Category: Uncategorized

Many formulations called “third way” have been advanced over many years. These denote a variety of things. In the 1930’s, “third way” generally referred to “mixed economy,” or a synthesis of socialism and capitalism. By the 1990’s, the understanding was that “third way” was a synthesis of conservative and progressive ideas, with a very explicit understanding that all this operates within a capitalist economy. This is an example of what they call moving the goalpost.

More generally, third ways get suggested when someone wishes to suggest a third alternative to a supposed dichotomy. Hence we have third parties, third genders, third sectors, etc. These particular types of third way seem to suggest something outside, rather than between, the strongly implied binary choices; a non-colinear third point.

“Hard anagorism” is a rejection of the assertion that all economies can be categorized in terms of ‘market’ or ‘command.’ “Soft anagorism” is a less assertive claim that rejects the assertion that ‘market’ and ‘command’ are mutually exclusive characteristics of economies. Perhaps the best known school of anagorist thought today is Parecon, or participatory economics. They seek to demonstrate that economic planning can be pried apart from command economics.

For the hard anagorist, the riddle is how to achieve participation in the economy with neither permission nor money. For the soft anagorist, the question is whether the amounts of both of these quantities that are needed can be dramatically reduced. Soft anagorism is most of what I will write about in the present blog. That is because I find it a more fruitful area of inquiry.

Obviously, in this context, we mean voluntary austerity, not the type of austerity plan imposed on a population as part of a program of market-based reforms. Voluntary austerity means cheap living as an art form. It can also be a religious thing. Voluntary austerity in pursuit of anagory takes the monastic formula of “poverty, celibacy and obedience,” drops obedience, suggests (but by no means requires) the substitution of family planning for celibacy, and studied economic minimalism for poverty.

I’m joining the mass exodus. The mission (such as it is) of the present blog will be continued at astoundingteam.com/wordpress. See you there!

Anagory or anagorism is offered as an alternative to agorism. Anagorism is like free market anticapitalism but minus the market part. Topics of interest include:

• continuing the search for end runs around the Iron Laws of Economics.
• seeking strategies that assume the validity of the Iron Laws, but look to salvage the maximum possible amount of idealism from compromises between what we believe to be true (i.e. competition) and what we believe to be right (i.e. solidarity).
• unmasking the Invisible Hand through reverse engineering and radically transparent projects in economic cooperation.
• networking and brainstorming with like-minded people.

This blog is created as a migration to WordPress of the Blogger blog Es un alimento muy completo. I will start by rewriting and refining those posts at alimento which are fairly directly related to the subject of anagory, and hopefully will be inspired enough to break ground on new anagorist arguments and topics.

Seems one of the featured (bankrolled) videos on YouTube is some kind of astroturf presentation condemning what they call the “bad cap tax.” A Google search on the quoted phrase “bad cap tax” (as of this writing) produces exactly one result.

The website

costaricaprivatecertifiedguide.com

directs one to

http://odilfmvt.cz.cc/fast-scan/

which runs an apparent Java exploit which shrinks the browser window to a very small size. Re-maximizing it reveals the message:

Windows Security 2011 has found critical process activity on your PC and will perform fast scan of system files

Elitism is the belief that wealth and power are evidence of virtue. The ‘liberal elite’ meme is Orwellian in the sense of ‘ignorance is strength,’ ‘freedom is slavery,’ etc. As with all memes, the strategy of choice is assertive, relentless repetition.

The people who parrot the ‘liberal elite’ meme would like us to believe that academia and the media are dominated by liberals, or leftists, or at any rate people they disagree with. This may be true of academia (though I have my doubts–economics department faculties tend to be well to the right of center) but is so obviously untrue of the media (who rather aggressively frame issues in right vs. center terms) that ‘liberal media’ used as if it were one word is a patent falsehood. Even if media and academia were liberal dominated, the implication that they are the power centers of society is laughable. The amount of real power in media and academia is trivial compared to the power in big business, and in the military and intelligence services, as well as of course government in general.

It all follows the usual pattern of propaganda. The assumption seems to be that if you repeat something enough times, many will believe it to be true.

This one purports to be from Bank of America, and redirects to www.syrianone.net. They even included a copyright notice, which I am taking the liberty of disregarding here, as the message is fraudulent to begin with. Non-standard grammar, it seems, is par for the course with spam, and this one is no exception, with “To get start:”

======8<————-

Due to the high number of fraud attempts and phishing
scams, it has been decided to implement EV
SSL Certification on this Internet Banking website.

The use of EV SSL certification works with high
security Web browsers to clearly identify whether
the site belongs to the company or is another site
imitating that company’s site.

It has been introduced to protect our clients against
phishing and other online fraudulent activities.

Since most Internet related crimes rely on false identity, Bank of America went through a rigorous validation process that meets the extended validation guidelines

Please upadate your account to the new EV SSL certification

> Log on to https://www.bankofamerica.com

Please Note: If we do not receive the appropriate account verification within 48 hours, then your account will be suspended. Remember, Bank of America is committed to your security and protection. To find out more, take a look at our Information Security section under Privacy and Security on the Web site. Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender Equal Housing Lender Equal Housing Lender © 2010 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

I have noticed a not-at-all subtle shift in the tone of conservative movement rhetoric in America, that (in terms of conservative sources I’m tuned in to) has seemingly unfolded in just the last few months. Since the Reagan revolution, the tendency of movement conservatism has been a zero-tolerance policy toward tax increases on any subset of the population, period. Now the meme being parroted by grass-roots conservatives (I’m willing to assume they’re not all sock puppets) is that citizens below about the 40th percentile in income are undertaxed, the talking point being that they “don’t pay any income tax.” I initially interpreted “40% pay no income tax” as code for “I’m against the Earned Income Credit.” But it also appears to be a salvo in the far-right’s age-old struggle to replace the income tax entirely with sales tax (code phrases “fair tax” [sic] and more recently “consumption tax”).

According to Bill Carver, “Most democrats don’t like a sales tax because it gives up conrol and doesn’t punish the rich.” Disregarding the ‘punish the rich’ rhetoric, the ‘control’ issue is an interesting frame to put on the issue. People control the amount of sales tax they pay by controlling the amount of taxable consumer goodies they purchase. Sounds fair enough. But how is income tax similarly not under individual control? I can’t count the number of times I’ve been lectured by libertarians and other conservatives about my relationship with my boss being ‘voluntary,’ let alone how many times I’ve heard the cliché “nobody’s holding a gun to your head.” While economic competition provides resistance to any attempt to increase one’s income (and hence one’s income tax liability) there is no resistance, let alone coercion, standing in the way of decreasing one’s income. One (who itemizes deductions, anyway) can even decrease one’s taxable income without any change in earnings through philanthropic giving. Of course, all taxation is coercion, and justifying taxation requires coercion to be a means justified by some end, one of the more popular being the maintenance of civilization itself. It is not my purpose here to debate the legitimacy of taxation in general. I simply don’t see how sales tax is under a taxpayer’s control in ways that income tax is not.