How Empires Bamboozle the Bourgeoisie
If we could somehow transport the whole population of today back to a millennium ago, with the level of technology and capital present at the time, what would be the results? Nothing short of mass starvation. While it is true that people are a resource, even the ultimate resource, people still must be fed, clothed, and housed. This would not be possible with the present level of population with the existing state of economic development 1,000 years ago.
There are many people today who long for a system of economics that prevailed in the Middle Ages. On the Left, we have the neo-Rousseauians who imagine that modern technology has a hopelessly corrupting effect, while many on the Right dream of a guild-dominated system of small craftsmen and home-based production. But these fantasies are not only unworkable; in reality, they are nothing short of lethal. Most of the world's population would die immediately if such a system were imposed.
There is only one system that can support a national and world population on this scale, and it is not socialism, primitivism, or any other than capitalism.
Comments (20)
For some good news on our "imperialist" venture in Iraq, check out this story: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009165
Published: October 30, 2006 9:44 AM
I propose the Constitution be repealed and we revert to 50 states under the Articles of Confederation, each state having a vote in the UN.
Published: October 30, 2006 9:52 AM
I propose the Constitution be repealed and we revert to 50 states under the Articles of Confederation, and the UN be burned to the ground and its bureaucrats deported at gunpoint.
Published: October 30, 2006 10:21 AM
I like Reactionary's viewpoint much better. :)
There is a Secessionist Convention coming up in Vermont, in the first week of November. I have drafted a Proposed Articles, very similar to the original Articles of Confederation. I would be extremely happy to revert back to the Articles.
And as always, U.S. out of U.N. and U.N. out of U.S.
Published: October 30, 2006 10:35 AM
Unfortunately, the "solution" to our failed experiment in federalism is to centralize power further in the creation of an EU-style North American Union -- http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=COR20060521&articleId=2491 -- complete with a euro-style currency -- http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15017
Published: October 30, 2006 11:31 AM
I don't think anyone is bamboozling the public. You don't have to. The worship of the federal government has reached idolatrous proportions. It has become the dominant religion of this country for both Democrats and Republicans. The same people who, in the survey in another thread, claim that the government should be smaller are also the first ones to scream for the federal government to rescue the people from greedy oil companies, pharma, Enron, flu viruses, flat tires and broken springs!
Published: October 30, 2006 2:05 PM
It seems to be little appreciated today that the bloodbath that France under Napoleon unleashed on Europe was a series of wars of LIBERATION. France, having completed its own bloody liberation in the French Revolution, was going to fix up the rest of Europe, so the public story went in France at the time. The result, of course, was the French Empire, under Emperor Napoleon.
A Tory preacher in Revolutionary Massachusetts once declaimed against the dangers of exchanging "one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away." His point seems far better taken today than would seem possible 250 years ago.
Published: October 30, 2006 3:27 PM
We don't need to repeal the constitution, but it would help to change a few things. Repealing the 14th, 16th, and 17th ammendments would go a long way towards making the Federal government workable.
If we removed the line in the original constitution allowing the Federal government to go into debt, it would definitely make imperialism difficult. And of course we would want to remove the government's ability to coin any money at all, which would end the incestuous relationship between banking and government.
There is a movement to rewrite our constitution and change our form of government. We can all think of improvements, but there is no guarantee that they would turn out the way we expect or even that they would be implemented if the opportunity for change were created (e.g. a constitutional convention). I am not interested in opening Pandora's box when the people who promote our troubles are in power.
Published: October 30, 2006 3:46 PM
You do not "repeal" the constitution. The constitution defines the legality of the state. The moment the state does something that violates the constitution, the state is illegal. The constitution is null and void.
Published: October 30, 2006 3:54 PM
I don't think we can describe Mises' political ideal as "government." If any group of people can withdraw from the state when they no longer find it beneficial, it's really more of a partnership whose governance structure is elective.
You couldn't redistribute wealth in such a structure since the victims would withdraw from the system.
Published: October 30, 2006 4:32 PM
A better way to put it is that all 50 states should secede and draw up revised Articles of Confederation.
I'd rather them break into smaller pieces than that. How about counties? Imagine the tax competition!
Published: October 30, 2006 6:41 PM
Kevin:
I have previously proposed breaking California up in to eight or nine states. Several other states could stand to be broken down into smaller units. Such smaller states would still be compatible with an Articles of Confederation style structure. By breaking up such states, you kill a lot of the bureaucracy required to maintain a sizable state.
Published: October 30, 2006 7:12 PM
Breaking up states won't do much unless there is a real idealogical revolution for liberty. Europe's states are smaller than many of the states in the U.S. but a majority of them are immersed in socialist policies worse than the U.S. Unless we break down governments down to county levels, I doubt Lew's idea of the greek free states will come to pass again.
Now what if the federal government was reduced to just the Bill of Rights? Yhat would not be a bad start.
Published: October 31, 2006 2:44 AM
Som,
I think that's the right idea, but most of the vast growth of the state has been in the role of protector of rights. Even the modern US military is a product of the Wilsonian vision of the US military as a force for spreading democratic freedoms. The Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and Immigration Reform Act from LBJ are responsible for most of what you see wrong with the federal government today.
Published: October 31, 2006 9:15 AM
Rockwell ought to read Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization, and Ralph Borsodi's Flight From the City before commenting on the carrying capacity of small-scale production.
Even court agricultural experts will confess, when pressed, that intensive cultivation with raised beds and double digging is more productive per acre than mechanized row-cropping.
Ralph Borsodi made detailed studies of all the costs entailed in home growing and canning of vegetables, including the market price of labor time, and found that the homemade stuff was significantly cheaper than the store-bought. He got similar results from a study of home textile production, furniture-making, and the like. He did all this stuff himself, mind you, creating a largely self-supporting homestead with a wide variety of household manufacture.
The reason home production of so many items is cheaper is the absence of distribution costs. The internal unit costs of production are considerably lower in a factory, but these savings are offset by increased distribution costs at relatively low levels of output.
Mumford argued that the development of electrically-powered tools, by enabling small-scale machinery to operate anywhere without being clustered around a single power source, made small-scale production competitive with the large factory, and ushered in the "neotechnic" age.
Published: October 31, 2006 12:54 PM
"He did all this stuff himself, mind you, creating a largely self-supporting homestead with a wide variety of household manufacture [. . .] The reason home production of so many items is cheaper is the absence of distribution costs. "
Why would I grow my own food when I can be more productive in other ways is beyond me. Even if store produce was a wee bit more expensive than what I could achieve in my 0.001 acres of humus, the opportunity costs more than offsets for that supposed disadvantage.
Published: October 31, 2006 7:29 PM
I read recently that 50% of the mercury pollution in the United States comes from Chinese industry via the air currents. I have no idea if this is true, but if it is and it created serious environmental or public health problems in the United States, what would we do?
What if one city-state upwind of Auburn, Alabama employs an industrial technique that pollutes Auburn to the point of unlivability? What would Auburn do? Who would mediate the inevitable dispute?
From an environmental perspective, we're all in this together. The world is a small, borderless place. Free markets, smaller government or a different constitution won't help us get along with other people, cities, or countries. Unregulated individual self-interest is a two-edged sword. It may make economies work efficiently but it also has great potential to trample the freedom of others. What's the answer?
Published: November 1, 2006 1:44 AM
From an environmental perspective, we're all in this together. The world is a small, borderless place. Free markets, smaller government or a different constitution won't help us get along with other people, cities, or countries.
Actually, the answer is that free markets are the only possible system of social order and the only way to respect the dignity and rights of others.
If this world is simply a small, borderless piece of territory that we can't view in terms of private property, then we will find ourselves with the 'tragedy of the commons.'
http://www.mises.org/story/865
http://blog.mises.org/archives/002416.asp
Published: November 1, 2006 7:19 AM
Gary, your post presumes the current lack of property rights against trespass by polluters, put in place by English judges at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and perpetuated through state and federal law. We essentially now have to accept any and all pollution that trespasses on our properties and our bodies, as long as the emission of it, measured at some arbitrary point, conforms to "standards".
If this immoral regime were rescinded, the ensuing lawsuits would very quickly clamp down on all kinds of pollution. And of the seas and the air were restored to private or homesteadable status, they would be protected in the same fashion.
Published: November 1, 2006 9:36 AM
in all the discussion of this landmark of population, I didn't hear a word about the critical question of how it is that all these people can be supported.
Petroleum is the single critical factor. Capitalism does grease the wheels to more efficient exploitation of this resource, but without that petrol, it is all gone. Petroleum is Work, it is Food, Heat and Shelter...THAT alone is the source of the population/wealth expansion. (and it will contract with the contraction of the petroleum)
Published: November 5, 2006 12:42 PM