Recent headlines speak volumes about the hypocrisy of the state. On the one hand, we have state persecution of private firms for collusion, price-fixing, monopolization, etc., e.g. LG, Sharp plead guilty to LCD price-fixing, take $585m fine; antitrust actions against Microsoft, both in the US and Europe (EU hits Microsoft with record 899 million euro antitrust fine); and as I noted in The Schizo Feds: Patent Monopolies and the FTC, the state grants patent monopolies and then uses antitrust law to attack the beneficiaries of those monopolies.
And on the other hand, we have state monopoly-granting patent office collusion: Blueprint Laid Out for Work-Sharing Among Five Intellectual Property Offices, reporting that “The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced the development of a blueprint for work sharing among five major intellectual property offices (IP5) to address the common challenges they are currently facing. The heads of the IP5 met at Jeju, Korea, on October 27 and 28, 2008, to discuss a shared vision for work sharing and collaboration.”
And we have the G20 nations colluding (“US President George W. Bush said Thursday that world leaders will ‘lay the foundation for reforms’ at global economic crisis talks this week….”), not to mention “coordination” by the world’s central banks (Fed, European Banks Coordinate Interest Rate Cut; Central Banks Coordinate Global Cut in Interest Rates; EU Leaders Vow to Coordinate Response to Finance Crisis).
Utter hypocrisy–and, as usual, exactly backwards: the state outlaws private “collusion” while engaging in global collusion itself, when, as Rothbard shows, only states are able to form genuine monopolies in the first place. (See Man, Economy, and State, ch. 10; also Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 9.)
{ 2 comments }
It seems to me that Niccolo Machiavelli explained this phenomenon five centuries ago.
The Prince cares not for morality, ideology, or law, but only uses such arguments as the means to his ends of attaining and maintaining his power.
In the intervening five centuries, the world has moved away from monarchs as a means of governance, and largely has replaced them with oligarchs, in the guise of democracies. The Prince is now a group of professional power brokers, both within government and outside of it in the corporate world (think of Hank Paulson, straddling both), rather than an individual. The “New Prince,” as an incorporation or confederation of state and corporate “leaders,” seeks greater power and advantage and will use whatever means necessary to get it. But the principles upon which their behavior is based are no different from Machiavelli’s Prince.
In the era of “globalization,” The New Prince reaches across national boundaries. What are The Trilateral Commission and The
A fine example of the hypocrisy of a New Prince is Warren Buffet. The Oracle of Omaha is beloved by the people as a stalwart of “traditional conservative values,” who got rich using the capitalist system, and yet he supports and espouses socialist leaders and redistributionist actions.
He denigrates the club he is a member of, the “Lucky Sperm Club.” He advocates an inheritance tax. He decries the fact that he paid a smaller percentage of his 2006 income (19%) to the government than his less well off employees (33%), yet he does so by hiring the best accountants and lawyers to find every possible loophole. Why not just donate the extra 14% ($6.7M) directly to the Treasury if he feels it is so unfair?
Comments on this entry are closed.