tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35624362024-03-12T21:21:41.543-07:00PorphyrogenitusIf one is going to go after sacred cows, one should really go after sacred cows. Most of the people in our society who get credit for "going after sacred cows" are just going after unfashionable ones. At least ones that are unfashionable in the circles they want to appeal to. We live in a world of iconodules posing as iconoclasts.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-66820977149377928602012-09-15T20:07:00.000-07:002012-09-15T20:07:09.180-07:00The Truth is More Hiddeous Than People Would Willingly BelieveIt's good to read <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ap-exclusive-memos-show-us-hushed-soviet-crime-17200217">this</a> in conjunction with <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-to-read-and-enjoy-bogus-history.html">this</a>, especially the section quoting Quentin Reynolds' <a href="http://www.questia.com/read/54828705/the-curtain-rises">book</a> and his <i>mens rea</i>.
Though this is reported, it won't really seep into most people's conciouses, nor will it be drummed into the conciousness like certain other episodes are. But in a just world, it would be.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-48718129202301089852012-08-26T17:22:00.002-07:002012-08-26T17:32:01.102-07:00Forgotten and Neglected HistoryFirst, I hate blogger's new format. Perhaps it's not new, but it's "new" to me because I haven't posted in quite some time. In any case, I'm posting from sections of <a href="http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2010/08/hyperinflation-part-ii-what-it-will.html">a Gonzalo Lira post</a>; setting asside the predictions he made in that post for the moment (they're hyperbolic), and referring only to the historical episode he describes. That episode was the reall nature of the Allende government in Chile:<blockquote>However, my personal history gives me a slight edge in this discussion: During the period 1970–’73, Chile experienced hyperinflation, brought about by the failed and corrupt policies of Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity Government. Though I was too young to experience it first hand, my family and some of my older friends have vivid memories of the Allende period—vivid memories that are actually closer to nightmares. . . <p>
To begin: In 1970, Salvador Allende was elected president by roughly a third of the population. The other two-thirds voted for the centrist Christian Democrat candidate, or for the center-right candidate in roughly equal measure. Allende’s election was a fluke. <p>
He wasn’t a centrist, no matter what the current hagiography might claim: Allende was a hard-core Socialist, who headed a Hard Left coalition called the Unidad Popular—the Popular Unity (UP, pronounced “oo-peh”). This coalition—Socialists, Communists, and assorted Left parties—took over the administration of the country, and quickly implemented several “reforms”, which were designed to “put Chile on the road to Socialism”. <p>
Land was expropriated—often by force—and given to the workers. Companies and mines were also nationalized, and also given to the workers. Of course, the farms, companies and mines which were stripped from their owners weren’t inefficient or ineptly run—on the contrary, Allende and his Unidad Popular thugs stole farms, companies and mines from precisely the “blood-thirsty Capitalists” who best treated their workers, and who were the most fair towards them. <p>
Allende’s government also put UP-loyalists in management positions in those nationalized enterprises—a first step towards implementing a Leninist regime, whereby the UP would have “political control” over the means of production and distribution. From speeches and his actions, it’s clear that Allende wanted to implement a Maoist-Leninist regime, with himself as Supreme Leader. <p>
One of the key policy initiative Allende carried out was wage and price controls. In order to appease and co-opt the workers, Allende’s regime simultaneously froze prices of basic goods and services, and augmented wages by decree. <p>
At first, this measure worked like a charm: Workers had more money, but goods and services still had the same old low prices. So workers were happy with Allende: They went on a shopping spree—and rapidly emptied stores and warehouses of consumer goods and basic products. Allende and the UP Government then claimed it was right-wing, anti-Revolutionary “acaparadores”—hoarders—who were keeping consumer goods from the workers. Right. <p>
Meanwhile, private companies—forced to raise worker wages while maintaining their same price structures—quickly went bankrupt: So then, of course, they were taken over by the Allende government, “in the name of the people”. Key industries were put on the State dole, as it were, and made to continue their operations at a loss, so as to satisfy internal demand. If there was a cash shortfall, the Allende government would simply print more escudos and give them to the now State-controlled companies, which would then pay the workers. <p>
This is how hyperinflation started in Chile. Workers had plenty of cash in hand—but it was useless, because there were no goods to buy. <p>
So Allende’s government quickly instituted the Juntas de Abastecimiento y Control de Precios (“Unions of Supply and Price Controls”, known as JAP). These were locally formed boards, composed of loyal Party members, who decided who in a given neighborhood received consumer products, and who did not. Naturally, other UP-loyalists had preference—these Allende backers received ration cards, with which to buy consumer goods and basic staples. <p>
Of course, those people perceived as “unfriendly” to Allende and the UP Government either received insufficient rations for their families, or no rations at all, if they were vocally opposed to the Allende regime and its policies. <p>
Very quickly, a black market in goods and staples arose. At first, these black markets accepted escudos. But with each passing month, more and more escudos were printed into circulation by the Allende government, until by late ’72, black marketeers were no longer accepting escudos. Their mantra became, “Sólo dólares”: Only dollars. <p>
Hyperinflation had arrived in Chile. <p>
(Most Chileans, myself included, find ourselves both amused and irritated, whenever Americans self-righteously claim that Nixon ruined Chile’s economy, and thereby derailed Allende’s “Socialist dream”. Yes, according to Kissinger’s memoirs, Nixon did in fact tell the CIA that he wanted Chile’s economy to “scream”—but Allende did such a bang-up job of fucking up Chile’s economy all on his own that, by the time Richard Helms got around to implementing his pissant little plots against the Chilean economy, there was not much left to ruin.)<p>
One of the effects of Chile’s hyperinflation was the collapse in asset prices. <p>
This would seem counterintuitive. After all, if the prices of consumer goods and basic staples are rising in a hyperinflationary environment, then asset prices should rise as well—right? Equities should rise in price—since more money is chasing after the same number of stock. Real estate prices should rise also—and for the same reason. Right?<p>
Actually, wrong—and for a simple reason: Once basic necessities are unmet, and remain unmet for a sustained period of time, any asset will be willingly and instantly sacrificed, in order to meet that basic need. <p>
To put it in simple terms: If you were dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, would you give up your family heirloom diamonds, in exchange for a gallon of water? The answer is obvious—yes. You would sacrifice anything and everyting—instantly—in order to meet your basic needs, or those of your family. <p>
So as the situation in Chile deteriorated in ’72 and into ’73, the stock market collapsed, the housing market collapsed—everything collapsed, as people either cashed out of their assets in order to buy basic goods and staples on the black market, or cashed out so as to leave the country altogether. No asset class was safe, from this sell-off—it was across-the-board, and total.</blockquote>Anyhow, in that post Gonzalo Lira's focus isn't (primarily) the essentially lawless and vicious nature of the Allende government, but the economic results of its destructive and inhumane ideological policies aimed at enriching supporters and crushing dissenters.<p>
This is what is ignored in the mythiography of Allende-as-martyred-democrat meme that is spread by our own ideological reality-shaping community, a movement with a long and ignoble history, but still a bright future for ambitious young people who want to combine passion with casuistry along with their devotion to the unlimited state.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-26538938767370692822010-10-17T08:22:00.000-07:002010-10-17T08:22:38.733-07:00Fear FactorSpeaking of <a href="http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2010/10/bitterly-clinging-to-their-fears-and-frustrations.html">this</a>, wasn't that part of <i><b>their</b></i> political strategy? To not let a crisis go to waste because during it they could herd people into accepting things people otherwise wouldn't go for?<br />
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Projection is rife with this Administration.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-54008431701466316382010-08-17T19:03:00.001-07:002010-08-17T19:05:22.071-07:00ConsistencyAlways remember that the governing class is completely consistent. They <a href="http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit-archive/archives2/022189.php">consistently</a> have <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/17/ground-zero-church-archdiocese-says-officials-forgot/">two standards</a>.<br />
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The Over and Under: The Mosque will be completed before the new WTC/Freedom Tower/"One World" Tower/whatever they end up calling it in the end. The Orthodox Church won't be rebuilt.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-12881916934267260052010-07-29T21:35:00.000-07:002010-07-29T21:35:35.791-07:00Not necessarily because of the specific issue, but I'm really keen on <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/29/support-for-mexican-border-fence-up-to-68/">polls with this breakdown</a>:<BLOCKQUOTE>But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it.</BLOCKQUOTE>We need a constant stream of polls showing "N% of the general electorate has this view, X% of the political class believes the opposite."<br />
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Not because the majority is always right, but because it's absolutely critical to <b><i>repeatedly</i></b> demonstrate <b><i>on a range of issues</i></b> how detached the governing class is from the people they govern, how alienated they are from the society they rule.<br />
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Which is also why, alas, such breakdowns are unlikely to get widespread mention in the Official Press.<br />
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On this one I actually agree with the majority of the country, but "to fence, or not to fence" is not actually the point here. I'm sure there are issues where I'll disagree with the majority of the electorate, and agree with the governing class (though prolly not many issues). But still I think that, even here I think the majority is wrong, putting in everyone's face the fact that the disconnect between the governed and the governing class has become so vast is an absolute precondition to addressing a lot of the problems we have. I don't think the majority is always right, but I <i><b>do</b></i> think it will be...informative...for the majority to learn so decisively how often their leaders think they're wrong. Then we can all decide through democratic vote which group is really the most fsk'd up.<br />
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Lustration to follow! épuration légale!Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-19948022650739504122010-07-29T20:52:00.000-07:002010-07-29T21:02:02.099-07:00Blogchair PsychoanalysisI'm not getting a soft-spot for the current Administration, far from it, most of my opinions of it I don't post here, but I still hold it in a minimum of high regard.<p><br />
That said, some criticisms are just <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/barack_obama_adult_child_of_an.html">mindless</a>. People on the Right such as myself and, I presume, the fine people at American Thinker, properly despise it when the Left subjects conservatives (either politicians or as a whole) to distant armchair psychoanalysis. So why are they engaging in it?<br />
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It doesn't <i><b>seem</b></i> to be along the lines of what I admit is one of my favorite strategeries, that of hoisting them on their own petard, subjecting them (the President in this case, the Left in general) to the same standards they subject everyone else to to demonstrate how fail and inconsistent the standards are. No, that piece seems perfectly earnest on its own terms. Right down to concluding "<i>adult children of alcoholics... keep them out of the White House</i>"<br />
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Well, a good Liberal, Left, Progressive, whatever writer could - and should - use my aforementioned favorite tactic in response to that: Does the author really mean Ronald Reagan should have been kept from the White House? Reagan was also an adult child of an alcoholic, and, unlike Obama, experienced it up close.<br />
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Criticisms of these sort, blogchair psychoanalytics, are insipid and self-defeating regardless of who engages in them. They do nothing to advance the debate, and a lot to poison it. I mean, c'mon, who is fooling who here? Nobody is fooling anyone but themselves. People who think Obama or Reagan should have never been President don't do so because they're the product of alcoholic households or any other psychoanalytic reason, and nobody who does think either were or are fine Presidents are going to be convinced otherwise by bogus arguments of this sort. The psychoanalitic deligitimization comes after already deciding they don't like their policies. It's never "you know, I really like what this guy's trying to accomplish and support his policies, but he's probably got this deep-seated mental disorder I attribute to him. He might be unfit for office by reason of crazy."<br />
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You know what would be a fun experiment? Find 1000 people who approve of the President, have them read that article, and see how many changed their minds and now think he's unfit for the office. Would there be <i>one</i> such person?Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-63543876451584991362010-07-20T16:12:00.000-07:002010-07-20T16:12:21.156-07:00Men at Work<a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/">A snapshot</a> of something that's not usually so overt and generally doesn't work as conciously:<BLOCKQUOTE>What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.<br />
<br />
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.</BLOCKQUOTE>This is the underlaying mentality, almost never expressed at all, much less so starkly.<br />
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<a href="http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Mary_Frances_Berry_91E3D9D5-C40D-440C-9D48-1C50CBC60C87.html">Compare with</a>:<BLOCKQUOTE>Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.</BLOCKQUOTE>Quite candid, really.<br />
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Oh, and: Eric Alterman was on JournoList, and I think its predecessor, and no doubt will be on whatever succeeds it. Remember that next time you're tempted to take his claims of how stories in the Official Press are or are not formulated seriously. Though there is always <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-liberal.html">this</a>.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-15731829562981025572010-07-05T17:28:00.000-07:002010-07-05T17:28:21.532-07:00Quotes I Stumbled AcrossWritten by "elf" in a comment at CNAS:<BLOCKQUOTE>My contempt is so deep I've moved past rage into calm.</BLOCKQUOTE>Which closed with:<BLOCKQUOTE>Don't take it personally. It's not you. It's all of you.<br />
</BLOCKQUOTE>Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-17748927247885634722010-07-05T17:13:00.000-07:002010-07-05T17:13:53.870-07:00Holding the Gun and Pulling the TriggerA response to <a href="http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2010/07/guns_dont_kill_1.html">this worthy post</a> at Classical Values:<br />
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1) It is quite often helpful knowing the origin of an action, motivated by the ideas behind it, in order to combat it. Especially when the action often comes in the form of spreading concepts it advocated.<br />
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2) Holding X Cultural Marxist (either originator or successor) accountable in debate is not the same as jailing them or even outlawing them or even their ideas. It's part of responding to speech with speech.<br />
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3) I'm pretty sure you know both of the above, but your recent post on the subject could be clearer, implying as it does clearing their names. If for example Marx's ideas when put into practice tend to lead to what they have always led to, one can and should point out that there seems to be something wrong with Marxism (to put it mildly), not *just* with their practitioners. Otherwise it tends towards lending credence to the oft-asserted claim that "it wasn't really Marxism" or "that's not what Marx intended" - sure it may not be, but if the story always ends the same way, maybe the author is subject to a critique?<br />
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4) If people say "I advocate that X, Y, and Z be done to tear down this capitalist society we dislike," and then they teach people to do X, Y, an Z, and who then teach others, &tc. &tc, that's not just creating an idea, that's putting it into action. Especially if the ideas themselves revolve around marching through cultural institutions in this way. The hands of people like Marcuse aren't clean. To continue the analogy you initiated, if they're holding the gun and pulling the trigger, then it's not the same as sitting in a institute somewhere and imagining how one might bring down a society, then others stumble across your texts through no fault of your own and put the ideas into practice while you're at saying "no, no, I was only describing how one could do it, I wasn't telling you to do it" or at least maintaining a discrete neutrality. The members of the Frankfurt School may all be dead today, but they were the first not only to come up with their ideas, but to put them into practice, since that practice consists precisely in spreading certain attitudes and belief-sets. <br />
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5) Thus the best analogy might be akin to "Patient Zero" of AIDS, who kept deliberately spreading it after he was told what it was. Even then it's perhaps an inapt analogy, because at first he spread it unaware of what he was doing. These people knew from the start.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-52913897809910562352010-06-03T16:51:00.000-07:002010-06-03T17:59:23.637-07:00Israel's Strategic FailureMy cold-blooded and deranged response to Walter Russell Meade's <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/06/03/israels-strategic-failure/comment-page-1/#comment-6720">post on the subject</a>.<br />
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The real strategic failure is that Israel continues to start measures and then backpedal in a way that produces all the negative consequences of action without any of the achievable goals being produced:<br />
Going into Lebanon and then later Gaza in force to root out the problems at their source, and then stopping and withdrawing in the face of the usual international reaction. Their international reputation would have hardly been worse if they had finished the job. Anyone who supported the initial policy in each case has to be disapointed by the ultimate lack of fortitude to follow through with it (which was predictable to me as both these campaigns started, though I hoped I was wrong), and anyone who opposed Israel in these cases is quietly thanking their good fortune.<br />
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Yet as I said, the each unfolded predictably, every time, exactly as I have foreseen, because at bottom even - especially - the Israelis want to not only do the right thing, but what is actually worse be *seen* and *perceived* as doing the right thing. So when they go to cut the knot, they saw half way through and when the International Community's Greek Chorus shouts them down, they stop and back off, letting it regrow and metastasize, letting it feel it has the momentum, feel a sense of victory, and that the Winds of Change are on their side.<br />
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This inevitably leaves them with the worst of both worlds. Surely WRM knows Napoleon's saying that if you set out to take Vienna, TAKE VIENNA.<br />
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Probably the best strategic move Israel could do now is rename itself "North Korea" (while not adopting that nation's political ideology). Then they could do whatever they want, sink any ship, threaten and kill anyone they needed to, and the ever-so caring International Community wouldn't care one whit - except to urge "Caution" and "don't over-react" and "nobody should escalate the situation."<br />
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Anyhow, it's really all over now; as my mother said the other day about this, it's like a dying person connected to a respirator. Everyone knows what is to come, but no one knows when.<br />
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Or, in one of my favorite quotes, tragic in this context, "The non-inevitability of events we nevertheless know are bound to come."<br />
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It is non-inevitable: Something could change, in us, the broad us, the so-called civilized world. But do you think it will? In time? Since it hasn't yet, despite many wuss-slaps to the face by reality, when and under what circumstances do you think it will? Again: In time. In this case, in time for the Israelis, who one would think have sacrificed enough and been sacrificed enough to other's self-regard.<br />
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T.S. Eliot: "<i>Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.</i>"<br />
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These days it most, more than half, of the forces for evil in this world would be readily checked if it wasn't for these two sorts of people. But we let them hold the reins.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-32441287383582332992010-06-01T20:24:00.000-07:002010-06-01T20:24:38.483-07:00After Virtue Revisited IaI'll have more to write on the updated version of "After Virtue," but until then there is <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/2010/06/01/kant-cant-explain-human-dignity/">this Spengler post</a> independently supporting the idea that the enlightenment project of justifying morality has failed, at least with respect to Kant and his philosophical heirs. (D. Layman doesn't refer to other branches of this heritage in that particular post; MacIntyre does, and as I said I'll get back to him later).Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-52488620400213275672010-05-29T08:13:00.000-07:002010-05-29T09:23:11.161-07:00Politics and the Arabic LanguageMusing a bit further on <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama%E2%80%99s-top-counterterror-adviser%E2%80%99s-inability-to-think-outside-the-box-bodes-disaster/">this article</a>, particularly this section:<blockquote>Next, our counterterror adviser evokes the perverse logic behind the administration’s recent decision to censor words offensive to Muslims (which I closely explored in <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-tries-to-eradicate-radical-islam/">this PJM article</a>):<blockquote>Nor do we describe our enemy as “jihadists” or “Islamists” because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.</BLOCKQUOTE>Inasmuch as he is correct in the first clause of that sentence — “jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community” — he greatly errs in the latter clause, by projecting his own notions of what constitutes “holy,” “legitimate,” and “innocent” onto Islam. In Islam, such terms are often antithetical to the Judeo-Christian/Western understanding. Indeed, the institution of jihad, according to every authoritative Muslim book on Islamic jurisprudence, is nothing less than offensive warfare to spread Sharia law, a cause seen as both “legitimate” and “holy” in Islam. As for “innocence,” by simply being a non-Muslim infidel, one is already <a href="http://ibrahim.pundicity.com/7427/islam-and-innocence">guilty in Islam</a>. Brennan understands the definition of jihad; he just has no clue of its application. So he is left fumbling about with a square peg that simply refuses to pass through a round hole.</BLOCKQUOTE>Until the recent "troubles" it wasn't just Islamic jurisprudence that properly understood what the term Jihad meant; it was universally understood throughout not just Islam but all cultures that had contact with Islam to mean warfare, specifically directed at non-Muslims or those declared heretics and thus deemed to be un-Islamic.<br />
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In recent times Muslim spokesmen working in conjunction with the usual suspects of PoMo intellectuals/pseudo-scholars and progressives have attempted to re-define the term. But one needs only to pick up any book from the previous era that even tangentially touches on the subject to see the term used in its proper historic meaning. As a student of ByzantinoRoman history I know this full well. Thus Ibrahim is actually wrong when he says, almost reflecting the thinking of Edward Said, that his "dual Middle-East/Western background gives me the advantage to understand both the Islamicate and American mindsets equally." Previous generations of Westerners also understood the term Jihad properly. The ethnocentric projection Ibrahim rightly condemns is actually a post-modern and multiculturalist phenomenon, and thus a rather recent innovation. This might seem like a minor quibble, but it's critical to our understanding of the problems we face.<br />
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It would be more proper to say that the word "Crusade" has transformed from its original meaning than it is to say "Jihad" has. After all, we have such things as "crusades for peace" and "The Billy Graham Crusade," neither of which involve mobilizing armies to recover<sup>1</sup> lands from Islam by military means. Jihad has never ceased to mean what it means, however, up through the mobilization of Arabs to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets and down through the present, though we are asked to believe otherwise. But we are told we cannot use the word "Crusade" because it is inflamatory, while also being instructed to re-conceive our understanding of calls for Jihad. This is a form of mental manipulation inflicted upon us not by our enemies, but by ourselves - or at any rate one wing of our own civilization.<br />
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And of course many young people, knowing little, having come of age in this era of degenerate pseudo-scholarship, educated by the instructors they have been educated, sincerely believe Jihad does not mean what it means. This is one means of intellectually disarming us, and leading people into accepting the received wisdom of progressivism on the sources and causes of this conflict, rather than connecting it to history. It helps open them to the conclusions of a Said or a Fisk or even their slightly-less-radical imitators: That we are to blame.<br />
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Redfining terms by those with an ideological axe to grind is almost invariably aimed at controling the thinking of others.<br />
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<sup>1</sup>Yes, recover: Crusades, aweful as many Crusaders behaved, were launched as counter-attacks. To call any but the 4th aggressive is akin to calling D-Day agressive. But, in this degenerate age, that history, however bad it was even told "straight," has been corrupted for ideological ends.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-18248936053402201852010-05-22T07:32:00.000-07:002010-05-22T07:32:42.687-07:00A Plague of ToadsWRM has a <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/05/21/how-britain-can-stop-eating-toads/">decent post</a> on postwar/postimperial Britain's international situation and what to do about it. The first part is essentially a factual narrative and analysis, the second part a recommended policy for Britain. <br />
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Arguably it's a policy worth attempting. I'm not sure it will be attempted, in part because the new British government is built on foundation that does not share some of WRM's premises. If it was attempted, there is of course no guarantee it would be effective, but life, and policies, are not about guarantees.<br />
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There are three other policies that could be followed. One: The LibDem dream policy of integrating Britain into the Franco-German project, with Britain signing on to the "ever greater union" as envisioned by the Franco-Germans. Britain would stop becoming an "obstacle" and would have apparent/illusory influence. This influence would only be superficial, however, as it would consist of getting along by going along and not making waves.<br />
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The second option would be "splendid isolation," withdrawal from the EU itself. This does not have to be as catastrophic as one might think. WRM's article mentions Norway and the fact that Norway is not a member of the EU. But Norway has trading agreements with the EU, and other ties, and gets on fine.<br />
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The third option, the least likely option (and thus naturally my preferred option) is revitalization of the Commonwealth as an economic and political/international force: The commonwealth as a free trade area which also attempts to coordinate a common foreign policy wherever policy. Frankly I wish that this had been the course followed in the wake of WWII: Instead of America insisting upon effectively neutering the British Commonwealth, encouraging its transformation into a free trade zone and <i><b>joining</b></i> it, along with the Philippines and Japan. What I think of as the best is almost always the least likely/possible, but such is life. Plus, if America were to join the Commonwealth, arguably Britain's international influence would not be increased: It would instead just be the reverse side of the same coin that has integrating itself with Franco-German EU policy on the obverse. Only a Commonwealth Free Trade Zone that has Britain as its first-among-equals would potentially increase British influence in world affairs, and as long as India keeps growing as fast as it is, Britain's premere status would necessarily be temporary.<br />
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Odds of a revitalized Commonwealth, with or without the U.S. joining, lay somewhere between slim and none. Which leaves Britain with the other three options: WRM's, Harmonized Borgism, or Splendid Isolation. For better or worse, if one wants Britain to have more influence in international affairs (which is what WRM concentrates), neither the HBism nor SIism will achieve that. WRM's outline is the only policy within the realm of the possible that could produce this.<br />
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Of course, there are other goods than international influence. Britain might decide the best thing to do would be to avoid getting entangled in such as much as possible and working on its own domestic problems. In which case Splendid Isolation would be the best policy: Being drawn into ever closer union within the EU naturally would involve participating in whatever disputes it has, both within the EU and with the broader world. Britain would not be entirely isolated if it left the EU anyhow: It would still be a member of NATO, for example, and in any case should wake from the Europe-wide revere that war is over and one need not have the capacity to truly defend one's own interests: It should shift its spending priorities to insure it will have the capacity to deter, and if necessary defeat, Argentina again, should that prove necessary.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-37415738815933302042010-05-20T08:29:00.000-07:002010-05-20T08:49:10.767-07:00Depictions of Mohammed<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs603.snc3/31752_401047037015_611602015_4692609_7467043_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs603.snc3/31752_401047037015_611602015_4692609_7467043_n.jpg" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs603.snc3/31752_401047017015_611602015_4692607_6575976_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs603.snc3/31752_401047017015_611602015_4692607_6575976_n.jpg" /></a>While I see no good reason to deliberately insult people's beliefs simply for the sake of insulting them, there are pre-eminent reasons to stand up for our own belief, and to take a stand against threats of violence, against attempted intimidation, even by a minority within a community. Indeed, that is all the more reason to not be silent: We cannot let a violent minority of any faith or community determine the terms of debate, and effectively hijack it and become its <i>de facto</i> spokesmen.</div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">It is simply not true that depictions of Mohammed have not been allowed in Islam, as the above pictures demonstrate.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">If we do nothing, and if moderate, reasonable Moslems do nothing, then our mental image of Mohammed must become this:</div></div></div><br />
<center></center><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs543.ash1/31752_401047042015_611602015_4692610_1237487_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="320" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs543.ash1/31752_401047042015_611602015_4692610_1237487_n.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">As it already is for many people.</div></div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"></div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In any case, here is my Mohammed for the day:</div></div></div><br />
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<center style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"></center><br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-sjc1/hs603.snc3/31752_401043697015_611602015_4692508_6342171_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="320" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-sjc1/hs603.snc3/31752_401043697015_611602015_4692508_6342171_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-42343875689018686702010-05-19T10:49:00.000-07:002010-05-19T21:00:03.207-07:00After Virtue Revisited ILong-time readers of whatever passes for my Blog at any given time know that in addition to Hayek I have a high regard for Alasdair MacIntyre's work. I picked up the 2007 edition of <i>After Virtue</i>. MacIntyre is most noteworthy for his description of the incommensurable demands of conflicting moral stances in modern times, arising out of the enlightenment-era reformulation of philosophy that, he says, discarded Aristotelian thinking and de-emphasized the virtues.<br />
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He has a compelling analysis and a good account for a foundation of virtuous ethics. However there are problems with aspects of what he says caused the strident, interminable and conceptually incommensurable nature of modern ethical dialogue.<br />
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There is teleological thinking in Mill, Kant, and Hobbes. Even Nietzsche has a Telos beyond "the will to power" for those who know where to look. Kant develops his own account of the virtues and their sources. However there might be in these philosophers a disconnection from the Aristotelian conception of the source and nature of both telos and virtue.<br />
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MacIntyre might be incorrect as to the exact nature of what is missing, what got lost, in what he describes as the fragments that became modernism. If so we could see him falling into some of the same pitfalls he deplores.<br />
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This does seem to be the case, and it is evident early in the current edition. On pp. xiv-xv he moves seamlessly from decrying "the dominant liberal view, [that] government is to be neutral towards rival conceptions of the human good, and yet in fact what liberalism promotes is a kind of institutional order that is inimical to the construction and sustaining of the types of communal relationship required for the best kind of human life" on the one hand to, in the very next paragraph, decrying the use of the state for coercive purposes, just as any classical liberal might.<br />
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This simply won't wash, it cannot be both ways, and this attitude reflects not so much an escape from the modern condition of confusion and contradictory aspirations on his part, but membership in it. State power is coercive power, and if it is used as the means through which an institutional order is constructed and sustained in the manner he advocates in the first instance, it will be coercive. Imposed conceptions of the good by the sovereign authority are likely not the droids he is looking for anyhow. These include state religions, Marxism itself, and even modern Liberalism itself. In most such cases we can see the development of a crisis of confidence in imposed conceptions of the good, resulting in a hollowing out. There are still many State Religions in European countries, but relatively few people sustain any belief in them. Putatively Marxist countries such as China and Vietnam don't hold any sincere belief in that conception of the good, either. There are some few places where the elites in charge of the imposed conception of the good maintain at least confidence in enforcing it, if not in the belief system itself (it can be hard to tell), but these are not places I think Alasdair MacIntyre would want to live: They are places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea*, and Burma.<br />
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What might be missing are alternate authorities and intermediary institutions that even the (liberal/modern) State defers to within their own sphere, and which people respect enough to give weight to their common account of the virtues. These were once predominantly religious authorities and institutions, and in those communities where such are still vital and living, traditional Aristotelian virtues arguably remain strongest (though with of course the breaches and problems. Few of these claim, as outsiders might commonly accuse, of being without vice).<br />
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at the start of the preface on page xvii MacIntyre writes that <i>After Virtue</i> came out of "a growing dissatisfaction with the conception of 'moral philosophy' as an independent and isolable area of enquiry." This is probably a true observation, however one of the flaws in how MacIntyre goes about his accounting of the virtues and his attempted revitalization of Aristotilianism is he retains his debt to Marx and Marxism. However, Marx was a bad economist (among other things), getting much wrong. Marx is economics for sociologists (I should know, having taken a Sociology course taught by Joel Rogers) and for philosophers. Marxist economics is very deficient.<br />
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This is where one must turn instead to Hayek. There are some who call themselves "Rawlsekians," combining Hayek and Rawls. However, I don't think this is satisfying, in part because I do not think Rawls' effort is ultimately convincing (except to the choir). "Hayintyrian" does not roll off the tongue or even the page very well, but in their accounts of the origins of and basis of an ethos, Hayek and MacIntyre mesh well together and each improves on the other's deficiencies. Hayek, following the lessons of Mises, has a much better understanding of economics than Marx, and because of that is able to develop concepts of spontaneous and extended order:<blockquote>The Extended order "is a framework of institutions – economic, legal, and moral – into which we fit ourselves by obeying certain rules of conduct that we never made, and which we have never understood in the sense of which we understand how the things that we manufacture function" This "order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional & largely moral practices..."</BLOCKQUOTE>MacIntyre may not properly understand that due to its nature and purpose, the modern State is ill-suited to serve as the vehicle for advancing a common conception of the good. However his insight, which is not his alone, that the liberal state dissolves and at times actively suppresses institutions and competing authorities that promote common conceptions of the good, is a worthy one. The liberal modern order, if it is not to destroy itself as MacIntyre implies, must exist within a moral framework that is not itself liberal, to paraphrase the thoughts of another.<br />
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*Which arguably does not impose the Marxist conception of the good, but whatever degenerate conception the Kims have developed.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-22666176814898213312010-05-18T14:08:00.000-07:002010-05-18T14:08:10.780-07:00I Win Ben Stein!I had a e-mail exchange with Win Ben Stein this weekend after watching him on the "Cost of Freedom" block saying he felt Socialism was inevitable in America. Obviously he wasn't cheering it, he just felt it was inevitable. Well I went to the trouble of looking up his e-mail and having a polite go at him: Yes, I can do polite.<br />
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I made a bit of fun of the usual way people start off such e-mails, about saying how they love someone's work and really admire them right before they launch into a vicious attack. Then I launched into my attack not on Mr. Stein but the assertion he made and its underlying premise.<br />
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I didn't figure I'd hear back from him: Heck I wasn't even sure I had his correct e-mail. But to my pleasant surprise he did write back, saying it was a great e-mail, before having a brief go at me. Well we went back and forth a bit over the weekend. I'll spare everyone the details except to say he was polite and brief and I rambled. I haven't heard from him since my last reply.<br />
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So I'm going to say I Win Ben Stein! I'll conclude that I convinced him with my brilliant arguments, while somewhere he's out there no doubt thinking I'm an ignoramus. So then we're both winners!Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-8691377762069539022010-05-10T10:23:00.000-07:002010-05-10T10:23:08.005-07:00Sic Transit Gloria MundiGordon Brown is <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/video_and_audio/news_channel_live/7459669.stm">accepting the inevitable</a> in Britain. I wonder if I'll feel the same sympathy for BHO or Pelosi or Reid as I feel for Gordon Brown, when their time comes. I doubt it, because I'm too close to the mater while, howeverso much I admire and identify with Great Britain and wish it all the best and think neither GB nor Labour are good for it, really his situation is more tragic than anything else: A part of something, partly responsible, not apart from it, but none the less held nearly exclusively responsible for things everyone knew when he moved into No. 10 were almost bound to happen.<br />
The real blame goes to Blair, but not for the reasons people dislike Blair, and neither is Blair entirely to blame for he two was and is part of a movement. But one he was more responsible for creating and leading than Brown is.<br />
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When Brown moved into the PM seat, pretty much everyone knew at the time that the sunlit days were over and the ship had entered stormy seas, and it would be very difficult for him to pilot Labour to another electoral success, given the difficulties that it was *already* *apparent* Britain was to face.<br />
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The fact that he's an unlovable man seems to have been at least as critical in the *dislike* people have for him as any responsibility he may have had as Chancellor (a job that, before the storm clouds appeared on the horizon just as he moved into the job he had always wanted, well until then all the opinion-leaders had praised him for how well he did. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi).<br />
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He didn't create the policies, though he surely supported and helped craft them. One man, even one Party, being held to account does not imply a solution if the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/06/constitution-in-decline/print/">institutions which are primarily responsible</a> simply carry forward without being held accountable.<br />
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As that last link shows, these problems aren't just British in nature. We have them as well. Voting different politicians into office while these are not held accountable solves nothing.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-27068839785321770912010-05-04T14:45:00.000-07:002010-05-04T15:13:39.541-07:00Confidence is HighFrom Walter Russel Mead's <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/05/03/the-lisbon-syndrome/">Blog</a>:<blockquote>Wretched as Washington is, Brussels is almost infinitely worse.</BLOCKQUOTE>Well, that's inspiring, no?<br />
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This in a post where he's hoping the markets respond favorably to the EU's bailout of Greece and don't swing against the PIIGS.<br />
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It's a fairly vain hope once one recognizes how wretched "Brussels" is, but it may just work. Then, later, when the house of cards comes crashing down at some future date, we can all blame bankers again. Huzzah!<br />
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There's also this, for all those who think government is the only way we have to make the world a better place<sup>1</sup>:<blockquote>Ten years ago, the European Union with great fanfare unveiled the “Lisbon Agenda”, a ten-year action plan to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.</BLOCKQUOTE>How'd that go?<blockquote>It flopped. Europe is less of a factor today than it was ten years ago in the high-tech world.</BLOCKQUOTE>Well, lets do emulate Europe, as so many want to do: It's working out so well for them, after all.<br />
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From his <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/05/01/the-greek-tragedy-unfolds/">previous post</a> on the subject:<BLOCKQUOTE>The point of the protesters is that the rich should pay the costs of the economic crisis not the ‘blameless’ ordinary people whose only sin is to have voted for generations of demagogic politicians who promised to give them the moon and pay for it with other people’s money.</BLOCKQUOTE>Nothing like that could ever happen here, at least...<br />
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<sup>1</sup>As commenter "Roland" put it in a response to my post of the below at WindsofChange.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-4742154980234056702010-05-03T11:36:00.000-07:002010-05-03T11:49:24.198-07:00The Governments Have Learned from their MistakesIt's too easy to satirize the <a href="http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/hundreds_of_yards_further_or_banking_crises_and_memory.html">mocking of naive innocents</a> such as <a href="http://blog.american.com/?p=13254">Jonah Goldberg</a>, to engage in the fun but unedifying art of <i>tu quoque</i> aimed at the well-meaning gentlemen who note market failure and imply the panacea: Good for what ails you! Got market failure? Government will cure it. Government failure? More government will cure it. Personal problems? Government is here to help you with all your needs.<br />
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We live in an era where <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/02/greek-bailout-already-making-s">some fringe cranks</a> focus in an inchoate way on government failure, or the pitfalls of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/department-of-huh/39750/">government solutions for perceived market failure</a>.<br />
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Sophisticated people focus more on how we acting together in a socially-responsible way can fix the problems that irresponsible private actors have inflicted upon all of us. The enlightened main currents of opinion recognize that it is certainly annoying to clean up after these messes created by private individuals and institutions, but if we don't accept the burden, the costs to us all will be higher.<br />
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The trouble is, as sagacious as people like Kevin Drum are when compared to simple-minded people like Jonah Goldberg, these guardians of the main currents of enlightened opinion fail to think beyond stage one: Why is it that bankers won't learn from their mistakes? What incentive structures have been put in place or, as importantly, what has been demolished, so as to discourage them from learning from their mistakes?<br />
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Demolished might be too strong a word. Decayed, dissolved, deteriorated might all be better descriptions, as in a building not well maintained, as with much of our public infrastructure (oh, but shovel-ready will fix this as well!)<br />
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Here is the question they dislike most, as it reflects a shocking lack of faith in our ability to solve public problems through collective action: Have the institutions they favor demonstrated a better capacity for learning from <i><b>their</b></i> mistakes than the ones they mock? If not, why not?<br />
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Are California or Michigan or New York &tc doing better learning from their mistakes than Goldman Sachs is? Are they <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-05-03-editorial03_ST_N.htm">really</a>? We mock the idea that bankers are, but is it a fair mockery? Or the gaunt, chilling laugh of those who are practically undead themselves?<br />
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Have the PIIGS learned from their mistakes? Really now, have they? Is there at least as much at stake here as there is in even the biggest "too big to fail" bank or corporation?<br />
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Those who think the problem was embedded in a previous Administration or one side of the aisle need to free their minds as well. The reassuring myth that it is all caused by having the wrong sort of people in government, and now we've got the right sort of master-minds involved; those who believe in government and have faith in its capacity to solve all problems, is one they may want to reconsider, and take a more historical view. If they can open their mind to untainted history.<br />
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A few points to keep in mind as they open their minds: Firstly, a group that swept into power asserting that they were going to make break with the failed policies of the past often use as one of their cudgels against those who object to their policies the fact that their policies are no different from that of the previous Administration's. This double-think has an old and dishonorable history, dating back at least to the Administration they most admire: FDR's, which has gone down in progressive history as a sharp contrast from the supposedly do-nothing lassez faire Hoover Administration, when the truth was "<i>practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started</i>," as Rex Tugwell admitted.<br />
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Why is this ancient history important? Isn't it true that only cranks and nutters, usually on TV or Radio or at some obscure Think Tank, rave on about comparisons between Hoover and FDR? True, but ideological finger-pointing and sneering over this obscures rather than illuminates: It closes the mind you want open to engage in any reconsideration.<br />
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Exactly as it is meant to.<br />
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In this way, we lose track of the original task: Unravelling the big ball of string that has come down to us, in order to see where it leads us in answering our question: Why our are institutions, private as well as public, apparently no longer capable of learning from experience?<br />
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(Btw, how's fixing education working out for you? How has throwing money at the problem worked out for you? Do you retain faith in the same government that has complete and sole responsible for one District's public education system, the District of Columbia's, to solve the problem's of our country's education system? Where does DC rank in per-pupil spending? Has it become the shining jewel which the rest of the country should emulate?. Over the last, pick a time period, lets say 35 years, has government learned from its mistakes when it comes to the provision of education? And yet the wise are confident it will do the best of all possible jobs when it comes to, say, health care...or student loans...or home mortgages...or the auto industry).<br />
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Our enlightened, when they speak of society's problems and the need for "society" to address them, they always mean by the later government. <--- Non-sequitur inserted to keep in mind when considering all of this.
Is their confident mocking laughter really warranted? From who's knee have the Banker's learned from since 1933 (or before)? Who shields them from the consequences of their own decisions? Who is shielding the rest of us from the consequences of ours? This confidence that we out here, private individuals and institutions, make mistakes, make blunders, but they are wise and will ever <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0300122233">nudge</a> us in the Correct Direction, save us from folly, and never lead us all into folly or, like lemmings, off a cliff (such as a cliff of unsustainable unfunded future mandates): Is it justified?<br />
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I assume the proper response is: If only we fallible members of the public would ever select the "correct" people to hold public trust, and never the "Right", all would be well: But again, it is our blundering that makes a mess out of their efforts on our behalf. We should not mock this confidence they have in their own ability, good intentions, and their sense that it is only the saboteurs and wreckers that constitute their political opposition who cause failures in government. But we should question this confidence as we untangle the ball of string that they have handed us in the form of opinion-leading Lippmanesque journalism and Schlessingeresque Court Historianism.<br />
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We might find that the <i>tu quoque</i> isn't a <i>tu quoque</i> at all, and that indeed it is their mindset that is the source of much of what they decry: That in the evolution of things, the problem is they have created a government that creates problems, then appoints itself to fix them, rinse and repeat <i>ad infinatum</i>, and that after sufficient iterations of this there is an utter displacement of responsibility. Who or what for example is really entirely to blame for the financial crisis? Both and all sides have some merit in the narratives they construct in order to point fingers at their despised boogiemen and hated political opponents. When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible, and this is the political economy we have created, and will deserve until we fix it "as a society."<br />
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If you know the solution, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. But if you <i><b>think</b></i> you know the solution with the <i><b>confident mockery</b></i> that some have, but the solution you have is a <i><b>sham-solution</b></i>, one that merely iterates the cycle again rather than breaking and reversing it, then you are not a better man at all, but the worst, however full of passionate intensity you may be.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-39368342416718971462010-05-03T07:22:00.000-07:002010-05-03T07:22:46.202-07:00Prominent Governor Gives Aid and Comfort to "Sedition"On March 2nd 1930 a prominent Governor of a major U.S. State gave the following speech. Be sure to check out the highlighted portions:<BLOCKQUOTE>I have been asked to talk about the respective powers of the National and State Governments to rule and regulate, where one begins and the other ends. By some curious twist of the public mind, under the terms "Home Rule" or "States’ Rights," this problem has been considered by many to apply, primarily, to the prohibition issue. <br />
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As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. <b><i>In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere.</i></b> <br />
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The proper relations between the government of the United States and the governments of the separate States thereof depend entirely, in their legal aspects, on what powers have been voluntarily ceded to the central government by the States themselves. What these powers of government are is contained in our Federal Constitution, either by direct language, by judicial interpretation thereof during many years, or by implication so plain as to have been recognized by the people generally. <br />
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The United States Constitution has proved itself the more marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written. Drawn up at a time when the population of this country was practically confined to a fringe along our Atlantic coast, combining into one nation for the first time scattered and feeble States, newly released from the autocratic control of the English Government, its preparation involved innumerable compromises between the different Commonwealths. Fortunately for the stability of our Nation, it was already apparent that the vastness of the territory presented geographical and climatic differences which gave to the States wide differences in the nature of their industry, their agriculture and their commerce. Already the New England States had turned toward shipping and manufacturing, while the South was devoting itself almost exclusively to the easier agriculture which a milder climate permitted. Thus, it was clear to the framers of our Constitution that the greatest possible liberty of self-government must be given to each State, and that any national administration attempting to make all laws for the whole Nation, such as was wholly practical in Great Britain, would inevitably result at some future time in a dissolution of the Union itself. <br />
<br />
<b><i>The preservation of this "Home Rule" by the States is not a cry of jealous Commonwealths seeking their own aggrandizement at the expense of sister States. It is a fundamental necessity if we are to remain a truly united country.</i></b> The whole success of our democracy has not been that it is a democracy wherein the will of a bare majority of the total inhabitants is imposed upon the minority, but that it has been a democracy where through a division of government into units called States the rights and interests of the minority have been respected and have always been given a voice in the control of our affairs. This is the principle on which the little State of Rhode Island is given just as large a voice in our national Senate as the great State of New York. <br />
<br />
The moment a mere numerical superiority by either States or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and, for their own selfish purposes or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights - that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system. <br />
<br />
For this reason a proper understanding of the fundamental powers of the States is very necessary and important. There are, I am sorry to say, danger signals flying. A lack of study and knowledge of the matter of sovereign power of the people through State government has led us to drift insensibly toward that dangerous disregard of minority needs which marks the beginning of autocracy. Let us not forget that there can be an autocracy of special classes or commercial interests which is utterly incompatible with a real democracy whose boasted motto is, "of the people, by the people and for the people." Already the more thinly populated agricultural districts of the West are bitterly complaining that rich and powerful industrial interests of the East have shaped the course of government to selfish advantage. <br />
<br />
<b><i>The doctrine of regulation and legislation by "master minds," in whose judgment and will all the people may gladly and quietly acquiesce, has been too glaringly apparent at Washington during these last ten years.</i></b> [For "master minds" read also "brain trust", "best and brightest", genius "Czars" - Porphy] Were it possible to find "master minds" so unselfish, so willing to decide unhesitatingly against their own personal interests or private prejudices, men almost god-like in their ability to hold the scales of Justice with an even hand, such a government might be to the interest of the country, but there are none such on our political horizon, and we cannot expect a complete reversal of all the teachings of history. <br />
<br />
<b><i>Now, to bring about government by oligarchy masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our National Government. The individual sovereignty of our States must first be destroyed, except in mere minor matters of legislation. We are safe from the danger of any such departure from the principles on which this country was founded just so long as the individual home rule of the States is scrupulously preserved and fought for whenever it seems in danger.</i></b> <br />
<br />
Thus it will be seen that this "Home Rule" is a most important thing, a most vital thing, if we are to continue along the course on which we have so far progressed with such unprecedented success. <br />
<br />
Let us see, then, what are the rights of the different States, as distinguished from the rights of the National Government. The Constitution says that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people," and Article IX, which precedes this, reads: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." <br />
<br />
Now, what are the powers delegated to the United States by the Constitution? First of all, the National Government is entrusted with the duty of protecting any or all States from the danger of invasion or conquest by foreign powers by sea or land, and in return the States surrender the right to engage in any private wars of their own. This involves, of course, the creation of the army and navy and the right to enroll citizens of any State in time of need. Next is given the treaty-making power and the sole right of all intercourse with foreign States, the issuing of money and its protection from counterfeiting. The regulation of weights and measures so as to be uniform, the entire control and regulation of commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, the protection of patents and copyrights, the erection of minor Federal tribunals throughout the country, and the establishment of post offices are specifically enumerated. The power to collect taxes, duties and imposts, to pay the debts for the common defense and general welfare of the country is also given to the United States Congress, as the law-making body of the Nation. <br />
<br />
It is interesting to note that under the power to create post offices the Constitution specifically provides for the building of post roads as a Federal enterprise, thus early recognizing that good roads were of benefit to intercommunications between the several States, and that districts too poor to afford to construct them at their own expense were entitled to some measure of Federal assistance. It is on this same principle that New York and other States are aiding rural counties, or constructing entirely at State expense improved thoroughfares suited to modern traffic. The Constitution also contains guarantees of religious freedom, of equality before the law of all possible acts of injustice to the individual citizens; and Congress is empowered to pass laws enforcing these guarantees of the Constitution, which is declared to be the supreme law of the land. <br />
<br />
<b><i>On such a small foundation have we erected the whole enormous fabric of Federal Government</i></b> which costs us now $3,500,000,000 every year, and <b><i>if we do not halt this steady process of building commissions and regulatory bodies and special legislation like huge inverted pyramids over every one of the simple Constitutional provisions</i></b>, we shall soon be spending many billions of dollars more. <br />
<br />
A few additional powers have been granted to the Federal Government by subsequent amendments. Slavery has been prohibited. All citizens, including women, have been given the franchise; the right to levy taxes on income, as well as the famous Eighteenth Amendment regarding intoxicating liquors, practically complete these later changes. <br />
<br />
So much for what may be called the "legal side of national versus State sovereignty." <b><i>But what are the underlying principles on which this Government is founded? There is, first and foremost, the new thought that every citizen is entitled to live his own life in his own way so long as his conduct does not injure any of his fellowmen.</i></b> This was to be a new "Land of Promise" where a man could worship God in the way he saw fit, where he could rise by industry, thrift and intelligence to the highest places in the Commonwealth, where he could be secure from tyranny and injustice - a free agent, the maker or the destroyer of his own destiny. <br />
<br />
But the minute a man or any collection of men sought to achieve power or wealth by crowding others off the path of progress, by using their strength, individually or collectively, to force the weak to the wall - that moment the whole power of Government, backed, as is every edict of the Government, by the entire army and navy of the United States, was pledged to make progress through tyranny or oppression impossible. <br />
<br />
On this sure foundation of the protection of the weak against the strong; stone by stone, our entire edifice of Government has been erected. <b><i>As the individual is protected from possible oppression by his neighbors, so the smallest political unit, the town, is, in theory at least, allowed to manage its own affairs, secure from undue interference by the larger unit of the county which, in turn, is protected from mischievous meddling by the State.</i></b> <br />
<br />
This is what we call the doctrine of "Home Rule," and the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution is to carry this great principle into the relations between the National Government and the Governments of the States. <br />
<br />
Let us remember that from the very beginning differences in climate, soil, conditions, habits and modes of living in States separated by thousands of miles rendered it necessary to give the fullest individual latitude to the individual States. Let us further remember that the mining States of the Rockies, the fertile savannas of the South, the prairies of the West, and the rocky soil of the New England States created many problems and introduced many factors in each locality, which have no existence in others. <b><i>It must be obvious that almost every new or old problem of government must be solved, if it is to be solved to the satisfaction of the people of the whole country, by each State in its own way. <br />
<br />
There are many glaring examples where exclusive Federal control is manifestly against the scheme and intent of our Constitution. <br />
<br />
It is, to me, unfortunate that under a clause in our Constitution, itself primarily intended for an entirely different purpose, our Federal Courts have been made a refuge by those who seek to evade the mandates of the State Judiciary.</i></b> [Commerce Clause, anyone? - Porphy] <br />
<br />
I think if we understand what I have tried to make clear tonight as to the fundamental principles on which our Government is built, and what the underlying idea of the relations between individuals and States and States and the National Government should be, we can all of us reason for ourselves what should be the proper course in regard to Federal legislation on any questions of the day. </BLOCKQUOTE>(Emphasis added).<br />
<br />
That Governor was, of course, the Governor of New York, a man who certainly knew a Blueprint for Action when he saw one: FDR.<br />
<br />
<br />
(Per text in his Public Papers and Addresses, 1938, I, 569---also New York Times March 3, 1930)Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-8177314425602391972010-04-29T18:25:00.000-07:002010-04-29T18:25:11.788-07:00Malign NeglectOne of the under-appreciated achievements of the Bush Administration was forging stronger ties with India. One of the under-criticized aspects of the Obama Administration has been its indifference to India, despite it's <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-bd.cfm?piece=803">growing importance</a>.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-73776049425991908352010-04-16T10:59:00.000-07:002010-04-16T10:59:52.393-07:00ModelingA really good comment by "<a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/ar/awful_austrians/75g">Shane</a>" that I'm posting here to retain:<BLOCKQUOTE>According to the about page, this group holds mathematical modeling in high esteem. A central idea being that the mind itself, individually and, by extension, groups of minds, can be mathematically described and modeled.<br />
<br />
I would be interested to hear how one claims to correlate the results of a model to the workings of the mind. It sounds to me more like the result of industrious researchers mixed with computing power which is sufficient for the task of repeatedly tweaking a complex model until the product resembles an observed reality. Afterward, chosen variables can be modified singularly or in groups, such that some brilliant claim or conclusion can be drawn from the model.<br />
<br />
With this confidence in the ability of science to model the mind, true believers must disdain the claim that economic modeling for management purposes is a useless endeavor. After all, the economic model is a layer above the internal mind modeling claims made here. From this starting point, one could never expect a fair analysis of the Austrian theory.<br />
<br />
So much could be said on this; what shall I choose.<br />
<br />
First, I recognize that Mises made some claims which, particularly when analyzed outside the purely academic context, are a reach. However, the minutia which are used by a purist to discover and articulate baseline ideas with words, which can only be symbols of ideas at best, are not where I find value in the school of thought. I am more interested in the practical and applicable knowledge that is the fruit and product of the analysis, which happens to be solid because the originators were willing to rigorously test their assertions, seeking ways to describe and model the theory.<br />
<br />
Yes, I said model. The idea of choosing a narrow, purpose oriented term like "happiness" is designed to create and sustain resources for an intellectual model. It is to select a fairly useful term, while stripping away the baggage that distorts its purpose in the model; which is akin to isolating a variable mathematically.<br />
<br />
Additionally, the claim that the Austrians make, which must be hard to swallow here, is that a mathematical model is useless in the field of economic prediction for the purpose of successfully managing an economy. The problems with this concept of modeling are really quite simple.<br />
<br />
A model will not incorporate all variables. If a model incorporated all variables and each had values, it would become a copy of reality. If it is a copy of future events, then it is unbounded by time. In addition, there is the question of whether the model "knows" the future, or is describing a potential reality. If only a potential reality, then the information is useless unless the information about actions can be disseminated, but this dissemnination process would then have to be incorporated into the model, which would then be distorted. If anyone disagreed, the modeled decisions would have to be applied by force... Where does this lead and where does it end?<br />
<br />
All variables are not known.<br />
<br />
If all variables were known, which they cannot be, their present and subsequent values in the model cannot be known, because the values are subject to human action; i.e. individual choice at a point in time based on concurrent conditions (which are unknown variables having unknown values).<br />
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Models produce averages, which are then conceived to be the answer for each actor, which is irrational. The model itself doesn't actually claim that all actors will enjoy the average results, and yet the results are rendered, communicated and applied as averages.<br />
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Even if a model were able to incorporate all known variables, apart from an active system on the ground which can actually control a variable that the model incorporates, moving the variable would be a fruitless exercise, other than for curiosity sake.<br />
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Models are owned by men, who pursue their own "happiness". They will have an agenda. If the model has any use for wielding influence, it will be applied through a system. The goal will be to use a system to enrich the players in the process, which then reduces the model to a tool of manipulation and theft.<br />
<br />
Therefore, we find that modeling in economics, as a method of managing an economy, is futile. However, modeling the effects of a controlled variable at play in the system, is quite attainable. The Austrian theory of the business cycle is described in part by this sort of modeling.<br />
<br />
The Austrian theory clearly describes the mathematical effects of currency manipulation. These effects lead to a boom bust cycle, which we have observed repeatedly. The ability to control the variables of money quantity and the distribution of new money, enables economists to "model" the effects. In the economists' arrogance or disdain for the producers, they see themselves as managers of a system, when in fact they are simply pillagers who have successfully created a pillaging system with the aid of central banking and coercive government intervention.<br />
<br />
Therefore, the presuppositions in the Austrian School provide a foundation for communicating that models cannot be created to successfully manage an economy. A model that is used to describe productivity in a genuinely free market without government intervention, would be useless. The outcomes would reduce to things like the industriousness and ingenuity of the actors.<br />
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A "brilliant" model is only attainable and useful when there is the ability to control the system by way of unavoidable force applied to the producers. When that case is exists, we find that the power to act in this way is always used oppressively.<br />
<br />
Our monetary system is Keynesian and Keynes wrote about the destructive effect of inflation at least as early as 1919.<br />
<br />
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some… Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."<br />
<br />
The Economic Consequences of the Peace, John Maynard Keynes, 1919<br />
<br />
The point is missed when the Austrian effort to articulate presuppositions is attacked on the grounds that they are presuppositions.<br />
<br />
Evidently the claim being made here, by implication, is the presupposition that the actual economy can be modeled. But that has never happened. Listen to Greenspan explain how the "housing boom" was neither predicted by the models nor anticipated by him or his staff. Either the model was useless, even with the control of currency and positive law, or the system was used to pillage, or both.<br />
<br />
The role of an economist should be to observe and describe the economy, not attempt manage it. The Austrians understand this role and acknowledge that certain things cannot be known at all, and that other things cannot be known or controlled, unless accompanied by violation of the rights of the individual.<br />
<br />
Mises and other Austrian economists sought a way to put into words why, in actual reality, a successful controlling model has never been created and cannot be created. Quibbling over presuppositions, which happen to be supported by experience and evidence, as a basis for discrediting the Austrian Theory is weak thinking indeed.</BLOCKQUOTE>Of course I also liked this part of <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/ar/awful_austrians/7bt">another comment</a>:<BLOCKQUOTE>Anyway, "Austrian economics" includes Hayek, who holds up very well indeed by today's standards of argument in epistemology and methodology.</BLOCKQUOTE>Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-37457174129663298172009-12-02T09:45:00.000-08:002009-12-02T10:01:51.200-08:00B.O. and the Lowest Politically Feasible SupportFirst thing is that last night's speech continued to emphasize that we are in a new era. That all of time is divided between "A.O.", and "B.O." - We're in the First Year After Obama, and all that came Before Obama stunk. He emphasized this more than anything else in a speech that was supposedly about why we should continue the fight in Afghanistan.<br />
<br />
Obama's "decision" on Afghanistan and last night's speech was oddly spiritless only if you think it's odd for a Progressive to lack passion when speaking on the subject of our country's foreign enemies (Homework Assignment: Contrast with the passion he displays when talking about his domestic political opponents, or when giving a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ1NJaCtIkM&feature=related">speech to SEIU</a> on shared goals and battles).<br />
<br />
I have a feeling, no proof because there wouldn't be any, but that the number of troops being sent is based not on military need, but simply on what is politically feasible. People are saying it's three-quarters of what General McChrystal recommended, but really it's only half of what he requested, and three-quarters of what was considered the <i>minimal</i> number needed.<br />
<br />
My guess is that 30,000 happened to be the bottom number that would prevent resignations among the military leadership. Personally, I think they should resign anyhow on the correct grounds that they are not being given what they feel they need, and the Commander in Chief should replace them with someone who thinks they can do the job with this number.<br />
<br />
Likely this is what would happen if no reinforcements were sent, or if Obama sent 20,000, which was what General McChrystal said would be so low as to make no difference. Thus the 30,000 figure was chosen as a false "middle ground", not for reasons of military effectiveness, but a political balancing act by someone who said Afghanistan was the war of necessity when it was politically expedient to do so, but whose heart really isn't in this fight, because Afghanistan isn't the "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTbJcixsLq8">enemy camp</a>" to them.<br />
<br />
His passion, like that of all Progressives, is reserved only for the fight against domestic political opponents. Thus he sprinkledPorphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-62718450974737456222009-12-02T07:34:00.000-08:002009-12-02T09:09:18.862-08:00Big Blue PillI go on vacation and come back to find that a man who started by giving <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/case-against-democracy-ten-red-pills.html">Ten Red Pills</a> to wake us from the Matrix that is the modern Western bureaucratic State has, in the pentultimate post before his <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/11/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html">conclusion</a> reassured us that under his utopian future government, we won't be slain and our organs harvested for profit, we'll instead <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/11/dire-problem-and-virtual-option.html">all be virtualized into pods</a> as our marginal utility runs out and we're replaced by our <a href="http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0013047/">Rob't</a> masters.<br />
<br />
Gee, that's a relief! If it weren't for the dignity of it, I'd just as soon pass. I hope we can go out like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/">Sol Roth</a> too, if we prefer.<br />
<br />
The last generation of humanity will find "dignity" in a MMORPG until either our Rob't Masters decide to save some money and turn out the lights by running a dignified "mass-casualty event" for us to perform final heroic sacrifices in, or, more humanely, just wait till the last of us dies of old age. <br />
<br />
Obviously there's no real - as opposed to virtual - human reproduction within the pods, and absolutely no incentive for whatever is outside of the pods to create such an opportunity, because we're in the pods as a result of having no social utility to our rulers outside the pods. Therefore, the last people to go into the pods will be the last people.<br />
<br />
One might argue that whoever owns these new nations will neither need to go into the pods or, most importantly, allow themselves to be pushed into the pods. The stockholders will continue to govern their state, the customers consisting of pod-people, and their staff consisting of Our Rob't Masters.<br />
<br />
However, if Our Rob't Masters are sufficiently advanced so that we are of no real use to them, as Moldbug concludes, they will certainly have greater facility for managing investments, and will use that to capture control of the State. A possible counter-argument is that human stockowners would have created such expert programs to assist them in managing their investments, and the Rob'ts could not deny them access to, and thus the benefits of, these expert programs. It's thus possible that the owners could escape this "benign" fate for a time, till the Rob'ts outlasted and outcompeted them which, if they're so sufficiently advanced, they will eventually do.<br />
<br />
Anyhow, let us turn to an argument Moldbug uses, and which is one of the reasons why, my sympathies and general preference for Libertarian-ish policies notwithstanding, I am not a Libertarian,even of the Moldbug sort (that is to say, I di agree with him that there will be a State, and where it acts, it should be strong). It is embedded in this:<blockquote>And we are just getting started. The ex-subject can then be dissected for his organs. Do you know what organs are worth? This is profit!<br />
<br />
If we claim to derive the responsibility of government from mere financial prudence, we must explain why the business strategy of culling unwanted subjects for their organs is not viable. Most would not find this profitable strategy consistent with responsibility. Yet, since a sovereign is sovereign, no higher sovereign can exist to outlaw or preclude it. The design must solve this problem on its own.<br />
<br />
The simplest, broadest, and most essential prevention against this degenerate result is the observation that the royal government is a government of law, and a government of law does not commit mass murder.</BLOCKQUOTE>He's made similar arguments before. Another was along the lines that, sure, Leopold behaved badly with the distant Congolese colony, but no European ruler behaved like that towards their own domestic populations.<br />
<br />
Which treats things as binary, when they are not analog; there is a range of misgovernment or oppressive government. It neglects the incontrovertable <i><b>fact</b></i> that it was during the height of the government system he has praise for that America was peopled. At the time the vast majority of those who came to America voluntarily came from Europe. They didn't leave places like Italy, Prussia, Greece, Poland, Ireland or Russia for here because they thought they were too well-governed and well-treated well by their owner/rulers.<br />
<br />
Most schools of Libertarians, and their sympathizers (such as Moldbug) have a Modeling Fallacy not too different from that of <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/11/climategate-and-other-correspondence.html">Global Warm-mongers</a>. Which is to say they assume all governments (except ours) and rulers (except ours) operate on a rational basis (they aren't insane), and use the same rational calculus that they would in deciding how to behave. They then assert that there would be no rational reason for rulers to do X, Y, or Z.<br />
<br />
Which is fine and good, except that, as a matter of historical record, they have done X, Y, or Z. So epicycles are created: Oh, they did those things because we exist and threw a monkey-wrench into the works; if only we adopted a policy of isolation and <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/05/ol5-shortest-way-to-world-peace.html">left them to their own devices</a>, they would revert to their natural rationality and things would work out perfectly. Oh, they were already infected with fill-in-the-blank (democratic calculi, religion, or whatever), and once we remove that tumor, a miracle will happen, and X, Y and Z will not occur.<br />
<br />
We know that even the Great and Autocratic Emperor of the Romans, Basil II Makedonion, who perhaps came closest to Moldbug's ideal in a ruler having absolute power and absolute responsibility, had to deal with politics. Had to deal, indeed, with his own officials not quite enforcing the Imperial will as he would have hoped. Quite possibly machine intelligience will render the machinations of whatever administrative apparatus Moldbug's new State creates moot, making them absolutely faithful to the Ruler's will, rather than tempted by <a href="http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view408.html#Iron">Pournelle's Iron Law</a>, something that happens in all corporations of significant size and certainly would happen here.<br />
<br />
Aristotle observed that <a href="http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/901">man is a political animal</a>, but Moldbug is <a href="http://www0.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu-1016744/content_404218023556">smarter than that moron</a> and knows that politics can be eliminated.<br />
<br />
Similarly, in reality Monarchs and rulers of all types have behaved in ways that the ruled found quite sufficiently oppressive, even though stopping short of harvesting them for their organs. There is no reason to believe that a government that ruled with all the power of a Chinese Emperor and His Glorious Mandarinate <a href="http://asianhistory.about.com/od/profilesofasianleaders/p/qinshihungbio.htm">wouldn't so treat us</a>, all Confucian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius">injunctions to the contrary</a> notwithstanding. <br />
<br />
Theory of how they Ought to behave, if they were to behave as a Libertarian would rationally want them to behave, is controverted by all actual experience with how such rulers and governments, even the best of them, do behave. Pliny, for example, after a fire at Nicomedia, wrote to Emperor Trajan <a href="http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Letters-of-the-Younger-Pliny-The-Letters1.html">advising the Emperor encourage the establishment of a volunteer fire brigade</a>, but the Emperor denied the request on the grounds that it would become a political party (brotherhood). But we're supposed to put all our trust in the <strike>Global Warming Computer Model</strike> Libertarian Rational Government Actor Model, and little in historical experience, which is that our ancestors fled such places when they could get away from them, and thus even if some might live well enough treated as such governments might treat us, the descendants of those who fled might not be best suited to life under a revived version of it. Odd that someone who has learned so much from his reading of history would have such a massive blindspot, in my opinion, but perhaps this is due to the fact that he abhores Progressive/Whig historiography so much he is willing to give its antithesis too much faith.<br />
<br />
This on top of the fact that, Oh Happy Day, if everything works as well as Moldbug desires, the endpoint of humanity is virtualization into a pod! Moldbug's comeback may - I don't want to put words into his mouth - be that this is the likely endpoint of "The Singularity" even under our current misgovernment (if it's not <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/antisingularity.html">Idiocracy</a>), it will just take longer.<br />
<br />
But I suppose I'll pass on his reassuring offer, and take my chances with some other endpoint. I do want to close in some other way, though; I owe Moldbug that much. This is a rather severe critique of his proposal, but I have read his writings with great interest because he has much to offer and his thoughts are well worth the time and consideration you give them.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-4416327675806344772009-11-05T13:39:00.000-08:002009-11-05T13:39:04.300-08:00Shootings at Ft. HoodI'm here working at Casey Library on post, and we're on lock down as there was a shooting rampage (that's what people are calling it) at the SRP site at the former Sports USA down the street from us.<br />
<br />
Apparently 7 are dead and 15 injured. They're still trying to catch all the perpetrators.<br />
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Pray for the victims and their families, please.<br />
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Story <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572305,00.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Update</u>:</b> One thing about being on lockdown is I probably know less than people can get from the news. Lots of sirens throughout the day, but we're told to stay inside. More <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8345713.stm">here</a>, including increasing casualty numbers as information gets updated.Porphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.com2