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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Lots of confusion about Austrian economics. Austrian economics is completely value-free. It makes no attempt to tell you what you should choose, it merely seeks to inform you of the consequences of that choice. It tends to appeal to libertarians, yes, but not because of any principle of Austrian economics. If one placed an extremely high subjective value on murder, rape and torture, the Austrian economist would inform him that it would be irrational to embrace libertarianism, because that would not likely lead to his highly-valued outcomes. The Austrian would counsel that communism is more likely the rational choice to… Read more »
There is no evidence of the system not being sustainable , or of collapse.
This is the ultimate false hope.
Betting on “Collapse” (TM) is the ultimate and fatal false choice.
The only thing that collapsed was any resistance.
Trump may have forced them into the Open, but since they have openly enforced their will however bizarre it seems to us – who have no power- it makes total sense for them.
The enemy is not collapsing, we collapsed .
I hate to say it FeinGul but you are probably right. This is what Heritage America is focused on (posting from my local Nextdoor site): Fiber-Optic folks working on our street today. Hubby is so excited I threatened to make him some pom-poms so he can be a Fiber-Optics cheerleader. He said, “Better yet – I’ll just drag the grill down there and feed those guys!” 🥴 This woman’s “Hubby” is no doubt excited to get fiber optic service so that he can stream ESPN, NFL, and NBA all year long while wearing Colin Kaepernick and Lebron James jerseys and… Read more »
The Situation;
I daresay things will remain on status quo until someone mistakes the Hammers for nails…
Maybe yes, maybe no. As the resident blackpiller, ask anyone, I am pretty confident that there will be an attempt to impose a Rwandan solution. But with Rwandan results. The leadership is old and divided. Sailer’s talking about Franz Ferdinand, the leadership in the West reminds me of the Hapsburgs at the end — elderly and incompetent. Replacements are loud and angry but fit only for bartending or screaming abuse. They are up against an enemy who already has deployed bioweapons, and promises more. There is the weird stuff with the election audits. Why are they going on now, and… Read more »
The ancient Greek Empire collapsed. The Roman Empire collapsed. The Soviet Union Collapsed. Yes, collapse is on the menu for the Good Ol’ USA too. And when an empire or nation collapses, it really doesn’t care about your opinion regarding it’s probability of happening. It just happens, ready or not.
TomA,
None of them collapsed. They were conquered or overthrown. By men.
Collapse (TM) is to some an invisible force, like “the market “ or “the right side of history “ or Jesus, or Q Anon. No. None of that just happened. Global warming has more substance.
Trust the Plan, lol.
Trust collapse, it’s coming. Since the 1970s at least.
Meanwhile do nothing.
And Grill. Don’t forget to grill.
Rome was history before it’s official demise in 476. Yes it over run by barbarians but it already had rotted so badly within a 100 years before it existed in name only.
The Soviet Union just imploded from internal rot and a few commies picked up the pieces.
The U.S,A isn’t special. or immune like you think. BTW there was no collapse coming since the 70’s, I’m old enough to remember those times. The country was quite healthy back then, compared to ir’s necrotic state that we see now..
I
Don’t worry about the dollar or the economy: the Fed is hiring TOP people.
Renee Jones from Boston College.
She doesn’t have a middle name with a dash, but you can guess the demographic by the fact that her mom didn’t know how to spell “Rene”.
The dollar will go when they want us to die – of starvation.
The food distribution system actually will collapse without money. However that collapse too is man made.
Wrong. Rene is the male form and Renee is the female form. The female version being much more common in America.
A French word meaning “reborn.”
Of course, the main argument comes down to “how best to feed the zoo animals fairly and efficiently.” The assumption being that that which is of primary importance to human health and well being can be boiled down to food and shelter. And of course, access to stuff. Like zoo animals. And so, after a few hundred years of this system, people, being exceptionally adaptable, now act as animals, not men and women. Libertarians are the worst with this. I can remember an argument that came down to treating humans like biological robots on an assembly line was actually a… Read more »
Their brain was already mush, or subpar, otherwise they’d have been programmers to begin with. No economic theory—right or left—works without an acceptance and understanding of HBD principles. Within an HBD framework, much of what we call the “human condition” and its origins/solutions becomes apparent.
[…] ZMan waxes philosophical. […]
Was reading that accountants have the highest rates of alcoholism among the professional class Anyone who has ever done accounting probably understands why. For me personally, simply putting my taxes together for my accountant makes me want to kill myself. Not everyone is cut out to be a businessman. My guess is that around 10% of the people are just naturally inclined to be in business and deal with money money money all day, but the other 90% is not mentally wired in that way yet EVERYONE pretty much has to force themselves to be. Larger point being that I… Read more »
Financialization of literally everything and owning nothing outright hasn’t been a boon to anyone except the note holders.
Good DR quote “You have to learn to think about money, or money is all you will think about.”
What does “DR” mean?
Dissident Right
“It’s taking a toll on people, without a doubt.” I do not disagree with you. However, for me it comes down to embracing the counter to this, and that is always, always have projects going that use my hands. My beef is being surrounded by so many middle-aged male peers that can’t start a lawnmower. They literally think I should accept their bleating, “I can’t” or “I don’t know how to…” when, whatever you think of that other YT (ends in “tube”) you can go there and learn just about anything. Roofing, plumbing, build this, fix that. Maintain your tiny… Read more »
Notice how we were a happier country when we had more jobs where men could in fact use their hands? I had a summer job making furniture in Tampa; the camaraderie with the guys and then there was great satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment when at the end of the day you see all the pieces of furniture everyone made now boxed up and ready to ship. It was probably the most enjoyable job I have ever had. I did not make much (I think it was $5/hr at a time when rent for a decent apartment was like $300… Read more »
For one summer when I was a late teenager, I was part of a crew that built BMX tracks. Dirt geometry arguments, dirt physics arguments, silently pushing dirt around for a week or two, then on the last couple days riding it better than anyone else ever would. Did that while studying centuries of Viennese composers and German philosophers via Walkman. Realized too late that that was my best available life of the mind/body. Became a formerly beautiful, potentially great (in a small local way) man hunched grotesquely over a desk for decades, reading legal garbage and making loan payments.… Read more »
Perhaps the Third Position was the correct one?
Is that what Willie told Kamala?
I see this as a part of our culture’s insistence on quantifying the qualitative, the appearance of which phenomenon means your cultural decline is terminal. A strong, self-confident civilization, like the Victorians, knew that e.g. homosexuality and prostitution were wrong ipso facto. They also knew both were going to happen regardless, and, being self-confident, were ok with that — they could grok concepts like “legal but wrong” (prostitution) and “illegal but tolerated” (homosexuality). The trick is threading the needle. Once their self-confidence began to slip, Westerners started hauling out data. Magnus Hirschfeld (((yeah, I know))) doesn’t ring too many bells… Read more »
Ceteris paribus, by George, I believe you are right.
Excellent comment.
The problem with all economic theories is that they all support interest bearing economies. By assigning every country’s currency to private banks, and borrowing money into circulation, you only guarantee one result. The house, i.e., the lending institutions, will always win. You cannot have an economy that lends money at interest that doesn’t go through boom and bust cycles. During the boom, everyone is borrowing money to get in on the action. During the bust, most people can’t borrow more money to stave off disaster, so they loose their wealth and property, which is sold at pennies on the dollar.… Read more »
I have dealt with lenders for a long time, and when it’s time for them to pay you as the vendor they take their own sweet time. Usually you get paid in 30 days after invoice, but not always and you have to pester them.
But when it’s YOU who owes THEM money, oh boy, you better pay up pronto or else.
Well, that’s what you can do when you own the government. And the courts. And all forms of communication.
A third way is Catholic social teaching. A good summary is John Paul II’s “Centesimus Annus” from 1991, just as the Cold War ended. He lived under Marxism and appreciated capitalism, with reasonable social restrictions:
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html
(The recent Marxist daily meanderings by Bergoglio are nonsense to be shunned.)
Yes, the elites are endlessly practicing selective remedy with impunity upon the peons, so why is it wrong for turnaround to be fair play? Why should they be exempt from accountability?
They have two main strategies going forward. The first is to coerce acquiescence to indoctrination and sheepletude. Or alternately, get the plebs to fight each other to the death and kill off all the alphas that might someday rise against them. The first is brain-dead and the second is body-dead. The cure is disease-dead.
By all rights they should not be exempt. But 70 years of public education and Madison Avenue gas lighting the base has screwed with out ability to finger the culprits to a large extent. We see their front men but not the shot callers – most look no further than BLM or Antifa or maybe their local enablers in city hall and the police force. The shot callers are a witches brew of insiders, endowments, foundations, corporations and individual players like Soros, Zucky, Bezos to name but a few. Most are untouchable but like any lord in a castle, they… Read more »
I’m a little perplexed at Mr. ZBlogMan’s obsession with Austrian economics of late. I’m admittedly ignorant but I would have thought the Chicago School is the brand of free marketism that dominates the neoliberal regime.
It is.
He’s got a thing about Libertarians.
“The trouble with Austrian School economics is it also striped morality and group preference from public debate”. I’ll admit that I haven’t read every book written by every member of the Austrian School, but I have read Hayek, von Mises, Rothbard, Woods, Murphy and North. To a man, they all argue that morality and group preference are better attained by freedom of association than the democratic process, and in particular freedom of association allows for more nuance and local quirks than centralized decision-making would. It’s a bit unfair to claim they were unconcerned with morality and group preferences. It’s vastly… Read more »
Z knows what you write is accurate.
None of the authors you cite have supported crony capitalism; to the contrary, they have all found political economy to be repugnant and they have all warned us that there would be those who would conflate the Austrian School with Apple / Antifa / BLM / Google / Gov.co Ltd.
Liberty Mike: that’s like saying they don’t support joggers theiving, but then defend letting joggers browse construction sites at night. The system the Austrians and Friedmanistas put forward leads inexorably to our people being rentier serfs of Blackrock the Landlord and heliots of Duke Bezos. The current feces pit of an economy we have is the logical, perhaps even necessary, outcome of their theories, which snuck in under Billy Clinton, and went full throttle under Bush the Idiot, and went to warp speed under Obama. (Sorry, the God of the Market is as false as the God of Democracy).
There is a subtle distinction between libertarians and neoliberals. Hayek and Friedman could be either depending on who their audience was. What we’ve had since the 70s is the selective gutting of the New Deal/social democrat administrative state in certain areas (trade, labor rights, financial regulation) but the preservation of the New Deal/social democrat state in most other areas (military, things like HUD and HHS). From the standpoint of the dogmatic libertarian this is still “statist” because we haven’t cut spending by 40% or abolished 5 cabinet-level departments, as Ron Paul and Gary Johnson urged in their presidential campaigns. However,… Read more »
This is where they are wrong. They think “morality and group preference” just spring from economic order. That is exactly backward. Economics is always down stream from culture. The Austrian School was always about ducking the cultural issues by kicking them down the road, much in the same way Marxism kicked the economic policy issue down the road.
From what I recall reading, and please tell me if I’ve missed something that states otherwise, they make no claims to where group preference come from, and they certainly don’t claim that moral order is the result of economic policy. Insofar as the two intersect, they make it abundantly clear economic interests should be subordinated to moral preference (eg. they would argue that, say, a Christian baker should not under any circumstances be compelled to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple if they didn’t want to, which means in this instance the moral order comes before and informs… Read more »
Just about every claim they make is based on morality. Take the “taxation is theft” line.This is morality. The whole freedom of association thing is all based morality. Private property is based on morality. Private property, in their view, originates from people fencing and working to improve the land and the concept of owning yourself and therefor the product of your labor. Most of what they say (and I grant that Libertarianism is mixed up in it) is based on morality. Many of them will come out and say that Libertarianism is the only moral system. Tom Woods, for example… Read more »
I agree with your take. Austrian theorists don’t support “freedom of association” in the normal sense of the term, be it just one’s desire to pick and choose whom he hangs around with or what makes him happy. Rather, they see it purely in economics terms — a businessman should have the right to deny service to anyone he does not want to do business with and so on and so forth. With the Austrian School, it’s still all about money and trading. And now granted, they are economists, so one can argue “Well, what else you expect them to… Read more »
PSA – Culture is downstream from math.
Markets are good for a lot of reasons but social stability is absolutely not one of them. Pretty much every economist from Adam Smith on, including Marx, realized that markets drove innovation and social change. Schumpeter coined the phrase creative destruction to encapsulate the concept.
The Austrians notion of the morality of markets was a mix of a counter to Communisns claim to morality of command economics; a derivation of the enlightenment era progress of history and self delusion.
The Austrians are stuck in the 19th century. It’s like they never got the memo that the gold standard is dead and buried. Hyperinflation is coming any day now…. These same people support nation wrecking ideas like free trade and open borders. They support every evil of libertarianism. Yeah, they got the pricing mechanism and the question of the central bank correct. But try telling people like Shapiro that banks loaded up with printed money shouldn’t be able to buy up the nation’s housing stock to turn us into renters. He actually tweeted how opposing this is taking money out… Read more »
The problem there is that liberal democracy is fundamentally inconsistent with freedom of association; democracy will always vote down free association due to the moral imperative that all voices must participate – sitting out or doing your own thing are immoral under democracy, and will not be tolerated. Also, they are not substitutable. “Freedom of association” is just one principal in a poltical theory, not a complete system like liberal democracy. That’s like saying Hayek prefers a Chevy steering wheel to a Ford F-150 – thats just a tiny part and cannot stand alone. Finally, it is not unfair to… Read more »
I don’t think you can separate Austrians/Freshwater from libertarianism. Also, to be fair, the Austrians do try to separate themselves from the Freshwater (Chicago) stuff. I think the “Chicago School” supports central banking. I think that is the main difference, but I’m not an economist so I don’t know for sure.
Unfortunately, we haven’t had freedom of association for many decades now.
Since 1860, some might say. Some might even say 1781.
I can’t comment on the others, but you have North basically right. In addition, he’d recommend you move as far out into the country as possible, have a reliable blue-collar job and social contacts, and stock up as much guns, ammunition, freeze-dried food, durable goods, gold and silver coins as practicable 😀
As sure as the sun rises in the east, people who cross our moral superiors from Arkansas by way of Chappaqua continue to meet unnatural ends.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/reporter-who-broke-clinton-lynch-tarmac-story-and-received-significant-death-threats
Probably a CIA hit squad. Now that the FBI and CIA (secret police) are part of the ruling cabal.
Arkansas mafia. Bill would never detail such an important task to amateurs.
I guess I still find all Z’s focus on “liberal democracy” baffling. His implication seems to be that if we had a form of government other than liberal democracy, with the same population, then things would be better.
I don’t think any governmental adjustments can improve our current situation much, given our population.
I read Z’s ongoing analysis of liberal democracy as a postmortem. I’m trying to do the same thing. Like Jared Taylor, who I’m told says that his writing is mainly to prove to the robot historians of 2315 that not all White people were utterly insane, so we dissidents have a duty to analyze the failures of the system we find ourselves in, such that future generations hopefully won’t make the same mistakes. Just as the original Constitution would’ve been impossible without the Founders’ deep understanding of guys like Cicero and Machiavelli, who analyzed the fate of the Roman Empire,… Read more »
I’m not sure liberal democracy was ever the plan. It was just kind of “what happened” as one generation after another acted in response to the problems of their day.
True, liberal democracy was not the plan in the sense that “Shaniqua never planned to get pregnant while going going home with strangers from the club.” But if you take a sober-minded view, informed by political philosophy and history, it is clearly the natural result. (FFS, even Plato called this outcome 2500 years ago, how can you claim it was “unintended”???)
I’m convinced the cycle of monarchy , oligarchy , democracy can ever be truly broken. Not until we solve the “men aren’t angels” problem.
Of the 3, democracy (even of the republican variant) seems the most tenuous.
ProZNoV. Democracy, as we witness it here and elsewhere today, is horribly confounded by “universal suffrage”. I’m still not convinced that our Republic would be in the state it now finds itself had it not steadily expanded the franchise.
Our Founding Fathers certainly did not want a king, but an aristocracy, not dictated by birth, seemed just fine.
No, voting is the problem. You will not cure your alcoholism by only having beer.
I agree, and probably Nietzsche would have too. I don’t think he ever comments on America or any politics outside Europe. He was definitely no friend of democracy, even the 19th century European variant. Among many other epithets, he used the term “radical aristocrat.” That might have well described our Founders. In any event, we certainly can’t allow a nation to be ruled by free, White landowner males any more. We must allow women, the freed slaves and (in progress) anyone who slips across the border, to participate! Nietzsche didn’t say this, but hie might have: A great nation (early… Read more »
It does make you wonder if any humans can stick with any decent system. Human nature seems to eventually erode every good plan. The Founding Fathers took a pretty good stab at creating a damn fine system and look where we are. They should have made the racial element of the country more explicit, but they probably didn’t even think that it needed to be said. Why would Whites ever let in non-Whites? But even if they had been explicit about that, who’s to say that it would have lasted. They were very explicit that only land-owning White men could… Read more »
Well if you and Z are right we should have never left the Crown. And we should be bending a knee to QE. The problem all systems have a fly in the ointment and that is mankind. It screws up every political system. Case in point pre-WWi Europe that was still run by aristocrats of various stripes. And what did they do? Blow their collective brains out in a senseless war that ended up destroying all of them. Gutting their gene pool in the process. And what was their dying gasp? To set the state for WWII. Democracy has it’s… Read more »
Far be it for me to speak for our host, but I assume the upshot of it is that our demographic reality can be pinned on the ever-expanding need for our rulers to bribe the voting populace, and that a similar problem is plaguing most of the liberal democracies of the West.
Not at all. I’ve made the point for years that the great chain of causality starts with biology. In fact, I’m the guy who coined the term “great chain of causality”. I’ve written and talked extensively about how the Nordic countries, for example, made socialism work, because they could make anything work.
Liberal democracy is a system that incorporates economics, petty politics, institutions and culture. To a great degree, it is the result of America’s unusual origin as a multicultural, multiethnic and multiracial republic.
The Nordics are rotting as well whether from liberal democracy or socialism, if there is a difference. The feminization of the Nordic mind is even greater than our own. Since their women didn’t have enough drama they are hell bent on importing it.
Nordic success is a fairly recent thing. Swedon was dirt poor in the 19th century. They afforded socialism only by applying the creation of others but now it has run its course. No society can withstand feminization, and socialism is completely natural to the female mind.
James, I have largely lost my distaste for socialism that I acquired as a conservative. It seems that most people want a social safety net, which is socialism, at least on a small scale. What’s the harm?
However, if someone wants to make a case against socialism to me now then the way to do it would be to argue that socialism necessarily entails egalitarianism, feminism and open borders as well. The fascism of the 20th century seems to argue against that, but none of them lasted long enough to know for sure.
Z-man, you lost me on the last sentence : “… America’s unusual origin as a multicultural, multiethnic and multiracial republic.”
How was American in the time of the Revolution (origin), multiracial? Black Slaves aside (who were without import) everyone else was basically White and European. In your great chain of causality: Biology->Race->Ethnicity->Culture->Society…, America *started out* as a White, European nation. Had it stayed that way, we’d not be having this conversation.
Yankee puritan roundheads are not Americans; heck, they may not be human. The colonies were certainly multiethnic and multicultural. By our “second founding” at the birth of the American Empire in 1865, we were certainly multiracial.
The differences (ethnic, cultural) among the people from the European continent was far less than the the differences we find from people of the various continents (races). And that started way after the Revolution. Hell, for that matter, I grew up in the 90% White, ethnic society of the 50’s and it was nothing like what we have now with our multiracial imports. I knew Irish, Greek, Italians, etc.—none of which had significant anti-American bent to them. Yes, there ware different traditions ala culture, but the uniting factor was that they were “White” and the similarities far outweighed the differences.
Liberal democracy is liberal first and foremost. “Democracy” is just the rationalization for the advance of liberalism. You can see this with the lefts’ rejection of any democratically derived setback and their embrace of anti-democratic advancements of their agenda.
You also have to break the conditioning. Showing people how the system is fundamentally flawed is a great counter to “let’s vote harder.” People will continue to seek reform and to vote their way out so long as they continue to think the system is salvageable.
Line: I don’t believe Zman is claiming our current demographics would work with some system other than liberal democracy. Rather, he is explaining how the basic tenets of liberal democracy led us to the cultural degeneracy and suicidal demographics we have today. The basic assumptions about man and markets and culture, from the Enlightenment through the Austrian economists, were all wrong – or at the very least dangerously incomplete. And those assumptions underlay the ‘American system’ of government and economics and allowed – nay – directed said system to devolve into what we have today.
Say what you will about fascism in Italy and Germany, at the least the fusion of state and corporate power were ostensibly to benefit the people. Hitler and Mussolini actually liked their people and culture.
Sure, the elites got more than their fair share of the pie, but the moral code backing the order was about promoting the welfare and independence of the German and Italian people.
The moral code backing our version of fascism is hatred of the founding stock of the United States and European countries.
Well said. In every political system, there is a chance that the elite will cease to identify with the people and betray them. The best way to minimize this possibility is a country with a homogeneous people, including the leadership. Ideally, the country will feel like an extended family.
Say what you want about Hitler and Mussolini, they clearly loved their people.
Hitler and Mussolini never loved anybody. Only the Fascist State.
Hitler was able to parse the difference between Marxism and National Socialism by disdaining the internationalism of the former and promoting the ethnic/racial underpinning of the latter.
In America, the people exist to serve the government. Not the government to serve the people. Which is why they have no problem with importing a new people to serve them.
Instead of the people electing a new government, the government elected a new people.
Maybe Franco of Spain and Pinochet of Chile are better examples who risked destroying their counties to save them?
They clearly had no territorial ambitions.
True. Hitler and Mussolini may have loved their people, but they also had desires that turned out awful for those people.
Z-man,
Typo concern; “vice” should be “vise”.
Plenty of vice involved in the creation & operation of the vise, though, so there’s that…
Great post, good comments. Thanks.
aka New Homes for New Americans
Keep them borders open, Kamala
And we’ll keep the neoEconomy alive
Another excellent article.
Slowly but surely the curtain is being pulled back on liberal democracy.
Dammit
Reading the article now, perfect tie-in with Taki’s
Dagnabit, Zman, you’re the embodiment of plateau evolution
Reaching new heights here
He wrote two different great articles on the same subject. Not to butter him up, (what’s an Internet compliment worth after all) but as I was reading them I wondered how he pulled it off.
Current-day economists working in this tradition are referred to as Austrian economists and their arguments came to dominate in the West, particularly in America. Really? Weren’t and aren’t the Keynesians the most significant group of economists in the West? The Austrians are a small, relatively unknown, sect of heterodox academics with little influence on economic policy. In fact, in the line of economists seeking attention they have been passed by the Modern Monetary Theory chartalists, whose ideas about money directly coincide with the current multi-trillion dollar enpixelation explosion. The foremost Austrians, Menger, von Mises, Rothbard and even Hayek are non-entities… Read more »
Excellent. That’s why they can barge forward from win to win- the “planning” was never for the result, but to prestage the response.
Excuse me, for the *stated* result
I’d guess he’s referring to Milton Friedman. Don’t know enough to say how much he owed to the Austrians.
Friedman’s monetarism is only one aspect that is subsumed within the Austrain school (though I believe the nomenklatura have evolved it into neoMonetarism at this point?). Claiming to distance Chicago from Austrian is like trying to cleave Trotskyism from Leninism: outside of esoteric mumblings in the politburo (or academe), to the people actually experiencing the results of these theories, they’re the same.
All those systems are examples of “take what you want, leave what you don’t”. Keynes is a great example where they took his “Spend when you got it, save when you don’t” and only ever did the first part whether they had it or not. Those systems are flawed to begin with, but the resulting caricatures are even more flawed.
RE: US educational system I was gonna’ say a Duroc hog with lip stick, but high heels and fishnet stockings works.
Yeah I don’t get it either. I can understand using AE as a illustrative device but I don’t see where it actually fits in with our situation.
Still ain’t got to today’s yet, so I may be speaking too early, but-
Remember the weirdness at the advent of the Nuclear Age? Desk-diving, backyard bunkers, Cadillacs with shark fins?
I think we’re seeing the entry into the Biowarfare Age. We can expect one unexpected thing that will make it somewhat predictable, and in the same vein as the Oil or Nuclear ages:
Some right rat-bastards are going to try to make sh*t-tons of money offa this.
I think you’re right. I fear a future where virtually any small group can tailor a virus to do whatever it likes. Say, kill of as many of an unwanted genotype (family, claim, ethnic group) as they like. If mRNA jabs can be created to fight a virus, they can equally be created to produce any number of other effects, some possibly disastrous. Right now, these powers are fairly specialized. But as technology improves, costs become cheaper. Many of these things are probably already within technological reach. I cringe at what will be available in ten or twenty years. Much… Read more »
You would think that “two-hundred year lifespans, enough food to eat, endless leisure and world peace” would take away the incentive to create such viruses. Unfortunately, evil transcends material well being.
Ben – One of the early TEOTWAKI fiction works I read from Kindle Unlimited (cannot recall title or author) entailed just such a genetically tailored virus. In this book, the Israelis intended the virus to target the Arabs but, due to failure to adequately account for their genetic similarity to Jews, ended up killing off their own people as well.
I’m evil; I laughed. I’m going to have to go back and figure out which book that was.
Dan Simmons ran with that concept in “Illium” and “Olympos”. His “Flashback” novel is also worth a read.
One the one hand: “They had no economic platform from which to work, just gobs of Marxist theory”.
On the other hand: “The trouble with Austrian School economics is it also striped morality and group preference from public debate”.
Trying to make some sense of it all, but I can see it makes no sense at all, clowns to the left of me, jokers the the right – here I am stuck in the middle again.
Great essay BTW
“Markets” are a marketing brand, nothing more. We haven’t had Markets since the 2006 ARM reset, if we ever had Markets.
Price discovery would destroy the dollar and USTs, so no we won’t be doing markets. We will do marketing.
Standing O! “Mark-to-market”, hahahaha
Just chiming in to say the previous Taki’s post is the finest precis of modern economics and society ever written.
It’s a goshdam tour-de-force.
Will be interesting to see the reaction of the Taki post by the folks over a Lee Rockwell.com. A libertarian-archo-tyranny partly of the Austrian making.
If you ever hear an interview with Lew, he’s the type of guy he really thinks the world is currently run by satanic pedophiles. I mean he’s not wrong in that part.
He’s in a different league that the bow-tied poseurs that most of Libertarianism is composed of.
Oops, current, so solly
Great taki post for this take of the century alone…
“… elites can remain irrational longer than you can remain alive.”
Years ago I followed Tom Woods and his Libertarian podcast. Out of curiosity I checked out his website just now–he has rebranded as a Liberty podcast. Probably the same stupid shit.
The Friday Z-cast pretty much handed NeoLibertarianism its own ass, for sure. We paleo-libertarians were heard cheering in the background.
Woods has a lot of good views. He is a unapologetic advocate of free association, up to and including covenants, ending fiat money, and traditional morality. He’s also well aware of the problems of race, but it’s far too edgy for his niche. The problem is, he also doesn’t believe in regulating vices like pornography, is against federal influence in the private sector, and the discourses he’s not willing discuss are the only discourses that matter now. He would have been largely a great voice for our interests in the 1950’s. Now, the ship has sailed, and it’s all about… Read more »
To be fair to Woods, when it comes to certain vices, there really is no substitute for self-regulation. There were tons of laws on the books until recently about public obscenity, prostitution, homosexuality and the rest. First they went unenforced, then they were mostly repealed. If their enforcement could have worked, surely we’d have seen that by now. Cf. The war on drugs for additional analysis.
The purpose of the laws were not to eradicate them, but to force them into seedier areas where they could not bother normal people as easily.
Re Taki Mag article; I’ve been saying universal government is the replacement for the sorely missed it seems Universal (Catholic) Church for awhile now.
One Holier than thou, violently apostolic, universal government.
“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,… Read more »
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.
Not that it matters, but the corporations are not actually in the progressive looney camp. They are making the smart play that the marxist left will give them a pass, as will the spineless RINO right on libertarian and bribery grounds. Looks like they are threading that needle pretty well. At least until the new left takes over and there is no one left to defend them. Sucks for us all.
Nah, they truly believe. And since the people at the top of these corporations have rarely dealt with privation, they’re even more susceptible to the false promises.
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.
Softly, softly, catchee monkey
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.
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… Read more »
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.
It’s frustrating just to wait, but your other options are to participate in something illegitimate (i.e. voting) and thereby give the system a patina of legitimacy, or take action against the system while it’s powerful, get your ass destroyed, and give the system further justification for clamping down after they use your isolated attempt as evidence that there’s a massive boogeyman army out there that needs to be combated. They’ll be dining off that James Fields kid for years. Right now I’m looking forward to Nancy Pelosi dying of old age, hoping her lungs fill with fluid on her deathbed… Read more »
This was a debate within Marxists circles in the early 20th century. One camp wanted to engage in formal politics, while the other camp wanted to remain outside of it. It is an age old debate, it seems. Sam Francis noted this with the Buckley-ites. Once you engage in formal politics, you legitimize it.
It was a debate within the völkish circles that Mustache Guy ran with (remember, kids, there were a lot of parties and movements besides the NSDAP from 1918-1933.) Mustache Guy originally wanted a Bolshevik/Mussolini style seizure of power, which is exactly what the Munich Putsch of November 1923 was. Only afterwards did he switch tactics to the legal, electoral method that did succeed, but he always made sure that his party stalwarts understood that this never meant legitimizing Wiemar democracy, only that it was to be used as a tool to ultimately destroy it.
Joey Junger: Minor quibble – I want Pelosi’s multiple face lifts to come undone – for her face to essentially ‘melt’ in public. What matters most to her (besides power and publicity) is vanity, so that’s what I want to see targeted. Then she can die of fluid-filled lungs. On a more serious note, you are correct. The old guard (primarily White and small hats with a smattering of POX grifters) thinks they have the new brigade under control for now. But wait 5-10 years, as things continually decay in Numerica, and see who ends up running things. I think… Read more »
Joey/3g4me, you both seem to think death is a punishment—and the worse one at that. Death comes to everyone. Be more imaginative. As with Hillary, find what they desire most, then wish them to experience it taken away. For Hillary, it was her lifetime obsession to be President. Now she sits a bitter old shrew wondering what happened—and it may get even better if Harris succeeds Biden.
Compsci, the desire to see Pelosi suffer and die isn’t necessarily to inflict maximum pain on her so much as to provide maximum pleasure to the rest of us.
3g4me, I’d love to see her face melt like that Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
is it possible that COVID was our “1905” with that being a dry run for the far left?
The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Accelerationist.
Great. Plan on how to tear sh*t up so the lowly white people will fix it. That’s the High IQ for ya.
I’ve been saying for awhile that our rulers are at the height of their power right now. They’ve inherited still functioning institutions with legacy workers who make the systems work. The military, the FBI, intelligence agencies, local law enforcement, they’re all still mostly staffed by non-insane, competent Whites. But this will change bit by bit over the next decade or so. As Z noted in his Sunday show, some police forces are already feeling the pinch as officer retire or quit. A similar process will happen across institutions as differing speeds. Competent Whites will retire or find other, less groveling… Read more »
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.
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.
I love the smell of irony in the morning.
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.
They’re planning on being bailed out, that’s why they’re over-leveraging.
******
(Credit for this goes to Drinky McSipSip, rebutting the Littlest Chickenhawk’s twitter- I dun stole it)
Yup, they’re planning on being bailed out, and so are
deliberately overleveraging.
Same exact formula as the subprime mortgage fiasco a decade back. The banks were all too happy to make bad loans, knowing the politicians who were encouraging them would send the bill to the taxpayers.
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.
Maybe there is. Mortgages- our houses will become our 401ks, as they were until 2008. Follow the big fish. The trend is your friend. If the rest of our overpopulating world depends on America-the-Shopping-Mall to keep their suffocating economies going, then even our fake money retains its position. It’s simply changed in the ‘value’ it represents- future cash flows, instead of past sunk costs. I’m getting a small mortgage to pay off in the next year, to buy Dad’s house in Dallas for a brother. Family ownership is what Patel does- they get loans from their relatives already here, and… Read more »
Absolutely no way these REITS can run 10% return on SFR. Between vacancy rates and cap expenditures from tenant turnover, the investment might best case run 5% which keeps up with inflation. Granted, if you have annual inflation of 10% in housing prices then you can pump up your returns for a few years but the next downturn in the economy will puncture that bubble PDQ. Even counting on a FED bailout, this entry of wall st into main st real estate is going to end horribly, 2008 on steroids.
The solution is they just sold us the rope. When the time comes, the new right will force the exproproation of all corporation-owned housing and returning it to our people. They’ll get their vig in eminent domain payout, beating inflation as they intend, so they will protest too much and then go along. That, or we’re going to have squatters and foreclosure skirmishes like the great depression again.
I can’t help but wonder if the homes purchased by Blackrock will be given to blacks as some kind of reparations funded by taxpaying citizens.
Now, Wolf, you’re scaring me
Squatemalan Renters Matter
Not likely. Reparations that don’t directly and explicitly injure innocent white people won’t satisfy our masters’ need for self-expression. You will hand-deliver cash to the Obamas, who’ll reject it for being stinky. Then the National Guard will kill you for trespassing.
What Blackrock will do is make sure that your neighbor’s not your friend. Preparation.
Mr. Black and Mr. Rock arent out buying up homes at FU prices. Its just moar capital thrust into the hands of super smart finance guys running their regional shops like good smart capitalists do. The right seems to fixate on boogymen almost as bad as the left when the problem involves reflecting upon ones own participation in the charade. There are many tentacles indeed. Ten years ago I was outbid on auction, foreclosed, piece of shit condos and homes repeatedly by all-cash super smart and savvy private investors who were buying to flip and/or paint-n-carpet then rent SFR. Then… Read more »
I agree that the house flipping thing has been going on for a long time. They have had cable TV shows about it for years. While it may be legal and make perfect financial sense for individual investors it has no doubt harmed young families looking for their first starter home.
Now we have corporations who are no doubt acting as fronts for Uncle Sam, using unlimited funds to sieze control of YTs last remaining stronghold, the suburbs.
The difference is that Millenials are now trying to buy homes and start families, and it is impossible out there. Same as boomers and schools in the 80’s-90’s, there is a wellspring of socio-political power for whomever will step in and say “i’ll give you the homes (schools) you want if you give me power.” Itll be a good opportunity for our people in 5 years or so.
I didn’t play the game.
Tard confirmed.
And the rent will still be due. You won’t be on Section 8.
aka New Homes for New Americans
Keep them borders open, Kamala
And the Blackrock Ed will keep the neoEconomy alive
Dang. It!!
Blackrock Fed
Same tribe as the Fed owners, by the way
Well, if the “property developers” paid Nero to burn his slums and build Neropolis, I’d say at least they’re predictable in their self interest
Of course, that “burn the Christians as living torches or feed them to the lions” during the Arena thing was kinda bad
But guess who were the animal trainers, animal traders, stall renters, and odds makers
Predictable