the neoliberal vision of the future

[8ball]

Does economic freedom on that graph include the freedom to collectively bargain and withdraw labour where necessary?

edit: I've actually taken a look and it seems those aren't a measure, but to get a plus in the 'labor freedom' category you just need to be able to sack people easily.

 

[Crispy]

That scatter chart tells us something about money, but nothing at all about human beings and their welfare.

 

[Crispy]

If i was at work and had tme to waste, id correllate the economic freedom scores with wealth inequality

 

[Bernie Gunther]

There is a whole host of evidence but quantitatively a lot of it is summarized in the following graph:

This shows a correlation between GDP and economic freedom. Granted, neither GDP nor economic freedom are perfect measures, and this graph alone does not prove causality and which direction it goes, but it does visibly summarize the effect of economic freedom (or the lack thereof) on national wealth. What it shows (in conjunction with all the available evidence) is that the more economically free a nation is, the wealthier it is. Or put negatively: the more it deviates from capitalism, the less wealthy it is. It is not in the near-capitalist societies that people are dying of malnutrition and disease. This happens in the poor, anti-capitalist countries. Thus, anyone who is promoting anti-capitalism is partially responsible for the deaths in anti-capitalist countries, because they contribute to the spreading of false, murderous ideas.

Now, you can of course now answer that this is bullshit, that this graph proves nothing, but consider what I am accusing you of: contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people every day. If *I* was accused of something like that I would have to pretty darn certain before dismissing it as bullshit. In fact, consider an analogous case: suppose there is a baby food producer, and several customers reported to you that there was something horribly wrong with the food that was making their children really sick. Suppose further that the baby food producer dismissed the complaints as bullshit and that their complaints prove nothing, and then proceeding to not do ANYTHING to test the food to see if there was anything wrong with it. What would your view of such a baby food producer be? I know that *I* would view him with contempt and hold him criminally responsible for deaths and illness caused by the baby food. Now, apply that same logic to yourself in the case of capitalism and see where that leaves you.

For that argument to hold any water, you need to show that GDP correlates in some useful way to general well-being, so you also need to consider stuff like the Gini index, infant mortality etc.

I'm kind of in the middle of something right now, but will return to this later.

 

[8ball]

For that argument to hold any water, you need to show that GDP correlates in some useful way to general well-being, so you also need to consider stuff like the Gini index, infant mortality etc.

General well-being!??!!!

Fucking nazis

 

[littlebabyjesus]

If i was at work and had tme to waste, id correllate the economic freedom scores with wealth inequality

In terms of onar's claims, you'd be better off doing something that correlated 'economic freedom' with life expectancy.

Given how he is defining economic freedom, you would find that those that come high on his chart would also be high on the chart of life expectancy, with Cuba and one or two other places bucking the trend by appearing in totally the wrong place.

But it's a classic case of finding what you're looking for. A brief perusal of those indices shows that it includes measures of such things as the strength of the rule of law and the extent of corruption. The richer a country is, the stronger its institutions are likely to be - precisely because they are backed by more money. The 'old world' economies of Europe will score highly on these measures, which more than offsets the low scores they might get for, for instance, government spending and tax. Denmark appears very high up on the list and is a case in point – a country where 50% GDP goes to the government, yet that still appears in the top 10 of the list.

There is another, very very important, point, which is that none of these countries exists in isolation, and many of the countries near the bottom of the list are dominated by countries that appear near the top of the list. It is the capitalist system that maintains this situation, and it is efforts by the likes of Morales in Bolivia to free their countries from the grip of foreign interests that are improving the lot of the poorest.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

For that argument to hold any water, you need to show that GDP correlates in some useful way to general well-being, so you also need to consider stuff like the Gini index, infant mortality etc.

It is very likely to, tbf.

 

[onarchy]

Does economic freedom on that graph include the freedom to collectively bargain and withdraw labour where necessary?

edit: I've actually taken a look and it seems those aren't a measure, but to get a plus in the 'labor freedom' category you just need to be able to sack people easily.

To the unemployed being able to offer the employer the ability to sack him easily is crucial to get into the labor market. Strong labor laws builds high walls around the labor market. They keep workers INSIDE the walls, but they equally much stop unemployed and low-paid foreigners OUTSIDE the labor market. But when that is said, economic freedom should include the right to unionize.

However, this is a minor detail that detracts the attention away from the crucial point here: it doesn't help that there are strong labor laws, when your family is unemployed and starving. Generally speaking, the countries that score well on economic freedom have a much better work situation for the vast majority of people than in countries that score badly.

 

[Blagsta]

Where did I mention or posit any kind of dichotomy?

It's inherent in individualism.

Though that makes more sense than 'individualism is a philosophical error'.
Anyway, I think we've had this argument before - it went on for a bit but I think in the end it centred on the definition of individualism.

We're having enough trouble over the definitions of words in this thread - I'll stick roughly with the Wikipedia entry on what it means and if you want it to mean something more akin to 'sociopathy' I'm happy to go with your conclusions

Additional:

If what you meant by 'individualism is a philosophical error' was 'Onarchy's elevation of individualism as something simple and distinct, with a black/white dualistic relationship with 'collectivism' with one being the source of all that is good and life-enhancing and the other being evil and the source of all unnecessary suffering in the world <breathes in> - is philosophically barmy', then I agree.

Yes, that is what I meant. However, from Wikipedia -

"Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so independence and self-reliance[2] while opposing most external interference upon one's own interests, whether by society, family or any other group or institution."

and

"Classical liberalism (including libertarianism), existentialism and anarchism (especially individualist anarchism) are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis"

and

"An individualist enters into society to further his or her own interests"


all of which would seem to me to be on shaky ground, predicated on the notion that individuals "enter into society" (where from?) fully formed, with no influence from anyone.

 

[8ball]

To the unemployed being able to offer the employer the ability to sack him easily is crucial to get into the labor market.

I didn't find this when I was unemployed. I guess it's more crucial in those countries where the employer's hold all the bargaining chips. Then I'd have been able to make a much more 'free' choice betweem shit working conditions and . . . shit working conditions.

 

[onarchy]

For that argument to hold any water, you need to show that GDP correlates in some useful way to general well-being, so you also need to consider stuff like the Gini index, infant mortality etc.

I'm kind of in the middle of something right now, but will return to this later.

Economic freedom correlates positively to GDP, literacy rate, low infent mortality, longevity AND happiness (self-reported well-being). There is ZERO statistically significant correlation between Economic Freedom and GINI. Interestingly there is also ZERO statistically signficant correlation between GINI and happiness, i.e. social inequality in itself does not contribute to making people unhappy (or happy).

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm puzzled. How are you defining 'more capitalist' here, onar? That list of yours puts countries with high taxes and high levels of communal provision such as Denmark up pretty high in the list.

Perhaps a graph showing 'Percentage GDP going to the state' versus 'GDP per capita' might be instructive. I think you might find quite a large number of high 'GDP going to the state' countries up near the top.

There are lots of ways to slice this particular pie depending on what you want to show. What you have done is show that a list that evaluates countries according to their attractiveness to business shows a correlation with overall wealth. That's not really very surprising or interesting of itself given that there are many, often contradictory, measures of what makes a place good to do business in: for instance, low govt spending vs sound infrastructure/well educated workforce.

 

[DotCommunist]

It is not in the near-capitalist societies that people are dying of malnutrition and disease

The facists at UNICEF recently rated Cuba as having 0% child malnutrition.

Oh and lol:

literacy rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate


Cuba is strong man socialist and georgia (birthplace of Stalin) was USSR territory.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Interestingly there is also ZERO statistically signficant correlation between GINI and happiness, i.e. social inequality in itself does not contribute to making people unhappy (or happy).

Source please ...

 

[8ball]

It's inherent in individualism.

We've had this argument before and it all came down to a pretty piddling difference of definition. If you see individualism as a kind of moral stance (I know in reality things get more convoluted but stay with me for a sec) - then there is no need to see it as something completely separate and distinct from a different moral stance (such as corporatism). It is more a choice of values - you may still for example value group cohesion, but if in some cases you see moniority rights as being more important then that's an individualist stance even if you slice the cake differently on other issues (and not everyone is entirely consistent with regard to these things, obviously.

Yes, that is what I meant. However, from Wikipedia -

"Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so independence and self-reliance[2] while opposing most external interference upon one's own interests, whether by society, family or any other group or institution."

and

"Classical liberalism (including libertarianism), existentialism and anarchism (especially individualist anarchism) are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis"

and

"An individualist enters into society to further his or her own interests"

all of which would seem to me to be on shaky ground, predicated on the notion that individuals "enter into society" (where from?) fully formed, with no influence from anyone.

I don't see the middle on as on shaky ground - all of those schools of thought are individualist in a methodological sense. The first one has an understandable (being Wikipedia) American-style take on things, and to an extent I agree with what you say about the last bit.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ok, not a graph, but there is a list on this link of countries with their tax burden as a %GDP and govt spending as a %GDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#Government_spending_as_a_percentage_of_GDP

As you can see from looking down that list, there is a very strong correlation between high government spending as a % GDP and GDP per capita. Of course, there are outliers and exceptions, but the trend is very clear.

 

[audiotech]

...the death camps are incidental, and not an integral part of Nazism, not any more integral than Stalin's death camps are to communism.

One of the unique aspects of the Stalin's camps is that it's inmates arrived, most of the time, via a legal system, if not always the ordinary judicial system. Unlike in Nazi-occupied Europe where no one tried and sentenced the Jews. When people entered the the Gulag system they never thought for a moment they were going to die and most didn't, unlike the systematic death camps of the Nazi's, which were built for the specific purpose of killing people.

Also, during Stalin's rule many communists were arrested, particularly foreign ones. The Comintern had 394 members in 1936, only 171 remained in 1938. The rest had been shot or sent to the camps. Stalin killed more members of the pre-1933 German Communist Party Politburo than did Hitler: of the 68 German communist leaders who fled to the Soviet Union after the Nazi seizure of power, 41 died, by execution, or in camps'. According to one estimate, Stalin had 5,000 Polish communists executed in 1937.

See 'Gulag: A History' by Anne Applebaum.

To add:
http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/0767900561

To add further: Not only are you a loathsome piece of shit, but an extremely arrogant one to boot.

 

[onarchy]

Source please ...

You can play around with a lot of the data here. (Sorry the page is in Norwegian, but the graph is in English)

http://wiki.fredsbevegelsen.no/Økonomisk_frihet

 

[onarchy]

Ok, not a graph, but there is a list on this link of countries with their tax burden as a %GDP and govt spending as a %GDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#Government_spending_as_a_percentage_of_GDP

As you can see from looking down that list, there is a very strong correlation between high government spending as a % GDP and GDP per capita. Of course, there are outliers and exceptions, but the trend is very clear.

Yup, and the correlation is so strong and so significant that we can rule out coincidence. So we know that there is a causal relationship between the two, but which way does the causality go? It turns out the correct explanation is that high productivity ENABLES countries to sustain high taxes, just like a well-trained man is CAPABLE of lifting a heavier weight than a punier man. If you measure the strength of people and then also measure the average burden they carry during a day, you will find a significant correlation between muscle strength and weight carried, for the simple reason that the punier men are unable to lift as much weight. Thus, the positive correlation is caused by the increased muscle weight (the enabler) in combination with incident factors.

Similarly the positive correlation between high taxes and high productivity is caused by the high productivity (the enabler) inm combination with incident factors. This can readily be seen by trying to impose 50% taxes on someone living on a existential wage and see if he survives.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this implies that economic freedom currently is measured incorrectly by the Heritage foundation. It penalizes a poor country equally much by having, say 10% taxes, as it does a rich country. But to a medieval economy 10% tax is devastating while to a rich industrialized economy it is a walk in the park. Thus, generally speaking the poorer a country is, the more it should be penalized (in terms of economic freedom) by high taxes.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It doesn't really matter. Madagascar was one of the options considered for a while. In the end, industrial-scale gassing was the course of action chosen. Perhaps that course of action would not have been chosen in the same way had it not been for the war. Who knows, and who cares? Nazi racial theory justified the inhuman treatment of untermenschen, whether they be Jews, Slavs or Gypsies. That's the important point to me.

Adam Tooze (The Wages of Destruction), among many others, has made a good case for an economic imperative to the Holocaust, insofar as removal of nationality from German Jews, with the accompanying seizure of assets, levying of huge charges for exit visas and other methods of expropriation gave the German economy a sizeable liquidity boost which fed into rearmament. Later seizure, after war was joined, allowed the net self-funding of the death camps, as well as providing labour and goods that were utilised by the state, from precious metals and stones, to hair.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That's a bit of a leap there. 'It turns out'. How? How have you reached that conclusion?

The correlation suggests that there is a causal link between the two – although you can't rule out their both being caused by a third factor based just on the figures. As it happens, I would think that there isn't a third factor. The correlation in itself doesn't imply causation in any particular direction, however, so your interpretation needs justification.

There are other comparisons I'd like to see, such as the correlation between high govt spending and lower economic inequality – I would strongly suspect that, generally, the higher a country's govt spending, the lower the overall economic inequality. Then there would be other measures, such as life expectancy and infant mortality. This spending by governments is going on stuff, good stuff mainly if you take out spending on the military and one or two other things.

I'd argue that there's almost certainly a dialectic relationship between the two. At the very, very least, this shows that high govt spending and high income are far from incompatible. It's not quite 'socialism killing babies', now, is it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Adam Tooze (The Wages of Destruction), among many others, has made a good case for an economic imperative to the Holocaust, insofar as removal of nationality from German Jews, with the accompanying seizure of assets, levying of huge charges for exit visas and other methods of expropriation gave the German economy a sizeable liquidity boost which fed into rearmament. Later seizure, after war was joined, allowed the net self-funding of the death camps, as well as providing labour and goods that were utilised by the state, from precious metals and stones, to hair.

Short-term liquidity boost to the state, sure. Medium- to long-term economic boost, no. As Idi Amin discovered, expelling an economically successful group from your country isn't good for your economy – whoever you hand their property to won't use it as efficiently as they did.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm on the phone now, tim Mason is who you need to look for. I put loads of his stuff online, probably on the libcom site now. He's the one.

^^^^This.

Norm, if you see a copy of Mason's 'Social Policy in the Third Reich: The Working Class and the "National Community" ' and you've got a spare few quid, buy it. It's a fascinating read, packed full of well-referenced data from credible (and checkable) sources.

 

[DotCommunist]

It turns out the correct explanation is that high productivity ENABLES countries to sustain high taxes, just like a well-trained man is CAPABLE of lifting a heavier weight than a punier man. If you measure the strength of people and then also measure the average burden they carry during a day, you will find a significant correlation between muscle strength and weight carried, for the simple reason that the punier men are unable to lift as much weight. Thus, the positive correlation is caused by the increased muscle weight (the enabler) in combination with incident factors.

a telling analogy.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Short-term liquidity boost to the state, sure. Medium- to long-term economic boost, no. As Idi Amin discovered, expelling an economically successful group from your country isn't good for your economy – whoever you hand their property to won't use it as efficiently as they did.

You're missing the point. The expropriation of German Jewry may have only obtained a short-term liquidity boost, but the systematic and continued expropriation and/or enslavement and.or annihilation of western central and eastern European Jewry outwith Germany made available vast sums of money into early 1945, as did the use of slave labour from the territories occupied by the Nazis.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

You're missing the point. The expropriation of German Jewry may have only obtained a short-term liquidity boost, but the systematic and continued expropriation and/or enslavement and.or annihilation of western central and eastern European Jewry outwith Germany made available vast sums of money into early 1945, as did the use of slave labour from the territories occupied by the Nazis.

Ah ok, yes, that makes sense.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I edited out the first bit. But how is the second bit wrong. The Holocaust was a logical conclusion to the process given the Nazi ideology. it wasn't, however, a fully formed idea until quite a long way into the process. That's all.

Hmm. I think that the language of the debate is tripping you up a bit.
It's far from certain that "The Holocaust" was a "logical conclusion", what was more nearly certain is that a "final solution to the Jewish problem" would be reached, whether that meant wholesale liquidation or, for example, turning Europe's Jews into Helots. Such a "solution" would, of course, had the same eventual outcome as "The Holocaust" (I'm putting the capitalised phrase in quotation marks because I'm a Finkelsteinian), but would have lacked the sheer horror of the murder of over 12 million people (conservatively) over the 10-11 years the Nazis were a-slaying.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I called it 'a' logical conclusion, not 'the' logical conclusion.

I've said that the final fate of Jews wasn't finally decided upon until late on in the process – after the war had already started, in fact.

Maybe I misunderstood butchers given his reaction to me, but he seemed to be suggesting that there was an argument that it was decided upon earlier than that.

I agree, though, that under different circumstances, other 'final solutions' could have been found. And the fact that the war had started almost certainly tipped the balance towards extermination. Was an important factor, let us say. I don't like to go into counterfactual stuff – who knows what would have happened had WW2 not started when it did.


I am genuinely a bit thrown by butchers. I don't know what he is saying that others are arguing. If they are arguing that, despite it not having been firmly decided upon yet, the Holocaust was inevitable years before it started, I would say that history simply doesn't work like that. That was why I wrote the bit I edited out. I dislike that kind of argument about historical processes. It's stupid.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Don't be so arrogant. What evidence is there to the contrary, and what exactly is the 'intentionalist' position? You haven't outlined it.

Pretty much that the systematic annihilation of Jewry was a given. There's a short passage in Mein Kampf that's often cited in support of such a thesis, but taken in context to the rabid end of German anti-Semitism post-the Great War (and I emphasise that context strongly), it's of a piece with a lot of "Let's beat the shit out of the Yids" pogrom rhetoric flying around. Hitler may have meant his rhetoric at a deeper and more sinister level than his political rivals of the time, but we can't know.

So while saying the holocaust was the product of an intentional effort to annihilate Jewry has the feel of a correct statement, and a certain emotional appeal, it's not intellectually-tenable unless you take a lot of other stuff for granted.

Personally, I see the holocaust more as a result of a combination of: extending the rationality that allowed Aktion T4 and the Lebensborn projects; an awareness that expropriation and its' accompanying commodification of the products of murder paid a dividend which allowed another part of the Nazi project (lebensraum) to be taken forward through paying for materiel, and of the intensive deployment (from even before the Nazis tricked their way to power) of a discourse of necessity - of the need to do anything, however horrific, to secure the future of the German Reich.

This is an opinion I've formed after extensive reading, but it's not a "majority" opinion by any means, btw!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ah, ok. You've answered my edit to my last post. Thanks.

Nothing is ever a given before it actually happens. I hate that kind of reading of history.

But your reading of it is very persuasive, VP.

That is kind of what I was trying to get at – genocide was a logical conclusion of Nazi ideology, which enabled it psychologically, but it was also of course a response to the material conditions of the time. I don't see a contradiction between the two – the seeds are certainly in Mein Kampf, but it wasn't decided upon then.

Thing is, once it started, once it had finally been decided on, the holocaust was an intentional effort to annihilate Jewry. That's where Himmler's words on it are pertinent. Again, there's nothing contradictory about saying that.