A few things ...

vimothy · Jan 7, 2008

Well, that was pretty weird.

To be honest, after reading Zhao's post, I was certain that I never wanted to write anything here again. I mean, if people are going to compare you to a child rapist simply for advancing political and economic arguments, what's the point? I'm not sure at all actually. However, I've finished sulking and am prepared to at least try to think about what's happened here.

Firstly, I think that these disputes should be thoroughly depersonalised. Maybe I really am a massive fucking wanker, but it's orthogonal to the debate about whether command economics is better or worse than free-market capitalism, or whether military intervention is ever justified or necessary. If you have stronger arguments, it should be enough to make them. I'm here to discuss politics, not my biography.

Secondly, the desultory insults kind of ironically exhibit the same behaviour that Nomadologist and Zhao have been accusing me of (unfairly -- I would never, for e.g., suggest that someone read the Koran to help them understand what is happening in the world today): they're annoyed at "neo-conservatives" (I'm not going to get into whether the use of this term is appropriate) because of the actions of a small and briefly influential group of US policy makers; I am a "neo-conservative" in their opinion; therefore I am somehow responsible for the actions of the collective whole, or at least part responsible. (Exactly the same as: Some Muslims are fascist idiots, therefore Islam is the problem, or the problem is within Islam or unique to Muslims). It's clear that I have no influence in the White House, but someone's very upset about something, and I'll have to do.

Thirdly, I feel that I am becoming more entrenched in my views the more I post here, not less. This is a bad thing. But not very important in the greater scheme of things.

Finally, I think that there's a lot of cognitive dissonance stemming from the fact that there's a significant "bias" (I mean that in a positive sense) on the boards towards theory, which is great, but of very limited relevance beyond theory's borders. (And believe it or not, I say that as someone who enjoys reading theory, and, once upon a time, went to university to study it). For instance, I remember arguing that the division of labour is necessary and a Good Thing. The fact that I had to make that argument with someone who couldn't accept or see what is surely the basis of all civilisation and the foundation of our lives (without it we'd be hunter-gatherers) was shocking from my perspective, but clearly from another perspective it's not obvious or shocking at all. There's lots of slippage and lots of disconnect. Perhaps the real surprise is not how much invective and confrontation there is, but how little.

Or maybe not ...

Anyway, there's a bit in the start of the essay from Hyperstition that started one of these "you are a retard" non-arguments that I think is spot on and worth remembering:
This blog is not primarily political, in the sense of partisan.... For that reason it is easy to be distracted from topics which trigger intense partisan rancour, aiming somehow to avoid them. The trouble is, as everyone knows, such topics are precisely the ones everyone really cares about. Either we find a way to discuss them productively here, or we learn to tolerate perpetual seething hatefest - or we might as well give up.
Make your (non-political) choices I guess.

* * * * * * *

I think having an iron belief in something like the market (or the state, for that matter) and assuming that it's gonna sort everything out is weird too.

The market isn't a "thing" that you can have a belief in. This is probably a good example of the disconnect I mentioned above. The "market" is human relationships mediated by exchange. I have more faith in the "market" than in government because I have more faith that individual people, given the localised and dispersed nature of knowledge, will be able to solve their own problems far more efficiently than a government committee, who probably won't even be able to correctly identify them.

Markets fail. It's their nature. If they didn't fail, we wouldn't need markets. Geddit?

He wasn't contrarian -- he was evangelical. He was trying to save our souls.

Oh give over -- I want to have knife-edge arguments about politics with people who are committed and extremely well read. I don't care about your soul and do not expect anyone to change their opinions based on what I say.

Around here? I would say it's about 50-50 with the academics on one side and the "commonsense-ists" (including Mr. Tea, Vimothy, IdleRich, you) on the other side.

I was thinking about this earlier, and it's the exact opposite of my impression. I don't think that there is a divide like that. When I look back over the threads, my arguments were with Mr Tea, Crackerjack, Guybrush, IdleRich, borderpolice and maybe Gavin the odd time. What Nomadologist (amusingly) refers to as the "academic" perspective (though literally Mr Tea is the academic and she an exec) is a humanities perspective, a theory perspective. It's not part of any debate except its own. Equally, there is no argument between Nomadologist or even HMLT and myself, there is just a lot of ire. On the other hand, there's fucking plenty of argument between me and Crackerjack or Mr Tea or IdleRich. (And probably a bit of ire too).

just natural born enemies, ain't no thang.

I disagree. This is a discussion board: it's all rhetoric.

Gavin · Jan 8, 2008

The market isn't a "thing" that you can have a belief in. This is probably a good example of the disconnect I mentioned above. The "market" is human relationships mediated by exchange. I have more faith in the "market" than in government because I have more faith that individual people, given the localised and dispersed nature of knowledge, will be able to solve their own problems far more efficiently than a government committee, who probably won't even be able to correctly identify them.

This is a played-out libertarian free-market vs Stalinist bureaucracy dichotomy.

Not sure who you're quoting, but in this context "believe in" clearly means "have faith in." I'm reading 1000 Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel Delanda, which is basically a Deleuzian history of Western civ (definitely worth checking out esp. for those wanting a counterpoint to Jared Diamond) complete with rhizomatic forays into geology, biology, genetics... anyway. He, drawing from Galbraith I think, calls forces of capitalism "anti-markets" -- they are hierarchical, top-down, large-scale monopolies that succeed in creating efficiency and (short-term) profit by suppressing market forces, which are actually not very efficient (your use of "exchange" is a mystification). Markets in their purest form involve complex interpersonal negotiations that require a great deal of time & effort in order to come to a solution agreeable to all parties. Very inefficient in practice. Efficiencies are created through power: discipline, control, rigid hierarchies that suppress negotiation (bureaucracies!), large scale homogenization. And of course these anti-markets inevitably scleroticize as they complexify.

Anyway, I don't have faith in people to solve or even identify their own problems on their own (seems silly to even say), but I live in the U.S. where a substantial portion of the population lives in a lurid hyperreality of Disney sentimentality and gross caricature.

Guybrush · Jan 8, 2008

Welcome back, Vimothy. All we need now is for Nomos to unban Hundredmillionlifetimes and we’ll have the merry-go-round back in spin in no time. I mean that in the best of ways.

Hundredmillionlifetimes brought up an interesting point a couple of months ago. I didn’t reply to it then, but I have been thinking about it and it kind of relates to this whole hullaballo. He wrote that some people hold beliefs that are so objectionable that one should never debate them, no matter what. The reason being that the debate itself circuitously validates the legitimacy of their claims, if only ever so slightly. Better then to treat them as pariah, signaling to whoever takes notice that some positions are so unacceptable as to exempt people who espouse them from common courtesy. In many European countries, parties on the fringes of the political spectrum routinely get excluded from the mainstream debate for much this reason, and judiciously exerted, I think this is a sensible stand. Unlike Hundredmillionlifetimes, however, I think different rules should apply on open-minded message boards such as this one. This, of course, given that said debater behaves civil and all that, but that’s a no-brainer. I’m not sure where I’m driving at, but there is a plea for reconsideration and reconciliation in there somewhere, I think.

polystyle · Jan 8, 2008

Hello Vimothy

Good to see you there / here,
whether I personally agree with you on politicos or not.
If not, I can read another thread.

* Was amazed myself to read a comparison to a 'child rapist'.
It's not something one hears everyday, online or in real world .
Think of it - would one say that so casually to someone's face ?

* As for HMLifetimes, re'rding the whole ridiculous exchange that grew over Mos Dan announcing his US election blog , confirmed that some just must really want to vent and will do so over the slightest.

One does glaze out on the 'theory' stuff and quotes from so and so,
if I wanted to go to college , I would have done so.

Anyway, its all just our opinions !
Best in 2008

vimothy · Jan 8, 2008

Afternoon all. It's good to be back. I have taken hideous oaths to Cthulhu to play nice and compromise more in 2008. And to stop posting so much. And to get some exersise. Hope it's all ok.

I think that this is v. interesting:

Gavin said:
This is a played-out libertarian free-market vs Stalinist bureaucracy dichotomy.

You could look at it as two opposite poles in a spectrum: "left" economics (e.g. MIT) says that markets fail, so use government; "right" economics (e.g. Chicago) says that markets are a good representation of reality, so use them. The Hayekian position (e.g. GMU or NYU, & my position above) is that markets fail, so use markets.

(Although I'm actually feeling more "Rodrikian" these days, but that's another conversation).

Not sure who you're quoting, but in this context "believe in" clearly means "have faith in."

I realise that, but I'm trying to say that markets are not a "thing" that you can have faith in. Government is a thing. You might have faith in a particular set of policy makers or a particular set of organisations that you trust, but there's no way that a relatively limited, discrete, isolated group of people is going to necessarily be able to identify and solve problems important to the great mass of people they ostensibly serve. I'm not talking about being able to say, "oh people are too stupid to solve the big problems facing humanity, they're too busy watching Disney cartoons". I'm talking about things like, what are more efficient methods of production for my company, what are good financial instruments (heh), what are acceptable levels of risk, where do I want to go to do my junior house officer year, how much cheese do I want on my burger, and so on. Markets are not a thing, markets are a metaphor, a proxy for human interaction around exchange.

I'm reading 1000 Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel Delanda, which is basically a Deleuzian history of Western civ (definitely worth checking out esp. for those wanting a counterpoint to Jared Diamond) complete with rhizomatic forays into geology, biology, genetics... anyway.

DeLanda is pretty cool. Not read this though...

He, drawing from Galbraith I think, calls forces of capitalism "anti-markets" -- they are hierarchical, top-down, large-scale monopolies that succeed in creating efficiency and (short-term) profit by suppressing market forces, which are actually not very efficient

Could you explain some of this, please? Are you really saying that large scale monopolies or monopsonies are more efficient than competetive markets? Can you link to any research that demonstrates this empirically? What do you think of (2002 Nobel Laureate) Vernon Smith's work in "experimental economics", which shows that even under infomation asymmetry in dynamic markets, prices stabilise around the market equilibrium, i.e. around the intersection of the supply and demand schedules? Why is competition so inefficient? How come free-er economies have done better over time when more competition and less monopolies should have made them perform worse than command economies? How come this seems to run counter to evidence and intuition? (What would Schumpeter say)?

(your use of "exchange" is a mystification).

Sorry -- don't understand this either.

Markets in their purest form involve complex interpersonal negotiations that require a great deal of time & effort in order to come to a solution agreeable to all parties.

If you really thought about this, you would see that it contradicts your argument. Yes, it's takes a complicated series of interactions to satisfy all parties. Bludgeoning them into submission with a large firm or government monopoly is not the answer. Allowing decentralised human action within a solid institutional framework is. Why? Partly because it takes a "great deal of time & effort in order to come to a solution agreeable to all parties".

And BTW, I'm not against "monopolies" per se (in the antitrust sense). Firms might control markets because they are more efficient at serving the needs of their customers. But saying that monopolies and uncompetitive markets are better than free, competitive markets doesn't make sense theoretically and isn't borne out historically. A competitive market ensures that dominant firms have to remain efficient, whereas monopolies ensure that efficiency is accidental. Also, is it not the case that large scale firms form internal dynamic markets of their own?

Very inefficient in practice. Efficiencies are created through power: discipline, control, rigid hierarchies that suppress negotiation (bureaucracies!), large scale homogenization. And of course these anti-markets inevitably scleroticize as they complexify.

Er, now this really is Stalinist. Bureaucracies are not efficient; stiffling negotiation is not efficient (how could it be? By definition you are not able to act independently as a rational agent, so cannot make decisions to maximise utility); rigid hierarchies are not efficient. Swarm behaviour, decentralised independence, local knowledge, instituional frameworks, competitive pressure, open markets, etc... that's where efficiency comes from.

And I know Galbraith was into his big firms and big policy undertakings (and was a Keynesian), but this.... I don't recognise this at all.

Anyway, I don't have faith in people to solve or even identify their own problems on their own (seems silly to even say), but I live in the U.S. where a substantial portion of the population lives in a lurid hyperreality of Disney sentimentality and gross caricature.

Ok, that's pretty patronising, but think about it like this: your given population is occluded in a haze of Disney-fied hyperreality. From that population, you draw a selectorate of people who will compete to choose the government. From that selectorate you draw a winning coalition of people who succeed at the polls. From that winning coalition you draw the government. Now, given that you've started with a population of idiots and further narrowed this population to a very small fraction, given that you don't have faith in people's ability to identify and solve their own problems full-stop, why do you think that a committee of people with self-interests and winning coalition members' interests to satisfy, who are based many miles away and in a completely different environment and context, would be best able to make decisions on your behalf?

Slothrop · Jan 8, 2008

One thing that always seems to stick out in these threads is Vimothy's assumption that anyone who is against a free market economy (or a centre-lefty mixed / modified / restricted / fixed market economy) is pro Soviet style big state monopolies where your car is made by the State Motor Company to the design that the Vehicle Research Committee has decided on and your hair is cut by the State Haircutting Company in the fashion that the Styling Subcommittee has decided you are most likely to want. Whereas the harder leftists he argues with seem to have in mind some form of decentralized non-capitalist system (and to view free markets as another form of centralization, centralizing power in the hands of corporations rather than states).

I'm aware that that's a pretty naive summary, but if it's not totally off the mark, I'd be quite interested to hear some fleshing out of an anti-capitalist, anti-centralist position.

At a slight tangent, it always seems a bit odd (or telling) that workers cooperatives tend to be associated with the left rather than the right - in principle, a setup where the workers are motivated to work harder by the fact that they're in for a share of the profits rather than discouraged from working by the fact that as long as they don't get fired, they get no personal benefit from increasing the quality of their work seems far more motivated by capitalism than socialism...

nomos · Jan 8, 2008

Guybrush said:
All we need now is for Nomos to unban Hundredmillionlifetimes and we’ll have the merry-go-round back in spin in no time. I mean that in the best of ways.

All of the mods, along with Woebot, agreed that the ban was appropriate. And as with most things here, any future decisions on the matter will be made collectively.

vimothy · Jan 8, 2008

Slothrop said:
One thing that always seems to stick out in these threads is Vimothy's assumption that anyone who is against a free market economy (or a centre-lefty mixed / modified / restricted / fixed market economy) is pro Soviet style big state monopolies where your car is made by the State Motor Company to the design that the Vehicle Research Committee has decided on and your hair is cut by the State Haircutting Company in the fashion that the Styling Subcommittee has decided you are most likely to want. Whereas the harder leftists he argues with seem to have in mind some form of decentralized non-capitalist system (and to view free markets as another form of centralization, centralizing power in the hands of corporations rather than states).

Yes, maybe, but be fair -- in this case, that's actually Gavin's position: competitive markets are inefficient and monopolies, hierarchies and bureaucracies are efficient.

Gavin · Jan 8, 2008

Vim I will have to re-read that part of the chapter (and yr links when I have the chance), but DeLanda is definitely NOT pro-monopoly, state or otherwise (and neither am I). He comes off as pro-market because it leads to greater heterogeneity, more possibility (though he is a bit coy on this). I thought it was an interesting upending of conventional wisdom that "capitalism=speedy markets" and that anticapitalists are somehow responsible for bureaucracy. In fact, true markets aren't that efficient (though he doesn't place the value on efficiency that you and other capitalists do), and capitalism actually relies on anti-markets to create profit (Microsoft is not "the left's" fault). That your dichotomy is false, that capitalism has always had that element of "Stalinism" in it, even though its self-image represses this.

His example that I recall is genetically modified crops. You increase efficiency by both isolating the genes that create the biggest ears of corn and creating terminal genetic lines so the gene pool stays consistent -- and farmers need to continually buy your seed. Problem is, it's a homogenous gene pool formed through top down control -- an anti-market -- and one disease will wipe everything out. But until that happens, you make a lot of short-term profit.

My Disney-narcotized population was a bit of rhetorical flourish, but anyway, politicians aren't drawn from the clerks, they're from the ruling class (which you probably don't "believe" in) and serve ruling class interests.

vimothy · Jan 8, 2008

Gavin said:
Vim I will have to re-read that part of the chapter (and yr links when I have the chance), but DeLanda is definitely NOT pro-monopoly, state or otherwise (and neither am I). He comes off as pro-market because it leads to greater heterogeneity, more possibility (though he is a bit coy on this). I thought it was an interesting upending of conventional wisdom that "capitalism=speedy markets" and that anticapitalists are somehow responsible for bureaucracy. In fact, true markets aren't that efficient (though he doesn't place the value on efficiency that you and other capitalists do), and capitalism actually relies on anti-markets to create profit (Microsoft is not "the left's" fault). That your dichotomy is false, that capitalism has always had that element of "Stalinism" in it, even though its self-image represses this.

Right, well, I don't think that DeLanda's actually right.... though if you'd prefer, I would also say, if he is right, if anti-markets are capitalism, I don't like capitalism. But I don't think he is. He is basically lifting that vision of capitalism wholesale from Galbraith and a limited timeframe where the economic policy consensus converged around Keynesian demand management, and a type of economic control that from one perspective was the continuation of a war footing (i.e. the government retains a lot of control of its industrial base), post-WWII hope in the power of quantification and science, and part of a general movement towards socialist or socialised economics (the world did look very different back then). Galbraith might have wanted to include this element of Stalinism in capitalist economies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is right (indeed, history has proved him pretty wrong by any measure).

Capitalism has always evolved.

And I'm still intereested in hearing why you / DeLanda think that competitive markets are less efficient than monopolies / monopsonies. Can you explain? How do you factor in stuff that seems to directly contradict that, like Schumpeter or Vernon Smith?

EDIT: Or history?

His example that I recall is genetically modified crops. You increase efficiency by both isolating the genes that create the biggest ears of corn and creating terminal genetic lines so the gene pool stays consistent -- and farmers need to continually buy your seed. Problem is, it's a homogenous gene pool formed through top down control -- an anti-market -- and one disease will wipe everything out. But until that happens, you make a lot of short-term profit.

Interesting ....

My Disney-narcotized population was a bit of rhetorical flourish, but anyway, politicians aren't drawn from the clerks, they're from the ruling class (which you probably don't "believe" in) and serve ruling class interests.

But it's more complicated than that. I was drawing on de Mesquita and Weingast (who I think you'd probably enjoy if you don't read them already). Whoever they are drawn from, they are going to have to serve the interests of the people who put them in power (i.e. the "winning coalition"). But whether you take that to be a fairly contructed percentage of the total population, or an exclusive elite, or even a combination of the two, it's clear that if you think that most people are idiots in any case then it doesn't matter.

What matters is that there's less idiots in the government, so it's going to take them a lot longer to write Shakespeare.

Mr. Tea · Jan 8, 2008

Two questions from an economics n00b:

1) in what way are we measuring/defining 'efficiency', in the sense it's used here?

2) what's an 'anti-market' when it's at home?

Gavin · Jan 9, 2008

Found the DeLanda online:

First of all, if capitalism has always relied on non-competitive practices, if the prices for its commodities have never been objectively set by demand/supply dynamics, but imposed from above by powerful economic decision-makers, then capitalism and the market have always been different entities. To use a term introduced by Braudel, capitalism has always been an "antimarket". This, of course, would seem to go against the very meaning of the word "capitalism", regardless of whether the word is used by Karl Marx or Ronald Reagan. For both nineteenth century radicals and twentieth century conservatives, capitalism is identified with an economy driven by market forces, whether one finds this desirable or not. Today, for example, one speaks of the former Soviet Union's "transition to a market economy", even though what was really supposed to happen was a transition to an antimarket: to large scale enterprises, with several layers of managerial strata, in which prices are set not taken. This conceptual confusion is so entrenched that I believe the only solution is to abandon the term "capitalism" completely, and to begin speaking of markets and antimarkets and their dynamics.

http://alamut.com/subj/economics/de_landa/antiMarkets.html

Gavin · Jan 9, 2008

Mr. Tea said:
Two questions from an economics n00b:

1) in what way are we measuring/defining 'efficiency', in the sense it's used here?

Ah, well I am by any definition a noob myself... I was using it to mean a lowering in transaction costs, "waste", etc.

2) what's an 'anti-market' when it's at home?

I thought this was some pun I didn't get for a while... I do not understand your question.

Mr. Tea · Jan 9, 2008

Ahh, saying "What's X when it's at home?" is a sort of UK idiom for "What's X [which I've never heard of before]?". So the question is, simply, "What's an anti-market?".

nomadologist · Jan 9, 2008

vimothy said:
they're annoyed at "neo-conservatives" (I'm not going to get into whether the use of this term is appropriate) because of the actions of a small and briefly influential group of US policy makers; I am a "neo-conservative" in their opinion; therefore I am somehow responsible for the actions of the collective whole, or at least part responsible. (Exactly the same as: Some Muslims are fascist idiots, therefore Islam is the problem, or the problem is within Islam or unique to Muslims). It's clear that I have no influence in the White House, but someone's very upset about something, and I'll have to do.

...

I was thinking about this earlier, and it's the exact opposite of my impression. I don't think that there is a divide like that. When I look back over the threads, my arguments were with Mr Tea, Crackerjack, Guybrush, IdleRich, borderpolice and maybe Gavin the odd time. What Nomadologist (amusingly) refers to as the "academic" perspective (though literally Mr Tea is the academic and she an exec) is a humanities perspective, a theory perspective. It's not part of any debate except its own. Equally, there is no argument between Nomadologist or even HMLT and myself, there is just a lot of ire. On the other hand, there's fucking plenty of argument between me and Crackerjack or Mr Tea or IdleRich. (And probably a bit of ire too).

I disagree. This is a discussion board: it's all rhetoric.

First, I don't think anyone has ever "blamed" you personally for the decisions the residents of the White House are ultimately responsible for, Vimothy. In terms of the way ideology works as a political force for division and hegemony-building, however, people have rightly pointed out that your politics beliefs (far from being subversive, radical, or even unpredictable/interesting) align perfectly with the ideology that is status quo in the United States. The fact that this ideology has so quickly and easily spread across the Atlantic is troubling to people who find the current conservative regime all-but authoritarian in its ludicrous overstepping of the constitutional authority vested in the executive branch by the Constitution.

Of course, to British people who may have less occasion to feel completely suffocated by these beliefs and convictions, who don't spend each and every day inundated by them via every last nanosecond of media they are forced to consume, the *ire* on the part of certain Americans who post here toward your ideologgorhea may seem over-the-top: I, for one, thought it abundantly clear that these Americans were expressing their emotional reaction to American cultural imperialism in a way that was consciously and intentionally over-the-top. There comes a certain point in political exasperation with American free market fundamentalism at which it ceases to seem like a battle that's at all symmetrical, even on the internet, and begins to feel like the stranglehold of Empire slowly crushing your last breath from your exhausted neck. Since you seem like a "big boy", Vimothy, I never thought you would take it too much to heart when I got to the point of throwing my hands up and resigning to losing the battle.

Ultimately, I agree--I don't believe there is a clear "divide" here in any meaningful sense, especially not a 50-50 one: that statement was made to describe a certain discursive deadlock that had overtaken the Politics threads at the time.

As for who is an "academic", I've been in grad school for a few years and plan to enroll in a PhD program within a year--once again, please do not assume that because you've been told a few details about my life that you know them all. I lay just as much claim to being an academic as Mr. Tea does, since I would not be surprsied if I've completed more grad school than he has at this point. As for your biography being irrelevant to politics, I'm sure that it is often very irrelevant, but the personal IS the political, and I've had the occasion to work in highly politically "charged" sectors that often have lead me to experience things I think are very relevant to some discussions we've had. This is why I've brought up work experience, and if you have any stories about your own job or experiences that are politically relevant, by all means share them. There is nothing wrong with or automatically logically fallacious in talking about anecdotal political experience, and I would argue that one can easily share details about experience without directly "personalizing" a debate.

Also, anyone who understands the discourse between communists, socialists, and pro-capitalists knows that theory is not only relevant, but central, to these discussions/doctrines/ideologies.

Finally, no need to flatter yourself--"you" have not really raised the ire in me, it's there for you only insofar as you echo the far more damaging and powerful politicians and new aristocrats whose ideology you've adopted as your own that make me angry. You are just a copy of a copy of the neocon whose punditry loses cultural cache with every passing moment.

nomadologist · Jan 9, 2008

Slothrop said:
One thing that always seems to stick out in these threads is Vimothy's assumption that anyone who is against a free market economy (or a centre-lefty mixed / modified / restricted / fixed market economy) is pro Soviet style big state monopolies where your car is made by the State Motor Company to the design that the Vehicle Research Committee has decided on and your hair is cut by the State Haircutting Company in the fashion that the Styling Subcommittee has decided you are most likely to want. Whereas the harder leftists he argues with seem to have in mind some form of decentralized non-capitalist system (and to view free markets as another form of centralization, centralizing power in the hands of corporations rather than states).

...

At a slight tangent, it always seems a bit odd (or telling) that workers cooperatives tend to be associated with the left rather than the right - in principle, a setup where the workers are motivated to work harder by the fact that they're in for a share of the profits rather than discouraged from working by the fact that as long as they don't get fired, they get no personal benefit from increasing the quality of their work seems far more motivated by capitalism than socialism...

First, yes, this is what was sometimes frustrating about these "economic" discussions--Vim and some others seemed to set up this binary where you were either the world's staunchest libertarian or you were pro-big stick waving Big Stalinish Gov where everyone stands in line for milk after putting in a 12-hour day pushing meaningless paperwork in some combination Gogolian/Kafkaesque nightmare Socialist State.

Second, workers cooperatives (at least if by this you mean unions?) don't encourage people to work harder, they encourage them to cease working as soon as the terms of their employment are unsatisfactory to them. Or at least that is the ideal..., we all know what happens to unions more often than not. However, I guess you're right in that there do exist stripes of conservatives in the U.S. that were rabidly anti-outsourcing and sweatshop labor long before these became liberal pet peeves.

nomadologist · Jan 9, 2008

Gavin said:
Found the DeLanda online:

http://alamut.com/subj/economics/de_landa/antiMarkets.html

This seems like a great idea, until you read on and see what DeLanda concludes after abandoning "capitalism"...the burden of proof is sort of on him at that point, and I don't think he meets it by any stretch.

nomadologist · Jan 9, 2008

vimothy said:
Ok, that's pretty patronising, but think about it like this: your given population is occluded in a haze of Disney-fied hyperreality. From that population, you draw a selectorate of people who will compete to choose the government. From that selectorate you draw a winning coalition of people who succeed at the polls. From that winning coalition you draw the government. Now, given that you've started with a population of idiots and further narrowed this population to a very small fraction, given that you don't have faith in people's ability to identify and solve their own problems full-stop, why do you think that a committee of people with self-interests and winning coalition members' interests to satisfy, who are based many miles away and in a completely different environment and context, would be best able to make decisions on your behalf?

What you are ignoring here (and I'm surprised given your interest in economics) is the fact that, while anyone can technically/legally run for office in the U.S., only a privileged elite can afford to do so, and within that elite, there is a subset of the even-more-elite who both have the wealth necessary to fund a political career AND the sort of social clout, historical political ties, and association with certain key institutions (ivy league schools, socialite circles and clubs, etc.) that are necessary to make running for any sort of office on the state or national level worth the money you'd spend doing it. Of course, this same superelite tends to be one-in-the-same thing as the "ruling class" elite that owns all of our major industries. These are the people the stock market sets its financial watch to.

There is no "ceteris paribus" when you talk about the people who run for office in the U.S. For every Rudy Giuliani, you have 15 Bloombergs. The "selectorate" isn't really "selecting" their candidates, they're just choosing among the superelites who bothered running that term.

Gavin · Jan 9, 2008

nomadologist said:
ideologgorhea

Stealing this at some point!

This seems like a great idea, until you read on and see what DeLanda concludes after abandoning "capitalism"...the burden of proof is sort of on him at that point, and I don't think he meets it by any stretch.

I am about 60% through the book and I am already sensing danger on the horizon. Plenty of kewl factoids though, as befits a rhizomaniac.

dominic · Jan 9, 2008

i'd be interested in vimothy's take on sovereign wealth funds, and the stake that such funds have recently acquired in distressed wall street banks (the heights of capitalism)

could it be that western-style capitalism is being hi-jacked (eclipsed) by the return of the State, in particular the Chinese State?

for a definition of sovereign wealth funds, see this link = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_funds

and for a lengthier primer, see this link =
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1126/p16s01-wmgn.html

for a political realist (or reformist) take =
http://www.tradereform.org/content/view/469/46/

and for a more comforting (free market orthodoxy) take on the phenomenon =
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4056

and for a soft-and-cushy blogosphere take =
http://theissue.com/issue/4954.html

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