Tag: Leviathan

The Immortal Corporation, Part I

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The Immortal Corporation is the title of the second chapter of Kevin D. Williamson’s new book, The End is Near and It’s Going to be Awesome, and that chapter is about, not corporations, but government.  It has been said that “Governments presumably will exist forever. People do not.”

Yes indeed, governments will presumably exist forever.  Just not the same ones.  But governments can last, unless they are very, very bad, for a very, very long time.

I ran across this image at Gerard Van der Leun’s American Digest:

photo thelines.jpg
The asterisk denotes that some classical liberals did support public funding of education (like Thomas Jefferson) while others (like Frederick Bastiat) did not.  Following the link trail, I discovered that the original poster accompanied it with a quote from F.A. Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom, from his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” (PDF):

Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments.

And the evidence largely supports this.

And I would be fine with that, seeing as I’m not a conservative either, but I am a minarchist and I am not at all pleased with the direction of the path that we’re being dragged down and which is illustrated in that image above.  Rev. Donald Sensing wrote several years ago,

Big government is itself apolitical. It cares not whose party is in power. It simply continues to grow. Its nourishment is the people’s money. Its excrement is more and more regulations and laws. Like the Terminator, “that’s what it does, that’s all it does.”

And we’re seeing more and more evidence of the metastasizing growth of Big Government every day—NSA snooping into our telephone records, use of surveillance drones over American soil, Radley Balko’s coverage of the explosive growth of SWAT team raids (Seriously? The Department of Education has a SWAT team?), IRS harassment of “TEA Party” groups, and now a massive “Federal Data Hub” being implemented to go along with Obamacare, just for a short list.

That joke about ordering a pizza for delivery is no longer so goddamned funny.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33CIVjvYyEk?rel=0]
Or so farfetched.

None of this began with the present administration—far from it—but the pace does seem to be accelerating exponentially.

On the topic of corporations, Kevin Williamson writes:

Twenty-first-century corporations are more like temporary associations of people and capital lucky to survive for a few decades, and, if present trends continue, the future corporation will be an even more ad hoc tissue of tenuous short-term relationships.

—

Given the power of branding and the impressive headquarters that corporations still sometimes inhabit, and American presidents’ habit of picking corporate executives for influential positions, it is easy to mistake familiar corporations for enduring, deeply structured enterprises.  The illusion of permanence that led to the building of the Chrysler Building is for the most part a thing of the past—which is why there are multibillion-dollar corporations that work out of rented space.

—

The corporate lifetime is shortening becaue the pace of social learning is accelerating.  More complex economic entities develop adaptive strategies more quickly.  We recognize our economic mistakes more quickly and develop alternatives in great number and at high speed.  Understood properly, bankruptcy and business failure are pedagogical tools: They are an important part of how individuals, businesses, and industries learn—and the global marketplace is an exercise in social learning.

Strange thing:  Nobody ever stopped to ask, “If there is no U.S. Steel, then where will we get steel?”

—

It seems paradoxical, but failure is what makes us rich.  (And we are, even in these troubled times, fabulously rich.) We’d all be a lot worse off if corporations such as U.S. Steel did in fact live forever.  Obvious counterexamples include Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service, two institutions that would have failed long ago if not for government support—subsidies for Amtrak, the government-chartered monopoly on letter delivery for the postal service.  The cost of their corporate immortality is not only the waste associated with maintaining them, but the fact that their continued existence prevents the emergence of superior alternatives.  No death, no evolution.  A political establishment is a near-deathless thing:  Even after the bitter campaign of 2012, voters returned essentially the same cast of characters to Washington, virtually ensuring the continuation of the policies with which some 90 percent of voters pronounced themselves dissatisfied.

And now Detroit is trying to file for bankruptcy, but is being told by another entity of government that it can’t.

Williamson again:

In politics there is very little reason to grow less wrong, and sometimes good reason to grow more wrong. In aggregate, this leads to destructive policy choices. This is a structural defect inherent in the political model of decision making. Substituting one political philosophy for another will not eliminate the underlying problem. The problem of politics is, for the most part, not that politics is full of bad people or stupid people; the shocking truth is that politics is full of intelligent, well-meaning people. Often they do things the know are not the best or smartest move, and usually it is in the belief that by tolerating smaller wrongs they may serve a greater good. When this produces an outcome the public likes, that is called compromise; otherwise it is called hypocrisy, but it is difficult to tell the difference at the margins, and the shamefacedness with which politicians sometimes go about such business is probably a good sign.

—

Politics suffers from an insurmountable information deficit, resulting in an inability to plan. It suffers from problems associated with the self-interest of politicians and political institutions. Both of these are made much more acute by the fact that politics has for centuries successfully insulated itself from competitive and innovative forces that produce gradual (and sometimes radical) evolutionary change in other social institutions. Each of these problems is a direct consequence of the fact that politics is, as noted, a monopoly.

But a monopoly on what?

I’ll let Bethesda, Maryland resident Ernest McGill answer that question.  From a letter he submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine (rejected), and the American Medical Association (ditto):

The monopoly on the exercise of armed force, separated from simple gun ownership, defines sovereignty. Government is the administrative apparatus of sovereignty.

Or as Kevin Williamson puts it, “Politics is Violence,” and therefore government is a monopoly on violence.  It’s called legitimate violence, but a monopoly nonetheless.

Now that expansion in SWAT raids seems a little more logical, doesn’t it?

(To be continued….)

Faith in Government

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I have this T-shirt, I got it recently, that says:

FAITH in GOVERNMENT
Defies Both
HISTORY and REASON
But that’s not the Quote of the Day.  This is:

The administration has admitted to spying on everybody, including the press; collecting every bit of communications and personal data it can, including credit ratings, purchases, and browsing history. Nowhere have they said Congress is exempt. Verizon was the first phone company where it was admitted that everything they touch goes to the NSA. Upon taking office, every member of the House and Senate is handed a Blackberry to do everything on. Who has the contract for the Congressional Blackberries? Verizon.

Since this started in 2009, one has to assume that every member of Congress regardless of party has been compromised, or has family that has been compromised; and is being blackmailed, extorted, or bribed in some form or combination, and is under the control of the administration. This explanation is the Occam’s Razor for why the Congress, the Republican Caucus in particular, has been so passive and refused to fight back against Obama.

There are implications for the future of the country.

Indeed there are.  And they’re not pretty.

I’m most of the way through reading the book Why Nations Fail. The overarching theme, it seems to me, is the same one put forth by Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell, among others – human nature doesn’t change. Added to that is Robert Heinlein’s observation:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Prosperity – a good marker for societal success – follows liberty.  Though it is far from the sole condition necessary for prosperity, liberty is an essential condition.  But liberty is quite rare, difficult to win, and apparently impossible to maintain for extended periods.  In contrast to the Declaration of Independence, throughout history governments have been instituted among men almost exclusively not to secure the rights endowed upon them by their creators, but instead to secure the power and privilege of the powerful and privileged.  Because human nature is what it is, who it is that has power and privilege may change over time, but the function of government remains, with few exceptions, to protect that power and privilege – regardless of who holds it.

Liberty endangers the power and privilege of those currently holding it.  The authors of Why Nations Fail point out repeatedly that governments – again, almost without exception – tend to do whatever they can to prevent economic “creative destruction,” because with it comes shifts in who holds economic, and thus political power.

Liberty is dangerous, and it is most dangerous to the powerful and privileged.  I am once again reminded of something I’ve quoted repeatedly from a post by blogger Ironbear several years ago:

It would be a mistake to paint the conflict exclusively in terms of “cultural war,” or Democrats vs Republicans, or even Left vs Right. Neither Democrats/Leftists or Republicans shy away from statism… the arguments there are merely over degree of statism, uses to which statism will be put – and over who’ll hold the reins. It’s the thought that they may not be left in a position to hold the reins that drives the Democrat-Left stark raving.

—

This is a conflict of ideologies…

The heart of the conflict is between those to whom personal liberty is important, and those to whom liberty is not only inconsequential, but to whom personal liberty is a deadly threat.

At the moment, that contingent is embodied most virulently by the “American” Left. This is the movement that still sees the enslavement and “re-education” of hundreds of thousands in South Vietnam, and the bones of millions used as fertilizer in Cambodia as a victory. This is the movement that sees suicide bombers as Minute Men, and sees the removal of a brutal murder and rape machine from power as totalitarianism. This is the movement that sees legitimately losing an election as the imposition of a police state. This is the movement that believes in seizing private property as “common good”. That celebrates Che Guevara as a hero. The movement who’s highest representatives talk blithely about taking away your money and limiting your access to your own homestead for your own good. The movement of disarmament.

The movement of the boot across the throat.

Think about it. When was the last time that you were able to engage in anything that resembled a discussion with someone of the Leftist persuasion? Were able to have an argument that was based on the premise that one of you was wrong, rather than being painted as Evil just because you disagreed?

The Left has painted itself into a rhetorical and logical corner, and unfortunately, they have no logic that might act as a paint thinner. It’s not possible for them to compromise with those that they’ve managed to conflate with the most venal of malevolence, with those whom they’re convinced disagree not because of different opinions but because of stupidity and evil, with those who’s core values are diametrically opposed to what the Left has embraced. There can be no real discourse, no real discussion. There’s no common ground. There can be no reconciliation there – the Left has nothing to offer that any adherent of freedom wants. The only way they can achieve their venue is from a position of political ascendancy where it can be imposed by force or inveigled by guile.

And all adherents of freedom have far too many decades of historical precedent demonstrating exactly where that Leftward road leads – to the ovens of Dachau.

But it’s not just the Left. BOTH sides currently in power are threatened by personal liberty. Creative destruction threatens them. The Left calls itself “progressive,” but as was noted a while back, they’re not – they’re the very definition of conservative, because they’re trying to conserve their power and privilege. They do that by building a class dependent upon government, a class that will keep reelecting them to ensure their gravy train doesn’t stop.  The only thing they want to change is the size of that dependent class to further guarantee their power and privilege.  And the GOP?  They want to conserve their power, too, but they’ve earned the sobriquet of “the Stupid Party.”

Steven Den Beste wrote an excellent essay on the topic back in 2002, Liberal Conservatism, in which he put it this way:

I am a humanist. I am a liberal, in the classic sense of the term, meaning that I think that the goal of a political system should be to liberate the individuals within it to have as much ability to make decisions about their own lives as is practical, with as little interference by other citizens or the mechanisms of the state. I strongly believe in diversity at every level: diversity of opinions, diversity of political beliefs, diversity of lifestyles. When in doubt, permit it unless it is clearly a danger to the survival of the state or threatens the health and wellbeing of those within the state.

Which, in 2003 in the United States, makes me a “conservative”, at least in the reckoning of self-anointed “Liberals” in this nation.

But what it really makes him is a libertarian.

What threatens the power of the established classes?

Personal liberty.  Private property.  Rule of law.  The things the Constitution was originally written to defend.  Why?  Because these things mean change, change that cannot be controlled, and change threatens the status quo.

Rand Paul frightens the hell out of both sides.  So does the Tea Party.

Perennial gadfly Markadelphia has, in repeated comments here, decried the fact that more and more of the wealth of this nation is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.  He is right to notice that and raise objection.  However, his “solution” is to use government force to take that wealth (“make the rich pay their fair share”) and redistribute it according to, I suppose, some wise plan conceived by our betters in Washington.  Markadelphia has an overweening faith in government.

What that concentration of wealth indicates to people like me, on the other hand, is what is known as “regulatory capture” and “crony capitalism.”  Government is seen by us as unlikely to be a solution, because it is part of the problem.  In point of fact, people like me don’t see “solutions” – we see trade-offs.  Whatever we do will have consequences over and above what might have been intended.  We recognize that fact, and are concerned with minimizing such consequences.  The Left seems oblivious to negative outcomes.  Intention it seems, is more important than result.

For our skepticism, we are accused of “hating the government,” and being “insurrectionists.”  I’ve been up front ever since I started this blog that if I thought a revolution would fix anything I’d be on the front lines pulling a trigger.  But I, like the majority of people on my side of the fence, understand that Ambrose Bierce was right:

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

The authors of Why Nations Fail illustrate this truism repeatedly.  The number of times in recorded history where revolution has resulted in an improvement in conditions for the common man can be counted on one hand with fingers left over.  We don’t have guns so we can revolt against the government, we have guns to make the government think twice about what it can do to us.  Robert Averech put it well:

Liberty is too messy, too chaotic for the forces of the Democrat party. They yearn for conformity, for a uniform sameness that gives the illusion of a serenely content society. That’s why they want to get rid of cars and shove us all into railroad cars. Socialists just love cattle cars; they just relabel them high-speed rail.

That’s why Democrats want to get rid of the Second Amendment. An armed citizenry can resist an unjust government.

Not revolution, what we want is a restoration of government to its original mandate – the protection of the rights of individuals.  The problem is, over two-and-a-quarter centuries of entropy has made the majority of the population of this nation unwilling, if not unable to accept that the government shouldn’t stand in loco parentis.

Take, for example, this Facebook post I came across the other day:

NEW MEME I’M WORKING ON
Here’s the first draft. Interested in feedback for revisions, additions or deletions:

*****

ENTITLEMENT:
We, the human beings on Plant Earth are endowed with certain inalienable rights. We receive these from our Creator and/or the intrinsic sense of justice that dwells in all people of good conscience.

We are entitled to:
• Freedom of Speech
• Freedom of Worship and the Freedom from Worship
• Freedom from Want
• Freedom from Fear
• Access to Health Care
• Clean Air
• Clean Water
• Freedom from Economic and Sexual Exploitation
• Justice and Transparency in Financial Transactions
• A Living Wage
• Democratic Governance; Free and Fair Elections
• Equal Justice, Due Process, and the Rule of Law
• Public Education
• Public Libraries
• Public Parks
• Public Roadways
• Collective Bargaining
• Just Distribution of the Tax Burdens of Individuals and Corporations

I’ve already taken on the “freedom from fear” meme, but I could make a career out of fisking this list.  Hell, the nine posts on the left sidebar under the banner The “Rights” Discussion do a pretty good job of demolishing it, but there are a LOT of people out there who would read this list and nod their heads sagely headbang while throwing up “hang loose” and peace sign hand gestures.

Here’s the author’s profile picture:

photo 1045116_601199539911755_1899370960_n.jpg
Yup, another unreformed 60’s hippie. According to his “about me” page, he taught English as a Second Language from 1981 through 2007, he currently lives in Washington, D.C. and he is an “Aggressive Progressive.” Quelle surprise!  Gee, I wonder if he’s read Paulo Friere’s Critical Pedagogy.

This is, quite literally, what we’re up against.  People like this are every bit as activist as NRA members, and I’d venture to guess there are MORE of them (since they have infested the public school systems and taught our kids for decades), albeit less focused or organized. Or rational.

A while back, Oren Litwin, aka “Critical Mastiff” when he comments here, said this:

If the non-socialist end of the political spectrum cannot create a political philosophy that is both good theory and emotionally appealing, we’re doomed.

Any political philosophy that is not self-reinforcing is by definition not the best political philosophy. Libertarianism (with a small “l”) features a stoic acceptance of individual risk (i.e. the lack of government intervention) for the sake of long-term freedom and prosperity–yet takes no measures to ensure that the society educates its young to maintain that acceptance of risk. The equilibrium, if it ever exists in the first place, is unstable and will collapse.

This aside from the fact that libertarianism is emotionally cold and unfulfilling to most people, who have not trained themselves to consider lack of outside restraint to be worth cherishing.

Bill Whittle has described the Left’s “emotionally appealing” political philosophy thus:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5HT64S_wJY?rel=0]
I think he’s on to something there.  But what about a good “emotionally appealing” alternative?  Orin says Libertarianism is “cold and unfulfilling to most people,” (or downright frightening some), but that’s a marketing thing, I think.  Bill Whittle has something to say on that subject, too.  Here’s the first part:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okF-UPzUvrQ?rel=0]
I have a major quibble with Bill on this, though.  “Leave Me Alone” is not the position of the Republican Party.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans are shot through with people who very much DO want to tell people what to do.  It seems that wanting to tell people what to do is a primary requirement for wanting to run for public office.  “Leave Me Alone” is a libertarian position.  Heinlein wrote in his 1966 Hugo and Nebula winning novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up.

Andrew Klavan just the other day echoed the thought:

If I could reach into the heart of humankind and pluck one flaw from its unknowable depths, it would be our seemingly irresistible desire to tell one another what to do.

It seems the only response to that deep yearning, that seemingly irresistible desire, is to try to do something about limiting their ability to act on  it.  Heinlein also wrote in Mistress:

It may not be possible to do away with government — sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive — and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?

Now there’s a thought!

On to the second leg of the Libertarian tripod, “It’s Your Stuff”:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur2ewO9B2FM?rel=0]
If you don’t believe that “six or seven out of ten” college students self-identify as socialists, consider the fact that a 2002 Columbia Law poll found

Almost two-thirds of Americans think Karl Marx’s maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” was or could have been written by the framers and included in the Constitution

That’s right in the middle between six and seven out of ten for the math impaired.

Seems like things haven’t changed much in the last decade.

On to part three – “Don’t be a Jerk”:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX8ZGSkGOFI?rel=0]
But they’re not conservatives – they’re libertarians.  And they’re not represented by either side currently in power.

And they’re not likely to be, either.  Go back up and re-read that first quote.  If in fact the Ruling Class is that firmly entrenched, then there is little hope left for those of us in Angelo Codevilla’s “country class” – those of us who are “small ‘L'” libertarians.  Liberty is on life-support.  The continued concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands is guaranteed, and the inevitable outcome will be a failed state and eventual societal collapse at the hands of people who live to tell others what to do.

Billy Beck calls it “The Endarkenment.”  He’s been predicting it for quite a while.  And it comes from “Faith in Government,” in defiance of history and reason.

Quote of the Day – Coal Edition

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Given yesterday’s announcement that the Obama administration needs to engage in a “War on Coal,” I was amused by an Instapundit reader’s comment:

Given the success of the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, if I’m Big Coal, I’m praying for a War on Coal.

This goes well with yesterday’s QotD, which concluded:

…in government, failure is an exciting excuse to ask for more funding or more power.

Can I get an “AMEN!”?

I Don’t Like Your Face, Obama. Either One of Them

KevinLeave a comment

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8?rel=0]
Not that I expected anything different.  But it’s got to be a shock to those who thought him a “Lightworker.” 

Thanks to Grumpy Old Fart for pointing to this one in a comment.

Let’s add this one, too – also from a comment by QuadGMoto:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4-H8tbcQP4?rel=0]

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!

As Glenn Reynolds notes, all the scandals are about abuse of power:

(I)s it plausible to believe that a government that would abuse the powers of the IRS to attack political enemies, go after journalists who publish unflattering material or scapegoat a filmmaker in the hopes of providing political cover to an election-season claim that al-Qaeda was finished would have any qualms about misusing the massive power of government-run snooping and Big Data? What we’ve seen here is a pattern of abuse. There’s little reason to think that pattern will change, absent a change of administration — and, quite possibly, not even then. Sooner or later, power granted tends to become power abused. Then there’s the risk that information gathered might leak, of course, as recent events demonstrate.

Most Americans generally think that politicians are untrustworthy. So why trust them with so much power? The evidence to date strongly suggests that they aren’t worthy of it.

Let me repeat the GeekWithA.45’s warning again:

We, who studied the shape and form of the machines of freedom and oppression, have looked around us, and are utterly dumbfounded by what we see.

We see first that the machinery of freedom and Liberty is badly broken. Parts that are supposed to govern and limit each other no longer do so with any reliability.

We examine the creaking and groaning structure, and note that critical timbers have been moved from one place to another, that some parts are entirely missing, and others are no longer recognizable under the wadded layers of spit and duct tape. Other, entirely new subsystems, foreign to the original design, have been added on, bolted at awkward angles.

—

We know the tools and mechanisms of oppression when we see them. We’ve studied them in depth, and their existence on our shores, in our times, offends us deeply. We can see the stirrings of malevolence, and we take stock of the damage they’ve caused over so much time.

Others pass by without a second look, with no alarm or hue and cry, as if they are blind, as if they don’t understand what they see before their very eyes. We want to shake them, to grasp their heads and turn their faces, shouting, “LOOK! Do you see what this thing is? Do you see how it might be put to use? Do you know what can happen if this thing becomes fully assembled and activated?”

But the President advises, “Don’t listen to those voices.”

And here’s Bill Whittle’s voice on the subject from last year:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgrktRgjBXk?rel=0]

Bordering on Tyranny, Piers?

KevinLeave a comment

OK, here we go again with Piers “I hate the Second Amendment” Morgan a few weeks ago:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKO8A285Rr0?rel=0]

And here he is just a day or so ago (sorry about the ad – can’t strip it out):

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_embed_2x_container.swf?site=cnn&profile=desktop&context=embedwww&videoId=us/2013/06/07/pmt-guardian-greenwald-nsa-prism-program.cnn&contentId=us/2013/06/07/pmt-guardian-greenwald-nsa-prism-program.cnn

Even Glenn Greenwald is outraged!  Or is he just trying to sell more dish soap?

So I ask again:  Merely bordering on tyranny?

Quote of the Day – New York Times Edition

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When you’ve lost the editorial board of the NYT, you’re in deep, deep guano:

…the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.

Hey, NYT editorial board, here’s a clue: It’s not just the executive branch, and it’s not just “this issue.”

But hey!  Nice start!

Oh, and “overreach”? There’s that term again.

UPDATE:  Aaaaand the NYT felt it necessary to soften the tone, apparently:

The New York Times edited its damning editorial condemning the Obama administration for collecting phone call data from Americans to make it less stinging shortly after the editorial was published online Thursday afternoon.

The editorial originally declared that the Obama “administration has lost all credibility” as a result of the recently revealed news that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been secretly collecting call data from American users of Verizon under the authority of the Patriot Act.

But hours later the stinging sentence had been modified to read the Obama “administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.” [Emphasis added]

IOW: They got it right the first time.  And no, they did not note that the piece had been altered.

Full disclosure:  I’ve edited this piece twice now.