Giving Measureable Meaning to the Moral Imperative
Analysts want there to be an algorythmic mechanics to indicate probable, testable, outcomes.
Determining variables are not always easily reduced and structured into differentials that make for reliable evaluative measures despite the assumption that all the effects are included in a regression.
Normative measures included in public policy, for example, can present with unintended consequences that confound technically descriptive, analytical models as well as normative, prescriptive models. The differential between economic models in combined operation (mixed economic models) makes for a complex analytic that becomes reduced to moral imperatives as declarative knowledge.
Reliance on prescriptive modeling for declarative knowledge is inherently biased and quickly reduces to political power for sustained application. The means is unscientific, but it is not unpredictable; that is, pure and mixed models have predictable consequences that are likely to be managed in predictable ways to sustain application of the modeling with a legitimacy of a moral imperative despite a verifiable insignificance.
While the incentives of a free-market model, for example, are easily verifiable, there is a tendency to modify the model for a non-market effect but with the "virtue" of a free-market legitimacy. The incentives modify with the model, however, and the outcome will, predictably, not be the predicted consequence of the model. There will then be unintentional consequences that, while being intentional, are easily argued to be spurious and confounding due to the complexity of a "mixed" model.
Culpability is structured into the unaccountability of the unintended consequences. A problem to be solved is then reduced to negotiating what the problem is, usually identified with conserving a moral imperative that results in an unresolvable, antagonistic differential.
The modification does not disconfirm the unmodified version. Instead, the measureable effects of the modified version, with a moral imperative to apply "virtuous" means-to-ends, supports the free market hypothesis.
Given the current status of our political-economic system, are we encouraging virtue or vice? For an equities analyst, for example, the differential can mean the difference in regulatory reform that affects margin performance. The calculus can be significantly changed based on the imperative scored into the political-economic differential equation.
Another good example is health care reform. If the solution is affordability to satisfy an imperative, three possibilities emerge: reduce costs, increase income, or both. We see, however, that the problem has been negotiated into an enormous bureaucratic scheme to provide insurance premiums, mandated to support the cost. The meaning of the imperative--delivering healthcare--is normatively the same but measurably different on an effective quantitative score.
Consolidation of industry and markets purports to increase the virtue of economic efficiency through an economy of scale to satisfy the imperative for the accumulation of capital (economic growth). The imperative is measureably achieved while the proposed effect of economic growth algorythmically cycles negative.
In the case of health care, the proposed reform will spread the risk and reduce costs through an economy of scale. The accumulation will effect growth of the insured. More funds are available for health care, and less for anything else. Capital is accumulated to achieve the scale, which is the problem--the more accumulated the less available to spend with any discretionary control over prices. The only price control is the deflationary affect on the general economy in the form of demand reduction--the inability to pay (the problem).
The distribution required to prevent a massive accumulation from being deflationary prospectively comes in the form of lower costs.
Reorganization of existing health-care costs into a mandated government accumulation will not reduce costs without cost controls, which is not a part of the program. Costs will equilibriate based on the amount of non-discretionary funding available. The general economic effect is disequilibriating.
The differential between the two practical models, free-market economics and an economy of scale, appears to be insignificant if they both yield lower costs and spread the risk. However, the accumulation has a deflationary tendency, consolidates the risk and the cost without control or an easily verifiable accountability.
Ensuring a free-market model is about providing health care at an affordable cost, equilibriating the cost to available income. Ensuring an economy of scale efficiency is about consolidating the risk into an accumulation of capital to pay the risk premium without equilibriating the cost to available income, which is the deflationary problem to be reformed.
In the former case, providers must control costs to stay in business (alpha risk). In the latter case, providers are incentivized to control the governing authority and bankrupt consumers (gamma risk). The former is pro growth with low inflation. The latter is pro inflation with low growth and provides an abusive incentive that Adam Smith proscribes by ensuring a free market in priority.
The latter results in reduction of supply and higher prices, and that is why the health care reform legislation will likely include provision for increased compensaton for providers. The problem is sustained in the form of a solution, favoring a deflationary accumulation of capital to grow the supply of insured funds available for provider cost increases.
The reduction of available income--the reduction of demand--is the risk that is supposed to be reduced by mandated health-care premiums. Instead, the risk is reorganized to look like risk reduction.
The two operational models--the pluralistic free-market model, and the model of consolidated economy of scale--is an antagonistic differential. The virtue, the strengths, of the two models are non-complimentary, the differential is in itself functionally disequilibriating, and the imperatives are categorically undefined, meaningless, variables.
Instead of encouraging virtue, we cultivate vice in priority with the legitimacy of the outcome falsely attributed to an ontology of free-market mechanics. It is every man for himself. The outcome cannot be a malign or criminal intent if we are all striving for the same reward. The winners are the "natural aristocracy" and "the right thing to do," no matter how wrong it may seem to the losers,
is "Beyond Good and Evil." Depriving the winners of their winnings is, therefore, unnatural. It is wrong and results in ontological crises, like the one we are experiencing now. The only right thing to do is to "let it be." Let the results of the free market stand. The only evil, then, according to the conservative argument, is to redistribute the wealth, and power, accumulated.
Accumulation of wealth and power, conservatives maintain, cannot be considered in any way a criminal intent. It is the right thing to do. This moral imperative is, however, categorical--it is not only the right thing to do, but a compelling endeavor that defines one's existence: no matter how immoral a value we may assign it, wealth and power will be sought and accumulated. It gives meaning, categorical value, to existence.
The categorical assignment of value is largely expressed in the sense of a distributive justice imbedded in a logic of orderly hierarchy and collective action.
The moral imperative is categorically infused with the power to organize toward a specific goal, or for specific performance, like analyzing whether banks that are organized "too big to fail" are more or less valuable to shareholders now that TARP funds--the product of a moral imperative--are being replaced with new equity.
Categorical distribution of value gives measurable meaning to the moral imperative. Since its meaning is imbedded in ethical argumentation, however, ambiguity abounds.
Unlike the empirical argumentation of the scientific method, the categorical measure of an ethical imperative is imbued with difficult-to-measure qualitative, normative values. The values are "indicated" by quantitative measures like the distribution of wealth and the exercise of power.
For example, is a one dollar vote in the marketplace equivalent to one person/one vote in the political marketplace? While the question is quantitatively testable, the meaning--the interpretation of the data--is subject to an endless qualititative ambiguity (reduced to an antagonistic analytical differential) of an unmeasurably argumentative proportion on values that are not generally, but should be, considered a function of verifiable hypotheses.
The measure of normative values is less a matter of confirmable ontology than an acceptance of faith supported by reason--the Aristotelian/Thomistic model of moral construction (teleology). It is an epistemology that natural science has rendered outmoded (the earth is not empirically flat and the sun does not empirically revolve around the earth).
The Aristotelian/Thomistic model of reasoning is critically flawed if we seek verifiably declarative knowledge and accept the predictive utility that comes with it. Despite the demonstrated utility of the scientific method, however, it does not keep us from constructing teleological, organizational models dressed up as naturalistic ontologies. It is a false epistemology intended to support the categorical assignments that achieve the moral imperative of doing the right thing. This is achieved with highly qualitative, and ambiguous, assignments of ethical value.
For example, bailing out too-big-and-complex-to fail banks was a moral imperative because it prevented a depression. The virtue of the benefit includes record foreclosures, massive unemployment and reduction of net worth redistributed to upper-class incomes.
Bailing out from the bottom up is an unconfirmed, untested, moral hazard premised on the false argument that accumulation of wealth creates growth and employment when the opposite is verifiably true. Disconfirmation of the tested hypothesis (growth creates wealth) is ironically considered by the same conservative argument to be morally superior to its confirmation, however.
Although demonstrated accumulation of wealth provides a productive incentive (something to be strived for), without growth there is little wealth to be accumulated; and as it accumulates there is little left to prevent a punitive, gamma-risk distribution on wealth that is retributively valued.
Confirmation of the wealth-creates-growth hypothesis is, then, a productive disincentive. It is a moral hazard.
The conservative argument, "accumulation of wealth causes growth" demonstrates how normative arguments become functionally complex and appear differentially hypocritical. Giving measurable meaning to moral imperatives is an evaluation of legitimacy, and as we see in the example, the functional differential is easily rendered an abstruse inscrutability that is effectively unempirical but measurably meaningful and fully functional, nevertheless.
It is not that the conservative-normative argument is an unverifiable hypothesis. It is disconfirmed (not verified) with each economic cycle into recessionary trend. That is why conservative proponents rely on the lack of a null hypothesis.
By not allowing the distribution necessary to verify it, the argument is made that the conservative-normative is verified by never being nulled. Since the best way to declare knowledge is to continuously try to disprove it, the conservative norm is falsely argued to stand the test of the null hypothesis.
The Bush tax cuts, for example, were to result in a budget surplus according to the conservative-normative hypothesis. The verifiable result is the Great Recession. Since the new adminstration will not apply an alternative, but is engaged in a reorganization of the problem from the top down, the null-hypothesis remains effectively untested and the conservative-normative gains empirical legitimacy despite continuous failure.
In the above example, the moral hazard is conversely verified by "virtue" of the intended result since accumulation of wealth and power causes a perverse incentive and a moral hazard. The predictable outcome of the practical model is, nevertheless, deemed forgiveably unintentional and will not be prevented to conserve the virtue of the verifiable benefit, avoiding the moral hazard.
Although the deprivation of the Great Recession is undesireable, according to the conservative-normative argument, it is a necessary condition (a categorical imperative). Economic growth will not occur without the moral imperative expressed as legitimately declarative knowledge: providing the incentive for growth (productivity) is caused by deprivation.
The differential is antagonistic, however, because the deprivation (the accumulation), by definition, prevents growth which is dependant on distribution.
Preventing the means of deprivation (the distribution) is a moral hazard because it will prevent the means of providing for the deprived. The differential struggles against itself to a generally beneficial and legitimate effect that requires secret, elite knowledge to fully understand.
The deprived, non-elite masses do not see the empirical, ethical value of capitalism and its cyclical processes because they do not have the secret elite knowledge to realize it. The non-elite must rely on faith in the system, and a failure of that faith is a heresy to be discouraged by political-economic sanction (deprivation). The travails of a natural, innate deprivation obstructs access to the knowledge necessary for economic success, not the exclusive deprivation of the capital.
According to the classical model of capitalism, deprivation is the virtue (the strength) of capital formation. Without it, we will ALL be much worse off than the deprivation necessary to achieve economic growth. The consequences are morally imperative and ontologically unavoidable (i.e., the accumulated value is completely non-retributive and the active pursuit of self-interest to provide for the undeprived a forgiveable consequence).
The ethical value of forgiveness plays a vital role in the logic of a righteous accumulation of wealth and power. Accumulation has both the dimension of a measurably indicated practical efficiency (the profit margin) and ethical value (the right thing to do). It should not be discouraged because it is the motive (the telos) to expand the pie.
An unforgiven debt burden at the bottom during the Great Recession, however, has unnecessarily given the profit motive an extraordinary retributive value. The extra value presents with extraordinary gamma risk that we will all find empirically, measurably, detrimental in the most meaningful way, relinquishing freedom to tyrannical ambitions that have become the structured incentives of power.
Health care reform legislation, for example, is an imperative that is structured with such an enormous complexity (the bill is over 2000 pages), that it is purely an endeavor of elite authority. Proponents would convince us that the complexity cannot be resolved by the non-elite in a free-market structure. Its passage is more a demonstration of tyrannical ambitions armed with moral imperatives than a practical measure to relieve the masses from the travails of a conservative-normative deprivation. It now awaits the empirical test, the normative differential, of a meaningful confirmation, nevertheless dependant on a normative description of power.
The normative differential has become so complex in the hands of technical expertise that it has been driven to an extraordinary level of unmanageability. The differential has become so antagonistic that reconciliation of the modeling is more a function of negotiating what the problem is than solving THE problem.
Nature is indifferent to whether we want to identify the truth. Nature asserts the truth with the force and empirical legitimacy of a categorically imperative authority. Ignoring the truth is a gamma risk that gives measureable meaning to our moral existence driven by the strength, the virtue, of our intellect to structure the power of our incentives.
Showing posts with label political-economic theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political-economic theory. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Government by Consent
A binomial organizational technology that always conserves the stakes in the guise of change, like a two-party system (A therefore B, B therefore A ad infinitum), achieves a false legitimacy with the appearance of pluralistic mechanics.
The third-party element that emerged in the Massachusettes senate election will be interpreted as being either pro-Republican or anti-Democrat. That will conserve the stakes (the bivariate technology).
Both parties want to conserve the benefit of what the demand for health care, for example, provides--inelasticity, or the relative inability to consent to one's fate.
Consent is the Constitutional legitimacy at the cornerstone of our republican form of government. It is, however, intentionally organized into a bivariate, dummy variable that is really no choice at all. The freedom to self-determine is reduced to a function of autocratic compliance, just exactly what our Constitution is very strictly intended to prevent.
Independents are providing the pluralism necessary to add the value of consent back to the front of the equation of power so that, representation plus consent equals power, rather than, representation equals power of consent.
The misattributed value of consent results in a retributive value, and a gamma risk associated with it, that signals a probable resistance to binomial distributions both politically and economically.
Mr. Brown's election does not indicate less gamma risk to an accumulated benefit (like the current bubble-value of equities), it signals more. It indicates a trend that demands support for more fundamental valuations--a recovery ironically feared to pull equity markets off current levels.
However, equities have prepared for the recovery phase of the business cycle. Mergers and acquisitions will mitigate the negative effect of a more fundamental valuation, which is what China is looking for to strengthen the dollar.
Positive equity value will follow another deflationary dip (another opportunity to merge and acquire) signaled, for example, by China's resolve to control bubbles with less liquidity. Commodities will deflate, a recovery will occur and there will be less pressure for a gamma-risk distribution that either deconsolidates power, or retributes accumulated value, politically or economically.
China's autocratic, deflationary, monetary hardening defends the dollar investment.
China needs to support the recovery of American consumers. While monetary hardening deflates the commodities bubble it also supports the Fed's policy of monetary easing that, without growth, resists a stronger dollar (more buying power) and adds speculative-demand support to commodities at the same time, resisting the effort to support American consumers and their dollars. China must be reasonably sure the American economy will recover the service sector, protecting it from the probability of increased alpha risk to its industrial base and gamma risk to its political base that naturally defaults to the consent of the governed whether oligarchs like it or not.
The probability the Fed's continued monetary easing will result in non-service sector investment is virtually none. The investment will not be used to push employment costs in the U.S. with China being reasonably sure the gamma-risk distribution--the recovery--will have a fundamentally minimal alpha effect.
Surplus capital made available for investment by cheap Chinese labor markets is not likely to be used to achieve a competitive advantage except by technological means that resists full employment (which is why analysts portend a tech bubble). This will generally support the bubble effect on U.S. equities and the probability for a protracted "jobless recovery" despite the emergence of populist, gamma-risk variables like "consent of the governed."
The third-party element that emerged in the Massachusettes senate election will be interpreted as being either pro-Republican or anti-Democrat. That will conserve the stakes (the bivariate technology).
Both parties want to conserve the benefit of what the demand for health care, for example, provides--inelasticity, or the relative inability to consent to one's fate.
Consent is the Constitutional legitimacy at the cornerstone of our republican form of government. It is, however, intentionally organized into a bivariate, dummy variable that is really no choice at all. The freedom to self-determine is reduced to a function of autocratic compliance, just exactly what our Constitution is very strictly intended to prevent.
Independents are providing the pluralism necessary to add the value of consent back to the front of the equation of power so that, representation plus consent equals power, rather than, representation equals power of consent.
The misattributed value of consent results in a retributive value, and a gamma risk associated with it, that signals a probable resistance to binomial distributions both politically and economically.
Mr. Brown's election does not indicate less gamma risk to an accumulated benefit (like the current bubble-value of equities), it signals more. It indicates a trend that demands support for more fundamental valuations--a recovery ironically feared to pull equity markets off current levels.
However, equities have prepared for the recovery phase of the business cycle. Mergers and acquisitions will mitigate the negative effect of a more fundamental valuation, which is what China is looking for to strengthen the dollar.
Positive equity value will follow another deflationary dip (another opportunity to merge and acquire) signaled, for example, by China's resolve to control bubbles with less liquidity. Commodities will deflate, a recovery will occur and there will be less pressure for a gamma-risk distribution that either deconsolidates power, or retributes accumulated value, politically or economically.
China's autocratic, deflationary, monetary hardening defends the dollar investment.
China needs to support the recovery of American consumers. While monetary hardening deflates the commodities bubble it also supports the Fed's policy of monetary easing that, without growth, resists a stronger dollar (more buying power) and adds speculative-demand support to commodities at the same time, resisting the effort to support American consumers and their dollars. China must be reasonably sure the American economy will recover the service sector, protecting it from the probability of increased alpha risk to its industrial base and gamma risk to its political base that naturally defaults to the consent of the governed whether oligarchs like it or not.
The probability the Fed's continued monetary easing will result in non-service sector investment is virtually none. The investment will not be used to push employment costs in the U.S. with China being reasonably sure the gamma-risk distribution--the recovery--will have a fundamentally minimal alpha effect.
Surplus capital made available for investment by cheap Chinese labor markets is not likely to be used to achieve a competitive advantage except by technological means that resists full employment (which is why analysts portend a tech bubble). This will generally support the bubble effect on U.S. equities and the probability for a protracted "jobless recovery" despite the emergence of populist, gamma-risk variables like "consent of the governed."
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Organizing to Control Costs: Healthcare and Energy Markets
The tendency to organize into horizontally and vertically integrated, monopolistic entities to distort valuations into the realm of the irrational was strongly argued against and identified as inimical to free markets by Adam Smith, founder of classical economic theory.
Smith argues that organizing into ever larger entities consolidates power in the marketplace and creates false indicators (the irrationality). Smith's solution is to be sure capital, industry and markets are deconsolidated. The profit margin is then a more accurate measure of future expectation (the trend) that is less likely to become a failed expectation and a sudden shock (the crisis) that further consolidates the wealth and power (systemic risk management).
According to Adam Smith, it is the job of government in priority to ensure the marketplace is free and unconsolidated. That, according to his theory, will effectively manage the systemic risk we are now grappling with. The government, then, according to classical theory, is in the business of creating jobs and wealth by ensuring it in priority despite the rhetoric of neo-conservative propagandists.
Notice that there is little to no evidence of government operating to apply Smith's prescription of deconsolidation.
Healthcare relies on the "public option." Energy relies on the regulation of derivative markets, like futures, which will innovate to avoid the gamma risk. Both elicit the need for progressive taxation to keep capital from the overaccumaltion that causes a deflationary trend with inflationary, monetarist counter-measures (stagflation).
The "need" for the progressive tax is obviated by organizing for a free-market system in priority. The need for a more progressive tax code is an accurate measure of extant free-market (democratic-economic) modality: the more the economy is organized for free-market mechanics, the less need for progressive taxation to technically correct for over-accumulation (liquidity crisis, or the systemic risk).
Government has operated largely to encourage and protect the organization of consolidated entities to the point of absurdity, irrationality, we have now: economic entities that are too big to fail and paying outrageous bonuses to business elits that have clearly managed the system into what is considered an illegitimate failure by the vast majority of Americans.
(The ultimate ignominy is to pay the devil a bonus for making you miserable! Is that the ultimate con game or what? The con is systematically organized to convert and consolidate value without legal liability. The liability is purely political. It is the gamma risk with a retributive, economic value.)
Current econmic policy clearly indicates a strong tendency to support state capitalism--a command economy with private consolidation of the wealth bureaucratically managed to protect the interests of the wealthy elite in "the public interest." Just enough pluralism is allowed, like a "public option," to give the consolidation of power a popular legitimacy.
The pluralistic legitimacy is really false. It is a Hamiltonian trick that keeps being reapplied in the name of democracy and self-determination.
Despite the freedom to pursue success and fully enjoy its reward without taxation, according to the conservative argument, the accumulation of wealth and power is nevertheless endowed. It is a legitimately necessary condition endowed by the god in which We all trust. The outcome is ontological--it just "naturally" happens. Thus we have the conservative concept of the Rights of Man: the utilitarian free pursuit of happiness with a naturally endowed outcome that if technically corrected for is contrary to the natural order of things.
Any attempt to correct for the accumulation of power and wealth that causes crises is considered to be an unnatural tyranny imposed on the natural order of things. That, according to the conservative argument, is the cause of perennial, systemic crises, like the deflationary trend we are experiencing now.
Not allowing for the naturally endowed tyranny of those with the secret, elite knowledge (the noble character to rule which, as far as I can tell, is merely the capacity to be corrupt and self-seeking in the name of the public interest) is an unnatural tyranny that causes crises. It is a self-fulfilled, teleological argument masqueraded as an ontology. It is a lie, a polemic, a lawyers trick, a sanctimonious, self-serving profanity that keeps the wealth, and power, legally consolidated as an act of God. Deconsolidation, then, is considered not only illegal, but a constitutional deprivation of the Rights of Man that is fundamentally evil.
Yes, deprivation of the Rights of Man is fundamentally bad. It results in crises and all manner of humanity's inhumanity to itself. It is an illogical, irrational, condition. It is an irrationality that mirrors the Hamiltonian ontological argument.
The Hamiltonian ontology is nothing but sophistry, later in history embraced as a moral ontology (an objective, untranscendable truth to be scientifically acknowledged) "beyond good and evil," as Nietzche described it.
The power elite is fallaciuosly argued to be a breed beyond the masses with a secret knowledge that is the public good...the general welfare. Why does Goldman Sachs give exclusive information, "tips," to its most privileged clients? (Recognize that the word "privilege" is a combination of the words private and legal).
The masses can never know, then, what the public good is because...it's a secret! It is entirely antithetical to a popular (pluralistic) legitimacy. The contradiction is not reconcilable, but historically it is ontologically played out in the natural order of things in which the truth naturally prevails over the lies.
The need for a progressive tax code to correct for an over-accumulation is considered by conservatives to be inimical to the public's best interest. It is therefore necessary to hide the wealth with innovative investment vehicles that are only accessible by the wealthiest clients (the consolidated capital).
The consolidated capital cannot be progressively taxed to correct for the over-accumulation if it is hidden. It's a secret. Can't tax what you can't see. All in the public interest.
It is then up to the Ben Bernankes of the world to save us all from the ontology of ourselves; from the mindless consolidation of power beyond good and evil, armed with the philosophy that conserving, rather than preventing, what is too big to fail will "reliably" effect the crises. If the effect is predictable, the risk can be "effectively" managed and predictably trended, which is what Keynesian economics does.
If the element of uncertainty is eliminated, the systemic risk can be effectively managed to keep the patient alive while we ontologically play out the proper diagnoses.
Rather than deconsolidation, government operates to regulate and technically correct for the lack of free-market mechanics (collective, direct democratic legitimacy).
The technical corrections (the gamma risk) plagues small investor analysts with a complexity that suckers them into following trends rather than predicting them. It is a furtive, systemic racketeering (yielding a privileged--a legally secret or private--benefit) that, as small investors found out, will result in reduction (consolidation) of net worth that supports a long deflationary trend, like we have now.
Until the means of deconsolidation is applied--a progressive tax code and reinvestment to pluralize consolidated markets and entities--small investors must always be on the defensive. They must protect themselves from trends commanded and controlled by entities too large to fail by applying an effective counter-tyranny in the marketplace.
Always being opposite the big money momentum (predicting the trend) is essential for capital preservation (to keep assets from being consolidated). It is a lesson to well be learned by the Obama administration and the current congressional delegation as we watch the stimulus money being consolidated into paying state debt and overpriced medicare bills, but that its leadership is unwilling to learn, much less apply. Changing that would be change we really need.
It is important to understand that, for example, what the Obama administration is recognizing as a necessary command and control of the futures markets by regulating the purpose of its participation is to control the ability to command the deflationary trend. Understand that both the problem and the solution are the same thing--command and control, not free-market economics.
At the same time, understand that the objection to the proposed action by the CFTC to remove the buyers (the speculators) dark marketeers say is needed to make futures markets operate with optimal efficiency to hedge the risk is not in any way supported by the evidence.
Physical users of the futures markets are penalized by the mass movement of private equity and hedge funds into futures contracts, driving up their costs and deflating the economy--the consequence (the trend) in command, and "the risk" to be controlled in "the public interest" (We, the ignorant mass of The People, can't be sure what that is, of course, because it's secret, privileged, knowledge).
We cannot legitimately measure the success of managing the risk by the depreciation or appreciation of income because it all happens by the secret knowledge of elite authority. All we supposedly know is challenging that elite authority, like allegorically realizing what causes the shadows on the cave wall, is inimical to our self, the public, interest.
Medical professionals, for example, have the esoteric knowledge of what drives the unlimited cost of healthcare. Talking about what a particular medical procedure costs is an uncivil questioning of authority (questioning the legitimacy of commanding the price).
Demanding the price is considered by the elite to be an ignorant act of defying civil authority. The equilibriating effect of a democratic, free-market economics on income will destroy the natural ability of the best and the brightest to protect the public's interest. Of course, it will not. The protection will be best afforded by not impoverishing the protected.
Controlling costs will be a function of ensuring economic democracy--free-market economics--in priority. As long as the price is commanded, either by public or private means, fair value is not empirically, legitimately, verifiable for either producers or consumers.
Incomes as well are not measurably fair and equitable without ensuring a free-market economics in priority.
We often hear conservatives say it is no one's business what their income is, and conspicuous consumption distributes the wealth fairly and equitably. The crisis that ensues from overaccumulation is falsely attributed to government intervention (the gamma risk) that distorts the free market. The cure, according to conservatives, is laissez-faire.
The reason income is a desireable "secret" is because it is an empirical measure of inequity. That inequity is retributive in value that must be protected. It is a risk that must be managed to be conserved (...sshhh... that's supposed to be an analytical secret well hidden within the dirty bowels of academe where obsequious conformists fear to tread). If the value was not retributive, no one would care what your income is, and you wouldn't care if it was a secret.
Empiricism is by definition to know, not to not know. It is antithetical to the privilege of the elite and why they resist free-market, demand economics for command economy. It is why income should be secretive and should not be considered the object of public policy to distribute it by free market means or any other means, but to conserve it.
Focusing on controlling costs is to focus on incomes and the legitimacy of those incomes. Costs have less to do with the esoteric knowledge of doctors, lawyers, business professionals... than with having the organized, systematic ability to command prices, and economic trends.
Controlling costs is a function of controlling the ability to command the price (ensuring a free-market mechanism in priority).
Controlling the ability to command the price is not accomplished with the ability to command the cost, like the public option does, or like the big box-store model does in which the provider commands the price and the consumer picks the quantity, but by The People having the power, the income, to democratically demand the price and thereby legitimately control the cost unless, of course, there is some secret knowledge I am unaware of.
Ensuring in priority a free and unconsolidated marketplace is to organize to control costs, and policy focused on income, rather than reorganizing the effects like a public option, is essential to ensuring it.
Smith argues that organizing into ever larger entities consolidates power in the marketplace and creates false indicators (the irrationality). Smith's solution is to be sure capital, industry and markets are deconsolidated. The profit margin is then a more accurate measure of future expectation (the trend) that is less likely to become a failed expectation and a sudden shock (the crisis) that further consolidates the wealth and power (systemic risk management).
According to Adam Smith, it is the job of government in priority to ensure the marketplace is free and unconsolidated. That, according to his theory, will effectively manage the systemic risk we are now grappling with. The government, then, according to classical theory, is in the business of creating jobs and wealth by ensuring it in priority despite the rhetoric of neo-conservative propagandists.
Notice that there is little to no evidence of government operating to apply Smith's prescription of deconsolidation.
Healthcare relies on the "public option." Energy relies on the regulation of derivative markets, like futures, which will innovate to avoid the gamma risk. Both elicit the need for progressive taxation to keep capital from the overaccumaltion that causes a deflationary trend with inflationary, monetarist counter-measures (stagflation).
The "need" for the progressive tax is obviated by organizing for a free-market system in priority. The need for a more progressive tax code is an accurate measure of extant free-market (democratic-economic) modality: the more the economy is organized for free-market mechanics, the less need for progressive taxation to technically correct for over-accumulation (liquidity crisis, or the systemic risk).
Government has operated largely to encourage and protect the organization of consolidated entities to the point of absurdity, irrationality, we have now: economic entities that are too big to fail and paying outrageous bonuses to business elits that have clearly managed the system into what is considered an illegitimate failure by the vast majority of Americans.
(The ultimate ignominy is to pay the devil a bonus for making you miserable! Is that the ultimate con game or what? The con is systematically organized to convert and consolidate value without legal liability. The liability is purely political. It is the gamma risk with a retributive, economic value.)
Current econmic policy clearly indicates a strong tendency to support state capitalism--a command economy with private consolidation of the wealth bureaucratically managed to protect the interests of the wealthy elite in "the public interest." Just enough pluralism is allowed, like a "public option," to give the consolidation of power a popular legitimacy.
The pluralistic legitimacy is really false. It is a Hamiltonian trick that keeps being reapplied in the name of democracy and self-determination.
Despite the freedom to pursue success and fully enjoy its reward without taxation, according to the conservative argument, the accumulation of wealth and power is nevertheless endowed. It is a legitimately necessary condition endowed by the god in which We all trust. The outcome is ontological--it just "naturally" happens. Thus we have the conservative concept of the Rights of Man: the utilitarian free pursuit of happiness with a naturally endowed outcome that if technically corrected for is contrary to the natural order of things.
Any attempt to correct for the accumulation of power and wealth that causes crises is considered to be an unnatural tyranny imposed on the natural order of things. That, according to the conservative argument, is the cause of perennial, systemic crises, like the deflationary trend we are experiencing now.
Not allowing for the naturally endowed tyranny of those with the secret, elite knowledge (the noble character to rule which, as far as I can tell, is merely the capacity to be corrupt and self-seeking in the name of the public interest) is an unnatural tyranny that causes crises. It is a self-fulfilled, teleological argument masqueraded as an ontology. It is a lie, a polemic, a lawyers trick, a sanctimonious, self-serving profanity that keeps the wealth, and power, legally consolidated as an act of God. Deconsolidation, then, is considered not only illegal, but a constitutional deprivation of the Rights of Man that is fundamentally evil.
Yes, deprivation of the Rights of Man is fundamentally bad. It results in crises and all manner of humanity's inhumanity to itself. It is an illogical, irrational, condition. It is an irrationality that mirrors the Hamiltonian ontological argument.
The Hamiltonian ontology is nothing but sophistry, later in history embraced as a moral ontology (an objective, untranscendable truth to be scientifically acknowledged) "beyond good and evil," as Nietzche described it.
The power elite is fallaciuosly argued to be a breed beyond the masses with a secret knowledge that is the public good...the general welfare. Why does Goldman Sachs give exclusive information, "tips," to its most privileged clients? (Recognize that the word "privilege" is a combination of the words private and legal).
The masses can never know, then, what the public good is because...it's a secret! It is entirely antithetical to a popular (pluralistic) legitimacy. The contradiction is not reconcilable, but historically it is ontologically played out in the natural order of things in which the truth naturally prevails over the lies.
The need for a progressive tax code to correct for an over-accumulation is considered by conservatives to be inimical to the public's best interest. It is therefore necessary to hide the wealth with innovative investment vehicles that are only accessible by the wealthiest clients (the consolidated capital).
The consolidated capital cannot be progressively taxed to correct for the over-accumulation if it is hidden. It's a secret. Can't tax what you can't see. All in the public interest.
It is then up to the Ben Bernankes of the world to save us all from the ontology of ourselves; from the mindless consolidation of power beyond good and evil, armed with the philosophy that conserving, rather than preventing, what is too big to fail will "reliably" effect the crises. If the effect is predictable, the risk can be "effectively" managed and predictably trended, which is what Keynesian economics does.
If the element of uncertainty is eliminated, the systemic risk can be effectively managed to keep the patient alive while we ontologically play out the proper diagnoses.
Rather than deconsolidation, government operates to regulate and technically correct for the lack of free-market mechanics (collective, direct democratic legitimacy).
The technical corrections (the gamma risk) plagues small investor analysts with a complexity that suckers them into following trends rather than predicting them. It is a furtive, systemic racketeering (yielding a privileged--a legally secret or private--benefit) that, as small investors found out, will result in reduction (consolidation) of net worth that supports a long deflationary trend, like we have now.
Until the means of deconsolidation is applied--a progressive tax code and reinvestment to pluralize consolidated markets and entities--small investors must always be on the defensive. They must protect themselves from trends commanded and controlled by entities too large to fail by applying an effective counter-tyranny in the marketplace.
Always being opposite the big money momentum (predicting the trend) is essential for capital preservation (to keep assets from being consolidated). It is a lesson to well be learned by the Obama administration and the current congressional delegation as we watch the stimulus money being consolidated into paying state debt and overpriced medicare bills, but that its leadership is unwilling to learn, much less apply. Changing that would be change we really need.
It is important to understand that, for example, what the Obama administration is recognizing as a necessary command and control of the futures markets by regulating the purpose of its participation is to control the ability to command the deflationary trend. Understand that both the problem and the solution are the same thing--command and control, not free-market economics.
At the same time, understand that the objection to the proposed action by the CFTC to remove the buyers (the speculators) dark marketeers say is needed to make futures markets operate with optimal efficiency to hedge the risk is not in any way supported by the evidence.
Physical users of the futures markets are penalized by the mass movement of private equity and hedge funds into futures contracts, driving up their costs and deflating the economy--the consequence (the trend) in command, and "the risk" to be controlled in "the public interest" (We, the ignorant mass of The People, can't be sure what that is, of course, because it's secret, privileged, knowledge).
We cannot legitimately measure the success of managing the risk by the depreciation or appreciation of income because it all happens by the secret knowledge of elite authority. All we supposedly know is challenging that elite authority, like allegorically realizing what causes the shadows on the cave wall, is inimical to our self, the public, interest.
Medical professionals, for example, have the esoteric knowledge of what drives the unlimited cost of healthcare. Talking about what a particular medical procedure costs is an uncivil questioning of authority (questioning the legitimacy of commanding the price).
Demanding the price is considered by the elite to be an ignorant act of defying civil authority. The equilibriating effect of a democratic, free-market economics on income will destroy the natural ability of the best and the brightest to protect the public's interest. Of course, it will not. The protection will be best afforded by not impoverishing the protected.
Controlling costs will be a function of ensuring economic democracy--free-market economics--in priority. As long as the price is commanded, either by public or private means, fair value is not empirically, legitimately, verifiable for either producers or consumers.
Incomes as well are not measurably fair and equitable without ensuring a free-market economics in priority.
We often hear conservatives say it is no one's business what their income is, and conspicuous consumption distributes the wealth fairly and equitably. The crisis that ensues from overaccumulation is falsely attributed to government intervention (the gamma risk) that distorts the free market. The cure, according to conservatives, is laissez-faire.
The reason income is a desireable "secret" is because it is an empirical measure of inequity. That inequity is retributive in value that must be protected. It is a risk that must be managed to be conserved (...sshhh... that's supposed to be an analytical secret well hidden within the dirty bowels of academe where obsequious conformists fear to tread). If the value was not retributive, no one would care what your income is, and you wouldn't care if it was a secret.
Empiricism is by definition to know, not to not know. It is antithetical to the privilege of the elite and why they resist free-market, demand economics for command economy. It is why income should be secretive and should not be considered the object of public policy to distribute it by free market means or any other means, but to conserve it.
Focusing on controlling costs is to focus on incomes and the legitimacy of those incomes. Costs have less to do with the esoteric knowledge of doctors, lawyers, business professionals... than with having the organized, systematic ability to command prices, and economic trends.
Controlling costs is a function of controlling the ability to command the price (ensuring a free-market mechanism in priority).
Controlling the ability to command the price is not accomplished with the ability to command the cost, like the public option does, or like the big box-store model does in which the provider commands the price and the consumer picks the quantity, but by The People having the power, the income, to democratically demand the price and thereby legitimately control the cost unless, of course, there is some secret knowledge I am unaware of.
Ensuring in priority a free and unconsolidated marketplace is to organize to control costs, and policy focused on income, rather than reorganizing the effects like a public option, is essential to ensuring it.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Evolution of the Political Economy
The last transformative crisis of capitalism was a punctuated evolutionary event that called into question the system of a bifurcated power structure of public and private domains discussed in previous articles. After The Great Depression, the power elite admitted contemplating whether the power structure should be modeled as fascist or communist. The bifurcation of the power structure was a threat to elitist power because it was too unstable and was providing empirical confirmation of the Marxist critique of classical capitalism.
The elite could not very well adopt a model we had fought a world war to prevent, and communism, while it would allow the elite to sytematically keep its power by maintaining an elitist administrative model, is antithetical to the Hamiltonian model of a ruling "class" society of private power with the force and legitimacy of public authority (government). Since the Hamiltonian model was too unstable, it would have to be modified (evolved) to survive. The conservative "principle" of strict bifurcation of the power structure that produces "great" wealth, and the legal authority to accumulate that wealth, causing a "great" depression, mutated into a "mixed" Keynesian economy.
Marx predicted this evolution of capitalism and called it "anti-socialist socialism." While the "decision" (the economic determinism) to adopt a more public/private mix of power was to prevent confirming Marxist hypotheses, all it did was confirm the critique of classical economic theory that the accumulation and consolidation of wealth and power will result in crises that evolves the power structure into an evermore equitable distribution to save itself. The power elite hang on to the vestigial emblems and rhetoric of consolidated power as long as possible.
The conservative rhetoric we hear now, that society is "naturally" ruled from the center-right, is but a desperate vestige of an empirical failure in an evermore scientifically cognizant society. There is really very little the conservative element can do in the face of economic determinism. We can continue with regressive (deflationary) burdens to publicly finance Keynesian policies and programs to validate the Hamiltonian model of power as application of the general welfare, like the SCHIP legislation, for example, but as we have seen, kick the systemic risk out the front door, it just comes in the back; and with every punctuated event toward a more pluralistic power structure, each recession is accompanied with a higher level of social expectation so that, while the detriment is monetized, it still "feels" like The Great Depression.
Financial markets will continue to be volatile. Equities will dip to oversold levels till the professionals have shook out and consolidated as much equity share as possible...you know the old saw, "the market can wait longer than you have money." This is where the zero-sum plays in the macro-economic cycle, where the mainstream economists falsely assure small investors that the lost value is not being consolidated. The bear market will end, and the recovery phase of the macro cycle begins, when the professionals are largely buying and selling to themselves.
Small investors will panic-out if not sell out of necessity. The wealthiest among us (the power elite of the Hamiltonian model) will consolidate those shares and sell them back on the uptick of the business cycle to small investors that, among other things, have to pay a more significant tax burden by a function of the size of their income (this is the reserve--the surplused value--used to buy, or consolidate, the wealth in a state of distress and an indirect means of accomplishing a zero-sum accumulation). The value of a regressive tax burden, including the burden of a flat tax, is magnified by the element of crisis. The false argument that there is no zero-sum loss of asset value is easily made by economists by ignoring the full mechanics of the macro systematic cycle. That is what they are educated, if not paid, to do.
Falsely arguing a non-zero-sum accumulation of wealth, and power, is an easy con because the sum lost is gained on the uptick of the business cycle and not at the time of the distressed value, the crisis, where the victim (the zero-sum loser) is experiencing the deflation of asset value. Ingenius as this system of expropriating value may be, it is not sustainable because, over time, the distribution of value is so strikingly inequitable that not only does it cause crisis, but as the distribution tends to become incrementally more equitable, the members of cafe society appear increasingly clownish and the compensation for it to be intolerably absurd.
The army of MBA's that have been graduated over the past twenty years to administer the means that finance the incomes of cafe society become the scorn of non-elite society. They will have to look to more pluralistic means to satisfy their dreams of success, unless of course we retrench to accepting the false efficiency of "bigger is better" compensated by an organized means of "too big to fail," condemning ourselves to an unneccessary farce of cyclical crisis in which we reward failure with success.
Arguing the value of rewarding success is the last vestige of conservative rhetoric to persuade us that the natural progress of a more pluralistic society should be resisted because it leads to the evil, alternative "ism" to capitalism. It is an argument that masquerades ideology as intelligence, pressing for adherence to principles that are but the passe' rationalism of 18th Century utilitarianism evolved into the "isms" (the unempirical belief systems) of modern ideology.
While 18th Century utilitarianism motivated the production of great wealth, it is now an argumentative absurdity that lacks the empirical truth of daily modern life. We observe failure being lavishly rewarded with success; and when the non-elite lose their jobs and their savings as a consequence of the failure-rewarded-as-success, it is absurdly argued as a non-zero-sum economic expansion of the pie.
Calculating economic growth liquidated into negative growth, like we are experiencing now, as the general welfare, or a "collective" gain produced by an inequitable distribution of wealth and power, the conservative utilitarian argument has evolved into complete absurdity. The productive "utility" of the argument is that we emerge collectively stronger as non-elites must work harder to achieve the measure of success that, by definition, cannot be collectively had. The non-elite must sacrifice to achieve the reward of "success" in zero-sum so that the only way to share in success is for someone to be unsuccessful, or a system condemned to a struggle, a conflict, of a change of elites. While it may motivate a productively innovative capacity, it does not promote a peaceful means to prosperity. A moral existence becomes secondary to the struggle. The Nietzche-like "will to power" becomes the dominant existential value, or the moral imperative beyond what is good and what is evil. The moral imperative is, then, confirmed to be the interest of the self, and the powerful, then, have achieved power with a moral and, thus, legitimate collective security of what we all ultimately strive to achieve as individuals.
Where the adherence to passe' conservative principles lacks the intellectual capacity to recognize and allow for the natural evolution of a more pluralistic structure of power, it is full of self-interest, which forms the fallacious composition of the conservative argument: that the welfare of the elite (ensuring the success of the individual) is the general welfare (ensuring the success of the collective). The argument is defeated by the very definition of the elements that compose it: the elite by definition are successful by the non-success of others (a zero-sum). This is also where conservatives discredit the operation of a free-market mechanism that allows for a peaceful and prosperous evolution of pluralistic society.
Defeating the pluralistic, democratic, mechanism of free-market economics while maintaining its moral and collective legitimacy is an elegant success of the capitalist model to consolidate power and keep it. Success in the free market is defined by defeating its operation. The accumulation of wealth that causes liquidity crisis is the reward of that success and cyclically causing the crisis ensures its consolidation into a zero-sum over time. Pluralizing the accumulated power of this freely acquired success by an intervention of the public sector (government) to ensure the operation of the free-market mechanism is regarded as a threat to freely pursue the rewards of success by denying the full value--the full power--of it. Government, therefore, as it was in the 18th Century, can only be regarded as evil unless it operates to keep the power privately consolidated for the public (collective) good (the Hamiltonian model). The communist model of government operates with the same utility of consolidated power but without the distinction between a public and private sector which is becoming evermore mixed whether capitalist or communist. The contradiction, and the practical organizational convergence, is readily apparent.
The practical evolution of mixing what is public and private to maintain a consolidated model of accumulated power is not necessarily an improvement. Progress is not always linear.
The businessperson has always tried to defeat the free market out of self-interest, and where the free market obtained, self-interest has always been verifiably checked in the collective interest, or for the general welfare.
We are not doomed to the determination of a natural existence. We are not merely the ineffective subjects of an economic determinism in which the convergent forces of evolving organizational technologies result in a dystopic hegemony of consolidated power and a continuous conflict to willfully ascend its structure. Whether the legitimacy of power is capitalist or communist, for the individual or the collective interest, we achieve existential satisfaction when freedom is the measure of our success.
Government that ensures a free and unconsolidated marketplace in priority operationalizes all the elements of power--what is public, what is private, the individual interest or the collective interest--into a peaceful process of pluralism. What is otherwise an eternal sea of differing opinions that forces a perpetual conflict of competing interests is rendered a peaceful progression of realizing our natural existence both individually and collectively. Rather than a fate of economic determinism, we are free both individually and collectively to determine our fate.
Just because the proponents and practitioners of consolidated capitalism falsely argue the legitimacy of free-market economics does not mean it cannot be rendered a true legitimacy with the force of public authority. The result will be a peaceful prosperity that allows for the freedom to pursue the good life rather than the dictates of the will to power beyond what is good and evil determining the fate of our natural existence.
by Griffith Lighton
March 1, 2009
griffithlighton.blogspot.com
The elite could not very well adopt a model we had fought a world war to prevent, and communism, while it would allow the elite to sytematically keep its power by maintaining an elitist administrative model, is antithetical to the Hamiltonian model of a ruling "class" society of private power with the force and legitimacy of public authority (government). Since the Hamiltonian model was too unstable, it would have to be modified (evolved) to survive. The conservative "principle" of strict bifurcation of the power structure that produces "great" wealth, and the legal authority to accumulate that wealth, causing a "great" depression, mutated into a "mixed" Keynesian economy.
Marx predicted this evolution of capitalism and called it "anti-socialist socialism." While the "decision" (the economic determinism) to adopt a more public/private mix of power was to prevent confirming Marxist hypotheses, all it did was confirm the critique of classical economic theory that the accumulation and consolidation of wealth and power will result in crises that evolves the power structure into an evermore equitable distribution to save itself. The power elite hang on to the vestigial emblems and rhetoric of consolidated power as long as possible.
The conservative rhetoric we hear now, that society is "naturally" ruled from the center-right, is but a desperate vestige of an empirical failure in an evermore scientifically cognizant society. There is really very little the conservative element can do in the face of economic determinism. We can continue with regressive (deflationary) burdens to publicly finance Keynesian policies and programs to validate the Hamiltonian model of power as application of the general welfare, like the SCHIP legislation, for example, but as we have seen, kick the systemic risk out the front door, it just comes in the back; and with every punctuated event toward a more pluralistic power structure, each recession is accompanied with a higher level of social expectation so that, while the detriment is monetized, it still "feels" like The Great Depression.
Financial markets will continue to be volatile. Equities will dip to oversold levels till the professionals have shook out and consolidated as much equity share as possible...you know the old saw, "the market can wait longer than you have money." This is where the zero-sum plays in the macro-economic cycle, where the mainstream economists falsely assure small investors that the lost value is not being consolidated. The bear market will end, and the recovery phase of the macro cycle begins, when the professionals are largely buying and selling to themselves.
Small investors will panic-out if not sell out of necessity. The wealthiest among us (the power elite of the Hamiltonian model) will consolidate those shares and sell them back on the uptick of the business cycle to small investors that, among other things, have to pay a more significant tax burden by a function of the size of their income (this is the reserve--the surplused value--used to buy, or consolidate, the wealth in a state of distress and an indirect means of accomplishing a zero-sum accumulation). The value of a regressive tax burden, including the burden of a flat tax, is magnified by the element of crisis. The false argument that there is no zero-sum loss of asset value is easily made by economists by ignoring the full mechanics of the macro systematic cycle. That is what they are educated, if not paid, to do.
Falsely arguing a non-zero-sum accumulation of wealth, and power, is an easy con because the sum lost is gained on the uptick of the business cycle and not at the time of the distressed value, the crisis, where the victim (the zero-sum loser) is experiencing the deflation of asset value. Ingenius as this system of expropriating value may be, it is not sustainable because, over time, the distribution of value is so strikingly inequitable that not only does it cause crisis, but as the distribution tends to become incrementally more equitable, the members of cafe society appear increasingly clownish and the compensation for it to be intolerably absurd.
The army of MBA's that have been graduated over the past twenty years to administer the means that finance the incomes of cafe society become the scorn of non-elite society. They will have to look to more pluralistic means to satisfy their dreams of success, unless of course we retrench to accepting the false efficiency of "bigger is better" compensated by an organized means of "too big to fail," condemning ourselves to an unneccessary farce of cyclical crisis in which we reward failure with success.
Arguing the value of rewarding success is the last vestige of conservative rhetoric to persuade us that the natural progress of a more pluralistic society should be resisted because it leads to the evil, alternative "ism" to capitalism. It is an argument that masquerades ideology as intelligence, pressing for adherence to principles that are but the passe' rationalism of 18th Century utilitarianism evolved into the "isms" (the unempirical belief systems) of modern ideology.
While 18th Century utilitarianism motivated the production of great wealth, it is now an argumentative absurdity that lacks the empirical truth of daily modern life. We observe failure being lavishly rewarded with success; and when the non-elite lose their jobs and their savings as a consequence of the failure-rewarded-as-success, it is absurdly argued as a non-zero-sum economic expansion of the pie.
Calculating economic growth liquidated into negative growth, like we are experiencing now, as the general welfare, or a "collective" gain produced by an inequitable distribution of wealth and power, the conservative utilitarian argument has evolved into complete absurdity. The productive "utility" of the argument is that we emerge collectively stronger as non-elites must work harder to achieve the measure of success that, by definition, cannot be collectively had. The non-elite must sacrifice to achieve the reward of "success" in zero-sum so that the only way to share in success is for someone to be unsuccessful, or a system condemned to a struggle, a conflict, of a change of elites. While it may motivate a productively innovative capacity, it does not promote a peaceful means to prosperity. A moral existence becomes secondary to the struggle. The Nietzche-like "will to power" becomes the dominant existential value, or the moral imperative beyond what is good and what is evil. The moral imperative is, then, confirmed to be the interest of the self, and the powerful, then, have achieved power with a moral and, thus, legitimate collective security of what we all ultimately strive to achieve as individuals.
Where the adherence to passe' conservative principles lacks the intellectual capacity to recognize and allow for the natural evolution of a more pluralistic structure of power, it is full of self-interest, which forms the fallacious composition of the conservative argument: that the welfare of the elite (ensuring the success of the individual) is the general welfare (ensuring the success of the collective). The argument is defeated by the very definition of the elements that compose it: the elite by definition are successful by the non-success of others (a zero-sum). This is also where conservatives discredit the operation of a free-market mechanism that allows for a peaceful and prosperous evolution of pluralistic society.
Defeating the pluralistic, democratic, mechanism of free-market economics while maintaining its moral and collective legitimacy is an elegant success of the capitalist model to consolidate power and keep it. Success in the free market is defined by defeating its operation. The accumulation of wealth that causes liquidity crisis is the reward of that success and cyclically causing the crisis ensures its consolidation into a zero-sum over time. Pluralizing the accumulated power of this freely acquired success by an intervention of the public sector (government) to ensure the operation of the free-market mechanism is regarded as a threat to freely pursue the rewards of success by denying the full value--the full power--of it. Government, therefore, as it was in the 18th Century, can only be regarded as evil unless it operates to keep the power privately consolidated for the public (collective) good (the Hamiltonian model). The communist model of government operates with the same utility of consolidated power but without the distinction between a public and private sector which is becoming evermore mixed whether capitalist or communist. The contradiction, and the practical organizational convergence, is readily apparent.
The practical evolution of mixing what is public and private to maintain a consolidated model of accumulated power is not necessarily an improvement. Progress is not always linear.
The businessperson has always tried to defeat the free market out of self-interest, and where the free market obtained, self-interest has always been verifiably checked in the collective interest, or for the general welfare.
We are not doomed to the determination of a natural existence. We are not merely the ineffective subjects of an economic determinism in which the convergent forces of evolving organizational technologies result in a dystopic hegemony of consolidated power and a continuous conflict to willfully ascend its structure. Whether the legitimacy of power is capitalist or communist, for the individual or the collective interest, we achieve existential satisfaction when freedom is the measure of our success.
Government that ensures a free and unconsolidated marketplace in priority operationalizes all the elements of power--what is public, what is private, the individual interest or the collective interest--into a peaceful process of pluralism. What is otherwise an eternal sea of differing opinions that forces a perpetual conflict of competing interests is rendered a peaceful progression of realizing our natural existence both individually and collectively. Rather than a fate of economic determinism, we are free both individually and collectively to determine our fate.
Just because the proponents and practitioners of consolidated capitalism falsely argue the legitimacy of free-market economics does not mean it cannot be rendered a true legitimacy with the force of public authority. The result will be a peaceful prosperity that allows for the freedom to pursue the good life rather than the dictates of the will to power beyond what is good and evil determining the fate of our natural existence.
by Griffith Lighton
March 1, 2009
griffithlighton.blogspot.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)