Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> Sent: Oct 27, 2004 9:37 AM To: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
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This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the "workers" eating the "bourgeoisie" by the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come "bourgeoisie" themselves.
I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. Different people differ on how to do that (like, whether the government should employ most of the doctors or the teachers), but that's the kind of goal that makes sense. And that's largely what the West has to offer. Not membership in a master race, or a date with destiny, or as vision of yourself as part of a great, centuries-old Jihad, but safe streets, working sewers, functioning markets, and a rising tide that promises to life all boats eventually, so that one day, your poor people, like ours, will be overweight from spending too much time sitting in front of the TV in an air conditioned room. The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. A country run by these guys is just not going to be in the forefront of technology, its economy will grow slowly, and it's likely to always be close to going to war with some infidels around it. No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. What Hayek called the liberal order (e.g., working minimal government, liberal democracy, rule of law) can't offer any of that. It offers safe streets and working sewers and peace and prosperity, but you have to come up with your own purpose. The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of mass movement mentality in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that we're going to go out and civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and then they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to strap dynamite to themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in the Middle East clearly want what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make that sort of thing break down. --John
-- "R.A. Hettinga"
This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the "workers" eating the "bourgeoisie" by the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come "bourgeoisie" themselves.
John Kelsey
I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. [...]
The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. [...] No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about.
Mass movements of this kind require the promise of inevitable victory. When communism suffered one decisive, uncomplicated, unambiguous defeat, the dominos fell one after another all the way to Moscow. The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning, and similarly the Islamists have made a considerable psychological recovery from Afghanistan, but the ideal of date with destiny tends to lose its appeal when you keep picking yourself off the dirt with a bloody nose. In Iraq we face a guerrila movement, and discover, yet again, that guerrilas can only be defeated by local forces - and the boys from Baghdad are not all that local. This gives the Islamicists renewed hope. So what do you do, if, like Israel, you face terrorists embedded in a local population that supports thems sufficiently they can melt into the people? Withdrawal did not work, for the terrorists keep sending car bombs and the like from their stronghold, as in Fallujah. What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay our enemies. Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in the way of this sort of deal. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG o32eoG4KhmccNjDBkOW9upEtn8Lka3zsooGJn8lY 4dMgCNOmt5z/S3km7vma/L6RECrRaVEmnhEZ4E2hb
At 10:41 AM -0700 10/27/04, James A. Donald wrote:
What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay our enemies.
Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in the way of this sort of deal.
Except, apparently, in Iraqi Kurdistan: <http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/58953.html> Wherein Ryan Lackey's boss has left Baghdad for a nice hotel upstate... :-) Ryan, apparently remains downtown where all the fun is... <http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/59447.html> page down to see Ryan in all his former dry-suited Sealand glory... I recommend Tyler <http://www.livejournal.com/users/giantlaser/> and Jayme's <http://www.livejournal.com/users/slownewsday/> Iraq Livejournal blogs as a wonderful example of inadvertant anarchocapitalism in action. Inadvertent, because, of course, they *really* wanna be statists, liberal ones in fact, in spite of evidence all around them to the contrary. I still think they're heroes. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, *Ryan's* a hero at this point. Nick Berg lives. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
participants (3)
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James A. Donald -
John Kelsey -
R.A. Hettinga