The coalition of the evil and unhinged

if anyone is so dim as to not notice prices or not care about prices and portion sizes, I don’t care what happens to him, and neither should any reactionary.

Such people need supervision, need a system where they wind up as chattel slaves.

> but in the real world what you get instead is a kind of exploitation of the weak and weak-minded by the callous and calculating.

You live in the fantasy universe invented by Cultural Marxists in Academia, who evidently do not get out much.

That is just not the capitalism that I see right in front of me. I shop where the poor shop, I hire poor people, I hang out with poor people, I know what goes down.

I am indeed “callous and calculating” and yet I just cannot seem to find any of these weak minded people to exploit. I pay market rates for people, and buy the same goods at the same prices as everyone else. I shop where everyone else shops, and pay what everyone else pays. Right in front of me I see capitalism working as advertised: Competitive fair market prices for goods and labor.

You would have better luck with the Old Marxist argument that fair market prices are inherently unfair, than the new Cultural Marxist argument that consumers are the helpless puppets of advertisers.

> rule by money-power

We have heard all this crap before far too many times.

This is formulaic Marxist crap which elides the distinction between individual private property rights and the collective rule of the capitalist class. You speak of individuals ruling over their own property selfishly in their own interest, using the words applicable to individual property rights, and yet you are in fact talking about the capitalist class selfishly owning the society and collectively ruling the society in the selfish interest of the capitalist class.

This stupid trick of rhetoric, sliding between one meaning and a contrary meaning, is targeted at stupid people. We see it everywhere over and over again, and I am not going to see it on my blog.

Absolute Monarchy is not socialism, it is the opposite of socialism. The King is absolute in that he could potentially intervene in any decision, or take charge of any property, but being mortal, cannot intervene in every decision, nor take charge of every property, and were he to attempt to do so, power would slip from his hands into the hands of a vast and faceless anarcho tyrannical bureaucracy.

And, if he claims divine right, he rules under God, so should not intervene in any decision, but only the exception, nor confiscate any property, but only the exception. He gets to decide the exception, but it is morally wrong for the exception to swallow the rule, as well as being unwise, for if the exception swallows the rule, he empowers a vast and dangerously powerful bureaucracy, which will eventually murder him or his sons.

God commands Kings not let the exception swallow the rule, in the same way as he commands you to wash your hands and refrain from sticking your little man up other people’s assholes.

Nuts.

We have all heard this Marxist crap before, but to demonstrate good faith, leaving it up.

Everything you say is a lie, and they are old lies that have been rebutted so many times, not going to rebut all of them all over again.

Subsequent repeats will be deleted.

But, if I leave something up unrebutted, you will claim that I accepted it, that we are all agreed that it is true. So, going down the list.

> It’s not that individual property rights merge into the ‘collective rule of the capitalist class’: it’s that what any one individual does with his property has effects on others.

Lying about your own argument. You are framing your argument as externalities, but you are not in fact arguing externalities, but Marxist Class theory – that Capitalism consists of rule by the Capitalist class, therefore if Kings rule, or feudal lords rule, or the high priest rules, not capitalism, therefore capitalism is a quite recent development, and we will do fine without it.

No, capitalism goes back to at least the early Iron Age, the Ten Commandments and the Book of Proverbs, and probably all the way back to the neolithic Y chromosome bottleneck.

> Libertarians are very quick to deny this, or to pretend it doesn’t matter even if they admit it’s real.

Barefaced lie, much repeated, a lie about what Libertarians say, about what Republicans say, and about what anyone who does not want to murder the kulaks says.

Anyone who repeats this lie intends to murder everyone like me. You are issuing a lie about what I say, about what everyone you intend to murder says, against Libertarians, against every halfway decent person. Externalities are not an argument against capitalism, nor even for regulation, and libertarians do not concede that they are such an argument. Externalities reflect the imperfect alignment of property rights with the costs and benefits of decisions, and centralizing decision making to one big supreme decision maker makes the problem harder, not easier.

> It’s surprising to find people self-identifying as reactionaries taking the same position.

We take that position because we don’t want people like you killing people like us. To be more precise, nobody takes that position, but everyone who is worried by the mass murders of the twentieth century takes the position that you are misrepresenting. It is not that externalities don’t exist or don’t matter, it is that they are a hard problem without easy solutions and any attempted solution is apt to wind up murdering one hundred million people.

> > “You speak of individuals ruling over their own property selfishly in their own interest, using the words applicable to individual property rights, and yet you are in fact talking about the capitalist class selfishly owning the society and collectively ruling the society in the selfish interest of the capitalist class.”

> In a way that’s right.

It is exactly right.

> > “This stupid trick of rhetoric, sliding between one meaning and a contrary meaning, is targeted at stupid people.”

> It’s nothing of the kind. I’m not saying a cabal of evil capitalists secretly rule the world. I’m saying that under laissez-faire, which you favour, and under which we do not currently live, society is ruled by property rights, which means employers are not responsible for their workers’ lives.

You employ the Motte and Bailey fallacy

To argue from the motte is to argue from a strongly defensible position, whereas to argue from the bailey is to make broad and far reaching statements that are poorly defended.

The conclusions that you argue for do not follow from the entirely defensible proposition that employers are not responsible for their employees lives, but from the proposition that the Capitalist Class Rules the world. You slide between these meanings.

> I still fail to see how this bureaucracy emerges from simple commands to cease&desist.

Motte and Bailey argument, scarcely worth rebutting, but as a gesture of good faith, and treating you as if you were an actual human being rather than a old script regurgitating old Marxist lies:

You are not proposing to outlaw certain clear specific, identifiable, and uncomplicated bad acts, but proposing an enormous regulatory state arrogantly intruding into every minute detail of every person’s life with the most savage violence, into every waking moment of every person’s life with casual brutality. The nature of externalities is that they cannot be simply forbidden, they consist of blurry consequences of actions that slide over between one’s person’s life, activities, and decisions, and another person’s life, activities, and decisions, they happen at the blurry unclear interface between people. That is what an externality is. It is something where it is hard to draw lines. So you cannot simply say “Stop doing X”. You have to say “Do Y and do it exactly the way I tell you to do it.”

So you tell them to make bricks, and there is no straw, so you tell them to make bricks without straw, and then you punish them when the building falls down.

Thus for example, Venezuela cannot simply tell people to cease and desist from selling bread at more than price such and such. Venezuela has to tell the baker to sell bread at price so and so. And then the baker says says he has no flour, so Venezuela says …

For example you complained about the packaging a supermarket uses. So you are going to wind up designing their packaging for them. And you complained about their prices. Venezuela tried a simple cease and desist order on prices. Observe the results.

The baker does not provide bread at the commanded price, so the government cracks down. And then the baker does not provide bread at all. So the Venezuelan government takes over the bakery, and then the shelves are emptied, and mysteriously fail to refill by themselves.

> > “You are framing your argument as externalities, but you are not in fact arguing externalities, but Marxist Class theory – that Capitalism consists of rule by the Capitalist class, therefore if Kings rule, or feudal lords rule, or the high priest rules, not capitalism, therefore capitalism is a quite recent development, and we will do fine without it.
> >
> > No, capitalism goes back to at least the early Iron Age, the Ten Commandments and the Book of Proverbs, and probably all the way back to the neolithic Y chromosome bottleneck.”

> That early mediaeval stock market, all those booms and busts, how did they manage with quills and parchments!

The for profit joint stock corporation was introduced in the restoration by Charles the Second. But capitalism means that, as Jesus explained in his parables, the owner of capital has the right to use it for profit, and to pay his employees whatever they both agree to.

> No Jim, that’s just not true. Capitalism is when owners of capital are beholden to no man: their power speaks for itself. If you want to work, we’ll hire you at the market rate. If you want to buy, we’ll sell on the open market. Competition will set prices and no man has the right to interfere. Let us be, that we can produce. We are the producer class, the engine the moves the world!

Well they actually are the engine that moves the world, in that industrialization and all that is caused by capitalism in general, and corporate capitalism in particular. Immediately after the restoration, we first see Rand’s heroic engineer scientist CEO entrepreneur, mobilizing other people’s capital and other people’s labor to advance technology and make that technology widely available, first canals, then railways, then railways with steam engines Then comes the industrial revolution and all that.

We want to conquer the stars – which will require star capitalism under the rule of star emperor. Because that is the social technology that gave us the industrial revolution, the British empire, and the scientific revolution.

These are the guys that first made steel affordable:

Shockley gave us the transistor. Those men are, as represented in Ayn Rand’s fountainhead, the engine that moves the world. Without them, no transistor, no computers, and steel far too expensive for routine use.

> It’s predicated on the equality of all men, the illegitimacy of divine rule (or any rule ultimately apart from the rule of law, of judges)

Modern Corporate Capitalism was introduced by the Divine Right King Charles the Second, the restorer, under whom no one dared openly advocate such ideas, and those who doubted his rightful authority to appoint Bishops wound up moving out of England, and in some cases got burned at the stake. Our earliest written records depicting the moral code and commercial conduct of a capitalist societies is the Book of Proverbs, issued by the court of King Solomon or his immediate successors, and I am pretty sure that King Solomon would have taken a dim view of anyone advocating such things and his high priest would have come after anyone advocating such things.

As Nazis are, in large part, people who want to re-implement what Hitler implemented, we reactionaries are in large part, people who want to re-implement what Charles the Second implemented.

You, like Maduro, want to finish of the destruction of Charles the Second implemented.

> You’re recasting what I’ve said as standard leftist ‘externalities’ arguments.

Nah, it is a motte and bailey argument with standard Marxism 101 as the bailey and with standard leftist ‘externalities’ argument as the motte. You pretend to present the arguments for the left wing regulatory state, and concluding the standard left wing totalitarian terror state, like feminist pretending to present the arguments that women should be equal to men, and concluding female supremacy.

> That’s not what I said. What I said was that Franky&Benny’s actions have consequences far beyond their immediate transactions. We live in a consumerist Utopia where anyone who DOESN’T live paycheck to paycheck is low status.

No one I know who lives paycheck to paycheck is high status. Everyone I know who is high status has substantial assets, and can afford the little luxuries in which he indulges from time to time. High status people have substantial assets, both liquid and illiquid. People without substantial assets can be induced to hate them and seek to destroy them. Covetousness is a standard left wing tactic in which you engage.

Old type Marxists Leftists tell people “The reason you have no assets is because evil people took it all from you, so you should kill the cows and burn the crops of the peasant with two cows” New type cultural Marxist leftists tell people “The reason you have no assets is because evil people mind controlled you into pissing it all away on overpriced goods, so you should burn the supermarket.”

You are a new type cultural marxist, but this tactic does not work on us, because most of us do have substantial assets.

> > “We take that position because we don’t want people like you killing people like us. To be more precise, nobody takes that position, but everyone who is worried by the mass murders of the twentieth century takes the position that you are misrepresenting.”

> Do you have a single example of a 20th century society that ever questioned any of the things I’m questioning?

Khmer Rouge Cambodia was enthusiastically endorsed by every academic everywhere – in that numerous academics spoke out enthusiastically in favor of Pol Pot, and any tenured academic who doubted remained silent. So I would say that all of academia questioned what you are questioning. Similarly, the New York Times backed Hugo Chávez to the hilt.

You are telling “right wing extremists” that the economic program of Hugo Chávez is actually reactionary, much as similar people are telling “Muslim extremists” that feminism and child support is actually Islamic – and indeed some of your arguments are arguments that child support is Islamic recycled and retargeted, with the white working class substituted for brown single mothers.

> What I’ve said repeatedly is that certain companies – BetFred and Domino’s being the poster boys – are doing things that are harmful to society as a whole, creating an ugly, fragile culture and inculcating toxic values: me first, more more more, I want the red one.

That is not what you are saying, and if it was what you are saying it is not true, and if it was true, any solution would likely wind up murdering one hundred million people and placing everyone in poverty after the fashion of Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Venezuela, and Mao’s china.

“Me first” is the the opposite of Globohomo, Globohomo being the greatest good for the greatest number.

The reactionary position is midway between globohomo and Randian egoism, being that one should care first about oneself, then about close family, then about family about family and friends, then about co-religionists, co-ethnics, tribe, and nation, and for the rest, should follow a policy of peace and goodwill to the extent practical and safe. Which does not mean always peace and goodwill, because sometimes war, collective and individual violence, is the only practical solution. And disgusting freaks have got to stay out of sight. By and large, capitalists and capitalism promote the reactionary position as much as they can get away with, as for example at Christmas time they promote the nuclear family and goodwill to all men, but family first.

> Some of my friends are weighed upon heavily by the demands of the consumer culture and it’s affecting them in demonstrable, measurable ways that are unsafe and unsound.

Bullshit. Your friends are cultural Marxists embedded in academia, and they rant that they are being affected by the demands of consumer culture like a feminist claiming that men oppress her and threaten her with violence. I know actual poor people, and they are totally unaffected by “the demands of consumer culture”.

> Under laissez-faire, society is destablised *by that*, not by secret cabals of evil capitalists twirling their moustaches. It’s destablised *BY* the fact that any employer owes nothing more to the employee than what’s in his employment contract.

Rather, it is the other way around.

The problem is that society is destabilized by the fact that employee does not owe the employer any more than what is in the employment contract, that just as old type binding marriage is illegal, old type binding apprenticeship is illegal. This problem set it with the dissolution of feudalism and the enforceable apprenticeship system. Just as you cannot restore marriage by cracking down even further on men, but only on women, you cannot restore the apprenticeship system by cracking down even further on employers, but only on employees. It is at will employment that is the problem, the problem is the excessive rights of the employee result in a defect/defect relationship between employer and employee, just as the excessive rights of the wife result in a defect/defect relationship between husband and wife.

We plan to restore the old pre-revolutionary apprenticeship system, and to some extent restore outright feudalism and slavery. We are going to enserf those who are not good at looking after themselves.

We plan to go backwards to old type apprenticeship, which is the opposite of your plan.

> > You are not proposing to outlaw certain clear specific, identifiable, and uncomplicated bad acts, but proposing an enormous regulatory state arrogantly intruding into every minute detail of every person’s life with the most savage violence, into every waking moment of every person’s life with casual brutality. The nature of externalities is that they cannot be simply forbidden, they consist of blurry consequences of actions that slide over between one’s person’s life, activities, and decisions, and another person’s life, activities, and decisions, they happen at the blurry unclear interface between people. That is what an externality is. It is something where it is hard to draw lines. So you cannot simply say “Stop doing X”. You have to say “Do Y and do it exactly the way I tell you to do it.”
> >
> > So you tell them to make bricks, and there is no straw, so you tell them to make bricks without straw, and then you punish them when the building falls down.”

> This is just in your imagination. All I’ve EVER said is that any sane person observing the behaviour of Franky&Benny’s customers will wonder why they’re doing it.

According to you, the evil Franky and Benny is mind controlling them to do stupid stuff, so you are going to outlaw Franky and Benny mind controlling them. But this in practice requires you to outlaw not evil mind control, but supposedly stupid stuff, and the supposedly stupid stuff that you are outlawing is pricing and packaging, which pops you right into Venezuelan socialism.

The stuff that they are doing is not in fact stupid. That is just cultural marxists pompously and arrogantly proclaiming their superiority to common folk that they intend to torture and murder, and demonstrating how deeply they care about the welfare of those that they intend to torture and murder. And if it was stupid, it is not Franky and Benny evil mind control but the spontaneous stupidity of the customers and employees, and if it was Franky and Benny evil mind control, you would not be able to outlaw the magic invisible mind control, since it is magic and invisible, but only the prices and packaging themselves, whereupon, like the Venezuelan authorities, you get overwhelmed by the impossibly complex task of attempting to run everything and make every decision about every waking moment of every person’s life.

> > “The baker does not provide bread at the commanded price, so the government cracks down. And then the baker does not provide bread at all. So the Venezuelan government takes over the bakery, and then the shelves are emptied, and mysteriously fail to refill by themselves.”

> This never happened under Napoleon and Napoleon is the proper comparison, not Maduro.

Napoleon instituted protectionism, high barriers to imports. He did not attempt to control pricing and packaging. You complain that prices are supposedly gouging, and packaging is supposedly deceptive.

Napoleon never attempted to restrain, and entirely failed to notice, the supposed bad behavior that you supposedly see.

And I and my girlfriend are careful shoppers and we don’t see it either. The directorate attempted to control prices, and wound up flaying people alive. History tells us that those who supposedly notice this supposedly bad behavior are bad people who intend to do bad things.

Half the time you give us new type cultural Marxism, that evil capitalists mind control duped employees and duped customers, and the other half the time you give us old type Marxism 101: That feudalism is rule by the feudal class, and capitalism is rule by the capitalist class, therefore capitalism is supposedly very recent.

Reaction 101: Capitalism dates back at to least our earliest written records, to at least the early iron age, and probably all the way back to the neolithic Y chromosome bottleneck. Moses was consciously restoring the real or legendary social order of the Patriarch Israel against the decadent socialist social order of the late Bronze age, and the social order of the Patriarch Israel was a survival from the Y Chromosome bottleneck.

Reaction 101: We are never ruled by capitalists. The capitalist class is no more capable of ruling than the proletariat is capable of ruling. We are always ruled by warriors or priests. Right now we are ruled by priests, and when priests rule, they are apt to succumb to holiness spirals.

Reaction 101: Science is dying, replaced by the demon haunted dark of peer review. Corporate capitalism is dying. Technology is stagnating.

Reaction 101: Corporate capitalism dates back to the Restoration of Charles the Second, which gave us empire, corporate capitalism, industrialization, technology, and science, which is exactly what we intend to restore. Corporate capitalism is one of the things that we intend to restore, under a divine right monarchy resembling that of Charles the Second.

Reaction 101: We want to restore what gave us science, technology, corporate capitalism, and empire, so that mankind can rule the stars under the star empire.

Reaction 101: Reaction looks to the past to revive old social technologies that have been lost, and avoid repeating past errors. Notable among those past errors was the murder of a hundred million or so by socialists, socialism, and leftists. The cure for that error is the corporate capitalism of Charles the Second. Another error was the thirty years war. The cure for that error is national churches and the peace of Westphalia. As with Orthodox Christianity, the Church should be both national and supranational, with neither characteristic obliterating the other.