The Koch Brothers and climate change

[Prospero]

It's hardly news that the infamous Koch Brothers have been funding right wing causes - including substantial support for the Tea Party. It now emerges with ever greater clarity the role they are playing in bogus research to debunk evidence of climate change.

This appeared in Scientific American a few months back

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=who-funds-contrariness-on

and today The Independent Newspaper in the UK had an expose of their tricks.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-billionaires-secretly-fund-attacks-on-climate-science-8466312.html

This was a report from December 2012.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/5/from_fossil_fuels_to_global_warming


Surely it is time the US government did something concrete to stop these people and their lies?

[fivekatz]

Sadly with the way the SCOTUS is stacked, the Koch's have more cover than ever before to create astroturf groups with nifty names like "Citizens for Health Air" that when translated into action means Koch Bros. for Burning More Coal."

[Prospero]

Sadly I think you are right fivekatz... but the more light shone on the Koch's nefariousness, the better.

[Jamie Michelle]

It's hardly news that the infamous Koch Brothers have been funding right wing causes - including substantial support for the Tea Party. It now emerges with ever greater clarity the role they are playing in bogus research to debunk evidence of climate change.

This appeared in Scientific American a few months back

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=who-funds-contrariness-on

and today The Independent Newspaper in the UK had an expose of their tricks.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-billionaires-secretly-fund-attacks-on-climate-science-8466312.html

This was a report from December 2012.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/5/from_fossil_fuels_to_global_warming


Surely it is time the US government did something concrete to stop these people and their lies?

The Koch brothers are etatists who have been directing the supposedly "libertarian" Cato Institute toward being supine apologists of the government.

If what you want is massive government having total control over your life, then the Koch brothers represent no threat to that and are in fact your friend.

Regarding the Tea Party, it is not a formal organization. Your characterization of it being right-wing is incorrect, as it is in fact left-wing and liberal in its origins. The modern Tea Party began on December 16, 2006 in order to promote 9/11 Truth: the event involved dumping copies of the 9/11 Commission Report into the Boston Harbor. It later became a part of the Dr. Ron Paul movement, as many 9/11 Truth members rolled it over into supporting him. For example, see the following two items:

"Boston Tea Party 2006", 911Truth.org, Dec. 16, 2006 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20061217193729511 , http://www.webcitation.org/6DyCCNpBa , http://wayback.archive.org/web/20080306041115/http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20061217193729511 , http://www.webcitation.org/6DyCNKImo

"Kevin Barrett at Boston Tea Party For 911 Truth", RadicalPragmatist, Dec. 18, 2006 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j77YIk1FH-M , http://www.webcitation.org/6DyCVgKhY

So calm down, as the last thing in the world the Koch brothers are going to do is get the government out of our lives concerning supposed "environmental" matters.

No, the government is God and you damn-well will worship it or get your face crushed-in, you little maggot. No carbon foot-print for you, you sniveling little snot.

[broncofan]

The only people who think the discussion is a simple matter of pro-government v. anti-government are deranged religious fundamentalists^^with zero capacity for rational thought. The Koch Brothers may not oppose government intervention on all matters (only unrealistic, unemployed potheads do) but they clearly are not environmentalists, nor do they believe the government has a constructive role in correcting market failures such as the externalities presented by the industrial pollution of natural resources.

It seems that the question of whether the tea party is liberal in its origins or began as a 9/11 truther organization is irrelevant to what it is that they support today. Of course this is the first time I've heard an organization defended based on its origins as a pseudo-scientific quack mill. What's next you're going to bolster their credibility by claiming they were formed by alchemists and flat-earthers? Today they support politicans who are regressive when it comes to women's rights, who believe conception following rape can be a gift from the almighty, who oppose progressive taxes unless they come on the back of a myriad of program cuts, and who stand mostly in opposition to gay marriage.

Presenting the tea party as left-wing is something only an individual who inhabits a separate universe would find sensible.

[fivekatz]

The Tea Party's origins mean very little considering the name applied by the media for the Tea Party took its full traction in 2009.

Originally seen as a backlash against government intervention in the financial meltdown, it quickly became a movement that made its signature issues health care reform and the 44th President. Many of the political figures they have brought to the forefront have been quite entertaining (Bachman, Palin, Ayers, etc).

Koch Bros interests in libertarian thought IMHO is motivated by the fact that any informed oversight by the government would for the most part limit their accumulation of wealth. Not eliminate it by any means, which is the ironic part of the capitalists resistance to any intervention and unfettered capitalism.

Without some sort of safety nets, government building infrastructure and pushing towards strategic directions with a longer view the the next quarterly earnings statements, capitalists are sure to suffer far more harm than they will from restriction on their production or net income.

Sadly these folks can't see beyond winning "the game" and every round of "the game" possible. It is what on one hand makes them prolific earners but dangerous citizens and when the SCOTUS confused free speech with unfettered cash expenditure to amplify speech, it empowered a very dangerous force.

[Jamie Michelle]

The only people who think the discussion is a simple matter of pro-government v. anti-government are deranged religious fundamentalists^^with zero capacity for rational thought. The Koch Brothers may not oppose government intervention on all matters (only unrealistic, unemployed potheads do) but they clearly are not environmentalists, nor do they believe the government has a constructive role in correcting market failures such as the externalities presented by the industrial pollution of natural resources.

It seems that the question of whether the tea party is liberal in its origins or began as a 9/11 truther organization is irrelevant to what it is that they support today. Of course this is the first time I've heard an organization defended based on its origins as a pseudo-scientific quack mill. What's next you're going to bolster their credibility by claiming they were formed by alchemists and flat-earthers? Today they support politicans who are regressive when it comes to women's rights, who believe conception following rape can be a gift from the almighty, who oppose progressive taxes unless they come on the back of a myriad of program cuts, and who stand mostly in opposition to gay marriage.

Presenting the tea party as left-wing is something only an individual who inhabits a separate universe would find sensible.

I suppose you meant your above response to be in reply to my above post.

I see that you are a government religionist. The same governments (including the United Nations) that gave us the Vietnam War, the Iraq War (both of them), Afghanistan, Libya, and so on and on: these are the governments which you want to save us from some supposed environmental cataclysm? Really? These gaggle of warmongers, war-profiteers, merchants of death, mass-murderers and liars are supposed to be our saviors?

The Tea Party has now been taken over by the political establishment. Your conception of political reality is false. The Democrat and Republican establishment are two arms on the same beast. Both arms work together to screw-over the US public. It doesn't matter if you get in an Obama or Romney, as both are members of the Bilderberg Group. Whoever is in office, the same agenda continues: unlimited government.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."—H. L. Mencken, "Women as Outlaws", A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), p. 29. This essay was first published in The Smart Set, December 1921.

For much more concerning the above matters, see under the heading "The New World Order: Government’s Attempt at Autoapotheosis", pp. 87-98 of my following article, being sure to read the footnotes, since much of the information on this is contained within said footnotes:

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEveryth ing , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://www.scribd.com/doc/79273334

[martin48]

No, the government is God and you damn-well will worship it or get your face crushed-in, you little maggot. No carbon foot-print for you, you sniveling little snot.


I'm so pleased to see reasoned and rational, not to say moderate, views expressed here. This "God" of yours looks like a nice guy.

[Jamie Michelle]

No, the government is God and you damn-well will worship it or get your face crushed-in, you little maggot. No carbon foot-print for you, you sniveling little snot.

I'm so pleased to see reasoned and rational, not to say moderate, views expressed here. This "God" of yours looks like a nice guy.

That "God"--i.e., government--is by far the most prolific serial-killer and mass-murderer that has ever existed. Government is the most massive death-cult in human history. For much more on this, see Sec. 8.2: "Ponerology Vis-à-Vis Politics" of my following article:

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEveryth ing , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://www.scribd.com/doc/79273334

[Stavros]

A bogus claim denied by the history of illness and disease -I did point this out to you in an earlier exchange but you refused to debate it. Your ignorance of the plague and various other diseases that wiped out large percentages of humanity doesn't fit your pseudo-political agenda.

[Prospero]

Jamie you will desist from the sort of insults you offered me here - and have offered others in the past. if not all of your posts will be deleted. This is meant to be a civilised forum - so remarks like that highlighted by Martin are unnacepptable.

[broncofan]

Jamie,
I find it very difficult to follow your reasoning because you always seem to cite to an external source of information in lieu of proving your point. The problem is that nobody wants to read a separate article in order to find the piece of information you think supports your argument, particularly when you were the author of the article and should know what information in it is most germane.

The second point is that if one thinks the article's scholarship is of dubious value to begin with you don't improve your argument by linking to many different versions of it.

Why is it that one can never find your entire argument within your posts? Some people think that by linking to the words of others or to their own previously written work they appear learned. It only gives the impression that you are unable to summarize the important facts and are hoping to distract people from your argument's weakness by directing them to other sources of information.

For more on this see:
www.plagiarism.org/self-plagiarism/hallucinatorylogic/youwon'tfindanyproofhere (http://www.plagiarism.org/self-plagiarism/hallucinatorylogic/youwon'tfindanyproofhere)

[broncofan]

BTW, my last post was not a criticism of posting informative articles generally. It is of the strategy of making five or so unsupportable points and then posting to lengthy works that don't provide support for it but saying they do.

Edit: it is not lost on me that Jamie did me the favor in her last post of narrowing an article to a 12 page range.

[Ben]

The environmental problems we face, all species face, is far more profound. For instance:

1) Water, air and soil pollution causes 40 percent of deaths worldwide, Cornell research survey finds:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/aug07/morediseases.sl.html

[Jamie Michelle]

Jamie you will desist from the sort of insults you offered me here - and have offered others in the past. if not all of your posts will be deleted. This is meant to be a civilised forum - so remarks like that highlighted by Martin are unnacepptable.

That "insult", as you call it, is the inherent nature of government, the very government which you regard as your savior from supposed environmental crises. Government is by far the most mass-murderous terrorist organization to ever exist. The entire raison d’être of government is so that a ruling class can live off of the expropriated production of others. Regarding this, below are vital articles concerning the nature of government, of liberty, and the free-market production of defense:

Prof. Murray N. Rothbard, "The Anatomy of the State", Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1965), pp. 1-24. Reprinted in a collection of some of Rothbard's articles, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (Washington, D.C.: Libertarian Review Press, 1974). http://www.mises.org/easaran/chap3.asp , http://www.mises.org/books/egalitarianism.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/5ve3r05ti

Murray N. Rothbard, "Defense Services on the Free Market", Chapter 1 from Power and Market: Government and the Economy (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1977; originally published 1970). http://www.webcitation.org/5ve3w5w9a , ftp://myebooks.dyndns.org/computers/.../economy/Rothbard%20-%20Power%20and%20Market%20-%20Government%20and%20the%20Economy%20(1970).pdf , http://flashmirrors.com/files/otempz6jzpvkd4c/Rothbard-Power-and-Market.pdf

Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "The Private Production of Defense", Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter 1998-1999), pp. 27-52. http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/14_1/14_1_2.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/5ve41VasQ

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory and the Production of Security", Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 27-46. http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/9_1/9_1_2.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/5ve485kNf

Prof. David D. Friedman, "Police, Courts, and Laws--On the Market", Chapter 29 from The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1989; originally published 1971). http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_29.html , http://www.webcitation.org/5ve4A6KFZ

Concerning the ethics of human rights, the below book is the best book on the subject:

Murray N. Rothbard , The Ethics of Liberty (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1998; originally published 1982). http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp , http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/5ve4GO9l5

If one desires a solid grounding in economics then one can do no better than with the below texts:

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method (Auburn, Ala.: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995). http://www.mises.org/esandtam.asp , http://mises.org/books/esam.pdf , http://webcitation.org/63rQDYtj2

The above small book by Prof. Hoppe doesn't delve into political theory, but only concerns the methodological basis of economics (i.e., the epistemology of economics). I would recommend that everyone read this short book *first* if they're at all interested in economics. There exists much confusion as to what economics is and what it is not. This book is truly great in elucidating the nature of economics and its epistemic basis. If one were to read no other texts on economics, then this ought to be the economic text that one reads. Plus it doesn't take all that long to read it.

Murray N. Rothbard, "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics", in Mary Sennholz (editor), On Freedom and Free Enterprise: The Economics of Free Enterprise (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1956), pp. 224-262. Reprinted in Murray N. Rothbard, The Logic of Action One: Method, Money, and the Austrian School (London, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1997), pp. 211-255. http://www.mises.org/rothbard/toward.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/5ve4WQnYm

Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State (Auburn, Ala.: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, second edition, 2004; originally published 1962). http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes.asp , http://www.mises.org/books/mespm.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/5v3cOaaAG

Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market: Government and the Economy (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1977; originally published 1970). http://www.webcitation.org/5ve3w5w9a , ftp://myebooks.dyndns.org/computers/.../economy/Rothbard%20-%20Power%20and%20Market%20-%20Government%20and%20the%20Economy%20(1970).pdf , http://flashmirrors.com/files/otempz6jzpvkd4c/Rothbard-Power-and-Market.pdf

These texts ought to be read in the order listed above. I would also add to the above list the below book:

Murray N. Rothbard, America's Great Depression (Auburn, Ala.: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, fifth edition, 2000; originally published 1963). http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/5v3cWFPsd

The above book concerns how governments create depressions (i.e., panics; recessions) through credit expansion (i.e., fractional-reserve banking and/or fiat money).

On the matter of politics in relation to God, see my below article, which demonstrates the logically unavoidable anarchism of Jesus Christ's teachings as recorded in the New Testament (in addition to analyzing their context in relation to his actions, to the Tanakh, and to his apostles). It is logically complete on this subject, in the sense of its apodixis.

James Redford, "Jesus Is an Anarchist", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), December 4, 2011 (originally published December 19, 2001), doi:10.2139/ssrn.1337761. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761 , http://theophysics.host56.com/anarchist-jesus.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/66AIz2rJw

And see my below article, which demonstrates the logically unavoidable correctness of the anarcho-capitalist theory of human rights. It doesn't derive an "ought" from an "is"--rather, it derives an "ought" from an "ought": an "ought" everyone must necessarily presuppose in order to even begin to deny it.

James Redford, "Libertarian Anarchism Is Apodictically Correct", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), December 15, 2011, doi:10.2139/ssrn.1972733. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1972733 , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Apodictic-Libertarianism.pdf , http://www.webcitation.org/63xyCLjLm

[martin48]

Quote for you, Jamie:

The fellow who thinks he knows it all is especially annoying to those of us who do.
- Harold Coffin

[broncofan]

http://www.mises.org/books/mespm.pdf

Hi Jamie,
It's going to take me at least a couple of weeks to read this approximately 1500 page pdf you linked. As an example of your gallantry can you stop posting until I'm done? I actually think I'm going to check all of the footnotes in the article if you think that would be a good use of my time. Fortunately I have 27 gallons of water and a full refrigerator.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Jamie Michelle;1268304]
That "insult", as you call it, is the inherent nature of government, the very government which you regard as your savior from supposed environmental crises.
Government is by far the most mass-murderous terrorist organization to ever exist.
-And what 'Government' was Genghiz Khan the head of?

The entire raison d’être of government is so that a ruling class can live off of the expropriated production of others.
-Isn't that what Marx said? Ooops, I forgot you think Marx was part of the plot...

Concerning the ethics of human rights, the below book is the best book on the subject:
Murray N. Rothbard , The Ethics of Liberty (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1998; originally published 1982).
--In your opinion maybe -what about Henry Shue? Carl Beitz? RJ Vincent? Thomas Paine?

If one desires a solid grounding in economics then one can do no better than with the below texts:
--one can MUCH better -why not start with Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations...?

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method (Auburn, Ala.: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995).

On the matter of politics in relation to God, see my below article, which demonstrates the logically unavoidable anarchism of Jesus Christ's teachings as recorded in the New Testament (in addition to analyzing their context in relation to his actions, to the Tanakh, and to his apostles). It is logically complete on this subject, in the sense of its apodixis.
--What preposterous rubbish, I could just as easily say that it is logically unavoidable to regard Jesus as a socialist. The socialist movement in Britain was founded on the non-established church. Ever heard of the Tolpuddle Martyrs?

And see my below article, which demonstrates the logically unavoidable correctness of the anarcho-capitalist theory of human rights. It doesn't derive an "ought" from an "is"--rather, it derives an "ought" from an "ought": an "ought" everyone must necessarily presuppose in order to even begin to deny it.
-there is nothing 'correct' about anarcho-capitalism, and it has nothing to do with logic; it is a choice and people make all sorts of choices, many have chosen to be Communists, for example; as for the prescriptive tautology, if you want to play with Hume's Guillotine be careful, you might hurt yourself.

[Jamie Michelle]

A bogus claim denied by the history of illness and disease -I did point this out to you in an earlier exchange but you refused to debate it. Your ignorance of the plague and various other diseases that wiped out large percentages of humanity doesn't fit your pseudo-political agenda.

Stavros, you have the reading-comprehension level of a severely inebriated derelict. Nowhere in any of my writings have I said that government has killed more people than anything else. Rather, I point out the fact that by far the greatest murderer in history is government.

The most egregious perpetrators of murderously brutal conspiracies are governments upon their own innocent citizens. More than six times the amount of noncombatants have been systematically murdered for purely ideological reasons by their own governments within the past century than were killed in that same time-span from wars. From 1900 to 1923, various Turkish regimes murdered from 3.5 million to over 4.3 million of its own Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, and other Christians. The Soviet government murdered over 61 million of its own noncombatant subjects. The communist Chinese government murdered over 76 million of it own subjects. And Germany murdered some 16 million of it own subjects in the past century. And that's only a sampling of governments mass-murdering their own noncombatant subjects within the past century. (The preceding figures are from Prof. Rudolph Joseph Rummel's University of Hawaii website at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ .)

All totaled, neither the private-sector crime which government is largely responsible for promoting and causing or even the wars committed by governments upon the subjects of other governments come anywhere close to the crimes government is directly responsible for committing against its own citizens--certainly not in amount of numbers. Without a doubt, the most dangerous presence to ever exist throughout history has always been the people's very own government. (This is also historically true for the US government, as no group has killed more US citizens than the US government: viz., with the Civil War; etc.)

Not only were all of these government mass-slaughters conspiracies--massive conspiracies, at that--but they were conspiracies of which the 9/11 attacks are quite piddling by comparison.

[Prospero]

Jamie wrote: "Stavros, you have the reading-comprehension level of a severely inebriated derelict."

I bet you are terrific company, for you have all the charm of a gestapo officer.
Also to judge by your meandering and ludicrous postings you took an awful of LSD at some point in your life.

[Stavros]

Stavros, you have the reading-comprehension level of a severely inebriated derelict. Nowhere in any of my writings have I said that government has killed more people than anything else. Rather, I point out the fact that by far the greatest murderer in history is government.


Thank you for your insult, at the very least it adumbrates your intellect.

Cause of death is the issue. Your sophistry attaches the word 'murder' to the cause of death in order to excuse your ignorance of the impact of disease on human populations. It would be tedious for me to mention the Black Death, Malaria, Smallpox, and so on -the literature on this is vast, and in some cases compelling history -Frank Snowden's Naples in the Time of Cholera (1996) being one fine example. Diseases have been amongst the greatest killers of all time; human creativity and science has also defeated them or brought them under control -I may not be the only person who notes how you never, ever celebrate the achievements of science in this regard.

Your oddly liberal use of the word murder also enables you to blame the US Government for deaths in the US Civil War, presumably because you share Di Lorenzo's view that it was a war waged by Lincoln to crush freedom in the South and impose the tyrannical rule of Washington DC and the Beastly Government over all Americans. Even some Old Faithful Sons of Dixie might protest that their forefathers were not recruited by Old Abe Lincoln to secede from the Union, assassinate their own folk as well as the Union armies, and burn down Atlanta. But there is, I am led to believe, even in this 21st Century, a lot of moonshine in your famous United States of America. A lot of it is in Florida.

The greatest murderer in history? On your own evidence, we shall know on that great day when the universe collapses, when superhuman mankind with the help of Jesus resurrects all human life that has ever lived to live forever in the light of God's Majesty, and you may inspect the records...

The Gates of time wide open stand,
and through them streams a deathless band...

[an8150]

It's hardly news that the infamous Koch Brothers have been funding right wing causes - including substantial support for the Tea Party. It now emerges with ever greater clarity the role they are playing in bogus research to debunk evidence of climate change.

This appeared in Scientific American a few months back

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=who-funds-contrariness-on

and today The Independent Newspaper in the UK had an expose of their tricks.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-billionaires-secretly-fund-attacks-on-climate-science-8466312.html

This was a report from December 2012.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/5/from_fossil_fuels_to_global_warming


Surely it is time the US government did something concrete to stop these people and their lies?



All sorts of people and organisations fund a variety of political movements, in a more or less shadowy manner. Idealistic nutters like me say the only way around this is to shrink government so it has no capacity to dish out favours, or is your point, Prospero, that you wish to ban the opinions merely of those with whom you disagree?

[Prospero]

No I have no wish to BAN opinions at all. it is the shady manipulations and secretive funding of bogus "objective" groups by those whose agenda is secretive that I object to an8150. The Koch brothers clearly wage war through their well-funded proxys.

And thanks for self identifying yourself as an idealistic nutter. Idealism is admirable but as i recall you're the minarchist - are you not?

[an8150]

No I have no wish to BAN opinions at all. it is the shady manipulations and secretive funding of bogus "objective" groups by those whose agenda is secretive that I object to an8150. The Koch brothers clearly wage war through their well-funded proxys.

And thanks for self identifying yourself as an idealistic nutter. Idealism is admirable but as i recall you're the minarchist - are you not?

It can't be that secret if you and The Independent know about it. Yes, I am the local tame minarchist, and was described by you on a thread called 'Democracy' as a "niaive idealist".

Should I disclose how I pay for the computer and internet connection which enables me to spread my niaivete?

[an8150]

For that matter, what if my agenda is secretive?

And what of trades unions who fund think tanks and highly-publicised surveys? what of agitprop fake charities which actually subsist on government funding?

[Prospero]

Sorry an8150 - not going to rise again to your provocations.

The simple truth about the Kochs is that they use a wide range of front organisations to try to propagandise on behalf of the anti-climate change lobby... the fossil fuel industry.
And that is one of many reasons why we need rules, limits and so forth on big business... why laws and regulations are needed. Capital strives to maximise its profit with no regard for the environment or the welfare of individuals unless forced or unless it is in their interests.

Oh and before you get smartarse about it, my new avatar - of Leon Trotsky - is there for my own amusement. Pure and simple.

[Stavros]

I would agree that the use of the words 'secret' or 'secretive' are misleading in many cases, and that what the newspapers are doing is giving greater exposure to facts which most people are not aware of, and doing so for their own political purposes -the Daily Telegraph does it as well as The Guardian here in the UK.

There are so many think-tanks out there I doubt if most people have ever heard of them or know who funds them; I recently looked at one in the UK which was advertising a job only to discover that its origins and personnel are poles apart from me. Every now and then someone in the papers discovers these things and publicises it on a 'shock! horror! basis; what is much worse is when elected politicians make policy decisions which are not faithfully recorded for public exposure, this I consider to be an abuse of power.

I don't have a problem with debating politics, I think if people become abusive its a failing on their part, but I wouldn't ban anyone unless the poster was being a pest.

The problem with so-called 'minarchy' is that the debate rarely gets going. The USA has had minimal government and in spite of Di Lorenzo's critique of the Lincoln administration, government did not interfere widely in business until the 20th century, and yet the 'minarchists' don't want to discuss the behaviour of the 'robber barons' of the last quarter of the 19th century -JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, JD Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford et al. Until the Sherman Act, passed by Congress in 1890 was imposed on Standard Oil in 1911, these 'free market buccaneers' had it all their own way at the expense of each other-when they were plotting and trying to wreck their competitors business- with scant regard for the general public. Violence, deception, criminality were synonymous with this 'free market'. This free for all was repeated in Russia in the 1990s when there were no real laws to prevent a few men from amassing staggering wealth, possibly bumping off opponents or critics or whistle-blowers. The unfettered capitalism trumpeted by Ayn Rand, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and the so-called 'Austrian School' can no more guarantee liberty, freedom and prosperity than any other economic arrangement. Just as the 'minarchists' refuse to discuss private property except as a pre-ordained given that cannot be challenged, they can't just wish away the recorded behaviour of industrial barons as 'competition'. Is it any surprise that the Mafia consider themselves to be businessmen?

[an8150]

Sorry an8150 - not going to rise again to your provocations.

The simple truth about the Kochs is that they use a wide range of front organisations to try to propagandise on behalf of the anti-climate change lobby... the fossil fuel industry.
And that is one of many reasons why we need rules, limits and so forth on big business... why laws and regulations are needed. Capital strives to maximise its profit with no regard for the environment or the welfare of individuals unless forced or unless it is in their interests.

Oh and before you get smartarse about it, my new avatar - of Leon Trotsky - is there for my own amusement. Pure and simple.

At the risk of provoking with my smart-arsery, or even with my niaive idealism, what rules can we expect to circumscribe you? Or are you unfamiliar with Kip's Law?

I preferred the Rathbone avatar, btw.

[an8150]

I would agree that the use of the words 'secret' or 'secretive' are misleading in many cases, and that what the newspapers are doing is giving greater exposure to facts which most people are not aware of, and doing so for their own political purposes -the Daily Telegraph does it as well as The Guardian here in the UK.

There are so many think-tanks out there I doubt if most people have ever heard of them or know who funds them; I recently looked at one in the UK which was advertising a job only to discover that its origins and personnel are poles apart from me. Every now and then someone in the papers discovers these things and publicises it on a 'shock! horror! basis; what is much worse is when elected politicians make policy decisions which are not faithfully recorded for public exposure, this I consider to be an abuse of power.

I don't have a problem with debating politics, I think if people become abusive its a failing on their part, but I wouldn't ban anyone unless the poster was being a pest.

The problem with so-called 'minarchy' is that the debate rarely gets going. The USA has had minimal government and in spite of Di Lorenzo's critique of the Lincoln administration, government did not interfere widely in business until the 20th century, and yet the 'minarchists' don't want to discuss the behaviour of the 'robber barons' of the last quarter of the 19th century -JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, JD Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford et al. Until the Sherman Act, passed by Congress in 1890 was imposed on Standard Oil in 1911, these 'free market buccaneers' had it all their own way at the expense of each other-when they were plotting and trying to wreck their competitors business- with scant regard for the general public. Violence, deception, criminality were synonymous with this 'free market'. This free for all was repeated in Russia in the 1990s when there were no real laws to prevent a few men from amassing staggering wealth, possibly bumping off opponents or critics or whistle-blowers. The unfettered capitalism trumpeted by Ayn Rand, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and the so-called 'Austrian School' can no more guarantee liberty, freedom and prosperity than any other economic arrangement. Just as the 'minarchists' refuse to discuss private property except as a pre-ordained given that cannot be challenged, they can't just wish away the recorded behaviour of industrial barons as 'competition'. Is it any surprise that the Mafia consider themselves to be businessmen?

Are you saying that Prospero has misled us by claiming that the Kochs are secretive?

Incidentally, http://fakecharities.org/about/ helps lift the veil of unknowing that surrounds many front organisations.

Some years ago I spent a profitable few days reading Pilger's book Hidden Agendas and was struck by, among other things, his explaining that a report attributed to the Adam Smith Institute did not clarify that the ASI is a free market think-tank. A good point, in a book called Hidden Agendas. Unfortunately a few pages later, he quoted a report from the Institute of Public Policy Research, without, mirabile dictu, clarifying that it is a left-wing think-tank. Secretive, lui? Jamais!

I gave up debating minarchism with you, Stavros, just as an aside, when it became clear to me that, for all your undoubted learning, and perhaps because of your undoubted learning, you don't understand it.

[an8150]

Oh and before you get smartarse about it, my new avatar - of Leon Trotsky - is there for my own amusement. Pure and simple.

Hm, let's see how far I get proclaiming my amusement at having an avatar of Reynhard Heydrich.

[Prospero]

Heydrich and Trotsky are utterly different figures for a variety of reasons - as you well know. A stupid remark, an8150, and beneath you.

[robertlouis]

Hm, let's see how far I get proclaiming my amusement at having an avatar of Reynhard Heydrich.

Not very far. That's a ludicrous comparison.

[Prospero]

An... you do have a point about openness and think tanks. The true colours of all should be transparent. And in many cases are.
The difference here is that an immensely rich industry is funding bodes whose aim is to challenge what the vast majority of scientists believe to be hard evidence on the sources of climate change. And they do it not in the interests of a genuine argument but to protect their profits. And as we also know they fund the irrational in the shape of the tea party

We need strong watchdogs - the state and on industry.

I accused you weeks ago of naive idealism in that you seem to believe that innate good human nature (the impulse to altruism) will prevail if rules and regulations are removed. All the evidence over centuries of history points the other way. Maybe we are a species that values "enlightened self interest" as argued by Matt Ridley. But there is pretty overwhelming evidence otherwise.


The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
Steve Jones takes issue with the argument that self-interest and private enterprise are in our DNA


The Guardian, Saturday 19 June 2010
"In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury." Thus the first paragraph of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and thus, more or less, the entire contents of Matt Ridley's latest book.

Gibbon went on, in half a dozen thick, square volumes, to chart the collapse of that earthly paradise and its replacement by barbarism. Ridley is more hopeful. The Rational Optimist is an anthem, sung by a celestial choir to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus, of undiluted praise for the free market in cash and ideas, from the stone age to the present day, and on into a sunlit and biologically inevitable future.

Its rationale comes from Self-Help, a work published in 1859. As Samuel Smiles put it in his Victorian bestseller: "The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual", and Matt Ridley (once chairman of Northern Rock, albeit "under the terms of my employment there . . . not at liberty to write about it") agrees.

Another volume, published on the same day as Self-Help, gives Rational Optimist a theme. The word "evolution" does not appear in The Origin of Species, but plays a large part here. In its Latin form, the term was applied to the unrolling of a scroll. Ridley examines the scroll of history and finds that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. In spite of the earthquakes, literal and metaphoric, that now and again perturb humankind's placid course, there is inevitability in his view of life, for the laws of nature, inscribed in our bodies and brains, have made us, and our economies, what they are.

The book is – like Ridley's earlier works – beautifully written and extensively researched. It is decorated with well-chosen facts and anecdotes which will, no doubt, be pillaged by future authors, and outlines a theory of history from which historians will, no doubt, learn a great deal.

Biologists may be more cautious. This Candide-like account of our past turns on the belief that what is natural must be right and what is right, natural. Free exchange, self-interest and private enterprise made us what we are, and must be coded in the recesses of our DNA. Ridley uses the origin of sex, and the spread of genes, among individuals that it promotes as an analogue of the market and of the movement of capital and of inventions. In fact, the beginnings and the rationale of sexual reproduction remain biology's biggest unsolved questions (although – like capitalism – the process is expensive, for it involves a whole class of parasites, males rather than market-manipulators, who depend on a productive or reproductive mass of workers or females to do the actual labour).

Like his predecessor, the Rev William Paley, Ridley summons up an artefact – in fact two – to make his case: not a watch upon a heath but a stone axe and a computer mouse. He makes a telling case that to manufacture either involved group intelligence, an exchange of goods and ideas among hundreds or thousands of people, most of whom were unaware of the collective power of their actions. He is no doubt correct, and there is plenty of evidence that the division of labour improves productivity (for those programmed to own one, a glance at a £20 note with its quotation from Adam Smith makes that clear).

True indeed, but nothing to do with Darwinism. The problem is hindsight or, worse, foresight. It easy to imagine that, if one found a computer mouse upon a heath, there must, somewhere, be a mouse-maker – and, of course, that would be correct; for that object, like all modern technology, depends on planning, forethought and design. Life does not. Darwin despised Lamarck not because the latter believed in the inheritance of acquired characters, for he himself thought the same, but because of Lamarck's insistence that there was an internal force that drove life to become more and more perfect (or, at least, French): as he wrote, "The production of a new organ in an animal body results from the appearance of a new want or need".

Plastic mouses (or stone axes) certainly emerged from wants and needs, but the furry rodent did not. Darwin (check the £10 note) insisted that there was no intrinsic direction to evolution, and modern biology shows that he was right. From Moses to Macaulay and Marx – all three quoted here – politicians and economists disagree. They have produced their own grand visions of history (often, like Marx, with reference to the Sage of Downe). Ridley is in that tradition and is, like his predecessors, happy to ignore the exceptions. Russia, where male life expectancy dropped by five years after the collapse of communism, is no advertisement for the joys of free enterprise and neither, for that matter, is the USA, which lags in that measure behind Cuba.

The recent accession to power of the Eton and Oxford gang, with their motto, from Samuel Smiles, of "a place for everything and everything in its place" – their place, as an immutable fact of Nature, being In Charge – is bad news for optimists, rational or otherwise. Gibbon saw history as "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind". I look forward, come the election of May 2015, to a second – and much revised – edition of The Rational Optimist that pays tribute to that uncomfortable truth.

[Stavros]

I gave up debating minarchism with you, Stavros, just as an aside, when it became clear to me that, for all your undoubted learning, and perhaps because of your undoubted learning, you don't understand it.

An honest, if feeble cop out on your side.

I don't know how you got the impression that I do not understand what you call 'minarchism' -perhaps you don't want to debate it because I do understand it and you are not sure you can handle the debate? I am aware, for example, that just as conservatives lump together a disparity of thinkers under the label 'cultural Marxism' that there are differences and disagreements between, for example, Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand -one detested the other, possibly because of the cult that was built around her on 36 E 36 (which she did nothing to stop) as much as the 'emotionalism' of Atlas Shrugged. I have linked below a perceptive memory of Ms Rand by what used to be thought of as the Conservative thinker William F. Buckley, though to most libertarians these days he is presumably but a flag's width away from Marxism.

Fundamental to 'minarchism', as I understand it, is the belief that taxation is theft, and government evil. Although the intellectual foundations of Rothbard's perspective are stronger than Ayn Rand's, his vision is flawed in so many ways it is hard to believe he was ever taken seriously. I don't mind that he considered Adam Smith a plagiarist and a Proto-Marxist; but the extremity of his views was summed up when he said

Taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States... (For a New Liberty: the Libertarian Manifesto, 1973).

I won't go on at length about this thinker, and presumably you will interject the name of some other theorist rather than Rothbard, but in essence the attitudes to taxation, government, and private property are shared by most libertarian-anarchist thinkers, much as most Marxists believe as a fundamental truth that capitalism cannot exist without exploiting the workers. The historical evidence of what happens when there is no taxation, no government and economic relations are shaped by the market, is chilling.

Yet even today, and in spite of layers and layers of nasty taxes, interventionist government, private property under pressure, multinationals like Microsoft use the same system of taxation denounced by minarchists- to avoid paying taxes!

A stellar example of private property in action is Rupert Murdoch- even though he only owns a controlling share in News International and its subsidiaries not the whole lot outright -nevertheless, treating the Sunday Times as his private property -presumably with full approval of minarchists, in this last week he forced the editor of the newspaper to issue a public apology for printing a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe, who has been publishing deliberately shocking cartoons in the Sunday Times for 50 years. The cartoon ridiculed the government of Israel. A few years ago Murdoch also used his 'rights of ownership' to prevent the publication of the revelation that a friend of his, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, was a serial pederast and unashamed of it, claiming young boys liked it. Freedom, in this case the freedom of a newspaper to print a cartoon or a news report, is not an absolute value -it remains to be negotiated by the proprietor, much as slaves in the United States were the 'human livestock' and private property of their owners.

In the absence of government, the free market heaven the minarchists dream of is somebody else's idea of hell on earth. But I welcome a debate.

Here is Buckley on Ayn Rand -the review of her book he mentions, by Whitaker Chambers, can be found after the youtube link.

William Buckley on Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmPLkiqnO8)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2705853/posts

[fivekatz]

There is plenty of evidence of the dangers of laissez faire economics. I thought one of the saddest moments I have every watched was Alan Greenspan appear before Congress after the 2008 meltdown. To paraphrase him the flaw in his entire life's work was that the markets would always govern themselves by not taking undue risk. Rather remarkable that the former Fed Chairman still held that view after the bankruptcy of Enron demonstrated that businesses, their banking partners and even their accounts could be so swayed by greed that they would take undue risk.

The reform movement of the late 19th and early 20th Century was spurred on by the fact that in the absence of other rules, greed becomes the only rule.

The very nature of the corporation is to have single minded focus which is to create significant profits for shareholders. Their charters do not concern them with perserve eco-systems for future generations and the corporation has proven at moments to be so myopic in its pursuits that the creation CDO and Synthethic CDOs went on unfettered though everyone in the process knew when the merry-go-round final stopped people were going to get hurt.

Government is flawed in as much as it is very vulnerable to the power and money that capital can bring to bare BUT it does serve the purpose in theory of protecting all members of the community of man since every citizen is in theory a share holder.

The worst art of the 2008 meltdown is that the very men that took due risk (Thain, Fuld, Blankfein, Dimon) have been untouched by their risks, in fact all of them are still very rich while millions have lost their homes and their livelihoods.

When the Koch Brothers succeed in convincing millions of citizens that climate change is a hoax they risk far greater catastrophy than the bankers and market makers did and blow will not be such that the government can soften the blow with a bailout.

[an8150]

Heydrich and Trotsky are utterly different figures for a variety of reasons - as you well know. A stupid remark, an8150, and beneath you.

You're quite right, Prospero. How about an avatar of Rudolph Hess, then? Or Julius Streicher? Or Ernst Rohm?

[an8150]

There is plenty of evidence of the dangers of laissez faire economics. I thought one of the saddest moments I have every watched was Alan Greenspan appear before Congress after the 2008 meltdown. To paraphrase him the flaw in his entire life's work was that the markets would always govern themselves by not taking undue risk. Rather remarkable that the former Fed Chairman still held that view after the bankruptcy of Enron demonstrated that businesses, their banking partners and even their accounts could be so swayed by greed that they would take undue risk.

The reform movement of the late 19th and early 20th Century was spurred on by the fact that in the absence of other rules, greed becomes the only rule.

The very nature of the corporation is to have single minded focus which is to create significant profits for shareholders. Their charters do not concern them with perserve eco-systems for future generations and the corporation has proven at moments to be so myopic in its pursuits that the creation CDO and Synthethic CDOs went on unfettered though everyone in the process knew when the merry-go-round final stopped people were going to get hurt.

Government is flawed in as much as it is very vulnerable to the power and money that capital can bring to bare BUT it does serve the purpose in theory of protecting all members of the community of man since every citizen is in theory a share holder.

The worst art of the 2008 meltdown is that the very men that took due risk (Thain, Fuld, Blankfein, Dimon) have been untouched by their risks, in fact all of them are still very rich while millions have lost their homes and their livelihoods.

When the Koch Brothers succeed in convincing millions of citizens that climate change is a hoax they risk far greater catastrophy than the bankers and market makers did and blow will not be such that the government can soften the blow with a bailout.


You guys just don't do first principles, do you?

[fivekatz]

You guys just don't do first principles, do you?I must admit I don't get what you mean?

[an8150]

An honest, if feeble cop out on your side.

I don't know how you got the impression that I do not understand what you call 'minarchism' -perhaps you don't want to debate it because I do understand it and you are not sure you can handle the debate? I am aware, for example, that just as conservatives lump together a disparity of thinkers under the label 'cultural Marxism' that there are differences and disagreements between, for example, Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand -one detested the other, possibly because of the cult that was built around her on 36 E 36 (which she did nothing to stop) as much as the 'emotionalism' of Atlas Shrugged. I have linked below a perceptive memory of Ms Rand by what used to be thought of as the Conservative thinker William F. Buckley, though to most libertarians these days he is presumably but a flag's width away from Marxism.

Fundamental to 'minarchism', as I understand it, is the belief that taxation is theft, and government evil. Although the intellectual foundations of Rothbard's perspective are stronger than Ayn Rand's, his vision is flawed in so many ways it is hard to believe he was ever taken seriously. I don't mind that he considered Adam Smith a plagiarist and a Proto-Marxist; but the extremity of his views was summed up when he said

Taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States... (For a New Liberty: the Libertarian Manifesto, 1973).

I won't go on at length about this thinker, and presumably you will interject the name of some other theorist rather than Rothbard, but in essence the attitudes to taxation, government, and private property are shared by most libertarian-anarchist thinkers, much as most Marxists believe as a fundamental truth that capitalism cannot exist without exploiting the workers. The historical evidence of what happens when there is no taxation, no government and economic relations are shaped by the market, is chilling.

Yet even today, and in spite of layers and layers of nasty taxes, interventionist government, private property under pressure, multinationals like Microsoft use the same system of taxation denounced by minarchists- to avoid paying taxes!

A stellar example of private property in action is Rupert Murdoch- even though he only owns a controlling share in News International and its subsidiaries not the whole lot outright -nevertheless, treating the Sunday Times as his private property -presumably with full approval of minarchists, in this last week he forced the editor of the newspaper to issue a public apology for printing a cartoon by Gerald Scarfe, who has been publishing deliberately shocking cartoons in the Sunday Times for 50 years. The cartoon ridiculed the government of Israel. A few years ago Murdoch also used his 'rights of ownership' to prevent the publication of the revelation that a friend of his, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, was a serial pederast and unashamed of it, claiming young boys liked it. Freedom, in this case the freedom of a newspaper to print a cartoon or a news report, is not an absolute value -it remains to be negotiated by the proprietor, much as slaves in the United States were the 'human livestock' and private property of their owners.

In the absence of government, the free market heaven the minarchists dream of is somebody else's idea of hell on earth. But I welcome a debate.

Here is Buckley on Ayn Rand -the review of her book he mentions, by Whitaker Chambers, can be found after the youtube link.

William Buckley on Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmPLkiqnO8)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2705853/posts

Oh, do come along, Stavros, you and I debated this for page after page in that other thread! Accusing me of copping out is contrary to that history.

I suspect you'll find most libertarians/minarchists (why the scare quotes, btw?) have little time for either Rupert Murdoch or Microsoft. The former, especially, most of us regard as no more than a particularly well-connected crony capitalist. I realise that, like the Koch brothers, GWB and Berlusconi, he's one of those right-wing hate figures for you guys, which, as with the others, almost makes him attractive to me, but really, most libertarians I'm in contact with assume that these sorts of people would, in our ideal world, either have to find some other way of earning their billions, or they'd end up as road-sweepers. Either way, neither of those business empires are poster children for that which we advocate. As you would understand, if you understood.

I know, I know, nobody understands me...

[an8150]

I must admit I don't get what you mean?

Then may I refer you to Prospero's initial post and to my initial comments on it?

[an8150]

I must admit I don't get what you mean?

Or how about robertlouis' comment below? Okay, okay, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, I chose the wrong bloody Nazi. But talk about missing the point!

[fivekatz]

I am not really sure how to take being called the wrong Nazi considering my jewish lineage but so be it.

I don' it as much I am missing the point as I have never considered the distinctions that you make. Whilst you see governments more evil actions as an indictment against government (wars etc) I see these things as the powerful influence that capital and the pursuit of capital produce.

Much of the free market thinking such as moral hazard simply is philosophical fantasy because when corporations extend their greed to the point of failure, those at the top whether it be the likes of Ken Lay/Jeff Skilling or John Thain/Dick Fuld, escape moral hazard with diminished but still massive wealth, while the masses suffer.

To have let moral hazard take its logical conclusion would be so catastrophic that it simply is unacceptable (hence the idea of too big to fail). If government has a problem is that it is too influenced by too few and those who hold the most capital.

Government itself is not bad, it is bad government that can do great harm, either but its action or for the most part since 1980 its inaction.

IMHO the great anti-Christ of the conservatives was FDR and what they never cottoned on to IMHO was that if not for FDR given the state of affairs in in 1930's the US was clearly going to either go the way of communism or fascism. Given the nature of the US and the control capital held in the US, the nazism you attributed to me was the most likely outcome.

Any government that can spend what we spend on defending our corporate interests through military spending certainly can do the same to defend its citizens from disease. And if in fact the 97% of climate scientists that aren't on Koch Brothers payroll are right, how do we convert our society from one that is so dependent on fossil fuel while we spend the next few years debating just what the melting polar caps and rising annual temps mean?

And even if the 97% were wrong, so what? New industries emerge and those in the fossil fuel business who are light of foot become players in the next generation of energy.

Whatever the SCOTUS has clearly confused free speech with unfettered, unexposed cash. Not surprising from the same group that failed to read half of the 27 words in the 2nd Amendment...

For the record I'd prefer to insulted by being called a communist to being called a Nazi.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=an8150;1269525]
Oh, do come along, Stavros, you and I debated this for page after page in that other thread! Accusing me of copping out is contrary to that history.
--Serious debates about politics have no end...

I suspect you'll find most libertarians/minarchists (why the scare quotes, btw?) have little time for either Rupert Murdoch or Microsoft. The former, especially, most of us regard as no more than a particularly well-connected crony capitalist. I realise that, like the Koch brothers, GWB and Berlusconi, he's one of those right-wing hate figures for you guys, which, as with the others, almost makes him attractive to me, but really, most libertarians I'm in contact with assume that these sorts of people would, in our ideal world, either have to find some other way of earning their billions, or they'd end up as road-sweepers. Either way, neither of those business empires are poster children for that which we advocate. As you would understand, if you understood.

I know, I know, nobody understands me...

We understand you, you just don't have much of an argument. Saying that tax-dodging Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch are not representative of capitalism is like being told by someone selling Workers Hammer on the high St on a Satuday morning that there was no socialism in the USSR...or Cuba... or China etc etc. You make the core point when you describe your vision as an 'ideal world' -one which you don't discuss much either, rather like a cadre from the SWP saying first lets have a worker's revolution, then we can discuss the socialist transition...I mean, Rupert Murdoch or Murray Rothbard, not much of a choice, is it?

[broncofan]

FiveKatz,
he didn't call you a Nazi. He compared Reinhard Heydrich to Leon Trotsky. Now he believes he chose the wrong Nazi to compare Trotsky to.

[an8150]

I am not really sure how to take being called the wrong Nazi considering my jewish lineage but so be it.

I don' it as much I am missing the point as I have never considered the distinctions that you make. Whilst you see governments more evil actions as an indictment against government (wars etc) I see these things as the powerful influence that capital and the pursuit of capital produce.

Much of the free market thinking such as moral hazard simply is philosophical fantasy because when corporations extend their greed to the point of failure, those at the top whether it be the likes of Ken Lay/Jeff Skilling or John Thain/Dick Fuld, escape moral hazard with diminished but still massive wealth, while the masses suffer.

To have let moral hazard take its logical conclusion would be so catastrophic that it simply is unacceptable (hence the idea of too big to fail). If government has a problem is that it is too influenced by too few and those who hold the most capital.

Government itself is not bad, it is bad government that can do great harm, either but its action or for the most part since 1980 its inaction.

IMHO the great anti-Christ of the conservatives was FDR and what they never cottoned on to IMHO was that if not for FDR given the state of affairs in in 1930's the US was clearly going to either go the way of communism or fascism. Given the nature of the US and the control capital held in the US, the nazism you attributed to me was the most likely outcome.

Any government that can spend what we spend on defending our corporate interests through military spending certainly can do the same to defend its citizens from disease. And if in fact the 97% of climate scientists that aren't on Koch Brothers payroll are right, how do we convert our society from one that is so dependent on fossil fuel while we spend the next few years debating just what the melting polar caps and rising annual temps mean?

And even if the 97% were wrong, so what? New industries emerge and those in the fossil fuel business who are light of foot become players in the next generation of energy.

Whatever the SCOTUS has clearly confused free speech with unfettered, unexposed cash. Not surprising from the same group that failed to read half of the 27 words in the 2nd Amendment...

For the record I'd prefer to insulted by being called a communist to being called a Nazi.


I'm not calling you a Nazi! Reynard Heydrich was a Nazi (with rumoured Jewish ancestry), as were Hess, Streicher and Rohm! Please tell me you knew that.

[an8150]

FiveKatz,
he didn't call you a Nazi. He compared Reinhard Heydrich to Leon Trotsky. Now he believes he chose the wrong Nazi to compare Trotsky to.

Thank you, broncofan, just saw your comment. Fired mine off without prior checks.

[an8150]

"For the record I'd prefer to insulted by being called a communist to being called a Nazi. "

And there, bless you, inadvertently, you've hit upon the point about Prospero's Trotsky avatar. Go on, see if you can work why...

[an8150]

[QUOTE=an8150;1269525]
Oh, do come along, Stavros, you and I debated this for page after page in that other thread! Accusing me of copping out is contrary to that history.
--Serious debates about politics have no end...

I suspect you'll find most libertarians/minarchists (why the scare quotes, btw?) have little time for either Rupert Murdoch or Microsoft. The former, especially, most of us regard as no more than a particularly well-connected crony capitalist. I realise that, like the Koch brothers, GWB and Berlusconi, he's one of those right-wing hate figures for you guys, which, as with the others, almost makes him attractive to me, but really, most libertarians I'm in contact with assume that these sorts of people would, in our ideal world, either have to find some other way of earning their billions, or they'd end up as road-sweepers. Either way, neither of those business empires are poster children for that which we advocate. As you would understand, if you understood.

I know, I know, nobody understands me...

We understand you, you just don't have much of an argument. Saying that tax-dodging Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch are not representative of capitalism is like being told by someone selling Workers Hammer on the high St on a Satuday morning that there was no socialism in the USSR...or Cuba... or China etc etc. You make the core point when you describe your vision as an 'ideal world' -one which you don't discuss much either, rather like a cadre from the SWP saying first lets have a worker's revolution, then we can discuss the socialist transition...I mean, Rupert Murdoch or Murray Rothbard, not much of a choice, is it?



Repeat after me: free market capitalism.

There, easy. Not capitalism. Or consumerism. Or whatever euphemism you lot are deploying this week. Free market capitalism.

[Prospero]

First principles an8150? C'mon then,enlighten us.

There are issues here far more worth talking about than silliness over avatars. I am sure you can find a freemarket objection to an easter island head if you choose to.

I think Stavros has effectively shown your ideas to be spurious, naive and - thankfully - unlikely ever to see any true realisation in the real world. Enjoy your idealism.

[Stavros]

[quote=Stavros;1269671]

Repeat after me: free market capitalism.

There, easy. Not capitalism. Or consumerism. Or whatever euphemism you lot are deploying this week. Free market capitalism.

free market capitalism....free market capitalism...free market capitalism...however many times I repeat it, I feel nothing. Fivekatz pointed out how the barons who screwed up their own firms and trashed jobs and economic stability walked away with millions. Perhaps someone can confirm that if, at the other end of the ladder in free market capitalism, somebody is not participating in this wonderful world of free competition, say because they are illiterate, lost their arms and legs in a road accident or a war, have a drink problem, or didn't save enough for their retirement -that basically, they are useless and should be, as it were, 'dismissed'? It might not match the eugenic solution to impurity practised by the Nazi's, but somehow I feel that free market capitaism might be separating out winners and losers in not so different a way...what did Whitaker Chamber say was Ayn Rand's response to losers? To the gas chambers, go...

[an8150]

First principles an8150? C'mon then,enlighten us.

There are issues here far more worth talking about than silliness over avatars. I am sure you can find a freemarket objection to an easter island head if you choose to.

I think Stavros has effectively shown your ideas to be spurious, naive and - thankfully - unlikely ever to see any true realisation in the real world. Enjoy your idealism.

Which just goes to show that we can scarcely blame free market capitalism for the ills of the world.

[an8150]

[quote=an8150;1269719]

free market capitalism....free market capitalism...free market capitalism...however many times I repeat it, I feel nothing. Fivekatz pointed out how the barons who screwed up their own firms and trashed jobs and economic stability walked away with millions. Perhaps someone can confirm that if, at the other end of the ladder in free market capitalism, somebody is not participating in this wonderful world of free competition, say because they are illiterate, lost their arms and legs in a road accident or a war, have a drink problem, or didn't save enough for their retirement -that basically, they are useless and should be, as it were, 'dismissed'? It might not match the eugenic solution to impurity practised by the Nazi's, but somehow I feel that free market capitaism might be separating out winners and losers in not so different a way...what did Whitaker Chamber say was Ayn Rand's response to losers? To the gas chambers, go...


Only big government funds gas chambers...

[hippifried]

Capitalism, as a financial system, consistently tries to consolidate to the point of monopolization. That's anathema to a free market.


To whomever... Just out of curiosity:
Were the Nazis actually fascist, or did Hitler just jump on the nearest bandwagon?

[an8150]

"Capitalism, as a financial system, consistently tries to consolidate to the point of monopolization"

Uh-huh. On this side of the pond, we have a joke: why is there only one monopolies commission?

There's no punchline.

[broncofan]

Were the Nazis actually fascist, or did Hitler just jump on the nearest bandwagon?
This is a good question. I bet you get more learned answers than mine. There were some unique aspects of Nazi ideology that can be separated from other forms of fascism. On the other hand, from what I understand about fascism, it provides an advantage in implementing many of the Nazi policies. A highly bureaucratic government unconcerned about the rights of the individual is ideal when wanting to create the military machine Hitler needed to expand into an empire and to crush the "untermensch".

Fascism seems to provide a very good organizational structure for carrying out all sorts of demonic tasks without having to be unduly concerned with dissent. So perhaps fascism is the vehicle rather than the message?

[broncofan]

"Capitalism, as a financial system, consistently tries to consolidate to the point of monopolization"

Uh-huh. On this side of the pond, we have a joke: why is there only one monopolies commission?

There's no punchline.
Economics jokes are my favorite. Got any applied physics jokes?:razz:

[fivekatz]

On can have free market capitalism and still have sensible regulation. In fact the greatest lesson form the financial markets collapse in 2008 was that regulation is required. If the CDO's were transparent, many investors would have invested elsewhere.

And taxation holds it's place as well. While the GOP had a lot of fun with the poorly crafted "you did not build it", it is true that much of the infrastructure that makes a free market work is built by the community through taxation.

And most of all we have this uniquely American problem that we believe in taxation to maintain massive standing armies BUT find it objectionable to defend our citizens from disease.

Anything taken to the extreme, Ayn Rand was extreme. And Alan Greenspan who is a disciple of Rand's ended up finding just that out. Free markets without oversight will eventually be manipulated by greed and hurt a lot of people.

What the Wall Street guys did in 1990's right up to today (London Whale) is n laughing matter, the hurt and in many cases destroyed people's lives. For all the right wing in the US denounces Obama as this great socialist, the lack of prosecutions and the weakness of the finanicial reforms are actually quite surprise considering the system should have and still may meltdown.

[an8150]

On can have free market capitalism and still have sensible regulation.

[no, you can't. that's the whole point. it's like saying you can get a little bit pregnant]

In fact the greatest lesson form the financial markets collapse in 2008 was that regulation is required [so in addition to never having heard of the architect of the holocaust (some Jewish ancestry, btw) you've never heard of the SEC or FSA. genius]. If the CDO's were transparent, many investors would have invested elsewhere.

And taxation holds it's place as well. While the GOP had a lot of fun with the poorly crafted "you did not build it", it is true that much of the infrastructure that makes a free market work is built by the community through taxation.

And most of all we have this uniquely American problem that we believe in taxation to maintain massive standing armies BUT find it objectionable to defend our citizens from disease.

Anything taken to the extreme, Ayn Rand was extreme. And Alan Greenspan who is [was; they renounced each other and he became a disciple of cheap money and central banking which is, incidentally, a government monopoly] a disciple of Rand's ended up finding just that out. Free markets without oversight [which planet are you living on, because I want in?] will eventually be manipulated by greed and hurt a lot of people.

What the Wall Street guys did in 1990's right up to today (London Whale) is n laughing matter, the hurt and in many cases destroyed people's lives. For all the right wing in the US denounces Obama as this great socialist, the lack of prosecutions and the weakness of the finanicial reforms are actually quite surprise considering the system should have and still may meltdown.

How do you suppose 'big to fail' became a catch-all for so many western financial institutions?

[an8150]

Economics jokes are my favorite. Got any applied physics jokes?:razz:

No, but otherwise it's a laugh-a-minute in the an8150 household.

[fivekatz]

So I suppose you never heard of Brooksley Bourne and how she was shutdown by Greenspan, Rubin and Saunders, when she warned that there was not oversight of CDO's and Synthetic CDOs and that the level of toxic assets were too high? The transactions were in the dark, the banks did not even know how much they were holding, and nobody knew how much of the securities were backed by AIG.

And where the heck are you coming from bring up the holocaust in a conversation about free markets and if there is the need to bridle that?

[an8150]

So I suppose you never heard of Brooksley Bourne and how she was shutdown by Greenspan, Rubin and Saunders, when she warned that there was not oversight of CDO's and Synthetic CDOs and that the level of toxic assets were too high? The transactions were in the dark, the banks did not even know how much they were holding, and nobody knew how much of the securities were backed by AIG.

And where the heck are you coming from bring up the holocaust in a conversation about free markets and if there is the need to bridle that?

Then your complaint is one of inadequate regulation, not of no regulation.

As for the holocaust thing, I think you'll find it stems from discussion of Prospero's Trotsky avatar. I don't think the train of responses/comments has been difficult to follow.

[fivekatz]

Then your complaint is one of inadequate regulation, not of no regulation.

As for the holocaust thing, I think you'll find it stems from discussion of Prospero's Trotsky avatar. I don't think the train of responses/comments has been difficult to follow.Certainly in the case of off the market derivatives they were unregulated. Brooksley Born asked Congress for oversight by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission of these transactions as well as President Clinton. She had as it turns out quite accurately forecast that CDO's and Synthetic CDO's would become overloaded with toxic assets without adequate reserves to back them. The trio of Rubin, Summers and Greenspan effectively under cut her before Congress, she resigned from the CFTC in 1999 an the merry-go-round kept going until Bear Stearns become the open bell of the meltdown.

I don't think that the elimination of Glass - Steagall was as responsible for the catastrophe in the markets as some people do. Whilst a few players wouldn't have been able to get into the game, Goldman, Lehman and the other investment banks still would have been in the game.

And when we talk about regulation, really it would have been a matter of transparency rather than restriction. Certainly if the investment bankers that were hedging their bets through AIG knew how much paper AIG was holding, they would not have done business with AIG.

The cause of 2008 meltdown was the over riding belief that moral hazard would constrain the dark market, so there was no need for transparency; when in fact left unconstrained the lust for immediate and huge returns was so great that the players involved ignored the risk. When it all went wrong it really was too big to fail, so the mechanism in the free market of moral hazard could not be allowed to happen because the true depths of the economic depression were unmeasurable because they were so huge.

As for the other arguments about government while I read them I really wasn't going to weigh in and that is probably why the holocaust thing caught me off guard if you will.

Government is imperfect. But it has taken many forms from religion being the ruling authority to the various forms we see today. And most wars are almost always about some form of capital, whether it be natural resources, human resources etc.

But IMO they also serve many wonderful purposes. Within capitalism they can act as a counter balance to corporations rightful single minded pursuit of consistent and large returns for its shareholders. Neither business or government is evil but both can do evil I suppose.

[Stavros]

The cause of 2008 meltdown was the over riding belief that moral hazard would constrain the dark market, so there was no need for transparency; when in fact left unconstrained the lust for immediate and huge returns was so great that the players involved ignored the risk. When it all went wrong it really was too big to fail, so the mechanism in the free market of moral hazard could not be allowed to happen because the true depths of the economic depression were unmeasurable because they were so huge.


I think this is at the core of the problem with 'free market capitalism' -what happens when businesses fail? When people fail? Free market capitalism seems to be so addicted to success, so indifferent to failure, that it ignores the human story in success as well as failure. It also doesn't tell us how people with a poor education, no access to capital, and perhaps crucially, neither motivation nor ideas, become successful -except to say: they don't. And yet they are alive, and need food, clothing and shelter.

[robertlouis]

I think this is at the core of the problem with 'free market capitalism' -what happens when businesses fail? When people fail? Free market capitalism seems to be so addicted to success, so indifferent to failure, that it ignores the human story in success as well as failure. It also doesn't tell us how people with a poor education, no access to capital, and perhaps crucially, neither motivation nor ideas, become successful -except to say: they don't. And yet they are alive, and need food, clothing and shelter.

Correct. Not so long ago, many western democracies thrived on a mixed economy of separated but interacting public and private sector activities. What few seem to have understood as the heat and testosterone of the financial sector accelerated was that there has to be a delicate balance between the two to succeed. The UK effectively discarded or sold off its public sector assets in the 80s and 90s and now suffers low tax receipts as a result. Other EU states like France, Italy and Spain failed to separate the interests of state and business sufficiently and are also suffering in their own way - Greece being the most extreme example.

The only states which continue to operate in balance and with the consent of their electorates, broadly speaking, are the enlightened but small social democracies in northern Europe such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

[fivekatz]

I think this is at the core of the problem with 'free market capitalism' -what happens when businesses fail? When people fail? Free market capitalism seems to be so addicted to success, so indifferent to failure, that it ignores the human story in success as well as failure. It also doesn't tell us how people with a poor education, no access to capital, and perhaps crucially, neither motivation nor ideas, become successful -except to say: they don't. And yet they are alive, and need food, clothing and shelter.In fairness, capitalism does create an environment where entrepreneur can flourish. Their success while unlikely if they lack education and capital backing can happen. The system does depend on uneven distribution of wealth, it needs cheap labor to make the system work.

IMHO what the intellectual positions of the likes of Ayn Rand miss is that it as a society we do not smooth out the hardest edges of income inequity (hunger, lack of health care, education for our children to give them that 1-100 shot at entrepreneurial success, that the 99% will eventual get really pissed off and eat the 1% alive.

This is where well intentioned and well prosecuted government can make capitalism work. It will create structures for doing business and trade where moral hazard does not have to be the only safety rail. It will through taxation create a standard of living for every citizen who can and will work and for every citizen suffering disability can not work have a minimal substance of health care, shelter and nourishment or better, equal with their efforts.

In long run 1% can't dominate 99% before the 99% get tired of it and rid themselves of that ruling elite. That is why the spreading income iniquity in America is so concerning to me because when American's get really sick of a dream undelivered their reaction may be quite unattractive but given the wealth in the nation anger would not be unjustified. American's can not only ask corporations to play more fair, they can ask its most wealthy to pay more tax and its government to spend less on its military and more own its own citizens.

Just my take and sure as hell a platform that would never get a peron elected to political office.

[robertlouis]

In fairness, capitalism does create an environment where entrepreneur can flourish. Their success while unlikely if they lack education and capital backing can happen. The system does depend on uneven distribution of wealth, it needs cheap labor to make the system work.

IMHO what the intellectual positions of the likes of Ayn Rand miss is that it as a society we do not smooth out the hardest edges of income inequity (hunger, lack of health care, education for our children to give them that 1-100 shot at entrepreneurial success, that the 99% will eventual get really pissed off and eat the 1% alive.

This is where well intentioned and well prosecuted government can make capitalism work. It will create structures for doing business and trade where moral hazard does not have to be the only safety rail. It will through taxation create a standard of living for every citizen who can and will work and for every citizen suffering disability can not work have a minimal substance of health care, shelter and nourishment or better, equal with their efforts.

In long run 1% can't dominate 99% before the 99% get tired of it and rid themselves of that ruling elite. That is why the spreading income iniquity in America is so concerning to me because when American's get really sick of a dream undelivered their reaction may be quite unattractive but given the wealth in the nation anger would not be unjustified. American's can not only ask corporations to play more fair, they can ask its most wealthy to pay more tax and its government to spend less on its military and more own its own citizens.

Just my take and sure as hell a platform that would never get a peron elected to political office.

Not while the idiots who persist in voting against their own interest and in favour of the plutocratic 1% continue to do so. The Republicans may not be that bright, but they're bright enough to pull off a massive con trick against the struggling and dispossessed who can be guaranteed to kneejerk against the bogey man word socialism, when they wouldn't know true socialism if it leaped up and bit them. Pardon my cynicism.

When I see bankers in jail instead of drawing down obscene bonuses despite their direct authoring of the crisis, then, and only then, might I start to believe.

[fivekatz]

Not while the idiots who persist in voting against their own interest and in favour of the plutocratic 1% continue to do so. The Republicans may not be that bright, but they're bright enough to pull off a massive con trick against the struggling and dispossessed who can be guaranteed to kneejerk against the bogey man word socialism, when they wouldn't know true socialism if it leaped up and bit them. Pardon my cynicism.

When I see bankers in jail instead of drawing down obscene bonuses despite their direct authoring of the crisis, then, and only then, might I start to believe.Hard to argue with you though I see hope in the fact the GOPs favorite wedge issues are drawing no traction with demographic groups that are growing like people of color and younger Americans.

The GOP success was displacing the Democrats in the South because of civil rights etc.

I too share your disapointment that Fuld and Dimon are not doing time for fraud.

[an8150]

"Just my take and sure as hell a platform that would never get a peron elected to political office. "

Indeed, thank God someone had the courage to speak out.

[Ben]

Koch Brothers: Vulture Capitalists | Brainwash Update - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmFHlMh3eMU)

[Ben]

Koch Brothers' new Pledge for Planet Destruction - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K64AYS_dD74)

[TSBootyLondon]

with 42 Billion dollars in their pockets its a given that they would get bored!

[Prospero]

It isn't about boredom... it's about power Bella

[TSBootyLondon]

It was sarcasm! You would think that with that much money in their bank accounts that they would buy a golf cart and hit the holes!

Money, power, greed! Blimey that sounds like the day in the life of Bella at the moment ;-)


It isn't about boredom... it's about power Bella

[Ben]

It was sarcasm! You would think that with that much money in their bank accounts that they would buy a golf cart and hit the holes!

Money, power, greed! Blimey that sounds like the day in the life of Bella at the moment ;-)

With power, well, whaddya want?!?! Well, more power!
It does seem strange. But our culture, our society, our system does encourage greed and selfishness. So, it's understandable in a society that rewards greed and selfishness that people will gravitate toward greed, toward selfishness.
Ohhh, but being greedy and selfish is part of human nature. That's true. Being greedy and being selfish is part of human nature. I mean, by definition anything human beings do is human nature.
But so is kindness, concern for others, caring. That's part of human nature. So, it hinges on what the culture rewards.
If -- and it does -- the culture rewards selfishness then people will be selfish. If the culture, the society rewards kindness, generosity, sympathy, well, people will be kind and sympathetic. So, again, it all hinges on the reward system.
Human nature, human behavior is exceedingly flexible.
So, it's the reward system....
Both brothers could do a lot of good with that much money.
And, yeah, they could play endless HOLES of golf... instead of bein' assHOLES -- ha ha! :)
Anyway, they're serving their own interests. And their value system is pretty simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AuPeDSFzBs

[Ben]

Harry Reid: Why The Kochs Are Dangerous For America...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2-cIpXIoY4

[envivision]

The Koch Brothers are JOB CREATORS..... Something that all liberals FAIL to accomplish or comprehend.

Go drink your kool aid, boy. Although it might ruin your teeth, but it won't matter 'cause you are english.

[trish]

The Koch brothers are intellectual midgets and obstructionists of economic freedom. For every living wage job they ever "created" there's a dozen they terminated. They are black holes draining the nation's wealth and energy. I doubt they ever done a foot pound of work in their long lives, save lifting toasts with their Waterford crystal and shoveling caviar with their silver spoons.

[95racer]

Harry Reid: Why The Kochs Are Dangerous For America...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2-cIpXIoY4


If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black !!!!!

[Ben]

The Kochs are a lethal force. But one should underscore: if it wasn't the Kochs [who, combined, are the richest person on the planet] it'd be someone else. Maybe Bill Gates would dip his toes, as it were, in the Tar Sands of Alberta.
I mean, this is the culture we live in: you merely pursue your own interests and ignore the consequences of your actions.
The Kochs are merely pursuing their rational self interest. In economics it is completely rational to pursue your own interests.
But there are costs and consequences to maintaining strict self interest.
I think we are all, collectively, ignoring what are called external costs... like global warming. We've collectively decided, because of global warming, that future generations simply have no value, they're of absolutely no importance.
This is the society we've created. Our choices will have grievous consequences on future generations.

Koch Brothers Are The Largest Foreign Lease Holder of Canadian Oil Sands

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CpoB3BCstk

[Ben]

Koch Bros. Exposed! | Jesse Ventura Off The Grid - Ora TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAy3ogDMCIU

[Ben]

Billionaire Brothers Don't Even Bother Hiding Anymore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9vKrWSfEM8

[Ben]

"Conservative activist and philanthropist David Koch says he’s a “social liberal” and doesn’t understand why people think he’s an “evil billionaire.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhXJBpYigGA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhXJBpYigGA)