21st Century Schizoid Boy

L’arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat is “generally considered to be the first motion picture in modern history… Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the “approaching” train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières’ cinématographe” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000012/trivia).

The RAND corporation is tied closely (and in part funded) by the U.S. government and, in particular, the military, and large private organizations in the defense industry. This study deals with an analysis of how terrorism ends. See also the causes of suicide terrorism (most often, occupation).

By analyzing 648 groups that existed between 1968 and 2006, this monograph examines how terrorist groups end. Its purpose is to inform U.S. counterterrorist efforts by understanding how groups have ended in the past and to assess implications for countering al Qa’ida…

The evidence since 1968 indicates that most groups have ended because (1) they joined the political process or (2) local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members. Military force has rarely been the primary reason for the end of terrorist groups, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory. This has significant implications for dealing with al Qa’ida and suggests fundamentally rethinking post–September 11 U.S. counterterrorism strategy…

Most terrorist groups that end because of politics seek narrow policy goals…

Against terrorist groups that cannot or will not make a transition to nonviolence, policing is likely to be the most effective strategy (40 percent)… Local police and intelligence agencies usually have a permanent presence in cities, towns, and villages; a better understanding of the threat environment in these areas; and better human intelligence.

…in 10 percent of the cases, terrorist groups ended because their goals were achieved, and military force led to the end of terrorist groups in 7 percent of the cases. Militaries tended to be most effective when used against terrorist groups engaged in an insurgency in which the groups were large, well armed, and well organized…

The evidence by 2008 suggested that the U.S. strategy was not successful in undermining al Qa’ida’s capabilities. Our assessment concludes that al Qa’ida remained a strong and competent organization…

Al Qa’ida has been involved in more terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, than it was during its prior history. These attacks spanned Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

There has been some discrepancy about the effectiveness of U.S. strategy against al Qa’ida. In 2007, for example, vice president Dick Cheney stated that the United States had “struck major blows against the al-Qaeda network that hit America.” Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf claimed that “Pakistan has shattered the al Qa’ida network in the region, severing its lateral and vertical linkages. It is now on the run and has ceased to exist as a homogenous force, capable of undertaking coordinated operations.” The National Security Strategy of the United States boldly stated, “The al-Qaida network has been significantly degraded.” These arguments were regularly repeated after 2001. “Al Qaeda’s Top Primed to Collapse, U.S. Says,” read a Washington Post headline two weeks after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, was arrested in March 2003.

Our analysis suggests that these claims were overstated. A growing body of work supports our conclusion. For example, the 2008 Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence reported that, “Using the sanctuary in the border area of Pakistan, al-Qa’ida has been able to maintain a cadre of skilled lieutenants capable of directing the organization’s operations around the world.” It also noted that “Al-Qa’ida is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the US: the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack in the Homeland.” The 2007 national intelligence estimate, The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland, similarly noted that the main threat to the U.S. homeland “comes from Islamic terrorist groups and cells, especially al-Qa’ida, driven by their undiminished intent to attack the Homeland and a continued effort by these terrorist groups to adapt and improve their capabilities.” Bruce Riedel, who spent 29 years at the CIA, acknowledged that “Al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before.”..

Military force is too blunt an instrument to defeat most terrorist groups. Military forces may be able to penetrate and garrison an area that terrorist groups frequent and, if well sustained, may temporarily reduce terrorist activity. But once the situation in an area becomes untenable for terrorists, they will simply transfer their activity to another area, and the problem remains unresolved. Terrorist groups generally fight wars of the weak. They do not put large, organized forces into the field, except when they engage in insurgencies…

Iraq was also helpful to al Qa’ida, since it established a foothold that it did not previously have. On the occasion of the second and third anniversaries of the September 11 attacks, the group’s second-incommand, Ayman al-Zawahiri provided the clearest explanation of al Qa’ida’s strategy in Iraq: He declared in September 2003, “We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemmas in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death.”

Such images as the Abu Ghraib prisoners were sent around the globe via Internet, satellite television, and cell phone. The war in Iraq also created a perception that Islam was under threat. Many Muslims accepted al Qa’ida’s argument that jihad was justified precisely because Islam was under attack by the United States. Consequently, fighting ground wars in the Muslim world appeared to inflame, not quell, Islamic terrorism…

Al Qa’ida was involved in more terrorist attacks in the first six years after September 11, 2001, than it had been during the previous six years. It averaged fewer than two attacks per year between 1995 and 2001, but it averaged more than ten attacks per year between 2002 and 2007… We excluded attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan…

As Figure 6.2 indicates, al Qa’ida continued to conduct attacks in several key locations, such as Saudi Arabia and Kenya. But it also expanded into North Africa (Tunisia and Algeria), Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan), the Middle East (Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt), and Europe (the United Kingdom). Most of these attacks were located in the area controlled by the caliphate, notably the Umayyad caliphate from 661 to 750 AD. This was part of al Qa’ida’s visionary pan-Islamic caliphate…

Public-opinion polls also showed notable support for al Qa’ida…

Despite initial success in capturing some al Qa’ida leaders, the United States failed to significantly weaken the organization. There was an increase in the number of attacks that involved al Qa’ida either directly or indirectly, an expansion of al Qa’ida’s geographic reach, and an evolution of its organizational structure.

How Terrorist Groups End, The Rand Corporation, Jones and Libicki, 2008, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG741-1.pdf.

Matt Taibbi from the Rolling Stones, of vampire squid fame, rips into both mainstream parties — Obama’s Limousine Liberals and the teabagger “idiots” of the Right — for letting the current Financial Regulatory “Reform” fall into the hands of Wall Street.

So on November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubin’s messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees. It is a terrible deal for the government, almost universally panned by all serious economists, an outrage to anyone who pays taxes. Under the deal, the bank gets $20 billion in cash, on top of the $25 billion it had already received just weeks before as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that’s just the appetizer. The government also agrees to charge taxpayers for up to $277 billion in losses on troubled Citi assets, many of them those toxic CDOs that Rubin had pushed Citi to invest in. No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. It’s the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubin’s fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. “If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street,” former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, “your doubts should be laid to rest.”…

Despite being perhaps more responsible for last year’s crash than any other single living person — his colossally stupid decisions at both the highest levels of government and the management of a private financial superpower make him unique — Rubin was the man Barack Obama chose to build his White House around…

The significance of all of these appointments isn’t that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It’s that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. “Bob Rubin, these guys, they’re classic limousine liberals,” says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. “These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they’re willing to give a little more to the poor. That’s the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else.”…

Because the way it works is that all of these great-sounding reforms get whittled down bit by bit as they move through the committee markup process, until finally there’s nothing left but the exceptions…

Republican teabaggers from all 50 states have showed up… They are here to protest Obama’s “socialist” health care bill… I approach a woman named Pat Defillipis from Toms River, New Jersey… I ask her if she’s aware that there’s a big hearing going on in the House today, where Barney Frank’s committee is marking up a bill to reform the financial regulatory system… “But what do we do about the rules governing Wall Street?”… She walks away. She doesn’t give a fuck. People like Pat aren’t aware of it, but they’re the best friends Obama has. They hate him, sure, but they don’t hate him for any reasons that make sense. When it comes down to it, most of them hate the president for all the usual reasons they hate “liberals”… These are the kinds of voters whom Obama’s gang of Wall Street advisers is counting on: idiots. People whose votes depend not on whether the party in power delivers them jobs or protects them from economic villains, but on what cultural markers the candidate flashes on TV. Finance reform has become to Obama what Iraq War coffins were to Bush: something to be tucked safely out of sight…

There’s no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America’s racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a “moral hazard” creeping over his administration.

“The obvious danger is that with the passage of time, risk-taking will be encouraged and efforts at prudential restraint will be resisted,” Volcker told Congress in September, expressing concerns about all the regulatory loopholes in Frank’s bill. “Ultimately, the possibility of further crises — even greater crises — will increase.”

What’s most troubling is that we don’t know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s our fault, for thinking he was different.

Obama’s Big Sellout, Matt Taibbi, The Rolling Stones Magazine, December 9, 2009, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout.

Even though the United States-backed a 10 year Vietnam war which killed 2.5 million Vietnamese [hawaii.edu] and 58,220 Americans [osd.mil A] [osd.mil B], and wounded many more, the United States now peacefully trades and co-operates with Vietnam, still a Communist country, to the tune of about $12 billion per year:

U.S. Census Bureau, Trade in Goods (Imports, Exports and Trade Balance) with Vietnam, http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5520.html (ODS).

Vietnam did not begin to emerge from international isolation until it withdrew its troops from Cambodia in 1989. Within months of the 1991 Paris Agreements, Vietnam established diplomatic and economic relations with ASEAN, as well as with most of the countries of Western Europe and Northeast Asia.

President Bill Clinton announced the formal normalization of diplomatic relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 11, 1995.

U.S. relations with Vietnam have become increasingly cooperative and broad-based in the years since political normalization. A series of bilateral summits have helped drive the improvement of ties, including President George W. Bush’s visit to Hanoi in November 2006, President Triet’s visit to Washington in June 2007, and Prime Minister Dung’s visit to Washington in June 2008.

In January 2007, Congress approved Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for Vietnam. In October 2008, the U.S. and Vietnam inaugurated annual political-military talks and policy planning talks to consult on regional security and strategic issues.

Since entry into force of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement on December 10, 2001, increased trade between the U.S. and Vietnam, combined with large-scale U.S. investment in Vietnam, evidence the maturing U.S.-Vietnam economic relationship. In 2008, the United States exported $2.8 billion of goods to Vietnam and imported $12.9 billion of goods from Vietnam. Similarly, U.S. companies continue to invest directly in the Vietnamese economy. During 2008, the U.S. private sector committed $1.49 billion to Vietnam in foreign direct investment.

Vietnam, U.S. Department of State, October 2009, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/4130.htm.

On democide in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia versus the war:

In total, this century’s battle killed in all its international and domestic wars, revolutions, and violent conflicts is so far about 35,654,000.

Yet, even more unbelievable than these vast numbers killed in war during the lifetime of some still living, and largely unknown, is this shocking fact. This century’s total killed by absolutist governments already far exceeds that for all wars, domestic and international.

…It is sad that hundreds of thousands of people can be killed by governments with hardly an international murmur, while a war killing several thousand people can cause an immediate world outcry and global reaction. Simply contrast the international focus on the relatively minor Falkland Islands War of Britain and Argentina with the widescale lack of interest in Burundi’s killing or acquiescence in such killing of about 100,000 Hutu in 1972, of Indonesia slaughtering a likely 600,000 “communists” in 1965, and of Pakistan, in an initially well planned massacre, eventually killing from one to three million Bengalis in 1971.

A most noteworthy and still sensitive example of this double standard is the Vietnam War. The international community was outraged at the American attempt to militarily prevent North Vietnam from taking over South Vietnam and ultimately Laos and Cambodia. “Stop the killing” was the cry, and eventually, the pressure of foreign and domestic opposition forced an American withdrawal. The overall number killed in the Vietnam War on all sides was about 1,216,000 people.

With the United States subsequently refusing them even modest military aid, South Vietnam was militarily defeated by the North and completely swallowed; and Cambodia was taken over by the communist Khmer Rouge, who in trying to recreate a primitive communist agricultural society slaughtered from one to three million Cambodians. If we take a middle two-million as the best estimate, then in four years the government of this small nation of seven million alone killed 64 percent more people than died in the ten-year Vietnam War.

Overall, the best estimate of those killed after the Vietnam War by the victorious communists in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia is 2,270,000. Now totaling almost twice as many as died in the Vietnam War, this communist killing still continues.

War isn’t this Cenutry’s Biggest Killer, R.J. Rummel, Honolulu: Department of Political Science, July 7, 1986, http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/WSJ.ART.HTM.

• Vietnam: Statistics of Democide

The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but the scourge of dioxin contamination from a herbicide known as Agent Orange did not.

Between 1962 and 1970, millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across parts of Vietnam.

But since the end of the Vietnam War, Washington has denied any moral or legal responsibility for the toxic legacy said to have been caused by Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Agent Orange was designed to defoliate the jungle and thus deny cover to Vietcong guerrillas.

It contained one of the most virulent poisons known to man, a strain of dioxin called TCCD.

First it killed the rainforest, stripping the jungle bare.

In time, the dioxin then spread its toxic reach to the food chain – which some say led to a proliferation of birth deformities.

In Vietnam, there are 150,000 other children like him, whose birth defects – according to Vietnamese Red Cross records – can be readily traced back to their parents’ exposure to Agent Orange during the war, or the consumption of dioxin-contaminated food and water since 1975.

VAVA estimates that three million Vietnamese were exposed to the chemical during the war, and at least one million suffer serious health problems today.

Dr Arnold Schecter, a leading expert in dioxin contamination in the US, sampled the soil there in 2003, and found it contained TCCD levels that were 180 million times above the safe level set by the US environmental protection agency.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3798581.stm

The part where police deny the ambulance and strangers come to help is touching.

First and foremost I want to thank from the bottom of my heart the kind humanbeings who helped my children, my wife and me after we were pepper sprayed by the Portland Police. We were aided immediately by fellow demonstrators, the black cross and passers-by caught in the crossfire. These people shielded us with their bodies and soothed us with their treatments and words, and argued with police, putting themselves in danger, to secure our safe passage through the cordon. Their actions stand in beautiful contrast to the savage inhumanity of the police.

We brought our children to a peaceful protest, we stayed in the back and we were walking on the sidewalk. The march stopped at the intersection of 2nd and Alder we could not see why from our position on the SW corner of the intersection. Police quickly moved up behind us and a moment or two later sprayed pepper spray into the crowd from the NE corner of the intersection. the crowd ran toward us to escape the spray. We asked the oficer closest to us how we should exit the intersection. He pointed and said to exit to the NE, into the spraying police opposite him. as the crowd pressed toward us I yelled to him to let us through (south on 2nd) because we had three small children. He looked at me, and drew out his can from his hip and sprayed directly at me. I was at an angle to him and the spray hit my right eye and our three year-old who I was holding in my right arm. In the same motion he turned the can on my wife who was holding our 10 month old baby and doused both of their heads entirely from a distance of less than 3 feet. my six year old daughter was holding my left hand and was not hit directly. We ended up on the sidewalk a few feet down alder with fellow protesters holding my screaming children and and pouring water on our eyes. Someone yelled that the police had said that we could pass through the cordon on alder with the children. I picked up the baby and other protesters brought my wife and other children to the police line. We attempted to pass through but they leaned in shoulders to block us. I yelled at them to let us pass for about two minutes and finally some officer up the line nodded me and the baby through. they were not going to let my wife and other children out but after a few minutes of pleading from the crowd and another signal from up the line they let them out. As we passed the officers were laughing and said something to the effect of “thats why you shouldn’t bring kids to protests”.

I immediatly called 911 as we moved up to the corner of 3rd and alder. I explained that a baby had been directly pepper sprayed and that I needed an ambulance. They informed me that they would not send one and that all protesters were to report to a first aid tent on the other side of the police lines. Fellow protestors aided us until Black Cross arrived. Business people brought water from the nearby offices and someone bought some juice for the children. Two KBOO staffers drove up in their Volvo and took us to Emmanuel ER. One of the protestors who had helped us from the beginning accompanied us to the hospital and waited with us until the kids were admitted (special thanks!). The children were examined for rhespritory problems and chemical burns. Luckily all were only suffering “normal” pepper spray reactions that have no treatment but to wait. The Pediatrician kept us a little longer so that she could call poison control to check for other recomended procedures as she had never in her career seen an infant pepper spray victim.

Don Joughin, From the father of the pepper-sprayed children, Portland Independent Media Center, August 24, 2002, http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2002/08/18010.shtml.

Plaintiffs allege that defendants intentionally applied pepper spray and shot rubber bullets at plaintiffs who were engaged in lawful protest activities. Further, the protesters were physically moved back from their peaceful positions, according to the Amended Complaint. In their supporting memorandum, defendants appear to contend that the Fourth Amendment is not offended by the intentional use of force that physically injures a citizen and only reduces his or her freedom of movement. If the citizen is able to walk or hobble away, according to defendants, no Fourth Amendment violation has occurred. However, as the Supreme Court has held, “The word ’seizure’ readily bears the meaning of laying on of hands or application of physical force to restrain movement, even when it is ultimately unsuccessful.” California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 626 (1991).

Defendants admit that on August 22, 2002, the police physically moved the protesters approximately 120 feet in order to create a larger entryway to the street. Defendants used pepper spray and physical force to achieve this movement. Clearly the effect of defendants’ actions was to control plaintiffs’ movement. Additionally, certain plaintiffs assert that they were physically prevented from leaving an area cordoned off by the police. By physically moving certain plaintiffs and circumscribing the area of movement of other plaintiffs, defendants seized plaintiffs within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Construing the facts pleaded in the Amended Complaint as true, as this court must do at this stage in the litigation, plaintiffs have properly asserted claims for Fourth Amendment violations. Accordingly, defendants’ Motions to Dismiss the third and fourth causes of action of the Amended Complaint are denied…

In contrast to Lyons, plaintiffs in this case specifically allege that it is the policy of the Portland Police Bureau to use excessive force against peaceful protesters. Notwithstanding defendants’ stated policy to apply pepper spray only to unlawful protesters, plaintiffs allege that defendants in fact apply pepper spray and shoot rubber bullets at citizens who are lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights…

The Amended Complaint alleges a sufficient likelihood of future harm. Plaintiffs contend that defendants are engaged in a pattern and practice of using excessive force against lawful protesters. Amended Complaint ¶ 7.1-7.10. Thus, while the plaintiff in Lyons was unable to show that he would likely be arrested in the future and victimized by a choke hold, plaintiffs in this case are likely to lawfully protest in the future, thus subjecting them to defendants’ alleged policy and practice of harming lawful protesters.

Marbet (and Joughin) vs. The City of Portland, United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Judge Haggerty, September 8, 2003, http://nlg.org/resources/massdefense/opinion%20and%20order%20on%20discovery%20rule%2012.pdf.

Last December, all of the plaintiffs save Marbet agreed to a $300,000 settlement with the city. They did not receive an official apology, although then Mayor Vera Katz said, “Mistakes were made. . . . You had to be blind not to see it.” …

And the headlines didn’t stop Police Chief Derrick Foxworth from promoting two supervisors, Lt. Mark Kruger and Capt. Marti Rowley, who were part of the August 2002 melee.

Settlements for August 2002 Police Actions at the Hilton Hotel, Steve Duin, The Oregonian, June 9, 2005, http://www.pprc-news.org/press/WhitepaperonPioneerSquare.pdf.

According to United Nations population projections, world population will rise to an estimated 8 to 12 billion humans in 2050. Interestingly, in the “low” estimate, it will not only start to taper off, but it will actually start to decline (due to decreasing fertility)!

Notice that the “high” estimate has dropped from 12 billion in the 2006 edition (below) to 11 billion in the 2008 edition (above).

Other facts:

According to the 2008 Revision of the official United Nations population estimates and projections, the world population is projected to reach 7 billion in late 2011, up from the current 6.8 billion, and surpass 9 billion people by 2050 (figure 1).

Most of the additional 2.3 billion people will enlarge the population of developing countries, which is projected to rise from 5.6 billion in 2009 to 7.9 billion in 2050, and will be distributed among the population aged 15-59 (1.2 billion) and 60 or over (1.1 billion) because the number of children under age 15 in developing countries will decrease.

In contrast, the population of the more developed regions is expected to change minimally, passing from 1.23 billion to 1.28 billion, and would have declined to 1.15 billion were it not for the projected net migration from developing to developed countries, which is projected to average 2.4 million persons annually from 2009 to 2050…

In the more developed regions, children and youth account for just 17 per cent and 13 per cent of the population, respectively, and whereas the number of children is expected to change little in the future, remaining close to 200 million, the number of young people is projected to decrease from 163 million currently to 134 million in 2050…

In both the more and the less developed regions, the number of people in the main working ages, 25 to 59, is at an all time high: 603 million and 2.4 billion, respectively. Yet, whereas in the more developed regions that number is expected to peak over the next decade and decline thereafter reaching 528 millions in 2050, in the less developed regions it will continue rising, reaching 3.6 billion in 2050 and increasing by nearly half a billion over the next decade…

Furthermore, the implications of population ageing cannot be dismissed. In the more developed regions, the population aged 60 or over is increasing at the fastest pace ever (growing at 2.0 per cent annually) and is expected to increase by more than 50 per cent over the next four decades, rising from 264 million in 2009 to 416 million in 2050…

Future population growth is highly dependent on the path that future fertility takes. In the medium variant, fertility declines from 2.56 children per woman in 2005-2010 to 2.02 children per woman in 2045-2050. If fertility were to remain about half a child above the levels projected in the medium variant, world population would reach 10.5 billion by 2050. A fertility path half a child below the medium would lead to a population of 8 billion by mid-century. Consequently, population growth until 2050 is inevitable even if the decline of fertility accelerates.

The United Nations, World Population Prospects The 2008 Revision Highlights, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2008/wpp2008_highlights.pdf.

The fall in the birth rate is a largely voluntary phenomenon. It has happened just as fast in countries with no coercive population policy as it has in China, with its Draconian two-child law. The demands for coercion that were common in the 1970s—”Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?” wrote Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich and John Holdren in 1977—seem embarrassing in retrospect.

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/quantity-quality

RESIDENT shall be responsible for keeping the garbage disposal clean of chicken bones, toothpicks, match sticks, celery, pits, grease, metal vegetable ties…

??

Some more interesting quotes from Mises’ The Anticapitalistic Mentality:

People are anxious to endorse the tenets they consider as fashionable lest they appear boorish and backward.

Ruere in servitium, they plunged into slavery, Tacitus sadly observed in speaking of the Romans of the age of Tiberius.

What makes many feel unhappy under capitalism is… that everybody is aware of his own defeat and insufficiency.

To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better… Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. It is—in a market not sabotaged by government-imposed restrictions—exclusively your fault if you do not outstrip the chocolate king, the movie star and the boxing champion.

The characteristic feature of the market economy is the fact that it allots the greater part of the improvements brought about by the endeavors of the three progressive classes—those saving, those investing the capital goods, and those elaborating new methods for the employment of capital goods—to the nonprogressive majority of people.

No technological improvement can be put to work if the capital required has not previously been accumulated by saving. Saving—capital accumulation—is the agency that has transformed step by step the awkward search for food on the part of savage cave dwellers into the modern ways of industry.

A hundred workers in a modern factory produce per unit of time a multiple of what a hundred workers used to produce in the workshops of precapitalistic craftsmen. This improvement is not conditioned by higher skill, competence or application on the part of the individual worker. (It is a fact that the proficiency needed by medieval artisans towered far above that of many categories of present-day factory hands.) It is due to the employment of more efficient tools and machines which, in turn, is the effect of the accumulation and investment of more capital.

Nobody is needy in the market economy because of the fact that some people are rich. The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody. The process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples’ want satisfaction. The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologies prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers.

The people of the United States are more prosperous than the inhabitants of all other countries because their government embarked later than the governments in other parts of the world upon the policy of obstructing business.

The substitution of laissez-faire capitalism for the precapitalistic methods of economic management has multiplied population figures and raised in an unprecedented way the average standard of living. A nation is the more prosperous today the less it has tried to put obstacles in the way of the spirit of free enterprise and private initiative.

Few Americans are fully aware of the fact that their country enjoys the highest standard of living and that the way of life of the average American appears as fabulous and out of reach to the immense majority of people inhabiting non-capitalistic countries. Most people belittle what they have and could possibly acquire, and crave those things which are inaccessible to them.

There is but one means available to improve the material conditions of mankind: to accelerate the growth of capital accumulated as against the growth in population. The greater the amount of capital invested per head of the worker, the more and the better goods can be produced and consumed.

The entrepreneurs and capitalists owe their wealth to the people who patronize their businesses. They lose it inevitably as soon as other men supplant them in serving the consumers better or more cheaply.

What the capitalistic democracy of the market brings about is not rewarding people according to their “true” merits, inherent worth and moral eminence. What makes a man more or less prosperous is not the evaluation of his contribution from any “absolute” principle of justice, but evaluation on the part of his fellowmen who exclusively apply the yardstick of their own personal wants, desires and ends. It is precisely this that the democratic system of the market means. The consumers are supreme—i.e., sovereign. They want to be satisfied…

What counts in the frame of the market economy is not academic judgments of value, but the valuations actually manifested by people in buying or not buying.

It is important to realize that the opportunity to compete for the prizes society has to dispense is a social institution. It cannot remove or alleviate the innate handicaps with which nature has discriminated against many people. It cannot change the fact that many are born sick or become disabled in later life.

The much talked about sternness of capitalism consists in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen. The sway of the principle, to each according to his accomplishments, does not allow of any excuse for personal shortcomings. Everybody knows very well that there are people like himself who succeeded where he himself failed. Everybody knows that many of those whom he envies are self-made men who started from the same point from which he himself started. And, much worse, he knows that all other people know it too.

This search for a scapegoat is an attitude of people living under the social order which treats everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen and where thus everybody is the founder of his own fortune. In such a society each member whose ambitions have not been fully satisfied resents the fortune of all those who succeeded better. The fool releases these feelings in slander and defamation. The more sophisticated do not indulge in personal calumny. They sublimate their hatred into a philosophy, the philosophy of anti-capitalism, in order to render inaudible the inner voice that tells them that their failure is entirely their own fault. Their fanaticism in defending their critique of capitalism is precisely due to the fact that they are fighting their own awareness of its falsity.

The gulf between what a man is and achieves and what he thinks of his own abilities and achievements is pitilessly revealed. Day-dreams of a “fair” world which would treat him according to his “real worth” are the refuge of all those plagued by a lack of self-knowledge.

The Anticapitalistic Mentality, Ludwig von Mises, 1956, http://mises.org/etexts/anticap.pdf.

The fundamental dogma… declares that poverty is an outcome of iniquitous social institutions. The original sin that deprived mankind of the blissful life in the Garden of Eden was the establishment of private property and enterprise. Capitalism serves only the selfish interests of rugged exploiters. It dooms the masses of righteous men to progressing impoverishment and degradation. What is needed to make all people prosperous is the taming of the greedy exploiters by the great god called State. The “service” motive must be substituted for the “profit” motive. Fortunately, they say, no intrigues and no brutality on the part of the infernal “economic royalists” can quell the reform movement. The coming of an age of central planning is inevitable. Then there will be plenty and abundance for all. Those eager to accelerate this great transformation call themselves progressives precisely because they pretend that they are working for the realization of what is both desirable and in accordance with the inexorable laws of historical evolution. They disparage as reactionaries all those who are committed to the vain effort of stopping what they call progress.

From the point of view of these dogmas the progressives advocate certain policies which, as they pretend, could alleviate immediately the lot of the suffering masses. They recommend, e.g., credit expansion and increasing the amount of money in circulation, minimum wage rates to be decreed and enforced either by the government or by labor union pressure and violence, control of commodity prices and rents and other interventionist measures. But the economists have demonstrated that all such nostrums fail to bring about those results which their advocates want to attain. Their outcome is, from the very point of view of those recommending them and resorting to their execution, even more unsatisfactory than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter. Credit expansion results in the recurrence of economic crisis and periods of depression. Inflation makes the prices of all commodities and services soar. The attempts to enforce wage rates higher than those the unhampered market would have determined produce mass unemployment prolonged year after year. Price ceilings result in a drop in the supply of commodities affected. The economists have proved these theorems in an irrefutable way. No “progressive” pseudo-economist ever tried to refute them *.

The essential charge brought by the progressives against capitalism is that the recurrence of crisis and depressions and mass unemployment are its inherent features. The demonstration that these phenomena are, on the contrary, the result of the interventionist attempts to regulate capitalism and to improve the conditions of the common man give the progressive ideology the finishing stroke. As the progressives are not in a position to advance any tenable objections to the teachings of the economists, they try to conceal them from the people and especially also from the intellectuals and the university students. Any mentioning of these heresies is strictly forbidden. Their authors are called names, and the students are dissuaded from reading their “crazy stuff.”

As the progressive dogmatist sees things, there are two groups of men quarreling about how much of the “national income” each of them should take for themselves. The propertied class, the entrepreneurs and the capitalists, to whom they often refer as “management,” is not prepared to leave to “labor”, i.e., the wage earners and employees, more than a trifle, just a little bit more than bare sustenance. Labor, as may easily be understood, annoyed by management’s greed, is inclined to lend an ear to the radicals, to the communists, who want to expropriate management entirely. However, the majority of the working class is moderate enough not to indulge in excessive radicalism. They reject communism and are ready to content themselves with less than the total confiscation of “unearned” income. They aim at a middle-of-the-road solution, at planning, the welfare state, socialism. In this controversy the intellectuals who allegedly do not belong to either of the two opposite camps are called to act as arbiters. They—the professors, the representatives of science, and the writers, the representatives of literature—must shun the extremists of each group, those who recommend capitalism as well as those who endorse communism. They must side with the moderates. They must stand for planning, the welfare state, socialism, and they must support all measures designed to curb the greed of management and to prevent it from abusing its economic power.

There is no need to enter anew into a detailed analysis of all the fallacies and contradictions implied in this way of thinking. It is enough to single out three fundamental errors.

First: The great ideological conflict of our age is not a struggle about the distribution of the “national income.” It is not a quarrel between two classes each of which is eager to appropriate to itself the greatest possible portion of a total sum available for distribution. It is a dissension concerning the choice of the most adequate system of society’s economic organization. The question is, which of the two systems, capitalism or socialism, warrants a higher productivity of human efforts to improve people’s standard of living. The question is, also, whether socialism can be considered as a substitute for capitalism, whether any rational conduct of production activities, i.e., conduct based on economic calculation, can be accomplished under socialist conditions. The bigotry and the dogmatism of the socialists manifest themselves in the fact that they stubbornly refuse to enter into an examination of these problems. With them it is a foregone conclusion that capitalism is the worst of all evils and socialism the incarnation of everything that is good. Every attempt to analyze the economic problems of a socialist commonwealth is considered as a crime of lèse majesté. As the conditions prevailing in the Western countries do not yet permit the liquidation of such offenders in the Russian way, they insult and vilify them, cast suspicion upon their motives and boycott them.

Second: There is no economic difference between socialism and communism. Both terms, socialism and communism, denote the same system of society’s economic organization, i.e., public control of all the means of production as distinct from private control of the means of production, namely capitalism. The two terms, socialism and communism, are synonyms. The document which all Marxian socialists consider as the unshakable foundation of their creed is called the Communist Manifesto. On the other hand, the official name of the communist Russian empire is Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.).

The antagonism between the present-day communist and socialist parties does not concern the ultimate goal of their policies. It refers mainly to the attitude of the Russian dictators to subjugate as many countries as possible, first of all the United States. It refers, furthermore, to the question of whether the realization of public control of the means of production should be achieved by constitutional methods or by a violent overthrow of the government in power.

Neither do the terms “planning” and “welfare state” as they are used in the language of economists, statesmen, politicians and all other people signify something different from the final goal of socialism and communism. Planning means that the plan of the government should be substituted for the plans of the individual citizens. It means that the entrepreneurs and capitalists should be deprived of the discretion to employ their capital according to their own designs and should be obliged to comply unconditionally with the orders issued by a central planning board or office. This amounts to the transfer of control from the entrepreneurs and capitalists to the government.

It is, therefore, a serious blunder to consider socialism, planning, or the welfare state as solutions to the problem of society’s economic organization which would differ from that of communism and which would have to be estimated as “less absolute” or “less radical.” Socialism and planning are not antidotes for communism as many people seem to believe. A socialist is more moderate than a communist insofar as he does not hand out secret documents of his own country to Russian agents and does not plot to assassinate anticommunist bourgeois. This is, of course, a very important difference. But it has no reference whatever to the ultimate goal of political action.

Third: Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism. Those advocating what is erroneously believed to be a middle-of-the-road solution do not recommend a compromise between capitalism and socialism, but a third pattern which has its own particular features and must be judged according to its own merits. This third system that the economists call interventionism does not combine, as its champions claim, some of the features of capitalism with some of socialism. It is something entirely different from each of them. The economists who declare that interventionism does not attain those ends which its supporters want to attain but makes things worse—not from the economists’ own point of view, but from the very point of view of the advocates of interventionism—are not intransigent and extremists. They merely describe the inevitable consequences of interventionism.

When Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto advocated definite interventionist measures, they did not mean to recommend a compromise between socialism and capitalism. They considered these measures—incidentally, the same measures which are today the essence of the New Deal and Fair Deal policies—as first steps on the way toward the establishment of full communism. They themselves described these measures as “economically insufficient and untenable,” and they asked for them only because they “in the course of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.”

Thus the social and economic philosophy of the progressives is a plea for socialism and communism.

* These last two sentences do not refer to three or four socialist authors of our time who—very late indeed and in a very unsatisfactory way—began to examine the economic problems of socialism. But they are literally true for all other socialists from the early origins of the socialist ideas down to our day.

The Anticapitalistic Mentality, Ludwig von Mises, Pages 54-59, 1956, http://mises.org/etexts/anticap.pdf.

In the ancien régime the theatres were free to produce Beaumarchais’s mocking of the aristocracy and the immortal opera composed by Mozart. Under the second French empire, Offenbach’s and Halévy’s Grandduchess of Gerolstein parodied absolutism, militarism and court life. Napoleon III himself and some of the other European monarchs enjoyed the play that made them ridiculous. In the Victorian Age, the censor of the British theatres, the Lord Chamberlain, did not hinder the performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical comedies which made fun of all venerable institutions of the British system of government. Noble Lords filled the boxes while on the stage the Earl of Montararat sang: “The House of Peers made no pretence to intellectual eminence.”

In our day it is out of the question to parody on the stage the powers that be. No disrespectful reflection on labor unions, cooperatives, government operated enterprises, budget deficits and other features of the welfare state is tolerated. The union bosses and the bureaucrats are sacrosanct. What is left to comedy are those topics that have made the operetta and the Hollywood farce abominable.

…

As all nations are moving toward socialism, the freedom of authors is vanishing step by step. From day to day it becomes more difficult for a man to publish a book or an article, the content of which displeases the government or powerful pressure groups. The heretics are not yet “liquidated” as in Russia nor are their books burned by order of the Inquisition. Neither is there a return to the old system of censorship. The self-styled progressives have more efficient weapons at their disposal. Their foremost tool of oppression is boycotting authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, printers, advertisers and readers.

Everybody is free to abstain from reading books, magazines, and newspapers he dislikes and to recommend to other people to shun these books, magazines, and newspapers. But it is quite another thing when some people threaten other people with serious reprisals in case they should not stop patronizing certain publications and their publishers. In many countries publishers of newspapers and magazines are frightened by the prospect of a boycott on the part of labor unions. They avoid open discussion of the issue and tacitly yield to the dictates of the union bosses. These “labor” leaders are much touchier than were the imperial and royal majesties of bygone ages. They cannot take a joke. Their touchiness has degraded the satire, the comedy and the musical comedy of the legitimate theatre and has condemned the moving pictures to sterility.

The Anticapitalistic Mentality, Ludwig von Mises, Pages 45-46, 1956, http://mises.org/etexts/anticap.pdf.