Free Market Fundamentalist Ideology is based on a Logical Fallacy.

No. If they believed that, they would not claim to have property rights in land.

 

They have property rights to their own property, and you have rights to yours. What are you talking about?

 

<sigh> Try to get it through your head: any "argument" that could also be (and was) used to justify chattel slavery -- such as yours, above -- is already known in advance to be fallacious, dishonest and evil, with no further argumentation needed.

I'm talking about "property" that consists of other people's rights to liberty, like slave deeds and land deeds.

 

What does that have to do with Libertarianism? Nothing.

 

It has everything to do with "libertarianism" -- more accurately propertarianism, or feudalism -- that considers the natural individual right to liberty unconditionally subordinate to the property rights of the privileged.

 

Young person, here is your future as described by Karl Marx in 1844:

“Estrangement is manifested not only in the fact that my means of life belong to someone else, that which I desire is the inaccessible possession of another, but also in the fact that everything is itself something different from itself— that my activity is something else and that, finally (and this applies also to the capitalist), all is under [the sway] of inhuman power."
-- (1844 Manuscripts, Marx, p. 119)(pdf.)."

​

Here is another short, but concise history of the rise of fascist neo-liberalism in the U.S. which has been waging a vicious cultural and economic war against the unaware American worker.

The current younger generation is almost completely unknowing of what is going to happen to them while they desperately seeking some kind of career so they can live their lives with some kind of stability. It is all an illusion--there will always be planned unemployment, a foreign or domestic enemy, threats against your livelihood, barely sustaining wages, price inflation, economic busts, and inhuman work schedules. And you will own nothing:

"We have said above that man is regressing to the cave dwelling, etc.—but he is regressing to it in an estranged, malignant form. The savage in his cave—a natural element which freely offers itself for his use and protection—feels himself no more a stranger, or rather feels as much at home as a fish in water. But the cellar dwelling of the poor man is a hostile element, “a dwelling which remains an alien power and only gives itself up to him insofar as he gives up to it his own blood and sweat”—a dwelling which he cannot regard as his own hearth—where he might at last exclaim: “Here I am at home”—but where instead he finds himself in someone else’s house, in the house of a stranger who always watches him and throws him out if he does not pay his rent. He is also aware of the contrast in quality between his dwelling and a human dwelling that stands in the other world, in the heaven of wealth."
--(1844 Manuscripts, Marx, p. 115)(pdf.)."​

The university economics professors are now brushing off the old justifications for a life of meaningless suffering--the young are the marks for the next round of generational exploitation because recent history has been suppressed and falsified. Wall Street is laughing.

Let Ben Norton tell us the true history (which I have witnessed) of the Big American Neo-Liberal Lie, and maybe then this generation will have a tiny, tiny chance not to relive this nightmare with a boot in their face forever:

What is neoliberalism? How the 'Washington consensus' was imposed on the world.
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As long as you think Marx has anything relevant to say, you are Part Of The Problem.

 

Marxism is the abolition of property rights.

It's interesting because the tenth command in the Ten Comandments is - "You will not covet" -

Coveting isn't just about wanting more for yourself but it is also about wanting less for your neighbor. The Marxist is jealous of their neighbor's wealth. It's a principle of Marxism - you covet. No good can come from that.

Meanwhile in a free market there is the potential for upward mobility. Not so with Marxism where it does not matter if you do surgery or sweep floors. With Marxism your neighbor will have as little as you do. Marxism is not equality, it is equity.

 

Economist Michael Hudson is interviewed by Afshin Rattansi of "Going Underground."

How Oligarchy & Debt Control Us: From Ancient Greece+Rome to the US, IMF+World Bank- Michael Hudson
Rumble Version

On this YouTube episode of Going Underground, we speak to former Wall Street Financial Analyst Michael Hudson, author of ‘The Collapse of Antiquity’. He discusses the origins of debt stemming from the oligarchy-dominated Ancient Greek and Roman ‘democracies’, the tradition of debt cancellation and how the Roman and Greek oligarchies marked a turning point in history using debt as a weapon of societal control, how oligarchic control of entire countries in contemporary late-stage capitalism has evolved through the US-dominated IMF & World Bank, why financial conquest has been far more deadly than military conquest and much more.

At the end of the interview, Hudson gives a great summary of his book describing the famous Rosetta Stone, and I thought his thoughts should be in print here for emphasis:
(All transcription errors are mine).

Afshin Rattansi: "...the Rosetta Stone, isn't it amazing, cuneiform writing and then any student who learns about it goes 'Well, what does it actually say?' gets told, 'Oh, it's some accounting thing.' You might have to remind us what the Rosetta Stone is and why arguably we weren't told what's written on the Rosetta Stone
which I think is in the British Museum now."

Michael Hudson: "Yes, it's because people are really embarrassed to say, 'Well, this is a debt cancellation.' There was a civil war going on and the Egyptian rulers did exactly what Egyptian rulers at the Pharaohs had been doing for 2000 years. In order to make peace, in order to create a feeling of citizenship, once again, you cancel all the debts that had been run up during the war, and you start with a clean slate with everybody in balance and that idea of restoring balance which doesn't exist today because if you are an economist, and you go to a university, they say, 'Oh, we don't need a government to write down debts because the private sector will automatically reach equilibrium that is fair and natural.' Well, this is just nonsense. This is not even Antiquity. The oligarchs say, 'Well, just don't regulate anything: everything is going to be natural because the market that is making us so wealthy is always in equilibrium. Even the oligarchy knew that usury was bad, that interfering with debt was going to polarize society, so it was not considered polite to make loans. They would make their slaves, or their freedmen, or hire foreigners (Medics) to foreign-born people to make the loans. They said, 'Oh, I would never make loans because we know how bad money lending is, and we know how bad it is to be an absentee landlord.' And yet, they were all absentee landlords, and they were having other people do the dirty work of lending out the money for them, just like the bondholders today have the banks do the dirty work. But the bank's bondholders are the one percent-- the Creditor class."

Professor, Michael Hudson, Thank you!

​

 

Neo-Classical Economics is old-fashioned, Classical Economics is modern.​

Here are two more interviews with Dr. Michael Hudson but paired with my other favorite historian-economist-philosophers: Dr. Steve Keen, and Dr. Richard D. Wolff. These interviews are about the cutting edge of economic theory today that can bring about a new kind of life and world.

How Finance Capitalism Ruined the World: Dr. Michael Hudson & Dr. Steve Keen


Is China's Economy Collapsing? Economic War: Dr. Michael Hudson & Dr. Richard D. Wolff
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I have a lot of respect for Hudson and Keen, but Wolff is just another Marxist idiot.

 

Slavery as an institution can only exist by sanction of the state. Otherwise, how would anyone own another human without it being outright kidnapping?

A free market is, literally, one in which there is no violent intervention in the peaceful economic exchange between humans. When do you believe that you have the right to stop two peaceful people from trading?

 

But it can exist as a fact whenever some people forcibly compel others to labor for them and appropriate the fruits of that labor. Slavery antedates the state by many thousands of years.

Chattel slavery is only one form of slavery -- and one of the more benign ones, as the slaves are then valuable assets whose owners are typically (of course there are exceptions) reluctant to impair their value by mistreating them. But the institutionalized ownership of others' rights to liberty does not require the ownership of their persons. That apparently makes it very difficult for most people to understand the true nature of such property "rights."

Do you know why the USA had slavery when Europe did not? In 17th and 18th century America, there was so much good land available that if landowners mistreated their workers, the workers would just leave and take up some nice land of their own. So chattel slavery -- ownership of the workers' persons -- was needed to enable landowners to extract the fruits of workers' labor by force. In Europe, all the useful land was already owned. So to survive, landless peasants had to place themselves in the service of landowners, where they could be -- and were -- treated like slaves without all the bother of actually owning them. That is why the material condition -- diet, health, life expectancy, housing, etc. -- of African slaves in the antebellum South was actually better than the material condition of contemporaneous landless European peasants.

And that is why it is impossible under capitalism, which by definition requires the forcible removal of people's rights to liberty and their conversion into the private property of landowners.

Claiming a right to own and buy and sell others' liberty rights to use what nature provided for all can never be peaceful.

When do you believe you have the right to stop even one peaceful person from exercising their liberty right to use the resources nature provided to sustain themselves?

 

The institutions of the time, led by tribal leaders and potentates, supported the slave trade, punishing those who escaped, absolving slave owners of the crime of harming their slaves, and punishing those who helped slaves escape.

Two things that have made slavery obsolete are capitalism, which thrives on the division of labor and productivity, and firearms. The modern firearm turns any human being into a deadly force and every human has the natural right to use whatever defense is required when someone is violating their consent.

I don't. That's why I'm an anarchist. I don't even believe that anyone has the right to wield political authority and violently control other people for any reason at all. If there is a qualification, it's self-defense and only to the level necessary to mitigate an imminent threat to person or property.
On the other hand, I don't believe that nature "provides" anything, since nature is not a thing that can act autonomously. Anthropomorphizing nature is rhetorical and obfuscates logic. What is your logical argument?

 

Alternative Visions- Soft Landing in 2024..Or Deeper Recession?
Friday Nov 24, 2023

“All statistics are manipulated data.”
--Dr. Jack Rasmus, economist​

Dr. Jack Rasmus is another economist I have followed for some years. On a recent podcast Rasmus reviews the statistics the Biden administration released on the health of the 3rd Quarter of the U.S. Economy. It isn't a good report.

The Biden administration reports a 4.2% average wage income increase for the 3rd quarter US GDP. However, Rasmus warns that this statistic only applies to full-time workers which excludes 50 million part-time workers, or 1/3 of the total US work force!

Also, the medium weekly earnings are the sum of hours worked and hourly wage. The Biden report claims only 4% inflation rate for the 3rd quarter 2023. But again, if we take the medium weekly earning adjusted for inflation for the 4th Quarter of 2019 using 1982 prices as the base year, the weekly medium adjusted for inflation is $362.00. Today, in 2023 the weekly medium wage adjusted for inflation wage is $365.00—or a three dollar increase in wages. And prices have been fiercely rising. During 1982, the same 400 sq. ft. San Francisco studio apartment built during the 1930s located in the Tenderloin was $465 per month including utilities now rents for over $2,000 dollars per month.

Program summary:
“In the podcast posted Dr. Rasmus discusses the growing media spin on the US economy that it’s headed for a ‘soft landing’—i.e. no recession as inflation continues to abate. Dr. Rasmus dissects the 3rd quarter US GDP numbers of 4.9% annual growth rate that is feeding the soft landing hype. The four major elements of GDP are reviewed, showing 3rd Quarter was an aberration driven by business over-expansion of inventories in expectation of a surge in consumer spending in 4th quarter that is now not appearing. What’s really happening with real consumer spending and retail sales, adjusted for inflation; real wage incomes; categories of business investment; and US exports in a global economy slowing noticeably. Rasmus explains how nearly all the slowdown in inflation is in the goods sector, and that manufacturing & construction are in a recession since early 2023. The result: the more likely scenario for winter 2023/24 is therefore US GDP will slow sharply and recession in 2024 beyond the goods sector is likely.”

Dr. Jack Rasmus, Ph.D Political Economy, teaches economics at St. Mary’s College in California. He is the author and producer of the various nonfiction and fictional workers, including the books The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Bush, Clarity Press, October 2019; Alexander Hamilton & The Origins of the Fed, Lexington books, March 2019; Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression, Clarity Press, August 2018; Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges, Clarity Press, Sept. 2016; Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, Clarity Press, January 2016; ‘Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few‘, Pluto Press, 2012, ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression‘, Pluto Press, 2010, and ‘The War at Home: The Corporate Offensive from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush‘, Kyklosproductions, 2006. He has written and produced several stage plays, including ‘Fire on Pier 32‘ and ‘1934‘. Jack is the host of the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network, and a journalist writing on economic, political and labor issues for various magazines, including European Financial Review, World Financial Review, World Review of Political Economy, ‘Z‘ magazine, and others. Before his current roles as author, journalist and radio host, Jack was an economist and market analyst for several global companies for 18 years and, for more than a decade, a local union president, vice-president, contract negotiator, and organizer for several labor unions, including the UAW, CWA, SEIU, and HERE. Jack’s website is www.kyklosproductions.com where his published articles, radio-tv interviews, plays and book reviews are available for download. He blogs at jackrasmus.com, where weekly commentaries on US and global economic matters are available. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

 

Summary: Political economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss the massive explosion of debt in the US and around the world, and how neoliberal economics leads to large bubbles based on speculation and asset-price inflation. Both economists discuss the massive debt the Wall Street Socialists have jacked up commercial real-estate to collect more interest and sell more debt which is the function of the Federal Reserve. See the U.S. total aggregate debt graph showing debt is accumulated by businesses and household debt bubble--government state and local debt is small in comparison. Biden is enforcing austerity policies to benefit the banks. Obama bailed out the speculative banks in 2008 throwing millions of minority families out of their homes on to the streets.

After the 2024 election there will a massive collapse followed by severe austerity (restricting money supply), layoffs of workers and managers, but will later rehire some back, but at a lower wage. Meanwhile corporations are investing in fictitious capital (not related to real production but financial interest-bearing instruments exploiting sub-prime minorities borrowers just as in 2008 overseen by Obama) to churn stocks and pension funds to pay themselves huge management fees. All this was done with the approval of both Democrats and Republican fascist Neo-Liberals. Student loans created by Joe Biden have placed millions of students in debt servitude for life. While the Wall Street socialists sell more and more debt the American Congress will justify cutting Medicare and Social Security because of the debt they deliberately created--these economic relations are circular in nature.

The deliberate creation of bank debt by neo-liberal congressional legislation results in a financial apartheid state. 10% of US Bank assets actually rely on the value of commercial real estate now. 50% of Americans don't have any assets but they have a big debt. Hudson says, "The Federal Reserve does not produce believable statistics on debt as a proportion of income. If you look at the Federal Reserve statistics of debt to income by percentile 10%--20% nothing has changed in the last 50 years. Nobody's run into debt at all because they say "let's assume that debt is constant for the last half century. The statistics are fictitious and they're fictitious because that protects the e fact that most of what passes as Bank capital is fictitious...."

The debt explosion: How neoliberalism fuels debt crises
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Here an economic topic that is barely on the national political radar just before a general election: Private equity firms drill through core industries and companies to essentially engage in organ harvesting--purchasing profitable companies only to sell off their physical assets by loading them with usurious debt, charging consulting fees to bleed the target business into bankruptcy leaving behind insolvent municipalities, unemployment, poverty, anger, and hopelessness. Private Equity Firms are the key destructive independent, dynamic, creative evil institutions of fascist Neo-liberalism.
Let's review the carnage.

How private equity conquered America | The Chris Hedges Report
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Absolutely horrid analogies, designed to obfuscate, bearing no resemblance to Libertarianism, Lassie Faire, Free Market Capitalism, or economics in any of its forms. You subsequently conspicuously provide no systemic examples you would deem more beneficial. Basically, just an anti-capitalist rant with mindless analogies. What is your preferred system?

 

Obviously, you have not read any posts after the first one.

 

Forcible impositions on others of the preferences of the powerful are not "institutions."

No, capitalism is fully consistent with slavery, which is why slavery thrived in the capitalist USA until the Civil War. I already explained what made slavery obsolete: private ownership of all the useful land, which, as in Europe, Latin America and Asia, enabled landowners to treat landless workers like slaves without all the bother of actually owning them. Read and learn:

"During the war I served in a Kentucky regiment in the Federal army. When the war broke out, my father owned sixty slaves. I had not been back to my old Kentucky home for years until a short time ago, when I was met by one of my father's old negroes, who said to me: "Master George, you say you set us free; but before God, I'm worse off than when I belonged to your father." The planters, on the other hand, are contented with the change. They say: "How foolish it was in us to go to war for slavery. We get labor cheaper now than when we owned the slaves." How do they get it cheaper? Why, in the shape of rents they take more of the labor of the negro than they could under slavery, for then they were compelled to return him sufficient food, clothing and medical attendance to keep him well, and were compelled by conscience and public opinion, as well as by law, to keep him when he could no longer work. Now their interest and responsibility cease when they have got all the work out of him they can."
-- From a letter by George Jackson, 1885

Nonsense. Firearms were very expensive until the 20th century, and slaves had no way to obtain them.

"Anarchy is the rule of a thousand tyrants."

Secure, exclusive land tenure is necessary to civilization, and there is no way to allocate secure, exclusive land tenure but by force. It is impossible.

Problem is, as history demonstrates so very conclusively, if honest people do not cooperate to establish a credible collective deterrent, the greedy will gladly cooperate to rob, rape, enslave, and murder them piecemeal. You just want to make sure the greedy, evil thieves, rapists, enslavers and murderers have the opportunity to do their robbing, raping, enslaving and murdering unmolested.

You are the one anthropomorphizing. There is nothing in the word, "provide" that implies autonomous action. Air provides the oxygen we need to live. The sun provides the heat and light plants need to grow. Nature provides everything that is here without any help from people. What other honest way is there to identify the fact that natural resources exist without anyone having to create them? You are just trying to contrive some means to prevent yourself from knowing that fact because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

If people don't have a right to use natural resources to sustain themselves, they do not have a right to liberty, or to life.

 

Here is a stunning short essay by the economist Angus Deaton who is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Emeritus, at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. He is the 2015 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Deaton's article is brought to our attention by philosopher Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser so I will let him explain and comment on Deaton's questioning the current American economic paradigm.

In his video, Niederhauser uses the Greek word for "economy" οἰκονομία (oikonomia) which in turn is composed of two words: oikos, which is usually translated as "household"; and nemein, which is best translated as "management and dispensation."

"Rethinking My Economics" - A Tidal Shift in Economics
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A moment of honesty from the discipline of economics (one cannot call it a science) after more than a century of lies...

 

Economics can't go wrong. Since it is an analysis of human behavior which is nearly impossible to understand let alone predict, economics is set of battling opinions. Opinions aren't right or wrong. They are just opinions. The problem is the importance society places on the opinions that economists offer.

 

It has.

Wrong. Some opinions are wrong, others are correct.

No, the problem is that their opinions are largely incorrect in ways that favor the narrow financial interests of the privileged.

 

Opinions cannot be wrong or right. Only facts can be described that way. Opinions are not facts. They are usually reactions to facts. The facts are what they are. The analyses are opinion. Your post is an example of an opinion, not a fact.