[pfiir at pfinr.org: [ PFFR ] Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral']

[juan]

On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 19:27:23 -0400
Steve Kinney <admin at pilobilus.net> wrote:



> 
> The Nolan Chart, beloved recruiting tool of the Libertarian Party,
> works reliably as such because - along with the associated diagnostic
> instrument - it measures and graphs the desire of the individual for
> ego gratification and freedom of action. 
> 
> Anyone who passes the Nolan test by landing in the "Libertarian"
> quadrant - a foregone conclusion for most healthy adults - should
> proceed from this introspective analysis to consideration of which
> political / economic system would offer the best shot at implementing
> their lifestyle choices as "rugged individualists."  The Nolan
> instrument provides no help, as its diagnostic output indicates
> personal preferences among a set of stereotyped partisan sales
> pitches - not the net impact of competing public policy agendas on
> individual "freedom." The Nolan test indicates what people believe
> about themselves, not the actual motives that affect their actions -
> otherwise, the inevitable conversion of our society to a Libertarian
> model of governance would have happened decades ago. 

	
	I'm not following. Are you saying that most "healthy adults" are
	libertarians? If that was the case, then indeed we would expect
	 society to be libertarian. But since the US (in this case) is
	anything but libertarian, then your premise is false? It seems
	kinda obvious that most 'healthy' adults are either left wing
	fascists or right wing fascists. Not healthy at all of course.




> 
> To represent something more like the real world, I propose a somewhat
> different graph to represent a two dimensional array of political /
> economic organizational principles:  The vertical axis represents
> State power mediated by applied violence as an Authoritarian /
> Anarchist scale; the horizontal axis represents Private power
> mediated by applied economic force on a Capitalism / Free Enterprise
> scale.  The upper left corner represents total concentration of power
> in the fewest hands, the lower right corner represents uniform
> distribution of power across an entire population.  
> 
> Kinney Chart
> 
> http://pilobilus.net/Political-Power-Spectrum.png

	
	Looks good. However, the term "capitalism" isn't the right one
	I think, because it's too ambiguous. More accurate terms :
	mercantilism or corporatism, which in practice lead to big
	businesses and monopoly. 

	The authoritarian/anarchist axis is a really good concept. On
	the other hand, when you look at the four corners you get weird
	stuff =P  - your four corners are : 

	authoritarian capitalism  (you marked that "left")
	authoritarian free enterprise 
	anarchist free enterprise 
	"anarcho capitalism"   (right)

	Authoritarian capitalism is pretty much what rules the world
	today, and both right wingers and lefties support it to varying
	degrees.
	
	authoritarian free enterprise seems like a contradiction since
	free enterprise requires the absence of state granted
	privi-leges. 

	anarchist free enterprise is just free enterprise proper, or a
	real free market - it's what real libertarians should advocate,
	etc.

	and then anarchist capitalism seems contradictory/impossible
	too, because big businesses need the state to prop them up,
	grant them privileges, bailouts, subsidies, etc, etc. 

	One could try a variation with two X axis/lines...

	anarchist<--------------->authoritarian
	free-market<------------->monopoly

	Of course, commie anarchists would say that private property is
	theft, that a free market is hell, and that freedom is
	slavery. 



> 
> The Capitalism / Free Enterprise axis raises immediate objections from
> many observers, due to the indoctrinated belief that Capitalism /is/
> Free Enterprise.  In my observation and experience, corporate
> capitalism makes itself the natural enemy of free enterprise:

	Indeed. And that's what adam smith and co. called "mercantile
	system" or mercantilism, mercantilism being exactly the sort of
	system that actual libertarians should oppose. 



> Powerful corporations enforce their market dominance by any means
> necessary, from sponsoring legislation and controlling regulatory
> policy to suppress independent competitors,  to dumping look-alike
> products on the market until smaller enterprises are bankrupted.
> This behavior may be "illegal" but in litigation as elsewhere, money
> is power and the real golden rule says:  A player who shows up with
> orders of magnitude more gold than the other player wins.  A buy-out
> removing the independent small business from the market by mutual
> agreement is the best case scenario for an independent enterprise in
> conflict with a well funded corporate adversary. 
> 
> I have placed the political Left and Right on the chart, to indicate
> their functional features in the chart's context:  The actual players
> whose followers call themselves Liberals and Conservatives all seek to
> conserve and advance the concentration of financial power in the hands
> of an elite minority (corporate capitalists), differing only on
> whether that economic power should be consolidated and exercised
> indirectly through State institutions or directly through Private
> cartels. 

	
	I think both the political left and political right are cleary
	in the authoritarian-capitalist quadrant. 

	Most of the differences between left and right are cosmetic.

	And it's not possible to defend "capitalism" (the current
	criminal system)  without recourse to the state.

	It's true that there are people who defend the current fascist
	system and claim that big businesses are a poor oppressed
	minority and the government should stop taxing goldman sachs
	and google and raytheon. I'm referring to the randroid scumbags
	of course. They certainly beong to the far right, but they have
	obviously nothing to do with 'anarchism'.



> 
> If most people who identify as Libertarian would rather live in the
> lower right quadrant of the above graph, so sorry.  That Party offers
> no such program or agenda:  

	well, the US libertarian party is really a non-entity so their
	offerings don't really mean anything...


> Only a hollow promise that incorruptible
> Civil Courts will deliver equal justice to penniless individuals and
> corporate cartels, and that the infallible invisible hand of the Free
> Market will prevent systemic abuse of corporate power.  


	well, that's indeed the philosophy behind "anarchist free
	enterprise". If on the other hand, you think that a free market
	will NOT prevent abuse/concentration  of economic  power, then
	you'd need to call the state to 'regulate' the market....and
	stop being an anarchist.


> If Fascism is
> defined as "the merger of Corporate and State power," the Libertarian
> agenda is not Fascist.  

	correct. 



> In practical terms, the Libertarian agenda
> could be described as an effort to achieve full replacement of State
> power by Corporate power.  One might call the result a Plutocratic
> Oligarchy.

	well, now I'm not sure who you are referring to when you say
	Libertarians with a capital L. You mean the fake libertarians in
	the US on the koch payroll? Well yes, those want a plutocratic
	oligarchy. But they are not really libertarians. They are fake
	libertarians, like the randroid scumbags I mentioned above. 

	They are conservatives using free market rhetoric. Typical of
	americans who murder children for fun and profit, in the name
	of "justice". 


> 
> That is why I call my own orientation and agenda Anarchism.  My
> preferred quadrant of the above graph is the lower right one:  Broadly
> distributed political and economic power among autonomous local
> communities.  Clockwise from lower left, I associate the quadrants
> with Free Market Capitalism, Socialist State Capitalism, Feudal
> Aristocracy and Tribal Federations.  


	Sorry, the red (lower left) quadrant is not free market
	capitalism at all. The red quadrant is an absurd position IF we
	use your definition of capitalism. You can't have state
	privileges(capitalism) if there's no state. 

	Free market capitalism is basically the green quadrant. But you
	are referring to it as "tribal federations" which is term you
	just made up...

	Your red quadrant and your violet quadrant are absurdities
	and not recognized in 'standard' political philosophy, plus
	your classification can't account for  plain old state
	socialism/communism.



> All loosely defined, as is
> proper with high level abstract labels.  All have their upsides and
> downsides, but Tribal Federations have, so far, produced the least
> harmful results overall. Can that model make a comeback in the
> post-industrial world?  

	
	Are you assuming this is a 'post industrial' world? Or are you
	talking about some hypothetical collapse of the industrial
	world? 

	I've bad news for you (and me). The industrial world isn't
	going away anytime soon. 



I think so, but that outcome depends entirely
> on economic drivers:  Will the global industrial economy crash, and
> if so, can it recover in its present form?  I think the crash will
> happen, and recovery to "the old normal" will not.
> 
> What the hell, it's something to play with.
> 
> :o)
> 
> 
> 
> 
>