The second derivative
The New York Times has a nightmare. “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.” And yet the denial continues. Socialism’s weakness is all because those damned right wing parties have learned how to be human from the Left. An NYT source says that the Left has been weakened by its very success:
Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.
It is not that the left is irrelevant — it often represents the only viable opposition to established governments, and so benefits, as in the United States, from the normal cycle of electoral politics.
But Robert Smith at American Thinker believes that the left is in real crisis, facing not a temporary electoral setback in Europe but an existential crisis; that it is self-destructing at such a rate that the very swiftness of its collapse threatens to be a catastrophe in its own right.
Less than a year into his presidency, Barack Obama’s world grows bleaker. Liberalism’s world is bleaker. At home and abroad, liberalism, as advanced by the President, is failing. Are we witnessing the beginnings of another historic event, loosely comparable to the fall of communism twenty years ago? Now the fall of liberalism? … Overseas, the nation’s enemies, who only a short time ago feared us, now scheme to overtly or surreptitiously challenge us. Our allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, some of whom resent our power, must confront an ugly question: What happens in a world absent sufficient projections of American power?
Smith isn’t alone in worrying about the frenetic pace at which events are moving. And it is not the change but the rate at which it is accelerating that really raises concerns. Some months ago it became evident that blunders were piling on so fast, and they were of such enormity that they fed each other, like a patient facing multiple organ failure. The Left was self-medicating itself so catastrophically, and smashing up so many things so quickly that there simply wasn’t enough outrage in the world to even keep track of it. Like a vast wave toppling over, the very weight of its accumulated blunders has reduced everyone — including its cadres and the conservatives, almost to the role of spectators. I wondered in comments last August whether it was actually safe to asssume that the Left was “too big to fail” or whether its sheer size simply multiplied the destruction it brought to bear upon itself — and on others.
This is not to say that the Left’s dominance of the academe and the cultural institutions is somehow at an end. It is not. But it is no longer invisible and it is being openly challenged. The problem that they face is that economic and bureaucratic control cannot be substituted for the old authority because it is resource limited. It is not information based, but resource and even coercion based. It needs ever larger amounts of government solutions to fix ever large government problems. Eventually the last bill in the wallet is extracted. And there is no more. It’s like a Ponzi scheme which must grow to the ends of the earth — and come to an abrupt stop.
What I am curious to discover is what happens when it runs out of lift. Because it will. Like Fannie and Freddie, it isn’t too big to fail. There’s no such thing. I think that one of the challenges of statecraft is to prepare for the Fall of the Inner Berlin Wall; what to do when the fantasy shatters. I think on the day after we’ll be confronted with many shattered institutions, completely bankrupted, mere Potemkin shells; out of money, out of ideas, and out of excuses. I am not optimistic about society’s ability to handle it because even conservatives, I think, will have difficulty anticipating the thoroughness of it and its probable shocking suddeness.
It is events in the United States that have really provoked the crisis. European socialism was fantasy viable only while the US successfully performed the role of global system administrator. With Barack Obama crashing subsystem after subsystem, the socialist appendages are powering down. Without free energy from the capitalist system they despise, socialism is indeed doomed. What no one anticipated was how quickly the end might come. It would be really interesting if the key problem in the next few years turned out to be not about how to defeat the left, but how to survive the maelstrom left by its sinking. There is some sense in the Left that things are no longer the same. But that’s a mistake. They have never changed.
Mr. Letta argues that Socialist policies will have to be transmuted into a more fluid form to allow an alliance with center, liberal and green parties that won’t be called “Socialist.” Mr. Winock, the historian, said, “I think the left and Socialism in Europe still have work to do; they have a raison d’être, and they will have to rely more on environment issues.” Combined with continuing efforts to reduce income disparity, he said, “going green” may give the left more life.
Mr. Judt argues that European Socialists need a new message — how to reform capitalism, “recognizing the centrality of economic interest while displacing it from its throne as the only way of talking about politics.”
Maybe its too late for that now.
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After the USSR collapsed I recall hearing an interview with a European man who had become an expert on communism. He said that he had visited Europe’s largest book fair and for the first time within memory there was not one new book on communism.
The man summed up the situation thusly, “You spend your whole life studying how communism worked and then you find out there was nothing to study in the first place. It was all a big con game.”
And at that time the head of the CPUSA explained it away: “What they had in the Soviet Union was not communism. That is why it failed.”
So when it all comes down we are bound to hear that it was not Leftism that failed but a fake Leftism.
‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. One wishes as well that the opposition were clear and prepared; fat chance.
At German Chancellor’s Side, a New Political Power Broker Emerges
BERLIN —
The politician everyone was talking about in the German capital the morning after national elections was not Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose party won the most votes, but the small-party kingmaker set to solidify the chancellor’s hold on power. And soon, the rest of the world will become acquainted with the new leading figure, the Free Democrats’ Guido Westerwelle.
If longstanding German tradition holds, Mr. Westerwelle will be named vice chancellor and foreign minister in the new government, his reward for steering his free-market, pro-business party to its best result yet in a federal election.
Good point; the props are being pulled out from under and they had been there so long most didn’t realize they even existed. The other day I saw an article in a Brit newspaper that said, in effect, “Why, how dare they take down that missle-defense system and leave us bare naked?!!”
Among the first several comments posted, most were from American readers, who said, in effect, “If you were so damn concerned about you own safety, why didn’t you build your own system?”
Military, economic, probably in many unapparent social ways, American’s strengths let them have a two-generation picnic: no expenses or heavy lifting for the important basic stuff, just pie and ice cream forever.
Well–now we’ll see.
PS: Loved the part where they are going conservative because the the conservatives have now accepted socialist principles.
Some effects of the collapse of the old Liberal order will be real disasters, people dead as trade implodes and totalitarians rage unchecked and migrating peoples desperate to escape bring diseases and grievances with them. Some effects may turn out positive. We will not return to the 19th century and forget everything that has been invented since. Resources can be redirected to productive work, Gender Studies and Community advocacy departments will go away and Engineering and History will be revived.
We will never be rid of the tendency of society to divide itself into those who work, those who fight and those who pray. The difference is that the mechanisms that kept those who pray concerned with the welfare of those who work will need to be revived. The role of those who rule has shifted from being entrusted to those who fight to those who pray. The later are now found in the Universities or other institutions but they serve the same role as Medieval clergy. There is always a struggle between the two subgroups as to who controls the levers of power. The record seems to be that the fighters stay more loyal to the workers but each needs the other two to keep them all honest.
What tools are available to socialize the clergy that have been stripped away over the last century? Perhaps a period of military service, a period of productive labor and adjustments to inheritance laws may help. Other practical ideas may come to mind.
“Are we witnessing the beginnings of another historic event, loosely comparable to the fall of communism twenty years ago? Now the fall of liberalism?”
If so, it is to be welcomed and dreaded. The “men [now, 'persons,' of course] of the Left” with their need for hierarchy, dominance by a ‘big man’ or central state, and anti-Semitism will have no where left to turn except Islam.
As if this does not bring pleasant and frightful thoughts to mind. We have kept so much of the world under our umbrella of protection for long anyhting that shakes that up is frightful and disconcerting. Both abroad and here at home. I have heard from a few contacts in I know in Europe and the poser in the White House is losing support faster than a breached dam over flood stage.
I would post more but work calls and at least I am still employed, for now…
All liberalism needs is a slogan, a celebrity, or some grotesque art exhibit to declare their theories successful, and indeed the best philosophy possible in a world of few options. The symbolism and the divinity of their motives is sufficient: radiant “good intentions” primarily, or perhaps embodied in a teenage boy single-handedly stopping the rebirth of Germanic fascism from his dorm room via angry blog rants. (There are no nazis on his campus, so it must be working…)
They have already “won” in their minds, forget your contrary arguments.
Also, if you think the major conservative factions will ever warmly unite (roughly- hawks, libertarians, country clubs, and Christians), well I don’t see that happening either. At best they will form a desperate alliance and no one will be satisfied.
“they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said”
not really, they are in the line of the tradition, since ages, state was the arbiter of businesses
Karl Marx: “A specter is haunting Europe — the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.”
If communism was a con-game, what is socialism? The socialists liked to apologize for communists by saying that communism was just “socialism in a hurry.” This was true, more so and in more ways than the socialists would now want to admit. A con game, slow or in a hurry, is still a con game.
Via Wiki: “In calculus, a branch of mathematics, the second derivative test is a criterion often useful for determining whether a given stationary point of a function is a local maximum or a local minimum.”
LOTM writes: “We will never be rid of the tendency of society to divide itself into those who work, those who fight and those who pray.”
Yes, the universities and think tanks have replaced the monasteries. Thinkers, Laputa-like, despise the workers. The thinkers should pay attention to John Gardner: “An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
Perhaps Benedict XVI is correct that there is a need for monasteries in the future to keep the faith, as was true for so much of Christendom until power and wealth worked their efficiencies in the 16th century and thereafter. The religious drama of the coming unraveling will be center stage or off-stage, but it will be the main drama, whatever the economic despair getting most of the attention.
Those of us with children worry about a Cultural Revolution-like lost generation during the coming shake-out. Men, already a minority in higher education, will suffer most immediately, and they are likely to be without jobs during their formative early working years. “Those who work” need jobs, and even the best Obama scenario calls for low job growth and high unemployment. Negative economic and social effects upon women will follow soon thereafter, especially upon those who lack traditional family economic units.
But perhaps the system will right itself, stop throwing good money after bad, pay as it goes, and get back to the status quo of having the socialists yipping at the heels of the capitalists.
The “rate of change” is indeed interesting. Even in polls that tend to favor Democrats you can see that the drop while not always extreme, is coming faster and faster. The trend is accelerating and points to disaster for them.
ACORN is going under and is likely to drag down some MS Media as well as the SEIU.
There are signs that the teacher unions are going to be underbussed in a number of states. Note well the ‘Net videos of little kids singing propaganda songs showing up.
The question is what is going to move into the vacuum created when the liberal institutions/nations fail. I fear it will be some combination of Russia, China, and militant Islam.
The fact that many socialist ideas espoused by the crazies has been adopted by the right should be a sign of worry – the failure of the Left as an institution is no guarantee of the failure of its ideas.
However, this collapse could eventually lead to a closer examination of the very same socialist ideas adopted by the right, and their ultimate revocation. At least, that’s what I hope for anyway.
exhelodrver@12: “The question is what is going to move into the vacuum created when the liberal institutions/nations fail.”
That is why it is incumbent on us to prove the resiliency and attractiveness of the alternatives – family, church, associations – all the Tocquevillian attributes of our society that must return to their central places. We must think less about the future role of the state and much more about these.
Perhaps socialism will collapse, but that does not mean something better will replace it. Men will still wish to lord over other men while lining their pockets from the public coffers. It has always been so. I have long wondered what things will look like on what I call the Other Side. The day when the last boomer is dead and the population is so much smaller than it is today. The greatly reduced demands on public pensions and healthcare, and the continued rise of immigrant populations. I don’t know what that day will look like but I fear great tumult lies in between.
IMO they will become “Humanity Is the Root of All Evil” environmental extremists.
They need a secular faith, and worship of Gaia qualifies as one.
S/14: I think the rise of the Tea Party movement is a sign that that very thing is happening–people are associating, discovering that it works, and gaining strength.
No matter what you call them–socialists, communitarians, progressives, collectivists, greens, whatever–there are two words which accurately describe their true nature:
Looters,
Parasites.
Their stock in trade is the constant allegation of the insensitivity of classical liberals, conservatives and libertarians, yet those groups constantly hold back from responding in kind, precisely because they are in fact more sensitive than the parasites.
It is not enough to oppose the looters and parasites. Liberty must be actively promoted, or it is lost. Thomas Jefferson understood this:
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
We have remained quiet to the misconceptions for far, far too long. We can only hope and pray that we have not waited so long that Jefferson’s ultimate remedy will not be necessary–again.
gosh, what to say? if the derivatives are showing acceleration now, isn’t it just that we’re being pulled into the financial black hole that opened up a year ago?
except for the excesses that imploded, would our economy be in trouble now? except for the trillions in remediation, would we already be ripped apart by the forces in the singularity? and don’t those trillions only add to the slope of the descent?
are those attributable to liberal/socialist politics? the right likes to think so, but I think it’s just apolitical greed, and of course my leftard buddy says it’s just capitalism being capitalism.
does Europe have any problems that would be killing it, at least this fast, without foreign policy and immigration problems with the Islamic world? I too think their pacifism is suidical, but is that exactly socialism?
I mean, if the New Yawk Times is telling us that socialism is failing, I assume as usual they’re behind the curve or otherwise bent, spindled, and mutilated. (reads article) (well, scans article) Aha, the “failure of socialism” is not that the ideas don’t work – it’s that they’re losing VOTES to the right! THAT is the NYTimes’ idea of a “failure of socialism”. HA!
OK, forget all my maunderings above, NYTimes is not alleging any of those are actually issues, so cheer up, wretchard!
oh, well, or maybe the NYTimes new “opinion media” department will read your posts, and *discover* some of these are, y’know, actual issues. helllloooo, NYTimes!
You speak of socialism as the failure of the middle ground, the third way. Sadly one thinks of reasonable men in a freight car on the road to the Gulag. In that car they are surrounded by apparitions of themselves that reflect the answers to the many solutions that were prescribed to stop the train to the cold gray islands. No, the truth is that corruption lies in the heart of man and given enough time all our designs will lead to its expression.
It is the intolerance of corruption in a way that allows individual freedom that may lead to justice. This is a goal worthy of the spirit of humanism but there is no Darwinian way to achieve that goal. Just try to get the democratic elites to say goodbye to moral relativism. Good luck with that.
Here’s hoping we’re not just hitting an inflection point: f”(x)=0
Tom Holsinger@16: I don’t know. It is certainly possible. When I watched the opening episode of Ken Burns’ “National Parks” one could see the hold these ideas have on the intellectual imagination. But these also could become somewhat discredited. Living in a port city, we have seen most of our working waterfront replaced by condos and restaurants and parks. But if we have, say, 25% unemployment what would it really take to buy out the half-empty condos and the fashionable waterfront restaurants and replace them with a shipyard employing 500 people? A shipyard full of industrial noises and high mast lighting and inbound trainloads of steel working three shifts a day? Probably not too much. Of course, the entire ethos of the governing class would have to change. But it could happen, probably more quickly than we imagine.
Gordon@17: Hope so.
Hopefully they off themselves first. They never were good at order of operations.
Unfortunately, it’s always the “other” that is evil in their eyes. So the rest of us will be taking some flak as they go down. I just hope they don’t drag everyone else down with them.
It is interesting to contemplate the possibility that Socialism could not survive without Capitalism. Whereas, Capitalism can survive without Socialism.
Now that any two bit dictator can ‘mail order’ a nuclear warhead (ok, I exagerated a bit), in a not too distant future. Coupled with Obama’s latest grand gesture of a nuclear free US, which of course means nuclear proliferation all over the world.
Do we worry about the survival of socialism or the decline of liberalism after the smoldering smoke or before?
Just like backburnering the McChrystal report and campaign for 2016 Olympics. Priorities, man, priorities.
And at that time the head of the CPUSA explained it away: “What they had in the Soviet Union was not communism. That is why it failed.”
So when it all comes down we are bound to hear that it was not Leftism that failed but a fake Leftism.
Croatian scholar Tomislav Sunic has a better explanation: Marxism failed in the Soviet-led East because it succeeded in the American-led West. Cultural Marxism dominates the West. That obviously includes the US right wing which wants to project American Power (including cultural Marxist values) around the world.
On an interesting parallel note — and apropos of the suggestion that socialism must seek refuge in environmentalism if it is to maintain its influence — is the continued chipping away of the ‘science’ that justifies emergency (read: increased government) measures to counter mankind’s impact on climate. The latest postings over at Watt’s Up With That outline what appears to be some extraordinarily selective (read: politically motivated) data manipulation by ‘wolf-crying’ global warmists. Read the story at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/27/quote-of-the-week-20-ding-dong-the-stick-is-dead/
“”"”" European socialism was fantasy viable only while the US successfully performed the role of global system administrator. “”"”"
This is what I’ve been alluding to in my occasional, and perhaps not articulate posts about one aspect of American ‘exceptionalism’ that is often overlooked. We’ve been the top of the economic food chain since at least WWII, and the beacon of freedom and opportunity that has been unmatched in history. The current powers-that-be in America are threatening to bring it all down by emulating our European cousins (or, more precisely, what they thought was the European model).
The stunning conceits of the Left, that others are better at governing and taking care of their people, fly in the face of the fact that America has been the place of last resort for all manner of solutions: from people seeking top-of-the-line medical care (so much for our ‘flawed’ health care system!), to people seeking opportunity and freedom, to the main source of aid in world disasters. If we’re to become just one more big, unwieldy, scarcity-driven social democracy, what is to become of the world’s safety nets?
And as more and more people wake up to the fact that much of the world has been governed by people demanding that we live a lie, from insisting that we face environmental cataclysm from ‘global warming,’ that ‘overpopulation’ is still a widely-held canard, that the UN and other international institutions are corrupt and inept, and so on, how are cynical ordinary people going to react to all this, when they see that they no longer need be initimidated by bureaucrats?
The Soviet Union collapsed from the weight of its own excesses but appeared to lose to capitalism. Conversely the Western economy collapsed from the weight of its own excesses and appears to be losing to Socialism. But this giving way to Socialism is entirely artificial. The US populace wanted hope and change to ameliorate the supposed sins of G.W Bush and to begin again with our greatest detractors the Europeans. Nobody likes to be despised by their own family. The Left has railed against Capitalism since its inception so when America voted for a decent, articulate, black man, they thought they we voting for one of their own, but in the wake of our current financial crisis it was an opportunity for the new president to destroy America and rebuild it in his own image. This is not being undertaken out of hatred but out of love of the One and Self motivated out of jealousy for the Europeans. But we are upsetting the role of Europe as righteous detractors and neutral arbiters. We are trying to salve old wounds and upset the order of prejudices and allegiances. Its as if the United States who has long played the gate keeper against the barbarians now wants to take the place of Switzerland as a neutral party. This is breaking the old order and disturbing the balance of loyal opposition. Whereas only bad communism doesn’t work I have a feeling that this big government fiasco will always be laid at the feet of capitalism. What’s next? I don’t know but I am pretty sure that it will involve more government.
Barney Frank
Nanci Pelosi
Harry Reid
Barbara Boxer
Where do we get such dirt bags?
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that German election results mean that Germans have changed their attitude to the social state. Many non-voters were SPD people disillusioned with the economic reforms put in place under Schroeder. They stayed home because they didn’t trust Steinmeier to bring back the good old days, but they trust the Left Party even less. The classic liberal FDP gained a lot of votes because CDU people did not want to risk an SPD-Green or SPD-Green Left coalition, not because everyone wants a smaller state. The SPD has replaced Steinmeier as party head, although he still heads the parliament fraction. His follower is Sigmar Gabriel who was environmental minister in the last cabinet but who headed a newly created office of pop culture under Schroeder (a bit of Peter Principle here). His biggest accomplishment on the environment was to further scare people about nuclear power. The SPD in Hesse is clamoring to get Andrea Ypsilanti in the national party leadership. She caused a furor in Hesse by wanting to form a coalition with the Left Party after the last state election, despite having promised not to do this in the campaign. The few delegates who voted against her move have been ostracized within the state SPD. The Green are now proclaiming themselves leaders of the opposition, and with unions now freed from protecting the SPD while it was in the government, I expect lots of demonstrations.
Westerwelle (FDP), a foreign policy novice but future foreign minister, will push for economic reform, but will sacrifice hard-nosed foreign policy to get there. He is already talking about taking up Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament by insisting that the US remove its few remaining nuclear weapons from German soil. He is unlikely to be a strong voice on Afghanistan. Merkel will probably squash his most populistic initiatives, but he will be buttressed by the opposition, so she has to be careful. She can pick and choose a few key issues to reform, but she will not lead a Reagan revolution and she will listen to big business interests because she won’t risk jobs.
Last night in talk round, Alice Schwarzer, Germany’s feminist voice, found one good thing about the new government: It would be led by a woman and a gay(Westerwelle). That doesn’t make me feel one iota better about Iran,Afghanistan or the economy. Alice is still back in the 60s.
To be cynical, one needs only consider that the success of liberalism, socialism, and communism requires something to loot and some ability to exercise power over other men.
Oswald Spengler realized this when he wrote “Once again, Socialism means power, power, and yet again power.”
I see that W quoted Tony Judt. Has anyone else read Tony Judt’s “Postwar”? It is a history of Europe since WWII. While the immediate post-war and early Cold War years are well covered, from 1968 or so (beginning coincidentaly with Judt’s coming of age) the author increasingly displays the socialist’s disconnect from logic, facts, and reason.
If one was REALLY generous to Obama, one could say he is forcing the Europeans to get out from behind our skirts and depend more on themselves. “Can you stand on your own?” he seems to be saying. Perhaps the German voters are getting the message.
Yes, if things can’t go on, they won’t. Liberalism in the US can’t afford it’s ambitions with our citizens’ money and labor. The time of over-reach is upon us. Combine it with pain and voters’ attitudes will once again change, much like they did after Carter’s term.
People are seeing that is time to replace our non-performing, non-servicing elites. They had better go peacefully.
Margaret Thatcher said it best:
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Upon the death of Sisera it was proclaimed that the stars in their courses had fought against him. So the stars in their courses have and will again claim those that overreach and fail..
Mark Steyn has an interesting piece up at National Review Online, with his thesis that things like socialized medicine is a game changer and taking seriously the contention that this “revival of the right” is, indeed, on a playing field that has been shifted well to the left of where it was some decades ago.
that idea, similar to what is said in the NYT article, is NOT totally inconsistent with a big implosion coming. It would perhaps mean the implosion will catch the right almost as flat-footed as the left, not just for its suddenness, but because it reveals an underlying truth to the right of even politicians we think of as conservative.
Personally, I think if this im;osion does occur, that will be its nature. Even our “moderate conservative” pols and thinkers have not come to grips with how busted their model really is. Not just Obama overreaching on health care, but the $37T unfunded Medicare liability, the $12T unfunded Social Security liability, chronic deficits at all levels of government, requiring frequent tax increases as society becomes less economically (financially) productive under the ill-thought-through burdens of environmentalism and other PC tropes. Tropes that have become so ingrained they aren’t ever questioned, but when questioned turn out to be based on nothing rigorous or worthwhile, just self-righteous attitudes.
When this happens, as sooner or later it must, it’ll be a true shitstorm. One hopes it won’t leave us all so dispirited as to give up, like an aboriginal tribe facing horses and guns. (tho, if some of us would give up to make way for more realistic peopel, THAT would be OK)
“It is not that the left is irrelevant — it often represents the only viable opposition to established governments, and so benefits, as in the United States, from the normal cycle of electoral politics.”
So says the NYT. What a joke. “The only viable opposition”, huh? I was inspired to pull out my old copy of “The Law” by the 18th century economist and statesmen Frederic Bastiat and this caught my eye -
“Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor: by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.
“But it is also true that a man may live as satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. this process is the origin of plunder.
“Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain – and since labor is pain in itself – it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions neither religion nor morality can stop it.
“When, then, does plunder stop? it stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
“It is evident, then, that the proper course of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder…. (…)
“…No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.
“The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are ‘just’ because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.”
It’s a shame Bastiat’s writings don’t enjoy a wider currency. He has much to say that addresses our current state of affairs and his ideas would have a great cleansing effect on our public discourse.
Even before the Berlin Wall fell we saw the problem with socialism: while not bad in theory it failed to account for human nature, i.e. the profit motive. In the past year we have seen that capitalism suffers from the same defect, the same disconnect between theory and practice. We have in the West now successfully raised two generations on moral relativism and –what a shock!– find that our financial institutions and the government watchdogs that are charged with keeping an eye on them have become predatory, oppressive and profoundly corrupt, lacking any sense of community or solidarity with those they do business with or profess to serve.
Just as the libertarian nature of the US’s founding was gradually eroded under a constant drip of new regulations to prevent people from using their liberty to take advantage of others, so now we will have to expand government power at the same rate as the free market’s descent into immorality and dysfunction. Also, we see an increasing willingness of people to deprive of civil rights those they deem as dangerous to society, which for too many people is the functional equivalent of “those who don’t think like me.” This might or not be the end of liberal socialism. But I fear that the future is fascism, whether a fascism founded on some resurgent xenophobia or on economic “justice” as the left would term it.
There are two fronts in this war: Economic (centralized vs. decentralized planning, hence power), and cultural (individualism vs. collectivism.) The Left embraces centralized planning and collectivism. Classical liberalism is, of course, practically the opposite of the modern Left. Environmental concerns, as presented by the Left, demand centralized planning and a collectivist spirit. But the second derivative (the rate of change of the rate of change) is working entirely against them. Although the pendulem rhythmically swings in their direction, its overall trend is toward the power of the individual. Technology will empower the individual more than the state. An army of Davids (thanks Glenn) will defeat the alliance of Goliaths.
36) Kevin,
“it failed to account for human nature, i.e. the profit motive”
More importantly, it failed to account for the “laziness motive.”
K @ 36. I contend that profit does not exist. What we call profit is return on risk, sometimes augmented by luck…long term profit is reduce by capitalism, the great equalizer…A point totally lost on the collectivist.
What the NYT article failed to mention is the elephant in the room: people are voting right wing in Europe not because of economics and the problems of socialism. They’re voting right wing because of uncontrolled immigration and as a backlash against political correctness.
Socialists could probably stay on top if they’d realize this. But there seems to be some kind of inexplicable relationship between left wing social values and the socialist economic/government model which just can’t be broken.
Wretchard:
Anent your opening line: “the NYTimes has a nightmare. . .” I would modify that to read “The NYTimes is a nightmare. . .” Other than that, another thought-provoking analysis. Thank you for bringing this to our group to discuss.
Speaking of change, Newt Gingrich gave the commencement address at my youngest daughter’s graduation about a decade ago. As long ago as then he said one thing that would amaze the graduates was not the change they would see in their lifetime, but the fact that change will happen at an accelerating (and dizzying) rate. Looks like he had it right.
Now if we can only get the troglodytes of this administration to admit they’re wrong and get on with governance as it should be. . . F
#36 Kevin:
“”"” We have in the West now successfully raised two generations on moral relativism and –what a shock!– find that our financial institutions and the government watchdogs that are charged with keeping an eye on them have become predatory, oppressive and profoundly corrupt, lacking any sense of community or solidarity with those they do business with or profess to serve. “”"”
I believe a dramatic example to illustrate your point is Greenspan’s bewilderment as to why the heads of various financial instituions would allow something to happen (the financial markets collapse) which was against the best interests of the companies they headed. Greenspan failed to realize that the company leadership didn’t care about the best interest of their organization; by providing themselves and their cronies with extravagant compensation well in excess of their actual contributions and skills, they could personally insulate themselves from financial catastrophe.
Power often quickly slips from the hands of those that wantonly grasp for it into the hands of those that have no plan to wield it.
“troglodytes”
Oh dear. I’m afraid Obama, et al, are much too mushy to be thought of as a troglodyte. As a herd, they’re more like big-eyed pale-skinned underground maggots, swarming over a still-warm body, sucking the nutrition, life, and soul out of it.
Quig @ 24:
Good point. I would say that is axiomatic. Where else is the Socialist going to get his funds? The assumption that government is anything but a net consumer is one of the fallacies of the Left.
Heh, listening to some Gov’t Mule: “Little Toy Brain”:
Clioman @ 27:
I remember that the guy who reconstructed the model from input/output data came to one really interesting conclusion. He could feed “white noise” data to his reconstructed model and still get the ‘hockey stick’. That tells you the model was so gamed as to be worse than useless, it was fraudulent.
I was struck when reading marymcl’s Bastiat quotes that the socialist also makes another assumption, that for socialism to work, there can be no advancement of the technical culture. This is, at best, a half formed thought right now.
“When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry:
” ‘Woe! Woe, O great city,
O Babylon, city of power!
In one hour your doom has come!’
“The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more—”
feeblemind@15:
“I have long wondered what things will look like on what I call the Other Side. The day when the last boomer is dead and the population is so much smaller than it is today. The greatly reduced demands on public pensions and healthcare, and the continued rise of immigrant populations.”
I thought I was the only one that had spent any time considering that. It’s why, while I doubt that anyone currently 40ish will see any social security in its current form, some sort of public retirement plan should by then be un-swamped from the boomers and be available to ease my twilight years at least a bit.
But I’d take issue with the idea that it’s necessarily true that immigrant populations will continue to rise indefinitely. Maybe it’s the case that it will level off or even fall. Maybe there will be a revolution in China, and some part of that behemoth will break away, design a brilliant constitution, and become the new favored destination for emigrants from all over, including the US.
It’s difficult to see beyond the hash the boomer leaders are making of things and the distortions their numbers are creating in our systems, but there will be something on the other side, and the most likely scenario is probably one we haven’t thought of, and wouldn’t believe right now if someone came back in a time machine and gave us video of it.
Socialism preys upon a basic human weakness, i.e. the desire for a “free lunch”. There will always be socialism.
What is currently disappearing from the world scene is the form of socialism called “Marxist-Leninism”. This obsolete form of socialism is rapidly being replaced by a new form called “environmentalism” or “green politics”.
Old fashioned socialism in the United States was formerly called “liberalism” but is being re-branded as “progressivism”. I find it hilarious that American socialists now like to call themselves “progressives”. They should really call themselves “retrogrades” (they’re straight out of the 1930s). American style socialism for the most part is a Cold War legacy that lingers due to social inertia. We still haven’t flushed out the Gramscian agit-prop and won’t until the MSM has gone bankrupt and the last “Noam Chomsky” in academia has died from old age.
“We’re just jamming, you can go if you want to.” – Jimi Hendrix at the end of Woodstock
Just kind of jamming a bit off of Wretchard’s highly evocative post…
We could see Obama’s UN speech as the culmination of everything the McGovern/New Left/contemporary left has wanted since 1972: a fuzzy wuzzy feel-good talk about world peace delivered by an American president.
Nevermind that the speech was applauded by unelected thugs whose palms were still sticky with the blood of innocents; nevermind that one of those same thugs took to the same microphone to spit on history and (again) deny the Jewish holocaust; nevermind that by sending missles into their skies, the Iranians reaffirmed their contempt for the world’s proclaimers of peace and brotherhood.
In what sense is Obama a leader if uses the heights of his office to promote bad fiction?
The mainstream media falls all over itself to “interview” dictator thugs.
Recently Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, extravegantly praised Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia?
Bill Clinton praised Iranian government as having a wonderful democracy (back in 2005). These people are not serious.
Tavis smiley has yet to talk about the removal of Van Jones or the ACORN scandals on his NPR radio show. If he does it will be in the context of the rabid right wing. NPR, another Obama booster organization, gives him plenty of cover to hide.
The silence of the left is a kind of hysterical admission of…?
Wretchard said:
>This is not to say that the Left’s dominance
>of the academe and the cultural institutions
>is somehow at an end. It is not. But it is
>no longer invisible and it is being openly
>challenged.
Don’t count on that.
The Left’s hold on power here is being challenged by a growing “Cognitive surplus” that the diversion of television watching time to value added, volunteer, internet and other work.
See this link:
http://bit.ly/VqTf0
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
By Clay Shirky
on April 26, 2008 10:48 AM | Permalink
Look at wikipedia and what it meant for things like the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Academia, the Main Stream Media and other industrial age cultural institutions are now facing a hornet swarm of civic activists that don’t bow down to the specialist verbal and written cants these folks live on.
These “Civic hornets” are instead searching for people who can speak to what is in their hearts and souls, and then express those desires in words and deeds.
Ronald Reagan had that gift and could speak past those exact Leftist cultural institution gatekeepers to the public.
The Last Democrat who had that same gift was Pres. John F. Kennedy.
American Presidents prior to JFK with the gift included Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
Republican ex-Gov. Sarah Palin has that gift, as her framing of the America health care debate with the term “Death Panel” shows.
The growth of Glenn Beck seems to be just as dependent on the same gift, as this passage from here shows:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/who-will-speak-for-the-mothers-glenn-beck/
“Nancy from Jacksonville, Florida, a mother of three, in response to a MommyLife.net request for input on Glenn Beck:
I watch and love Glenn Beck because he’s honest. Because he doesn’t act like some pompous ass. Because he can put into words all the things I’m thinking but don’t know how to say. He can ask all the questions I am asking, but don’t know exactly how to ask. He’s had a hard life, he’s made some bad decisions … he’s normal … he’s not afraid to admit it when he’s wrong. I also like him because he’s funny. He knows how and when to be sarcastic to get a point across …”
The Leftist cultural elites have nothing to say and nothing to offer these “Civic Hornet Swarms” spawned by the collapse of television watching.
These mass movements will change the democratic states in ways no one in these cultural elites can ever imagine, and these elites will play no meaningful part in these events, save as obstacle to over come.
I hope that both Palin and Beck have the wisdom to use their gifts well.
In ages past, Democracies called people misusing such gifts demagogs.
I’m secure in the fact that some of the quotes in this thread re #35, reflect thoughts that came out of my head and I’ve never even heard of Bastiat! It would be interesting to follow the degrees of separation… Also, is anyone out there planning for some sort of societal breakdown?
Well I’m not preparing for a long term breakdown…..of course I’ve got a 1000 rounds of ammo squirreled away, but for the most part I’m just set up for a one week emergency. On the other hand there are a lot of people who are setting up for a long term SHTF, with junk silver, gold chains and rings, and etc. What is spooky is the number of law enforcement officers buying military arms and ammo for themselves, not their departments.
Toad,
Tried to buy ammunition lately?
.44, .45, .223 and 00 Buck are scarce.
You can still get cheap 9mm, 7.62×39 and not so cheap .308.
People are scared.
They sense a break down (economic, cultural, political/security) coming.
We all prepare in different ways.
I am growing vegetables and reading Emerson.
Langley
The UK is interesting to watch because it mimics, albeit imperfectly and on a smaller scale, what happens when a political point of view begins to become discredited. The comparison isn’t perfect because Britain can be a “free rider” in ways the US can’t. Without the systemic insurance US hegemony provided, the UK would be in far more parlous condition. Nevertheless, several things are happening in the UK which may happen in the US:
In a real collapse, these trends will continue unchecked until there is real hunger, want and widespread disorder. The public, desperate for a solution, turns to a strongman to prevent chaos. In extremis, quick fixes are at a premium and long term solutions will turn people off. That’s why the dictators rose to power so quickly before the Second World War. What may save the US from that fate is its federal structure, vast size and the Second Amendment. I think the real value of the Second Amendment is that it supplies the basis for public order even if there is institutional collapse. Neighbors can “close up and hedgehog” until order can be reconstituted. This vastly reduces the appeal of a Hitler-like figure because a kind of voluntary state can be substituted for short periods until things recover.
Two thousand rounds of ammunition people might have have isn’t of course sufficient for a real war. That amount of ammo will be shot off in a week in high intensity combat. But it is probably adequate to create a sort of “who goes there” order while the new founding, or perhaps refounding fathers (and mothers) meet to straighten things out. But to be proactive, dialogue and political reform should be started now because a kernel of people who are involved in the issues and familiar with each other, including some from the left who are sane, will be invaluable in an emergency situation. They will provide a natural cadre around which to rally, and that cadre is better established by involvement now than later.
Now I realize that I’m in danger of sounding like an alarmist kook here, but really the ideas are simple and require no tinfoil. Suppose there’s a crisis; now a crisis can never be ruled out. They happen from time to time and may emerge for reasons unforseen. We can recognize it — we know what an approaching crisis will look like; we can prepare to meet it — damage control parties should implictly formed before it breaks for any possible eventuation (“one if by land, two if by sea”). Beyond that, little is known beyond “keep your fingers crossed”.
If all you expect out of a movie is two hours worth of safe escapade from reality, the principles and the narratives of socialism offer excellent templates for the creation of a good visit to utopia, safe because you bought a two-way ticket: Two hours later, you are back on the parking lot, reaching for the keys to open your car, and gently return to a reality that you can reconcile yourself with because the dose of fictitious adventure you administered yourself was therapeutic enough to dissipate some of the surplus on mondanity in your so-called “real” life.
It’s a bit different if you have a real passion in life, because once you have dedicated your life to a challenging pursuit, reality does in fact surpass fiction, and how often do you need a movie anymore?
Socialism is wonderful for dreamers, and compulsive movie goers, but near useless for doers, which is why those we call “liberals” today are well fed and prosperous folks who need entertainment, because they somehow fell in the trappings of boredom, to which you become vulnerable only if you are sufficiently idle and unproductive.
If you have not experienced the double blessing of being productive and being happy, you will be looking for some kind of “third way”, and the utopian theories will be as “fulfilling” to you as the movies. As long as you are not in charge of making anything happen, why not dream of a perfect world? The word “perfectionist” was invented to make the procrastinators feel better, because they are the same people, really!
So, as long as the utopists in general and the socialists in particular are sufficiently separated from the levers of power, the people who are trying to accomplish something will experience the utopists as a mere nuisance, and will look for various forms and degrees of accomodation.
The real trouble starts when the utopists capture the levers of power. Suddenly, people who cherish their hard work and its fruits realize that they have been embarked on a huge all-encompassing movie, with a one-way ticket, because the utopists are no longer a nuisance, they became a threat, they pull all the levers, block all the exits, and you will never see the parking lot and drive your car again, and you join the tea parties to stop the madness before it’s too late!
AP re feeblemind:
Give up everything that has been invented by the boomers you ungrateful child. Now.
As a boomer who has worked my whole life to make it better for those like your ungrateful a$$, I am now going John Galt.
….and the horse you rode in on….
Talk like that is just uncalled for, little child.
This has been a long time coming BUT this persona is now signing off. Thanks for all the fish, wretchard. Keep doing the yeoman’s job for the children. Someone has to educate the worthless little simps.
Their leftism is not my liberalism; actual liberalism need not collapse, because it isn’t Socialism, but rather the enemy of Socialism.
Instead of the canard the push that “real Socialism has never been tried (so our failures don’t count)”, it’s more that real liberalism has never been tried, but it’s been successful in proportion to how much has been tried, rather than inversely.
No wonder “liberal” has been a dirty word for the European Left (as opposed to its use in the US as a synonym for Leftist).
I look for them to take back the Internet which the Great Algore hath bestowed upon us. Their Ponzi scheme has been exposed and now they can’t conveniently cover it up. One look at California and you can see the speed of change. The state teeters on bankruptcy while the socialist leaders are off junketing. The Actor in Chief doesn’t have a clue. He’s proposing a new business tax – just what a state with 12.5% unemployment needs.
They’re desperate to find a dark place to hide and regroup. But as long as YouTube and the Internet are free they’re screwed. I look for the FCC to find an excuse to control Internet content. Maybe another czar to oversee it to make sure there’s ‘balance’.
This post reminds me of the “old” post-Soviet joke:
Q: “…And what could be worse than Communism?”
A: “What comes after Communism”
Of course, like anything, it is all a question of timing and your pespective on same.
Just great comments.
There is something going on.
I don’t watch TV. It seems an opiate, straight from Hollywood writers, whom I do not respect.
Same with main stream media. Why pay for intellectual bias and poison. There are other sources of information.
The media that fawns over Obama and promotes vicious attacks on Palin defines itself. It defines itself as a shill and morally corrupt. This is media-malpractice and people are noticing.
So what comes after.
Remember there is a singularity coming.
Wretchard, I am *not* a Russia-expert at all, but from what I remember of the collapse of the USSR, it didn’t entail any of those 4 things you list. Did it? And they just called it something different?
I do remember it seemed to happen very swiftly, like, over a weekend, and suddenly everyone in Russia was unemployed, the factories were closed and the farmers couldn’t even grow the same amount of crops they had been lying about for decades.
So my question is this: is the collapse of a communist society different than the collapse of a capitalist one? It seems like it should be similar since we’re predicating the capitalist collapse on too much socialism, which is what led to the collapse of the communist one.
What am I overlooking?
Not an original idea with me, but the following list are “goods” to stockpile for a SHTF scenario:
1) Cheap single shot .22 LR rifles (You can feed a family with one and in a pinch, stop AN intruder, or if everyone in the family has one, stop more than one, however, don’t plan on a sustained fire fight. These will be high value trade goods.)
2) Ammo for single shot .22 (As many rounds as you can stock pile. Look for sales at Walmart and buy them by the brick.)
3) Whiskey (Anesthetic, disenfectant, trade goods, in a pinch can be used to start a fire if high alcohol content whiskey)
3) Birth control pills – Lack of hospitals and OB-GYN care will make these invaluable – permits a modicum of planning.
4) Sewing supplies – Walmart ain’t going to be supplying your shirts and skirts.
5) Canning supplies – Freezers will be worthless.
I could go on, but look up Mel Tappan. Buy any books you can find by him by the dozen. If the SHTF, people will need these. (Note: Mel was not a wild eyed type. He thought long and deeply about survival in a variety of scenarios and shared his thoughts and experiences)
Re #56 Robohobo: I am a Boomer,Robohobo. I meant no ill towards my generation in the remark. It is just a mental exercise, wondering what it will be like when the aged class dies off, there will be a power shift, and not just here, the same thing will happen in much of the world. There will be a reshuffling of the deck in the world. My crystal ball is just too cloudy to see what will come. OTOH, maybe we will live forever? Shrinkwrapped had a post up the other day speculating that in 20 years, science may be adding a year to our life expectancy every year.
Wretchard, I am *not* a Russia-expert at all, but from what I remember of the collapse of the USSR, it didn’t entail any of those 4 things you list. Did it? And they just called it something different?
They used to say about the USSR that it got better every year until it finally collapsed. The moral authority of “Communist Party” collapsed, and its associated nomenklatura. Ultimately Pravda became a joke. In the end very little worked. But the USSR had one invaluable thing going for it — the rest of the world was working: a source of free energy to give them CPR when the Leninist heart stopped beating. There was a life ring to hang on to when they finally decided they were drowning. “I give up, now give me money”. East Germany had the West; North Korea has South Korea. In general socialism had the West to feed them and then they could pretend it was because they “learned the lessons of socialism” and became more “humane”. At first the self-deception seemed merely amusing. Now we see it’s not just self-deception. It’s madness which is having an actual effect. But if the US goes down, who’s going to bail it out? What happens if the lender of last resort goes bust? If Cuba goes under, there’ll be relief from the West. If the West goes under, will Africa save it? No. The West has to save itself. That or nothing. This is why a left wing victory in the West is ultimately far more catastrophic than the USSR was for the world. It’s rot at the core of the system.
Now I think the process is now underway in full view. If it continues — and of course I may be wrong and simply paranoid — then it will be a far more fundamental crisis than the one besetting Venezuela, or Cuba or North Korea. That was minor frostbite. This is cancer. The patient will in time recover, but there will be a lot of heaving and coughing, and heck of a lot of misery. How much depends on the expediency with which people organize themselves.
From the wiki artilce on Mel Tappan:
Tappan said that he was disappointed by the demographics of southwestern Oregon after the influx of survivalists in the late 1970s. “Too many doctors and lawyers” relocated to Oregon, he said, but “not enough plumbers, electricians, or carpenters.”
Complete Wiki article
@35. Marymcl;
Absolutely wonderful! Bastiat nails it. And exposes the root causes of our current systemic cancers. You are to be congratulated on your efforts to bring this to the discussion. Thank you.
@44. Nahncee;
I would say the left can be accurately described as a rapidly reproducing mutated mass of cells. In short Cancer of the body politic. And unfortunately it just may take irradiation to kill it off.
@49. Das;
The silence you are hearing was brought home to me by my Dad and his utter and almost hysterical refusal to recognize and give credence to the absolute lying and corruption of the old media and it’s pimps the major political parties. He has his head stuck in the sixties and refuses to look up for fear of seeing all the work he did before retirement being for naught. He is a beginning year boomer and I am the last year and we couldn’t be farther apart in opinions on the role of govt and the media.
@54. Wretchard;
Have you noticed that a lot of what was considered alarmist and tinfoolery in the last five years has come to pass? Maybe these tin foil hat wearing guys are at the least a little bit right and in some instances are right on the money. The Boy Scouts motto is worth noting: Be Prepared. Nothing is ever lost by being prepared and much is lost by not.
@56. Robohobo;
Vaya con Dios mi compadre. May the road rise up to meet your feet and a cold beer never farther and than arms reach.
To see what those that won’t be caught with their pants down are about I suggest you click on over to “The Frugal Squirrel” it is a family oriented site with a amazing group of people doing amazing things.
When I was on active duty in the USAF there was one good thing about a real crisis: the BS stopped for a while.
When you had all the A-7D’s or F-105′s or F-111′s sitting disabled on the ramp or an Atlas booster spread all over the side of a hill, the people whose job it was to bug you about being Ops Duty Officer next weekend or managing the office cleanup campaign or the savings bond drive were ignored – and usually were even smart enough to keep their mouth shut.
When the excrement hits the impeller, do you think anyone will give a rat’s rump that Nancy Pelosi is trying to save the Earth by stopping oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?
Do you think that anyone will care in the least that a certain Wise Latina is against the 2nd amendment or that Congress passed a law regulating how many rounds of ammo you can own?
Do you think that ACORN workers will still get their Federal checks or that anyone will care if they picket a bank for not giving away enough sub-prime loans?
Nahncee: The fall of the USSR did not happen overnight, but, like a horror movie, when the batteries in the last flashlight die the people in the remote cabin at 2AM get to find out what is causing the scratching at the doors and windows. The scratching has been there for years but the light kept things seemingly safe. In the USSR the batteries in the flashlight died suddenly but the ominous noises in the dark had been there for decades.
A little story from the fall of the USSR: Downrange from the main Soviet launch base at Baikonour live people who had been getting falling, flaming, rocket parts in their back yards for decades. About 15 min after they hauled the hammer and sickle down from the Kremlin for the last time, those people showed up at the gate of the launch base and said the crap they had been putting up with had to stop. That they were politely assured that appropriate measures would be taken spoke volumes.
“Ceausescu kitsch
Theodore Dalrymple on a grisly exhibition in Bucharest that reveals the megalomaniacal mediocrity of the late dictator
Any incipient temptation to nostalgia for the days when the Conducator, Nicolae, and his wife, the world-famous organic chemist Elena, were in charge of things was swiftly overcome by a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art, housed in the notorious and vast neo-pharaonic pile the Casa Poporului, now known as the Palatul Parlamcntului. It was showing an exhibition of paintings from the Ceausescu era and the theme, not surprisingly, was that of the happy couple themselves.”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200505/ai_n14903548/
Robohobo@56:
Like feeblemind, I meant no disrespect to boomers generally. I DID say “the hash the boomer leaders are making of things” and that I stand by. Unless you LIKE what Obama and his cadres are doing to this country. But most of my best friends that aren’t my age are boomers, and they see things mostly the same way I do.
But I certainly apologize for having offended and for being a snotnosed young ‘un.
ACORN corruption is being exposed in greater detail. It now going to be very hard for the trolls to defend, because now their is evidence of outright vote fraud.
There may be as many as 50 absentee ballots that were forged, according to people close to the case. Countywide, there were 126 absentee ballots applied for on the Working Families Party line.
“The third-party WFP line has become a key battleground between the Republicans and Democrats in Troy. The scandal is unfolding in a year when the city council’s nine seats are up for grabs with 19 candidates, including nine Republicans and nine Democrats. Six at-large county legislative seats in Troy also are on the line this year with 12 candidates.
“Attorneys consulted by the Times Union who are familiar with voter-fraud issues said the allegations surfacing in Troy may be unprecedented here and could result in criminal prosecutions.
“Two of the absentee ballots reviewed by the newspaper carry addresses in Griswold Heights, a public housing complex, and are attributed to residents who have not lived there for years, records show. One of the ballots is listed under the name of Milagros Serrano, 44, who left Griswold Heights in October 2007 and now lives in Hollywood, Fla., records show.”
And the endemic bad voter registrations can no longer be dismissed as mere employee fraud.
“Christopher Edwards, 33, the former Las Vegas field director for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, pleaded guilty to two gross misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters.
“As part of a plea agreement, Edwards will testify against the other two defendants in the case — ACORN and its former regional director, Amy Busefink.
“… State investigators consider Edwards the mastermind of an illegal incentive program at the local ACORN office that, with the approval of Busefink and national ACORN officials, encouraged the collection of fraudulent voter registration forms during the 2008 campaign season.”
Ashen@51
“Also, is anyone out there planning for some sort of societal breakdown?”
If preparedness for this sort of thing interests you, I highly recommend survivalblog.com. There’s hours and hours and HOURS of reading in the archives, detailing everything from animal husbandry to gardening to guns & ammo complete with battlefield tactics to first aid to you name it.
Me? I’ve got a bunch of cases of #10 cans of freeze-dried food and several nitrogen-packed buckets of wheat berries and rice squirreled away, probably enough to keep us going for a few months at least. I live within 1/4 mile of two different lakes that would work for drinking water in a pinch. I’ve got my own well and a plan for putting in private septic if necessary….I live on an acre about 2 miles from town, so for now I’m on city sewer. I keep maybe 100 gallons of gas on the property and rotate it regularly through our vehicles, and I’ve got a 5000-watt gas generator, which runs the house fairly well as long as you don’t try cooking on the electric stove or run the AC. I hope to upgrade to a bigger diesel at some point, as diesel is safer to store, more economical and the generator will last longer.
I keep about 2 months or so (working toward 6) worth of regular food in the house at all times. I keep a little garden with mostly heirloom seed, and while the fresh veggies are nice, I’m basically just keeping my seed fresh in case we really need it later.
I’ve got a 30/.30 with a few hundred rounds of ammo and two cleaning kits, a .22 with a few thousand rounds and two cleaning kits, a pellet gun, a bow and a few dozen arrows, a 4X4, a van, a Tracker, a motorcycle, a lot of ice & summer fishing gear, a chainsaw, a couple axes, a couple mauls, a few wedges, a shitload of gardening tools and assorted saws, drills and so forth. I’m getting a shotgun in a few weeks, and I’m gonna try to lay in at least a few hundred rounds for that as well.
I’m putting in a wood stove next spring (I’ll probably buy it well ahead of time, because if TSHTF this winter you won’t be able to lay hands on one) and I’ll be laying up wood until I have a dozen cords or so…enough to keep the pipes from bursting and us from dying all winter if necessary.
I’m hoping to buy the 4-acre plot next door for gardening and animal forage at some point, but I’m not there yet. Ditto that for a solar electric system and a wind tower…that stuff ain’t cheap, and I’m trying to get through grad school at the moment, which also ain’t cheap.
What savings I have is all in either cash or gold, and I keep a month’s worth of cash in the house for what I see as an inevitable bank holiday at some point in the near-to-intermediate future, depending on how long the Wall Street wizards can postpone disaster.
So yeah, I guess you could say that I’ve done some planning for some sort of breakdown. I’ve been at it for a couple years, bit by bit. It sort of gets to be a way of life.
Wretchard:
In omitting the preceding paragraph from the NYTimes piece, you seem to be neglecting another political model between “Anglo-Saxon capitalsim” (really existing only in the USA) and socialism: that of European Christian Democracy, with its heavy borrowing from socialism. Here’s the relevant NYTimes ‘graph:
“Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.”
Have these adaptions of leftist tenets led to a cascading crash of “subsystems” that you use to describe Obama’s policies? Why not? Surely, the adoption of “nationalized health care” — so common in Europe (and popular among European conservatives) — would mean the end of all freedom here in American, right?
Okay, I just can’t resist.
A Country boy can survive
Wretchard #54
>>4. Two kinds of extremist groups begin to emerge in a crashing society; one kind composed of “protected classes” like Islamists, victim groups, etc who simply take what they want; and the other type are vigilante groups, some of them really composed of dissatisfied members of the Left who begin to take a nativist stance while keeping their old welfare mentality. In the UK, the BNP plays this role.<<
HA! Wretchard agrees with me! So I must not be crazy after all!
This jibes closely with my theory of "white socialism." Are Fascism and Nazism right wing philosophies, as the left insists, or left wing socialist philosophies, as the right insists? Neither exactly. Much of what we consider the "right" are people who want exactly the same thing the left wants, and for much the same reasons, only they want the benefits to flow to their group. And if left socialists would agree to this, they would get a lot of support from the "right."
See my blog for more of my scintillating thought.
Have these adaptions of leftist tenets led to a cascading crash of “subsystems” that you use to describe Obama’s policies? Why not? Surely, the adoption of “nationalized health care” — so common in Europe (and popular among European conservatives) — would mean the end of all freedom here in American, right?
There are two issues: the first is whether the European welfare systems are sustainable and the second is what systems would mean for freedom. The answer to the first is ‘no they are not sustainable’ and reason is simple: they are intergenerational income transfers and will go bankrupt because of demographics. This is widely known and understood, yet just as widely denied. For a long time the ends were made to meet by borrowing, but that process has now reached its limits.
The second issue is what such systems would mean for freedom in the United States. It’s a little different from the problem of Europe. Whatever freedom Europe has in its most basic sense derives from security. Security was something Europe lacked for most of the 20th century and its welfare systems, such as they are, cannot be envisioned without it. For decades, it wasn’t the French or British Armies that kept the Sovs out, but the US. Freedom of the oceans, deterrence — these underpinned the peace for which Europe literally did not pay for. Were they forced to pay for it, they could not have their welfare system. The corollary is that with the welfare system they can’t pay for security. Guns and butter. At the level of butter, the guns have to be provided by someone else.
Now consider what happens if the US becomes essentially a large Belgium because it spends its money on butter (by borrowing and intergenerational transfer) and can’t afford guns in any case. The first consequence is that instability will very soon creep back into the international system. The interesting thing about current events is that it provides a setting for an empirical test of this model. We don’t have to debate whether such and such will happen; we can see things for ourselves, and if I’m right, fairly soon.
Here’s what I predict and which we can confirm by pretty much imminent observation. First, the bubble we’ve avoided with another bubble will burst. Europe’s own bubbles will burst too. And we’ll be out of bubbles to blow, or maybe we’ll keep blowing bubbles, but they’ll live for shorter and shorter periods of time. Everyone wanted to be like California. Soon they will be. Second, we’ll head for an era of increasing instability. There’s a liklihood that something — a crisis of some sort — will be upon the West and simply be unmanageable. If under Obama and Brown they’ll give a big speech and promptly stick their heads in the sand. And that will only be the beginning.
That’s a pretty specific prediction. I hasten to say that I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think so.
“Mr. Letta argues that …Combined with continuing efforts to reduce income disparity…”,
The ultimate income equality is when everyone has nothing and freezes in the dark.
Marx observed that feudalism was replaced by capitalism, and would be replaced in its turn by communism. In Russia communism has been replaced by feudalism. If the only security possible is achieved by swearing fealty to someone stronger, feudalism suddenly becomes a valid alternate to anarchy. Let us hope that Marx was right for once and capitalism will ruse again.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. We have the same wetware that our pre-A.D ancestors had, we just have better hardware.
wretchard: I hope you’re wrong too, for once.
Wretchard: True. So it is useful to take the longer view. In Orthodoxy Chesteron quotes Hillaire Belloc:
“Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night. It is already morning.”
#53 Langley,
It took me two months to get some .40 S&W at a half way reasonable price for my carbine. The Local Walmart has zip in the way of center fire pistol ammo. I’m down to 20 rounds of .380 Corbon for my BUG. Every time I get to my local retailer it is sold out. Here in Texas we were hopping the run would die out in July. There is starting to be a little available but but the prices are high. I reload for practice .45 acp but I dread shopping for primers.
During a paranoid bull session we talked over what to do if the dollar went into free fall. One idea was to form a Red state economic union and develop our own currency backed by oil, minerals, and commodities. One guy said the Feds wouldn’t allow that. The response was would they be willing to engage Texas nuclear forces? Hopefully the plug will get pulled on the current administration before we see hyper inflation.
When I think of the times I’ve gotten into trouble it was mostly because I distrusted my instincts, which are far from infallible or even an adequate guide to action by themselves. But instincts are usually a tarball of information; they are trying to tell you something and the questions they make you ask are unquestionably invaluable. The trouble comes when you don’t ask the questions your instincts were screaming at you to pose.
I wonder to what extent readers experienced the same thing: for example, when the economic crisis was coming on, how many “felt” something strange in the air? I think many people detect a discontinuity by detecting the vibes before they explicitly see it. The reason is that they pick up anomalous signals but can’t decode them yet. What instincts do is raise a) convey the sensation of a change which is nonspecific, but which may later become retrospectively comprehensible when the cause becomes evident.
It’s dangerous to rely on raw instinct, but they can be quite prudently employed to guide inquiry. You’ll know soon enough if you’re on a false scent because the instinct will receive negative reinforcement. What’s really scary is when instincts get positive reinforcement. Then you have to be careful, because now you run the risk of seeing what you expect to see. But press on and just squirrel away the data.
When you’ve got data from a variety of sources, the best course is to discard instinct altogether in the final stage of evaluation and lay out the evidence dispassionately. Try and convince someone of it who doesn’t know a thing about it. That’s a good test of whether you’re seeing things or there’s something in it. And here’s the hard part. If the evidence forces a conclusion against the conventional wisdom, then believe the evidence. There’s a real tendency among people to think tomorrow will be like today; and that’s usually a pretty good assumption, but if the preponderance of the facts suggests tomorrow will be like nothing you’ve seen so far, then believe it or be caught at unawares.
What tools are available to socialize the clergy that have been stripped away over the last century? Perhaps a period of military service, a period of productive labor and adjustments to inheritance laws may help. Other practical ideas may come to mind
Life-O,
I think tax and spending cuts will do the trick. Clergy (of the religious or secular variety) get disconnected from the rest of the populace when they’re able to get hold of the public purse. If their ideas are required to pass muster with the Gods of the Copybook Headings, Clergy tend to say connected with reality and serve their fellow men (since that’s, y’know, how you get people to willingly pay you – provide something of value, whether it’s a barrel of apples or a bit of spiritual advice). Let the government start picking up the bill, and it’s just a matter of time until the clerics are as corrupt, misguided and foolish as, well, as Keith Olbermann.
“I wonder to what extent readers experienced the same thing: for example, when the economic crisis was coming on, how many “felt” something strange in the air?”
I did. It was when I started prepping…I remember posting something to a thread in BC in January 2008 to an open thread you posted for people to put in their new year’s predictions. I intimated my foreboding in that post, and shortly after that I made my first big purchase of prep food and ammo.
It began to feel REALLY ugly to me last April or so, and I don’t know why. Then it felt less urgent this summer, and I again don’t know why. Now it’s starting to feel more urgent again and yet again I don’t know why. But, like you, I tend to trust my instincts and let them at least HELP guide my decisions…though I tend to think of them as more of a zip file than a tarball. ;-p
Bastiat via marymcl writes: ““Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain – and since labor is pain in itself – it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions neither religion nor morality can stop it.”
The economist Marcur Olson studied how dictatorships and warlord, and especially Stalin, succeeded, if you can call it that, in running economies that strangled the goose that lays the golden eggs, but just enough to keep the goose alive, very afraid, and still producing some eggs.
“Neither religion nor morality can stop it.” And in some cases the religion encourages and authorizes the plunder as being God’s will.
One of the charms of the Belmont Club is the name given to a posting. Or, I should say, one of the challenges. The challenge being: What the Hell does that heading have to do with the subject of the posting? As in, “The second derivative”. Now I, a student of mathematics, know perfectly well what the second derivative is. (Hint: It’s the derivative of the first derivative. Now, wasn’t that enlightening!) I’ll assume Belmont Club knows what it is. And Belmont Club is subtle and clever in naming his postings. Generally I see the connection. Well, I see “a” connection, if I scratch deep and stifle my literalist bent.
So, what is this connection? Is it the secondary impact of Obamanation on Europe, derivative of the first impact, on ‘merica itself? That’s a stretch. 3/4 yrs from now, maybe. But the sharp drop in support for the German SPD in the recent election has, IMHO, nothing to do with Obama. The election of Sarkozy obviously had nothing to do with Obama. The current malaise of Labour in the UK has nothing to do with Obama. Most importantly, NONE of these developments has much to do with an alleged decline of Socialism. Because Socialism is, to a considerable extent, firmly embedded within all these soi-disant “center right” parties. (Maybe not so much in the German FDP, which did make the largest gains, but still only about 14% of the vote, less than the combined Left/Green vote.) What did Hayek say in the Road to Serfdom? Something like — I paraphrase here, having read it long ago and not having it at hand — “to the socialists in all parties”!
I’ll believe that socialism is in decline when I see a genuine Reagan Redux in the Oval Office, and a dozen Margaret Thatchers across Europe. Hey, it could happen! Someday…
“There’s a real tendency among people to think tomorrow will be like today.”
I wonder if it’s not even more dangerous to think that tomorrow will be like yesterday, and if we just stock up enough bullets and sewing needles, we can pioneer on through.
I took the title to be “derived” from the sequence, position, velocity, acceleration, and lastly the jerk.
LOTM,
Don’t we have a fourth group these days (who others here have hinted at without actually using the name)? Those who freeload…
The thread from August, not even six weeks ago, that Wretchard linked has this comment (in response to a comment suggesting a possible Congressional blowout loss for Dems in 2010):
do you envision Obama, Acorn and the unions sitting by and watching themselves lose power?
Well, one of those three looks to be out of the fight for 2010, and a second (or at least the SEIU part of it) might be in trouble too. Don’t get cocky, kid, but things are looking better than they did a short time ago.
The second derivative of position is acceleration. We have a lot of acceleration going on these days.
Ben @83
The second derivative is the rate of change in the rate of change, aka acceleration.
Let’s hope we never see a post titled “The Singularity”.
ADE
skook/77; You have mistaken the hour of the night
One year ago today the Dow had biggest one-day drop ever, 777 points when the first stim bill vote failed. Seven months ago it hit 666 (*shiver*) and then turned up to the mid 900s where it is now.
“Capitalism” is a term from Marx –before that term gained useage it was called free enterprise, economic liberty, or just plain old liberty or freedom. As a way of life it is pretty powerful, in step as it is with the human spirit. i know it feels like we’re back at December 6th 1941 only with Yamamoto in USN uniform occupying the base commander’s office –but as you say, there is a chance that just by refusing to go to pieces, we can stay in one piece.
If we want to, that is. i guess it depends on how much reform we can achieve at what cost –that is if no foreign crisis explodes. It’d almost be worth a real breakdown if that would be the only way to avoid having to settle, by way of reform, for nothing much but cosmetics out of DC.
What’s killing us is not the problems themselves –hell, health care is a no brainer, we all could give the orders –three changes –and have it done by lunchtime tomorrow. Same with all our other problems –the fix is easy to figure. It’s the damned spider web we’re caught upo in that”s doing the damage.
geoffb: I took the title to be “derived” from the sequence, position, velocity, acceleration, and lastly the jerk.
geoffb, I went through four years of engineering school and five years working as an engineer at Boeing without knowing what “jerk” was. It wasn’t until I came across the works of an inventor turned philosopher named Arthur Middle Young that I learned about “jerk” being the first derivative of acceleration. He discusses this and other measure formulae in a fascinating book entitled “The Geometry of Meaning.”
http://www.arthuryoung.com/gmexc.html
As for the title of this post, I took it to mean improvement of a kind that has been bandied about by the administrations cheerleaders of late, i.e. slows downs in declining statistics. For example, think back to how many times in the last few months we’ve heard things like this touted as evidence of improvement…”the economy shed fewer jobs last month than expected” or “Credit conditions tightened less through the survey period.” These are second derivative improvements. http://tinyurl.com/2nd-deriv
I prefer mine in the first-derivative.
Also, I highly recommend to my fellow BC’ers Hayek’s “Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism”. http://bit.ly/vxlg2 It was written in the 1970′s and though not as popular as Road to Serfdom, it’s very accessible and speaks directly to many issues raised by our host here and in other posts.
#79 Wretchard
Definitely, listen to your instincts. When I was working, I would pound into the heads of the officers I was training to “Listen to the cop sense. If the hair is standing up on the back of your neck, there is a reason somewhere.”. So you are dead right. If you can combine that instinct with a knowledge of history, you may be able to get inside the OODA loop of who or whatever you end up facing.
By the way, since I have you here, I guess you can ignore the email I sent you about not being able to get the site to let me post, since it seems to be working now.
#84 NahnCee
I wonder if it’s not even more dangerous to think that tomorrow will be like yesterday, and if we just stock up enough bullets and sewing needles, we can pioneer on through.
Yeah, our preparations may be imperfect, but I suspect that they are the best that we can do. If you are ready for economic collapse, hunger, and a breakdown of law and order, that may be all we can do. Subsumed in those preparations is the ability to just begin to resist if such should become politically necessary. But most definitely we are still vulnerable to that which we have not recognized yet. The only hopeful thing may be is that while history does not repeat itself, human stupidity does. There are only a limited number of ways that a social order can collapse. If you have any other ideas for preparations, please share. One advantage of BC, is that we can pick each others’ brains.
#87 JMH
do you envision Obama, Acorn and the unions sitting by and watching themselves lose power?
Well, one of those three looks to be out of the fight for 2010, and a second (or at least the SEIU part of it) might be in trouble too. Don’t get cocky, kid, but things are looking better than they did a short time ago.
Those are optimistic thoughts. I would temper them with the realization that if they are no longer able to rig the elections as easily as they had planned, they may have a fallback position that is not in the Civics books. Going back to what Wretchard was talking about; the hairs on the back of my neck went up when the Democrats in Congress started acting like they never will have to be held to account by voters for their actions. Politicians [especially American politicians] are by their nature arrogance and greed backed by little more than hot air. And knowing that there is nothing of substance in themselves, they are very careful not to do anything to give mortal offense to a large chunk of the electorate and conceal that arrogance. Now they seem to take pleasure in insulting and attacking the voters. When investigating something, you look for anomalous behavior, and that is bloody anomalous and the only conceivable reasons makes one look with concern at one’s ammunition stores.
Subotai Bahadur
Thank you for the link. I had heard of jerk perhaps 10 years ago, once, but it was referred to as surge when I came across it.
yep, didja notice how quick & smooth the Acorn deracination took place? in a trice congress and banks and agencies all on cue simultaneously ”dropped” acorn –with nary a murmer nor sign of deliberation, let alone a (horrors!) congressional investigation. Suddenly newly-enlightened congresspersons saw a chance to gang rush the exit –and took it quick-like. But the personnel are still in place –yep, the red tee shirts have to go into the bottom drawer, and yep, new signs & business cards will have to be printed up. But the main funding has always been the unions, which i’m sure are more than happy to cooperate in helping their pols hang onto a shard of dignity. Acorn had become a taxable non-profit –a Pushme Pullyou as Dr Swissbank i mean Seuss would say –able to politic as well as recieve gov’t grants –and sooner or later someone was sure to notice.
Acorn –delivering on cue the sudden tsunamir of system-overloading ninja and liar iloans –thru the piplene prepped as far back as Clinton’s latter days –are what blew out the markets in Sept 08 and guaranteed both the election and the perfect crisis (under Bush! under Bush!”) and thus needed the Night of the Long Knives or the Trotsky icepicck, in order to free the boss for the big Job coming.
forgive typos –racing editor and text jumping like meth popcorn
out of money, out of ideas, and out of excuses.
A Bill Whittle fan I see. Good on ya.
It is interesting. No longer under the US defense umbrella Europe has to stand on its own and find allies where it can. Amazing.
By withdrawing guarantees from Europe ∅ has forced them to the right losing allies he had hoped to keep in his pocket by being friendlier to Eurosocialsm and winning back Euro respect. This is not second derivative stuff. It is third – referred to technically as “jerk”.
France allied with Israel? Check. Saudi Arabia in secret agreement with the Israelis check. And on and on.
This is not the world Obama got elected into.
Another idea for preparations. Stock up on tools. Even cheap Chinese stuff if it is not too junky. Voltmeters and for those who are somewhat adept – oscopes.
A good shortwave radio. This is good at under $150
Sony ICF-SW7600GR AM/FM Shortwave World Band Receiver with Single Side Band Reception
This is good for $60
Kaito KA1101 – Worldband radio
This is a good disaster radio for $30
American Red Cross FR150 Microlink Solar-Powered, Self-Powered AM/FM/Weatherband Portable Radio with Flashlight and Cell Phone Charger (Red)
If you can fix things or make thing – good. Plumbing, house wiring, simple house repairs. Auto repairs.
Tools, tools, tools. Most of them that will be useful don’t have a rifled barrel.
Some of the prices shown on the radios are higher than need be.
You can pay a lower price and get some more info by going to:
What To Do Before TSHTF
I was reminded of this thread when I saw a scene in a Japanese anime called “Major”
The jock baseball student has to pass an academic entrance test and an interview for a high school with a high rated baseball program. During the interview he is told he had a high enough score to pass and:
“I liked your response on the definition of Extensionalism.”
“I…left that page blank.”
“Yes, brilliant.”
Well, folks that think that there is an emerging trend toward freedom in Europe should watch this Friday’s “referendum” in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty/Accords. This treaty is more or less the EU “Constitution” sneaked in by the back door. Odds are that Ireland will vote yes to it. Then the EU will be a de facto State with its own full State apparatus and trappings, and the national governments of Europe will become in effect provinces of this State. (and if you think we have dollar problems now, just watch the markets then-all part of the plan.)
Socialism failing? Perhaps. Fascism rising? Definitely. The EUocrats make Hitler or Mussolini look like rude, comic vaudeville actors. It is a cartel of corrupt, unaccountable government power grubbers who may now enact laws away from the public eye or the ballot box. Socialism was, after all, merely a dodge; the goal was totalitarian oligarchy all along. Few in the whole history of Europe have held such power. Once this is in place it will take much to dislodge it–perhaps a world war will be required to bring it down. It is doubtful that a world wide depression will alone suffice.
Conservatives love to poke fun at the limp wristed European, but should times get tough and they go to national conscription, which a starving and frightened populus might well welcome, it is a different game altogether. Imagine a nuclear Germany aligned with Russia in some manner, or a nuclear EU aligned with China or Brazil. Do not imagine that they care one whit for the USA or are aligned with our interests. They cannot even love much of the legacy of their own civilization. they would take us for all we are worth.
Even should that not occur, the new fascist State of Europe will be in a situation to withstand a disgruntled populace and weather hard economic times. This, after all, has been the condition of Europe for much of its history. Moreover, it is quite unclear that things will descend down to entire continents raising geese in their back yards. It is hard to see the Putins of the world (or even the Browns or Obamas) waving across their fences at their next door neighbors as they bend down to plant their heirloom seeds together. Much more likely it is that they will enslave those neighbors as vassals and serfs. This is what history teaches.
To belabor the obvious, the break down of the current order most likely does not create more freedom for anyone but the new depots and the new Aceint Regime, and the notion that the pace of this change will work to the advantage anyone else but them is a dubious one. Quite the opposite may be the case.
If civilization and order really break down, there will be hoards of people fleeing the cities and the powers that be will welcome it for it gets them out of their hair and does much of their work for them–all will be easier to tame later. The survivalists will find that their arms are quickly exhausted, their redoubts overrun and their carefully husbanded stores pillaged and plundered. If there are to be “Refounding Fathers” it will be on the other side of this tumult. One doubts that they will be possessed of the same wisdom of our Founders or, should they have that wisdom, be in much of a position to exercise it. The legacy we inherit is precious beyond measure, We should preserve it at all costs save those which corrupt it.
So the real question, so far as the USA goes, is what do the Armed Forces and the LEO communities do? Which side do they stand on and what steps are they willing to take? What steps can they take? One imagines that their responses will vary, but the broad outlines of the alternatives are visible. They can push to the center of gravity of the collapsing order and protect the core of the power structure, create their own power structure or cleave toward the founding principles of the nation and pull us back from the abyss. I suggest that it is unknowable at this point what will come to pass.
Of course, this is not to say that one should not take all precautions that one may. Who is to say how it will break for an individual? One should not, however, be sanguine about outcomes nor view such a thing as some sort of Scout Camp adventure or a retreat from the true nature of man or the world. Our civilization is a marvelous thing. It keeps man from the throat of man. What will come could be nasty indeed.
The model is hardly the fall of Rome, which of course took centuries. Those left then to pick up the pieces did not have to contend with nuclear weapons or machine guns.
I know of a quite wealthy man who, imagining that he as anticipated this all, has built an elaborate “off grid home”, a compound really, which is so elaborate that it require “staff”, including serious “security personnel”. If the order should really break down, it is not beyond imagining that his head of “security” would soon grab the place himself and start his own little fiefdom. I mention this to him an his brow furrows. They “aft gang agley”, as they say.
Water supply, storage and purification. Boiling it all for 10 min is a pain in the rear. Bleach/iodine tastes bad but keeps you alive. You can go weeks w/o food, water, not so much. Empty (cleaned) plastic jugs at standby for filling when the time is near.
Network. Know some specialists, electrician, plumber, carpenter, medic, farmer, etc…
Think about how you’d get by w/o electricity. The grid will go down. Mainly because it’s the weakest deniable that the cities have.
Network again. For common defense. There will be many that do not have. They will do ANYTHING when they and their own are starving.
Threat Identification. Know who the Quislings, habitual criminals and child molesters are in your neck of the woods. There are online research sources for much of this. The local paper for politics is a good source too. Remove the easiest threats first.
Heirloom seeds. I saw this mentioned above. Well said sir… a 1/2 acre can go far to keeping you alive. Throw in some canning jars and you’re going to be okay.
Educate. The mind is the primary weapon. Learn for yourself, for and from your network. Myself, I have “Pole Barn construction”, “The Foxfire Book”, FM 21-76, Survival among others. The websites mentioned above are excellent.
Motivate. Get off your duff. Our host said it months ago… it might have been in regards to that sinking feeling then, too, but Wretch said “Do something”. Ennui is the killer. Inaction leads to stasis. Take one hour a night 3 times a week and USE it.
Mongoose says:
If civilization and order really break down, there will be hoards of people fleeing the cities and the powers that be will welcome it for it gets them out of their hair and does much of their work for them–all will be easier to tame later. The survivalists will find that their arms are quickly exhausted, their redoubts overrun and their carefully husbanded stores pillaged and plundered.
Probably not so much. Think Katrina or some of the other major storms. Cars setting on the freeways burning gas, stalling, blocking roads. Then scavengers spreading out on foot, preying on each other. Thousands of people who have learned all they know about outdoor survival from Disney. People who refuse to use basic sanitary practices in their daily life because the “man” has got anti-biotics for everything, dude. Screw washing your hands after,… well fill in the blanks. I’m not a survivalist, I’m too old, but holding out for about a month or two will probably be enough for the “bad to die young”. And when cold weather comes, especially in the northern part of the USA, the coyotes will feed well.
Real survival will lie with the small towns where people band together and have a variety of skill sets to call on. Move to a small town now, contribute to the town with your sweat and support, join a church.
And remember Programmers Viet Nam era mantra, “There is no such thing as too much ammo, there is such a thing as not enough ammo.”
Added edit: The above is why small calibers are good. It is easier to carry a thousand rounds of 22 LR than a hundred rounds of .300 Lapua.
Mongoose@99
An interesting post, and one I mostly agree with. however…
“If civilization and order really break down, there will be hoards of people fleeing the cities and the powers that be will welcome it for it gets them out of their hair and does much of their work for them–all will be easier to tame later. The survivalists will find that their arms are quickly exhausted, their redoubts overrun and their carefully husbanded stores pillaged and plundered.”
There will indeed, in that situation, be hordes of people fleeing the cities. Many call them “the Golden Horde”. This is why I live well off any main arteries of travel, in an inconspicuous house near an inconspicuous town, whose denizens in such a case will strongly encourage any wanderers to move on. We tell nobody except trusted, dear friends and family (and damned few of them) of our preparations, all of which are well hidden from the view of visitors. I would not write about it here if I couldn’t use a pseudonym. I also keep caches separately hidden on the property just so at least SOME survives the type of plundering you speak of, should it happen.
Survivalist redoubts/compounds may well be overrun, as may our house. My goal is to keep myself and my family alive, perhaps to fight another day. I’ll leave the house in a trice if that’s what’s required. I won’t bother to install steel plates in the walls and so forth like some do, although one project for this winter is to strengthen the hinges on our outside doors, which makes good sense in any case.
Finally, my arms will probably never be completely exhausted. I plan never to get in a firefight that lasts more than a few shots. If it’s going to be more than that, I’ll take my family and run for it. I’m not in this to be Rambo. Only as a last option will I unload everything I’ve got, and in that situation I’ll assume my imminent death.
Programmer@103
“And when cold weather comes, especially in the northern part of the USA, the coyotes will feed well.”
Yeah, they will. It amazes me how many Minnesotans have no idea how to take care of themselves in the cold, especially in the Twin Cities.
“Real survival will lie with the small towns where people band together and have a variety of skill sets to call on. Move to a small town now, contribute to the town with your sweat and support, join a church.”
Wise, wise words. The single greatest prep you can make for disaster is to JOIN A CHURCH. It’s a built-in support system chock full of people who know useful stuff. My church has experts in carpentry, electric, heating, well-digging, septic, gunsmithing and more, and they’re all the kind of people you’d want at your back in a pinch. Perhaps most of all, they’re kind and willing to lend a hand when you need it.
Now is the time to make good friends with these people, and like you said, give freely of your sweat and effort to the town. Even if nothing huge ever happens, it’s a fulfilling life and you make great friends. Win-win.
prog/103; love 22LR for that reason –suppressing fire depends on ‘lotsa bullets’ –and is what you’ll want, to make your 10-20 the relatively less attractive destination –at bloodless distance if possible –for a few weeks of breakdown.
‘course you want that shotgun and that center-fire handy too –but no one but no one wants to get hit by a 22LR either, given their druthers.
…meanwhile, back at the culture, this is encouraging:
The recent change in favor of traditional values has been most pronounced among independents, among whom Gallup says there has been a “dramatic turnaround.” Last year, independents were overwhelmingly in favor, by 55 percent to 37 percent, of the government not favoring any set of values. In the new survey, those numbers are almost reversed, with 54 percent saying the government should promote traditional values and 40 percent saying it should not. Gallup did not find similarly striking changes among Democrats and Republicans, although Democrats have also moved a little bit in the direction of wanting the government to promote traditional values.
But it is the turnaround among independents — Gallup also found similar numbers among people who called themselves moderates — that put a screeching halt to the shift that had been taking place in the last few years. “Americans’ views of the proper government role in promoting traditional values had moved in a more liberal direction since 2005, to the point that last year, as many said the government should not promote traditional values as said it should,” Gallup writes. “If that trend had continued, 2009 would have marked the first time Gallup found more Americans preferring that the government refrain from actively promoting traditional values. Instead, Americans’ attitudes reverted to a more conservative point of view on the matter. Now, Americans favor the government’s promoting traditional values by an 11-point margin, similar to the double-digit margins favoring that view through much of the prior two decades.”
(ht instapundit)
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Has-the-liberal-moment-come-and-gone-62842512.html
ADE (88),
The title I dread seeing is “I Told You So” (referencing the Three Conjectures.)
Just to be clear, Fascism is a form of elite-led Socialism that privileges the nation (Italy as reborn Rome) or the ethnicity (the German “Volk” or Nasser’s pan-Arabism) rather than the economic class as in Communism.
If Fascism is resurgent in Europe it will not be a repudiation of Socialism, tho perhaps repudiating social democracy.
Mongoose writes: “Socialism was, after all, merely a dodge; the goal was totalitarian oligarchy all along.”
Democracy is our main asset, and the rule of law, under fair democratic process is our insurance.
But authorities, aristocracies, want the goods. They will arrange things so that the goods fall into their hands. That reminds me of a story:
“In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, “Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”
You know the rest.
if they are no longer able to rig the elections as easily as they had planned, they may have a fallback position that is not in the Civics books
Completely agree, but I still see this as a positive development. I fear stolen elections more than cancelled ones. Cancelling elections and attempting, essentially, a Zelaya style coup will force Leftists out into the open, and then everyone else can react and treat them as the traitors we suspect they are.
But as long as they continue to operate with plausible deniability while subverting things under cover, it’s hard to rally enough people to fight them. As some old, dead white guys said once, mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable and all that.
“I think the left and Socialism in Europe still have work to do; they have a raison d’être, and they will have to rely more on environment issues. Combined with continuing efforts to reduce income disparity, he said, “going green” may give the left more life.”
But what happens when that approach is discredited as well. The great hoax that is the Global Warming Scare is about to be shown to be nothing more than a lie. The Sun has entered, on cue by the way, into a quiet phase in its cycle and the Earth, on cue, is about to enter a cooling phase in its climate as a result. Within a couple of years the fact that Sun is THE driver of the global climate will be inescapable for even the most die-hard AGW’er. What then for the Left? Yet another one of their ‘truths’ will have been exposed as a lie. It will be the final nail in their coffin, I think. Unfortunately, the Left is like a vampire. It will lie in its coffin until conditions are right for it to emerge and feast once again on the blood on the living, aka the productive.
Wretchard #64: “What happens if the lender of last resort goes bust?”
Or gets nervous? It was striking to me that the Chinese a few months ago basically asked aloud whether they will ever see the money they lent to the US. That is the sort of thing that should be asked privately. That they asked it in the press signals… what? Alarm?
Marty, of course you are correct, and I take your point–it is a point that cannot be repeated too often. In the case of my particular post, I really used the term “fascism” for I can find no other term with as terse and pungent meaning which comes close to having some common currency. We really have no words at all for what is happening. It is an amalgam of Corporatism, Peronism, Socialism, in the traditional meaning of the term, and Fascism–perhaps even Communism–and has national, regional and international levels and layers. “Enarch Globalism”? “Elite Global Fascist Globalism”? It is difficult to capture in a simple word.
But whatever one calls it, it does have a “Class Element”. There are two classes: the elites and the rest of us, and the former, at least, is international in scope and composition. Certainly we have seen totalitarian regimes before, but nothing like this. It is the Global nature of it that is new, and this makes it particularly vexing. We now have, or are close to having, an internationally rationalized “Global Economy” which supports a global elite who has managed to position themselves in it in such a manner that they may exist in freedom and in power alienated from their own peoples, cultures and, in a sense, even their own civilizations. they are accountable to no one but themselves.
One wonders just how long they will be able to old their positions, but that is not really the greatest danger. What is the greatest danger is what replaces them once tings implode, or, worse, explode. The history of the collectivist Regimes of Europe, Russia and Asia do not bode well for the terminal outcomes of this new “Enarch Global Fascism”.
Should we not be able to stop this the long term prospects for the cause of human dignity and freedom will be bleak. We revert to a beehive. It may take centuries for sanity and anything remotely similar to the legacy of the West to return. It is no joke. Few thngs could be more serious. I the end it is more serious than our individual fates.
If we pull make from the edge of the abyss and save ourselves for moment we shall have to re-examine just what we want out of “Globalism”. Globalism is the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the room, and every one and every side have not quite been honest with themselves about it nor really faced the real repercussion, not even “free market” conservatives.
It will have to be re-evaluated.
Tarnsman -
You didn’t get the memo from Al Gore?
“We have always been at war with Global Cooling!”
-Langley
#103 Programmer, #104 Agoraphobic Plumber
It is interesting that the first instinct of many in the cities will be to “flee to the mountains”. If you do not know what you are doing, and most don’t, y’all are gonna die right smartly in the mountains; especially if there are a number of people competing for the limited resources there.
I was discussing this with someone well over a decade ago. That person has since moved to Belize, which may indicate something. In any case, the prospect of hordes of welfare dependent Front Range city dwellers coming up the few, narrow roads to mountain towns [locusts anyone?] was discussed. This person noted that even on relatively flat roads, there are culverts, etc. over ditches and draws. If something were to happen to a few culverts or small bridges; that the hordes who were driving will quickly be on foot. Econoboxes do not do cross country well, and most owners of SUV’s really do not understand off road driving. The mobs will be reduced to shank’s mare, albeit there will be a few motorcycles that could get through.
Your average city dweller is not going to be capable of a 50 mile hike, cross country, carrying whatever belongings and in whatever weather [Colorado is Alpine desert]. They would either give up and die or go back and the number of intruders would be seriously attrited. He implied that plans had been made to that effect, but ‘the BS was strong with that one’. His conclusions were accurate, but I never really did know how much truth was there beyond that. But any community trying to survive is going to need defense in depth to attrite the waves of threats.
Secondly, if the assumption is that you are going to protect you and yours; we all pretty much have family [usually kids] who have moved to the city. I don’t know about y’all; but my kids know that if I say to come home NOW, they had better come home NOW. And they know the back mountain roads to get here. My daughter who lives on the coast knows if I say it is time to get out of the city, she and her family are going to where they have stockpiles away from the city. Communications so that the ones you are trying to protect can get in before someone slams a door are a good thing.
Subotai Bahadur
@ #45 Robohoho -
Read Ayn Rand’s Anthem. She nailed the lack of technical as well as social progress that is inherent in collectivism. Her main point – innovation comes from the individual, never a committee.
Just contemplate how long and how many blue ribbon panels would be necessary to duplicate the advances of just Newton and Einstein. Not sure we wouldn’t be approaching infinity on that one….
Wretchard @ #75:
“There are two issues: the first is whether the European welfare systems are sustainable and the second is what systems would mean for freedom. The answer to the first is ‘no they are not sustainable’ and reason is simple: they are intergenerational income transfers and will go bankrupt because of demographics. This is widely known and understood, yet just as widely denied. For a long time the ends were made to meet by borrowing, but that process has now reached its limits.”
When it comes to nationalized healthcare however, you seem to be missing a very basic and easily provable fact: European and Canadian nationalized healthcare costs less than America’s privatized system. Why? Because the American system needs to turn more of a profit: CEO salaries, high-priced actuaries, advertising and PR arms, as well as multiple bureaucracies for each competing corporation. More centralized and government run systems can do without these, which is why so many countries with nationalized systems and universal coverage pay less of a percentage of their GDP on healthcare than America.
Which system is really economically sustainable in the long run? That’s why it’s distressing to see so many so-called “conservatives” fighting against cuts in Medicare for short-term political advantage — you’d think that controlling health are costs would be in the interests of fiscal conservatives. Maybe not this election cycle . . . nor the following.
Solon -
I do not want to be a slave or a beggar. That is what, in principle, you are proposing.
BTW – in practice, government mandates and regulations increase the price of “health care” (see Laffer’s Wedge Theory or Von Missus and Hayack on the Price Function).
- Langley
ws/116; …and Edison! EPA just the other day put out a new list of rules for the outdoor power equipment industry –i haven’t read it thru but the fine for a web based mail order part sent across a state that hasn’t approved the part to an approved part state destination –a harmless act –is $37K for a one-time first offense. IOW a clerical oversight. And that one is in just the first para of several pages i didn’t read, as it was making me want to throw up. Folks in the biz are saying the mess is so contradictory, vaguely and poorly-written, and yet so draconian in punishments that the only job worth having now in the industry is not production sales repair or distribution but to be one of the EPA’s cops –a Dukes of Enforcement, picking & choosing whom you wish to loot & banish and whom you deem worthy of the royal dispensation to remain (and BTW, pick up your victims’ customers).
Chicago, Chicago, that’s my kinda town –ya gotta sing it, see?
SARAH PALIN IS UP TO #2 ON AMAZON, proving that her publisher knew something.
On the other hand, James Wesley Rawles’ survival book is up to #4, with virtually no traditional press attention.
Posted at 2:52 pm by Glenn Reynolds
******
( there’s two embedded links in the pasted copy above @
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/
Palin’s title is “Going Rogue” –wow –’going rogue’ –what is she saying? )
Solon: You have some proof for that assertion that EU health systems performance in aggregate for direct and indirect costs and at the same rate of performance are more efficient than a market based system? This certainly is not true for Medicaid or Medicare, whose distortions of the market are driving prices up, not down. It is a bizarre proposition which you are making: Competition raises prices? The lack of it lowers prices? Prove it. You say that this is a provable fact, and yet I wonder just what your proof is. I imagine that in the figures you are looking at the level of performance is not the same and that the indirect cost are omitted. Sound like propaganda to me, but if you have a political neutral study then please share it with us.
Here is one for you: How many MRI machines per captia are there in EU compared against America? How ng do they ae to wait for visits. And it will not do to cherry pick. you hae to comapre apples to apples, across all the EU.
Oh and the EU systems make a “profit” too, it is just the government that reaps the reward.
I must say, you sound like a socialist to me.
I wish someone would define what, exactly, are we talking about when the term “the elites” is being used? I’m pretty sure it’s not Paris Hilton, nor the House of Saud, nor even the Queen of England. In other words, being filthy rich would not necessarily save your ass in the discussed potential Apocalypse.
Are people thinking of Soros heading a gang of Ivory Towered Women’s Studies professors when they talk about “the elites”? Or are we talking Putin’s tame Russian billionaires and any Russian Mafia they might think they own?
Obviously, Obama and his angry missus think *they* are elite because of their Ivy-League education and/or connection to the Chicago machine. Is that a definition? That you’ll survive the downfall of capitalism if you graduated from Harvard or can get ACORN to throw you an election? Doesn’t seem like one would necessarily follow the other, but then I’m having trouble grasping the whole concept of “the Elites” so please, someone, elucidate.
e really have no words at all for what is happening. It is an amalgam of Corporatism, Peronism, Socialism, in the traditional meaning of the term, and Fascism–perhaps even Communism–and has national, regional and international levels and layers. “Enarch Globalism”? “Elite Global Fascist Globalism”? It is difficult to capture in a simple word.
But whatever one calls it, it does have a “Class Element”. There are two classes: the elites and the rest of us, and the former, at least, is international in scope and composition…
Neo-Feudalism, that’s what I’s calls it. We’ve seen a version of it before – Europe during the middle ages. A pan-European nobility united by language (Latin, then French) and religion (debased, pre-reformation Catholicism) that warred among themselves for power but ultimately allied with each other against threats from outside their own class (peasant uprising, external invasions). It came to an end when three things happened: one, their religion split when it became clear the dominant version was more concerned with power than morality; two when the industrial revolution made productivity depend on brain, which is harder to coerce than brawn, and thus found commoners controlling important parts of the economy; and three when the nobility failed to produce enough military leaders and needed to either draw from the squeezed middle class and thus lose control of the military, or else retain control of the military at the cost of losing war after war.
Odd situation today. The neo-nobles do not really control the most powerful military, the US Military, which defers to them only so long as they defer to democratic elections. The commoners already control the productive parts of the economy, all the neo-nobility have ever been able to do is loot and ruin and if they run out of things to loot will starve for want of ability. Their religion – eco-socialism – is a farce, pre-corrupted form them in it’s inception and, as Tarsnman points out, about to have a huge chunk discredited by Mother Nature (it’s not nice to lie in Mother Nature’s name…).
I think the new feudalism is stillborn. The orginal Lords achieved their positions through ability and leadership. The new crop have come to power in a fit of absent-mindedness on the part of everyone else. There’s nothing behind them, all hot air and pretension. What it took the previous aristocracy half a millenium to achieve, these dolts have sunk to within a generation.
Langley @ #118:
“BTW – in practice, government mandates and regulations increase the price of “health care” (see Laffer’s Wedge Theory or Von Missus and Hayack on the Price Function).”
Honest question: If so, then why does the US pay more, way more, of its GDP than nations with universal coverage? And insures less people?
Mongoose @ #121:
“Solon: You have some proof for that assertion that EU health systems performance in aggregate for direct and indirect costs and at the same rate of performance are more efficient than a market based system? This certainly is not true for Medicaid or Medicare, whose distortions of the market are driving prices up, not down. It is a bizarre proposition which you are making: Competition raises prices? The lack of it lowers prices? Prove it. You say that this is a provable fact, and yet I wonder just what your proof is. I imagine that in the figures you are looking at the level of performance is not the same and that the indirect cost are omitted. Sound like propaganda to me, but if you have a political neutral study then please share it with us.”
Sure competition can raise prices — especially when oligopolies collaborate to peg rates and fix prices! Happens all the time, especially in chemicals, agriculture, food processing, credit cards and private healthcare. Did competition among rating agencies result in better, more accurate bond rating among the best companies? Moody’s? S&P? Please.
We can’t establish the “same rate of performance” across comparable systems that cover millions of people (unless you want to look at life expectancy rates), especially when the US has such a high percentage of people who are uninsured — uninsured and relying on legally mandated emergency room servie, which as you must know, is often crappy (not preventative) and EXCEEDINGLY expensive. But we certainly can establish costs as percentage of GDP.
Here’s the OECD study:
http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,3343,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html
A handy chart:
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=45110
There’s nothing behind them, all hot air and pretension.
-well however many public poseurs have nothing but hot air, there are still a good number of politicians who are a tad more pragmatic; they know well that to fund their projects there has to be a productive economy and that means there must be some freedom and a limit to state-enforced limits on freedom. Not all left-liberals are dumb enough not to know the danger of killing the goose (though circumstances may drive in that direction regardless).
I suspect the future will be one where the productive classes continue to be taxed and blackmailed in various ways to fund the enforcers. But no free market can exist without enforcers, and without politics imposing moral imperatives on those who take market freedoms to immoral ends (e.g. gaming the system, protecting market dominance), so it need not all be seen as parasitical. What we need, frankly, are smart parasites that respect their host.
The alternative to a socialism that tips the balances towards the parasites and a non-viable system is to imagine and organize a political economy that is sustainable and growth-oriented. We need to be able to imagine a political class we could respect in how they impose limits to “freedom”, knowing that market freedom is maximized not when things are left completely open but when certain moral imperatives are enforced, when certain possibilities are closed off.
It is perhaps notable that in this thread the bad guy is almost univerally the state-employed socialist. I am not his defender but at a time when the “free market” financial elite, and their politicians, have proven themselves so corrupt, are we not missing something…?
Langley @ #118:
“BTW – in practice, government mandates and regulations increase the price of “health care” (see Laffer’s Wedge Theory or Von Missus and Hayack on the Price Function).”
Honest question: If so, then why does the US pay more, way more, of its GDP than nations with universal coverage? And insures less people?
Mongoose @ #121:
“Solon: You have some proof for that assertion that EU health systems performance in aggregate for direct and indirect costs and at the same rate of performance are more efficient than a market based system? This certainly is not true for Medicaid or Medicare, whose distortions of the market are driving prices up, not down. It is a bizarre proposition which you are making: Competition raises prices? The lack of it lowers prices? Prove it. You say that this is a provable fact, and yet I wonder just what your proof is. I imagine that in the figures you are looking at the level of performance is not the same and that the indirect cost are omitted. Sound like propaganda to me, but if you have a political neutral study then please share it with us.”
Sure “competition” can raise prices — especially when oligopolies collaborate to peg rates and fix prices! Happens all the time, especially in chemicals, agriculture, food processing, credit cards and private healthcare. Did competition among ratings agencies result in better, more accurate bond rating among the best companies? Moody’s? S&P? Please. Competition among competing health care providers has not resulted in lower costs to the consumer — insurance rates are rising, at rates higher with nationalized systems (data cited below).
We can’t establish the “same rate of performance” across comparable systems that cover millions of people (unless you want to look at life expectancy rates), especially when the US has such a high percentage of people who are uninsured — uninsured and relying on legally mandated emergency room servie, which as you must know, is often crappy (not preventative) and EXCEEDINGLY expensive. But we certainly can establish costs as percentage of GDP.
Here’s the OECD study:
http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,3343,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html
A handy chart:
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=45110
…but at a time when the “free market” financial elite, and their politicians, have proven themselves so corrupt, are we not missing something…?
Their dependance on government support? Their control by government regulation? How “free market” is a mortgage lender who is a) required by governemnt agencies to lend to unqualified borrowers and b) bailed out by said government when the balloon pops? Not very “free market” at all, and only possible via a government that thinks it has all the answers.
Solon -
“Honest question: If so, then why does the US pay more, way more, of its GDP than nations with universal coverage? And insures less (sic) people?”
Because our government is mandated to throw more money at “health care.”
The price of things goes up because of the amount of money that is bid for them.
When government got into paying for education – the price of elementary and secondary education went up.
When government got into mortgage underwriting – the price of real estate went up.
This is true across all classes of Human Action.
In all cases the price goes up but the value/quality goes down (that is why the “elites” in congress do not want the “public plan”).
“Honest question:” – You really did not know this?
- Langley
How “free market” is a mortgage lender who is a) required by governemnt agencies to lend to unqualified borrowers and b) bailed out by said government when the balloon pops? Not very “free market” at all, and only possible via a government that thinks it has all the answers.
-I don’t know just how much of the “sub-prime” lending was required by government fiat. But it seems clear that much of it was not done kicking and screaming, along with all the other forms of expanding consumer credit and debt. Nor was the hiding of this debt in financial gymnastics, fraudulently selling it to others as low-risk, required by government. The financial industry actively participated in hiding the fraud of Ninja loans because careers and salaries were made in blowing the debt bubble. And they have participated in many other forms of fraud besides, like hiding their bad debts from their books while continuing to seek public (taxpayer and stockmarket) investors. It is wrong not to call them and “the market’ on this just because there has been a corrupt cronyism with the pols. Human nature being what it is, there will always be a tendency to corruption in free markets; there will always be people wanting to game the system and maintain an established advantage or market position. Still, we need free markets, and need to ask what kind of political order maximizes freedom and not the corruption that is inevitable without a political order.
My point is not that government has been innocent in any this. Quite the oppposite of course. I am only suggesting that, theoretically, we can’t seriously imagine any “free market” that is not framed by one or another political order that is itself prior to the possibility of the free market. We need to give attention to what kind of frames we want and not take on the easy nihilism of just being against government. Those who are planning to run and hide in the hills when TSHTF may be modestly extending their own lives but are they maximizing the odds for their progeny? Long-term survival for all but a few (those suited to small gangs of tightly-bounded “survivalists”, which in a real economic and political collapse would start to look something like the taliban, joy) depends on renewing and bounding the only kind of urbanized, globalized, economy that can possibly hope to feed anywhere need 7 billion people. What is the political economy that can make that possible? Attending to such necessity is the pragmatic source of our freedom.
In the State of Washington what used to be competition among over one hundred insurers is now mandated to less than a fist full (five), by law, to bid on the state run federally mandated insurance programs. Those bids are considered to be competition by the wisdom of the already economically challenged democrat controled read large enough liberal to make that lean more of a lounge and the stance an issue of poor posture legislature. That is not competition. That is a racket. Calling that competition is not only unwise it is criminal in effect for it robs all parties of the ability to focus on the real issues facing everyday working people.
Of course this is in a population where the largest employers is the government, and the biggest budget item is the filling of government employee pension plans, foisted on the public. As revenues tank, and scarce monitary resources dwindle, the government employee pensioners will have to become true Keynesians and simply owe it to themselves, or decide that the future is too important to leave to the whim of a government that would stoop to so many lies and such bald face deceit to get elected.
I figured the end began when SSI could not get a fair shake as an issue for reform. Such bald faced lies and such deceit I have only been a witness to in the promoting of that immigration “reform” bill, where the details spat on the very title of the sections. The bill as writen seemed to slither out of committee, and exposed as slimy all that had a hand in its inception. What government does that, wishes that on its citizens?
Solon: Seriously, an OCED Study? Come on. I said “politically neutral” studies. You might as well as offer official EU numbers. Cost per GDP alone does not cut it either.
You have no given proof at all for your assertions. And what do you mean, by saying we cannot establish relative performance levels? Of course we can. More to the point, if you cannot do this, then your figures are meaningless.
Here you are merely attempting a sort of “sympathetic magic”. Do not use some sort of “technocrat econ-o-speak” parlance and then not be able to back it up with anything real.
You are just indugling in rhetoric here and nothing else.
#85 – remember that beyond jerk is snatch
Somehow that was one part of physics class in HS that I’ve never forgotten.
Beyond snatch is jounce? (rate of change in jerk?)
When it comes to nationalized healthcare however, you seem to be missing a very basic and easily provable fact: European and Canadian nationalized healthcare costs less than America’s privatized system. Why? Because the American system needs to turn more of a profit: CEO salaries, high-priced actuaries, advertising and PR arms, as well as multiple bureaucracies for each competing corporation. More centralized and government run systems can do without these, which is why so many countries with nationalized systems and universal coverage pay less of a percentage of their GDP on healthcare than America.
See Dr. Bala Ambati’s discussion in a previous post for the breakdown of healthcare costs. There are two parts to the cost problem, the first arising from the fact that the “privatized system” has many uncompetitive parts; it is private only in the sense that it allows rent-seeking by nongovernment institutions. Captive insurance markets, doctor’s monopolies, and tort law are some that come to mind. In which case the solution isn’t to replace on uncompetitive system with another. The second thing is that the US system provides a lot products at the margin then a socialized system. And it is these products at the margin which comprise a large percentage of the costs.
In fact, President Obama’s health care “reforms” are intended to address these issues, but only superficially. For example, the “public option” is touted as a way to create competition and thereby lower the costs. But it really doesn’t, nor does it for example, answer the tort reform problem. It implicitly recognizes that the US system produces lots of unwanted (from the government point of view) products. This is what Zeke Emmanuel’s health care curve is about; what Obama’s campaign against unnecessary procedures are about. In truth, there is nothing in CEO salaries or corporate profits that are a waste, provided they are set by market forces. These are returns on risk in a well-functioning system.
Essentially the argument you put forward is a false choice between a private system that isn’t competitive and a government system that has no intention of ever being competitive. The right solution is to reform the health system by making it competitive and providing government health care where there is total market failure, no different from welfare. And regarding Europe, see the New Scientist paper (and that can hardly be called a right wing source) http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327271.800-population-europes-problems-will-grow-as-it-shrinks.html, which argues that not only is Europe possibly unsustainably economically, it may also be unsustainable environmentally.
A few perspectives on the Canadian health care system which I have read (a few years ago now) is about 1/10 of GDP as compared to 1/6 in the U.S.
We hear a lot about the cheaper (because American-subsidized) drugs we have in Canada, but I don’t think this is one of the larger reasons for the cheaper Canadian system. I think Canada’s non-market system is cheaper because, simply, it provides less and has less overhead when government is half-competent. For example, there is limited profit-making potential in the Canadian system. My doctor can only make more money by seeing more patients and so he works his ass off getting as many through the doors in a day as he can. I’m not particularly happy with the resulting care, but such rationing of time and other resources is inevitable in a public system. (If I were paying for everything on my own dime I’d probably be more frugal yet though I imagine I’m somewhat exceptional in that regard….)
And with governments providing the bulk of the budget, and politicians having many other projects they want to fund, there can be some real incentives to cut costs and impose strict management in a non-competitive system. For just one easy example, years ago they got rid of the unionized hospital cleaning staff and now have cheap labour doing the job. Our local hospital can look dirty at times, but I’m willing to believe that, on average, our hospitals are operated more cheaply than the American where people are encouraged to desire and pay for more.
Recently, there has been some development of private market alternatives to the public system in Canada, the courts basically ruling that government cannot stop you from buying a medical service if such is not made reasonably available in the public system. Still, when you get some minimal care from the public system, you probably have less incentive, and less exposure to marketing (because your “public” doctor may not be so connected to alternative service providers), than do American patients. As with anything, we pay for what we desire and desire is ever expandable; and it may well be that the AMerican system is more expensive because it is better at creating desire for yet more medical services.
I do all I can to avoid the dirty hospital.
Ultimately, it seems to me that Americans have to decide what desires have priority, whether they want a public system that, through rationing, will drive down costs (while surely providing some private alternatives to those who can afford them). How much of your national income do you want to spend on healthcare, as opposed to all the other goods out there, like say alternative forms of education for those who don’t want their kids to be taught by the institutional left.
In other words, this cannot really be a question of comparing economic efficiency between comparable systems, which they are not, as of what kinds of desires and values you want your society to hold. Is health care more imporant than all the other possible goods out there? You have to die sometime…
It is true that a single-payer health insurance system, with government-run hospitals and -paid doctors is a move towards a more state-dominated society. But while it may be, this is not necessarily a move towards an overall less free society. It is a question of how many exceptions to the rule of state control are allowed. Pardoxically, some exceptions must always be allowed to maximize freedom, while too many exceptions kill freedom.
If spending 1/10 instead of 1/6 of national income on health care can engender greater freedoms elsewhere in the system, by providing capital for other goods, or by making things like entrepreneurialism less risky/costly, then the exception to the free market may not be a sign of greater stateism. Now I’m not saying Canada maximizes freedom, but it’s not an entirely unfree society either.
I would reiterate that a maximally free system requires some partial closure of the system to give people the security and sense of ethical and moral purpose necessary to leave them free to focus on increasing reciprocity and invention. Open borders, for example, is not a good idea, it seems to me, if one wants to renew people’s sense of commitment to helping protect a free society. OR, for another example, we allow the state to professionalize and control policing because it makes us more, not less free, in our relationships with our neighbors and economic partners. But we cannot apply this example to all aspects of our relationships if we want to remain free; at some point, we have to become the police.
Just as we cannot concentrate on maximizing freedom and reciprocity when we don’t have social order and have to put up with, say, either rampant drug use, or criminal gangs, and so we limit one kind of freedom to maximize another (e.g. through outlawing drugs and dealers), Americans have to decide whether making healthcare a stateist exception to the free market rule can work to maximize freedom overall. The answer is not obvious to me. It all depends on what kind of discipline you would bring to insure that the state does not become the manager of everything else, and on what you would do with the money saved by enforced rationing/saving.
132,133; Stop it you guys are making me hungry. Now I gotta go cook some jerk chicken.
Langley @ #128:
“Because our government is mandated (sic)to throw more money at “health care.”
Perhaps you misunderstand the question because your answer doesn’t suffice. If government mandates raise the price of healthcare as a percentage of GDP — as you assert — then why do nations with more nationalized systems cost their nations less? See the links I provided.
Mongoose @ #131: “Seriously, an OCED Study? Come on. I said “politically neutral” studies. You might as well as offer official EU numbers. Cost per GDP alone does not cut it either.”
I’m certainly willing to look at any contradictory figures you provide of healthcare as a percentage of GDP. Pick a source, maybe even the CIA World Fact Book:
http://www.orthocuban.com/2009/08/healthcare-and-the-cia-world-factbook/
*And what do you mean, by saying we cannot establish relative performance levels? Of course we can. More to the point, if you cannot do this, then your figures are meaningless.*
Well, let me expand on that a bit. The US does an exemplary job in treating prostrate and breast cancers, the best in the world. Japan does a better job in treating rectal and colon cancers. Germany and France outperform America in treating heart disease, but then Americans *are* more obese. How would you compare treatment for these various ailments? One could argue that greater specificity is needed, or that you could aggregate them in life expectancy rates. In which case, many countries with universal coverage are doing better than the US: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
Mongoose, do you have any other method you’d like to offer to better establish performance comparisons?
Wretchard @ 134: *Captive insurance markets, doctor’s monopolies, and tort law are some that come to mind. In which case the solution isn’t to replace on uncompetitive system with another.*
Perhaps, but then, in order to make the such a system more competitive you run into Teddy Roosevelt’s paradox. TR ran as a firm opponent of socialists, and derided them all his life, but in office he grew to realize that fair competition among cooperations requires monitoring and regulation. Hence, trust-busting. The libertarian ideal of competition leading to innovation and lower costs requires government regulation — regulation to ensure that oligopolies, monopolies and cartels don’t form to stifle competition; precisely the sort of pathologies you list. Wretchard, are you arguing for more government intervention?
*The second thing is that the US system provides a lot products at the margin then a socialized system. And it is these products at the margin which comprise a large percentage of the costs.*
The question is what these marginal products are and whether they’re being overused. Certainly the US press is able to find many incidents of unscrupulous doctors, hospitals and technicians overusing diagnostics:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/24/eveningnews/main5337931.shtml
*In fact, President Obama’s health care “reforms” are intended to address these issues, but only superficially. For example, the “public option” is touted as a way to create competition and thereby lower the costs. But it really doesn’t, nor does it for example, answer the tort reform problem.*
I don’t follow this first assertion. Could you please elaborate? It’s a tenet of conservative faith and analysis that not only would the public option provide competition but ***unfair*** competition. See the Heritage Foundation:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/healthcare/bg2311.cfm
*Essentially the argument you put forward is a false choice between a private system that isn’t competitive and a government system that has no intention of ever being competitive. The right solution is to reform the health system by making it competitive and providing government health care where there is total market failure, no different from welfare.*
Interesting, in that so many of the defenders of the American healtcare insists that it is truly competitive, just look to some of the comments in this thread. If it isn’t, what should be done to “reform” it as you suggest? In this assertion that we’ve never had a truly competitive system, you arrive at the great Marxist justification: it will work, it’s just never been tried. And as to “providing government health care where there is total market failure, no different from welfare,” I agree with you, though I suspect many BCers will be unhappy with your formulation. The question that remains is what constitutes “total market failure.”
*And regarding Europe, see the New Scientist paper (and that can hardly be called a right wing source) http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327271.800-population-europes-problems-will-grow-as-it-shrinks.html, which argues that not only is Europe possibly unsustainably economically, it may also be unsustainable environmentally.*
Intersting, but then a demographically challenged Europe would be **less** likely to adapt an American style system that costs more, yes? From the NYTimes article you cited, we learn the current temperment of European conservatives when it comes to such Americanized proposals:
**When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.**
Wretchard: I wondered in comments last August whether it was actually safe to asssume that the Left was “too big to fail” or whether its sheer size simply multiplied the destruction it brought to bear upon itself — and on others.
It is worth noting that “too big to fail”, at least as the phrase is mostly used in the U.S., doesn’t literally mean “so big that its failure is actually impossible” – it means “so big that the polity doesn’t dare allow it to fail”, out of fear of precisely the sort of catastrophic consequences you mentioned. Indeed, it seems to me that the Left’s very M.O. for obtaining, and especially for holding onto, political power is to make itself “too big to fail” in that latter, perceptual sense.
truepeers,
Americans spend more on health care because they can afford it.
Around 1900 30% of the family budget went for food. Today it is under 10%. Are we starving? No. Even the poor people are fat in America.
So where did that extra 20% (of a much expanded family income) go? Health care. Almost 1 for 1.
====
Many things in America are much lower cost than elsewhere. Which is why we can afford so much for health care. The big drive for national health care is for one reason only. Union pension plans with medical benefits are unsustainable.
To cover the scam of government making up the difference “single payer” is mooted.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574300113800780786.html
Americans spend more on health care because they can afford it.
Honestly, this is one of the things that drives me nuts about the Health Care debate when the “EEEVIIIILLLLL Drug Companies” are demonized. Why, these fat-cat so-and-so BigPharma executives are getting filthy rich by, by, by
[sottovoice]
saving people’s lives!
</sottovoice]
The abysmal injustice of it all, that someone makes money by letting people live longer, healthier, more fullfilling lives.
Fer crisssakes, Merck ought to just rebrand what they do as art and have their execs rape a few 13-year olds in LA. Then it would be okay.
Just more evidence of the complete disconnect from reality that the Left-O-sphere has nothing but contempt for those who really, really do better the human condition, but is willing to excuse the most inexcusable behavior from those who make frivolous luxuries of mediocre quality.
What is wrong with these people? Nothing William Techumseh Sherman couldn’t fix, I suspect.
@66 JFSanders031 – You’re welcome. If you’re interested in Bastiat, here is a link to a biographical sketch and some of his writings
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Bastiat.html
@90 Starling – Thank you for the link to Arthur Young – fascinating stuff
M/138; –add this to the link in #139. explains from yet another angle why the simple tweaks re portability, IRS double standard, and adoption of say, the Texas gentle but effective tort reform, are not even in the ObamaCare universe.
What adds insult to injury is the union pension funds DO have a chance at solvency –it is in a healthy and confident stock market –which is being sickened & crippled by the unethical political manipulation known as democratic party health care reform.
a self-licking ice cream cone only it’s manure not ice cream.
beats anything i ever saw for dumbass –for preferring anything –even failed scam after grandiose failed scam –to a plain old runs-on-automatic free market.
#132, 133, The link in #85 has names for derivations up to 6th for both position and force saying
“Needless to say, none of these are in any kind of standards, yet. We just made them up on usenet.“
@143,
Well now since no Delta=ii squared/time or some such more elegant or real mathematical statement was present, I assumed it was, ah, not a literal thingy. But more of a fanciful process.
What can I say, I like jounce!