Feb 19
To Joe Carter and his blogpost that asks if Capitalism can be saved from the conservatives who hate it. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Having read the whole article cited, there are two questions that should have been asked rather than the one in the title. First, can democracy and capitalism coexist? Second, can capitalism be saved from itself?
The first question asks whether we can have a true democracy while embracing capitalism. That partially depends on how we define democracy. For if democracy is merely reduced to the people having the right to vote for their leaders, then the answer is 'yes.' But then we would also have to look at more examples of democracies than we might care to. For there are many nations that allow their people to vote for their leaders but restrict who can run for office. Such situations puts voters in voting cattle chutes that either the voting shows that election winners have a false level of support and/or the voters will constantly vote for the lesser of evils. People can vote for their leaders in Iran, but does Iran have a working democracy? The same can be asked of Russia.
Now if democracy includes along with the mechanisms that allow people to vote for their leaders a state of being where people share society with others as equals, then we have more to consider. Jeff Halper, from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), has noted that ethnocracies, that is nations with some sort of majority in terms of national identity, race, language, religion, and so forth which seizes a privileged place of control over government, even if they use democratic processes to accomplish this, has become an ethnocracy. In such a situation, society isn't shared with others as equals because one group's control over government is used to maintain that privileged position at the expense of the rights and welfare of the other groups.
The question then becomes, are there other categories of groups, besides the ones Halper associated with ethnocracies, that can do the same? For example, another category of groups is economic class. What if one economic class seized a privileged position of control over our government over the other classes? We could call such a situation a classocracy. And considering how some are starting to question whether we have transitioned from a democracy to an oligarchy (see http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ), asking if we have a classocracy becomes a legitimate question to ask.
We should also note that the structure of one of the mainstays of our capitalist economic system, the corporation, lends itself to authoritarianism and the centralization of power. How is it that the leadership of our corporations will not seek to exercise a similar kind of control over government that they have over their employees especially when increasing profits are at stake? And since most of the people employed by those corporations are ruled over by authoritarians, what choices are these employees able to make?
Then we come to the second question of whether capitalism can be save from capitalism. Here we should note, from the article cited by Carter, that the free market is based on the maximization of individual freedom. But such a description is misleading. For the free market maximizes the privileges for freedom - equality = privilege. Thus, what we are really talking about is the maximization of privilege for the market's elite performers. Note that we can't say that freedom is being maximized because voting in the free market is based on a one dollar per one vote rather than a one person per one vote scenario. And since, in capitalist nations, political power follows wealth, those with the most wealth have the most political power. And those with the most power then tend to use that power to maintain the status quo rather than to make changes to the status quo which protects and give political voice to all the others. As the non-elite groups suffer from the rule of the elitesit can lead to a dystopias if not revolutions.
While conservatives considered FDR to have enacted "socialist" policies, leftists had a different view. They view FDR's policies as having saved capitalism from itself because it made it at least tolerable to those who otherwise might have revolted or, at least, become unmanageable.
What we see today is simply an Ayn Rand coup of our government which celebrates this maximizing of individual freedom without accounting for the consequences that are experienced by others. That coup is empowering those with the most power to act more and more selfishly. We should note that America is still experiencing a long-term increase in wealth disparity. And we should note that our society is becoming more and more violent. In addition, the way of life which our capitalism has promoted is destroying the environment and thus any kind of satisfying way of life for future generations.
So the real question is, can capitalism be saved from itself.
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Feb 20
To Gary Gregg II and his blogpost praising Ronald Reagan as the greatest modern American Presidents. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
Link to cited article on whether Capitalism can be saved from Conservatives
As Gregg cited prejudice as a reason for why Schlessinger's survey did not rank Reagan as high as the ISI survey rated him, we might want to note the prejudice with which Gregg writes his article. That prejudice is found in his selective use of facts.
Gregg wants to cite Reagan as the greatest of the modern presidents using the ISI survey. I guess that Eisenhower, who was also ranked on the same level was not considered by Gregg . But what impressed Gregg about Reagan?
Gregg talks about Reagan's ending of the Cold War through a philosophy of 'peace through strength.' He also 'encouraged' prosperity and helped his political party recover from its previous state and break control over the House of Representatives by the Democratic Party. He was instrumental in getting others to end 'big government.' And he taught, by example, the republicanism's tenets of self government along with leading a moral revolution of his own.
When one goes through that list, how could Reagan not be consider to be a great President? Again, the analysis of Reagan provided by Gregg and also the ISI survey team is only as good as the data they worked with. And what is missing from that data is first the consequences of Reagan's self government and reduction of the reach of the Federal government approach. For Reagan, reducing government size applied only to social safety nets and reductions in taxes and regulations. But what were some of the other results of Reagan's shrinking of government? One non-result was the standard living. It did not improve from the time period of 1950 to 1980. Neither did the poverty rate. However, income inequality did increase (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8500951 ). In addition, the National Debt rose much faster under Reagan than under previous presidents. We should note that the National Debt nearly tripled under Reagan's presidency while the National Debt-GDP ratio increased in all but the first year of his presidency and went from 31% to 49%.
The damage that Reagan did to unions has lived far past the tenure of his administration. But something else should be noted. The reduction in the reach of government at home, which is widely celebrated by some conservatives, resulted in increases the reach of private elites, who are not subject to the accountability that democratic processes affords. Remember that the S&L crisis occurred during Reagan's presidency just as the economic crisis of 2008 occurred during Bush II's presidency. Both presidencies saw an decrease in regulations. In addition, Reagan's 'peace through strength' expanded the reach of the US in the world. Thus we have the conservative celebration at the reduction of government power at home but a celebration of the increase of our government's power abroad.
As for Reagan's moral character, one should consider his administration's mixed record on Pinochet and Chilé--should note that Pinochet was indicted for crimes against humanity in how he treated his own people after a coup established him as Chilé's military dictator.. After the State Department had decided, during Reagan's 2nd term, in favor of ending Pinochet's reign and partially restoring democracy, it was so determined so long as US interests, which most often refers to business interests, would be helped by such a return to democracy. But it was not the kind of democracy Chilé practiced before Pinochet took over. For the multiple political party democracy that existed prior to Pinochet was regarded as an 'adventurism.' Political ideologies and parties that the US opposed were not allowed to participate (see http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159267 ).
Or another sign of Reagan's moral side came with his full support of terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and others in Afghanistan. He called these men 'freedom fighters' even though they were conducting terrorist attacks in the nation in order to draw the Soviet Union into a Vietnam kind of war and outcome. Under Reagan we had the Iran-Contra affair in which arms sales to, what was considered to be an enemy nation, Iran was used to fund support for the Contras despite the Boland Amendment that outlawed such sales.
And speaking of the Contras, the US was condemned by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the actions it sponsored which were conducted by the Contras in Nicaragua as the US vigorously tried to over throw the Sandinista government. The specific actions included mining Nicaraguan harbors, which was a terrorist act. Other terrorist acts against soft targets in Nicaragua were also executed by the US-supported Contras.
Still another side of Reagan's morality could be seen in his support for Saddam Hussein even when he was committing atrocities (See http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/ ).
We could also include America's support and training of military and paramilitary forces from El Salvador. Those troops committed numerous atrocities to the extent of causing the beginnings of the MS-13 gang.
Thus, today we are dealing with at least 2 significant problems that were either the result of Reagan's policies or a reaction to them. The former saw the formation of the Taliban and other terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda as a result of foreign policies pursued by the Reagan Administration. The latter resulted in the formation of the vary dangerous MS-13 gang. Both are unsung parts of the Reagan legacy. Reagan's successful attacks on unions has contributed to the ever increasing wealth disparity in the US.
Certainly there are other events to add to the ones just listed. But it appears that those products of the Reagan Administration were not counted by the ISI in determining Reagan's performance as President.
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To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost, which was mistitled, about the purpose of economists. This appeared in the Acton blog.
We should note that the title of the article said it was about economics, but the content focused on economists. So besides the title of the article being misnamed, it seems that the role of economists is not adequately defined here. Why? Because it seems that explaining economic science is done from a single economic ideology. That ideology is neoliberalism. And we should note several things here. First, economics is a behavioral science, not a physical science and that is regardless of the mathematics involved. Mathematics is also heavily used in other social sciences and so citing its dependence on math does not remove economics from the field of the behavioral sciences. Rather, economics includes a study of human behavior within certain spheres of society and human life and the impact that behavior has on society as a whole and groups of people. And as a behavioral science, it is far more difficult to isolate variables in economic studies than it is in many of the physical sciences.
Second, as a behavioral science, understanding the behavior of those in business must always include an adequate description of the context in which an economy functions. Thus, what works in one contextual setting doesn't always work in other settings. We should also note that economists should educate people as to the strengths and weakness of each of the various economic ideologies. There are a number of different economic ideologies besides the one our society and nation employs now.
We should also note that what often passes as economics is merely commerce (for the difference between the two, see http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-economics-and-vs-commerce/ ). Economics is a broader field of study that includes public policies, government and should include the physical and social impacts of business on people and their different environments.
Since there is no adequate definition of economics given here, it would be hard to ascertain the difference between commerce and economics from reading this article. But more than that, because there is no adequate definition of economics given here, neither is there an adequate description of how economists should relate to the public.
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