Showing posts with label Adam Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adam Smith. Show all posts

Sunday, April 20, 2014

The Piscean Ethic in Government: Ecology and Technology

Written November 10th, 2010
Edited in April 2014
as a note about running for the U.S. House in 2012



    I was born on February 24th, 1987. This makes me a Pisces, only several days away from the Pisces - Aquarius cusp. The year I will be running for Congress (2012) is recognized by many as the year of transition from the current Age of Pisces to the coming Age of Aquarius. I feel that my run would be symbolic of this transition. Due to the procession of the equinoxes, the 2,153-year era associated with Pisces precedes the one that is associated with Aquarius, so now seems like my time to shine
(http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/02/terence-mckenna-and-novelty-calendar.html).

   I plan to embody what I term the "Piscean ethic" in my politics. That is, my ideas will go many directions at once, as do the two fishes. I am as tolerant of extremely libertarian views as I am of extremely progressivistic views (remember that Adam Smith, often revered as the founder of capitalism, favored what could be interpreted as progressive taxation). Both the libertarian and progressive movements are essentially populistic in nature. I recognize the truth latent in the opinion of every person because I recognize that everyone is correct for their own purposes.

   Just as I believe in Ron Paul's call to obey the Constitution, so too do I lend equal credit to 18th-century anarchist Lysander Spooner's claim that the Constitution should to an extent be disregarded because it only applied to willing civic participants in the Revolutionary government during the generation in which it was drafted
(http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/09/spooner-amendment.html).
   And just as I believe that the administrative districts in this country should be redrawn to consider watersheds and natural physical boundaries, so too do I also support re-envisioning the way we see government as transcending geographical boundaries, in the tradition of Frederic Bastiat's Panarchism as well as in Otto Bauer's National Personal Autonomistic Socialism (http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/11/jurisdictional-aterritorialism-bastiat.html).

   I believe that building a coalition of the best minds among the congressional independents, Tea Partiers, the two libertarian committees, Main Street Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, Progressive Democrats, and Populist Democrats in the House of Representatives is essential to opposing the oligarchy- and bureaucracy-mired policies resulting from the collusion of the Clinton-Obama New Democrats with the majority of the Republican Study Committee associated with Bush and McCain.(http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/ideological-caucus-membership-in-us.html).

   As the beginning of the Age of Pisces brought the Judean rebellion against Rome and its conquest of the Mediterranean Sea, the end of the Age of Pisces also represents the end of dominion by the Roman Empire over the seas; that is, the end of imperialism as we know it. The United States' imperialistic tendencies are a legacy of Ancient Rome and its proxy, the British Empire. The U.S. is stretching its military, its sphere of influence, and its scope too far and too thin. We cannot survive with a robust economy when we have 700 overseas military bases and at least one soldier in four out of every five countries. Fortunately for us, the Age of Aquarius is also recognized as a harbinger of environmental sustainability and consciousness expansion as well as innovation. We must move forward with technological innovation that is environmentally sustainable.

   As your congressman, I promise to do everything I can to help the United States succeed in pursuing reforms in agribusiness and science education, among other things, that promote a wave of innovation that allows our country to become self-sufficient, stay the premier national purveyor of freedom of enterprise in the world, foment a new era of personal responsibility, and allow the market to create environmentally sustainable industry and jobs, both now and for generations to come.


For more entries on borders, immigration, and territorial integrity, please visit:

For more entries on coalition building and ideological caucuses, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/02/ideological-cmo-membership-images-for.html

For more entries on world religions and mysticism, please visit:
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, October 24, 2010

On Public Planning Departments


 In June or July 2008, I wrote the following essay for a university course on public planning and natural resources. It is an exercise based on a hypothetical situation in which a candidate for mayor were to advocate for the elimination of a city public planning department. Its original title was “Loss of Public Planning Department Would Impact Influence of Public Will, Slow Development."

It should be noted that I do not hold many of the opinions defended in this essay today. I explain why at the end of the essay. The essay reads thus:






I am concerned about the misleading rhetoric espoused by the conservative candidate for mayor regarding her plan to eliminate the public planning department.

To eliminate this department would leave a hole in our local government. It would dramatically diminish our city’s ability to engage in sustainable development with minimal detriment to the safety of our citizens, natural resources, and wildlife.

Were our local government to attempt to exist effectively without the public planning department, decisions regarding important public concerns such as unlimited pollution and inefficient or faulty transportation systems [would be left] up to individual people and businesses, meaning that a majority of the public could be affected without their knowledge, consent, or ability to voice their objections or suggestions.

Although the efficiency of the functioning of markets is a legitimate concern, it would not be correct to suggest that government interference in markets will decrease efficiency. Unlimited pollution would not interfere with the efficiency of the market in the short term, but it would be terribly inefficient to suspend the actions of a body created to handle problems affecting the public until a private investor with enough money and interest to fix the problem comes along, causing the delay of projects which may prevent further exposure to poorly-maintained roads and hazardous chemicals, thus creating several other problems such as rising health care costs and dissatisfaction with local government.

It would be more efficient for the progress of society as a whole, and to the specific community, to take some effort to ensure that groups of citizens who may not be able to invest time and money to fix problems affecting the public have a method to ensure that their concerns have a chance of being heard and addressed, rather than to eliminate the public planning department and allow the possibility that cheap, shoddy materials could be used to build infrastructure, or that decisions on improving transportation systems and protecting against damage by pollution could be left to the lowest bidder, whom cannot always be counted on to put the public interest ahead of his own desire to make profit.

The conservative candidate’s claim that “buyers and sellers know what is best for them, and the greater public interest will result from their decisions” is false. We cannot assume that any particular rational market actor will do what is in the public interest any more than we can assume that any particular person will know what the public interest is, or that he will understand how to implement decisions to best serve the public interest, or even that he can be relied on to ensure the safety and security of himself, his family, and his property.

To suggest that individuals and markets can be counted on to bring about the public good eliminates the purpose of democracy: the ability of citizens to be represented in lawmaking and to engage in discourse with their elected representatives so that they may hear the complaints and suggestions of their constituents, better understand the public interest and good, and be held accountable for any failures to serve the public.

While it is true that ownership of private property is a condition for freedom, since ownership gives rights to the owner, and thus gives the owner freedom from infringement upon those rights, it is not, however, true that ownership of private property is a necessary condition for democracy. Even citizens whom do not own any private property have voting rights and are entitled to representation, so democracy can exist even if some of those citizens who participate in the democracy do not own private property.

The conservative candidate has not provided sufficient justification for the elimination of the public planning department. Although she is correct to warn against unjustifiable takings without compensation, she does not adequately explain why such cases represent a threat to democracy or to democratic values. She has used concerns for the efficiency of the economy and the endurance of democratic values to mislead the public to support a candidate whose reforms would drastically alter the structure and ability of the local government, which would cause layoffs and slow progress in issues of public concern.





I will next explain with which opinions contained in the above essay I no longer agree, and why. This text was written on October 24th, 2010.


First, while I believe that there is an important place for democracy in local government, I also believe that such democracy can only be protective of private property and individual rights so long as the authority of the democratic government in question is submitted to voluntarily.

But I would add that once such a government is constituted legitimately – that is, with the consent of all parties involved – it should have the right to make rules about which people and businesses may be permitted to reside and operate within the territory administered by the government (that is, if that government operates as a territorial government, rather than as a confederation of individuals, or some other formulation of a jurisdictionally-aterritorial confederation of governments and autonomous individuals).

     Second, I reject my previous claims that government interference in markets will increase efficiency. Being that our current government is centralized, exclusive, monopolistic, and has coercion as its main premise, I would now argue the opinion espoused by the Austrian School, which is that it becomes impossible for an optimally efficient balance to be found through the actions of the sum of freely acting participants in any given market over which some right to plan – especially in a centralized manner – is claimed and exercised by a monopoly government.

Third, while it is true that without a monopolistic central planning department, decisions could be left to the lowest bidder, it is not necessarily true that the lowest bidder would always provide for the goods which are desired by the community.

Although I did not overtly say this in the essay, I did reject the claim that “buyers and sellers know what is best for them, and the greater public interest will result from their decisions”, and I also said that “we cannot assume that any particular rational market actor… will understand how to implement decisions to best serve the public interest”.

While I believe that this claim is consistent with Adam Smith’s idea that “every individual… generally… neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it”, it would appear that the implication of these two statements is that we can also not assume that any particular rational market actor who has been elected to serve in government will understand how to implement decisions to best serve the public interest.

While it would seem appropriate to note that this idea could be easily used to argue against democracy, it would take a bit more to use it to argue in favor of the free market. To do this, I would again invoke catallaxy, a term which is essentially identical with Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, and which Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek used to refer to “the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market”.

To invoke catallaxy in this argument is to defend the idea that as long as participants in the marketplace do not coerce, manipulate, or defraud one another, and act with deference to the mutual desire of all parties to economic agreements to make decisions which each party deems to be in its own best interest, the result will always be not only the most optimally efficient result possible (as judged by the parties), but also the most moral result possible, being that the consent of no party was ignored in the decision-making process.

    In attempting to understand this argument, it would also be helpful to note that in a free market of governance which rejected monopolistic economic planning, there would be nothing preventing an individual or a group thereof from seeking justiciable restitution in the event that their property were to be damaged as a result of decision-making by individuals unknown to the person or persons claiming that some damage has occurred.


Original Essay Written in June or July 2008 for a college course
Correction Written on October 24th, 2010
Originally Published on October 24th, 2010




For more entries on enterprise, business, business alliance, and markets, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/enlightened-catallaxy-reciprocally.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/agorist-protection-agencies-and.html

For more entries on social services, public planning, and welfare, please visit:
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Enlightened Catallaxy: A Reciprocally-Altruistic Politicoeconomic Theory

        
 Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)
  
I recommend that the public (in that word’s true sense, meaning the agglomeration and enumeration of all individuals living within a given society, bar none, even criminal transgressors and political prisoners), as a means to forge its own destiny independent of centralized state apparati (including political parties) and of trade and labor unions, resolve, through the utilization of direct, organic, grassroots, localistic, non-bureaucratic, non-representative, and populist methods, to advocate for the discovery of data pertaining to the characteristics - qualitative, causal, and otherwise - of any and all forms of capital (including land, labor, consumer goods, and political capital) which are or may become available for exchange or purchase, as well as the subsequent communication and disclosure of such data for access and use by the general market-going populace.

I believe that if this condition were to be fulfilled, it would provide a solution to the problem presented by a claim that was made by eighteenth-century classical liberal economist Adam Smith, which is that an individual, in exercising his freedom to voluntary participate in marketplace activities, generally “neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it”. I believe the consumer- and citizen-advocacy activities of a truly organic, all-voluntary public sector (as an alternative to centralized government structures which perform the same or similar functions) would allow investors to make economic and political decisions in a manner that is - to the extent to which it is possible - well-informed, conscious of the causality of the outcomes of the (inter-)action upon the remainder of the public, and morally acceptable to the investor-citizen as well as consistent with any intentions he or she may have in making the decision.

Twentieth-century Austrian neo-classical economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek used the term “catallaxy” to describe the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies and of voluntarily-cooperating actors in the market. Catallaxy is not an order that can be imposed by any state apparatus, because it is just that; one that is completely voluntary for all participating actors, each of whom accepts the terms of a negotiation or transaction when each party sees the agreement as sufficiently beneficial to oneself. This is crucial because each party must have the freedom to subjectively determine what is advantageous and valuable to it.

A grassroots, public-sector consumer- and citizen-advocacy program would allow this catallactic market order to exist under a state of high-quality politicoeconomic education and information, resulting in what I would term an “Enlightened Catallaxy.” Such a condition would permit a free market completely unhindered by the often monopolizing effects of corporate welfare and protectionism, and allow for free and informed choice in economics (a term which means personal and household fiscal management). Also, it would exist under a system that fulfills perfect anarcho-capitalism, while still allowing a perfect anarcho-collectivistic public sector to exist, although not as a strong, assertive, authoritative, discriminatory, monolithic, oligarchical, bureaucratic, centralized state government.

In this politicoeconomic system, all public-sector apparati would be completely brought about and funded through voluntary, direct-action public service efforts, supplemented by charitable monetary donations solicited from a voluntarily-contributing populace on an individual basis, abhorrent of the initiation of coercive taxation. Furthermore, a public sector satisfying these conditions coexisting alongside an all-voluntary private sector would result in a perfect syncretism of both economic systems (socialism [fiscal collectivism] and capitalism [fiscal individualism]), thereby ridding each of their more coercive and authoritarian elements. It would create an economically-syncretistic, minarchistic polyarchism, meaning that minimal amounts of control and authority would be exercised in order to allow voluntary practice of economic and political systems and greater entertainment of diversity and freedom in the election of political and legal representation, and in legal and physical defense.

It would be a system in balance, if only people could prove themselves truly ready to commit to and accept the axiomatic utopian solution which has been recommended by many critically-thinking minds throughout history, which is that some of us must, at least occasionally, be prepared to volunteer to perform labors whose rewards are evident in their own result; i.e., that sometimes, some people must recognize that work can be its own reward, and that we should at times help others without guarantee that we will be helped to a degree of equal value by our own subjective standards.

This system would allow people to act freely in accordance with their morality, and consumers would be free to exercise their will either to refuse to - or agree to - compromise with people who they believe act in ways that are contrary to their own morality. It is a system which acknowledges that individual human beings, and not groups, organizations, or government apparati, are and should be the only ones who can act on principled voluntary decisions and opinions.

To those who would argue that this system would permit racism and undermine civil rights, remember that Jim Crow laws were just that: laws, mandated by the governments of the southern states and of racist local city commerce councils. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 illegitimately deemed all private commercial establishments as public accommodations, and thus they were within the jurisdiction of the federal government under the Commerce Clause, preventing private business owners from ever having the opportunity to choose not to discriminate.

Additionally, to speak to the issue of racial inequality, classical-liberal monetarist economist and sometimes-Keynesian Milton Friedman saw the minimum wage law as the single current law which discriminates against African-Americans the most, due to the fact that it causes the least-skilled laborers to be perpetually unemployed and / or underemployed. Many modern proponents of capitalism believe that to lower or abolish the minimum wage would increase hiring rates, leading to a decrease in unemployment, resulting eventually in higher wages once the economy begins to feel the effects of higher employment rates. I would like to add that this idea is central to the issue of the employment of illegal immigrants. Most white Americans would complain much more about immigrants taking their jobs if there were no minimum wage, because whites would no longer be afforded the privilege of having to make sacrifices to compete with typically less-skilled non-whites who find it advantageous to undervalue their own labor.

We should foment an economic philosophy and system that embraces the ethic of reciprocal altruism, and I believe that the philosophy and system which I have termed "Enlightened Catallaxy" embodies and fulfills that ethic. I believe that to realize this ethic as a central tenet of a successful, pragmatic politicoeconomic philosophy would be tantamount to proving the intrinsic worth of the human spirit, being that it would reject any semblance of a notion that people are inherently amoral or immoral or that people need to be compelled to share and act charitably without the promise of immediate equitable compensation.

You will notice that nowhere in the above paragraphs did I employ the terms “democracy” or “republic.” I am convinced that neither a codified republican system of law and contract enforcement, nor a doctrine of democratic majority rule, nor even a conjunction of the two, are either necessary or sufficient methods of constituting political or economic systems which would embody the ethic which I have put forth as essential to a sound anarchistic philosophy.



Written on October 24th, 2010
Originally Published on October 24th, 2010



For more entries on consumers' issues, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/economic-policy-for-2012-us-house.html
For more entries on enterprise, business, business alliance, and markets, please visit:
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

How to Fold Two Square Pieces of Card Stock into a Box

      This series of images shows how to take two square pieces of card stock (or thick paper), and cut and fold them into two halves of a b...