I have posted some material on Ricardo Duchesne recently (see “Progressives are Running the Universities”; “Extreme Sports as a Context for Implicit Whiteness“; “Stephen Walt on Andres Brevik, Immigration, and Western Culture”) referring to his recent book, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization. I have a review of the book posted at VDARE.com. It is an abridged version of a longer review appearing in The Occidental Quarterly, now available by subscription online and in hardcopy versions. I really like the book. The review concludes:
The Uniqueness of Western Civilization
is a brilliant critical review of an incredibly wide range of scholarship covering the entire span of Western history. It is a book that is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the vitality and creativity of Western civilization—and for understanding its current malaise as it struggles for survival against the forces of darkness.
Facing the Future as a Minority
Was the Immigration Act of 1924 Illiberal?
It seems Ricardo Duchesne, like racist Zionist Jews, too live in self-denial. No race is unique. On the other hand, almost every race has created its ‘uniqueness’ in the past. As Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s mother said that Jewish Holocaust not a unique tragedy as many other races and suffered much larger Holocaust than the Jews. She even pointed out that currently, Palestinians are going through their Holocaust at the hands of Israeli Jews.
Muslim created a unique civilization within Europe in Spain and Sicily.
“Both Milan and Venice were thriving commercial cities, thriving entirely from trade with Saracens. In fact the whole Renaissance, the “revival of learning in Europr”, inexplicably “arose” in Italy, that long, narrow peninsula with Saracen civilization brilliant at its tip, and its every port opening to the Saracens’ Sea,” – Rose Wilder Lane, in “Islam and the Discovery of Freedom”…..
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/islamic-state-of-sicily/
A great review of what sounds like a good book. I do wonder about the factual basis of the statements about pre-historic Europe and ethnic characteristics. They are interesting and plausible, but how can they be tested?
Perhaps Arktos could run a cheap paperback edition of the book for us plebs:)
Either he had read some of your work before, and derives his views on Boasian anthropology and the Frankfort School from the CoC (in which case he is one of us), or else he hadn’t read your work before (in which case his book is an independent confirmation of the importance of the Jewish ethnic movements identified in your book). I would actually be happier if the second was the case: i.e. if he found these two (we know Jewish) movements as important. This would be an important development.
I would like to read it but the book cost $155 at Amazons.
KM: “In no other area of scientific inquiry would people be satisfied with a theory based on luck.”
Wish that were the case. Keynesianism, still the orthodoxy that is forced fed to unfortunate taxpayers, resorts to “animal spirits” to explain economic booms and busts. Ooga booga!
@Trenchant: Consumer confidence is something measurable and not the same as luck. And the Great Recession that followed the collapse of the housing bubble (“the wealth effect”) showed Keynes to be right yet again.
I’ve not read the book but all “western civilization” means to me is Chaos on a global scale.
The hell of it is that no one seems to notice the elephant in the room.
I would recommend anyone interested in The Industrial Revolution to listen to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s analysis. Unlike most economists, he’s open to the thesis that IQ, and not just institutional settings, was a necessary ingredient in breaking the Malthusian cycle.
http://goo.gl/ZWDFZ
Idiocracy (2006) was a warning that Malthus is always breathing down our necks.
@Hedgerow:
I am not an economist, But even I know that when machines start replacing human labor, Its only a matter of time till the ordinary working man (blue collar workers) are out of a job.
Its trickle down trickle up economics; the jobs trickle down through “free trade” to poorer countries like India, China, etc. And the money trickles up to Big Brother who owns or has the note on the machines.
@Hedgerow:
How do you measure consumer confidence, by anal probes?
@henry baxley:
Luddite used to be a term of opprobium for good reason. Without machines, most people on the globe die. Including me, thanks.
@Trenchant: Thanks for Hans-Herman Hoppe link. He seems to be a libertarian that also understands the importance of demography and the problem with open borders. I notice this quote of his on his Wiki page that sums up my problem with certain “counter-culture” type libertarians perfectly:
A second motive for the open border enthusiasm among contemporary left-libertarians is their egalitarianism. They were initially drawn to libertarianism as juveniles because of its “antiauthoritarianism” (trust no authority) and seeming “tolerance,” in particular toward “alternative” — non-bourgeois — lifestyles. As adults, they have been arrested in this phase of mental development. They express special “sensitivity” in every manner of discrimination and are not inhibited in using the power of the central state to impose non-discrimination or “civil rights” statutes on society. Consequently, by prohibiting other property owners from discrimination as they see fit, they are allowed to live at others’ expense. They can indulge in their “alternative” lifestyle without having to pay the “normal” price for such conduct, i.e., discrimination and exclusion. To legitimize this course of action, they insist that one lifestyle is as good and acceptable as another. This leads first to multiculturalism, then to cultural relativism, and finally to “open borders.”
Wages are low in under-developed countries because productivity is low. Thanks to capital accumulation – machines, technology, know-how – the worker of the West is far more productive that his Third world competitor, and so earns higher wages.
Of course, if borders are just abstractions, there is a tendency for wage-rates to equalize for similar jobs.
Mr. Third World gets on a boat to the developed world and competes with those of like talents, increasing the supply of labour and decreasing the wage rate for his particular line of work.
I think the dependency theorists (mentioned in the VDARE article) have a stronger case in their analysis of underdeveloped countries’ difficulties in developing than those theorists do in their analysis of developed countries success in developing. The U.S. and Britain have pressured underdeveloped countries, working with local elites, to reject the policies those two countries used themselves in the process of development. Tariffs to protect nascent industries and prohibitions on the export of capital have been attacked. Germany, in criticizing British pressure on it, once accused Britain of trying to kick away the ladder it had used itself.
Incidentally, Immanuel Wallerstein calls his model World Systems Theory, and Paul Sweezy used the term Dependency Theory. However, the two theories seem much the same to me.
@Trenchant: Polling. It is measured all the time.
@Jason Speaks:
Yes, all too many confuse libertine with libertarian. Hoppe would argue, and I agree, that the State deliberately and systemically weakens all traditional institutions like the family and the Church. By exposing hedonists to the full price of their indulgences rather than socializing them as per today, a private-property order would restore the carrot and stick.
@Hedgerow:
Social science isn’t an empirical sciences like the natural sciences. There are no constants, so reproducibility is impossible.
Also, consumer confidence doesn’t address Keynesianism’s premise – ie. that exogenous shocks cause investors to suffer a lack of confidence.
@Trenchant:
I don’t object to machines, I object to over population due to the welfare state Whose labor is no longer needed.
Also, I object to the monopoly of machines by Big Brother and thus of the created wealth due to the democratic shell game of this same state.
@Trenchant: That’s social science for you. It’s not physics.
@Hedgerow:
Tariffs are extremely high in Africa, for example, and extremely low in Hong Kong.
Mercantilism is the oldest political trick in the book. The US practices it via its monetary policy, and China likewise. Tariffs exacerbate this problem, not alleviate it.
@Trenchant: “exogenous shocks cause investors to suffer a lack of confidence”
Investment is something else that is measured all the time.
@Trenchant: Hong Kong doesn’t need high tariffs. It is much more developed.
@henry baxley:
I’m against all monopoly franchises granted by the State, including patents, copyright and so-called “intellectual property”. There’s a fine line between learning and copying, and I maintain that line is better draw by individuals or civil society, and not by bureaucrats.
@Hedgerow:
Chicken and egg. Low tariffs helped to create the wealth.
@Trenchant:
Also I would add there are too many people on the globe anyway.
@Trenchant: “Mercantilism is the oldest political trick in the book. The US practices it via its monetary policy, and China likewise.”
Exactly the opposite in the case of the U.S. The dollar is overvalued, hence the big trade deficit. Bankers, famously Robert Rubin, want the overvalued dollar to keep inflation down and protect their interest-bearing assets.
@Hedgerow:
Investment may be measured, but that’s not the thing discussed. It’s investor confidence. And how do you measure that reliably?
@Trenchant: Didn’t make South Korea rich. Protectionism did. From one of the poorest countries on Earth to one of the richest in a few years.
@Trenchant: See if investors are investing.
@Trenchant: @Trenchant:
Machines allow for a few to produce what it formally took many to produce, but at some saturation point the machine itself takes over even the tasks of the few, thus leading to mass unemployment and the welfare state. Not to mention global recession.
@Hedgerow:
That’s just what I’m saying. The dollar’s over-valuation, by virtue of its hegemony as the world’s reserve currency for the better part of the last century, makes offshoring profitable. The Chinese, by amassing huge quantities of Treasuries, stop their own currency rising, and do their part in the offshoring game.
@Trenchant: I agree that both countries are kind of in on the game. China seems worried it may eventually get burned by holding a bunch of overvalued dollars, but it seems willing to do it anyway to maintain exports and employment. It has really done a number on U.S. manufacturing and the working class. But finance capital seems in the driver’s seat in a corrupted U.S. system.
@Hedgerow:
“See if investors are investing.”
More scientific, please.
@Hedgerow:
South Korea got rich in spite of its tariffs. North Korea has high tariffs.
@Walter L: A good alternative to buying the book is to subscribe to TOO and read the longer book review that MacDonald did. It’s about 4 times longer than the Vdare article. It’s is only $30 for a year, and honestly, it’s probably easier to read summary than the original.
In the longer TOQ book review, MacDonald discusses the difference between what he calls an individualist-egalitarian culture and an aristocratic-egalitarian culture. The former is more individualistic and less ethnocentric. Puritans are an example of the individualist-egalitarians. They bring great moral fervor to their belief in the radical equality of all human beings and are willing to inflict massive altruistic punishment toward those who violate this ideal (think of Northern Whites engaging in a war that killed 620,000 Whites for the sake of another race – that would be your individualistic-egalitarians).
The other camp, the aristocratic-egalitarian group, seems to be descended from an ancient Indo-European warrior elite and continue to reflect that ethos in many ways. As I understand it, they are egalitarian, but only to those they consider part of their group (fellow ethnics), not all of humanity. A good example is the Virginian colonialists.
This second group treated each other as equals, but they did not extend this to non-Whites, and in general their society as a whole was hierarchical. This group is ethnocentric, and while their original numbers long ago were small, I assume that their numbers are now legion and constitute most people in the South, for example.
The conflict between these two groups has impacted history for centuries. One example is how elated French egalitarian radicals were at the revolution in Haiti that destroyed the White elite that had previous ruled the island. These French radicals actually embraced the Africans that had slaughtered their French countrymen. Sound familiar?
I’ve never understood the objection to tariffs, that our internationalist, open borders, and so called “Free Trade” Senate has always held. In fact, the only context I can understand it in is in the Senates rejection of the basic rights and privledges of American citizens.
The founding fathers of this country believed in tariffs. During their time, England was the most powerfull economic force on earth. England would have loved to flood the new country with cheap foreign junk. But then, the founding fathers cared about the new country and the citizens in it, unlike the people that “represent” Americans today.
@Rehmat:
The title of Duchesne’s book is “The Uniqueness of Western Civilization“. So, if you see the civilization of Al-Andalus as a unique civilization (which it definitely was not), then you are implicitly acknowledging that civilizations can be unique – which means there is no basis for your criticism.
@Hedgerow:
Agreed. In both countries, cadres and crony capitalists rip off the common man.
@Bobby:
Tariffs stop the consumer from choosing the best product at the best price, and reduce the division of labour, one of the keys to raising the general standard of living. Because the cost to the individual consumer is slight, no single person gets so angry as too complain. Those little amounts per capita add up to huge amounts on a national scale, and make it quite worthwhile to pay off the politician who fixes the protection.
There’s no more magic than if I tax 1cent from every citizen, and direct the proceeds (less my cut as middleman) it to one hundred of my supporters.
Besides, as the Smoot Hawley episode amply shows, imposing a tariff unilaterally often sets off a tit-for-tat trade war, impoverishing everyone bar the industries concerned.
It’s counter-intuitive, but the wealthiest countries in the world are generally those with the lowest barriers to trade. It’s easy to bring stuff into Switzerland, but not at all easy to move there personally, ditto for Singapore, Monaco, etc. Free trade in goods doesn’t have to mean unrestricted access for non-residents. In a democracy, with a welfare state to boot, open borders are a recipe for bankruptcy as well as the non-monetary considerations, like culture and heritage.
Fake “free” trade agreements like NAFTA by helping US agribusinesses hurt small Mexican farmers who then have every incentive to leave the land and either head north, or maybe get into the narcotics game.
Buying stuff from Mexico is just a personal choice, having Mexico move into the street becomes a social issue.
To illustrate my point about how impossible it is to run a sensible trade policy in a paper-money regime, consider the CHF/USD market. How could a Swiss exporter cope when the one franc goes from USD 0.85 to 1.40 in the space of a year? And then from 1.40 to 1.10 in one month? How could one possibly cut costs to compensate? Big companies can hedge to soften the short-term movements; little companies often have got neither the skills nor the working capital to fund a hedging operation.
The entire notion of “exports” and “Imports” is statist malarkey, from the days of mercantilism. Trade is between individuals/companies, not countries. “Balance of trade” is more statist hooey.
What is the “balance of trade” between Florida and Oregon? Between New York and Nevada? Between San Diego and Los Angeles?
@Trenchant:
Yeah, old-fashioned Stalinism has nothing to do with North Korea’s poverty-it’s all because of tariffs.
“The “Candle Maker’s Petition” is a satire of protectionist tariffs written the by great French economist, Frederic Bastiat. In many ways, it expanded on the free market argument against mercantilism set forth by Adam Smith, but Bastiat’s target was government tariffs that were levied to protect domestic industries from competition. In Bastiat’s “Candle Maker’s Petition”, all the people involved in the French lighting industry, including “the manufacturers of candles, tapers, lanterns, sticks, street lamps, snuffers and extinguishers, and from producers of tallow, oil, resin, alcohol, and generally of everything connected with lighting” call upon the French government to take protective action against the unfair competition of the sun.”
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/candle-makers-petition.asp#axzz1c5tWOd6E
@H. Baxley: Machines cause unemployment in a certain industry. Those workers go elsewhere. In a fully free market (which we do not have) a job is available for all.
“Unemployment” is another statist hoax, to justify deficit spending (see the Employment Act of 1946)
Impetus
By 1940 depression was finally over. A remarkable burst of economic activity and full employment came during the war years (1941-45). Fears of a postwar depression were widespread, since the massive military spending was ending, the war plants were shutting down, and 12 million soldiers were coming home. Congress, fearful of a return to depression, sought to establish preemptive safeguards against economic downturn.[4]
The White House relied on Keynesian economic theory to develop its strategy. The theory, set forth by economist John Maynard Keynes and his American disciples such as Alvin Hansen at Harvard, contends that unemployment is caused by insufficient aggregate demand relative to the possible aggregate supply generated by full employment. Swings in aggregate demand create a phenomenon known as a business cycle that leads to irregular downsizing and hiring runs, causing fluctuations in unemployment. Keynes argued that the biggest contributor of these shifts in aggregate demand is investment.[5] (Wiki)
The entire progressive idea is alchemy- using the “state” to bend reality- to fix social problems. Fix the business cycle with the printing press. Fix drinking problems with a certain Amendment. Turn negroes into whites by Federal legislation. The philosophy of Pragmatism does teach that reality can be bent (!) but this absurdity was kept from the general public.
@Rehmat:
“Islam and the Discovery of Freedom”
I got a chuckle out of that. FTR the only reason the Saracens had a slight edge economically and politically for a few centuries is b/c they were in the process of looting the former Roman and Persian territories. By the time Arab-Muslim culture became the majority those areas they became frozen in time and largely remained in the 12th century until the discovery of oil by Europeans.
@icr:
It’s a continuum, Stalinism at one end, freedom the other. Tariffs are a step away from freedom. That’s all.
@Trenchant: Come up with your own measurement if you are dissatisfied.
@Trenchant: How did that happen, and so quickly?
In any event, it is for each country to decide for itself, not to have dictated by more powerful countries.
For a Center for Economic and Policy Research paper that analyses the negative developments that followed the increased opening to international trade and financial flows that occurred in a large majority of countries since 1980, click on the link below. The paper looks at the 20 years before and the 20 years after 1980.
Click on http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/globalization_2001_07_11.htm
Whoops! Instead of the link provided above, I should have used the PDF link so that the graphs are also available for reading. Click on http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/globalization_2001_07_11.pdf
@Hedgerow:
It’s unmeasurable. That’s my point. When economists try and use the same methodology as the natural sciences they show why the science is in such bad shape today.
I agree that each country is sovereign and deserves to be left alone to pursue its own policies. I’m a supporter of free trade and relations with all countries, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, all the “bad” guys. I don’t care how despotic or good their leaders are, trade helps both us and them.
The US meddling in Cuban affairs only helps Castro by playing to his role as anti-imperialist. It’s an own goal.
@Hedgerow:
I don’t intend to defend the existing pattern of international trade at all. I have made it clear that the existing monetary regime worldwide, ie. fiat money presided over by central banks, generates false prices. We see this in the domestic sphere (Nasdaq bubble, house bubble, Treasuries bubble now), and also internationally (Yuan underpriced, USD overpriced – who knows?).
When this phoney paper-money system finally destroys itself in the coming years, and there is a return to something sort of specie-based monetary order, then comparative advantage is what will determine trade flows, and not pricing misalignments, as is today the case.
@TabuLa Raza:
“Machines cause unemployment in a certain industry, those workers go somewhere else”
Yes they do, many go on welfare because they can’t find a job.
I can think of no industry that has not downsized due to mechanization. There are tens of thousands of small busineses in America, when each of those companies get a machine that does the work of three people (at least) Do the math.
Personal anecdote; As a kid I picked cotton every fall to buy my school clothes. Along came the cotton stripper, and MILLIONS of people, (not just black people) lost a major source of income practically overnight.
With around three people being born in the world every second (conservative estimate) on new machine coming out practically every day that will replace them, no amount of free market is going to avoid a catastrophy in a mere twenty years. In fact, its happening already.
@Trenchant: “trade helps both us and them”
More scientific please. Some groups are hurt, others harmed.
Regarding investment, it is very measurable.
A true, free trader also must oppose patent and copyright protection and support open borders, a free market in labor. Otherwise, one is a protectionist.
@Hedgerow: That should read: Some groups are helped, others harmed.
@Hedgerow:
If you and I choose to exchange goods or services, it’s because, ex ante, we both expect to gain from the operation. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. QED.
I oppose “intellectual property”, because I don’t regard thoughts as property.
In a private-property order, ingress is dictated by the wishes of the property owner. You control who comes into your living room, and that works out just fine. Nobody tells you who you can have in your house, unless it’s disturbing others.
Given, however, that we have a public-property regime, universal suffrage, welfare and a host of other state-created mechanisms that attract migrants, it seems logical that the state also puts a brake on the entry of those who would come to avail themselves of this bounty, finite as it is.
@Trenchant:
“If you and I choose to exchange goods or services, it’s because, ex ante, we both expect to gain from the operation. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it.”
Yep, but you aren’t the only two impacted by it.
“Given, however, that we have a public-property regime, universal suffrage, welfare and a host of other state-created mechanisms that attract migrants [not to mention jobs], it seems logical that the state also puts a brake on the entry of those who would come to avail themselves of this bounty, finite as it is.”
So you are a protectionist.
@TabuLa Raza:
Obviously you have never in your life been unemployed, neither any of your relatives, friends or acquaintances.
I don’t know if it could get any surreal than that. Next time someone will declare that black crime is a statist hoax.
@Hedgerow:
If you have a business, you don’t own your customers. If I choose to open next door and sell better stuff, then why shouldn’t they transact with me, and not you? If I live in Japan, it still doesn’t give you a right to a clientele.
Every economic choice by definition involves someone being favoured and someone else not. I buy from you and not from your competitor. Or vice versa.
I have no problem with people excluding others from private property, this is not protectionism. The state has arrogated the privilege of deciding who comes into the territory (it’s not my border, or passports), so it’s not unreasonable to ask that they do their job and police the system over which they enjoy a monopoly of force.
@Trenchant: Maybe. However, the countries that have gone from Third World poverty to First World riches within a couple of generations have all been at least somewhat statist and protectionist economies. This does not mean that libertarian economics cannot work, but it does mean that it’s not the only thing that works.
@Trenchant:
This point you just made proves that it’s an advantage to have paper money.
Do you think the Swiss exporter would be out of the woods if Switzerland had the gold standard? At least they have paper money, too, so the SNB could declare that they will buy up all foreign currency if the EURCHF drops below 1.2. Actually, that was the reason that eventually all countries left the gold standard in the thirties, and the quasi gold standard (Bretton Woods) in the seventies. Having a bad money was a competitive advantage, so the gold standard system was simply not an evolutionarily stable strategy.
@Trenchant: You made the comment:
When this phoney paper-money system finally destroys itself in the coming years …
I have been waiting for this longer than I care to admit. I think it could happen, but yet, there were predictions of such a collapse 40 years … it was just around the corner. But it never happened. At this point, it is starting to feel like Waiting for Godot.
There is also something about these predictions that suggest a final apocalyptic Götterdämmerung that will cleanse the world of if it’s evil statism and deliver us into The Promised Land of hard money and libertarian nirvana. At this point, it is like the so-called imminent race war we’ve been promised for 50 years. Some Day Real Soon Now™ all of man’s evils will be washed away by a cataclysmic convulsion that wipes out The Evil and brings forth The Good.
Somehow I think it will be more complicated than that.
@Trenchant:
And that monopoly of force also extends to the economy. That’s what governments do.
@Trenchant: “so it’s not unreasonable to ask that they do their job and police the system over which they enjoy a monopoly of force. ”
That’s where your protectionism comes in.
@Jason Speaks: It’s not difficult to imagine Whites will continue to sleep, even as they get wiped out. I guess if in the face of mass unemployment one can declare that “unemployment is a hoax”, then in the face of black crime one can declare “race doesn’t matter”, or in the face of Jewish involvement in leftist movements one can declare “they just happen to be Jewish”.
This thread is totally depressing.
@Gabor: I guess when it is said “unemployment is a hoax”, that only holds in a healthy economy. Certainly the government and the Fed can create horrible conditions that make unemployment rough.
Unless, it is meant that technically speaking, everyone would be employed if market rates were allowed to fall way below minimum wage. If I could hire people for a $1/hr to mow lawn, certainly we would have full employment.
@Jason Speaks:
“If I could hire people for a $1/hr to mow lawn, certainly we would have full employment.”
Not necessarily, because that would indicate a deflationary spiral — and they are very hard to get out of. For one thing, business is not going to hire people to sell stuff to workers who make so little they cannot afford to buy anything. For another, once prices start dropping in a deflation, people quit buying because they will probably be able to get the stuff cheaper if they wait.
The issue is not so much why the system can achieve equilibrium at well below full employment. The relevant debate is over why that is the case: liquidity trap (interest rates too low to attack risk takers), downward rigidity of prices in an oligopolistic economy, etc.
@Hedgerow:
Sorry. My final paragraph above should read, The issue is not so much weather the system can achieve equilibrium at well below full employment. The relevant debate is over why that is the case: liquidity trap (interest rates too low to attract risk takers), downward rigidity of prices in an oligopolistic economy, etc.
@Hedgerow:
And “weather” should be “whether.” I need some sleep. ;-)
@Jason Speaks: I’m not so sure. There is a lot of risk involved with employing someone. Obviously your assumption is that anyone hired for 1 dollar would behave the same way as someone hired for 6 or 7 dollars. That’s not necessarily true. E.g. the risk of theft would be much larger, just as his motivation would be lower (which in turn could result in larger risks for your lawnmower getting broken etc.), so at the end of the day, you might not want to hire anybody for 1 dollar only / hour.
@Gabor: Oh that is true. What I meant to say, but wasn’t clear about, was I suppose technically if we all drop down to Third World level of subsistence, we could probably find jobs working for $50/week (and live under bridges). I was trying to be facetious. There can be conditions where unemployment is very real.
The postwar recessions up until the last two were induced by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to control inflation. Interest rates are raised, workers lose their jobs, demand is reduced, and inflation is reduced. It’s throwing people out of work to reduce inflation. The last two recessions were different: They involved the bursting of asset bubbles (the stock market bubble and then the housing bubble). When asset bubbles burst, people have less wealth and cut their spending (“the wealth effect”). A recession ensues. The famous case is when the stock market collapsed which was followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s.
@Hedgerow:
And look where that’s got us!
@Jason Speaks:
I don’t believe that a return to sound money – a specie-backed regime – is automatic. Everything suggests that the fiat paper-money system will be milked up to the point where it risks complete collapse, which could take years. The melt-down in the Treasuries has yet to eventuate, so the greater part of the pain is ahead of us, not behind.
@Hedgerow:
Or alternatively: Fed lowers interest rate, distorting investment decisions – longer duration projects now seem attractive – money flows to these investments, prices go up, alarmed Fed reverses decision, raises interest rates, bubble pops, projects revealed as errors. Workers fired, and ventures shelved.
When prices have collapsed, Fed panics and lowers interest rates, cycle recommences. Classic ABCT!
@Hedgerow:
Bubbles are always accompanied by an increase in the money supply (inflation). Not always does money created flow into the basket of goods that form the CPI, it can just as readily flow into financial assets – bonds, equities, property. This is what we see saw in the 1920′s share mania and also in the 1990′s tech-bubble.
“Not always does money created flow into the basket of goods that form the CPI, it can just as readily flow into financial assets – bonds, equities, property.”
Not only can capital flow into speculation, it does in mature capitalist economies with surplus capacity.
@H. Baxley: Machines cause unemployment in a certain industry. Those workers go elsewhere. In a fully free
market (which we do not have) a job is available for all.
“Unemployment” is another statist hoax, to justify deficit spending (see the Employment Act of 1946)
@TabuLa Raza:
“Unemployment” is another statist hoax, to justify deficit spending
Obviously you have never in your life been unemployed, neither any of your relatives, friends or acquaintances.
I don’t know if it could get any surreal than that. (From Gabor)
I also said In a fully free market (which we do not have) a job is available for all
I from time to time place cryptic remarks to see what happens, to see how perceptive folks are, and to challenge their analytical skills. Example- “statist hoax”. I wanted readers to think “what does he mean by that?” Do you know what statism is? Do you know that it is the dominant politics for over 100 years?
The entire progressive/Marxist idea is how horrible a fully free society is. How these horribilisms can be repaired by the godly State. (The German philosopher Hegel asserted that the State was the closet to God on earth.) And the glorious last century- oops. . . The market by itself sucks, and must be fixed. Unemployment and the depression were caused by unregulated capitalism, they say. So the way to create employment is through the State, AND ONLY THROUGH THE STATE. We get the Full Employment Act of 1946. We get another statist hoax called the “Phillips Curve”, showing a trade-off between inflation and employment. More inflation = more jobs. Full employment is not possible without the printing press, without the State. Why not claim that human survival is not possible without the State?
“Unemployment” was a non-problem in the nineteenth century. Unemployment is caused by various bubbles from the Central Bank, the various regulations which deny economic freedom, BY FORCING THE WAGE ABOVE THE MARKET CLEARING LEVEL, and by the availability of unemployment insurance. “Statist hoax” means the claim that unemployment is part of the free market- TO BE FIXED BY THE GODLY GOVERNMENT.
A fully free society is fully free. There are no central banks. There are no legal tender laws. There are no employment laws. There is no business cycle. There are no union monopolies. There are no minimum wage
laws. People can live the way they want, like the Amish. They can use scrip like in Orania, while they also use other monetary media like silver coins and even dollars. There are no monopolies under freedom.
People can survive without a job. They can have a self-sufficient farm. They can live with family. The family was destroyed by government, a whole story in itself.
The State is responsible for unemployment. Only the State. They want to blame this on capitalism, on the lack of regulation. This is the hoax- that the ONLY way out of depression and unemployment is deficit spending.
The libertarians are a lot smarter than statists, and much more knowledgeable. You have no chance in debate, as Statism is based upon magical thought. I’ve been in this for more than four decades, going back to
the first libertarian conference at Cal State Long Beach in 1969. Professot Mises was there- he stayed at Congressman Rohrabacher’s apartment.
Please read Economics in one lesson (Hazlitt) and The Law (by Bastiat).
Unemployment IS a hoax in a fully free society.
@Hedgerow:
Every transaction is speculative in nature. One presumes that swapping money for ice-cream is better than chocolate or chocolate, or keeping the money and not transacting.
Jason speaks. New information has come out that it was actaully 740,000 soldiers killed in the war of northern agression. The 50,000 or so civilians of the southern and border states who died from the effects of malnutrition should also be counted.
“everyone would be employed if market rates were allowed to fall way below minimum wage. If I could hire people for a $1/hr to mow lawn, certainly we would have full employment. ”
How would they get to work? Obviously they could not have a car. In my city a month’s bus pass is $76.00, almost 2 week’s pay at $1.00. What would they wear to work? Where would they sleep? Obviously they would be homeless. How would they bathe?
In America, lwo wages are supported by welfare. Food stamps, free schooll lunch, breakfast and after school snack. Same feeding program in the parks during summer. Free medical care. Sec 8 housing with free utilities. Free day care for the younger kids.
@Trenchant:
Wow! This has turned into an exercise in semantics.
@mari: Yes, I don’t mean it would be good for market rates to fall to a dollar an hour – in fact, I was trying to point out the dangers of letting it fall that low, as you did in your post. Do really want Americans living like that? No.
On the number of war dead, that is truly tragic. I had heard something abut a revision. And Sherman also instigated the modern version of total war – burning cities to the ground. In my more sober moments I wish the South had also found a way to avoid war, but they could not imagine the tactics that would be unleashed on them.
@Jason Speaks: Jason, the point was not whether it’s desirable or not to have wages at 1 dollar per hour. The question was, whether there would be anybody who would do the work – people doing the work for 1 dollar an hour would be starving, and freezing to death. If the equilibrium wage level is below the level needed to sustain the population and give them clothing, housing, etc., then a portion of the population would die off.
Mass unemployment is unknown in agricultural subsistence economies (there are famines in such economies), but in industrial or service cities it’s ubiquitous. It’s also periodic, there are economic and financial crises, during which unemployment soars, while it can stay relatively low (and decreasing) during years of fast growth. There was already mass unemployment in the first half of the 19th century in the UK, hardly a paragon of government interventionism. (By coincidence, the last large Western European famine also happened to take place in laissez-faire UK, which at the time was probably the richest country of the world.)
I think the statement that inflexible wages and/or government intervention cause unemployment is empirically false.
I finished the book, and it was well worth reading.
His explanations are not racialist, although he explicitly shuns political correctness. He writes a little bit about Judaism, but it’s only the positive effects Judaism might have had on Western rationalism. He is also not really an evolutionist, at least regarding humans he is not. That is a bit of a problem (although I think his explanations would have made perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective as well), but it might even have added to the value of his book – because sometimes it’s fun to read about the strength of the spirit even for people (like me) who suspect that behind every high spirit there is a lowly material explanation. I mean, yeah, probably there is some explanation, but on some level we don’t even need to do that. You just want to be a character, someone whom even Cicero would have admired. (Unfortunately, I fall short of this ideal anyway, but it’s good to have some ideal like that.)
I think that his not being a racialist or evolutionist or even Jew-wise is actually good news on another plain, too: this means that he probably has not read the works of Dr. MacDonald (or at the very least doesn’t agree with them), and yet still finds Boasianism and the Frankfort School and its Critical Theory important factors in the decline of the West. This is a kind of independent confirmation of Dr. MacDonald’s view that the Culture of Critique was very important. Now the only thing he doesn’t confirm (he doesn’t even deal with it at all) is the question of Jewish involvement in the Frankfort School and in Boasianism, but that’s also fairly well establish. If one doesn’t like Dr. MacDonald’s references, I found a reference to Ashley Montagu’s role and his insidious dealings with his rivals in Frank Miele’s and Vincent Sarich’s book (Race: The Reality of Human Differences), where they also mention his “working theory” that “every gentile is an anti-Semite”.
Any chance that any nationalist press can approach the publisher to see about producing a reasonably priced paperback edition?
@Leon Haller: I guess you’ll have to wait until the hardcover version runs out. Normally they wait a year or two before issuing a paperback.
In any event I bought one, and I also bought one as a present for Christmas.