We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day The persistent delusion is that the West has a capitalist economy. It doesn’t. It has a rent-seeking economy, and the failures of government regulatory agencies are as likely to be a result of their delivering such rents as of their being ‘honestly’ incompetent. History tells us that the sensibly cautious – not paranoid – way to look at government is with the presumption that it’s corrupt.
– Commenter ‘Person from Porlock’
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
“History tells us that the sensibly cautious – not paranoid – way to look at government is with the presumption that it’s corrupt.”
That’s fine and dandy if you’re only sitting in your armchair theorizing on “the economy” (i.e. other people’s lives), but when it comes down to your business being fucked with, the ‘sensibly cautious’ way of looking at government is through the eye of a Madame Defarge.
That’ another SQotD right there Mike:-)
Two investment strategies are insider trading and outsider gambling.
Indicator of truth: official denial
America has “Czars” because there are still a few respectable people using the titles of “Capo” and “Don”
Well Mike, the moment I think there is a critical mass of support for cutting off heads over all the things that vex us wild eyed friends of liberty…. well… lets just say I am not a pacifist. Lets get those tumbrel rolling.
Well you know, patience is a virtue as I’m sure you appreciate.
Sadly, I’m losing confidence in Sun Tzu and the statement that:
If you stand by the bank of the river long enough, you will eventually see the body of your enemy float past.
Apparently Sun Tzu was a precursor to Keynes. (“In the long run we’re all dead.”)
I think what we’re seeing is the inevitable result of the centralization of vast power in Washington, etc. It’s the realization of Lord Acton’s famous maxim about “absolute power corrupt[ing] absolutely”, and it’s the reason libertarians argue so strongly for decentralization of power.
So-called “globalization” is nothing new. It has existed long enough to be a subject of archaeology. As currently used, it means “economic consolidation”. Nation states are the human resource departments. Only my opinion
that it seems a near last attempt to save failing civilizations.
Even non-engagement may be used as a tactic.
I prefer the J.H.Huang translation of Sun Wu.
There seems a misconception, often promoted by U.S. media, that it is the poor minorities supporting Obama. Most of the Obama bumper stickers are on high end, late model cars, driven by whites in upscale neighborhoods.
I have some confidence in that statement Bod, if only we are clear which enemy it refers to. The State is one enemy, but there are others elsewhere.
“The persistent delusion is that the West has a capitalist economy. It doesn’t. It has a rent-seeking economy…”
Psychology, for example, (delusion / maleducation) is where some of them are to be found.
Well, it’s a very “catchy” polemic, but I dont think Anne Krueger or Gordon Tullock would accept that premise without serious qualifications.
Presumably the source intends to define a price-system of exchanges and distribution as the “Capitalist Economy.”
So, I would say that commentator is wrong. There is Rent Seeking within all impersonal exchange systems (it’s sort of hard to pull off when all transactions are inter-personal as in limited access societies).
But, by and large, most choices and exchanges in our economies are determined principally by prices. That is not to say that political rent seeking actions have no effect on prices or the availability of choices, such as occur in the diregiste systems. There is also Rent Seeking in what is used as the Medium of Exchange. but that does not change the nature of the economy.
However, much of the efforts to influence, direct or control human conduct (including that which impacts the economic system) does not result in the creation of “Rents,” and more often destroys the potential source of “Rents.”
See, The Rent Seeking Society, Vol 5 Selected Works of Gordon Tullock (Liberty Fund 2005).
“Presumably the source intends to define a price-system of exchanges and distribution as the “Capitalist Economy.”
Your presumed definition, RRS, is deficient in its apparent neglect of property rights. Von Mises:
“A government that sets out to abolish market prices is inevitably driven toward the abolition of private property; it has to recognize that there is no middle way between the system of private property in the means of production combined with free contract, and the system of common ownership of the means of production, or socialism. It is gradually forced toward compulsory production, universal obligation to labor, rationing of consumption, and, finally, official regulation of the whole of production and consumption.”
– Theory Of Money & Credit, Part 2, Chapter 8, Section 3 p247-248 (English Translation of 2nd Edition, Yale University Press, 1953).
I think von Mises is saying that (private property) is intrinsic in a price system.
Posted by mike at September 3, 2009 03:49 PM
Cynic that I am, I’ll just observe that a sensibly cautious businessman, looking at government, looks for the guy with his hand out. You can get a much surer return-on-investment from a politician than from, say, a research scientist.
Damn Firefox! I had a whole comment ready to go there… try again:
RRS: consider these two propositions:
1) Private property is a defining feature of capitalism.
2) Private property is constantly being sabotaged by western governments.
Your contention that western economies are still capitalist is only true is we either reject proposition 1 or ignore proposition 2. One of the present difficulties we face is that the concept of “private property” has been, and is being, subsumed under a more general concept of “privilege” by older and younger generations respectively – instead of being subsumed under the wider concept of “right”. This is a major problem – and calling any modern economy “capitalist” does not reflect this. I am only making definitional and tactical points here – use whatever words you want, but I say it’s better to avoid the confusion that is going to be spread by pretending the C isn’t really an S.
I skimmed through the book in a bit too much of a hurry to find the Mises quote, but the reason I chose it was that it seemed to highlight two things: the close connection (as you admit) between private property and prices, and the corollary that an attack on one entails an attack on the other.
PersonFromPorlock: no shit – you can get much surer odds of being shafted that way too.
I read a book about the French Revolution, which claimed that the real rancour against the system came when the King granted rights to the subjects, and then tried to take them away! Are their any other points that could inspire people’s blood?
The worst private property loss is privacy itself. I worked in banks (trust dept) for 20 yrs until 30 Dec 86
Remember 1986/87 ? Texas Commerce? Fed housing
scandal? Wall St Journal looked like the National Enquirer.
Worked in security for four companies. “Sound Monitored for Security Purposes” meant microphones.
Nobody seemed to care. Cams were large enough to
see, and most black and white. Not digital.
Without privacy, you are property.
Sorry if my comment was taken as implying something other than a better understanding of Rent Seeking.
The whole concept of Property is another subject of its own, as are the issues of conditions of “ownership” and possession.
The expansion of Rent Seeking activities, particularly by the political class, but also by “private” commercial interests, is deleterious to that most basic right of entitlement to the results of one’s own labor, as it is to any economy based on exchanges, because it extracts without providing anything in exchange.
Indeed, RRS, which is why I so detest the term “rent-seeking”. Here’s the (fairly standard) Wikipedia definition:
That’s truly a bastardization of the fundamental concept of “rent”, which is a perfectly valid economic transaction. If I permit you to use my (justly-acquired) property, it is appropriate that you should pay for the privilege; that is “rent”. The term “rent-seeking” takes that word and turns it on its head by making it into a definition of parasitism. If whoever thought up that term had purposely intended to engender confusion and misunderstanding he couldn’t have done better.
We really need a better term than that.
Laird –
Well, Kreuger coined the term when she looked at the position of a holder of a position (say, governmental) who sought personal gain as the “holder” from allowing parties to “use” that position to advance their goals (e.g., bribery). She compared (not equated) that to charges for uses of other resources.
Tullock had approached the same issues as part of Public Choice, for which Jim Buchanan later got the Nobel.
Perhaps the time has come to say again: What we refer to as capitalism is not an ISM, in that it has no societal or other ideological goals, whereas socialism, fascism and totalitarianism all do have ideological goals.
Capitalism is generally described, not defined; and, of course, it still suffers from its category being set early on by Marx. et al.
Madam Defarge was a supporter of a worse regime than the one it replaced (indeed the new regime was largely made up of administrators in the old regime, including “lawyers” who were more like law court administrators, who had undermined the ancient regime from within).
This is the point – we can not expect a perfect government and then support ANY enemy of a government if it (surprise, surprise) turns out to be flawed.
It was totally right to oppose President Bush (I am the one here who called him a moron), but it was totally WRONG to support anyone who made vague promises of “change” without a careful investigation into who this person and his supporters were and what they believed in.
For it is NOT just a case of “rent seeking” or corruption – yes Goldman Sachs had lots of people in the Bush Administration and has lots of people in the present one, and yes General Electric has a deep commercial interest in using NBC news as a propaganda arm of the Obama regime.
But there is also the matter of IDEOLOGY – or to use a non “scary” word, “beliefs”.
The new Chicago Machine of Senator Durbin and Mayor Daley Jr may be as corrupt as the old Machine of Mayor Daley Senior (and A. Stevenson – for all his pose as Mr Incorruptable) BUT THE TWO MACHINES ARE NOT THE SAME.
Mayor Daley Senior would not have handed over the schools of Chicago to Bill Ayers, and he would not have made a formal alliance with the other Marxist Saul Alinsky followers such as Barack Obama.
And Stevenson was no Dick Durbin – he would never have supported someone like Comrade Barack Obama to be President of the United States.
Financial corruption is just one factor – ideological corruption (corruption of beliefs) is a much more serious factor.