by JackRiddler » Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:32 pm
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WR just mentioned this as one of his favorite threads.
With revisions, I shall repeat a reply of mine from the first page, because I liked it:
Street's article is good. It's about something important.
Right-wing ideology so obviously and proudly attacks and corrodes and spits on reason and fact, and specifically tramples on so many threatened groups and classes, that those who would come together in movements for social justice feel forced to fight it, as a matter of self-defense. To many, that means they cannot complicate that fight with their own unrealistically elevated critique of the status quo. So they forget about fighting the status quo. In fact, "fighting the status quo" is what the right wingers are supposedly doing; they have successfully stolen the language of opposition.
I think that is the reason that the article does not mention the even more powerful and entrenched myths of the status quo, which are more sophisticated and, in fact, appear to be far better substantiated, but ultimately just as wrong:
- We have a democracy and rule of law. All citizens are equal before the law.
- In our system, a pluralist competition of different economic and political actors plays out on a relatively accessible and even field of public debate and political influence. The push and pull achieves a reasonably just equilibrium among legitimate interests. This has resulted in constant progress for almost all citizens.
- The major institutions of government and society are visible and run according to the Constitution, written law, and known, transparent procedures. They may be faulty but they strive to function as advertised, and generally do well enough that radical alternatives should be anathema.
- There are three and only three branches of government. The existing separation of powers among the branches and sub-branches of government is ideal. It makes for an even and productive balance.
- A relatively strong president allows "things to get done," but the executive branch is not out of control.
- Secret power does not determine (too many) important questions. The Pentagon and security state are only a few percentage points of GDP and therefore relatively weak in determining the shape of society.
- Wars happen and it's naive to think they won't, so it's good to prepare for them. The best preparation for security is to achieve the ability to completely destroy the enemies you designate, anywhere in the world, without sustaining casualties of your own.
- With few exceptions, markets are ideal mechanisms for utilitarian outcomes, with just distribution of economic rewards.
- Winners in the market generally win by having better ideas and therefore deserve their rewards. Complainers are probably losers. Cheaters generally are caught before they get too powerful. It is just that the winners accumulate capital and thus the power to determine other developments in economy and society. Characters like Koch may abuse the power of their money by devoting it toward destructive ends, but we have constructive counterexamples in the noble works of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It is good that the latter have accumulated their wealth, so that they may perform such good works.
- Wildly differential incomes are essential to maintaining the system of incentives that keeps the best and brightest working as hard as they can and producing good outcomes for the society as a whole. Without extreme difference, the best and brightest would lose their motivation to innovate. Society would become level, grey, uncreative and boring.
- Wealth is a product of something called the private sector. Something called the "public sector" lives from it. The latter is necessary but in some sense regrettable. Corporations and the state are separate, quasi antagonistic sectors.
- Economic growth measured in dollars and consumption of things is both essential and sustainable. It is the best organizing principle for economy and society.
- The environment is something separate from human society. It is out there, somewhere. It is a good thing and worthy of protection but cannot be prioritized above economy or we will suffer. Technological progress and economic growth have actually turned out to be very good for the environment! Advanced industrialized nations are more energy efficient and pollute less than the less-developed countries. The US is rich in trees.
- There is a political spectrum. It is conceived as a line. The line runs from something called liberal (on something called the left), to something called conservative (on something called the right). This left and right correspond in the main to the Republican and Democratic parties. All reasonable positions fall within the two poles of liberal and conservative. At the extremes, liberal and conservative represent a significant opposition with radically different visions and programs. These poles correspond to different political cultures, which are quasi-immutable and based in "red" and "blue" regions. Almost everyone in the country is within the two poles. Anyone who is outside them belongs to an extremist minority that need not and should not be acknowledged in mainstream political discourse. Even within the poles, however, excessive "partisanship" is a terrible problem, with the left as bad as the right in creating this problem. The best and most fair policies come from something called the center. Good politics are defined as moderate or bipartisan. Anything bipartisan must be good.
- There are interests we all share as something called "Americans" (or name the country) that are higher than all others. Unity of the nation is always a good thing.
- Soldiers serve you; thank them.
- All nations are engaged in a single economic competition within the only best possible model of development. Nations prevail and prosper by selling more stuff than they buy in international trade on a single world market, and by attracting more capital than other nations or places. Despite how this sounds like a zero-sum game, thanks to growth it will be possible for all nations to prosper; whereas any form of protectionism will produce disasters.
- Capital arriving to your town, region or country from the outside to invest in anything and freely perform any business is always an unmitigated good thing. It brings jobs and prosperity. Anyone questioning that would recklessly impoverish the common folk. State and local authorities should always take measures to attract capital in whatever form.
- The first priority of education must be to prepare people for their future roles in the economy as defined by capital. Overemphasizing anything else is a disservice to the children who will end up unemployable. Those who argue otherwise may secretly hate children.
- Science, math and native language skills are real education. The rest is frills and possibly a distraction. What matters is measurable performance in these hard disciplines.
- Technological fixes or technocratic solutions for most problems are coming. Successful outcomes will be measurable in variables subject to objective agreement among qualified experts. Discussions of definitions, values and principles are a waste of time.
- The idea that you can generate capital locally and strive to develop local self-sufficiencies prior to participation in global market is a dangerous pipedream that will starve the poor and keep them down.
- Political views are like religions and should be tolerated, up to a point. But economics is a single quantitative science and should have primacy.
- We are all one. Major religious beliefs all strive for the same ideas of love, humanity and justice; and yet they can be kept cleanly separate from the secular sphere.
- Science has solved the major questions and none of its current reigning paradigms will, as they have until now, fail or be modified beyond current recognition. In this regard, Big Bang theory is just as good as evolutionary theory!
- Physicists are the top of the heap in wisdom. Their opinions should be taken more seriously, whatever the subject.
- Actually, moneybags are the top of the heap in wisdom. If you made a lot of money, not only should you get to design the world as much as you can afford to do so with your own capital, but your opinions should be honored and obeyed by all.
- Actually, successful celebrities are the top of the heap in wisdom.
- The Federal Reserve system and modern banking must operate in the way they do, because the economy and especially finance are too complex to consider alternatives. Only a few trained experts can understand what's best for all.
- Interest with compound interest is a necessary and always legitimate way of making money from money. Whatever the market will bear is fine.
- Anyone who questions the Federal Reserve System and modern banking must want to return to the gold standard and probably has other unworkable and probably paranoid or bigoted ideas. (We see this and the last couple of ideas implied in Street's article.)
- Real communism was tried out. The workers were in charge of the communist countries. It failed horribly to deliver the goods in an economic competition with the capitalist nations. This is why those regimes were overthrown.
- Reagan's war budgets and the Afghanistan crusade spent the Commies into oblivion.
- Africa's problems will be solved by AIDS medicine; this should always be the first priority in any discussion of Africa. Any talk of imperialism or foreign interference to this day merely serves to make excuses and in reality holds those people back. The genocide in Rwanda happened because Western countries failed to intervene, and therefore we should prepare to intervene to prevent future occurrences of such tragedies.
- PR, advertising and marketing are communication. People are adults, they cannot be swayed or fooled easily. It is insulting and snobbish to suggest otherwise. People know what they want and the media merely inform them about ways to fulfill their desires (or give direct fulfillment in the form of entertainment).
- It is mean, snobbish and anti-social to restrict television time for tots.
- Big utopian ideas may be well-intentioned but come out of a dislike of complex human imperfection. Attempting to implement such ideas has and will uniformly and always produce totalitarian results. So stop thinking them right now.
- Name the problem: Past abuses were a mistake; things are not as bad today; shhh old news.
- Radical questioning of your country's established institutions may be due to the disease of conspiracy theory. Any tendency to believe that institutions or influential groups serve interests or agendas than their stated public purposes is conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory is a single linked set of wrong views that reject reigning or official ideas. It is a kind of negative ideology that infects the misinformed with a pathological drive to assign too many patterns in explaining events. Conspiracy theory either provides the believer with a sense of comfort in a complex world, or renders him entirely helpless and useless to just causes, but it always generates terrible body odor. The mere invocation of the phrase against you is a nuclear weapon that vaporizes any argument you may wish to advance and forever pulverizes your credibility. Therefore all persons writing on human affairs are wise to preemptively distance themselves from conspiracy theory by delivering a speech that reviews these points in order while heaping contempt on the conspiracy theories du jour, real or invented.
See what I mean?
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We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
TopSecret WallSt. Iraq &
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