Fear is the foundation of most governments.
-John Adams
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
CAPITALISM UBER ALLES
CAPMAGISTAN
Libertarianism is just an argument for Anarchy by way of Money.
Every man for himself is the unifying mantra between Libertarians and Conservatives. They preach no government and disguise that sentiment by invoking Free Market in the prior case and States' Rights in the latter.
Pedantry continued, the Randroids are full on idee fixe when it comes to capital. The be all and end all is money (or property or assets), in perpetuity, forever and ever, on into eternity. The tunnel vision of the individual rights mantra renders them hopelessly solipsistic. Mention humanism or cooperation and you get the puppy-dog look, head cocked, eyes blank and wanting.
Off we go, then, yo ho yo ho, where the means are the ends and we all get the bends.
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Andrew Bernstein writes a freshman-year philosophy paper about Communism (except he calls it capitalism) and pretends that stoned 17-year olds haven't made his exact argument after hearing Rage Against the Machine.
We've never had true Capitalism, man. Not really. Think about it!
"A consistent, non-contradictory implementation of the principle of individual rights necessitates laissez-faire; anything other or less is not capitalism."
And a consistent, non-contradictory implementation of common sense wouldn't base an entire philosophy on an idealized, untested premise; to do so would be jackassery.
The example Mr. Bernstein cites as "the closest to a laissez-faire form of government that mankind has come" is the northern US States in the 19th century. You might remember this period of history - before women could vote, before child labor laws, before unions, before wage laws or health care, when robber barons were free to do whatever the fuck they wanted. Utopia, for rich white males. Why didn't that stay popular?
Then comes the obligatoryMaybe No True Scotsman half-fallacy:
"A related misunderstanding is the belief that the actions and principles of individual capitalists are necessarily representative of the nature of capitalism."
Let's run that through the Obfuscator X-500:
Don't blame capitalism for bad capitalists, because not every capitalist is representative of capitalism. Only the good ones represent capitalism; The rest are apostates. Any positive developments that can be attributed to capitalism will be solely attributed to capitalism. Any negative developments that appear connected to capitalism are not representative or, more likely, wholly different from capitalism.
"It might as well be argued that the murderous activities of Hitler and Stalin are necessarily representative of the nature of government (they are representative of the nature of statism)."
Here's a hint for Mr. Bernstein: Don't spend part of your essay constraining the definition of capitalism and then expect to craft a useful comparison to a general term like government. In case you need help -- Economic system : Capitalism :: Government : [Type of government].
Our last look at Mr. Bernstein's insight comes from his closing paragraph:
"The confusion of the history of capitalism (or the actions of capitalists) with the system's fundamental nature is an example of what may be termed the Empiricist Fallacy. Such a cognitive error involves treating the historical facts, rather than the philosophical essence of a political/cultural phenomenon as the deepest, most significant level of its explanation."
Witness a full-fledged example of mushy-headed platonic idealism. What the closing paragraph seems to argue, and rather unconvincingly, is that the problem with studying the history of capitalism is that people are so hung up on studying what actually happened. The whys and wherefores and all that messy real-world complexity that is just so damned antithetical to serious philosophical thinking.
What he seems to be against is any kind of method for determining the efficacy of, or even examining, a system, while at the same time repudiating historical research as a basis for correcting errors.
To be fair, he does allow that the historical facts could be a facet of one's study of capitalism, but makes clear that "the deepest, most significant level of its explanation" should be its philosophical essence.
Did he really just conclude a defense of capitalism by saying the equivalent of, "It's the thought that counts?" So if a woman's husband is abusive, she shouldn't look at her history of being abused as the deepest level of her relationship, but should focus instead on the fact that her man says he loves her.
In Summation: Capitalism is the best system even though it's never been implemented. Just like Communism, dude. And neoconservatism. End of history. Done. What's the word count?
"Multiculturalism - a creation of leftist, Western, nihilistic, post-modern philosophy professors - begins by promoting 'cultural relativism', which holds that all cultures are of equal value; no culture is better or worse than any other. Logically, this serves to de-value Western values, such as reason, science, productiveness, and each individual's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by equating them with the most irrational and destructive practices of primitive, mystical cultures such as voodoo medicine, the subjugation of women by men, genital mutilation, and even cannibalism. As essentialized by Peter Schwartz, 'Multiculturalism is the debased attempt to obliterate values by claiming that they are indistinguishable from non-values.' "
We told him to call George Noory. And to never use the word "logically" again. And then we hung up.
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Line 'em up, knock 'em down:
Elan Journowastes an entire page trying to make the case for cutting off aid to North Korea without mentioning how many people would starve or directly agitating for war. But the author so clearly wants war. Just fucking say "war" next time.
Ben Lieberman bitches about not drilling for oil all over the US, without regard for environmental impact or actual need. Does he really think higher prices at the pump are a result of less available? Why aren't oil companies drilling all over Iraq? Here's a secret -- When a few companies control the entire supply of a resource, they can make covert agreements to restrict that supply in order to raise prices. See also: Enron.
Alan Caruba also bitches about gasoline while being completely dense. He attributes the price increase to "fears of military conflict in the Middle East, probably initiated by Iran." Way to pay attention. Then there's discussion of drilling in ANWR, which might yield 10.4 billion barrels of oil, at which Alan Caruba issues a challenge: "Well, if anyone considers an estimated 10.4 billion barrels to the nation's oil supply 'small', then one wonders what they consider large?" How about the Iraq supply mentioned above (115 billion barrels, with maybe 100 billion added onto that)? Then scoffing about environmental solutions to the oil situation, with nothing good enough to sate Alan. New technologies are worthless* -- after all, we'll never run out of oil!
*Why haven't any Randroids come to the realization that research and development of new energy resources is bound to have enormous profit potential? Why such a boner for oil?
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Time to go wash our brains out with bleach and ammonia.
