Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Matt Bruenig — Anti-liberty economic regulations: a dialogue


More libertarian fun.

Anti-liberty economic regulations: a dialogue 
Matt Bruenig

30 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"This dialogue is set at the beginning of human time."

Cain was the first libertarian...

rsp,

Bob Roddis said...

If you go imposing this rule on everyone unilaterally, then what’s to stop them from imposing their economic regulations on everyone?

Typical Bruenig nonsense. The same can be said for peaceful Jews standing up to the Nazis and/or peaceful Africans standing up to slavecatchers.

As I've known for 40 years, the "progressive" agenda is based upon the obliteration of the protections of private property which are most required by the poor and powerless. It's good that you guys have come right out in the open with these attacks on the very idea of private property.

See. MMT is not a "monetary theory".

Go for it.

Anonymous said...


Quote: "As I've known for 40 years, the "progressive" agenda is based upon the obliteration of the protections of private property which are most required by the poor and powerless."

So the historically the poor and powerless where the property owners?

Even for you Bob this is new low...

Quote: ". The same can be said for peaceful Jews standing up to the Nazis and/or peaceful Africans standing up to slavecatchers."

Really Bob? Really? You really want to bring up the libertarian record regarding the Holocaust?


So where were you when all the libertarian rags where publishing the Holocaust denial stuff in the 1970s?

Did you condemn the movement then or not?

Yes or No?

If not then you are a racist holocaust denying scumbag. Period. End of Discussion.

Quote: ". It's good that you guys have come right out in the open with these attacks on the very idea of private property."

Apparently you don't what reductio ad absurdum is...

He's not attacking private property. He's attacking very bad arguments for an objective notion of private property from first principles.


Answer Bruenig's question.

What gives you the right to attack my body without my consent?

Bob, you are a violent psychopath by claiming you have the right to use violence against my body without my consent to secure your exclusive claims to necessary land
and resources.

What give you the right to violate my self ownership?

Bruenig has utterly destroyed the vulgar libertarian sophistry.

You just can't admit you where duped by a Neo-Racist Cult created by the fascists of the National Association of Manufacturers and Lunatic Robert LeFevre because you a moral coward and/or a racist.

I've already proven you are a rape apologist so show us you condemnation of the use libertarian publishing platforms for the promotion of holocaust denial.

You if cannot.I will have proven that you are not only a rape apologist but also a racist.

Bob Roddis said...

What "libertarian" persons or publications advocated Holocaust Denial in the 1970s?

Anonymous said...

"It's good that you guys have come right out in the open with these attacks on the very idea of private property."

Actually Bruenig isn't opposed to the idea of private property. What he is doing is showing you that your particular belief system is incoherent and a pack of lies.

Matt Franko said...

Bob,

Whats your take on the Clive Bundy situation going on out in Nevada?

Tom Hickey said...

John Locke's just so story on the origin of property:

Sec. 32. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind. God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour. He that in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him.

Sec. 33. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.

Sec. 34. God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, (and labour was to be his title to it;) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another's labour: if he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another's pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left, as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to.

— John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter V
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm

Tom Hickey said...

Adam Smith's just so story on the labor theory of value:

"Equal quantities of labour, at all times and places, may be said to be of equal value to the labourer. In his ordinary state of health, strength, and spirits; in the ordinary degree of his skill and dexterity, he must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness. The price which he pays must always be the same, whatever may be the quantity of goods which he receives in return for it. Of these, indeed, it may sometimes purchase a greater and sometimes a smaller quantity; but it is their value which varies, not that of the labour which purchases them. At all times and places, that is dear which it is difficult to come at, or which it costs much labour to acquire; and that cheap which is to be had easily, or with very little labour. Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only."

— Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V

Emphasis added.

Tom Hickey said...

The above quotes show how classical liberalism is tied up in Locke's labor theory of property and Smith's labor theory of value.

Which leads right into Marx's theory of primitive accumulation as expropriation and profit as exploitation.

This leads into the demand for a reset.

Bob Roddis said...

Libertarian Review March 1978 page 4:

But it would be a tragedy if the First Amendment were violated just because this rabble has decided to stir up some trouble. It is a tragedy that they have been able to use the First Amendment-which they, as National Socialists, loathe-to get some cheap publicity. They ought simply to be ignored, and the Jewish community involved really ought to try to find within itself the heroic amount of self-control needed to do just that. Then the Nazis group would hoot and holler, find no one listening, and sink back into the muck from whence it came.*******

As for the Nazis, our only choice here and now is either to march against them, or ignore their blustering, letting them fade back into richly-deserved obscurity. Above all, we must not give them the cause of freedom of speech to hold high. That spectacle, which we are seeing now in the courts of this nation, should be repugnant to all of us, whether Jewish or not.


http://www.libertarianism.org/lr/LR783.pdf

Bob Roddis said...

1. The "labor theory of value" was eviscerated once and for all by the Austrians.

2. The non-aggression principle does not prohibit groups of people from pooling their land, money or anything else.

3. The non-aggression principle does not address or concern the long list of non-violent social sanctions that might be applied to people with bad attitudes or unpopular and non-PC ways of living by the majority of hip, smart PC types.

Anonymous said...

Quote from racist Bob:"What "libertarian" persons or publications advocated Holocaust Denial in the 1970s?"

Rampart Journal, Reason Magazine, Noontide Press, etc... (here,

Hell the early Libertarians pretty much invented holocaust denial via Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby. Please read this book

The Libertarian movement has always been filled to the gills with white racists hanging around folks like Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell and everyone knows it.

And that is why I know you are racist. There no way you could have involved in the movement for 40 years and not know about it's Neo-Nazi and Neo Confederate racist core leadership.

The reason I hate libertarians is because as a fascism researcher I came to understand that there is no separation between American Libertarianism and the American version of the fascist movement from Bill Palley on. The historical pedigree of the entire the libertarian movement comes from the American fascist movement.

Libertarianism isn't to be debated. It is to be smashed.

Bob Roddis said...

You find ONE interview of a very early edition of Libertarian Review of someone no one ever hear of and no one has heard from since who is interviewed by people no one ever heard of nor has anyone heard from since.

James J. Martin (who?) was interviewed by Steven Springer, Michael P. Hardesty, Peter Kuetzing, and John McCarthy (who?).

This theme really caught on with the libertarian movement as a whole too, didn't it?

Brian Doherty notes in Radicals for Capitalism: "Martin, in his attempt to adjust standard historical understandings of war and war guilt, shifted into questioning the veracity of standard anti-German atrocity stories, including the standard details of the Holocaust", calls it an "unfortunate shading over into Hitler apologetics".

I have never heard of any of them. No one has ever heard of any of them. And it's true that Stalin killed far more people than Hitler. And all you MMTers are commies. And the left engages in perpetual commie holocaust denial. The commie holocaust occurred due to the evisceration of private property rights. So what does that say about you guys?

(I did find a positive reference for Martin from the left wing Jewish anti-warrior Murray Polner who liked Martin's much earlier anti-war work.)

Just another vicious smear.

Matt Franko said...

bob,

you are avoiding my question as to your views on the current "Cliven Bundy situation".... rsp,

Anonymous said...

Matt, have the "militia" men started shooting at each other yet?

Anonymous said...

Bob said: "James J. Martin (who?)"


Historical revisionism

"Rothbard embraced "historical revisionism" as an antidote to what he perceived to be the dominant influence exerted by corrupt "court intellectuals" over mainstream historical narratives.[5](pp15, 62, 141)[100] Rothbard wrote that these mainstream intellectuals distorted the historical record in favor of "the state" in exchange for "power, prestige, and loot" from the state.[5] Rothbard characterized the revisionist task as "penetrating the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history".[100] He was influenced by and a champion of Harry Elmer Barnes [holocaust denier].[100][101][102] Rothbard endorsed Barnes's revisionism on World War II, favorably citing his view that "the murder of Germans and Japanese was the overriding aim of World War II". In addition to broadly supporting his historical views, Rothbard promoted Barnes as an influence for future revisionists.[103]

Rothbard's endorsing of World War II revisionism and his association with Barnes and other Holocaust deniers have drawn criticism from within the political right. Kevin D. Williamson wrote an opinion piece published by National Review which condemned Rothbard for "making common cause with the 'revisionist' historians of the Third Reich", a term he used to describe American Holocaust deniers associated with Rothbard, such as James J. Martin of the Institute for Historical Review. The piece also characterized "Rothbard and his faction" as being "culpably indulgent" of Holocaust denial, the view which "specifically denies that the Holocaust actually happened or holds that it was in some way exaggerated".[104]

In an article for Rothbard's 50th birthday, Rothbard's friend and Buffalo State College historian Ralph Raico stated that Rothbard "is the main reason that revisionism has become a crucial part of the whole libertarian position."[105]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard#Historical_revisionism

Anonymous said...

Bob said: "James J. Martin (who?)"

just check out the website of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama:

'Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition'
James J. Martin

http://direct.mises.org/document/4229/Revisionist-Viewpoints-Essays-in-a-Dissident-Historical-Tradition

Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908
James J. Martin

http://mises.org/document/4310/Men-Against-the-State-The-Expositers-of-Individualist-Anarchism-in-America-18271908

Anonymous said...

Bob said: "James J. Martin (who?)"


Jeff Riggenbach:

"The noted revisionist historian James J. Martin... one of the great libertarians of the 20th century"

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/riggenbach.php?articleid=2593

https://mises.org/authors/1218/Jeff-Riggenbach

Bob Roddis said...

Jewish leftist antiwar Murray Polner:

Each time I read that some liberals and neoliberals, conservatives, neo- and otherwise, and a few hawkish academics have again begun talking up the supposed virtues of a military draft, I return to James J. Martin, that sadly disregarded anarchist-conservative-libertarian whose magisterial work Men Against the State badly needs to be read and debated by each new generation of pundits, professors and politicians.

Apparently, regardless of his past work, once he started questioning THE EXTENT of the holocaust in the late 70s, no one would associate with him. Thus, proof of ZERO influence of "holocaust denial" on or in the libertarian movement.

The reason you commies have your panties in a wad is because libertarians constantly show how Nazi attrocities flow naturally from the "socialist" part of National SOCIALISM. We use the horror of the Nazis to demonstrate the horrors of socialism. There's no denial of the horrors of the Nazis.

Since you guys have no response, you name-call.

Bob Roddis said...

And we all know that the Nazis practiced Keynesianism. They sure never practiced Austrian Economics or the NAP:

http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/05/fascism-and-keynesianism.html

So who's the racist racist racist now?

Tom Hickey said...

Sorry, Bob, the Nazis were not socialists, with the state owning the means of production. They were fascists and Hitler ran a corporate state. He never nationalized Krupp, for example, and Alfred Krupp was convicted of war crimes.

Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (13 August 1907 – 30 July 1967), often referred to as Alfried Krupp,[1] was an industrialist, a competitor in Olympic yacht races and a member of the Krupp family, which has been prominent in German industry since the early 19th century.
He was convicted after World War II of crimes against humanity for the way he operated his factories; served three years in prison, and was pardoned.
The family company, known formally as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was a key supplier of weapons and materiel to the Nazi regime and the Wehrmacht during World War II. In 1943, Krupp became sole proprietor of the company, following the Lex Krupp ("Krupp Law") decreed by Adolf Hitler. Krupp's wartime employment of slave labor, resulted in the "Krupp Trial" of 1947–1948, following which he served three years in prison.


Wikipedia

If you mean that Hitler anticipated Keynes in using fiscal policy to stimulate the German economy in the post WWI depression, that is correct. But that's not "socialism" other than in the sense that everything that is not laissez-faire is socialism.

Keynes on Germany in the 1930s

How [G. W.] Bush's grandfather [Prescott Bush] helped Hitler's rise to power

Tom Hickey said...

The Austrian politician Engelbert Dollfuss became Chancellor of Austria in May 1932. In March 1933, Dollfuss effectively abolished democracy, and established an authoritarian Austro-fascist regime, but was assassinated in July 25, 1934 and replaced by another dictator called Kurt Schuschnigg, who was Chancellor from July 1934 to the Anschluss in March 1938. While Dollfuss engaged in some limited interventions in the economy, mostly he seems to have pursued deflationary austerity.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (an Austrian economist) relates that Mises was a close adviser of Dollfuss:
“Engelbert Dollfuss [sc. was] ... the Austrian Chancellor who tried to prevent the Nazis from taking over Austria. During this period Mises was chief economist for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. Before Dollfuss was murdered for his politics, Mises was one of his closest advisers.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Meaning of the Mises Papers,” Mises.org, April 1997
Even after his move to Geneva in 1934, Mises was still employed by the Austrian government, visited Austria periodically, and continued to do work for the government (Hülsmann 2007: 884).

So Mises was giving policy advice to Dollfuss and possibly Schuschnigg, and I assume that it was they should pursue austerity.

The historical studies on Austria in this period suggest that Dollfuss appears to have taken most of this advice to heart.

So how did the austerity work out for Austria?:
“In tackling the economic crisis the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship pursued harsh deflationary policies designed to balance the budget and stabilize the currency. The government’s program featured severe spending cuts, high interest rates, and frozen wages. …. In a sense the Christian Corporative regime demonstrated the viability of the Austrian state, but it did so at the cost of alienating a majority of the Austrian people. On the eve of Anschluss a third of the population was still out of work, while those fortunate enough to have jobs were bringing home paychecks considerably smaller than before the Great War” (Bukey 2000: 17).

“Beginning in in 1931, [Austrian] unemployment grew rapidly, reaching a peak in 1933–6, with between 24 and 26 per cent of the labour force out of work .... When, in 1937 and 1938, there was a modest recovery, unemployment never dropped below the 20 per cent value. This had a devastating effect on the legitimacy of the Austrian system .... As the Austrian government sustained its reluctance to apply Keynesian policies, the economic recovery never entered a serious tale-off phase in the second half of the 1930s. Linked to an exhausted determination of the Austrian government to resist the pressures from Germany, the economic crisis of the 1930s should be seen as an additional reason why the Austrian society was receptive to the annexation by Germany in March 1938” (Gerlich and Campbell 2000: 55).



Mises and the Great Depression in Austria

Seems that Austrian economics didn't work out so well for Austria, while Hitler did fine in his implementation of "Keynesianism" adapted to the corporate state. Perhaps if Austria had followed a Keynesian recipe instead of an Austrian one, the Austrian people would not have welcomed the Anschluss. As it was, they saw Hitler as an improvement.

Bob Roddis said...

A little advice from Mises to the Austrian fascist leadership is not a test of a laissez faire/hard money regime in central-banking-fascist Austria. Of course, the depression was caused in the first place by monetary distortions caused by central banking in order to fund the bloodfest known as WWI which could not and would not have been funded without it. So we know who is on the side of mass death and theft of the common man: The supporters of and advocates for the emissions of government funny fiat money.

You know that the purpose of the NAP is to make a fascist regime impossible, right?

Scraping the bottom of that giant Keynesian barrel again, I see.

Anonymous said...

Rothbard's imaginary utopia would be particular type of fascism in a very pure form. There would still be a 'state', of course, that state would just be controlled by corporate tyrannies rather than by elected governments. Oh and of course they wouldn't call it a 'state'.

Anonymous said...

"WWI which could not and would not have been funded without it"

what a stupid statement. So in Bob's infantile mind, if everyone had just passed a law saying that governments can't print money then world war I would never have happened.

There are so many different types of stupid packed into that thought it's actually quite impressive in its own way.

Bob Roddis said...

Fascism is just a variety of totalitarian socialism where the property owners kinda sorta get to keep title to most of their property while the government bosses them around telling them what they can and cannot do with it. Under Keynesianism, the state allows even a little longer leash on the victims.

Hayek's “Road to Serfdom” pretty well settled the issue of whether or not the Nazis were socialists. It's that book that Pilkington always mocks but has clearly never read.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Of course fascism isn't "a variety of socialism". Only an ignoramus brainwashed by the garbage that spews out of the Ludwig von Mises propaganda Institute could possibly be so completely ignorant about history and political theory.

Larkus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Larkus said...

Bob Roddis wrote:
"You know that the purpose of the NAP is to make a fascist regime impossible, right?"

The NAP doesn't make a fascist regime impossible.

People can even be sent to the concentration camps and gas chambers without violating the NAP.