J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
@ Agorist.com
I almost titled this article “Cut the Crap,” but I decided at the last minute it was just a bit too undignified.
I found myself in an Internet flame war yesterday with Kevin Carson who had written a blog called “Libertarians for Junk Science.” Carson and I had crossed swords in the past when he attended a Yahoo Group I moderated for the Movement for the Libertarian Left.
The MLL had been started by Samuel Edward Konkin III who thought there could be libertarian outreach to leftists by teaching them how their revolutionary anti-ruling-class values could best be achieved by first understanding how the Austrian School of Economics, through Konkin’s theories of counter-economics and Agorism, destroyed what they called Capitalism and what Sam called State Capitalism.
After Sam passed away in 2004 J. Kent Hastings took over as list moderator, and got to a point where he wanted me to take over the moderator’s duties. What I found when I started paying attention to the list was that instead of being an outreach of libertarian ideas to the left, the list had become doctrinaire leftist and any attempts to reintroduce libertarian ideas resulted in typical leftist tantrums.
So I set up rules to keep posts courteous and on topic, deleting posts which failed to meet those standards … and a war started against me, calling me an authoritarian fascist. As I said, typical leftist tactics, and the reason Sam — who observed how the SDS had been taken over by doctrinaire Marxists during the Vietnam War — had set the MLL list up to be moderated in the first place.
Kevin Carson was one of those unhappy with the way I was moderating the list. Apparently allowing libertarian ideas on a libertarian list was displeasing to the leftists who had — when Kent was simply allowing anything to be posted — taken the list over.
It’s not my purpose here to reignite those flame wars — either the one on MLL or the one that took place yesterday in the comment section of Carson’s blog.
But I did find in that discussion yesterday a theme worth coming back to my own turf to write about.
It’s this. If an idea can’t be expressed simply and elegantly, it’s bullshit.
Take, for example, the central theme of Christianity: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Five words. If you need to make it a bit more explicit, it doesn’t add very many more words: “Whatever excuses you make for your own faults, give those same breaks to everyone else.”
Or how about Marxism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It’s an easily understandable idea. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea — but you need to understand the simple idea that “People won’t work if they don’t feel they’re getting the benefits of working” before you understand why putting it into practice has severe unintended consequences.
The ideas that Kevin Carson and I were flaming each other over had to do with the source of “value” — a fairly abstract concept to begin with.
Adam Smith and Karl Marx held to the idea that the value of a thing was dependent on how much labor went into making it. That idea is called the labor theory of value. That simple idea is the basis of both classical economics and Marxism.
A later economist, Ludwig von Mises, contended that the value of a thing comes from an individual’s desire for it at a particular instant in time, as compared to other objects of desire. That’s called the subjective theory of value. It’s the basis for the laissez-faire economics promoted by libertarians.
Kevin Carson has a theory which attempts to “subjectivize” labor theory of value. To me, that’s like trying to go north and south at the same time. Two simple ideas that lead in different directions can’t be combined, and the trick of making it look as if you have done so requires a magician’s sleight of hand.
We live today in a country filled with sleight-of-hand artists selling bullshit.
The President and Congress of the United States are trying to put forth an improvement on health care, by moving funding and control of it from health-care-providers to the government. In doing so they are trying to replace one simple idea — health care is a marketplace good just like food or clothing — with another simple idea: something as important as your health is too important to be left to the marketplace. The assumption of this second idea is also simple: the government is better at making important decisions than you are.
The thousands of words of argument and the legislation being debated all depends on these simple ideas, but special interests — both private like pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies, and public like politicians addicted to aggrandizing wealth and power for themselves — work hard at hiding how simple the real questions are.
Or take global warming. It’s a simple idea: What human beings exhale — carbon dioxide — is a poison that is destroying the earth.
Makes it real easy to take sides on that one once you realize that the fact that you’re alive is their problem, doesn’t it?
Or even more directly, “Having babies is destroying the earth.”
Sort of starts to make a pattern, doesn’t it?
How about, “Being rich is unfair to the poor — so make the rich poor and the poor rich.”
How’s that again?
Yes, it comes down to ideas that when you peel away the layers are that simple.
The people who want to run your life want you to feel stupid. They want you to regard them as the experts.
If they can make you feel stupid enough to regard them as experts, they’ve won — and winning in this case means they’re the master and you’re their flunkie. When they whistle, you’d better hop to.
I don’t trust anyone who can’t express their “great” idea in a few words. That, to me, is the signature of a bullshit artist.
And we’re up to our waist in such waste these days, aren’t we?
My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available for sale or rental on Amazon.com Video On Demand. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
December 26, 2009 - 9:50 pm
J. Neil Schulman wrote “I regard the federal government of the United States of America as a severely degraded version of the Republican principles of the Constitution of the United States, particularly the Bill of Rights. But at least those documents give us a lofty standard by which to judge its lack of fidelity to its founding principles. That, to me, makes American government — as shitty as it is — superior to governments throughout the rest of planet earth with no such history of documentary idealism. I am proud to be an American because of the ideals of the American Revolution and the love the American people have expressed for those ideals — often with their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”
May I put it to you that that view arises largely from distortions you have received from outside, now that we live in an age where we have evidence both of the practice and of the actual founding processes, as opposed to the hopes of earlier generations who had to rely on what little they knew of the principles? As an outsider I see neither any actual achievement in those areas, nor any loftiness in the actual ideals which seem rather a rhetorical gloss seeking to justify what the revolting Americans wanted to do anyway along the lines of expropriating, massacring and exiling those who preferred not to play along. (I consider that the ethical and practical course for them would have been a Great Trek avant la lettre.) With no imposed bias, I have come to a very different conclusion to yours about the USA, that “shining, stinking republic”.
I am reminded of something Bertrand Russell once wrote, commenting on a letter he had received from a reader of an earlier book of his. In that he had pointed out that all forms of patriotism were mere cover stories for the worst excesses, except for that of the reader’s own country, for whom patriotism was noble, wise, and good. The reader in question wrote back, “I entirely agree with everything you wrote, but tell me, how did you know that I am a Pole?”.
J. Neil Schulman also wrote “Since I do not own a donkey, my meaning does not need to be disambiguated”.
Certainly it needed that – for that is a fact not in evidence.
December 27, 2009 - 1:16 am
John, are those “805 military bases in 130+ countries” exacting tribute from the countries in which they sit? Are any of them there without the consent of the local governments?
How would the South Koreans feel if the United States were to pull its military out, leaving them at the mercy of the North Koreans?
Why — 64 years after the end of the Second World War and 20 years after the Berlin Wall was pulled down — is the German government not asking the United States to remove its troops? I’d think they would, if the United States was maintaining an occupation force and exacting tribute from the defeated Germans.
How much Iraqi oil has ended up heating American homes or being refined into gasoline and diesel fuel for American cars and trucks, John? That’s what the United States invaded Iraq for John, wasn’t it? The oil?
When the Soviet Union was occupying Afghanistan, did the United States ask anything in return from the Afghans for the Stinger missiles the United States provided the Mujahadeen so they could expel the Soviets? When the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan by U.S.-provided weapons, did the United States replace the Soviets as an occupying force in Afghanistan?
President Franklin Roosevelt desperately wanted the United States to go to war against Germany. After the United States was attacked on December 7, 1941, FDR was able to get a Declaration of War out of Congress … against Japan. If Hitler had not declared war on the U.S. on December 11, 1941, Roosevelt would have had to pull all naval forces out of the Atlantic — ending all aid to England — and concentrate all forces in the war against the nation that had attacked — Japan. If not for Hitler keeping a treaty commitment with Japan when he was unwilling to keep any of the treaty commitments he’d made with Chamberlain or Stalin, FDR would have found himself fighting the wrong World War II.
When the United States had a nuclear monopoly at the end of World War II, how many nations did the United States blackmail into ceding their territory? Canada and Mexico would have been dead easy, just for a start. And why isn’t the flag of the United States flying today over Tokyo? That atomic-bomb-dropping Truman could have made that one of the conditions of the unconditional surrender, could not he have? And Washington could have American military governors running Japan to this day, no?
When the Soviet Union fell, the United States likewise had an opportunity to flex its power. Darth Bush could have said — and it would have been true — “There will be no one to stop us this time.”
And, of course, when Fidel Castro — on an island 90 miles from Florida — allied with the United States’ arch-enemy the USSR, confiscated billions of dollars of private American property, and declared Cuba a socialist state, did either President Eisenhower or President Kennedy launch a full-scale invasion to recapture that island? Or did they just give some small arms to Cuban expatriates who wished to overthrow Castro?
I think you know the answer.
John, I’m an old-school libertarian military isolationist. If I had my choice I’d close every overseas military base of the United States, pull all troops back home to the mainland U.S., and bring back Fortress America.
But for crying out loud. Cut the crap and get some moral perspective.
Neil
December 27, 2009 - 7:25 am
“are those ‘805 military bases in 130+ countries’ exacting tribute from the countries in which they sit?”
No — they’re exacting tribute from the American taxpayer, to the tune of $663.8 billion for FY 2010 (for the sake of comparison: Russia’s “defense” budget for 2009 was $41.5 billion; China’s was $70.3 billion; Iran’s for 2007 was $7.3 billion).
The tribute from the countries where US bases are situated goes to the same place (US “defense” contractors and other politically connected industries who’ve bought enough congresscritters to get their own stops on the Corporate Welfare Gravy Train Express), but the US government isn’t the middleman, it’s just the button man (“nice country you got here … be a shame if anything happened to it …”).
December 27, 2009 - 4:28 pm
The costs for the German taxpayer add up to several hundred million Euros each year – the exact amount is hard to tell, because it is divided between (and hidden in!) dozens of items in the federal budget and the state budgets. Same thing in other countries…
These facts are well-known and easy to google – a simple idea I would recommend…
December 27, 2009 - 5:51 pm
Which is precisely why I wrote, ” I’m an old-school libertarian military isolationist. If I had my choice I’d close every overseas military base of the United States, pull all troops back home to the mainland U.S., and bring back Fortress America.”
December 27, 2009 - 5:54 pm
Okay, Google it and post it here.
But if the German people don’t think they’re getting value from the presence of American military bases, why don’t they vote out the politicians that tax them for it? Germany is well-known for being fairly pacifistic since WW2. Why isn’t expelling American military bases politically potent in Germany? It’s not like it’s impossible to get the Americans to leave. France and the Philippines did it.
December 27, 2009 - 6:06 pm
Speaking of the Americans leaving France in 1966, an interesting article in The New York Times of April 27, 2009: “After 43 Years, a French Town’s Nostalgia for Harry and Joe Lingers.”
Contrary to U.S. military bases being occupying forces shaking down foreign countries for tribute, for the most part they proliferated as U.S. taxpayer subsidies to foreign economies, relieving those countries from taxing themselves for their own national defense against the USSR during the Cold War.
December 27, 2009 - 8:27 pm
‘Okay, Google it and post it here.’
That’s not the point: it was not me who made an assertion that seems to be false…
Btw: I did google it to get an idea of the dimensions of the costs.
‘But if the German people don’t think they’re getting value from the presence of American military bases, why don’t they vote out the politicians that tax them for it?’
Again: this is not the point.
I didn’t comment on a remark concerning the electorial behavior of the Germans.
As a libertarian I don’t even understand why someone votes at all…
‘Germany is well-known for being fairly pacifistic since WW2. Why isn’t expelling American military bases politically potent in Germany? It’s not like it’s impossible to get the Americans to leave. France and the Philippines did it.’
I’m afraid the German government is only as pacifistic as occasion demands…
I don’t deny that most Germans felt protected by the US forces during the Cold War. Moreover, most bases (especially the ones in poorer regions) helped the local economy. If this is what you mean by ‘getting value’ let me remind you of Bastiat’s ‘What’s seen and what’s unseen’…
But there might be a value indeed:
there is anti-American resentment in Germany both with a left and a right ‘flavor’. The right variety is of the ‘barbarians without culture and nigger music’ kind, the left one hates ‘unrestrained US capitalism’. I must admit that I’m quite grateful for the (cultural) impact of the American presence and the fact of living in a heavily ‘americanised’ country. Seems to be a better perspective than living in, er..let’s say Afghanistan…
December 29, 2009 - 3:56 pm
I’m going to throw my two cents in here: We hear frequently in the news, such as it is, cries from the Iraqi people for the US to leave (and rightly so!) yet mark my words, when it does actually happen, there will be an outcry from both government cleptocrats, and the people themselves. One part of the eqauation is certainly official US government aid, as well as defense contracts. That accounts for big bucks. Yet that money tends to stay in the hands of the bankers and defense contractors and government ministers. There’s another side of the equation that no one seems to talk about, and I have no idea how much money it accounts for.
Soldiers’ pay: Let’s look at Iraq for a minute. Last week, there was an article in Stars and Stripes regarding the supposed coming crackdown on enforcing US IP laws regarding movies, music and software. I laughed. Each and every US base here, from the small to the large has a minimum of three little shops operating that sell bootleg DVDs and software. It’s been like this since we started establishing permanent bases.
JSS War Eagle, where I spent the first eight months of my current tour had at one time four of these little shops, and they served around 1,000 soldiers. The Army invites them to do this. They get paid in tax free US federal reserve notes. They may be fiat, but they beat the hell out of the dinar which hovers around 11,000 to the dollar. Talk about worthless money.
This is one way that a lot of cash and buying power gets infused in to the local economy, as it goes from my hand to the shop owner, bypassing the vast system of bribery and graft that passes for their government.
It’s not my intent to justify this, but to comment on an aspect of the economic impact of our foriegn bases that is rarely talked about.
The small town of Baumholder Germany where I was stationed for two and a half years is another example. Forget about the actual jobs on post, the foriegn military aid and the defense contracts again, US soldiers in that town put thouands of dollars in to stripper’s g-strings every weekend. Oh, and let’s not forget beer. I think it’s a reasonable argument that beer is a major part of the German economy. I would be willing to bet that the average US soldier drinks about 1/3 of his paycheck every two weeks.
The question was asked above, why don’t the locals just choose elected officials that will act to end the US presence? I think it’s because most people vote according to their wallet. There’s nothing right or wrong about this, it’s just the way it is.
So, while in the newspapers and in the street protests the Iraqis rally against this current crusade, when it comes down to it, that means taking away their much sought after US dollars as well. Finding the political will to make that happen is, I think, going to be impossible.
Again, this isn’t a justification. As I explain this, don’t take my explanation for advocacy. I have friends and family that ask when I say I want to see our foriegn military presence and foriegn aid to EVERYONE ended, “Oh, but you don’t mean Israel too, do you?” Why, yes, yes I do. Trust me, I have every confidence that the American Jewish community can voluntarily support Israel with all of it’s aid needs, and I’m sure none of it’s neighbors could come anywhere close to generating by force the kind of cash Israel could come up with using individual choice… but I digress.
OK, now I’m not even sure where I’m going with this.
I do want to weigh in on the patriotism issue. I will stand up very proudly and call myself a patriot, in that I love my country, and her people. I find her government to be vile and disgusting, but the American people are what makes this country, and not the government. While the Constitution is only on a respirator with no sign of brain activity, I still think it beats the pants off of just about thing else this world has come up with to include Venezuela and Iran. But to be honest, fuck them. I really don’t give a rats ass one way or the other, what they do as long as they don’t come marching down my street. OK, I’ve really gotten myself lost in the weeds with this comment.
I’m reading “The Struggle for Freedom” by RW Lane right now: an interesting observation of how this country was seen around the world in the beginning of the 20th century. I recommend it to anyone.
Brian
December 29, 2009 - 4:11 pm
And one more comment completely unrelated to my previous rambling: I followed a link from Brad Spangler on Facebook to this:
http://www.mutualist.org/id10.html
The complete opposite of “Great Ideas are Simple”. Am I actually supposed to read this? Oh come on! I just don’t see what is more simple than the non aggression principle, and the concept that human rights are derived out of property rights, and the only path toward freedom in accordance with those is through individual self and property ownership. That’s it. That leads us to a voluntary free marketplace of ideas and goods and cheeseburgers and .308 Winchester and everything else.
Do you want to spread the ideas of freedom and liberty to others, or do you just want to debate it over bong hits at your friends’ houses? I tell you what, this Marxist Austrian mutualist (whatever the fuck that means) synthesis crap just makes my brain hurt.