[108310] in Cypherpunks
Re: H-WEB: N Chomsky on Hayek & 'inevitable' Dictatorship
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Burnes - Denver)
Thu Feb 11 20:57:58 1999
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 18:41:36 -0700 (MST)
From: Jim Burnes - Denver <jim.burnes@ssds.com>
To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <v04020a1cb2e8e932771d@[139.167.130.246]>
Reply-To: Jim Burnes - Denver <jim.burnes@ssds.com>
On Thu, 11 Feb 1999, Robert Hettinga wrote:
> >From the Chomksy Forum:
>
> "You ask about my reaction to Hayek's assertion "that collective governments
> designed originally to even out conditions in society lead, inevitably, to
etc etc
Further reinforcing my view, contrary to the apologists opinions that
Chomsky is an anarchist, that he is simply a mainstream socialist, and
full of hot air to boot.
For all his intricate verbiage, his arguments against Hayek simply
come down to "Oh Yeah! And so is your mother!" (I will give him
a little leeway. Claiming that governments that were designed to
redistribute wealth leads to dictatorship was a mistake on Hayek's
part. They are already there.)
Its really shocking that most of his arguments are either ad-hominem or
appeal to authority.
> The second part is radically ahistorical. Ideas of "spontaneous
> coordination," etc., were abandoned a century ago, because it was clear that
> they were leading to complete disaster.
Oh dear. Is Chomsky still employed at MIT? Maybe he should call Mitch
Resnick, author of "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams". Or have him call
Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Laureate in Physics for his groundbreaking work in
spontaneous order at thermodynaic bifurcation points. Spontaneous order is a
fundamental property of the universe. Next Chomsky is going to claim to
be a Creationist. (ahistorical -- gotta love that ;-) Command economies
indeed! Maybe he believes god created the universe through a "command
universe".
>That's the background for the
> abandonment of a (brief) experiment withlaissez-faire in England, and for the
> "corporatization of America" that took place under business initiative in the
> latter part of the 19th century in reaction to massive market failures
> (similar developments took place elsewhere, for similar reasons). The shift
> from some sort of "proprietary capitalism" to administered markets is familiar
> to all economic historians. Since then, ideas of the kind you mention are the
> province of ideologues,
I think that was an ad-hominem.
> experiment, since we are working in areas of very great ignorance. Historical
> experience, for the little that it is worth, is that "command economies" have
> been quite successful, by and large. Take recent US history. The depression
> of the '30s convinced any last holdouts that anything resembling "capitalism"
> was impossible.
Thats the problem. After 1913 all we had was something that "resembled"
capitalism. And an unreasonable facsimile at that. No matter. The
reason that some "command economies" worked and some didn't is because
pseudo-capitalist systems like the US and other Western countries allowed
the little people to play in their capitalist sandboxes until they became
successful. They were litteraly laboring under the delusion that they
were free and could own things. When they became successful they found
something quite the contrary. Their assets were owned ultimately by the
state, but it was too late because you had already created wealth for the
state. The more you tried to free yourself from the state juggenaut, the
more it became apparent that you were chattle. Owned completely by the
state. If you ever try to leave the US because you don't like way they
"re-allocate" your assets, you will learn that you must buy your way out.
If you ever want to rescind your US citizenship, and they think its
because your don't wan't to be a tax slave, you will owe them the amount
of taxes you would have payed had you lived there. Essentially buying
your way out of indentured servitutude -- the future value of the balance
of your life. Galley slaves for the ship of state.
> It's well known that the New
>Deal had little impact, but the
> war did. Large-scale coordination and control by the state (implemented by
> the corporate executives who flocked to Washington to manipulate the levers of
> power) led to a real economic miracle, not only overcoming the depression, but
> more than tripling US industrial production and laying the basis for the
> state-capitalist regime of the postwar period, relying very heavily on state
> intervention to socialize costs and risk.
I always worry about "academics" who believe in "miracles". There was
nothing mystical about wartime inflation. Thanks to the Fed it was
possible to create vast quantites of fiat money to grease the wheels of an
economy nearly destroyed by dangerous experiments in central banking.
> Same was true in England, an enormous economic success during the war.
These were not complete "command > economies" (nothing ever is), but they
had a substantial measure of state > coordination and control, and were
remarkably efficient. Should we like them? > Surely not. Nor should we
fall in love with the Stalinist or Nazi models, > both of them significant
economic successes by comparative standards. Or the > Japanese model.
Japan had the world's highest growth rate from mid-19th > century to the
1990s, but hardly in a pretty society (it had some of the worst >
inequality of the world during the period of its great pre-WWII expansion,
for > example). > > The Austrian/Chicago schools had nothing to do with
the dismantling of Bretton > Woods. That had other causes (there's good
literature on this, if you are > interested -- including quite mainstream
economics). But it's true that the > ideologies were invoked later to
"justify" what was being done for other > reasons. Bear in mind, however,
that no one even close to power (in > government, corporations, etc.) has
> any use for these ideologies.
Of course not. Austrian economics despises the fiat currencies which are
the bullwark of power in this century. Certainly they had no use for
them. State initiated slavery through the debasement of a people's money
is the most despicable and insidious form of slavery -- and I find it
really distressing that Chomsky misses this point. One of Chomsky's
theories, and one I admire very much, is that politicians saying one thing
and doing another is the equivalent of beating people over the head in a
dictatorship. If that is the case, then debasing their currency is
certainly the most obscene form of enslavement. It arbitrarily alters the
value of a man's labor and is the tool for those who would create wealth
for their friends by defrauding the ignorant. Creating the ultimate
ossification of society into a modern serfdom. Those that are priveledged
to create money and those that are not.
> They are
> weapons to wield against the powerless.
The weapons wielded against the powerless are the bankrupt idealogies of
class warfare. Only by reinforcing diffferences between people and then
claiming to care for these people can power mongers solidify their base.
>That's not to deny, incidentally, that
> one can learn from Chicago school economics, or even that one should disregard
> their proposals (for example, Friedman's ideas about negative income tax might
> have merit). And Hayek is worth reading too, despite the irrationality. On
> "pathological," I think I used the term in reference to the principles
> articulated by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan: that every "any person's ideal
> situation is... mastery over a world of slaves."
Another appeal-to-authority. So lets not pick an ideal. There is no
utopia. Just let people cooperate voluntarily. Anything else amounts to
forcing people into your mold -- your ideal. And that is where the world
of slaves begins.
> What I wrote is that Adam
> Smith would have regarded this as "pathological"; rightly. The ideological
> institutionswouldn't discuss this; even they'd recognize it as pathological,
> not for the ears of the public. But less nutty ideas that are prevalent, as
> ideological weapons, are also pathological, in my view. Value judgments
> aside, on intellectual grounds they are a disgrace, and would not be tolerated
> in domains that have any intellectual standards.
>
Name calling. (nutty, disgrace, etc) Of course all this talk of things
being "pathalogical" is just so much pseudo-psychological banter. Rather
like calling people who think much differently than you "mentally ill".
Shades of Soviet gulags filled with the "mentally ill" come to mind.
Its really a pity that Chomsky has come to this. His theories
on linguistics are groundreaking. Back during the Reagan and Bush
administration he pointed to much dirty dealing by them. It was
in this environment that I learned about Khun Sa, CIA sponsored
drug trafficking in Burma, Dick Armitage and other shady characters.
Pull it out, Noam.
jim
