient Greeks developed a concept of liberty is because there existed a class of elites (male citizens) who were “liberated” from the need to toil daily to reproduce society and meet its ongoing material needs. The slaves and members of the lower-classes did most of the work. Likewise, we moderns have to ask ourselves how our form of society–its structure, its forms of coercion, the relative leisure it affords us, etc.–gives rise to this or that form of thought, to this or that set of concepts, values, ideologies, presumptions, etc. I’m referring to the relationship between the abstract thought of an age and the society in which that thought arises. The concepts of competition and self-preservation are historical in their own way. It might very well be the case that members of the capitalist class in our society have a particular affinity for the concept of self-preservation as you’ve presented it for the very reason that **it reflects their own class’s lived-experienced as risk-takers who must compete to preserve their business lest they lose out to other capitalists.** [This is not a form of relativism, by the way, because I'm not suggesting that the history of thought cannot be grounded in an analysis; rather, the history of thought maintains a complex but real relation to the society in which it occurs.] Sorry if this is a bit abstract, but I’m not sure there’s any other way to approach a critique of “self-preservation,” especially when it gets thrown around as a rationale, value, and justification for either (1) the status quo and (2) not thinking critically any further about how we think.
I certainly don’t subscribe to social darwinism. I think of the human as a complex, evolving, highly dynamic animal. This ability to evolve quickly through reason and learning is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. And it is, in my opinion, what has led us to reject the idea of natural selection over time. But we are not so far removed from the rest of the animal kingdom that we have entirely shed many of the inherent survival based traits that make us similar to other species.
From my perspective and understanding I would contend that most of the hardcore capitalists in this world view the trajectory of living standards as being based on our ability to continually produce, increase efficiency, etc. To the capitalist this is achieved by taking risk, organizing ideas, and providing direction. Whereas people with a more socialist perspective (I don’t intend the term in a pejorative sense) have reached a point where they are asking “when is enough enough?” and view the world as a place that can offer much for all involved. In other words, socialists look at capitalists and say “when is enough enough for you”. The capitalist will inherently respond “it is never enough”. The socialist view is a more altruistic view of the world whereas the capitalist views altruism as best being served through personal improvement. I read Volney’s Empire of Ruins a few months ago and he discusses this in detail. His theory was that human beings need to be productive. That they need to improve, make progress, move forward at all times. Enough is never enough. It is inherent.
I think we’re reaching a point in history where the question “when is enough enough” is becoming increasingly pertinent. The world produced more output in the last 10 years than it had in the prior 2,000 years or something like that. So I’d like to be able to say that the species will reach a point where enough becomes enough and we learn to take care of each other without feeling this perpetual need to compete in a manner that essentially keeps a majority of the world on its knees. But I am not so naive to believe that we are nearing a point where that is remotely possible. And my greater concern is that, as Volney theorized, we are designed to believe that enough is never enough.
I’m certainly no political philosopher so my thoughts on all of this aren’t exactly well organized, but I appreciate the good/thoughtful conversation. I wish I knew the answers to these questions….
One other thing: the opportunity for someone like Cullen to assume this risk is already embedded within the social relations of capitalist production. This relation is guaranteed and enforced by law. In other words, the opportunity to assume risk in this particular way (i.e., as a capitalist) is NOT something that naturally springs forth from human nature or simply “the way the world turns”. It is a social and legal convention that came into existence over the course of history. (See my posts in the conversation “In Defense of Capitalism” for more on this.] We take it for granted today that some people will be wage laborers and some capitalists, but this doesn’t change the fact that is is an utterly historical phenomenon.
Now, the specifically Marxist perspective on this is that there is a possible contradiction in the (very) long-run between, on the one hand, the social relations of production (owners and wage labor), and on the other hand, the mode of production that these social relations make possible: as capitalism becomes more productive, it needs fewer workers to produce the same amount of goods. It also needs fewer capitalists! And yet humans remain…
Well, I dont think capitalism is “evil” either. Which is not to say I think it is morally good. I generally dont think ethics is a very helpful lens through which to conduct social analysis. Clouds the judgment! The “humanizing” effect that some–not all–capitalists hope for by working in a small business and not a large one is a kind of religious hope–it’s not grounded in nor does it reflect the imperative for owners to extract surplus value from the labor-time of their workers. This is why Marx said religion will always have a place in capitalist societies, ha! Anyhow, yes, it seems that concentration is inevitable.
If not evil, then what? Well, it is riven with contradictions between its organization and the outcomes of that organizational structure. This is why I believe Marx is a helpful tool of analysis, because this is precisely how he thought of it. (Obviously his texts are much more complex and detailed than just this.)
It seems to me that “regulation” is something that the elite in capitalist societies do to themselves only when it suits their interests. There are two circumstances in which it suits their interests: first, when everyone underneath them pushes back (Occupy protests, yadayada) and threaten their hold on power (i.e., their monopoly of ownership via concentration of the means of production); second, when economic elites realize that their own behavior is so cannibalistic that it threatens their existence as a class. #1 is a political crisis in society, whereas #2 is mostly an economic crisis. #1 can lead to a better situation for labor in general if and only if it is well organized and they have a game plan. #2 is hard because elites dont really want to regulate themselves, and besides, regulation inherently increases production costs, so the system in its purest form is anathema to it. Because of this antithesis, #2 leads to internecine fighting **among elites** over who will take the fall (in general we can say that in the U.S. manufacturing capitalists obviously lost out to finance capitalists, which is also almost always the case, but this leads to other problems)
These crises in the social relations of production occur over decades if not longer. They are, in other words, “under the radar” of what economists look for and are trained to see or even what they are capable of considering as objects of analysis. But this is merely to say that economics as a discipline is terribly inadequate at tracking the underlying, long-term dynamics of capitalism. For this reason, I think a **historical perspective** is absolutely necessary to understand the real structure and basis of capitalism. I read Robert Brenner for some of this. Others are out there. No easy answers, of course.
Perhaps one way to re-think the problem of the concentration of the means of production in the hands of the few is to push it to its logical conclusion: concentration of the means of production in the hands of all.
It seems to me that the question of how to produce on a massive scale is no longer the issue for society. We know too much about the production process to have to fear being thrown back to barbarism. The question is, can there be an alternative incentivizing mechanism to reward people for risk and leadership? Why does it have to be money? The Ancient Greeks didn’t reward their greatest with money, they were rewarded with fame. Only capitalist societies reward their greatest individuals with money. But even if we figure this out, we still have to figure out how to produce/create value (and even **surplus** value) on an ongoing basis that doesn’t automatically lead to a concentration of ownership in the hands of the few or the complete alienation of labor from what it is producing.
I wonder how much of this is a flaw in the system or how much of this is an inherent flaw in human beings? We are designed to be self serving to a large degree. Put 100 people in a room, lock the doors and start a fire in one corner and all 100 of those people will kill each other to get out of that room first. But we need each other to survive so to some degree, our inherently self serving design is in constant conflict with our existence as a social species. I don’t know if capitalism/socialism is to blame or is the answer. These are really just design structures that help us meet the aforementioned conflicting needs. To me, this seems more like a design flaw in the human being. I don’t know if you fix that….
Steve Jobs made his rep before he used Chinese labor.
Humans are not designed to be self serving. That is a historical fiction. In fact most of pre civilized history is just the opposite–it is cooperative writ large. 99% of human history is pre civilization. There is no way that a Hobbsian view of human nature was even remotely operative, otherwise the species would have ceased to exist. Cooperation was essential to survival. Period. Actually I would add that most everyday life in the civilized world is also mostly cooperative in spite of the pathologies the protestant work ethic has foisted on us.
The historical fiction is the idea that humans are inherently altruistic (or worse, that primitive animals are). Yes, we need each other and we recognize that, but how much true altruism exists in the world? How many people are really willing to do something for nothing or actually spend their lives doing something for nothing? Are the majority of our actions doing something for nothing? Or are they self serving while appearing altruistic?
Cullen,
I know you are very bright and willing to expand your knowledge base. Please read the following. Sahlins is no quack:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
Thanks. I’ll have a look.
Hi Cullen,
“The Social Conquest of Earth” by Edward O. Wilson suggests group level selection is at work in evolution. Read his reply to Richard Dawkin’s criticism and the comments that follow. Humans and termites may not be altruistic, but they are highly successful at evolution.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/edward-wilson-social-conquest-earth-evolutionary-errors-origin-species/
Thanks Brian. Also, I saw your email. I’ve been busy with other stuff today. I’ll get back to you shortly.
Cullen you write, “Put 100 people in a room, lock the doors and start a fire in one corner and all 100 of those people will kill each other to get out of that room first.”
That’s a tough statement to swallow and it doesn’t explain situations that have actually happened, like the patrons in the Aurora movie theatre, the passengers of United 93 or people in the Pentagon and WTC towers on 9/11. What about procreation? What is self-serving about bringing in another human in the world that will only consume scarce resources? I don’t think this proves the opposite is true, but I do believe it shows that we are not inherently self-serving.
Couldn’t you argue that pro-creation is the ultimate self preservation and self serving act? The act of creating another being in your likeness for the sake of continuing your lineage? Don’t take that view the wrong way, but I am just playing devil’s advocate.
I don’t think people generally have children because they’re feeling charitable. I think they’re doing it because it will make them happy….
“I don’t think people generally have children because they’re feeling charitable. I think they’re doing it because it will make them happy….”
Or more likely, they’re feeling very, very drunk/hungover.
I’ve always thought Jobs was a bit of a crap example of an innovator making people’s lives better.
All the heavy technical lifting was done by other people – the technological innovations done by a bunch of people most have never heard of working at IBM, Bell, the government, etc. and hobbyists sharing their work with no expectation of profit. Those people, in turn, relied completely and totally on scientific discoveries and mathematical methods developed by people who published their work in journals which was thereafter free for anyone anywhere to use for any purpose – they did it, in general, out of sheer curiosity and to feed their ego.
What does the individual entrepreneur actually do? For the most part, just organize the production and distribution process, or organize the people who organize the production process. Beyond that, they might leave their personal quirks on the products: Steve Jobs had a penchant for industrial design, so we had smooth feeling MP3 players with a neat wheel – but had he never been, we would still have something roughly analogous to an iPod in existence. For a military analogue, they’re more or less logistics officers. Room exists for them to act as real leaders and promoters of morale, but this is rarely pursued – although employee loyalty might be dynamically efficient and profitable, being rather cutthroat about layoffs is more immediately and obviously financially sound.
In my humble opinion, the best examples of creative genius – even in things that are of immediate value and directly marketable – are rarely entrepreneurs. The week that Jobs died, Dennis Ritchie died. Who was he? He developed the C programming language and Unix. He was infinitely more important and directly responsible for the technological world we have today, including Jobs’ own machines. He wasn’t an entrepreneur and didn’t wear a turtleneck.
All of this is why Rand and Randians are so freaking stupid. You have to be scientifically illiterate and ignorant to buy into it.
The Chinese are using something similar to Lincolns National banking system, and are using their system to climb the wealth curve in one generation. They are playing rope a dope with Western Capitalists. Wall Street funds industry relocation, and simple accounting methods allow wage arbitrage. In other words, “it’s more profitable to build over there” because of simple accounting thinking. Not all wealth variables have entered the ledger. In reality, the past knowledge and capability of Western industry is monetized for today, and profits are realized as the wage differential (arbitrage). This looks god like profits and growth, but it actually hollows out the U.S. and allows China to rapidly build knowledge and capability. In fact, dispossessed Western labor is forced to teach them capability. Already their industrial capacity is becoming first rate, and that is a form of wealth. Also, despite the claims of starving Chinese labor, evidence does not support that case.
Job’s simply went along with the system as it is. Dollar as reserve makes the U.S. importer of last resort, forcing tariffs low. Chinese banking, labor and industry is geared to play rope a dope for at least a generation.
Sure, the workers make the product which can make the owners rich. But the owners define what the workers will make. That is what workers need, otherwise they might still try to make a living making buggy whips.
sic “The owner has the most to lose…”
Unless you’re a TBTF banker…
I am glad you start to appreciate some of Hayek’s thoughts.
With regards to the Garcia quote towards the end of the post: “More relevant to this post, an extension of Hayek’s thinking is that the achievements of successful individuals aren’t due to their personal awesomeness (much as they’d like to believe it) but to an indecipherable combination of factors that can’t easily be untangled, explained, or anticipated.”
Malcolm Gladwell quite brilliantly illustrates this in his Book “Outliers – The Story of Success”.
I recommend this wholeheartedly.
If you want some more good dirt on the market fundamentalists’ back biting each other, check out what Ayn Rand had to say about libertarians:
Q: Why don’t you approve of the Libertarians, thousands of whom are loyal readers of your works? [FHF: “The Age of Mediocrity,” 1981]
AR: Because Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program.
Q: The Libertarians are providing intermediate steps toward your goals. Why don’t you support them? [Ibid., 1981]
AR: Please don’t tell me they’re pursuing my goals. I have not asked for, nor do I accept, the help of intellectual cranks. I want philosophically educated people: those who understand ideas, care about ideas, and spread the right ideas. That’s how my philosophy will spread, just as philosophy has throughout all history: by means of people who understand and teach it to others. Further, it should be clear that I do not endorse the filthy slogan, “The end justifies the means.” That was originated by the Jesuits, and accepted enthusiastically by Communists and Nazis. The end does not justify the means; you cannot achieve anything good by evil means. Finally, the Libertarians aren’t worthy of being the means to any end, let alone the end of spreading Objectivism.
Here’s the link:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=education_campus_libertarians
… and then my favorite: Another Austrian economist, Murray Rothbard, wrote a scathing essay on Ayn Rand’s “cult”:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
I agree, a great book on this.
Cullen thanks for all your great work, you’re “…philosophically educated people: those who understand ideas,care about ideas, and spread the right ideas.” Gracias Amigo
It’s a mix of Rand and Hayek. Some bright guys/gals can make a break through and that can help the entire society. But that breakthrough must be accepted & absorbed by society as well.
Just imagine a Steve Jobs inventing an iPad in the 1960s when there wasn’t the internet around to make the iPad useful. Or today when people don’t have any money left to buy an iPad.
Just so you know, MP3 players & music cell phones were first invented by Asian companies (Samsung, Creative Labs, etc) in the 1990s but it remained in the tiny of tech experts & music buffs since most people didn’t know how to find/download, & rip music
Steve Jobs marketing genius made it so simple little girls/grandmas could use it without having to know how to rip music & download using kazaa/napster/torrents.
After reading some of Hayek’s work on knowledge, organization and the economic calculation problem, my thought was, “That would be interesting if behavioral economics, complexity economics and industrial organization didn’t exist.”
It’s about as relevant as the four humors – or, more charitably, reading Harvey on the circulatory system.
Interesting conversation and topic Cullen thanks
If I may interrupt yours and Marx reloadeds conversation, I think one of the problems many have when discussing this whole “selfishness vs selflessness” is an understanding of the biological definitions of these terms AND how these traits necessarily play out at the macro level (to borrow an econ term).
Selfishness is not the same when a biologist/behaviorist uses the term and how we understand it on a social relationship level. Selfishness is not the consideration only of self by the organism at the level of consciousness, its simply the genes in our body doing what they do…. trying to replicate. Those “desires” of genes drive our sexual urges, our offspring protective urges and our cooperation urges because we (our genes) “know” they are not self replicating……. they need a partner. Its this simple little algorithm, Ill call it “connect in order to continue” that gets replayed over and over and over that has brought our species to 7 billion+. Once this simple little algorithm creates more than a handful of a species a whole new series of strategies( all “determined” at genetic level) begins operating at a meta level. We then socialize and develop rules for our continued behaviors together. No where along the way does the possibility of extreme selfishness get eradicated. One can always go rogue so to speak and look out only for self, but that is never a dominant strategy in a healthy group that hopes to continue. It will however always exist on the spectrum of options an organism has in its playbook. Which strategies a group settles on as “normal” are simply determined by its culture which of course is largely shaped by different religions or group stories about their beginnings which get passed along through generations.
I see our cultures problem as stemming from a myth of radical individualism. This was not just a conservative idea as many liberal thinkers were guilty of promoting this idea in one form or another as a way to empower those who were left out of many processes in our developing society. Individualism is great, radical individualism is toxic…. in my view. Just as we can suffer from oxygen toxicity if exposed to 100% oxygen for too long, I believe we are suffering from “individualism toxicity”
One last comment,
I kind of look at it this way. If you are really concerned about your welfare (as we all should be) are we better off with just one pair of eyes (our own) constantly looking inward or are we better off knowing that hundreds or possibly thousands of others are looking outward at us and looking out for us. To me its an easy numbers game. I can be a more successful selfish creature by being willing to let others look out for me and my cost is simply looking outward too and not inward and downward.
My $.02 worth.
To your last paragraph I would add I think the process of natural selection would make the answer obvious. As humans we have survived as a result of having developed a culture which rears and nutures its young (obviously not individualism), protects itself and works for mutual advantage by living in collective groups (villages, towns, cities, and such – again – obviously not individualism), and finally succeeds most profoundly by effectively collaborating with others (in corporations, businesses, non-profits, churchs, etc, etc, etc.)
There simple is NO success individually anywhere. If so called “super individuals” were to be born outside at least the rudimentary structure of society – our collection of organizations (not even mentioning the family unit) they would die impoverished.
Our existence has succeeded on the continual leveraging and building upon the efforts of others. The very idea of super-individuals in today’s society claiming some sort of superiority after how many millenia of leveraging the advancement of others is patently absurd.
Steve,
Large, impersonal bureaucratic structures which lump the whole mass of people into herded lemmings are the flip side of the super-individual, and they are just as unworkable–think Leninism. I’m kinda partial to the contemporary anarchism/living arrangement proffered by Fredy Perlman.
Thanks Greg. I agree with most of what you’re saying. I guess what I have a hard time rationalizing is the fact that much of what we do in life is inherently self serving. We need one another and in fact can’t survive without one another, but we don’t always trust this dependence. So I think we try to reject it to some degree. Freud’s concept of the ego, id and super ego are relevant here. We have competing thought processes that create an internal conflict resulting in external strife.
Cullen,
Max Stirner labels self serving nature that you’ve described above as egoist. In short, Striner postulates that, yes, we are selfish but that does not mean that this selfish proclivity and cooperation are mutually exclusive. In other words most selfish desires paradoxically lead to a desire for good things to happen to others, as those good fortunes lead to an overall sense of well being for the egotist himself (he can’t be “selfishly” happy if others around him aren’t happy). Those who can be happy in a world where their direct actions lead to the harm of others, emotional and otherwise, are sociopaths. We do have a shitload of those types congregating at Broad and Wall St.
Hey Cullen
I like your comment about “trusting this dependence”. Its a real conflict that humans(all animals really) have. Being needy and having to rely on someone else yet needing some sort of verification that this “other” wont cheat and can be trusted to reciprocate. Very few, if any, other species have the capacity to deceive that we do so our uneasiness is warranted. All social groups are trying to solve the problem of how to detect, deter and de motivate free riders.
I think one of the ways to delineate what I will label (just for convenience) as conservative from liberal or progressive is in how one prefers to solve free rider issues. Conservatives, as a rule I think, try to form smaller and smaller groups with tighter controls and work hard to detect others and out them. Whereas the other strategy is to expand the group diluting out the effect of free riders, making them inconsequential. If they feel they are having no affect they might acquiesce and try harder to cooperate, but even if they dont acquiesce, they will be a small mostly inconsequential minority
strategy.
Theres no need to rationalize self serving behavior. Its how we must be……. and the way we are more effective at that self serving behavior is by being more nurturing of our social structure, not pursuing radical individualism. Its kind of like the counterintuitive insight of MR/MMT that in order for ALL of us in the private sector to spend less than we make in income some entity MUST spend more than their income. There is no other way
Your certainly correct about our internal conflicts leading to external strife…… we must learn how to be effectively selfish.
Yeah, I come at all of this from a unique background (somewhat I think). I grew up in a family where my dad did most of the work and he worked like a dog. So I grew up understanding and appreciating a sense of entrepreneurship and hard work. If you wanted something you had to earn it. I was built to think like that. But at home we were all very tight. 8 brothers and sisters and a tough as nails mom. We all got along amazingly. To the point where we needed each other enormously. We were best friends. There was no other way. It hit home even more in my career as I started my small partnership when I was just 25 and took a huge risk with the money I had made to try to build something on my own. And I was all alone. Every day for years. I refused to seek outside assistance on so many things. In retrospect, I recognize that that was a big mistake because my firm was performing well, but way underperforming what I probably could have done had I waited a few years, matured a bit, and partnered with a bunch of other people. I literally learned that you don’t build anything by yourself. You need other people. Even the most entrepreneurial, innovative and independent people need others. As you said, there is no other way. But we are so hesitant about trusting and needing others. Anyhow, I am rambling. Personal life story over.
Thanks as always Greg.
Not rambling at all, just giving us a little look at you.
Interestingly we all hesitate to do this because we know that many will “use this” against us in various social ways. We only want to open up where its safe, which is where we have control or know we are surrounded by friends.
I think your story is very common. Lots of us had hard working dads that just took care of everything (at least financially) My dad was military and I had one sibling but I had a thrifty mom who was alone at times as my dad was in Viet Nam and then Korea for extended stays. I learned to save but also to buy nice things not cheap crap.
My Mom wouldnt buy stuff that would fall apart to save a nickel. She was willing to pay for quality.
My parents funded my school because they could ( And Im doing the same for my son) and because they felt it was quality to fund my pre med education and then my Masters in Med Sciences. I would have borrowed if necessary but why borrow when not necessary. I hope my son does the same for his son because there is no reason to put your child in debt if not necessary.
One thing that stands out about your story which I think has a “moral” in our present situation is that you risked it all unnecessarily. Or at least way more than you needed. Todays entrepeneurs seem to use less of their own money and use more leverage (much backed by govt guarantees),which I think is smart. But dont come back and tell the rest of us how you did it alone and beat your chest and justify exorbitant fees because of “all the risk you took”. Another example of telling things more like they are.
1. “….the achievements of successful individuals aren’t due to their personal awesomeness (much as they’d like to believe it) but to an indecipherable combination of factors that can’t easily be untangled, explained, or anticipated. Lots of room for randomness and circumstance to play a role in this line of thinking; some might call it “luck”.”
is a very accurate, exact, statistically challengable fact. luck maybe a string word but let’s aknoledge the multifaceted sometimes random nature of success. The only behavior to be seek is then “be in a position to maximise your chances to do it and to grasp chance when it comes to knock at your door” (and be humble !)
2. Rand philosophy is often used by proponents of capitalism who then let proponents of ultra short term liberalism (greed) play on words to jusitify their “system”. BUT the practical result of this is not a world where individuals are free to express their potential but another system where heavy constraints imposed by institutions (corporates, markets) dictates what you should do, what you should learn and how you should behave. I believe in “Great People” thing but today great people are directed to work for goldman sachs. I do believe in capitalism but i do not see it implemented due to lobbyst, and so called ‘economist’ that just bring false intellectual authority to /justify banksters and larry summers like terrible policies to the public. capital is too much diverted from being useful.
3. the free market is a myth, competition is heavily distorted, moral hazard and asymetric information is heaviliy present making the whole theory…well..a nice theory that should stay in books. (and not forced via WTO)
4. people tend to think that economists are not political. Well given how the machine effectively works and what most of them (orthodox) do propose to handle it: they are political.
5. many discussions on this topic will evolve around the individual entrepreneurs and then, thanks to the tendency of people to be more receptive to storytelling than facts, will be used as an arguments to justify policies that favor only big corporates in their quasi monopolistic positions and ruin small businesses. I am being extreme here but the iconic individual entrepreneurs is only used by politicians as a nice story to be tell.
6. those discussions tend to end up irrationally whereas, as with monetary theory, one can see, understand and judge what’s working and what’s not. One can also see the discrepancy between theory and reality. Some people will refer to capitalism as what it is in theory whereas other will refer to it as being the current system. On my own, one more time, i refer to the theory and is not at work ! I hope it’s more than a theory but given the way people are incentivised (and also the way they are not punished) and leaders corrupted/lazy i’m scared.
not to say i want to live in a dictatorship but i want more from the system…
7. what’s the goal of all this ? what is your goal ? what do you think should be the goal of humanity ?
To reuse the “oil in the engine” image made by Cullen regarding banking system, I think we tend to forget that the economic system could be viewed as being the oil of the engine that will drive humanity to it goal (i have my own view about that goal, what’s yours ?). Oil has to be of good quality but let’s not focus only on oil and forget the global picture, the goal…
anyway great post and great comments…i always have good surprise here (even a reference to max stirner…the founder of individualistic anarchism…but what about mutualistic anarchism ?)
thank you CR