Category: Uncategorized

As has become my habit, I again blew way past the character maximum for blog comments. This is a response to Winton Bates’ comment of 29 August, 2010 21:32 on this blog.

On first inspection of the above comment I was half wondering whether Lin Osrom was short for Elinor Ostrom, and to my delight it is! Elinor Ostrom’s claim to fame seems to be at least a partial debunking of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ understanding of free and/or public goods, which in itself is enough to make her a hero of mine. If only I had a penny for every time my ideals have been whacked over the head with the wet noodle called ‘tragedy of the commons’ by some snarky libertarian. Another barometer of true brilliance is the impressive and diverse variety of groups and causes that seem to want to claim her as one of their own, or at least claim some measure of vindication in her findings for their own pet theories, and pet bodies of theory. Only a year or so post-Nobel, and she’s right up there with Thomas Jefferson by that barometer. Laissez-faire types love her for demonstrating that central authority is not needed for optimal allocation, while commies like me celebrate her finding that apparently property rights aren’t needed either. What isn’t exactly clear to me is what exactly is needed, and what exactly is the range of problems to which these group dynamics are applicable. I need to read up on these things.

As for this Peter Boettke, the name looked familiar, and of course following the link burned the name “George Mason University – Department of Economics” onto my retinas. Just day before yesterday one of the blogs I subscribe to posted a link to this claim that GMU Econ is essentially a wholly-owned subsidiary of the David H. Koch Foundation.

Of course, in the spirit of fairness, I read all 23 pages, at least twice.

As for Dr. Boettke’s thesis that the only reasonable regulation is self regulation, I find it interesting that he finds Dr. Ostrom’s findings to include “informal, and sometimes even tacit, rules that communities live by.” This sounds to me like neither government regulation nor self-regulation, but social norms. So, perhaps we should rejoice in the triumph of the normative over the positive; calling into question another mainstream economics dictum with which my most cherished beliefs have been pummeled many times.

As for the beekeepers and apple growers, maybe the jury is still out on that. Just last night David Suzuki’s TV show was looking into the phenomenon of colony collapse disorder that has been decimating the honeybee population. It seems that bottling up, ‘mixing labor with’ and commoditizing the ‘service of nature‘ that is pollination has had the effect of bringing the bees, like the other livestock, into the world of monoculture, which may be a contributing factor to CCD. In fairness, the show was inconclusive as to an exact cause, positing that the honeybee is facing so many stressors from so many sources that any one of these stressors could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Here’s a gem:

It is arguable, that not since Kenneth Boulding (see, e.g., Boettke and Prychitko 1996) have we seen a social scientist allow their sheer curiosity about the world to take them on such a methodological journey of so
many different approaches to get at the phenomena she wants to understand…

Sounds to me like the everyday practice of anthropology. I’ll probably file it as yet another example of mainstream economists being dismissive of the other social sciences.

All in all, the article read to me like a salvo of the standard talking points I have come to expect from ‘Masonomists,’ but I did learn something. I didn’t know that Dr. Ostrom had cred in both public choice theory and political economy. Public choice theory is a discipline people of my ilk tend to dismiss as just another school of thought created in service to incumbent interests. Political economy, I always assumed, was the exact opposite; a discipline scuttled (for similarly mercenary reasons) in favor of economics as a science apart from politics. It seems obvious (or let’s say intuitive) to me that all economic relationships (e.g. employer-employee, landlord-tenant, franchisor-franchisee, principal-agent, and yes, government-citizen) have a political (i.e. dominance-submission) dimension. I’m inclined to believe that the movement from political economy to economics is in service to the agenda of defining the political in the ultra-narrow terms of ‘monopoly of the initiation of force,’ while the invention of public choice theory is an attempt to make political science a branch of economics, in keeping with Steven Landsburg’s project of making all sciences branches of economics through sophistic demonstrations that everything from particle interactions to evolutionary biology to matters of the heart (is nothing sacred?) are basically manifestations of market forces.

Snarky, but definitely food for thought, and much reading for me to catch up on.

The following is intended as a comment to Winton Bates’ post titled Are Americans pessimistic about the prospects for the next generation?

Speaking as a ‘Generation X’ American (born 1965) I’m inclined to believe that (1) my generation’s coming-of-age years occurred during that ratcheting-down of working class expectations called Reaganomics, (2) future generations can expect further ratcheting down of expectations and (3) the high point of American civilization was what was called the ‘post-war period,’ maybe 1946-1979. Some put its definitive end as early as 1973 (OPEC embargo). I’ll go along with that, but human resources made a strong campaign of working with rather than against the trends circa 1980; what Jacob Hacker has termed the Risk Shift.

Whether the American standard of living is rising or falling, it should be undisputed that the structural trend is for Americans of modest means to be expected to eat more and more of the risk inherent in enterprise. All of the trends in human resources practice point in this direction, be it the trend from union to non-union workplaces, gainful (permanent, full-time) to ‘contingent’ employment, employee status to ‘independent contractor’ status, fee-per-service to HMO in health benefits, and defined benefit to defined contribution in retiree benefits. I would say that whatever gains (if any) have been made in median income have been more than offset by the losses in economic security. Even if it’s true that risk was systematically underpriced by employers and insurers (perhaps due to incompetence or lack of 20-20 hindsight) during the postwar period, that underpricing enhanced quality of life in very tangible ways.

I think at least the next two or so generations are facing a continuation of this trend. For them, debt-financing of education, unpaid internships, attrition hiring, and self-employment by default are being added to the expectations placed on individuals generally.

There are of course many very important ways in which the present is much better than postwar America, which was far more racist and sexist. It was also more bureaucratic and conformist, but in these areas I think the present-day trend toward a surveillance state, and more significantly, a surveillance workplace, more than cancels out the relative cultural freedom, which in practice has more to do with expression than with substantive rebellion.

I don’t expect a reversal of the Risk Shift trend until the painful market correction between global-north and global-south wage expectations has run its course to equilibrium. I think the odds are against this particular elephant being swallowed and digested during my lifetime. The only hope for a mercifully quick (though possibly more traumatic) resolution of these structural inequities is to ‘liberalize’ human migration with as much ideological ram-rodding as has been applied to the ‘liberalization’ of trade and of capital flows. The necessary adjustment of global-north consumption norms to the reality of global warming should also help, as will the projection that we will probably clear the population hump (though at a staggering 9 billion) by about mid-century.

Toward a thick individualism

Thick individualism as I intend to formulate it is not exactly the same thing as thick libertarianism. Of course I don’t regard individualism as exactly synonymous with libertarianism. Libertarianism, both thick and thin, it seems, is anti-government first and pro-individual second. Another reason I tend to distance myself from libertarianism is because while libertarianism draws the battle lines between the public sector and the private sector, I tend to draw the battle lines between individuals and institutions. The latter category definitely includes all governments and businesses, and I generally also tend to throw in nonprofits, religions and perhaps families. I’m the type of anti-authoritarian for whom the creators of the Geek Code invented the PE>$ designation, which translates to “Distrust both government and business.” That statement pretty much sums up my worldview, and it’s been my worldview pretty much since my first job.

The apparent cluster of ideologies that includes thick libertarianism, left libertarianism, market anarchism, market socialism, and mutualism (at least in the American sense) seems to have a decidedly anti-corporate flavor (which, curiously, is starting to emerge in right-wing ‘libertarian’ circles) but it isn’t clear to me whether they are pro- or anti- ‘business,’ in a sense that would include, for example, small business. I’m decidedly anti-business, as my working definition of capitalist is ‘someone who owns and/or operates a business.’ Like the IWW, I understand a worker to be ‘someone who isn’t a boss.’ An employee of a small business is an employee, which is to say, used. From the vantage point of the employee, the employer is definitely an institution. Granted some employers are individuals, but here we’re generally talking about work in personal service and other situations involving explicit social rank, which would logically be an affront to all schools of anarchy save the capitalist ones.

Needless to say, at some point I started to refer to my system as anti-institutionalism. This left a disturbing aftertaste, however, since it seems the only thing more trite than a neologism ending in -ism is one that also begins with anti-. Besides, it is fashionable these days, for some reason I can’t quite fathom, to chide people for expressing with precision what they are against without describing what they’re for. The formulation neo-individualism occurred to me, but the neo- prefix is perhaps even more trite than anti-. Then a few days ago, I saw yet another reference to thick libertarianism and it hit me. Why not call it thick individualism, describing it more or less as individualism as if individuals mattered.

The practice and advancement of thick individualism should logically avoid the creation of institutions. This begs the question of the legitimacy of organizations such as syndicalist unions and federations. One way around this is to regard these as part of a dual power strategy, although I’m generally inclined to think of power itself as a dirty word. Small-f federalism as a decentralizing tendency is, I think, of real value, so I would say that if we must have organizations, they should be federations of smaller organization, which devolve in a transparent way all the way to the individual. Given my general anticapitalist (which to me implies anti-market) bias, I’m inclined to think that if we must accept organizations as a necessary evil, they should also ideally be nonprofit organizations.

Anarcho-capitalists, of course, self-identify as individualists. Like thick libertarians and thick individualist(s?), this to them means they are anti-statists. They seem to think the state is collectivism taken to its logical extreme. I think of it is inequality taken to its logical extreme. Meanwhile I struggle with certain questions, like, whether it’s possible for an organization not to be an institution, and whether my professed love of collectivism is simply out of spite toward the capitalist types. My provisional answer is that I can imagine no non-collective strategy by which the mice can bell the cat, whether the cat is the boss or the state.

Market anarchy means anarchy (i.e. freedom) for the market. Real anarchy means freedom for the people, which means, among other things, freedom from the market. If the market enjoys freedom to find its equilibrium, that doesn’t help me if the equilibrium price of my talents happens to fall short of the equilibrium price of my needs. Unmet needs are the basis to all forms of exploitation. Those who have what they need within easy reach are those who have the freedom to take this (or another) job and shove it. Freedom for the people may require the ability to override market outcomes. Obviously a nongovernmental means of accomplishing this must be invented, but such an invention is necessarily part of the struggle.

I’m not the religious type. If anything, I’m the irreligious type. I definitely do not harbor a theistic viewpoint. ‘No gods, no masters,’ etc. In spite of all this, I have a tendency to think in terms of a supposed dichotomy between the categories of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane.’ I’ve been meaning for a while to blog on this subject, and what finally broke that particular writer’s block was a comment I received from David Gendron:

I disagree about your anti-market stance. Even sexual relations and gifting are realizations of market mechanisms.

I hear claims like this every so often. My reaction is always the same, and it is a verbal thought, and it’s worded exactly thus: Is nothing sacred?

Perhaps it is significant that David Gendron refers to sexual relations rather than romantic relations. His hobby horse over at anarchopragmatisme seems to be the vileness of statism applied to the criminalization of so-called vices, including the flesh trade. I regard sexual relations as sacred in the context of romantic relationships and profane in the context of commercial ones. I should point out that I don’t have any opinions whatsoever of the ethical or unethical nature of any kind of sexual conduct. Sacred and profane, to me, is not analogous to ethical and unethical. A slogan I came up with that I delight in throwing around: Friendship is sacred. Networking is profane. Here of course I mean networking in the careerist sense; networking meaning working with rather than against the fact that in the real world, who you know is more important than what you know. Friendship is the more organic practice of simply gravitating to those people with whom you are most at home, or who reflect your interests or values. Networking is the practice of sizing people up as useful or not, influential or not, in the loop or not. Who is worth spending time with is determined by pragmatic considerations.

In a market economy you have to market yourself. That, for me, is the single most compelling argument against market economics. The fact is, some of us detest everything about sales, marketing and promotion. As Killer says, “The present economy is organized to produce a considerable amount of crap that wouldn’t be needed in a post-capitalist society and industry can be made more efficient if organized differently.”

When deciding whether one has common cause with movements like ‘market socialism’ or ‘free-market anticapitalism,’ it makes sense to figure out just what it is that these people mean by ‘market.’ What are the essential properties of the market mechanism?

What about strong efficiency? Is transparency a necessary condition for efficiency? If it is, there may hope for a non-dystopian yet market-oriented future. Under strong efficiency, informational outsiders are nevertheless treated to ‘efficient prices,’ which suggests the dismal possibility that we’re living in the best of all possible worlds. A related question is whether market equilibrium is the best of all possible worlds. I may be wrong (I’m often wrong) but this seems to be the main bone of contention between the neoclassical and Austrian schools of economics. From my perspective, they both look far-right and laissez-faire capitalist (if anything the Austrians more so), but if the Austrians are de-linking equilibrium-seeking and (global) optimum-finding, perhaps that should be interpreted as a form of optimism, and it can be understood (to some extent) why so many ‘left’-oriented anarchist and libertarian blogs link to mises.org, despite the snarkiness and the ‘yes Virginia TANSTAAFL’ tone.

Most of these seemingly paradoxical market≠capitalism schools accept the exchange paradigm but not property. But what is exchanged in this actually-free market if not property?

Another question is whether market economics can be had without marketing, or the related dark arts of salescrittership and advertising. If forced sales is inherently authoritarian, how is it that involuntary unemployment is not? Maybe it’s a lesser evil thing, prioritizing freedom over security or equality. Or is the libertarian left in full agreement with the libertarian right that not only doesn’t the world owe anyone a living, but it doesn’t even owe them a job offer or the equivalent? I can see how there is a problem if someone’s particular handiwork (and gift to society in the gift economy sense) is neither needed nor wanted. But assuming one is flexible about what work they will perform, must the opportunity to perform it be a privilege? Perhaps this is the fatal weakness of gift economics based on doing your own thing—the likelihood that the outcome of doing it is not what is needed by others. So it is that Henry David Thoreau had to “make it worth men’s while” to buy his particular kind of basket of a delicate texture. In what to me is the spirit of anti-authoritarianism, he elected instead to study “how to avoid the necessity of selling them.” He of course pursued this by attempting a minimalist and subsistence-based lifestyle. We all know this strategy has its limits.

These class struggle agorists also tend to embrace competition, at least between group endeavors, be they cooperatives, syndicates, federations, etc. I fail to understand how this type of competition can help but lead to competition between individuals over opportunities to participate. Inevitably at some point some individual will be seen as a competitive liability to a work group and will face rejection, and possibly failure, insolvency or non-survival, or is this not as inevitable as I imagine? Even if competition is somehow magically limited to ersatz institutions and not individuals, what is being competed over? Wealth? Power?? Market share? What is the penalty for being a loser?

It’s hard to imagine a movement rallying around what it terms ‘the free market,’ but also having a shared social goal of eliminating the necessity of selling. Perhaps mutualists have no complaint with the necessity of selling, per se. The question becomes, what organized or at least self described movement or school of thought does? Whoever they are, I wish to join them.

I’ve added a blogroll of sorts to this blog. The positioning and coloring is based on the ‘political compass‘ displayed in the upper left corner. The coloring is copied directly from the political compass for the four corners, and RGB-interpolated for the other five positions in my 3×3 grid. The left column of my 3×3 grid is in the left column of my blog template, likewise for the right. The center column I didn’t quite know what to do with. For now I decided to place it in the center column under the blog entries. It’s too obscure a placement for blogroll-type lists, but seemed for now more appealing than arbitrarily assigning it to either left or right, or putting it above blog entries, which shouldn’t require navigating past much and should certainly be visible without pressing page-down or the equivalent.

Assigning blogs to pigeonholes of course is on a call-’em-as-I-see-’em basis. If anyone has complaints with their placement (where or if) they will be honored. Just send email to november-eight-charlie-hotel-zulu-at-yahoo-dot-ca.

Or it could be the fog. Morning of Thursday July 15, 2010 was hopping for ATSC (i.e. DTV) DX-ing from my QTH north of Detroit. Picked up the following stations:

• 11 WTOL Toledo CBS (+ 11.2 ‘News 11’)
• 15 → 5 WEWS ABC Cleveland
• 17 → 3 WKYC Cleveland NBC (+ 3.2 weather radar)
• 23 ION, Qubo, ION Life (local Christianist station WUDT still logging as 8 → 23.1)
• 26 → 25, WVIZ Cleveland PBS (+ 25.2, 25.3, 25.4)
• 27 WBGU Bowling Green, OH PBS (+ 27.2, 27.3))
• 31 ION, same routine as channel 23, above.
• 34 → 61 WQHS Cleveland Univision

Antenna is a simple single ‘bowtie’ UHF antenna in the attic.

There were also those pregnant pauses suggesting the receiver really wanted to pull a signal out of digital channels 10, 12, 13, 20, 47 and 50

According to one “Flash Card Machine,” anagorism means the following:

the point in the plot especially of a tragedy at which the protagonist recognizes his/her or some other character’s true identity or discovers the nature of his situation

This is of course unrelated to my own formulation of anagorism simply as an antonym or negation of agorism. The ‘original definition’ of anagorism nevertheless has a spooky relevance to my own emerging consciousness concerning the inevitability of the agora, and all the inner conflict etc. arising from such realizations. In the interest of advancing the word anagorism as a sort of a meme, I’ve started using it as a tag.

The following is a parody: