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From Stand on Zanzibar: "UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn’t manage."
From Stand on Zanzibar: "UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn’t manage."
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It seems obvious that means abide by which to sustain current levels of production (at least, absent natural calamity). Most fundamentals (resources, machines, computers, skills) are not distressed. Rather, what are distressed are mindsets and institutional means for allocating financial lubricants of trust, credit, and cooperation among individuals, nations, and extra-national corporatists. Those are the stressors that are “unfairly” out of whack. Those are what must be "reset," if civilizing trust is to be preserved, without jolts of rancor and war that will necessarily lead to pestilence and collapse (causing great gnashing of teeth for everyone). That is why “fairness” is as compelling a topic as ever, in respect of which human good faith and good will must somehow be re-inspired and re-assimilated.
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Mere market forces will not produce needed resets. This is because entire markets are now subject to manipulation by morally-hollow, computer-modeling, hedge-controllers of institutions of banking, trade regulations, media, academia, governments, and science-funding. Many people are disadvantaged less because of inferior work ethic, intelligence, or talent than because of disadvantage in proximity to outlets for manipulating markets. (Example: Chinese currency and social policies keep wages artificially low.) Manipulators can now sell just about any crap they want to sell. (Obama -- quod erat demonstrandum.) As things stand, fairness has been undone by mindsets for coveting pleasure and power (i.e., diversification of pot, porn, and plunder). As motivators, pleasure and power are short term. They don't factor well for preserving civilizations based on mutual respect. To get elected, Dems have deemed it necessary to appeal to short term preservations of pleasure, while Repubs have deemed it necessary to appeal to short term preservations of power. Dinos and Rinos may as well be harnessed to an alliance for pulling civilization away from purposeful vision, with no brakes against decadence.
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Both America and the rest of the world have lost assimilating visions; both are without legitimate, authoritative alternatives. If the world does not move towards (1) assimilation in respect of human dignity and fairer marketing freedom or (2) Big Brother pyramidal collectivism, then the world will get (3) massive breakdown. (Or, America could return to a modified kind of isolationism, to seek restoration of local energy independence, combined with preemption of abilities of competing nations and cultures to threaten America’s stability.) My read of tea leaves is that we are heading towards pyramidal collectivism (Big Brother seeking of false security at expense to human liberty). My read of what sensible “fairness” requires is a reset of the financial-banking-corporate system, to regulate it so it does not threaten to buy every republic and sell it into serfdom under a collectivizing syndicate of visionless Crony Corporatists, greedbag Market Manipulators, and subhuman Big Brother Collectivists. God bless us, taking history as a guide, I think we are in for some very bad times.
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The problem with trying to regulate markets entirely in terms of markets is that such an attempt is defenseless against crony marketeers of markets, i.e., cannibalizing negaters of markets. To preserve free markets for non-crony individuals, there must be regulation of the marketing of markets. Otherwise, control of all enterprises is eventually ceded to those who would lord over people as if they were livestock.
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The problem with trying to regulate markets entirely in terms of markets is that such an attempt is defenseless against crony marketeers of markets, i.e., cannibalizing negaters of markets. To preserve free markets for non-crony individuals, there must be regulation of the marketing of markets. Otherwise, control of all enterprises is eventually ceded to those who would lord over people as if they were livestock.
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6 comments:
If individual liberty is to be preserved, the extent of the problem facing it needs to be identified. Collectivism is to some extent a predictable result of increasing and instantaneous connectivity (as in the world wide web, ease of travel, and consolidating of control over all institutions of social influence). It's hard to preserve free markets when markets themselves are falling under the manipulative control of marketeers of crony control over all means of persuasion (bribery, regulation, threats). National borders and cultural values mean little to such cronies.
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From Stand on Zanzibar: "UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn’t manage."
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Means abide by which to sustain current levels of production. Most fundamentals (resources, machines, computers, skills) are not distressed. Rather, what are distressed are mindsets and means for allocating financial lubricants among individuals, nations, and extra-national corporatists. Those are the stressors that are “unfairly” out of whack. Those are what must be "reset," if civilizing trust is to be preserved. That is why “fairness” is as compelling a topic as ever, in respect of which human good faith and good will must somehow be rejuvenated.
.
Mere market forces will not produce needed resets. This is because entire markets are now subject to manipulation by morally-hollow, computer-modeling, hedge-controllers of institutions of banking, trade regulations, media, academia, governments, and science-funding. Many people are disadvantaged less because of inferior work ethic, intelligence, or talent than because of disadvantage in proximity to outlets for manipulating markets. (Example: Chinese currency and social policies keep wages artificially low.) Manipulators can now sell just about any crap they want to sell. (Obama -- quod erat demonstrandum.) As things stand, fairness has been undone by mindsets for coveting pleasure and power (i.e., diversification of pot, porn, and plunder). As motivators, pleasure and power are short term. They don't factor well for preserving civilizations based on mutual respect. To get elected, Dems have deemed it necessary to appeal to short term preservations of pleasure, while Repubs have deemed it necessary to appeal to short term preservations of power. Dinos and Rinos may as well be harnessed to an alliance for pulling civilization away from purposeful vision, with no brakes against decadence.
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Both America and the rest of the world have lost assimilating visions; both are without legitimate, authoritative alternatives. If the world does not move towards (1) (Jesus-Adam Smith) assimilation in respect of human dignity and fairer marketing freedom or (2) (Allah-Karl Marx) Big Brother pyramidal collectivism, then the world will get (3) (Pandemonium) massive breakdown. (Or, America could return to a modified kind of isolationism, to seek restoration of local energy independence, combined with preemption of abilities of competing nations and cultures to threaten America’s stability.)
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I believe we are heading towards pyramidal collectivism (Big Brother seeking of false security at expense to human liberty). My read of what sensible “fairness” requires is a reset of the financial-banking-corporate system, to regulate it so it does not threaten to buy every republic and sell it into serfdom under a collectivizing syndicate of Crony Corporatists, Market Manipulators, and Big Brother Collectivists.
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The problem with efforts to regulate markets entirely in terms of markets is that such attempts are defenseless against crony marketeers of markets, i.e., cannibalizing negaters of markets. To preserve free markets for non-crony individuals, there must be checks on the marketing of markets. There must be preserved at least one oasis of territorial and moral boundaries that can facilitate free enterprise. Otherwise, control of all enterprise must eventually be ceded to those who would lord over people as if they were livestock.
For what reason did Jefferson and Franklin believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were either self evident or sacred and undeniable? Was their reasoning not closely associated with having been reared and assimilated among traditions for debating applications of Judeo-Christian values? Libertarians tend to like John Locke, who treated that political society exists to protect such property as is derived from one’s labor. Locke defined property to concern a person's life, liberty, and estate. Unlike modern Libertarians, Locke tended to favor a Christology (albeit, often non-trinitarian). He felt that the associations that influence one’s feelings and ideas while young tend to be more influential, because they are more foundational. (Are solid values assimilate by youth in multicultural societies?) Some people find coming to grips with a Judeo-Christian background for assimilating values to be disquieting, preferring “diversification ” of dogmas, so they can be watered down in appeals to “walls” based on “natural reason.” (Canadians may prefer the slogan “peace, order, and good government.”) Is such reasoning “purely objective?”
Is the Constitution a Social Contract that entitles B and C to vote to redistribute and share C's property? Is it a Living Constitution, so it legitimizes B and C in "virtually voting," simply by "liberating" A's property? It seems many of us are targeted to pay reparations for wrongs we did not do, based on a contract that we did not sign, based on interpretations back-twisted to rationalize the basest of impulses. It seems like a variation of might makes right -- except change "might" to (voting or organizing) "numbers." Now, numbers make right. This seems uncomfortably closer to mob connivery than compassion, closer to teaching children strategies for delaying responsibility than for teaching them to grow into individual responsibility. I guess organized mobs could just take, and then say afterwards that they had "virtually voted" first. When one man's theft becomes another man's liberating redistribution, I don't quite see how mere law can much longer legitimize social cohesion. I agree that morality is subjective. I think property law is becoming back-rationalized subjective. Once every salad-bowl ethnicity, creed, and culture comes to feel no assimilative standards define their nation, I suppose national borders will soon fall. It will be interesting to see how that works out.
Forget fairness and instead balance common sense. What does it take to preserve incentive in a republic, without allowing the republic to be bought out from under us? The thinking that goes only along a linear scale of fairness versus incentive is what keeps our eyes fastened on the circus projected on the walls of the cave, while an alliance of corrupt cronies and useful idiots buys and sells us as human livestock. Think about the republic for once! Yes, end the tax on income and domestic corporate production. But for goodness sakes, do we really need to allow an aristocracy of wealth to accumulate to the point of commoditizing the nation? Who puts these ideas in peoples' heads?
Incentive relates to production by individuals and corporations. Incentive for family businesses can be preserved by using the corporate form. There is little need to avoid hereditary taxes in order to preserve incentives. There is a need to tax wealth transfers in order to reduce dynasties of aristocratic old boy cronyism.
A republic needs an environment that can sustain a vibrant middle class. A republic needs effective checks and balances. It does not flourish in an environment of collectivizing despots, nor in an environment of grossly lopsided cronyism. What we have now is an understanding among despots and cronies. Absent a third party, meaningful representation for middle classpeople of good faith is an unfunny joke, facilitated by simple minded slogans. However, reality is not reducible to simplistic linear slogans. Linear thinkers tend often to fail to appreciate that math is activated in concert with a spiritual component. Platonic forms (active geometry) are derivative of active math. Active math fluxes to feedback among participants giving expressions to fields and particles. Reality is not captured in dead slogans expressed along simplistic linear scales.
When inadequately balanced by a decent citizenry, informed in how to deploy institutional checks, both socialism and capitalism lead along parallel tracks directly to depotism. Socialism does it by accretion of regulations, which it pretends to advance for the sake of "equality, fairness, and saving the planet" (in suchlike PelosiSpeak, we have to enact socialism so we can then read how it really means all for one and none for all). Crony capitalism leads to much the same despotism by reducing entire governments and markets to commodities. Chinese Capitalism is at least honest in showing how an unholy team of Rinos and Dinos can advance material security while reducing most of humanity to livestock.
At first, American Collectivists united in order to defend their individual liberty and/or their common security. However, once secured, the value of liberty was eventually discounted, while the value of security was up-rated. So centralization of command became more important, even self-accumulative, taking us closer to a kind of totalitarian elitism that devours the liberty of others. Infestations of such impulse include Sharia law, international Marxism, and Agenda 21. All lead to minutiae-intrusive dictat, and all require regimes to make periodic examples of rebels and periodic displays to remind people of central authority. We're now seeing that in the Obama Regime.
As authority becomes more hierarchically and centrally organized, local delegations of authority become more bureaucratically regulated and less responsive to local markets and common sense. Collectivists-for-security will not abide federal respect for sub-state's rights. Consider recent efforts by some American States to legalize medical marijuana. I am no fan at all of dopers. Yet I am concerned: Why do Fed Authorities deem it so important to demonstrate to States that the central authority does not allow States such self determination? Feds are consolidating control over local health care, medicine, diets, and carbon exhaling. Soon, controls will intrude pervasively --- in breeding, traveling, communicating, and enterprising. Designs for Obama-control will make Sharia law look tolerant. Soon, Dims (80 percent of whom can be prodded around with cheap bribes and blaring ridicule, if we can believe Carville) will be so beholden to central command that the Regime will no longer need to make cheap bribes. It will be able to rely on pure dictat. And, Libertarians, it will then not need to give a damn about your security, comfort, drugs, and hormones.
People become institutionalized and conditioned. Older people are conditioned by years of experience. Younger people are conditioned by what they feel about what their peers feel. And secular minded people who have invested most heavily in time and money in "the struggle" can never admit they were wrong. Especially when they went against everything their parents said. At least, not until their parents are dead and they become parents themselves. When a college grossly overpays a prof or coach, how likely is it that the college will soon confess error? Especially when Emmanuel Goldstein can be blamed forever and ever. And especially when you believe in no higher moral reconciler.
Study all you want. What you will find is that you can make sense available, but you can't force people to drink of it. I suspect you will also find that peer pressure among young students and young profs trumps reason. The most mentally immature will be most in need of approval from the collective with which they identify. This is because they have not acquired skill, wisdom or confidence to know their own minds. After all, why else would they be collectivists-for-security? Mature thinkers will tend to know what leftist loons are saying. Collectivist youth will know little about what anyone is saying, and will be proud fodder for Jay walking and Howard Stern. They are conditioned by their peers to be conservative-phobes, afraid to listen to alternative thinkers for fear of being castigated. Older people who often seem set in their thinking also tend to have a lifetime of thinking. Younger people have their immediate feelings and insecurities about their peers. Often, they should not be voting, because they will almost always favor the lying santa demagogue. Once you allow them to vote, tell them it's their civic duty to vote, and encourage them to register incompetents and illegals to vote, there's not much use in studying how to use reason to appeal to them. Not unless you want to set up a competing santa shop.
What should be done? Enforce the border. Teach what history and philosophy have to say about what it takes to preserve a decent republic that avails human freedom and dignity. Teach that it is the civic duty of people who lack a clue to NOT vote. Teach how Carville, billionaires, and Wall Streeters tend to favor Dims because they are easiest to fleece. Teach how older people who have successfully held jobs and raised families and run businesses are actually quite smart and competent. Teach that conservatives know what a figure of speech is, and also know the value of traditionally assimilative and sacred figures of speech. Teach that science does not avail objective answers to moral issues. Teach that there is a need for receptivity to spiritual, moral insight. And when youth and Dims give disrespect in return, for goodness sakes, don't join or celebrate them.
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