Jonathan Tepper — Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism With It

We need a revolution to cast off monopolies and restore entrepreneurial freedom. First of two excerpts from “The Myth of Capitalism.”

Bloomberg Opinion
Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism With It

Jonathan Tepper

See also a short review of The Myth of Capitalism

A lot of times, when you read reviews about books on the economy, you end up wondering what the reviewer’s ‘priors’ are as people like to say in economics. You read the review and wonder where the biases of the reviewer are, because that can tell you a lot about the review.

So I’m going to lay it out there.

The ‘Corporatist’ is a kleptocrat masquerading as a believer in liberty. He uses terminology based in liberty to construct an ideology solely as a means of furthering the gains of a specific strata of society allied with the corporatist and at the expense of other strata, by coercion if necessary.

That’s me, seven years ago on this very website in a post I called Corporatism masquerading as Liberty. So, those are my priors coming into this; I’m someone who sees the ‘ideology’ of freedom and liberty being used as a cloak and shield for people who are almost entirely self-interested. And what I believe has happened is that ideology has been injected into our form of capitalism as a way of disarming naysayers and allowing the ‘Corporatist’ to benefit at everyone’s expense.

So when I read “The Myth of Capitalism" (henceforth The MOC) was subtitled “Monopolies and the Death of Competition", I was intrigued because the question for me was how self-interested people are able to reap all the gains of our system, while avoiding a lot of the downsides....

econintersect
"The Myth Of Capitalism"
Edward Harrison, Credit Writedowns

See also

"Freedom" at the tip of a missile. Making the world "safe" for capitalism American style, or else.

AntiWar
Pompeo Promises New Liberal World Order – New Wine In Old Bottles?

Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams

See also

Huawei chief financial officer Wanzhou Meng is facing extradition to the United States after being arrested in Canada on suspicion of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, the Globe and Mail reports.

Making the world safe.

Axios

Top Huawei executive arrested on suspicion of violating Iran sanctions

Zachary Basu

also

Mere hours after Chinese officials finally affirmed President Trump's description of Saturday's trade 'truce' - this after fears that the true nature of the agreement might have been "lost in translation" helped trigger the worst one-day market selloff since October - the DOJ has gone ahead and kicked the hornet's nest, seriously jeopardizing the prospects for a prolonged trade detente between the world's two biggest economies....

Zero Hedge
Trade Truce Over? Canada Arrests Huawei CFO At US Request

Tyler Durden

James Petras — A Decalogue of American Empire-Building: A Dialogue

Introduction: Few, if any, believe what they hear and read from leaders and media publicists. Most people choose to ignore the cacophony of voices, vices and virtues.


This paper provides a set of theses which purports to lay-out the basis for a dialogue between and among those who choose to abstain from elections with the intent to engage them in political struggle.…

James Petras Website
A Decalogue of American Empire-Building: A DialogueJames Petras | Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Yanis Varoufakis — May 1st: As long as capitalism exists, every generation of workers is condemned to wage the same struggles again and again – for dignity, wages, conditions, hours

Today, May 1, we struggle not to forget the sacrifices of generations of workers to etch onto the world’s collective conscience the crucial principle that labour is not, and can never be, just another commodity. We struggle to remember past struggles so that the next struggles can be won in the name of humanism.

The 1st of May commemoration is not an exercise in remembrance alone: Today’s generation is struggling against the same monsters that crushed the workers in May 1886 in Chicago – and for the same reason: The struggle to limit working hours to 8 per day, to extract from employers a living wage, to secure decent conditions, to safeguard the workers’ dignity in an era where young people are forced to choose between Uberisation, endless internships, or a soul-destroying process of branding and re-branding themselves as ultra-flexible, all-hours wage slaves who live for the corporation and not for themselves.

The struggle continues. And this is, in itself, excellent news!

Yanis Varoufakis
May 1st: As long as capitalism exists, every generation of workers is condemned to wage the same struggles again and again – for dignity, wages, conditions, hours

Eric Zuesse — What America’s Aristocracy Want

The American aristocracy want inequality of rights, with two basic polar-opposite classes: the ‘elite’, with themselves at the top of everything, and everybody else below them, as subjects to be ruled by them, in such ways as they (themselves, and their fellow ‘elite’) can agree to do. They are convinced that they have earned their high status, in one way or another, and they compete ferociously amongst themselves, to rise even higher within the aristocracy.

This is the essence of conservatism in political liberalism. Liberalism was essentially about ending the privilege of monarchies and aristocracies, a project that was largely completed at the end of World War I.

However, this is did not end a privilege ruling elite. "Bourgeois liberalism" simply replace the feudal ruling class with a capitalistic one.

This involves overreach and just as the feudal oligarchy was terminated so too will the bourgeois oligarchy.

This is what Donald trump ran on. But he plays the curious part of being a member of the oligarchy and the supposed champion confronting it. This suggest that the end game has not yet begun in earnest.

Barack Obama had the chance of becoming the next FDR, but he or his party were real for it. Bernie could have also, but the party was not yet ready for it either.

The question is who will seize the opportunity of a wave that has crested and when will that wave have actually crested and begun breaking.

Strategic Culture Foundation
What America’s Aristocracy Want

Eric Zuesse

George Carlin summed it up:

Oleg Komlik — Class struggle explained by… Adam Smith?!

Keeper Smith quote to throw at neoliberals.

Economic Sociology and Political Economy
Class struggle explained by… Adam Smith?!
Oleg Komlik | founder and editor-in-chief of the ES/PE, Chairman of the Junior Sociologists Network at the International Sociological Association, a PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and a Lecturer in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies

Sandwichman — Ants at the Piketty Picnic: What's Wrong with "Inequality"?

Sandwichman follows up on Peter Radford.

Why do people want to get rich? Sure, they want nice stuff, but more fundamentally they want to be freed from the coercive everyday insecurity of being poor. How do the wealthy stay rich and get even richer? They use the political power that their wealth accords to keep the game rigged in their favor....

Inequality is a positive fact; coercion is a normative claim. So let's all talk about inequality as if it has nothing to do with coercion. Let's not talk about the elephant in the room. What elephant?

So what's wrong with "inequality"? Framing the debate to be about "inequality" misses the point that the real problem is coercion.

Democracy gives the less well off the power to coerce the wealthy into sharing the wealth  — if they use it. The rich use their social, political and economic power to prevent this, in effect coercing the less well off to remain so.

One of the key arguments is that a rising tide lifts all boats. Another is meritocracy and just deserts. Both are based on unreasonable assumptions as heterodox economic analysis shows as well as analysis of social and political thinkers and social scientists.

Capitalism results in accumulation of capital at the top unless policy is brought to bear to prevent this.

Econospeak
Ants at the Piketty Picnic: What's Wrong with "Inequality"?

Sandwichman

Chris Dillow — On Within-Class Envy

Of course, there are countless real world analogies to this behaviour. Old money sneering at new money, the richcomplaining about the super-rich, "white trash" being racist and "strivers" attacking "shirkers" are all examples of within-class conflict. What's striking about this experiment is that such behaviour emerges so easily, without the aid of ideology or media manipulation.This suggests that the lack of development of class solidarity has some deeper-rooted causes than ideology alone.

For a Marxist, this is depressing stuff. But it should also concern any liberal or democrat.It suggests that people might support policies that hurt other poor people - for example, welfare cuts or immigration controls - even if they themselves are harmed by such policies. In this sense, people's preferences aren't necessarily the same as their narrow material interests.

Stumbling and Mumbling
On Within-Class Envy
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle (UK)

The basis of interest politics and wedge issues?

Peter Cooper — A Return to the Dark Ages

It doesn’t matter what shade of authoritarianism the 0.1% cloak themselves in, they have always wanted the same thing: a return to the Dark Ages. Liberal education, open inquiry, transparency, freedom of expression, democracy, all spell trouble for the enemies of well-rounded human progress. Stalinism, McCarthyism, Neoliberalism have all actively suppressed knowledge, critical thought, and people power. They have done so because an agenda that is diametrically opposed to the interests of almost the entirety of humanity can only thrive in darkness. War is sold to the gullible with lies about the other. Opponents of global capitalism’s worst excesses are demonized as terrorists. National leaders who stand up to the Washington Consensus have CIA-orchestrated coups to contend with. Austerity, a policy without legitimate theoretical or empirical basis, is Economics’ version of the Big Lie. The aim is the greatest ignorance for the greatest number. Knowledge, not just wealth, is hoarded by a tiny few, while disinformation is disseminated freely. The aim is a widening of wealth inequality, but not just for the wealth itself, but for the power and control this enables.

heteconomist.com
A Return to the Dark Ages
Peter Cooper

David Moberg — ‘Going Nuclear’ on Class

The Democrats’ working-class disconnect.
In These Times
‘Going Nuclear’ on Class
David Moberg | Senior Editor

Brad DeLong — The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Has Shot Itself In The Head

The most fascinating thing about Romney is that he has fallen for a fake statistic created by the Wall Street Journal editorial page as what they call "boob bait for the bubbas"--something that they hope low-information voters will hear, get outraged about, and vote Republican. As Ezra Klein writes: "Among the Americans who paid no federal income taxes… 61 percent paid payroll taxes… 15.3 percent of their income.… Another 22 percent were elderly. So 83 percent… are either working… or they’re elderly…"

 Yet Romney clearly thinks that the following are identical:

• The 47% of the population who are the Democratic base.
• The 47% of the population who pay no income taxes.
• The 47% of the population who are "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it… [the people whom we] will never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives…"

But Romney was not supposed to fall for this fake statistic, and make policy based on it--he was supposed to have economic advisors who would brief him, and rapidly deprogram him of fake right-wing talking points that lodged in his brain as things that really were true.

I wonder why they did not do so…

Grasping Reality with Both Invisible Hands
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Has Shot Itself In The Head
Bred DeLong |
(h/t Mark Thoma)

Brad, the reason that Romney's advisors did not do so, and they are very smart people, is that GOP strategists consider this is a "base" election in which the winner will be whichever party turns out its base. So the push is voter suppression to reduce Democratic base turnout, and red meat to the the GOP base. So this is a "base" election in more ways than one.

As an overall strategy the GOP has decided to harness the Tea Party energy to the Establishment goal of reversing the New Deal declaring class war against "the moochers." We are now going to see how that plays out.

Donations to the GOP coffers are skyrocketing as a result, and there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. It may be a base strategy in more ways than one, but that is the nature of the contemporary GOP. They have decided to go for the moon and claim a mandate if they win, which they expect to be able to do though superior fundraising, tight targeting of the swing counties, and base management aka the ground game.