We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day “Traditionally, a bank is a means by which old people with capital lend to young people with ideas. But the advanced democracies with their mountains of sovereign debt are in effect old people who’ve blown through their capital and are all out of ideas looking for young people flush enough to bail them out. And the idea that it might be time for the spendthrift geezers to change their ways butts up against their indestructible moral vanity. Last year, President Sarkozy said that the G20 summit provided “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give capitalism a conscience.” European capitalism may have a conscience. It’s not clear it has a pulse. And, actually, when you’re burning Greek bank clerks to death in defence of your benefits, your “conscience” isn’t much in evidence, either.”
– Mark Steyn, writing about Greece and the ongoing train-crash of the European welfare state model.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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That is superb.
That brings up an interesting perspective. If money is a claim on resources, by what right do the old, who have accumulated capital, presumably by generating resources for their (and older) generations have a claim in the resources produced by the younger generation?
I know it’s not as simple as that. But it’s an interesting thought. Consider that the upcoming problems with social security are that there will (apparently) not be enough young people producing to support the old. It’s really a demographic problem. The solution from free marketeers (of which I count myself one) tends to be to advocate making pensions into private investments. Yet the demographic problem is still there. Although the private option is undoubtedly better in my mind, the demographic problem may force the issue and result in a pensions bubble bust and market collapse. The only real solution will be to keep people productive for longer. Also, we will no longer be able to afford the luxury of supporting the unproductive.
First of all Richard, people are living and staying productive longer. Second, there is nothing wrong with younger generation supporting the older one, provided it is done voluntarily, on the basis of family and other societal commitments. You know, the way it used to be done before our betters convinced us that it’s “society” (i.e. the state) that should take care of our parents (and children too, for that matter).
However, to do this the young have to have the resources, but time and money. The only way to achieve this is to stop taking the money from them in the first place.
Rather a bummer for those who didn’t have a family though.
Thieving the wealth of savers by inflation/devaluation of the fiat currency by low interest rates and other means, especially those who have saved for their retirement, is not addressed in this quote.
The theft/con is perpetrated by those who control the manufacture of “the coin of the realm” and their acolytes.
Courageous youth, look well to your presumption?
I am in total agreement about the first part of your comment, John Galt. The problem of those who didn’t have a family is partially addressed by John B. above. Another part of this is that childless elderly are just a special case of a larger group who are often referred to as “the unfortunate”, such as orphans, the disabled etc. This is what charity is for, and I think it can work under free market conditions. Not perfectly, mind you, as nothing human can ever be perfect, but much more efficiently than the state will ever be capable of.
Alisa, people are living longer it’s true, and many are being productive for longer as well. But what I’m talking about is a drastic increase in the retirement age.
And non-violent support is well and good. What I’m saying it’s that it’s interesting to look closer at what is actually going on with money. Say there’s just me and Joe in the world. I hit 60 and retire with a million in savings just as Joe comes of age. What gives me a claim on the results of Joe’s labor just because I have pieces of paper? I’m not necessarily saying there are none, just that thinking in terms of dollars and cents sometimes masks the truth of what’s going on under the surface.
@Richard, having money gives you no claim on any resources. It’s just that we find the pieces of paper valuable, and will consequently exchange them for resources, but if Joe didn’t want the money, he wouldn’t have to exchange it for his resources. The reason it works is because other people would rather have the pieces of paper rather than the rocks. (or sticks, or labour) You have a claim on the pieces of paper which you are willing to exchange for someone else’s claim on resources, and vice-versa.
You could spend your life building up stocks of gold, or land, or antiques, it’s the same thing really. You have a claim to one resource that someone else wants, and they have a claim to a resource that you want, so the two of you trade. It’s just that money is the most common resource of trade.
TimP, I think maybe I pulled out too many parts for the example to work properly. I guess we need to put in Ed who demands several thousand shekels a year for providing “security” for Joe.
Scrub that though. That moves things away from my point which was more of an out-loud speculation about the nature of capital. I often like to break things down to “A has corn, B has chickens, C has a printing press and D has a gun” type scenarios just to see what falls out. It’s said the “The map is not the territory” and I think the is often never truer than when it comes to money.
What do you mean, tough for those without families? That’s what Big Brother is for!
No – in that I think you mistake Big Brothers objectives. The aim is not money or to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor (or vice versa). It is power and control, in the circumstance of single people versus people with children the state extracts more from the young man during his working life and provides a small stipend, just above starvation level in retirement.
It’s divide and rule just like the old days.
Power and Control is not a means to an end for Big Brother it is an end in itself. That is why I took the Red Pill and checked out of Big Brother’s matrix. I would rather live on my own resources and wits without both the support (hah!), interference and forced extractions (i.e. taxes) of Big Brother.
Time to break free.
Orwell created Big Brother because it seemed like something that the state would do- pretend that we’re all one big happy family, with Big Brother as the natural leader of people who are otherwise equals. The aim was power, by surplanting normal family ties. I have often felt that socialist and communist philosophers have tried to force society to be the family that the leftoids didn’t have growing up.
It’s exactly how John Galt says it is: power and control is what motivates all of us, money and sex and everything else that they say “keeps the world go round” are about power and control. The difference is between those who limit their desire for control to their non-human surroundings, and those who make no distinction between humans and the rest of the physical world. In that sense, it turns out that socialist are really the anti-social ones among us.
This makes me change my mind about Death Panels. Euthanize the geezers. But make sure they have “choice”. Say, “okay, you can volunteer for euthanasia, or volunteer your grandkids for post-birth abortions, which will it be?” Then ask the grandkids what their choice is, and whoever puts up the most money wins….
The problem with Steyn is that he has this whole America vs. Europe narrative which I think is just false. So he picks up on a European “bad capitalism” thing and ignores that the USA has all the same afflictions, including the biggest, highest spending government in the world. That is, he’s presenting a rather simplistic belief in the USA as the land of laissez faire as reality. Even though it isn’t.
The interesting point for me is that Sarkozy’s statement of “capitalism with a conscience” is straight out of the Anglosphere ruling class playbook. Anglo-capitalism (UK, US etc) is predicated on moralist economics. The idea is that the rich are supposed to be philanthropists, and the State encourages and enforces philanthropy by the rich,. Hence all the talk during the crash of moral failings; it was caused by greed, a sin. That’s actually rather different to the European communist ideas of Marx etc. The thing that I see is that, since the collapse of marxism, the anglosphere statist approach has spread out and replaced it in formerly overtly socialist/communist parts of the world. What the whole world is sinking into now isn’t commiedom, it’s “enlightened corporatism”, and that is very much a British and American invention, developed during the Victorian/Progressive Era.
You’re allowed to make money so long as (a) you do so by moral means and (b) use your wealth for moral purposes, i.e. philanthropy. You are then an “enlightened businessman” who will be welcomed with open arms. If you fail in either (a) or (b) the State will confiscate your wealth and use if for philanthropic purposes whether you like it or not. It’s not a “socialist” (in the sense of marxist) philosophy, it’s quite different. That’s why Anglospher nations which are fiercely anti-communist have so easily became enormously Statist. It’s based on the Philanthropic Principle.
So, after much typing… Sarkozy is, in that quote, actual echoing an Anglospheric ideal. Capitalism with a conscience. Steyn’s narrative- which is commonplace among American conservatives- that America has fallen under “European” socialist ideals has it all the wrong way round.
Two questions about money lending:
“Where did you get the money you are lending out?”
And.
“Why are you so sure the people you are lending to are going to pay you back?”
It the reply to question one is not “I saved the money” or “I got the money from other people who saved it” then something is wrong – VERY WRONG.
As for question two.
If MOST lending is not for productive investment (for example for farms, factories, service enterprisers – people you have judged will make a return on the money), but is for CONSUMPTION (buying nice things – like televisions or big houses) as with Greece or the United States (or Britian). Then how can you get paid back?
Some loans for consumption are fine – but MOST loans? How does that work?
Of course loans for real investment may go wrong – the farms or factories or serivice companies may not make the returns you (and they) hope for (classic Austrain economics – one can make loans that seem like they are for rational investment, but the credit money expansion has twisted everything so what seems like sound investments are not sound investments).
But if the loans were mainly for consumption….. – well then you do not even have a chance.
What has happened in both Britain and the United States (and Greece) is that vast loans have been made that have no basis in real savings (who is saving?) and the money has been used to buy nice stuff – i.e. (to be blunt) pissed up against the wall.
How can anyone not see that this means we are bust – totally bust.
Paul, that is the avowed goal (and inevitable result) of Keynsian economics: in their world, consumption drives everything. Of course, that is absolutely bonkers (without production, consumption merely creates price inflation), but it is the dominant ideology in all the world’s capitals and universities.
Laird – agreed.
That is why all the “great and the good” are demanding “more lending” even though saving (in both Britain and the United States) has actually FALLEN.
Think about it people – saving was incredibly low even before the crises and now it has actually FALLEN (people are raiding their savings – partly to keep up unsustainable living standards, partly because INTEREST RATES are so low why save?).
And yet people tell me that we are comming out of the crises – comming out when the malinvestments have NOT been liqidated and the pool of savings has NOT been rebuilt.
People talk about the next crises (the bursting of this bubble) being X years away.
I am going to stick my neck out (i.e. make a prediction that could be quite wrong) and say that the American bust at least will be in the comming year.
Not X years away – but in 2011.
History is against me (no two busts have ever been so close together) – but it is what I believe.
I would not bet against Paul on this one.
Maybe I’m being thick, but I just don’t understand Richard Thomas’s question at all. Is it a point about paper money ? In which case what was wrong with Tim P’s reply ? But if it was about “real” capital, ie actual assets owned by old people – farms, tractors, factories, houses, ships, or shares or debt in companies that own those things, then what’s the mystery about young people having to pay to use, or acquire, those assets ?
Indeed, Lee. When things get tough people don’t want to have to pay.
But. Things should never have got so tough and all these discussions would not arise, if the state and it’s other con men friends were not nicking most of the wealth.
It would be like arguing about who should own most of the salt in the sea.
However. Regarding whether old folk should just shut up and die (Obamacare?)
If I have earned wealth (most often as money, the way the state prefers it so they can more easily calculate their cut – tax) in my life and decided to put some away for my old age in the most convenient form, money, and tried to fight off the ravages of the money’s devaluation by inflation, by investing it at a rate of interest.
I would consider it reasonable if might expect to convert that money (paper) back into real wealth (food, clothing) when my needs so require.
Wouldn’t you?
Indeed, John B. Just be careful that the form in which you choose to save your wealth (currency) is still accepted by others when you decide to convert it back into “real wealth”. Don’t confuse “wealth” or “money” with currency.