Note: The weekly Taki post is up. When possible, the Monday post here will be related to the Taki post. Of course, there is the Sunday show behind the green door for those interested.
One of the underappreciated aspects of liberal democracy is that it always pits morality versus objective facts, always creating a false choice. Every public debate is between one camp that demand we do “the right thing” and another camp that insist on doing “the correct thing”. The right thing is defined as the moral thing while the correct thing is the factually accurate or effective thing. The choice is failure while on the moral high ground or succeed and be seen and inhumane or indifferent.
This false choice predates the rise and spread of liberal democracy, so it is not accurate to lay the blame there. The debate that evolved over economics that grew up out of the industrial revolution is the origin. The Marxists were never making an economic argument back in the 19th century. They started with a moral claim that capitalism is built on exploitation of the workers. This was inherently immoral so it must lead to class struggle, crisis and then revolution.
This lack of an economic plan of any sort should have been obvious, but the followers and Marx were not interested in practical matters. The appeal was always the morality of the program. It was the chief selling point. This was made manifest in Russia when the Bolsheviks seized control of the state. Suddenly they were faced with solving the sorts of problem governments are tasked with doing. They had no economic platform from which to work, just gobs of Marxist theory.
The reaction to Marxism was Austrian School economics. Unlike the Marxists, the Austrians had a very detailed analysis of economics. Their model explained the basics of how goods and services flowed through an economy. This factual accuracy made it possible to form public policy and test the result. Over the course of the Cold War, Austrian economics became the primary weapon against Marxism. It stripped communist economics of the claim to empirical authority.
The trouble with Austrian School economics is it also striped morality and group preference from public debate. Every want and desire had to be justified by an economic argument. Rotten results that may make sense according to the laws of economic could not be contested. The out of control consumerism we see, for example, just has to be tolerated. The spread of degeneracy cannot be opposed, because the market dictates what is right in society.
American society has been squeezed in this vice for a long time. One side makes arguments that make some sense from a moral perspective but are completely unworkable as a practical matter. The other side counters with what appear to be factually correct arguments, the results of which are unsustainable. Worse still, neither side has a way to counter the other. The result of this dynamic is a system that is morally indefensible but shaking to pieces by moral fervor.
Ironically, both jaws of this vice are built on false assumptions. The Marxists fall victim to Hume’s guillotine. The value of a good or service is no doubt the sum of the labor it requires to produce it. It does not follow that anyone in society or society as a whole should agree. The other jaw makes a different error, assuming that human beings act from economic self-interest. They can, but they more often act from biological reasons, especially group biological reasons.
The dynamic resulting from this false choice seems to be reaching an end point, where neither side is sustainable. The moral claims made by what is called the Left have veered so far into the ridiculous that it looks like satire. A century ago, it was easy to sympathize with the groups the Left claimed to champion. Workers being ripped off by unscrupulous employers had a strong claim. Men is bizarre outfits claiming to be a third sex are clowns no one can take seriously.
A similar fate has befallen the so-called Right. When massive global corporations are stripping people of their lights, often by funding street gangs to assaults people going about their business, it is laughable to defend the “free market” system that produced these companies. When state sponsored financial concerns are buying up houses to create new renters, in the name of capitalism, the so-called free market is just as ridiculous as the men in dresses.
Liberal democracy has become an octopus with its tentacles wrapped around various parts of society. One tentacle is the moralizers assaulting us with the latest fads from corporate HR. Another tentacle is consumerism strip mining the traditions and history, the social capital, that are the foundation stones of society. Another tentacle is finance capital skimming a bit from every transaction without adding anything back. Every tentacle has a corresponding one to help it fight off attacks.
That is the primary defense of the system. All critics are herded into this set of false choices the system maintains. If you do not like that state-sponsored hedge funds are hoovering up single family homes, you have two choices. One is you can throw in with the loons and their bizarre defense of bourgeoise decadence. The other is you can waste your time making an economic argument claiming that the “market” will solve the problem if we worship it more.
The point of democratic systems is for the public to have a say in how public policy is formulated and a veto over the final result. In reality, it offers false choices controlled by a narrow elite. The narrow elite hides in the shadows of a mythical beast called the general will or the invisible hand of the market. It is a curtain behind which stands the ruling class. In the end, it is looking like what Marxism and liberal democracy have always claimed to oppose.
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The truly aggravating aspect of the Blackrock Group,(I think that’s their name), hovering up entire subdivisions at above market prices is that;
1) they are being financed by the Fed, which is the dirt people’s money, and
2) If somehow there is a collapse and Blackrock gets in trouble, they will be bailed out by, you guessed it, your money.
Either way, the peons will pay.
If I’m wrong, please set me straight, and get your finances straight before the great Reset, I mean collapse.
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It is the full fusion of finance capitalism and state capitalism, to use Marxist jargon. The chief defenders of it are people who claim to be Marxists.
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Normally, if Blackrock and the other gigantic asset management firms buy up homes and overpay, that’s a huge risk for them, because the bubble would burst. But of course they’ll be bailed out. They can do as they please.
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The other problem with BlackRock is that every thrifty saver who reads Z-Man gives 5 to 20 percent of their annual income to them through IRA or 401k contributions. If you invest in an index fund (which you should), the odds are high that the fund is run by your friends at Blackrock.
Of course, it IS a free country and you can always create your own tax-protected, highly liquid, multi-asset, exchange traded fund.
Trust me, I have tried to figure out an alternative, but absent collapse, I don’t see a solution to this.
It sounds like there’s only one solution. Identify who is behind the curtain and make them stop. A lot of our enemies who are at least smart enough to keep this monster running are old. “Hope lies with the actuarial tables,” as I think you said. Most of our younger enemies are too stupid to run anything, but they can screw things up and keep anything from running functionally, which causes a different problem. These problems can be solved, and probably will be solved, and it will be ugly. But, as the old blogger Thrasymachus used to say, “Ugly is good. Beautiful right now is just putting pancake makeup on a syphilitic whore.” Comfort and stability are great, but they can’t be the ultimate ideal, and in order to build something new, we are going to have to suffer for awhile.
I’ve been reading a lot about the Bolsheviks. After 1905 they most concluded that the way forward was to organize and wait for the crisis, that they were sure would inevitably come. The truth is, revolutions require the people in charge to make mistakes and create a crisis they cannot contain. It’s less violent brother, reform, also requires crisis, which delegitimizes the people ate the top of the ruling order.
Is there a name for this, besides Globohomo, where the corporations are consolidating power and wealth, in partnership with the government and the woke agenda, at the expense of small and medium size businesses and American citizens. We’re always hearing that socialism is coming, or communism, or “that’s what the Nazis did!,” and so on….It would be good to call this something, because as far as I know, it’s unprecedented.
There is a third choice. You can simply become an antibody and kill off the disease cells one at a time. 4S and focus is an ancient remedy for the type of systemic problem that currently ails us. And it doesn’t take much to drive off the Master Parasites. Just a few and they will begin to leave voluntarily. If we don’t fight back, our fate is sheeple or death.
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Reminds me of Limbaugh’s observation of the actor Ron Silver at Clinton’s inauguration. The jets flying overhead and Silver’s commie companion complaining about the military presence. Silver consoled him saying, they are now our jets and military. Of course later he learned to love the Rino zionists because, well because.
Not we hear the same sort loving the corporations because now they are in the progressive looney camp. It’s too much.
“When massive global corporations are stripping people of their lights, often by funding street gangs to assaults people going about their business, it is laughable to defend the “free market” system that produced these companies. When state sponsored financial concerns are buying up houses to create new renters, in the name of capitalism, the so-called free market is just as ridiculous as the men in dresses.”
It is textbook fascism, to be precise. It is ironic the street thugs who defend this order think of themselves as “anti-Fascists.” They are children of upper middle class Whites, for the most part, who will whine the most when shorn of their worldly goods and wealth. Horrible time to live, but that will be lovely to watch. The residual Good White “Left” is protecting that stuff right now, but they are being ushered off the stage quite rapidly.