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note: This segues off of my post "why DC Versus Heller was badly decided" and a series of other posts written before and after this one, which are listed at the end of this post. It directly follows up on Thoughts on Defending Democracy which talks about the Swiss Militia and the even earlier post Militia Second-amendment and Democracy post where I talked of the second amendment referring to the Federalist Papers.
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The point Stiglitz makes is that our system is so corrupt that judges and officials, politicians and law enforcement folks don't have to be obviously on the take. The system rewards them for going along with the program and punishes them for doing the right thing. |
Mayday US is suggesting a:
"plan to elect a reform minded Congress by 2016, please consider being a Congressional candidate yourself.
I suggest folks also consider forming groups, like my "Maryland Green Democrats" Group to find and support such candidates. Not all of us would make great congressmen, but we also need I think we need to build a support infrastructure as well because without that candidates will never get elected. We need a plank (best to base it on E. Warren or Bernie Sander's list with some additions). And sometimes we need to find candidates other than ourselves. The big problem with American Politics is the focus on "fearless leaders". We need a bench; County Officers, local government, and State officers. Even so he's right when he says:
This suggestion is not so ridiculous as you may think.
What we can do is:
"Internet Volunteer Activity"
"General Exception"
"An uncompensated individual or group of uncompensated individuals may engage in certain voluntary Internet activities for the purpose of influencing a federal election without restriction. These exempted Internet activities would not result in a contribution or an expenditure under the Act and would not trigger any registration or reporting requirements with the FEC. This exemption applies to individuals acting with or without the knowledge or consent of a campaign or a political party committee. 100.94 and 100.155. Exempted Internet activities include, but are not limited to, sending or forwarding electronic mail, providing a hyperlink to a website, creating, maintaining or hosting a website and paying a nominal fee for the use of a website."
We can fight for change by running an insurgency within the Democratic Party.
Note: Bolded Are Bernie Sander's plank ideas, "EW" is for Elizabeth Warren's 8 points (mapped to Bernies)
Alexander Hamilton was a proponent of free trade. But what he meant by "Free Trade" and what is sold as free trade now, are two different things!
In 1795 writing as Secretary of Commer, In No. Xxvi (From The Minerva.) he writes of the difficulties presented by our treaty with Great Britain, and of the evils of monopolistic Colonial trade. But then he notes:
"Several circumstances calculated to give our trade with Asia an advantage against foreign competition, and a preference to our trade with Europe, are deserving of attention." Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 6 [1795] [http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1383]
He then goes on to list what made our ability to trade with foreign countries superior to that of the Colonial Powers (he mainly was referring to Britain, but he includes other countries too). The first advantage being our ability to trade directly with East Asia and not have to ship to London and then to our country anymore. And:
"Second.—The difference between the duties on Asiatic goods imported in American bottoms direct from Asia, and the duties imposed on the same goods in foreign bottoms from Asia or from Europe; being on all articles a favorable discrimination, and in the articles of teas, the duties on those imported in foreign bottoms being fifty per cent. higher than on those imported in American bottoms." Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 6 [1795] [http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1383]
For Hamilton and our sane founders, "free trade" didn't mean freedom from duties or the freedom for Giant Foreign Conglomerates to corner our markets. It meant the right to individual enterprise. And his third reason why we had the advantage is telling on this:
"Third.—The European intercourse with Asia is, in most cases, conducted by corporations or exclusive companies, and all experience has proved that in every species of business (that of banking and a few analogous employments excepted), in conducting of which a competition shall exist between individuals and corporations, the superior economy, enterprise, zeal, and perseverance of the former will make them an overmatch for the latter; and that while individuals acquire riches, corporations engaged in the same business often sink their capital and become bankrupt." Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 6 [1795] [http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1383]
Note, free enterprise doesn't mean treating "corporations as people" it means the right of individuals to participate in markets. There is no free enterprise in monopolies or conglomerates. The Freedom comes from individual freedom within the context of commonwealth. I think he would be aghast at the degree that East India style companies have taken over our country. We've given away our freedom to conglomerates.
Free Enterprise benefits from natural advantages from differences of climate, resources and cultural ability. Hamilton finishes his paragraph saying:
"The British East India Company are, moreover, burdened with various terms and conditions, which they are required to observe in their Asiatic trade, and which operate as so many advantages in favor of their rivals in the supply of foreign markets. The company, for example, are obliged annually to invest a large capital in the purchase of British manufactures, to be exported and sold by them in India; the loss on these investments is considerable every year, as few of the manufactures which they are obliged to purchase will sell in India for their cost and charges; besides, from the policy of protecting the home manufactures, the Company are, in a great measure, shut out from supplying India goods for the home consumption of Great Britain. Most of the goods which they import from India are re-exported with additional charges, incurred by the regulations of the Company, to foreign markets, in supplying of which we shall be their rivals, as, from the information of intelligent merchants, it is a fact that Asiatic goods, including the teas of China, are [on an average] cheaper within the United States than in Great Britain." Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 6 [1795] [http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1383]
He would have been happy with importing cheap manufactures from China and India, as long as they weren't competing unfairly with US manufacturers. And his fourth point was how cheap Asian Manufactures were compared to European Manufactures.
"Fourth.—The manufactures of Asia are not only cheaper here than in Europe, but in general they are cheaper than goods of equal quality of European manufacture. So long as from the cheapness of subsistence and the immense population of India (the inhabitants of the British territories alone being estimated at forty millions) the labor of a manufacturer can be procured from two to three pence sterling per day, the similar manufactures of Europe, aided with all their ingenious machinery, are likely, on a fair competition, in almost every instance, to be excluded by those of India. So apprehensive have the British Government been of endangering their home manufactures by the permission of Asiatic goods to be consumed in Great Britain, that they have imposed eighteen per cent. duties on the gross sales of all India muslins, which is equal to twenty-two per cent. on their prime cost. The duties on coarser India goods are still higher, and a long catalogue of Asiatic articles, including all stained and printed goods, is prohibited from being consumed in Great Britain." Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 6 [1795] [http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1383]
Hamilton described the then superiority of Indian (and Chinese) manufactures to European ones, even as late as 1795. It took concerted effort to reduce India and China to the basket cases they were under colonial oppression. What they are doing now is to regain ground they lost, not acting in some kind of vacuum.
"The British manufacturers were not satisfied even with this prohibitory system; and on the late renewal of the Company’s charter, they urged the total exclusion from British consumption of all India goods, and, moreover, proposed that the Company should be held to import annually from India a large amount of raw materials, and particularly cotton, for the supply of the British manufacturers." Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 6 [1795] [http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1383]
It is policy that drives poverty. Free markets mean free access to markets for individuals. Not a system where giant companies exercise monopolies.
"Those facts are noticed to show the advantages to be derived from a free access to the India market, from whence we may obtain those goods which would be extensively consumed even in the first manufacturing nations of Europe, did not the security of their manufactories require their exclusion." Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, (Federal Edition), vol. 6 [1795] [http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1383]
It makes you wonder how much Hamilton really was a protectionist, or if he saw the advantages of genuine free trade, meaning genuine individual enterprise. He certainly saw the risks of corporations and not protecting industry at home. But I think this article shows he knew the risk of overprotecting markets. We don't have free trade we have giant Conglomerates, more like the East India Company than what we had in 1795.
Recently, Fred E. Foldvary, a guy I respect, wrote an essay in which he tried to find points of commonality between the Libertarian movement and those Georgists he leads. In his article "Austrian Economics Explained" [http://www.progress.org/views/2015-04-12/austrian-economics-explained] The top caption states:
"Why It Matters, The Austrian School of economic thought is often misunderstood." [http://www.progress.org/views/2015-04-12/austrian-economics-explained]
...which kind of is either an understatement, or some kind of twisted humor in my mind, because to me the Austrian School has been a source of evil second only to the evil created by that other progeny of Austria...He's got a nice graphic (I'm using a link because it's too nice to merely copy:
Poor misunderstood Austrian School. I've blogged a number of times about Hayek and Von Mises. But I've pretty much left the others alone, though I've read about them and read as much of their writings, or at least summaries of their work, as I could. As usual I'm not totally done. Fred tries to explain the common threads of the Austrian School, but myself, I found that they were no more alike than any other collection of college professors or theoreticians. Still he explains their points of comparison. Rather than reprising them I'm listing and summarizing Fred's points in my own words:
Fred then goes on to summarize the subjects that are most common among Austrian School Teachers:
Looking at the list one can see that the Austrian School is the anti Marxism school. If the Marxists make one set of erroneous structures and focus on the collective. The Austrian School focuses on the individual and rejects social science. Looking at their history they've been preoccupied with "refuting" Marxism for more than a century. This shows in their assumptions:
"Austrian economists tend to believe that markets work well. Austrian theory concludes that interventions as taxes, subsidies, mandates, and prohibitions, which interfere with peaceful and honest human action, reduce the productivity of economies and human well-being." [http://www.progress.org/views/2015-04-12/austrian-economics-explained]
Two sets of faulty assumptions, both erroneous, both leading to diametrically opposite conclusions. Where Marxism sees grand movements of "history" the Austrians see the efficiency of markets and the virtue of self interest. Where Keynesians, Georgists and Marxists see flaws in human virtue, they praise it. In hindsight both Marxism and the Austrians have too rosy a view of human virtue. "Honest human action" in the jaded reporting of Marx is a joke. The notion that Collective behavior can be predicted in the selfish ideology of the Austrians is equally a joke. Both are using deductive methods to try to understand the world. And both seem to ignore the test results of their theories. Later he Fred notes:
"Austrian economists have been the leading theorists of “free banking,” the replacement of central-banking controls with a free-market setting of interest rates and the money supply, an application of the Austrian critique of central planning." [http://www.progress.org/views/2015-04-12/austrian-economics-explained]
My friend Rick DeMare shares
"there are some similarities between the two systems, but so-called "free banking" should be an absolute deal-breaker for Georgists, and Georgists should not get hung up on trying to reconcile Austrian free banking with Georgism." [https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommonWealthTax/ April 13 at 7:27am]
I agree. And Rick quotes del Mar's "The Science of Money":
"When money shall be recognized in the law, when it is defined, when its volume, magnitude, dimensions, limits are set forth as precisely, fixed as unchangeably, and protected as securely from alteration, as are now the dimensions of the yard-stick, the pint-pot, and the pound-weight, then, and only then, will money perfectly resemble other measures; for then only will it become a concrete thing of known dimensions. When this comes to pass, Aristotle's definition of its function will resume its original correctness, and money will be as fit in fact, as it is now only in theory, to measure the relation called value." pg. 58" [https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommonWealthTax/ April 13 at 7:27am]
I may have more to say. But that's enough for this post. I've already talked about Faulty Assumptions.
Max Keiser has been documenting the subtle and not so subtle ways that British Economic Royalists steal from their citizens. I was watching this program [http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/250677-episode-max-keiser/] and I recognized the game. I don't know if the Brits are imitating the USA or if the USA imitated the Brits, or it's just that the same international firms are driving corruption in the USA and around the world. When I was working in DC I noticed some strange things in government contracting, but it wasn't until recently that I realized that I was witnessing the perfectly legal swindles by which the 1% con the rest of us into supporting them. I suggest you listen to him describe how the Tories and Labor party swindled the British Medical System out of millions.
[http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/250677-episode-max-keiser/]
A clever DA could probably find a way to charge these people with committing fraud, but probably not. One the DA would be arrested himself. And Two, it's not even on the radar. Keiser is showing some of the manifold ways the "monied men" take public money, entrusted to their care, give it to themselves, loan it back to the public and then pretend that they are doing the public a favor. Sadly all that is not only legal, but people who are supposed to be on our side will betray us for some "trickle down" from the fraudsters!
There is no transcript for the Keiser report so I looked up some articles to explain how "Private Finance Initiatives" work. They gave me some information such as the following:
"[W]hy did hospitals at Barking, which has had to find £50m on its private finance initiative (PFI) deal and is heading for a £50m loss, be allowed to go on despite years of red ink?" [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/26/andrew-lansley-nhs-crackdown-product-pfi]
Essentially the British Government contracted these "Private Finance Initiatives" to build hospitals, schools and other institutions and lease them back to the Government. The Government would pay them back for their costs, including the private finance costs through these 'mortgages'. But here's the rub. If a Central Government borrows money it can borrow at very low interest (almost no interest if it uses sovereign notes) and thus it's finance costs are minimal and the investment is virtually all capital investment. But when done through private financing, the PFI's borrow at interests and those interests are built into the costs of their construction and into the eventual "mortgages" (really rent) they charge the government for having built the Hospitals, Schools, etc... This is a great deal for investors. They can create a company. Pay themselves a fee for running it. Loan it money at high interest. Pay themselves rents and "pay back" the loans, and get the General public to pick up the tab.
The reality is that the Brits aren't the only one doing this.
Privatization works by building in costs to a project, hiding those costs to the public. Pretending the costs will be lower while selling the project. Kicking back advertizing to reporters and "donations" to politicians. And thus filling pockets all over the place with taxpayer money. All the while setting the stage for the failure of the public projects and public good associated with them.
And the beauty is that all this theft can be blamed on "Socialism"
I worked in Government buildings that had private owners when I worked in DC. I saw how contracting was used to both hide and pad expenses all around me. There are other schemes besides Private Financing Initiatives. But we all should learn to beware of the power of privateers to steal from government. And beware of people working in Government preaching the evils of Government. They can only know those things from experience or intention.
