The Samson Strategy

The Republicans are pursuing the Samson policy.

You should know the story.  Samson was a Nazirine. He wasn't supposed to cut his hair, which gave him supernatural strength. But he also was a lothario who loved the ladies. His enemies, the Philistines, were neighbors of his clan of Dan, & he was seduced by Delilah, who cut his hair to take his power. They imprisoned him in their Temple. At last, after much tearful prayer, and time for his hair to regrow. He got his power back, and still chained to two key pillars, pulled the temple down!

The Trumper party, formerly known as Repubicans, are pulling the temple down!

In response from cries, from economists & citizens, that our economy & lives are in danger from COVID19. The democrats put a package together to help States, workers & small business.

Grimm Reaper McConnell, announced it is "Dead on arrival!"

Dead on Arrival

The threat [not risk, it is happening], is of the cascading effects of 3 preexisting economic conditions combined with the effects of the virus, [& Trump's destructive & stupid response] in forcing self quarantines & shutdowns.

1. Major businesses are saddled with too much debt [leverage].

2. Much of retail was already having trouble dealing with the growth of online retail.

3. Our infrastructure is vulnerable.

These things plus stupid governors & POTUS = cascading failures.

They think they can reopen the country & it will rebound economically.  But, what they are doing will cause cascading failures.

If Truckers can't drive, for being sick, they can't drive. If factories have no healthy workers, they will close again. If workers aren't paid, they can't buy. If States have no money they will no longer be able to operate safely & people will die for lack of Emergency workers & Healthcare.

Trump is pulling down the temple.

Unearned Income vs Earned Income

My friend Rick Lemarr writes ( my [] contain comments) with:

“More proof that the neoliberals, libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, etc. [Pirates & privateers] who have infiltrated the Georgist movement are wrong.”

What he calls “neoliberals, libertarians & anarcho-capitalists” I label simply as privateers. The reason is that the arguments they use, referred to as “economic-royalism” by FDR in the 30s and 40s, valorize selfishness, wealth and property in a way that devalues labor and justifies asset stripping and usurpation of private wealth. Henry George, an economist from the 19th century, developed a school of economics which addressed unearned income starting by explaining that nature's bounty is a common property of all of us and so vital a right, that it should not be an absolute one. He made the distinction by talking about how people have “property in” land, in the product of their labor and capital. And how the person who owns capital as wealth, rather than tools he/she him/herself is using, ought to acknowledge the “property in” rights of workers. Henry George was a champion of the renter over the rentier, and he didn't exclude capitalists from his argument. That is a mistreatment of his writings.

He quotes H. George here:

“Interest from capital, or "capital yield" does not” [should not] “belong to the owner of the capital, or to “capital as capital,” but only to the USER of capital.”

This meditation is part of a series of posts on capital and labor:

The Fraud of Renting Labor

That Muddlehead Marx

Important Matters

Henry George Was explaining some important matters:

“Observe, again: It is not, as is carelessly stated by some writers, the increased efficiency given to labor by the adaptation of capital to any special form or use which fixes this maximum, but the average power of increase which belongs to capital generally. The power of applying itself in advantageous forms is a power of labor, which capital as capital cannot claim nor share.”

What “Labor Comes Before Capital” means

Abraham Lincoln understood this point when he said that “labor comes before capital” is an ontological distinction. That is labor by definition creates capital. Not the other way, except to the extent that capital goods might labor unguided, which would be an entirely new can of worms. Thus the user of capital has a natural interest in the product of that capital. At the same time the presence or absence of capital and raw materials creates the thresholds for production of food and services necessary to the well being and survival of both labor and those rentiers who style themselves capitalists. The following examples illustrate:

“A bow and arrows will enable an Indian to kill, let us say, a buffalo every day, while with sticks and stones he could hardly kill one in a week; but the weapon maker of the tribe could not claim from the hunter six out of every seven buffaloes killed as a return for the use of a bow and arrows; nor will capital invested in a woolen factory yield to the capitalist the difference between the produce of the factory and what the same amount of labor could have obtained with the spinning wheel and hand loom.”

An Inalienable right or Interest in Capital

Labor has an inalienable right to property in, “Interest” the capital goods it uses

“William when he borrows a plane from James does not in that obtain the advantage of the increased efficiency of labor when using a plane for the smoothing of boards over what it has when smoothing them with a shell or flint. The progress of knowledge has made the advantage involved in the use of planes a common property and power of labor. What he gets from James is merely such advantage as the element of a year’s time will give to the possession of so much capital as is represented by the plane.”

Custodial versus Use Property

One can think of capitalists as the custodians of capital. They govern a set of (one or more) properties, that they employ others to use to produce wealth and services in return for exchange. The people who use capital have an interest in that capital as well. Something owners often pretend not to be the case. To hear the creators of giant monopolies like Amazon or Facebook tell it sometimes, labor and users had nothing to do with their creations. They did it all themselves. They will claim that a contract can legally quit completely the ownership of the person who created a thing or used a tool to create with. That that kind of sweat equity is inalienable is demonstrated by the effects that such attitudes, laws and contract enforcement have on creators, users and employees. A person has a natural interest in his or her associations. And that interest is tied to the fundamental inalienable right to pursue happiness. Stealing wages may be legal (hence my term privateering), but is oppression and inequity. Catch 22 contracts may be legal, but they are still unjust.

Fair Treatment is a Basic Human Right

Economists like Ernst Wigforss, Keynes, and post-marxists profit from this basic human rights argument because it doesn't rely on demonizing capitalists or making workers into heroes. It's not inevitable that workers should "seize the means of production." There is a role for management and private government of business, as long as it is done respecting the interests of those being governed. This is also why Keynes and Wigforss were successful when Marxists like Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Mao were not. It is easy to use sloganeering to talk about everyone being equal. But a persons interest in capital is specific and most competencies are too. A man who can wield a blowtorch, has the same basic ability to use reason as the man wielding a pen, but they have specialized. Thus it is appropriate for the man wielding a blowtorch to be consulted and have a say in how the company employing him and his blowtorch are used, and the society that employs the company. But he usually doesn't even want to run the company or the country. Just fair treatment related to his interest in it. It is fair treatment that is the basic human right. And workers have a basic right to their share of capital interest. What goes to the company managers and nominal owners is derivative of their labor. As Henry George noted, a certain amount reflects “the labor of intendancy.” The rest is unearned.

Marx came up with broad generalizations and advocated for revolution that would somehow put workers in charge of running their own businesses and specified that eventually the state would melt into anarchy. This never made sense. It is why H. George could refer to Karl Marx as "that muddlehead." I think many of his modern “disciples” could be described as equally muddleheaded. That is why Ellerman, said:

“Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution have set back the Left for over a century. More like a century and a half. [Talk-PDF]

The point is that income from sales of a thing or service, produced by “mixing labor with capital”, for example operating a dentist drill to fill a tooth cavity, belong primarily to the dentist, or other person operating the thing. Henry George would not want to expropriate property belonging to one dentist borrowed by another. But he would have been fine with taxing the "interest" from that capital appropriated from a hired dentist and not paid to him. Because unearned interest is really a form of economic rent.

Earned Interest

Still technically both the dentist using the drill, and the dentist who bought it, have an interest in that drill, or more importantly, in the revenue from charging the patient for a dental procedure. That interest from labor is a basic right because the laborer otherwise is denied full value and sufficient resources for his/her own survival. The interest from capital is also a right, but not an inalienable one. It is to be protected as long as it is reused as capital to fix, update or replace drills, keep the shop open and pay the dentists. It is property in capital acquired by sweat equity. It is also "interest" in capital. Income from capital and labor are so important that labor compensation should be privileged in taxation and capital reused as capital as well. Additionally things like retirement compensation and savings represent earned income for those who were privately taxed and/or provided the savings. A soldier has an inalienable interest in the country he fights for. A worker an inalienable interest in the business he works for. Denying such interest is a wrong, even when corrupt laws protect it. Hence my term privateering for the behaviors labeled "capitalism" by unscrupulous actors. And as Ellerman and Wigforss maintained, these are basic rights.

Unearned income and interest

Conversely when a person (or private government corporation) employs workers, the employer has a legitimate interest in the income from the capital he/she protects. That interest ought to be protected by the tax code as capital goods require constant replacement, refreshment & maintenance. But since not all of it is earned by the labor of the capitalist, not all of it deserves complete protection. And much of the value of an enterprise comes from labor. When such interest is sold or taken out as loot, it becomes unearned rental income and an unearned interest in the enterprise. It should be taxed progressively.

Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879), Book 3, Chapter 5, Paragraph 3, The Law of Interest

https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommonWealthTax/permalink/2664655990314194/

Sources and Related Posts and Articles

http://www.ellerman.org/category/main-blog/

http://www.ellerman.org/neo-abolitionism-and-marxism/

http://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Munich-neo-abolitionist-Talk.pdf

Atlas Was Robbed

Today is the last day of the year (I wrote this at the end of 2018). I started to watch "Atlas Shrugged" on a lark.  Folks often mistake young libertarians for liberals. Looking at NETFLICKS promotions this morning I realized, someone there is very so! They offer the Cheesy, updated, modern version of 'Atlas Shrugged.' I've tried to read it over and over again but it is a cheesy story with a cheesy plot & a misleading message. It is poorly written, unresearched. Worse the story is offensive to any understanding of reality, causality and not in a good way. This was like watching a Superman versus Bizarroman flick.

The Trouble with Atlas Shrugged.

The story starts with people demanding work. The headlines ask, "who cares about the inventories", while noting gasoline shortages. It shows images of black people striking for a Job. It has people saying "there is plenty of oil in the ground." It sounds like a Donald Trump campaign commercial. Trouble is, these are management decisions. She blames common folks for the responsibilities of her heros in management.

False Causality

The logical error that Ayn Rand committed was that of ascribing false causality to the dysfunction of reality. In the world of Atlas shrugged nobody works & that is the fault of,... drum roll ... workers. Management is somehow not responsible for their own decisions. She sees the pirates as heros while calling those workers looters.

Actual History

And the plot lines act like we still have competitive rail lines. In real life Passenger rail were looted & abandoned to airlines, bus lines & freight rail years ago, by the entrepeneurs. Those remaining  were given to the State via bankruptcy courts. Mexico is promoting jobs not nationalizing rail. She describes a world of Monopolists & pirates, & then makes them heros.

Trump thinks he's John Galt

None of this was new. But what I found fascinating was the Pirate Motiffe.  As depicted the line "who is John Galt" was a recruitment call to managers & elites to desert their posts & work for John Galt & join his war.

The Book talks about allies of John Galt making war on US Shipping. It became obvious to me that she was advocating privateering. Anything goes capitalism is pirate capitalism, given a thin veneer of respectability by relabeling private warfare, private government of public assets and theft as legal privateering.

It also occured to me that the owners strike was really a lock out. Especially after rereading the end. Scientists don't lie about the safety of "rearden metal", but con artists do. Years ago I wanted to write a parallel story where the safety testers were the heros & rearden metal full of plutonium & radioactive metals. In bizaaroland exec's & managers sabotaging their own business, are heros.

Trump thinks he is John Galt. He doesn't need "gubbornment" so he can just "shut it down" to get his way. To his thinking it should be run for, by & of oligarchs. He loves the Russian model!

Galts Gulch is Panama or Cyprus banks.  Treason is just business. After all it is our own fault we don't live in a libertarian paradise like Somalia.

Ayn Rand was advocating thieves rules.

This was written 1/1/2019, for some reason when I updated it, it changed the date.

Capitalism has a lane, Socialism has a lane

And Healthcare

There is a lane for social goods and there is a lane for private goods. Henry George made the distinction based on whether the goods can be sensibly sold in markets.

Excludable and Rivalrous

Modern theorists insist that the distinction between market capitalism and socialism is in whether the goods involved are "rivalrous" or "excludable." That definition involves the behavior of consumers and sellers and power.

Excludable refers to governing powers

Excludable means that someone with power, a governor, can say "you can't enter here." It refers to the ability of people with power, government, to put gates on a resource, service or product. The natural commons is non-excludable. Yet historically westerners have seized, marked boundaries, claimed and fenced land and tried to do the same with oceans and even clouds. Rivalrous means that the good is limited in availability.

Vital Goods, food, medicine, shelter, are by definition rivalrous, but rationing them via markets is barbarous. If a good is vital and someone can exclude people from using it, then by George's version that is a natural monopoly. Excluding goods from markets is a means to make them more "rivalrous". His definition of monopoly is based on the moral effects, the natural rights of those who "should" have access to them. The Rivalrous and Excludable argument has more to do with power.

Purpose of Capital is to make Goods less rivalrous

The purpose of capital, historically, has been to make the formerly unavailable more available. Our ancestors found their health and life-spans limited by access to resources. Capital is about marshaling resources for both public and private benefit. There is little to share socially without the use of capital to make production, goods and services more efficient and/or better quality.

Capital

To Henry George and other early modern writers, capital was something very specific, it was wealth reused "in the course of production." Such wealth, like;

• Seed Corn,
• Tools of production like tractors, factory equipment, hammers and drills,
• Ingredients of production such as livestock, nails, raw materials pulled out of the ground,
• Those are “capital

Capital is the wealth, tools and equipment that go into production.

the Governance of Capital

The governorship of capital is either in the hands of the folks using those tools themselves, or in the hands of managers. Those managers can work for a government, or work for some private owner. Private owners call themselves "capitalists" but they really are property owners who are renting and managing capital. Capitalism is simply a term for a system where the ownership and governorship of capital is in private hands. Capitalists employ people and manage them. Private government versus public government. Is private government necessarily better? That is problematic.

Certainly not Collective Versus Free Enterprise

A Collective is a "group of people acting as a group." By that definition the only time one is not dealing with a collective is when a single person is running an owner operator business where he/she does everything him/herself. Therefore there is no "collectivism versus capitalism." The battle is between private governorship of collectives or some kind of republican and democratic forms. There is a range of involvement from pure democracy where nothing gets done unless everyone agrees, to some kind of hierarchy.

Republican and Democratic principles versus Tyranny

Businesses work best when they pay attention to republican and democratic principles. It is probably right to disparage purely collective decision making because that only works on a very very small scale. When scaling up to a Republic or some kind of federation you need a certain amount of hierarchy. But in any case large organizations are collective organization. This is definitional

Governing Collectives

A collective organization is can be governed democratically, oligarchically, or as a tyranny. We get sold "individual" enterprise as free enterprise. But unless Zuckerberg is the only run involved in facebook, he's managing a collective. An enterprise solely owned it is solely owned by a single person backed by a hierarchy is "monarchy" or "tyranny," by definition. If someone has a hundred or 100,000 employees, it doesn't matter. Ownership is government, enabled by legal documents registered with a court. If government turns into simple arbitrary ownership, that is usually bad government. Dictators make themselves extremely wealthy. In some cases they own their country and make themselves monarchs. "Capitalism" is often a problematical term that confuses the organization of productive property with some kind of governing system.

Privateering Versus Capitalism

For those reasons I no longer refer to predatory "capitalism" as capitalism. I call it privateering. Privateering is the conversion of government into private hands. Profiteering, legal piracy, Private warfare, modern corporate raiders, grifting and grafting, are all modern forms of privateering. Thus the issue is not capitalism versus democracy or socialism, but pirates versus common good, using propaganda and legal tricks to make their thefts perfectly legal. Privateers seek private separate power and advantage. That is tyranny, not a virtue.

What Capital is not

Not all wealth is capital.

• Loot is not capital. It was stolen from someone and not produced by the person who stole it.
• Coal, oil, gas, while still in the ground, is not yet capital. It is nature's bounty. The product of long dead trees and plants, and belongs to God, or nature. Claims on it are more like to loot than to capital.
• Solar panels are capital. The tunnels dug or pipes put in the ground to get at coal or gas are capital.
• Money invested in capital is working. Money to purchase property is derivative of capital.

The “Proper Social Function” Lane

When we are talking about nature's bounty or of goods and services that don't fit into a market mold, we are talking about goods and services that don't fit a pure capital mode. We call such goods “social Goods” because they are a “proper social function,” this is a social lane. In modern times it gets labeled socialism, but they are social goods whether or not they are controlled by the people as a whole or governed by rich people.

Public and Private Goods

When public goods, like parks, farms, and similar are handed over to private hands they are usually turned into gated club goods. A formerly non-rival good, by excluding people from using it becomes a gated good. Those with the resources to trade for the good get access to it, others are excluded. This creates market failure. Markets only work when the goods sold are non-rival (nobody hurt by purchase, plenty of hamburgers or cookies for example) and non-exclusive (meaning anyone can buy and sell in the market). Monopoly puts vital goods in the hands one one or a small number more people, who then can extract tolls from their access.

Public versus Private good

Vital social goods; food, medicine, health care, communications, transport, can be distributed through markets, but unless the markets enforce access, transparent information and resourcing for all actors, monopolists will turn them into gated goods, forcing artificial rivalries and excluding access arbitrarily. A free market is a creation not an accident. Some markets are never free. Hospitals, emergency services, and infrastructure, either belong to all the people or they risk being artificially gated or rivalrous goods where competition is life or death and resources extracted in the exchange. Example is when companies can buy drug patents and then raise prices to insane levels. Those are not free markets.

More:

• Management for the Public Good

The “Capitalism” Lane

The capitalism lane is what can be bought or sold in a market, justly. A good is in the lane of markets if:

• The buyer and seller can refuse individual sales [no coercion]
• There are real alternative buyers and sellers
• There aren't significant barriers to others entering the market as buyers and sellers

Things that have those three attributes are in the capitalist lane. The social goods lane can also have capitalists involved and use markets, but if they do:

• The presence of coercion means that either buyer or seller is denied a fair price for their goods or even unjustly denied access.
• The presence of monopoly (complete or partial) means power of coercion due to lack of alternative buyers and sellers.
• Barriers to becoming buyers or sellers means that the market is failing to reach or serve all persons in a society or collection of societies.

The kinds of goods described in Henry George's comments in 1890 were very profitable, because they could be governed by monopolists and denied to those not willing or able to pay an obviously inflated price, or in the case of monopsony, not sellers denied sales unless they pay an artificially low price. HG was describing market failure and social goods. It is not socialism when social goods are under governorship or at least control of the people as a whole through their representatives. It is monopoly capitalism, and privateering.

More information

• Piketty Capital versus Unearned Wealth
• The Trouble with Capitalism
• Confusing Capital with Rental income.

₽rivateering and Smuggling

Elements of Privateering

Original Definition:

Legalized theft and warfare against commerce on the high seas.

Modern Defintion

Usurpation of Government or public functions for private profit

₽rivateers engage in the following:

Filibustering
Private warfare against unorganized places or countries the country the privateer is at war with.
Smuggling
Usually private sea captains would do legal trade with whoever they could. But often privateers would engage in illegal smuggling if it made them money.
Slave Trade
Privateers often combined private warfare elements with smuggling by grabbing people for sale like they were any other good for sale. The Navies would even recruit their own sailors by grabbing them from ports and "pressing them" to service. Privateer sailors were often little better than slaves.
Piracy
One reason that the saying "Dead men Tell no tales" is that if a privateer took a prize of a ship not at war, if nobody survived to rat them out, and no evidence could be found of a crime, the now pirate could continue to pretend to be a privateer. This led to some confusion among pirate captains. The famous Captain Kidd of the 1700s went to England to argue his case that he had been a legal privateer, not a pirate. He was hung as a pirate. Many pirate/privateers got away with that.
Private government and colonization.
Private government was always an element in privateering. King James granted them the East India Company charter in 1600. This was the real beginning of the Tory Party and of the movement to modern Privateering. But when Christopher Columbus got his permission to sail west, it was with the aim of establishing private government in the lands he discovered.

Privateering And Large Scale Swindles

The theme of piracy and privateering to describe our current economic system, much of our current political system, and the ideology of our modern Republican Business classes. Not that Democrats aren't sometimes pirates and privateers. It is just not their stated ideology.

Privateering is at the heart of the worst of modern capitalism; the "privateering spirit. As I've noticed before privateering is defined as using private enterprises to accomplish missions assigned to government. Initially the term was window dressing for legal piracy. As I've noted before both the British Navy and the USA navy emerged from the private navies of legal pirates like Sir Francis Drake. The successful descendants of pirates became the lords and barons of British Society, and more importantly of British foreign trade, adventurism and the admirals of the fleet.

For more Information on this history:

Origins of the East India Company

Pirate Contracts

The heart of the matter is that modern business relies on contractual relationships, and ₽rivateering relies on the inequity of contracts that involve power relationships. The difference between a pirate and a privateer is that privateers are bound by contracts that grant them license, and use those contracts to abuse law and power.

To illustrate, Pirates, were simply outlaws. For that reason pirate ships often were more democratic and the officers and crew more free, aboard ship, than the crews of privateers, who were often little more than slaves to ambitious, greedy power hungry captains. However, the ideal privateer operated his ship as if it were a pirate ship and treated their crew with respect. Thus the lines between pirate and privateer were often blurred. On land they had to follow rules. At sea "dead men tell no tales" was often practiced to avoid getting caught by officials while robbing and stealing at sea while ostensibly doing legitimate business. The result was the legal pirates were often hanging known pirates. Privateers have always tended to be pirates. But pirates rarely get to be privateers unless they can manage to avoid being caught.

Modern Privateers

Modern privateers don't need eye patches, peg legs. They wear Armani suits and carry briefcases. They enslave through contracts, loans, lawsuits and hostile takeovers. No need for cannon. They frequently own (or are) Judges and law enforcement. But when the cops are the criminals, who will enforce the law? Piracy led to privateering and privateering enabled:

• Private Warfare, Filibustering, legalized robbery and looting.
• Conquest and colonization
• Vast estates for the successful Pirates
• Layers of Oppression

Power establishes Inequitable relationships established through abusive contracts and debt. The robbed can be robbed over and over again. Privateers would do anything for trade goods and property:

• Smuggling to acquire trade goods
• Monopoly over vital properties
• Rent from that property

So the irony of modern privateers is that often they are playing all sides. Robbing people, and arresting robbers. Smuggling and arresting smugglers. Bribing people and taking Bribes. Piracy attracts con artists and grifters. A Grifter is a con artist who has a plan B for avoiding getting caught. Grift + Drift to new marks. Privateering only works when the pirates can attract a crew and governments can hire them. Since it is based on looting, it hollows out any actual capital that might have been there.

Modern pirates operate through the use of contracts, courts and information and power disparity. This post is about their historic involvement in drug smuggling.

Privateering Vs the Commons

Klepto Policies

George Lakoff recommended using the word Privateering to describe klepto political policies like privatization. That term turns out to be extremely appropriate for understanding the modern confidence scheme movement that calls itself "conservative." They like to say they are for "Capitalism" and against "Socialism" but privateering is a bait and switch operation where fake capitalists acquire rents and usurp property they can use to extract loot. It is not what most people think of when they think of "free enterprise."

The Sea Dog Tradition

The term "privateer" ought to push buttons and make alarms go off for people who are paying attention. Our US mob always wants to be legal, so it buys politicians to legalize what would be criminal anywhere else. It turns out our own Mafia is the inheritors of the "Brotherhood of the Coast" and a tradition of piracy (Sea Dogs) that still infects our politics and business. it truly can be seen as an ideology that masques itself as "capitalism."

An Ideology of Privateering

This ideology embraces the following basic principles:

FDR called these the principles of “economic royalism” & hinges on the following beliefs:

The notions that:

1. that all things, including people, are property that can be owned.
2. that contracts, even coerced contracts, are sacred.
3. that people, or their labor, can be owned by a person or corporation thru the power of contract.
4. that a corporation can usurp personhood.
5. that private government is superior to public government.
6. that public government doesn't invest & can't have a positive role in economic or social progress.
7. that profits come before any notions of public good or responsibility.

Privateering As titles of nobility

The Far Right calls a government that provides basic services "socialism", but they practice the privatization of anything that nature provides all of us and its placement into private hands. Land, minerals, water resources, all traditionally belong to “the commons” and yet we give them to private persons or privately owned companies to manage and extract wealth from. If someone by an accident of birth comes to own a part of nature's bounty, that is privilege not effort, labor or merit.

Enclosing the Commons

A privateering ideology is also an ideology of nobility. The constitution says that no titles of nobility should be granted. But it seems that granting property to self appointed nobility, that they can extract rents from, is fine.

When what was previously run for the common good, is enclosed, turned out for profit. The term for that is "enclosing the commons." It is analogous to when land barons started stringing barbed wire across the plains and killing wandering cattlemen (free rangers). It is analogous to giving people "titles of nobility", except it usually is laundered through legal processes.

Titles of Nobility

We give titles of nobility to Owners of;

• Sports Team Owners
• Communications, energy and transport companies.
• Monopolies, copyrights and patents.
• Insurance, Health Care.

Extracting Rents from monopoly

And these owners extract profits from profiteering in medicines, health care products, and by overcharging everyone. They don't invest in new medicines or technologies so much as extract rents from existing products. When they do invest in new products they mark up the products so high very little of the investment is actual investment.

A rentier doesn't care if the building, corporation or land he owns is kept in good order, or if people eat or survive. All they care about is extracting their rents.

Criminal Contracts

At the basis of oppression is the enforcement of criminal, unjust or oppressive contracts. US law has always treated criminal contracts as unenforceable. But when government is corrupt, it legalizes what would have been considered criminal in the past. Thus people are saddled with huge debt, with interest, for attending college; with criminal loans for their homes. With unconscionable rents. And have no recourse. This is privateering. It is legalized looting.

Contracts as a Vehicle of Slavery

Our country outlawed slavery, but it comes back to life through abusive contracts and abusive use of the law. Those who can't pay debts used to get put in debtor prisons. The system is trying to bring those back. The government outlawed the use of bankruptcy for dealing with education debts, and people are losing everything to debt for healthcare. Getting an education is a public good, not only for the student, but for society. Health care is a "non-refusable" public good where people will die if they can't get what they are unable to afford. Extracting profits and using debt to enslave people who need those services is engaging in modern slavery. Privateers used to have to grab and smuggle people from Africa. All they have to do now is print money through a bank and loan it to someone in our days.This is legal piracy, loan sharking and enslaving people.

Usurping Personhood

The Federal Government, thru, corrupt legislators and judges gave rights to corporations as artificial persons, in the 1880s, at the very same time they were taking it from the persons that the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were intended to protect. Privateers, as economic royalists, love the Royal "we." The Corporation as a "person" asserts the rights to having a religious belief, to telling its employees what to do, and the right to enslave employees, take their labor and stiffing them on promised compensation. Many a CEO claims to speak for all his employees, they often claim to own their labor, innovations and enterprise. And they take a cut of everything.

And thanks to corrupt SCOTUS, they claim a right to bribe and extort politicians into doing their bidding with unlimited corporate money. Monopolies and centralized power are putting pirates in charge of the country.

Government and Investment

A Convincing case has been made that without public investment, there would be little private wealth and it would be so poorly distributed that there would no longer be what we now think of as a middle class. The argument of con artists is that public investment doesn't improve society. This was a Reagan Era trope and is patently false. But it is also an excuse for privateering. The fact is that without public investment; no electrical grid, oil, canals, railroads, roads and highways. In fact no real civilization. The government is not allowed to treat its capital investment as capital due to accounting tricks perpetuated by pirates over a period of centuries. Even our money is privatized by legal pirates. Since the beginning of the country the absurdity of issuing private notes based on treasury notes has been obvious to critics. Yet, we depreciate direct treasury notes and let the Federal Reserve serve as a tongue louse on our financial system.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/distribution-wealth-little-productivity-everything-power/

Wage Slavery & Taxes

In a paper published by Edward J. McCaffery titled "The Death of the Income Tax" he explains how the income tax became a wage tax & was suberted by generations of work by armies of lawyers, lobbyists & paid pseudo-schollars.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3242314#.W5DxjAm3U4g.facebook
When the income tax was first proposed, its target was to recoup some of the money created by the use of private money$ (currently Federal Reserve Notes & accounting money$ loaned into existence by banks), Corporate privilege, & Land Ownership.
All of these income was derived from paper (notational) money and the interest on that money. This was unearned income "a.k.a. economic rent, passive income, land values"), from privileges granted by government to a self selected few & mostly earned jointly by the privateers & a crew of commoners from common property; but not shared with the crew, i.e. privateering.
Anyway the income tax made sure financial capitalism generated profit for everyone while moderating the tyrannical impulses of the private separate interests who otherwise would have continued to build massive forces on the backs of labor. It's gradual demise reflects the efforts of those powerful interests & their avatars over a period of more than 70 years.
It was never intended to be a tax on labor. Income from labor is earned, compensation for energy expended & little is net income after food, transport, housing & other taxes (economic rent is a form of private tax).  Taxing labor compensation violates basic principles of fairness and is thus unjust oppression, especially when it was never the original purpose of the income tax! But anyway,
Read the article so you'll see for yourself:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3242314#.W5DxjAm3U4g.facebook

I'm publishing now, as this is a small piece of a longer argument.

The Pirates Dilemma -- Rogue States versus sovereignty

Piracy is as old as the use of the oceans in commerce. A pirate is a thief who operates on the ocean. However, due to the way this world works, a pirate can be a "legitimate businessman" or a "common thief" depending on who they attack and rob, and how they do it. There are some real differences between a pirate and a privateer:

• Privateers do their thefts "legally"
• Privateers don't share their loot
• Privateers often get to hang the pirates and crew-members who cross them.
• A Country that cannot protect, or control, its pirates is labeled a "Rogue State"
• Sovereignty requires controlling outlaws and pirates, especially the ones who operate on the margins of the law.

Related Posts:

Many Kinds of Privateering

Money Manager capitalism

Money manager capitalism is financial capitalism. But financial capitalism is only tangential to actual capital. It means money making money from money.

Put baldly it is rentier capitalism. Not concerned with machinery, or tools, roads or bridges, automation or labor but with numbers of digits on financial ledgers.

The money managers, whether managing their own, or other people's money, are primarily concerned with conserving and growing those ledger numbers abstracted from reality. Those become derivative instruments & they lose touch with the real economy, the inputs, real capital & other public goods, that drives a healthy society.

The numbers in such an economy thus become abstracted & unearned properties, & actually can threaten the people & things in the real economy.

Article;

http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180104/p2a/00m/0na/018000c

An Ideology of Piratical Banking

Accounting Money, Piracy and Credit

The theme of piracy and privateering describes our current economic system, both as a humorous metaphor and verifiable fact.  I've been referring to the GOP as the Grifters, Oligarchs and Pirates party for a reason. And that reason is that they've become, over time an ideology of legalized piracy.

Privatization Historically is a tool of Privateering

...And Privateering is Legalized Piracy

Privateers wage private war, They:
1. Raise Private Armies
2. Privatize and Extract Resources
3. Privatize and loot Government Services
4. Sell their looting as Good for the looted.

National Emergency Response Service and the Militia

National Health Service

The best way to manage our health care rationally, and to provide for good healthcare for everything, is to put at least a component of it under a National Service Framework. The education, training and minimum provisioning "arming" of healthcare providers all should be organized at a National level and also carried out in each State.

Restoring the Utility of a Free Press

The Free Press Under Assault from Incipient Oligarchs

A Free Press has to have these three Attributes:

• Free And Unfettered Access to News Sources and events
• A means to get paid and eat
• A means to reach their audiences

Currently all three of these attributes of a free press are under assault

The Free Press in the United States is under attack from enemies & counterfeiters. These overt enemies want to either take over and control the news for corrupt partisan purposes, or to shut down legitimate news and substitute "entertainment" and propaganda. The usurpers are succeeding principally by buying networks, local TV and Radio and replacing local news staffs with centralized propagandists and central instructions. This is concentrating ownership of news and creating local monopoly and reinforcing local, regional and national oligarchic power. Meanwhile Counterfeit news is propagated by partisans with no means to verify and validate accuracy. This news is often picked up by the Oligarchic news as if it were the real thing.

If this is allowed to continue the Utility of honest and accurate reporting will be replaced with agitation propaganda, advertising & purely partisan information.  This is already happening with Companies like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting. And the influence of front office and back office powers over editing and content is felt across the media. Meanwhile many qualified veteran reporters are doing web broadcasts or blogs. That is not a stable or efficient substitute to truly free press.

This is a threat to both the Democratic Party and Democracy. Until it is fixed we have to act as inadequate substitutes for the press ourselves.

Gresham's law as a Tool of Regulation

Gresham's law, in a sovereign country, becomes a tool to manage money. So-called "Good money" becomes a commodity, measured by the governments accounts, paper and issue. Bad money is really money that is outside the control of society. In this post I explain why "good money" tends to be actually bad money, from the Point of View of Society as a Whole.

It is a faulty assumption that rare commodities like gold or silver are better money than, say the bronze tokens the Romans use. Good money is actually money that:

• holds its value (is safe),
• is readily used and accepted in markets
• and that stays in Circulation long enough to support payrolls and investment in capital goods & services.

Therefore it is an illusion that gold and silver is "good money" unless your point of view is one of wealthy people who need portable assets that they can hoard. It is a faulty assumption.

Moreover, actual good money is based on the "full faith and credit" of the goods and services it buys and sells. That implies several additional things:

Money must be regulated through taxation.

Money holds its value when unearned and excessive quantities of it are removed from circulation by taxation.

When there is an alternative to private credit instruments.

When it is backed by goods and services.

Effectively Taxing corporations

Thomas G Shearman Advice on Taxing Corporations

Until fairly recently most Federal Revenues came from Corporate taxes rather than Income Taxes. The clever grifters, operatives and pirates of the 1970s, noted that corporate taxes were levied once, and then recipients had to pay a second tax on their dividends and used that argument to claim that people were being "taxed twice." Since on the face of it that seemed true, congress in it's immense wisdom, greased by lobbyist money, started cutting the corporate tax. But there is another way to look at corporate taxes, and also another way to levy them, and that is what this post is about.

Post Keynesianism as a Way Forward

Post Keynesianism Versus Kakistocracy

We have a whole generation of struggling young people. Some of whom have turned to leftist revolution as an alternative. Others of whom have adopted the ultimate symbol of the lucky loser in Donald Trump. Both groups seem to want to just "burn it down." They are frustrated because our economic system is frustrating. Jobs are disappearing. Monopolies are buying out ma and pa or simply putting them out of business. And ruthless capitalism seems to be joyfully converting itself into kakistocracy. Schumpeters Creative destruction stops being creative the moment people stop creating. Hoarding creates liquidity traps. We have a system that is only serving some of us!

None of this is necessary!

We can participate in our own creation. The world does not have to decline.

Utility versus the pirates

People who see business as opportunity to loot, and competition as about economic warfare, are pirates not legitimate businessmen. And when they get their hands on monopolies and vital goods, they call that "privatization" but it really is privateering; guaranteed fortunes for the few versus pain and suffering for the many. We need to eliminate piracy from our economy. That starts with identifying it for what it is.

Tories, Neoliberalism, NeoKeynesianism versus Post Keynesianism

We Are Not Neoliberal

Friends of mine constantly accuse various Democrats of being "neoliberal". The term has some definite meaning to it, and so I find their use of it to be sloppy, broad-brushing and usually defamatory. What it isn't is anything to do with the actual Democratic Party and it's ideology. It is a defamation of Democrats to call us "neo-liberal." The term has a real meaning and is used wrongly by those trolling us, who use it. They can call themselves intellectuals, but they are defaming the party and what it stands for when they call us that.

Franklin As a Modern Money Advocate

This continues a post Tory Economics Versus Benjamin Franklin which in turn completes something I wrote back in 2015. Benjamin Franklin was no angel, but his observations about money and economics were on point. And he made some important points about the money supply that seem to have been deliberately forgotten, again and again, in subsequent years.

Tory Economics Versus Benjamin Franklin

https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/publications/economic-education/ben-franklin-and-paper-money-economy.pdf

Franklin saw paper money as a necessary tool for local government in the colonies. The purpose of paper money was, and is, to facilitate commerce. The value of paper money is that it can be used to pay taxes, which in turn are used to pay for services performed for the local jurisdiction. This keeps enough circulation going to facilitate trade and commerce.

By issuing public money locally, backed by tax revenues and State Properties and making it payable for private and public debts, the paper money could be regulated through taxation, preventing excessive inflation. Paper money issued, would be retired or rolled over as appropriate.