Rather than savage cuts, Switzerland considers “Star Trek” economics
"Switzerland will vote on giving every adult in the country a $2,800 check every month. How would that work?"
John Schmitt, a senior [orthodox] economist at the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research pooh poohs the idea as unworkable for the USA - largely because we're racists?
Thanks for nothing, John!
So one dumb economist says a particular option of any fiat currency system won't work here? So why are citizens who are actually closer to real operations on the street even listening to what one dumb [orthodox] economist says? Just because some media hack is touting ONE dumb economist as an "expert" that 315 million should listen carefully to?
Wow! The weight of the statistical sampling - let alone the subsequent verification - is suppressing me!
Listen, Josh [reporter on this story,] if you really want us to listen to dumb economists, just have 'em mumble incantations in Latin or some other extinct language, not just in OUR language, using their unique semantic definitions. Their semantics is 80 years out of paradigm. Citizens are going to catch on to the zany semantics - some day. Is that really a chance you are willing to take?
There's this thing called a thesaurus, you know.
However, if you codify the stupid in an extinct language, and put it in a ritual, then trusting serfs .. er, citizens .. often accept the message that some traditions aren't SUPPOSED to be understood, or ever questioned.
Then the self-fraud will never get old. Just institutionalized. Capiche?
Listen, Josh [reporter on this story,] if you really want us to listen to dumb economists, just have 'em mumble incantations in Latin or some other extinct language, not just in OUR language, using their unique semantic definitions. Their semantics is 80 years out of paradigm. Citizens are going to catch on to the zany semantics - some day. Is that really a chance you are willing to take?
There's this thing called a thesaurus, you know.
However, if you codify the stupid in an extinct language, and put it in a ritual, then trusting serfs .. er, citizens .. often accept the message that some traditions aren't SUPPOSED to be understood, or ever questioned.
Then the self-fraud will never get old. Just institutionalized. Capiche?
ps: It also protects the sanctity of the dumb economic priests in the hood, where they can have guaranteed ... discretely fettered ... access to young cultural options. If you play your cards right, Josh, you might even get a guaranteed dispensation from the new institution. I'm sure you get the message.
ps: ps: On the other hand, if the descendants of current hominids ever learn to wield fiat currency with increasing group agility, just think of the evolution that might yet await!
ps: ps: On the other hand, if the descendants of current hominids ever learn to wield fiat currency with increasing group agility, just think of the evolution that might yet await!
16 comments:
I saw this story last week. It is truly stunning and maybe gives some hope, that the neoliberal/libertarian doctrine may be finally showing some cracks. Bravo to the Swiss electorate!!!
I may just have to move back there.
Funny enough, Switzerland is the closest thing to a real democracy in the world (specially after the failure of democracy in USA and the rise of the aristocracy aka crony capitalists).
I'm surprised their Swiss bankers aren't urging them to keep it secret. :(
"...that the neoliberal/libertarian doctrine may be finally showing some cracks. Bravo to the Swiss electorate!!!"
You really can't be this stupid and/or blind to reality. How can the neoliberal/libertarian doctrine finally be "showing some cracks" when it doesn't even come close to having a foothold in the policy prescriptions being put forth in Switzerland, the US, or anywhere else on the globe? The statist neo-progressives that run the show and have millions of believers to keep the rest of us in line do their best to ensure that libertarianism stays way on the sidelines as nothing more than a fringe element.
Bottom line is that you only pretend it has a stranglehold on policy so you can assign blame elsewhere when you're own catastrophic ideas turn into an unmitigated failure.
I call bullshit.
Mule Rider, is it really a valid argument to require a pure laissez-faire system, which is just about impossible to accomplish in the modern world since all nations trade and their economies are open. Moreover, there is always going to be some public ownership or government activity that purists can point to as the reason that their ideal is not achieved yet and therefore cannot be tested?
I would rather say that a political cohort has hijacked a great part of the LIbertarian, Objectivist, and traditional conservative movement to promote a system of crony capitalism and corruption in the name of small government, low taxes, security of personal and property and traditional values.
In a truly laissez-faire system there would be no corporations but only individuals responsible and accountable for their action. There would be near perfect competition in free market, which means that there would be no profit above the return on capital investment.
First, that is a state of affairs that has never existed on any scale. Secondly, there is no way get there from here.
Therefore, the purists' ideal is just that and using it as an argument premise immediately makes the argument unsound. A sound argument one with valid logical form and true premises. If one of the premises is all but impossible in actuality, the argument doesn't withstand critical scrutiny.
I call bull shit on your bull shit and raise you one. The gradual implementation of a policy based on economic liberalism as put forward in different ways by Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Rand, Friedman, etc. is leading the US, UK, and the EZ over the cliff. It's economically disastrous and politically untenable.
What's an unsound argument is assigning a set of beliefs, actions, policy prescriptions, etc. to libertarians that they in no way endorse and pretend they have a stranglehold on power (or are at least growing in power and influence) and scapegoating/blaming them for the failed ideas/actions of others.
"The gradual implementation of a policy based on economic liberalism as put forward in different ways by Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Rand, Friedman, etc. is leading the US, UK, and the EZ over the cliff."
Except this whole concept doesn't exist except in your fantasy world. The ideas of Rothbard, Mises, et al have virtually ZERO influence on the economies of the US or pretty much anywhere else in the developed or even under-developed world, so pretending they are what's driving us towards imminent doom goes beyond sheer nonsense and rubbish to the utterly preposterous and absurd.
Mule, what I said doesn't scapegoat Libertarians, Objectivists or traditional conservatives. It puts the blame on political operatives that are using them to achieve objective to which they would not agree because these objective victimize them rather than increasing their freedom. Like most of the left, most of the right is taken in by drinking the kool-aid of propaganda and psy ops. The real (hidden) agenda of these operative is not to create a nation of free individuals competing on level ground and may the best win. Far from it. It is preserve and strengthen the existing economic power structure under the ruling elite. If it weren't the ruling elite would stomp it forthwith, and they are already taking steps to do so with the political operatives that are stepping out of bounds and rocking the boat of business and finance.
You say, "The ideas of Rothbard, Mises, et al have virtually ZERO influence on the economies of the US or pretty much anywhere else in the developed or even under-developed world, so pretending they are what's driving us towards imminent doom goes beyond sheer nonsense and rubbish to the utterly preposterous and absurd."
I would agree with this in part. First it is true that these ideas have little traction and not going to get any if the ruling elite have any way in it. A truly competitive marketplace is not in their interests.
However, they are using such ideas to dupe the rubes that strongly believe in them to elect leaders who are agents of the ruling elite and serve their interests, just as Establishment Democrats dupe their rubes with the slogans they want to hear.
The best we can hope for in the foreseeable future is to get a leash on the predator class. The likelihood of there being either a laissez-faire market economy or a communal economy in the US approaches zero.
Why do I say this? First, because politics is highly polarized in the US and the center cases the deciding vote. This means that no politician from either extreme is electable. Secondly, because campaigns are financed by the ruling elite and they are not going to back anyone that threatens their interests.
I dont know how it could get more libertarian than "we're out of money!"...
rsp,
Mises: "You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you."
He wrote this to a woman who openly idolized one of the most vicious child murderers in American history. I'd say Mises ideas are ascendant in our society. Certainly right-libertarians can be found high-fiving each other ever time a Corporate Lord puts his boot on some peasant's neck.
Good Lord Ben! Have we stooped that low again? On a bigger scale, again?
Sooooo, Ayn Rand idolizes child murderer William Hickman = libertarianism refuted?
Logic. Fail.
No wonder this website is considered the cesspool of the econ blogosphere.
"Certainly right-libertarians can be found high-fiving each other ever time a Corporate Lord puts his boot on some peasant's neck."
Ignorant hyperbole. Sorry, not a valid response to the critiques put forth by Austrian/libertarian economists.
"I'd say Mises ideas are ascendant in our society."
I'd wager that at least 97 out of 100 US citizens over the age of 18 don't have the first clue who Ludwig von Mises is or what his ideas were.
Sooooo, Ayn Rand idolizes child murderer William Hickman = libertarianism refuted?
Logic. Fail.
Ayn Rand and Libertarians mutually repudiated each other during her lifetime, so conflating then in not correct. However, Objectivists and those touting Ayn Rand have some explaining to do over the fact that she did model fictional heroes on Hickman and based her philosophy of individualism on a building a wall between self-interest and altruism, going so far as to praise Hickman as a model and to diss Jesus as the villain of Western civilization.
That's a problem for politicians that aspire to national office, like Paul Ryan. You can't have Rand without Hickman and also her repudiation of Christianity and religion in general.
The real logic fail is with people like Ryan who try to be conservative Christians and also promote Ayn Rand's philosophy.
Rothbard was not far from this, either, and it is quite simple to show this through quotes, as y has done in the past.
And it is not just Objectivists and Rothbard Libertarians. Individualism is just not compatible with the gospels, and religious conservatives that read the gospels selectively are obvious hypocrites, since the text itself condemns them. One cannot have it both ways and be logically consistent.
That's your opinion, Tom. Which, taken with an extra $4.50, will get you a latte at Starbucks.
Snark aside, the gospels are not a guiding light with regard to collectivism, individualism, objectivism, or any other modernized terms we've "coined" to try and put people in a box so as to either put them on a pedestal or ostracize them. The gospels are there to proclaim the holiness of Jesus Christ and His grace, mercy, and love. In other words, the gospels are about Him, not "us" and a bunch of awkward labels people like you try to assign to others.
Mule Rider, I am just pointing out contradictory positions. You can't be a Christian who accepts and lives the "hard sayings" of Jesus and also an individualist politically and economically without either selective reading or bending the interpretation to something non-standard. Ayn Rand recognized this, for example. It was abundantly obvious to her as a good Nietzschean that Jesus was requiring altruism and not egoism. If Jesus was preaching a meritocracy it was a meritocracy of virtue and not worldly success in terms of fame, fortune, power, and pleasure.
Tea Party Evangelicals are fooling themselves if they think that can somehow reconcile this contradiction in the eyes of people who can read what Jesus is reported to have said and the traditional interpretation of it until the "Jesus wants you to be rich" teaching was promulgated in many mega-churches that cater to Sunday Christianists who have no appetite for the hard sayings of Jesus and would rather pretend that they don't exist or mean something other than is obvious from the words themselves and traditional understandings of them.
In fact, many if not most the biblical quotes in support of the contemporary "heresies" are selectively extracted from Hebrew and Christian scripture to buttress a position that is contradictory to the spirit of Jesus teaching and Paul's letters and the other letters as well.
I am not particularly concerned with this from the religious or spiritual point of view here. People are welcome to believe what they want even if it is contradictory and they don't mind looking foolish or hypocritical.
I am saying that there is a fundamental disconnect in the GOP among Libertarians, Objectivists, and conservatives and the cracks are beginning to show as positions get pushed to the extreme. Then coalitions break down. That is what is happening now.
This is important from the vantage of economics in that institutionalists hold that politics, religion, government policy, etc. exert powerful economic influences.
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