Thursday, November 10, 2022

Michael Hudson — War and Debt to Rule

It should not be surprising that modern financial elites are behaving in the way that Ibn Khaldun described decadent dynasties: with anti-social selfishness. The drive for money turns men into homo economicus, the self-seeking “libertarian” individuals idealized by the Austrian and Chicago Schools, unconstrained by feelings of the “group identity” that Ibn Khaldun called ‘asabiyah, Ferguson called “fellow feeling” and the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin called mutual aid.

Most philosophers anticipated that wealth would breed selfishness and hubris, but none were so cynical as to anticipate that elites would rewrite history to depict their gain-seeking and luxury not as a decline of civilization lapsing back into savagery, but as a rise or even as the eternal state of society, a timeless and constant human nature. The public-spirited moral checks that used to be viewed as consolidating social solidarity are now denigrated as a detour from the “natural” spirit of self-seeking.…
Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of Neoliberalism
War and Debt to Rule
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

See also

Keynes agreed,
Some of the most important work of Alfred Marshall-to take one instance-was directed to the elucidation of the leading cases in which private interest and social interest are not harmonious. Nevertheless, the guarded and undogmatic attitude of the best economists has not prevailed against the general opinion that an individualistic laissez-faire is both what they ought to teach and what in fact they do teach….
It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive ‘natural liberty’ in their economic activities. There is no ‘compact’ conferring perpetual rights on those who Have or those who Acquire. The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not a correct deduction from the Principles of Economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest. Nor is it true that self-interest generally is enlightened; more often individuals acting separately to promote their own ends are too ignorant or too weak to attain even these. Experience does not show that individuals, when they make up a social unit, are always less clear-sighted than when they act separately....
John Maynard Keynes 
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ... But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight. 
John Maynard Keynes, 1930 
Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Section II
John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963, pp. 358-373

13 comments:

Ahmed Fares said...

What I Like About Scrooge —Steven E. Landsburg

[selected quotes]

In praise of misers.

Christmas is about generosity and charity and giving, right? And so it is that tightwad Ebenezer Scrooge is the villain in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Is that really fair, though? In 2004, Steven Landsburg explained why misers are actually very generous. In the spirit of the season, the article is reprinted below.

Here’s what I like about Ebenezer Scrooge: His meager lodgings were dark because darkness is cheap, and barely heated because coal is not free. His dinner was gruel, which he prepared himself. Scrooge paid no man to wait on him.

Scrooge has been called ungenerous. I say that’s a bum rap. What could be more generous than keeping your lamps unlit and your plate unfilled, leaving more fuel for others to burn and more food for others to eat? Who is a more benevolent neighbor than the man who employs no servants, freeing them to wait on someone else?

In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser—the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.

If you build a house and refuse to buy a house, the rest of the world is one house richer. If you earn a dollar and refuse to spend a dollar, the rest of the world is one dollar richer—because you produced a dollar’s worth of goods and didn’t consume them.

Peter Pan said...

Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from mental illness.

Steven E. Landsburg was his government appointed psychiatrist.

Matt Franko said...

“ Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from mental illness.”

Yo Ebenezer Scrooge wasn’t a real person..

Matt Franko said...

“ Nevertheless, the guarded and undogmatic attitude of the best economists has not prevailed”

Under Platonism everyone is dogmatic…

You can’t just proclaim you are not dogmatic because you are proposing an anti thesis to the prevailing thesis…

You are also dogmatic but are dogmatic towards your antithesis…

Keynes didn’t even understand his own methodology he was operating under…

Matt Franko said...

dog·ma·tism
/ˈdôɡməˌtizəm/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: dogmatism
the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.

Matt Franko said...

“ attitude of the best economists”

How the hell does he know? Took a poll?

Sounds like Trump….

Peter Pan said...

Yo Ebenezer Scrooge wasn’t a real person..

Is Steven E. Landsburg a real person?

Peter Pan said...

cat·ma·tism
the tendency to lay down and take a twelve hour nap.

Butch Busselle said...

Peter Pan rules the day

Ahmed Fares said...

‘More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics’ —Steven E. Landsburg

Consider Martin, a charming and generally prudent young man with a limited sexual history, who has been gently flirting with his coworker Joan. As last week's office party approached, both Joan and Martin silently and separately entertained the prospect that they just might be going home together. Unfortunately, Fate, through its agents at the Centers for Disease Control, intervened. The morning of the party, Martin happened to notice one of those CDC-sponsored subway ads touting the virtues of abstinence. Chastened, he decided to stay home. In Martin's absence, Joan hooked up with the equally charming but considerably less prudent Maxwell - and Joan got AIDS.

When the cautious Martin withdraws from the mating game, he makes it easier for the reckless Maxwell to prey on the hapless Joan. If those subway ads are more effective against Martin than against Maxwell, they are a threat to Joan's safety. This is especially so when they displace Calvin Klein ads, which might have put Martin in a more socially beneficent mood.

If the Martins of the world would loosen up a little, we could slow the spread of AIDS. Of course, we wouldn't want to push this too far: if Martin loosens up too much, he becomes as dangerous as Maxwell. But when sexual conservatives increase their activity by moderate amounts, they do the rest of us a lot of good. Harvard professor Michael Kremer estimates that the spread of AIDS in England could plausibly be retarded if everyone with fewer than about 2.25 partners per year were to take additional partners more frequently. That would apply to three-fourths of all British heterosexuals between the ages of 18 and 45.

A cautious guy like Martin does the world a favor every time he hits the bars. In fact, he does the world two favors. First he improves the odds for everyone who's out there seeking a safe match. The second favor is more macabre, but probably also more significant: If Martin picks up a new partner tonight, he just might pick up an infection as well. That's great. Because then Martin goes home, wastes away in solitude, and eventually dies - taking the virus with him.

If someone has to get infected tonight, I want it to be Martin rather than Promiscuous Pete, who would probably infect another twenty people before finally dying.

I'm always glad to see guys like Martin in the bars. When he takes home an uninfected partner, he diverts that partner from a potentially more dangerous liaison. When he takes home an infected partner, he diverts that partner from giving the virus to someone who might spread it far and wide. Either way, I sure hope he gets lucky tonight.

Matt Franko said...

Why don’t they just get a STD PCR test?

Too stupid Art Degree morons?

Peter Pan said...

In Steven E. Landsburg world, women have no agency.

Matt Franko said...

Art Degree Dickens preceded Art Degree Darwin by a few years so you can see where Darwin got it…