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Friday
August 14, 2009

Our Genuine Collectivism? by Tibor R. Machan

How can one detect the socialist version of this attempt to revamp the
American system in Mr. Obama & Co.'s proposals? The one straightforward
way is to pay attention to how the regime has accepted one of the most
basic tenets of classical socialism, namely, that wealth is publicly
owned, not by individuals who earned or otherwise honestly came by it. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (58 messages)

Monday, August 24, 2009 - 3:00pm

Mark:

1. Did the actual USA actually do any good for itself and the rest of the world by engaging in this foreign entanglement or should it have let the Nazis and the Communists mutually self destruct?

I don't think that the latter was an option. The Nazis and Communists were involved in a turf war, Totalitarian Bloods vs. Totalitarian Cripps. One or the other group of global scale thugs, unimpeded, would have prevailed in that turf war. Unilateral declarations of peace by the West would have simply been appeasement in the face of declared intents to assert world dominance. Without engagement, we were facing the real spectacle of a someday soon mushroom cloud over NYC, and forced capitulation. WWII was a do-or-die struggle for survival. Paradoxically, we mobbed up to fight the global movement towards totalitarian mob rule--because there was no viable alternative, except perish as a free nation-- even as, unleashing what we did caused some of what we were(as what remained of a free state)to perish. We had a choice between bad and worse, we chose bad, and have been trying to democratically fix 'bad' ever since--even if we ultimately fail. But fixing 'worse' would have been impossible, and doing nothing in the face of 'worse,' ala Chamberlain, was not a real option.

Look at the example of street thugs in the world. When do you think the actual Bloods and Cripps will 'mutually self destruct?'-- as opposed to, when ineffectually confronted, spin off into the Latin Kings, MS-13, on ad infinitum to a barely acceptable level of fringe mayhem, constantly asserting the universal truth that 'force rules' until someone effectively asserts 'true enough, but it is going to be reasoned force.'

The Bloods, Cripps, Latin Kings, MS-13, etc., are all examples of local spheres of 'governance,' all with forms of dues/taxes and rules and enforcement of same. Some/many even willingly accede to those rules of governance. The assertion that 'force rules' is always bubbling along just under the surface, waiting for a vacuum to appear in which to expand. The same is true on the global stage, we can't unilaterally remove that constant pressure to either assert or accede.

Crime/force not only pays, it pays damn well, unless confronted with superior violence. That has not been unilaterally repealed, nor have I ever heard a convincing argument how it could be unilaterally repealed. Megapolitcs is too efficient a shortcut to commerce and politics, even in global politics, it will always be with us. So, force ultimately rules, that isn't a question. It better be reasonable force that we can accede to, or else it will be unreasonable force that we cannot accede to. Those are the only two choices we ever have, and only one of those holds the promise of force in service to political solutions that we could agree to.

Not 'should'; we all agree that we'd like if force shouldn't rule. But force just 'does,' either as reasonable or unreasonable force, period, and we have to deal with that reality, which we do as a group/nation, just like everything else we do as a group/nation, imperfectly.

regards,
Fred

Monday, August 24, 2009 - 3:38pm

"...the real spectacle of a someday soon mushroom cloud over NYC"

That's not the story I've heard. The ex post facto justification for American entry into the war used to be that the Germans were closing in on the bomb and would have gotten it if the war had gone on any longer (the WMD of its day). Such mentions of this story as I've seen in recent decades have said unanimously that it was never true. Germany had a basic research program going in the early days of the war but higher-ups squelched it in 1941. Sorry, but I don't have sources for any of this.

One of the aforementioned denials is in Barbara Branden's biography of Rand, which says that she and Oppenheimer bonded with their disdain for the notion that a totalitarian nation could ever have acheived such a breakthrough.

Monday, August 24, 2009 - 11:13pm

Fred:

One or the other group of global scale thugs, unimpeded, would have prevailed in that turf war.

Isn't that precisely what happened, thanks to Western intervention? Didn't we, subsequently, come close to annihilation, while watching most of the world fall victim to Communist domination?

By picking one side as a "lesser evil", didn't the West, in effect, offer "the sanction of the victim" to the Communists?

How do you know that, unimpeded, one group of thugs would have prevailed? Isn't it more likely that an ugly stalemate would have ensued, while both sides, in ruins and impoverished, would have either made a truce and some reforms or, more likely, have been overthrown from within?

Totalitarianism can only sustain itself on plunder. Once it impoverishes itself, its neighbors and loses the foreign aid and guaranteed loans given as appeasements by its craven, would be adversaries, it falls.

Not only doesn't the end justify the means, but elevating the end above the means fails miserably in attaining the end that was sought.

With regards,
Mark

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 8:06am

Mark:

re; By picking one side as a "lesser evil", didn't the West, in effect, offer "the sanction of the victim" to the Communists?

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. By 'bad over worse', I didn't mean 'allying with the commies over the Nazis.' That was pure real-politik, there were never any illusions about being BFF with the Soviet Union, the immediate transition to the Cold War-- the continuation of our conflict with meat eating totalitarianism -- didn't skip a beat after the Axis was defeated.

By 'bad' I meant, choosing to unleash our own soft fascism, the cozy tribal relationships between the guns of our own government and business in America, to rapidly ramp up the Arsenal of Democracy. That was the real 'sanction of the victim.' We embraced totalitarianism...to fight totalitarianism. By necessity. It could have been more focused, more deliberately fettered-- but it wasn't. This was a continuation of what happened in WWI, but on a much larger scale in WWII, and in an unbroken chain ever since. Both of those events were fertilizer thrown on an already festering infestation of the hubristic scientific statism that was sweeping the world, including the US, since the early part of the twentieth century-- a zealous religion that had the marketing savvy to call itself a 'science.'

By 'worse' I meant, capitulation to meat eating totalitarian alternatives with not only an already declared intention at world dominance, but an already declared willingess to act on those intentions.

That, to me, was our imperfect choice, between 'bad' and 'worse.' We were well on our way, I think, to a wish to ride WWII out on the sidelines, when Japan demonstrated the non-unilateral nature of disavowing megapolitics; assert, or accede. I don't see the hypothetical where that would have been possible. In a world that often does not permit unilateral decisions, sometimes the only available choices are 'bad and worse.'

When we unleashed it, we had a national hope, I think, that our own brand of soft fascism could be effectively fettered; that isn't at all clear, in fact, it seems to have been largely unfetterable, it mostly just grows. But without effective confrontation, and energetic declaration of an alternative, it is clear that the meat eating alternatives in vacuum were not about to be effectively fettered.

Indeed, they have not been effectively fettered; precisely because of ineffective fettering (we let the commies and their fellow travelers over-run our internal machinery of state, including education, and as a result, even now the White House), their bad ideas have not only brought the Soviet Union to its knees, but us as well.

The left used to accuse the right of warning about straw man 'socialism' -- but no longer. Now, the think it's safe to crawl out from hiding, and openly declare, "why not?" (We owe Obama gratitude for making this debate explicit, and no longer denied. His very public failure will do more to finally bury left wing sentiment in this nation than a thousand Reagans; Obama is the Left's last gasp in America, and he's gasping more with each passing day...)

Why did it have to get to Obama? In the end, it wasn't our military or any intervention that failed to defend the American idea; it was the intellectuals, safe and warm in our beds at home.

Because, in that do or die bad choice, in what was fundamentally a conflict, a confrontation with incompatible totalitarianism, some here not only held their nose and embraced our own variant of soft fascism, but openly bought it dinner and flowers. And, not just those closet-camo-commies on the left, but all who court massive, centralized government monopolistic power in the name of their personal really good cause. That for sure includes all the flag waving, pin wearing, coin slapping, monopolists with guns saddled up to the CronyFest on the Potomac, weepily doing God's work while they form a carcass ripping gauntlet that takes way more than its share of OPM on the way to the heros at the far away pointy end of the stick. The nation, in the name of defending freedom, has been convinced to hurl unlimited amounts of cash at this gauntlet, where the unsightly feeding frenzy occurs, complete with the laughable charade of the DOD-FARS self rendering a legitimacy on all this wired pillaging, and we all only hope that enough actually makes it to the pointy end of the stick to actually do any good.

It is the nature of tribal government defense spending; it draws the very worst at one end of the pipeline, and the very best at the far end. It doesn't pay to be a gangster anymore, when there is 'legal' pillaging going on full bore in DC at the fat end of the pipeline.

War in Iraq? Sure thing. Windmills? Whatever you say. Does anyone think it matters in the least-- to the rapers, pillagers, and burners at the fat end of the gauntlet -- what we are pointing the tribe's gun at, as long as the game is playable to the tune of billions of dollars?

To me, the most critical aspect of 'fascism' is not 'a single dictator;' whether there is one dictator or a committee of thirty is pointless. The important and dangerous to us all characteristic of 'fascism' is the welding of the state's guns to commerce, guided by a few, not the head count in the little room that is marked 'Dictators Only.'

There isn't a special breed of 'Europeans only' called 'the Fascists.' That inevitable tribal underbelly -- inevitable in any tribe of human beings -- is the result in any tribe that unleashes tribal 'free-for-connected-somes' guided at the end of the state's guns.

The nation hasn't been up to freedom. We've been equally sold out by those who claim to be on the right, content to run their share of the CronyFest on the Potomac, as those who claim to be on the left.

regards,
Fred

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 12:51pm

Mark:

re; How do you know that, unimpeded, one group of thugs would have prevailed? Isn't it more likely that an ugly stalemate would have ensued, while both sides, in ruins and impoverished, would have either made a truce and some reforms or, more likely, have been overthrown from within?

I don't know that, and neither do you, and neither you nor I were alive when this was going on. But, reading the motivations of those who worked on the Manhatten Project, for instance, like Feynman, it is clear that they believed they were in do-or-die existential conflict. Ironically, we pitted our geniuses of European descent -- living under freedom -- against their geniuses of European descent -- living in fear of their own state. It's true, I'd expect our geniuses of European descent to win that race, but that is not the same as believing we didn't have to run and win the race.

Hitler was an idiot, it is true, and still 50 million died in WWII. It could have well been a much higher figure, it wasn't for lack of his trying, no matter how ineptly.

Compare the German jet engine with the UK/Whittle engine; America in that war had neither, the modern jet engine is a clear descendent of what the Germans first developed, even with their 3% efficient compressor and its untwisted blades. It was still miles ahead of the total insanity of the Whittle engine, which was a brilliant, if comical, effort, totally inappropriate to the mission of propulsion. How did they lose the war? It came down to a remarkable few terrible choices by Nutzo, not ability. The allies owned the skies over Germany by way of brute force of numbers, combined with Hitler's lack of vision with regard to their clear advantage in jet fighter technology. Thank-you, Hitler, you idiot.

re; Totalitarianism can only sustain itself on plunder. Once it impoverishes itself, its neighbors and loses the foreign aid and guaranteed loans given as appeasements by its craven, would be adversaries, it falls.

Well, I hope you are right, because basically, that is pretty much what we are counting on to turn back America's own brush with poorly fettered statism. We are apparently depending on American totalitarianism to just fail, and devolve itself, hopefully someday to some fettered form of restored federalism.

regards,
Fred

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 1:47am

There seems to be a conscpiracy to change the topic on which I wrote. I cannot do anything about it but express my dismay with people's unwillingness to just write what they want and post it and get it discussed instead of pretending to add a comment on the essay that has been posted.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 9:57am

I apologize for contributing to the thread abuse.

re; The Obama regime is totally nonplussed about wealth
redistribution because it believes wealth is all socially held, not private property. And since they run the society, they can make use of this wealth, including the wealth yet to be produced by members of future generations, as they believe is wise. This is why bailouts, stimulus packages, clunker programs and the like are all just fine and dandy with them. All the wealth involved belongs to us, with them in charge of it.

Since there may well be some serious resistance to this socialist program once Americans get full wind of its implications, it can well come to pass that the government will make use of rough measures to make sure its will
is the way. So, lookout--this socialism with a human face could change rather abruptly to one just like those we have seen first turn brutal and then crash in the 20th century!

I don't think you have, but did you mean to imply that this lurch towards "socialism with a human face", which I refer to as 'soft fascism,' is in any way unique to 'the Obama regime?'

If so, I disagree. The Obama regime is an effect, not a cause. The discussion of your article led to a consideration of the roots of where this nation's brush with embracing its own form of totalitarianism came from. My thesis is, and you're free to disagree, is that in part it came from our do-or-die embrace of totalitarian ideas -- including, our unleashing of our 'soft fascism' in WWII(and even WWI), where I've discounted 'led by a single dictator' as largely meaningless, and emphasized 'characterized by a welding of the guns of state to commerce' as critical in using the term 'fascism.'

I've called that brush with unleashing our own soft-fascism 'a bad choice over a worse choice', and Mark, I believe, suggests that there was a third choice, which although I agree would have been a better choice if it was viable, I do not agree that it was a viable choice, because of the nature of megapolitics(the politics of brute force.) The competing meat eating totalitarian alternatives in the world had expressed a clear willingess and desire for world dominance, and those in this country facing that reality assessed that America, the free world was in an existential fight. They chose 'bad over worse', and although they clung to the third choice as long as they could, as a nation, were divorced of it by what I believe is the fundamental nature of megapolitics; it can't unilaterally be repealed.

Your article ends by warning that our brush with "socialism with a human face" could lurch to one of the meat-eating totalitarian variants that characterized all the strife of the last century. Unfettered, that is largely likely, once the nation embraces totalitarian ideals.

Then, if so, fettered by what? For sure, not quiet friendly fire in fringeville.

Our do-or-die unleashing of our own soft-fascism could have been done with better fettering--with strident fettering. And, some patriotic, freedom loving voices in this country did attempt that. But, others, of all political persuasions, not only embraced the new soft fascism, but met it with dinner and flowers, as in, the modern GOP.

At some point, this political context wrangling has to be seen for what it is; in the end, Marx's state -- the irresistable power of all of us over any of us -- eats what it wants, without sufficient fettering. The human bowel sometimes gets a severe case of Colitis, and there is little that any individual bacteria can do about it-- even, intelligent, freedom loving bacteria -- except wait for the inevitable runs, to void the failing political context of its bout of bad ideas.

And, for the second time in a single post, I apologize--for the terrible imagery.

regards,
Fred

Saturday, August 29, 2009 - 9:41pm

Bush style socialism is mostly a function of conservative authoritarianism, whereas Obama is directly interested in economic socialism, massive wealth redistribution. And under Obama the intensity has also increased, probably because his team is committed, convinced of the righteousness of the socialist alternative.
(Edited by Machan on 8/30, 2:33am)

Sunday, August 30, 2009 - 7:37am

re; Bush style socialism is mostly a function of conservative authoritarianism,

...as representative of GOP style socialism, but GOP style socialism is still fundamentally about 'running the Economy[sic].'

There's no question that Obama and the Dems are all about centrally planned, command control 'the Economy[sic]' running.

This goes well beyond Bush's Fall 2008 capitulation, his little finger in the wind variant of 'I had to sell out the free market in order to save it' or whatnot. (It is totally not worth it to look up his exact mumblings, that was the essence.) The top 3 GOP front-runners also all subscribed to this 'run the Economy[sic]' nonsense.

That's all we have to effectively choose from in American politics, two variants of believers in a totalitarian view.

I'm a little amazed. 1989, the Berlin Wall falls. At least a part of that story is, the failure of centrally planned command-control 'the Economy[sic]' totalitarian ideas. Monopolistic, single point of failure ideas apparently on the trash heap of history. Within two years, Carville's bumper sticker -- "It's the Economy, stupid!" -- was sweeping the political landscape, right up to and including our current relapse with a vengeance. How could that be, unless it was falling on already fertile ground?

That's the point -- it has seldom been in much remission, even in the face of its repeated failures--even in the American experiment, even in the hands of the GOP.

Where do you think our popular embrace of totalitarian, one size fits all, single point of failure, monopolists with guns ideas springs from?

We used to, as a national experiment, explicitly codify something called 'federalism' -- purposely distributed fettered power. Inexorably, federalism was brushed aside with ever more imbalanced federal power, which was the blatant villian in our latest economic collapse, and surprisingly, the totalitarians screamed otherwise. ( In court case after court case, and even, USSC case, 50 sets of by design un-aligned, and often, more stringent state banking and lending regulations were pushed aside by a single point of failure federal model, which failed all at once. A glaring systematic 'design' flaw in our constructivist hubris, our tendency to lurch towards single point of failure systems design. Who in their right mind targets suxh nonsense? We don't build bridges that way. We don't build towers that way. We don't build anything that is meant to be strong that way. What the christ makes us think we can build our economies that way, the blatant evidence of which is that we lemmings accede to referring to them exclusively as an 'it?' The Economy? What myth do we think we are talking about when we exclusively refer to 'the' Economy????????????????????????????????

It is a symptom of what ails us, as a tribe. Our insistence on abstractly thinking of complex systems as 'a complex system.' That very act leads us away from understanding, not towards it, and worse, it leads us to consider only totalitarian, one size fits all, single point of failure solutions that always will -- fail, and when they do, catastrophically.

The GOP as recently as Reagan gave half-hearted lip service to restoring federalism, but it was in the context of an already lost battle. Once stood up(in WWI and WWII, as a do-or-die necessity), America's own soft fascist beast was in place and not about to devolve itself. There is not much evidence of devolution of centralized power under even Reagan, and listening to the last 3 GOP front runners, no hope that the spectre of 'the Economy[sic] running' was going to diminish under any of them.

My conclusion is, this bout of bad ideas has to publicly fail before the nation purges itself, and Obama is the best midwife to rapidly bring this about. Sooner the better, because a lingering ratcheted stand off by ineffective Republicans was just slow death. It is exactly like a bad case of Colitis, and Obama is the medicine that will bring on the much needed case of the runs to clean us out.

Sunday, August 30, 2009 - 7:19pm

One need not be talking about myth but perhaps about the entire arena of commercial conduct within societies. Granted there are no fixed borders but neither are there with sports or science or the arts. Yet we are pretty clear as to what these refer to.

Monday, August 31, 2009 - 7:08am

Re;Granted there are no fixed borders but neither are there with sports or science or the arts. Yet we are pretty clear as to what these refer to.

We are pretty clear in all of those examples, because we never refer to the aggregate of all of them in the singular, and expect that concept to have any meaning that would guide policies.

Do we ever ponder 'the art,' or are we at least aware enough to yet refer to 'them' as 'the arts?'

We don't- meaningfully- talk about 'the' weather of the United States of America. That's an absurd concept. Ditto, 'the' temperature of the United States. 'It' would have no meaning at all -- especially, in any informative role as a guide to some imagined thermostat, to make 'the' temperature of the United States 'warmer' or 'colder.' (We'd let the folks in Alaska and Florida duke it out, I suppose.)

It is -- or should be-- immediately obvious that the aggregate concept of 'the weather of the United States' or 'the temperature of the United States' is a concept in extreme, and totally useless in forming any singular policy.

But when it comes to our economies...systems that are far more complex and localized and not categorized purely by geophysical laws, like weather systems, we have no qualms waving our hands and referring to some aggregate singular 'it,' and even spouting half baked theories about controlling 'it.'

And, in so doing, we have lulled ourselves into actually believing that there is such an 'it' to control, and worse, that we actually have the first f'n clue how to do so.

I know we would like to believe that we are savvy enough to understand that 'the Economy' is shorthand for the more cumbersome 'the economies', but after generations of this shorthand, it has shortened our concept of 'them' until we actually do largely think of 'them' as a singular 'it,' which is precisely the bias needed to blindly embrace collectivist/totalitarian concepts as a given.

The proof of this is the fact that we largely can't even see this bias; the 'fact' of 'the Economy' is so deeply embedded in our now collective psyche that we are largely unable to ever not see 'it,'-- jarringly, even as we ponder things like collectivism and totalitarian ideas...

regards,
Fred

Monday, August 31, 2009 - 8:48pm

Yes and no--science is often discussed as, well, science; the arts are, too, although because there is such variety of them, usually in the plural. But what about literature or poetry?

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - 8:26am

For the purpose of formulating 'a' policy to control them as a singular 'it?' When anyone refers to 'literature', it is only to make the most sweepingly general -- and largely inconsequential observations. When politicians refer to 'the Economy', they intend to actually convince us that they have the first f'n clue how to control 'it' as an 'it.'

Of what possible objection can anyone have to 'collectivism' if we find it reasonable that there is, in fact, a singular monolithic meaningful thing called 'the Economy?' Collectivism/totalitarianism is the belief that there is a singular, monolothic thing called 'the Economy.' Conceding that as a meaningful target of actual policy, as opposed to pure abstraction, puts us all well on the way to believing that there is 'a' singular goal and 'a' singular strategy for reaching 'the' goal.

Ask the folks who manufacture 'wall safes' about 'the' state of 'the' Economy in the last year...

I have an older, alcoholic, total derelict sister. I'm trying to imagine in what sense she and I actually participate in the same 'the Economy.' I can't, except in the most trivial and meaningless of ways.

Lather, rinse, repeat, times 300,000,000. What in the world do people think they are referring to, when they refer to 'the Economy?'

I think many think that they know, and I think that is comforting to them, because so many cling to that ingrained concept until their fingers bleed.

It is a term that has been taught to not only us, but our grandparents. We have been well generationally inculcated. It was taught to us by scientific statists, selling scientific statism. Are we all buying?

The question is, why do folks who claim to rail against 'collectivism' jarringly agree so deeply with scientific statists, by acceding to terms biased towards collectivism/statism?

The term 'the Economy' is a political term, not a scientific term -- not even, a dismal scientific term.

Paul Krugman toils not just in 'The Department of Economics', but, "The Program of Political Economy.'

Hello?

The term is readily discardable without consequence; simply replace 'the Economy' with 'the economies,' and the point is not only made, but illuminated. Continuing to use the term 'the Economy' leads away from understanding, not towards, but worse, leads us towards totalitarianism.

regards,
Fred

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 12:13am

Is "furniture" a collectivist term? No, but it refers a bunch of different kind of things--chairs, table, sofas, etc. Anyway, talking about the economy--in the abstract--is like talking about education or the Internet. Reasonable people know one isn't talking about some one concrete item but an interlocking arena of certain sorts of activities. (Why this eagerness to nail someone with collectivism who is explicitly critical of political collectivism? Is this a game of gotcha? I am not playing any more.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 12:24am

Fred, I've seen you make this "No such thing as The Economy" point on a number of occasions. I think that you are right that it might herald an error. But I would disagree that it is always an error. It is a word that need to be assigned a context which is what usually happens when it is used. Because of your posts, I'll be reading and listening more carefully in the future to see if there is a failure to assign a sufficiently accurate context, but I think that you have gone to an extreme and are making an error of a different sort - you are denying the valid existence of a certain level of generalization, and/or ignoring where a context says "what" the context is. We have local economies, national economies, the rust belt economy, the Chicago economy, etc. Did you read what Jane Jacobs had to say about the National Economy? She said the only real economies were centered around a city, and that the national economy was meaningless since wealth was generated locally.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 6:18am

Machan:

Screw 'gotcha.' I don't play 'gotcha.' 'Gotcha' is for idiots.

I know damn well that you, as a reasonable person, when you talk about 'the Economy' in the abstract, are not advocating 'collectivism.' Ditto most conservative intellectuals in our political context.

My insane campaign to illuminate this political slight of hand is at its heart an appeal to restore balanced federalism.

My point is, politicians do not merely talk about 'the Economy' in the abstract. The howdy-doody light weight politicians who ponder 'running the Economy' are not talking about 'it' in the abstract. They are talking about establishing a monolithic, single point of failure legislative agenda to run 'it' -- and, a substantial part of the nation is bobbing its head and going along with 'it.'

What the Hell just happened with banking and lending regulations in the 50 states? Court case after court case, and even USSC case, pushed aside and superceded by a single-point-of-failure-federal-model. And why not, when the topic on everyone's lips is 'it?'

That was a concrete, not an abstract, and we're living with the sloppy consequences of truly puddingheaded systems design. This is being foisted on us by Cargo Cult dismal science 'soft scientists,' who look down their noses at the 'answers in the back of the book' hard scientists, and who would run screaming like children out of any room governed by the discipline of the 'hard sciences'--the same 'sciences' that they seek to borrow authority from in form if not substance, whenever they practice their voodoo witch doctor political rituals.

We are in the midst of a current political movement in this nation to 'run the Economy', not in the abstract, and my admittedly moot point is that our national embrace of this singular, monolothic concept is well and deeply inculcated into us.

My conclusion is, effectively countering collectivism is largely a lost cause when our thinking on the topic is so biased towards passively accepting singular, monolothic concepts. We accept it as an innocent, abstract term at our peril.

"It's the Economy, stupid!"

Never truer words were ever printed on a f'n bumper sticker; James Carville is the undisputed intellectual leader of our times.

regards,
Fred

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 6:35am

Steve:

You are absolutely right that I have taken this point to extremes, but that is because the singular concept is buried deeply in our national tribal debates, as if in concrete.

It needs to be blasted out, and identified as the abstract term -- the meaningless abstract term -- that it truly is.

The agregate of all economies has no practical meaning that is useful for guiding policy of any kind, at any level.

The term 'the Economy' --even when people think they are thinking of 'it' as 'the national Economy' -- has no practical meaning whatosover when it comes to managing 'it' as an 'it'. It is simply an imperfect summation at the bottom of some government Excel spreadsheet columns, period. When we focus on that 'bottom line', we totally lose sight of how we get to that 'bottom line.'

Economies do not uniquely fill up geography, like pieces of a state puzzle; economies overlap even in the same geographic space. Economies, plural, overlap even on the same neighboorhood block, and even within the same family.

The attempt to manage 'them' as an 'it' defines human hubristic insanity, and in my sort of lonely opinion, the first step in building strong economies is the same as the first step in building strong bridge cables and the first step in building strong Sears towers, on ad infinitum, and recognizing that 'they' are not an 'it.'

The issue is, single point of failure concepts should be avoided, not embraced. We, currently, as a nation, are embracing single point of failure solutions.

The fault is not uniquely 'because we use the term The Economy.' That may be a symptom.

But it sure as Hell doesn't help. If it is a symptom, then it is also a symptom that feeds back on the disease. It is not just a convenient shorthand, a tactic to make the intractable tractable. It is self-deception, a lurch away from understanding, not towards it. It leads us to single point of failure thinking.

regards,
Fred

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 8:00pm

Actually I am not a politician!