Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - World Affairs / Debate - "The Decline and Fall of Conservatism" by Butler Shaffer
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hhallahh
Posts: 604/607 |
Of course, you're an economist. I'm not one, but I am speaking to some OTHER economists. Many of them are worried that if the current trends occur unimpeded by government intervention into the market well...Yeah...1929 had unique circumstances, but there is nothing to say that a different set of circumstances could arise to cause an equally quick down-turn.
At worst, I'd believe, other economists would say that there are certain kinds of interventions needed to keep the economy stable. I doubt many would count redistributory programs among these interventions, though. Perhaps one could say that redistribution is needed to keep the masses from revolting, but that's not exactly an economic argument. And most likely wouldn't apply to a lot of places, like America.
a) Yes, they do. The levels of wealth may change, but it does create something similar to a dynasty. The Kennedys, Rockafellers, Bushs, and various others.
These families are not dynasties in the sense that I meant. I'd readily concede that there's a relatively high correlation between powerful parents and powerful children, but it's still true that the most powerful families now are completely different than the most powerful families a generation ago. The power and wealth almost invariably peaks and then dissipates.
Also, in the realm of politics, in a democratic society... if political dynasties emerge, how can we say this is a sign of aristocracy? Should we ban the children of officials from running for office? If the people choose to create a dynasty because of their affinity with the individual's "brand name", it's certainly a disingenuous thing to say that this is unfair.
b) Those that don't want to use them don't. Those that realize they can do. Many of them form lobby groups that have an awful lot more clout due to their patron's wealth. The Heritage Foundation and Mr. Coors are a good example.
Political power can be bought, but still.. no special privileges, since anyone is allowed to create a lobbying group. Removing political inequalities isn't an unmitigated good either, since it naturally leads to a tyranny of the majority.
It is slowly, but surely, solidifying the wealth into a smaller and smaller few and strangling the middle-class and making the working poor into just plain poor.
Come on. This represents the naive view that wealth is a fixed quantity, and anytime the rich get richer, the poor simply must get poorer. However, this is simply untrue. It's true that the poor would initially be worse off if you took away their handouts, but things would get better from there, no matter how much wealth became concentrated at the top. Even at the most inhumane times of the industrial revolution, people were still better off than they were in feudal societies. The free market demonstrates a tendency for all groups to become better-off with the passage of time. The rich do not simply lock up all of their profits in giant vaults like Uncle Scrooge from Duck Tales until the end of time. They reinvest them in economic development which helps all strata of society. One could argue that, if we wanted more long-term growth, we should redistribute money towards the rich, because they'd be more likely to invest it in development..
Now I find it funny that you call taxation "wealth redistribution". I think it is a nation's democratic right to be able to set its own taxes, because its not like Canada and the other "welfare" states have shut down their economy to trading and become insular, enigmatic world recluses like Turkmenistan. In fact, Finland has one of the most competitive economies in the world, and one of the best social systems in the world. Of course, they're evil Commie bastards that should have the shit bombed out of them because they might tax a man that makes half-a-million a year a few thousand more dollars than the man that is struggling to feed his family.
It is wealth redistribution. Granted, I generally refer to it as "wealth redistribution" when redistribution is an end rather than a means, but... it's technically true. I don't see what the rest of this tangeant is about. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 5042/5458 |
Of course, you're an economist. I'm not one, but I am speaking to some OTHER economists. Many of them are worried that if the current trends occur unimpeded by government intervention into the market well...Yeah...1929 had unique circumstances, but there is nothing to say that a different set of circumstances could arise to cause an equally quick down-turn.
Renewed aristocracy? If you mean "high wealth inequality", then the answer is yes. However, if you're implying that this aristocracy would displace democracy (as the term would imply), then you're wrong. There are a few essential facts about rich people in a free market:
a) They tend not to produce dynasties. I don't have figures onhand, but the top 10 richest families now and the top 10 richest families 50 years ago are most likely completely different.
b) They have no special privileges.
c) They tend to have achieved their fortune by creating a product which helps people.
And in this case, I have a slight advantage because of a little overlooked dingy called history. And fortunately I can be fancied a historian 
a) Yes, they do. The levels of wealth may change, but it does create something similar to a dynasty. The Kennedys, Rockafellers, Bushs, and various others.
b) Those that don't want to use them don't. Those that realize they can do. Many of them form lobby groups that have an awful lot more clout due to their patron's wealth. The Heritage Foundation and Mr. Coors are a good example.
Those are the primary tenents of an aristocracy. One thing I've learned about chilling with professors is that they know a lot. And each time I've spoken with a poli-sci prof or grad they always say one thing: "There are two types of change revolution which is quick and violent (not necessarily physically violent). And then there is a gradual change." The former has examples like America, the French Revolution, the recent Central Asian and Ex-Soviet revolutions or even the failed Upper Canada Revolt or Red River Rebellion. The latter is slow and gradual change. Like from the old system in England what with villeins and how you know to the system that gradually became nasty, brutish and then required revolutions to fix it even slightly (which never benefitted the revolutionaries ). In the case of an aristocracy this high wealth inequality (which I don't understand how people can pass through the brains and go "weeeeeeeeeee, that sounds fair!") is going to be the deliverer. It is slowly, but surely, solidifying the wealth into a smaller and smaller few and strangling the middle-class and making the working poor into just plain poor. Kinda like the Czar system following the Muscovite take over of Kyvin-Rus I fear that if the current system of ripping the guts of society out we will gradually fall into a problem similar to what caused the rise of communism (Great-Grandpa could tell you some lovely stories about Ukraine under the thumb of Stalin).
Okee dokee.
Now I find it funny that you call taxation "wealth redistribution". I think it is a nation's democratic right to be able to set its own taxes, because its not like Canada and the other "welfare" states have shut down their economy to trading and become insular, enigmatic world recluses like Turkmenistan. In fact, Finland has one of the most competitive economies in the world, and one of the best social systems in the world. Of course, they're evil Commie bastards that should have the shit bombed out of them because they might tax a man that makes half-a-million a year a few thousand more dollars than the man that is struggling to feed his family. |
beneficii
Posts: 403/567 |
Originally posted by alte Hexe
I can handle economic conservatives who preach privatizing everything. They've got logic circuits that work and can be debated with...generally.
I cannot handle the raging whack jobs like Rick Santorum that have taken historical facts and twisted and distorted them to fit into their small world views.
To conclude, economic conservatives of the Canadian variety like Robert Stanfield. Are a-okay because they care about society. They are respectable and can be debated with and are generally cool all around. Fringe conservatives like Stockwell Day are plenty crazy and can neither be spoken to nor debated.
But...
The enemy doesn't have to be the terrorists - it can be the welfare state and those who believe in material redistribution.
Is a terrible statement. The definition of an enemy is too extreme. I don't understand this complete and blatent hatred of democractic rights that many modern paleo-conservatives epouse. Whatever happened to the days where nations like Canada and Sweden and Norway and Finland, et al. could exist peacefully without having people frothing at the mouth at us? I find it odd that nowadays democracy = capitalism. I don't understand this conservative dichotomy.
I find it hilarious that people make statements of this sort can go on to claim that their "enemies" are on the decline and have little footing. Many political scientists of a high degree, in fact many people of any intellectual degree, would state that the weak have to have an enemy to make a rally call.
Well, I don't really consider myself a conservative; I just want to be able to trade with whomever I want without worrying about whether I'm breaking some law or regulation. You know, it's my life. |
hhallahh
Posts: 603/607 |
Originally posted by alte Hexe
Same thing with the conservative economy. Pretty soon you have a renewed aristocracy and a massive depression.
Renewed aristocracy? If you mean "high wealth inequality", then the answer is yes. However, if you're implying that this aristocracy would displace democracy (as the term would imply), then you're wrong. There are a few essential facts about rich people in a free market:
a) They tend not to produce dynasties. I don't have figures onhand, but the top 10 richest families now and the top 10 richest families 50 years ago are most likely completely different.
b) They have no special privileges.
c) They tend to have achieved their forture by creating a product which helps people.
As for a massive depression... I'm not sure where you're coming from with that. And I'm the economist, so you might want to make sure you've thought your reply to this through. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 5040/5458 |
Same thing with the conservative economy. Pretty soon you have a renewed aristocracy and a massive depression. |
hhallahh
Posts: 602/607 |
Slippery slopes and whatnot. Before you know it, you have guaranteed incomes and 15% unemployment rates. Europe. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 5035/5458 |
I don't see why people see the welfare state as some sort of enemy. So what if a multi-millionaire faces a few thousand dollars of extra in taxes? I'd much rather him not be able to drink from a gold-coated Coke can than have ANOTHER 450 homeless freeze to death in Toronto. |
hhallahh
Posts: 601/607 |
Democracy is a system wherein, supposedly, the ultimate sovereign is the People. This says nothing for the scope of government. What are "democratic rights"? The right to take from the rich and give to the poor, just because they are rich and you are poor, and you outnumber them? The right to tell your neighbor who he can sleep with, and in what manner? The right to enslave minorities? These are not the kinds of "rights" which the founding fathers in America envisaged. These are not the kind of "rights" that you envisage, I hope. When you say "democratic rights", I take it to mean "the right to force others to do as you will, limited only by my personal sense of justice." Thus, having a redistributionist system is a "democratic right", but something like instituting segregation isn't.
Democracy is merely the least worst system. The genius of America lies in its Constitutionally-limited government and federalist division of authority.
And yea, Santorum is nutty. One of the tenets of conservatism is a respect for tradition and authority, but legislating respect is a very sketchy thing to do. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 5030/5458 |
I can handle economic conservatives who preach privatizing everything. They've got logic circuits that work and can be debated with...generally.
I cannot handle the raging whack jobs like Rick Santorum that have taken historical facts and twisted and distorted them to fit into their small world views.
To conclude, economic conservatives of the Canadian variety like Robert Stanfield. Are a-okay because they care about society. They are respectable and can be debated with and are generally cool all around. Fringe conservatives like Stockwell Day are plenty crazy and can neither be spoken to nor debated.
But...
The enemy doesn't have to be the terrorists - it can be the welfare state and those who believe in material redistribution.
Is a terrible statement. The definition of an enemy is too extreme. I don't understand this complete and blatent hatred of democractic rights that many modern paleo-conservatives epouse. Whatever happened to the days where nations like Canada and Sweden and Norway and Finland, et al. could exist peacefully without having people frothing at the mouth at us? I find it odd that nowadays democracy = capitalism. I don't understand this conservative dichotomy.
I find it hilarious that people make statements of this sort can go on to claim that their "enemies" are on the decline and have little footing. Many political scientists of a high degree, in fact many people of any intellectual degree, would state that the weak have to have an enemy to make a rally call. |
hhallahh
Posts: 600/607 |
Intellectual masturbation and wishful thinking. It's true that conservatives in governments have become bloated with power and prone to corruption... but such is the nature of power, so they say. But the conservative movement as a whole is ascendent nonetheless, both socially and intellectually. The enemy doesn't have to be the terrorists - it can be the welfare state and those who believe in material redistribution. Faith in rugged American individualism and exceptionalism are undoubtedly at their highest levels since the 60s. Liberals have very little ground and the Democrats are criticized as a party without ideas - and rightly so, because they simply don't have them. They are on the defensive.
If the conservative coalition that now dominates American politics whiters away, it will not be because of intellectual bankruptcy but rather because those with power used it to gain more power rather than achieve the goals which they espoused. I believe this will happen - there are many examples of conservative overreach for which the Republicans are taking damage - the sketchy justification of the Iraq war, the Plame incident, Terry Shiavo, out of control spending, etc. But these are not issues with conservatism as a whole. True Burkean conservatives are most likely horrified by what's been happening. |
Arwon
Posts: 390/506 |
Bollocks.
Oh, sorry.
bollocks |
alte Hexe
Posts: 4897/5458 |
Originally posted by Arwon
Someone should tell Moby about Capital Letters.
Shhhhhh...They don't exist in the Karmic mind of the Buddhist. |
Arwon
Posts: 389/506 |
Someone should tell Moby about Capital Letters. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 4896/5458 |
Alright, just you know...Make that clear. |
Clockworkz
Posts: 1762/2002 |
Moby. Read my bio. I agree 100% with his views. Except that I'm an aetheist, and he isn't. |
alte Hexe
Posts: 4895/5458 |
...who wrote these, EXACTLY, clockworkz? |
Clockworkz
Posts: 1760/2002 |
I love quoting my Bio.
------------------------
"one problem with cultural conservatism:
to put it simply, and it's not a problem that only conservatives have, conservatives very often confuse (or conflate) ethics and aesthetics. when gertrude himmelfarb lambasts our (as she perceives it) 'amoral', 'sexually deviant' and 'polymorphously perverse' culture she is primarily responding to something that she finds culturally foreign and threatening.
i agree with her that values are oftentimes a good thing, but only when they are born of an ethical and pragmatic perspective, not an aesthetic one.
the conservatives want a seemingly neat and compartmentalised society wherein stable appearances are maintained and archaic cultural archetypes are adhered to religiously. i grew up in a world of rigid cultural archetypes. i grew up with white businessmen going to office buildings while their wives stayed at home and their kids went to school. or, more accurately, i grew up with alcoholic adulterous businessmen who lived culturally insular lives while their wives took sedatives and smoked cigarettes and vented their frustrations on their kids, and these same kids took reams of drugs, got abortions, drove drunk, and victimised the weaklings. i grew up in what most conservatives would consider a utopia; lots of money, prestige, cultural cohesion, and good conservative values.
but their values were in fact aesthetics, and maintaining these aesthetics ruled and ruined their lives. almost everyone in this suburban bourgeoisie system hated their lives, but because they had been brought up to worship these aesthetic myths they felt that to question them was an admission of personal failure.
what are these myths? they're old and platitudinal but i'll trot them out again: that money makes you happy, that society is right, that poverty is bad, that maintaining convention in every aspect of your life is the ultimate good, that aberrance from these ideas is sin, etc.
i'm not going to say that the polar opposites of these clich |
windwaker
Posts: 1740/1797 |
Originally posted by Reshaper256
Very good article. I'm surrounded by modern conservatism myself, and I'm glad to see that there are smart people out there (besides my dad and John Stewart)
Heh.
And yeah, the only reason they're still in power in America is that people feel that anyone who can get a job with the government is smart enough to deserve that job. The others just don't care. ;( |
alte Hexe
Posts: 4858/5458 |
Yeah. When conservatives are in power all they do is give 1 ups to the liberals. Man conservatives hate conservatives. |
Okilian
Posts: 25/43 |
I hope you guys know, but political comedians/shows like the Daily Show aren't necesarily against Conservatives...as much as who ever is in power at the time. They do it for laughs... |
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