This Crony Capitalism Even Makes Me Want To Redistribute Wealth

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This Crony Capitalism Even Makes Me Want To Redistribute Wealth

Heh.

Just kidding.

But look at this crap. This video has gone viral. Over 3 million views so far.

Of course, the dude who made it isn't saying the wealth of the top 1% is due to collusion between government and big corporations. He is merely framing it as a haves and have-nots thing. I sense he has sympathies with the Occupy Wall Street kind of mentality (but I'm not sure).

It doesn't matter. Crony capitalism is the villain here.

Without a big government, this would not stand. And without big corporations, this would not stand. But each alone cannot produce it, either.

So here's the rub--without the cartel of big government added to big corporations, this would not stand. The only way to remove such a breathtaking disparity as you see in the video is to sever that tie.

And the disparity is pretty sickening--not because it is a disparity. It's the sheer quantity of legalized embezzlement that gets to me.

Nobody ever calls it by its real name--legalized embezzlement or crony capitalism--except for a select few. The others, which means almost everybody, are too busy fighting each other over false dichotomies.

The weirdest part is that I got this video on TheBlaze: WHY IS THIS VIDEO FROM 2012 GOING VIRAL & ARE ITS ‘INCOME INEQUALITY’ CLAIMS TRUE?

The research in the video is based on a study by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely. You can get a pdf of it here: Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time.

TheBlaze found some items to disagree with in it, and maybe they're right, but still...

Dayaamm!

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Not valuable. "You can prove anything with statistics."--Rand

The real problem is the destruction of the middle class and social-economic mobility. The destruction of freedom, economic, not only civil. If you are sick, go to the emergency room. Hungry, McDonalds or food stamps. Of course the rich take up more and more space; the pie is shrinking, but they know how to keep what they have. The poor have nothing to keep and the middle class is befuddled and ate upon by the voting polloi and university-media/political elite.

--Brant

[syrakusos]

Not valuable. "You can prove anything with statistics."--Rand

--Brant

Cute, but she really never said that. Unless you are quoting Rand Paul, or some other "Rand."

[Samson Corwell]

This Crony Capitalism Even Makes Me Want To Redistribute Wealth

Heh.

Just kidding.

But look at this crap. This video has gone viral. Over 3 million views so far.

Of course, the dude who made it isn't saying the wealth of the top 1% is due to collusion between government and big corporations. He is merely framing it as a haves and have-nots thing. I sense he has sympathies with the Occupy Wall Street kind of mentality (but I'm not sure).

It doesn't matter. Crony capitalism is the villain here.

Without a big government, this would not stand. And without big corporations, this would not stand. But each alone cannot produce it, either.

So here's the rub--without the cartel of big government added to big corporations, this would not stand. The only way to remove such a breathtaking disparity as you see in the video is to sever that tie.

And the disparity is pretty sickening--not because it is a disparity. It's the sheer quantity of legalized embezzlement that gets to me.

Nobody ever calls it by its real name--legalized embezzlement or crony capitalism--except for a select few. The others, which means almost everybody, are too busy fighting each other over false dichotomies.

The weirdest part is that I got this video on TheBlaze: WHY IS THIS VIDEO FROM 2012 GOING VIRAL & ARE ITS ‘INCOME INEQUALITY’ CLAIMS TRUE?

The research in the video is based on a study by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely. You can get a pdf of it here: Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time.

TheBlaze found some items to disagree with in it, and maybe they're right, but still...

Dayaamm!

Michael

Over on the Hannity forums, someone posted this exact video. As usual, it generated a load of replies.

[dennislmay]

There seems to be at least 3 separate topics at hand.

1. Many of the present day top earners got there through corrupt government interference in the economy. Most people who are upset by the chart will not or do not understand that big government is the primary driver of corruption. They tend to want more big government to solve the problem which only makes it worse.

2. Rules [Constitution] are for everyone, once the Constitution was bypassed and big government took over fairness [rules apply to everyone] went out the window. Wanting more big government to enforce fairness fails to recognize the foundation of the problem. Economic ignorance drives 1 an 2.

3. Unequal wealth distribution is not a problem at all [and rational people should not see it as a problem] as long as it achieved with rules that apply to everyone without interference or corruption. Wealth achieved through production of value does not need to satisfy some chart based on people's feelings of fairness.

I have many times run into people who do not believe that someone's productive value can be worth so much more than that of other people. Poorly educated people who have not been around extremely capable people are the ones most likely to have an incorrect view in this matter.

I have known mathematicians, physicists, computer programmers, and medical people who are worth much more than the several hundred times average pay which is implied to be improper. Value is determined by the market. In a proper market without government interference and a set of rules which apply to everyone there would be fewer fly by night bankers and CEO's jumping between companies collecting golden parachutes and fewer investors and bankers with insider government connections making up the 1%. That does not imply the chart would change much with the very competent still taking home several hundred times the normal income. These new rich would actually be productive raising all boats - not simply dividing up a corrupt pie.

I would like to make thousands of times the average salary with a fair set of rules and without big corrupt government stealing my efforts and retraining my productivity at every turn. The best chart would resemble the current chart but with everyone richer because the government wouldn't get its cut.

Dennis

[Serapis Bey]

It doesn't matter. Crony capitalism is the villain here.

Without a big government, this would not stand. And without big corporations, this would not stand. But each alone cannot produce it, either.

So here's the rub--without the cartel of big government added to big corporations, this would not stand. The only way to remove such a breathtaking disparity as you see in the video is to sever that tie.

So here's the REAL rub -- people who have power tend to hobnob with others who also have power. It matters not whether the power flows from capital or government decree -- the fact is, those who have power seek to consolidate it through strategic alliances. Where in history have we NOT seen government figureheads making backroom deals with the captains of industry, the movers and shakers? NO-WHERE. It is inherent in human nature for those with monetary power to align with those who have authority power. Such is the nature of the beast. The folks here who proffer paeans to the Founding Fathers are relics of a dusty anachronism. That's just not how the world works now, or at any other time in history (the reasons for this are another discussion entirely, but I digress).

Oh, sure, we can write a list of rules on a piece of paper to keep everyone in check. Suuuuure... Do abstract laws have force? Not on their own. They require PEOPLE to enforce them. But if the people in power find it beneficial to cut slack to greedy corporations, THEY WILL. This is the reality. There is no higher authority, and all the Objectivist bleating about justice is just whistling past the graveyard.

[Serapis Bey]

[dennislmay]

It doesn't matter. Crony capitalism is the villain here.

Without a big government, this would not stand. And without big corporations, this would not stand. But each alone cannot produce it, either.

So here's the rub--without the cartel of big government added to big corporations, this would not stand. The only way to remove such a breathtaking disparity as you see in the video is to sever that tie.

So here's the REAL rub -- people who have power tend to hobnob with others who also have power. It matters not whether the power flows from capital or government decree -- the fact is, those who have power seek to consolidate it through strategic alliances. Where in history have we NOT seen government figureheads making backroom deals with the captains of industry, the movers and shakers? NO-WHERE. It is inherent in human nature for those with monetary power to align with those who have authority power. Such is the nature of the beast. The folks here who proffer paeans to the Founding Fathers are relics of a dusty anachronism. That's just not how the world works now, or at any other time in history (the reasons for this are another discussion entirely, but I digress).

Oh, sure, we can write a list of rules on a piece of paper to keep everyone in check. Suuuuure... Do abstract laws have force? Not on their own. They require PEOPLE to enforce them. But if the people in power find it beneficial to cut slack to greedy corporations, THEY WILL. This is the reality. There is no higher authority, and all the Objectivist bleating about justice is just whistling past the graveyard.

All societies are rule based - the least productive societies having rule by arbitrary decree and/or corruption where the arbitrary can be gamed to advantage. Like controlling disease, parasites or predators in a process it is understood that a certain percentage of humans will be a problem and their range influence should be minimized. This is not just the job of a few figureheads but all of the society. The degree to which all of a society engages in minimizing threats determines the vitality of the society - whether personally involved or involved by being careful who represents your interests. On the one extreme you have authoritarian rule where the arbitrary is the norm - on the other extreme you have societies where the vast majority play by accepted fair rules with increased productivity and widespread individual success being the result. You can see the difference in corruption and its impact between various states in the US, between various countries, and between different societies in different time periods. If a society allows itself to be gamed all suffer except a corrupt few. It all starts at the local level, if you have corrupt local zoning, corruption in education, government/business in bed creating corruption those problems only magnify as the scale of society moves from the local, county, state and national levels. Allowing corruption to flourish is like ignoring disease, parasites, and predators - nothing in nature can afford to do that.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A few comments on the Pavlovian emanations of our esteemed Serapis Bey.

Pavlovian?

Sure.

It's subtext. Subconscious premise. Learned automatic reaction. Ding the bell and the dog salivates.

Or say something that gives an opening on a site where Rand is discussed, we get a Rand-bash. Or an Objectivist bash. Or a Founding Father bash. And so on.

Diiiiiing. Bash.

t's predictable and it never fails. The poor Pavlovian suckers just can't help themselves.

I admit, I gave up the folly of trying to defend anything before the Pavlovian reflex. (By defend in this context, I mean argue to change their minds.) It's just too deeply embedded and it functions like a cybernetic system.

Here's what I mean. In a cybernetic system, there is a programmed goal, deflection sensors and a course-correction mechanism.

For instance, a thermostat in a house is a cybernetic system. You program it for xxx degrees. Then someone opens the door, lets the cold air in, the temperature drops, the sensors detect the deflection, then the course-correction mechanism kicks in and the heater turns on until the temperature is xxx degrees again, at which time the heater turns off. That's a cybernetic system.

A mental cybernetic system works like this, also. I once read a Marxist complain about a Jehovah's Witness, "You can win the argument, but still not change his mind." When the JW admits he loses the argument, he's sincere, but that's going off course for a bit. Soon he's back on track. (The Marxist didn't see how he is the same, but that's another question.)

The "Rand-bash as premise" mind works just like this (as does the O-fundy mind). You can interact with it up to a point and actually discuss the meat of some ideas. You can get it out of its comfort zone. But soon the deflection will be noticed by its subconscious sensors and a course-correction mechanism will kick in. Most of the time, this is manifest by snarky conclusions about Objectivists, Rand, Founding Fathers, capitalism, etc., etc, etc.

You can be discussing the intricacies credit default swaps or biochemistry or arcane mythology and it will eventually come back to: "This proves Rand and Objectivists are deluded." Diiiiiing. Bash.

So I will not address the goading of our esteemed canine wannabe. My cybernetic course is different and runs on a higher plane. Besides, there's just too much slobber for intelligent discussion.

Pavlovian apologists for accepting power mongers as the rightful rulers of the rest of us (or, in modern parlance, "that's just the way it is") have existed since the dawn of humanity. Yet mankind has marched toward increased individual awareness and liberty. It's not either-or. It's been a slow progression and it is still ongoing.

Here's a bright side. Just look at the technological goodies mankind has produced along the way, especially during the last two centuries. Look at the increased life-span. Look at the population growth. They simply would not have come into being in a world where all people kowtow to Big Power because they blindly accept the sermons of the toadies, I mean apologists of bullies--those who preach that any dreams of freedom people may foster in their souls are "just not how the world works now, or at any other time in history."

Getting on to my way of doing things, I use the epistemological system of identifying something correctly before I can judge it correctly. That is the gist of my purpose in harping on the issue of crony capitalism as what the video at the start of this thread really means.

But let's identify some more stuff correctly. It is true that there is a tie between big business and big government that exists on levels people interested in Rand tend to brush aside. Ditto for some contexts.

I believe this has several roots that do not pertain to moral theory, but can be controlled by morality. (I.e., we have to accept the identification, but we can choose how to control it.)

First, we have to accept the way the mind is. We have a subconscious that controls much of what we think and do. We cannot control it immediately by volition. But we can, through focused repetition (and attacking it from different angles like logic, stories, strong emotions and some other techniques) implant a new neural pathway and myelinate it to Kingdom Come. This is very close to what Rand called a sense of life premise.

We can implant this with our free will and do it so much that the "premise" becomes a mental cybernetic program. This, to me, is one of the real functions of religion. It's also one of the true functions of a book like Atlas Shrugged. And it's how social change always takes place.

So here are just a couple of facts--correct identifications, so to speak--that are not considered very much in O-Land.

The first is about bullying. We are all capable of letting it grow, encouraging it in our souls and turning into royal assholes, but some people are more prone to it than others. It's both innate and chosen.

The second fact is uncomfortable for those in our subculture, but it is true. If we set up a banquet table right beside a bunch of starving people and prohibit them from eating as we dig in, it will not turn out well. It never has and it never will.

In ancient times, they built castles to keep the rabble out, but the rabble would eventually show up in mobs with torches and pitchforks. Nowadays, the rabble eats and eats well, but they also get bombarded with appetite-whetting advertising for inaccessible goodies from the other side of a financial moat.

These are facts.

I don't mention them as end-points. They are starting points, just like man's need for reason is a starting point. Like I said, in my way of thinking, I start by identifying and end by judging. This progress from the cognitive to the normative is a mental procedure I--and others who think the same--do on purpose and by choice when I mull over an important issue.

(Unlike the Pavlovian intellects, who start subconsciously with a judgment as their cybernetic goal, then consciously try to identify stuff to prove it--with all the rationalizations and monkeyshines that system entails--heh, at least they can be colorful, so they do serve as entertainment).

When I talk about bullying and eating well in front of starving people above, I am not yet judging anything. I am identifying.

Now, based on those two facts, which I believe are totally accurate because they are so easily observed--both now and throughout all of known human history--what do we do about them if we want to value the individual? This means his life and independence of thought and action. This means me, but it also means you.

Codifying individual rights over divine rights was a great start in human history. (Bullies and toadies for bullies hate this, but "that's just the way it is." ) Developing role models through storytelling (to myelinate neural pathways) is another. And so on.

This is the evaluative part of my way of thinking. We look at the facts, see what parts of them need fostering and what parts need constraints for a chosen goal, then we implement.

That's a long discussion and I don't have all the answers. Objectivism and libertarianism have given some great answers, but they are not complete from what I have studied and observed so far. Still, they (and that includes the Founding Fathers) present some of the best tradition-busting reality-based solutions to break the Pavlovian trance of kowtowing to Big Power I have seen to date.

But, to harp on my point, if we ignore the facts, our evaluations and implementations will always come up short for our goals.

Power is part of human nature. It is not the be-all and end-all, but it is a non-severable part of our existence. We cannot ignore it and get a complete picture of reality. If we do not identify human nature correctly, we will not be able to govern it correctly.

Then the bullies will keep winning and the toadies will keep singing their praises.

I'm an optimist, though. The bullies are losing as mankind progresses. The only big problem I see is that our technological goodies have given them access to major-mass-damage resources and made this a race. I just hope we can govern human nature correctly on a broad social level before the bullies blow up the planet.

The only way to do this is called freedom for the individual. And we can thank our Founding Fathers for getting the ball rolling in the right direction, not just in theory, but in practice.

Michael

[Samson Corwell]

Pavlovian? I'm unfamiliar with that term.

[BaalChatzaf]

O.K. You win. I am now a Rush fan.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Pavlovian? I'm unfamiliar with that term.

Ring...Ring...salivate...Pavlov's dogs...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov

The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the "conditioned reflex" (or in his own words the conditional reflex: the translation of условный рефлекс into English is debatable) he developed jointly with his assistant Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov in 1901. He had come to learn this concept of conditioned reflex when examining the rates of salivations among dogs. Pavlov had learned then when a bell was rung in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog will initially salivate when the food is presented. The dog will later come to associate the ringing of the bell with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the ringing of the bell.^[24] Tolochinov, whose own term for the phenomenon had been "reflex at a distance", communicated the results at the Congress of Natural Sciences in Helsinki in 1903.^[25] Later the same year Pavlov more fully explained the findings, at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid, where he read a paper titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals.^[3]

Sampson:

I am asking this delicately. How old are you? Where have you been educated?

A....

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Pavlovian? I'm unfamiliar with that term.

Samson,

Pavlov was a Russian scientist from early last century. His did a famous experiment where he would feed dogs and ding a bell at the same time. After a while, he just sounded the bell without feeding them and they would salivate. This is called "conditioned reflex."

How this works with Rand-bashers (or any fanatic, including so-called Rand "defenders") is tribal at root.

A person belongs to a group of people for whatever reason. He believes they are special--they are superior to others. And he knows he is one of them. That helps him feel he is superior to others. He feels safe among them. He feels accepted. But like all humans, he has an emotional need for approval.

Enter the scapegoat. We all need villains, human or otherwise, in order to situate our problems and make a plan of action. We need to know the cause of problems. But there is a malicious side to pointing to villains. When people do it in a crowd, it comes with an enormous amount of peer pressure.

If everybody is bashing a villain and you say, "Wait a minute," it is very easy for the mob to turn on you as a scapegoat-lover or even a member of the scapegoat itself. That means they might expel you from the group.

The easiest way to deal with the situation is to go along with others and say, "Yeah! Those guys are awful!" And maybe, "Let's get 'em!" for more intense moments.

This comes with an emotional payoff that is hard to resist. When you bash the goat, people in your group high-five you. They sing your praises. They point you out to others as someone worthy. They think you're cool. They imitate you.

In other words, the scapegoat is Pavlov's bell, the praise is the food, and you are the dog.

(Just kidding if you took this personally... )

After a while, you do not need the praise anymore to feel good about bashing the scapegoat. You have been conditioned. You just need to come across some of the trigger situations you have encountered in the past and you mentally salivate. Then you attack. Ahhhhhh.... That was great!

This "feel-good" reaction will trump any amount of logic or proof presented to you. It's deeper than conscious awareness. It's on the level of a subconscious cybernetic goal.

That's why you can argue with a Pavlovian intellect until you are blue in the face, but until his tribal umbilical cord is severed and he puts thinking on his own in first place--and I mean first place at a cybernetic goal level--instead of his fond memories of being loved for bashing the goat, you will always get monkey-shines at the end instead of true discussion.

The only way for him to cut that tribal umbilical cord is to increase his awareness and accept an ugly truth about himself. That's a tall order for anyone, especially if his conceit is intense because it has been fed often in his tribe.

Ding-dong...

Michael

[Samson Corwell]

Pavlovian? I'm unfamiliar with that term.

Ring...Ring...salivate...Pavlov's dogs...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov

The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the "conditioned reflex" (or in his own words the conditional reflex: the translation of условный рефлекс into English is debatable) he developed jointly with his assistant Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov in 1901. He had come to learn this concept of conditioned reflex when examining the rates of salivations among dogs. Pavlov had learned then when a bell was rung in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog will initially salivate when the food is presented. The dog will later come to associate the ringing of the bell with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the ringing of the bell.^[24] Tolochinov, whose own term for the phenomenon had been "reflex at a distance", communicated the results at the Congress of Natural Sciences in Helsinki in 1903.^[25] Later the same year Pavlov more fully explained the findings, at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid, where he read a paper titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals.^[3]

Sampson:

I am asking this delicately. How old are you? Where have you been educated?

A....

I'm nineteen and I am currently attending university.

[Selene]

I'm nineteen and I am currently attending university.

Thanks.

What university?

A...

[Serapis Bey]

Oh Mike....

Mike, Mike, Mike....

SMH.....sigh...

Is it too much to ask that you read me with just a tad more charity? Do you truly have "charity towards none"?

For the sake of argument, I'll accept the charge of "Rand Basher" you have imputed to me. But where in the world did you get the idea that I endorse our current state of affairs? Following your own logic, I was merely pointing out facts -- making identifications - with no normative syrup poured on top. You could have just as easily characterized me as a leftist who wished to "fight the power". Whatever the case, you appear to have grabbed a thin strand of my thought and ran with it. That is fine, since I found your elucidation of a certain psycho-epistemology insightful, but it really has no bearing on the central thrust of my post. When I'm in a more lucid state of mind I hope to get back to this topic, but for the time being, I am glad you made this statement:

"It is true that there is a tie between big business and big government that exists on levels people interested in Rand tend to brush aside."

That's all I was really driving at.

Regarding the veneration of businessmen -- I worry that the totems and symbols of Rand's universe, which her fans clutch to their chests as a source of motive power in their own lives, sometimes leads to them projecting outwards onto the current bigwigs of the world's chessboard. The noble entrepeneur is not fiction, but he is a minority. The folks who run most mega corporations are not Hank Reardens, and it behooves us to keep this in mind at all times. Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming useful idiots in the service of those who don't give a damn about us.

[Serapis Bey]

O.K. You win. I am now a Rush fan.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Glad to hear it. I would suggest staying away from anything after 1986 however. That was the tipping point where Peart's Objectivish leanings started transforming into saccharine and maudlin progressive political correctness.

There are still a few gems here and there in his post 1986 output however.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Oh Mike....

Mike, Mike, Mike....

SMH.....sigh...

Is it too much to ask that you read me with just a tad more charity?

My dear Serapis Bey,

Now that is funny. You ask for charity and are so inclined not to give any.

I suppose this double-standard characteristic of narcissism is inherent in many people drawn to discussing Rand, so why not you, too? Here, let me show you what I'm talking about (but just one example because I don't have all day for this).

... all the Objectivist bleating about justice is just whistling past the graveyard.

Bleating, is it?

Do I bleat?

Do I bleat high or beat low?

Is my bleating loud and long, or soft and short like whimpering?

Are my bleats pleasing to the ear or merely comical fodder for a snooty put-down?

And how about the bleats of the others around here? Do we bleat in chorus right before we are slaughtered? Or do we bleat in cacophony amidst the clucking and oinking?

Are we sheeple who need our betters to take care of us for being so utterly misguided?

Do we need you as our shepherd?

Do I need to continue?

OK. Now that's off my chest, let me think about reading you with some charity.

I grant you that the more orthodox-leaning people attracted to Objectivism often do express themselves in terms that merit mockery (like your dropping them to animal level). Your broad all-inclusive brush, however, causes the strangest urge in me to give up bleating and start cooing like a pigeon...

Now, before I get to the substantive stuff, maybe you see my point? Maybe, just maybe? A teensy-weensy bit? Just a smidgen? A pigeon-smidgen? (I doubt it. I think the Pavlovian reflex is too deep, the neural conceit pathway too myelinated and reinforced through tribal repetition and mental rehearsal, but who knows? I ask because I always think it's worth a shot when I see the glimmer of a mind opening to awareness. So, maybe I don't think you see my point, but I hope so--or at least some of my point.)

... for the time being, I am glad you made this statement:

"It is true that there is a tie between big business and big government that exists on levels people interested in Rand tend to brush aside."

That's all I was really driving at.

Actually, nope. I don't think that was ALL you were driving at. I think your cognitive point (the point about how powerful people tend to think and act for real and how this gets ignored) was merely the trigger to show off how superior you are to the little people.

Here's the proof. Change the cognitive trigger, the topic, to any other--say, intellectual property or the gold standard or aesthetics--and your observations will still carry the "me oh so superior to the little people" payoff.

I certainly cannot imagine you ever saying that Objectivists or Rand really nailed point xxx or point yyy and that the world is a better place for these ideas coming into the mainstream. All I can imagine you saying is how deluded Rand and everyone connected with her are on whatever topic you are discussing. With the clear implication that you are nowhere near being tainted with such delusions.

So, in your utterances, one part is interchangeable at will. The other part never changes. And both are always present.

You mentioned ALL you were driving at. I'm merely trying to see the ALL in your comment. Or would you prefer I remain one of the little people who only sees PART of what you are driving at--the part you want to be seen by us wee ones, the topic only without the wrapper?

Just food for thought...

Now on to reading you with charity (and clarity):

Regarding the veneration of businessmen -- I worry that the totems and symbols of Rand's universe, which her fans clutch to their chests as a source of motive power in their own lives, sometimes leads to them projecting outwards onto the current bigwigs of the world's chessboard. The noble entrepeneur is not fiction, but he is a minority. The folks who run most mega corporations are not Hank Reardens, and it behooves us to keep this in mind at all times. Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming useful idiots in the service of those who don't give a damn about us.

I would like to make some intelligent addition, but I agree with this fully and you expressed it eloquently.

(How's that for a shocker? I mean it, too. )

Well... here's a comment and, hopefully, it will add to your point...

I'm especially concerned about the "totems and symbols" you mentioned. And the storytelling. From my experience, I get the impression that the vast social power of these things are under-appreciated in our subculture (and that's an understatement). Or, when I see people talking about the power of these things, they most often talk about the power over others, almost never the power over themselves.

To put it another way, if Rand had only written her nonfiction and had not written bestselling novels, I believe she would have approximately the same standing as Rose Lane Wilder or Isabel Paterson--not only in the minds of the public at large, but also in the minds of most people who discuss her--including ortho-Objectivists. By "standing," I refer to continued book sales, Google search volume, current news stories, and other indicators of social impact--including a commonly known category of thought called "Objectivist." Without fiction, I believe Rand would be currently considered as one more libertarian intellectual and nothing more.

Rand's fiction and myth-making (and I mean that in a good sense--the best, in fact, not as a derogatory comment) are the power supply running the spread of her ideas. Not the other way around. But, as great as her fiction works are, we need more archetypes and stories.

She did give us some villain archetypes, but unfortunately, we often see Objectivists (or even some other people in the mainstream) holding up your typical Wall Street investor as a John Galt or Hank Rearden instead of as a James Taggart or Peter Keating. And it is as clear as daylight to me that these last are a hell of a lot closer to the essence of many corporate businesspeople than her heroes.

I think this constant error is due to a flaw in her villain archetype--a sin by omission, so to speak. Rand never presented her villains actually relishing their power, going off on arrogant sadistic ego-rants, or threatening to crush their enemies and so forth. She only gave the power attitude (to coin a phrase), or the emotional certainty of dominance, to her heroes. So her villain archetypes do not align very well--as images in the popular mind--with powerful weasels like Ken Lay of ENRON (to use an obvious illustration). Here's another example. On the image level I carry inside my mind, Ben Bernanke might be many things, but Wesley Mouch he is not.

I have recently discovered Michael Lewis (I'm reading The Big Short right now). To me, this guy is nailing who the real villains on Wall Street are as opposed to the heroes. He is bringing them to life to me, but framed as good and bad in a manner very similar to the way archetypes do. Unfortunately, he does not get the government connection as well as I would like, but I'll take what I can get at this point.

I already loaded one of his heroes with one of Rand's archetypes--one that I believe fits to a tee (in essence, not in details). See here: I think I found Midas Mulligan. (Apropos, I don't expect that load to go far, but who knows? We get some top-level readers lurking about here on OL.)

I am at a loss to find a good Objectivist-sounding archetype for his villains, though. Let's look at a really good example, Joe Cassano, who used to run AIG. He was a control freak who shouted a lot in people's faces and constantly punished those who disagreed with him over anything, but weirdly lavished gobs of money on all, even his enemies. Orren Boyle or Tinky Holloway or Lee Hunsacker most certainly do NOT come to mind when I think about him. Maybe Kip Chalmers, but this archetype seems to me more like a spoiled brat with connections than a powerful bully who actually runs the show.

In my opinion, Rand gave us strong archetypes for capitalists and prime movers, but not very good ones for crony-capitalists. I'm judging this in terms of their public effectiveness qua archetypes, not in terms of the accuracy of the characteristics she presented (which I believe were--and still are--accurate; they are just not nearly enough).

Since archetypes work on the emotional level, not by simple identification and logic, and many people in our subculture avoid probing their own emotions like the plague, they are inevitably moved by an unquestioned subconscious on what resonates the best when they look at modern business leaders.

Look at any press conference. These leaders exude confidence and power, just like Rand's heroes do. And they head large productive companies, just like Rand's heroes do. And many complain about government controls, just like Rand's heroes do. (Albeit, these weasels complain in public, but make backstage deals with the government in private.)

In short, there are many more emotional alignments between modern business leaders and Rand's heroes than with her villains. Add that to the many shared surface details and it's easy for the subconscious to get tripped up. I believe this is the reason behind the mistake. We often see our O-Land colleagues attribute a heroic archetype to a real-life weasel when said weasel does not, on the surface, look and act like one, but appears to carry the emotional load and surface trappings of a Randian hero instead.

Thus, Bill Gates to these people is not his reality, i.e., a mixture of genius and productive marketer, plus crony capitalist and outright looter who manipulated intellectual property laws to gain legal favors, but instead a Hank Rearden. There are many such examples.

So, in my view, we agree on the substance of this. From what I see, it's 100% agreement or almost that. We just don't agree on how stupid people are in the Objectivist and libertarian subculture. As a default position, you find them laughable and bleating. I find them to be good people with good intentions and most of them with higher than average intelligence.

When we point to shortcomings in the subculture, it may look the same--and even be the same--on the different topics, but the subtext is miles apart.

Please let me know if I am mistaken.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Not valuable. "You can prove anything with statistics."--Rand

--Brant

Cute, but she really never said that. Unless you are quoting Rand Paul, or some other "Rand."

Oh, I thought she said it in one of the Q and A's at a Ford Hall Forum I attended in the late 60s or early to mid 70s. I went to seven or eight consecutive ones starting in 1968.

Where did you get your info she never said it?

--Brant

[Dglgmut]

Actually, it's a widely used phrase

"You can't have your cake and eat it too." --Rand

Anyway, I think Serapsis makes a good point. You cannot "sever the tie" between big business and big government--not as long as each exists in the same context as Michael used the terms.

Power does not necessarily have anything to do with force or violence. Power, in a social context, depends on collective organization, but the collective responsible for actually carrying out any act of violence cannot lead itself. Because the leader of the group cannot possibly possess more potential for violence in himself than the group does collectively, it must be something other than force that constitutes power.

Money (property) can certainly be an incentive to violate another human being or group; but this is not power either. A leader must be chosen; at least implicitly, by his followers.

[Samson Corwell]

I'm nineteen and I am currently attending university.

Thanks.

What university?

A...

The University of Rhode Island.

[Jon Letendre]

The video is about static wealth, not income or living standard. This means there are a lot of people way over on the left, on the "poor" side of the chart, who we're supposed to feel sorry for, who have extremely high income. They are on the left of side of the chart because they spend about or above 100% of their income, so they accumulate little or no wealth. It is perfectly fine that a lot of people are over there. Fairness does not require that this or that quintile have any wealth at all.

Likewise, there are people on the right side of the chart who inherited and work a farm and live much more modestly than some of the clowns on the left side of the chart previously mentioned.

Today's wealth distribution may well be perfectly fair. Before saying it is spread too much to the right side of the chart, or not enough to the right side, I would first need to know what a fair distribution is. Abstractly, that would be whatever distribution arises in a free market. But we don't have a free market. We do have some crony capitalism, which argues for "too much to the right side." But we also have regulations and taxes, which suggest "not enough to the right side." My guess is that a free market would yield a skewing of wealth to the right side of the chart about comparable to what we see today, probably more so.

Capital accumulation is good. When one person has $311 million of assets, he is unable to burn through a significant share, so the vast majority of it stays invested and contributes to the expansion of capital spending with resultant increases in productivity and living standards. If that $311,000,000 were $1 in every American's pocket tomorrow morning, you would see an expansion of 7-Eleven's lottery ticket sales.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hey Jon!

Good to see ya'.

I think your insinuation that this wealth accumulation is the way it should be sounds good in theory, but I have seen the offshore accounts when I was messing with this stuff in Brazil. I guess you could say it's invested, but there is an awful lot of it just sitting around trying to stay under the radar. Lots tied up in tangible assets, too. Farm land was the biggest fad to tie up funds when I left. I know about this because I used to work with folks who set this stuff up.

It's been a while, but I used to mess around with SWIFT transfers, correspondent accounts, government bonds (from various Latin American countries), safe keeping receipts and stuff like that, not just on the secondary market, but with Vice Presidents of major banks (like Santander, for one, although I don't want to talk too much about that stuff on a public forum) and highly placed officials in several Central Banks of several different countries.

Don't think this has nothing to do with the USA. The Fed is in like Flynn in everything major overseas. The USA practically outsourced its inflation ever since the first Bretton Woods agreement and it looks like Obama is going to finally break the back of that scheme. I hope I am wrong because I have lived in a society with high inflation. it sucks. Everyday people stay stressed all the time and get nasty.

btw - I also learned that if you are not rich, at least among the folks I ran with, the rich will talk to you, let you hang out with them (up to a point) and promise you lots of things to get you to do their donkey work and take their risks, but they are not too keen on the idea of you actually joining their financial ranks. If you are working the rounds trying to get in, it's amazing how many things go right when they have to receive payments, and how many things "accidentally go wrong" when you try to get yours

(sigh...) At least you get to stay in five-star hotels all over the place and eat well...

Man am I glad I moved on...

I grant you, there's a lot good happening in our world in terms of stuff. I'm the first to say that most "victims" you see in the news cry for their bottle on a full stomach (to use a Brazilian expression). How serious can we take a poor person who says he doesn't have a chance in life when he pulls out his iPad? Even barring that, I have seen poor, like hungry poor. Dirt floors in shanty clapboard dwellings. (In fact, I used to buy my drugs in some of those neighborhoods when I was an active addict.)

People don't starve here in the USA. They have refrigerators and microwaves.

But Oceans of Greed Hedge Fund, Insurance and Front Groups Ltd. definitely has a humongous chunk of the pie.

One of the reasons I like Michael Lewis so much (from what little I have read so far) is that his stories of events align perfectly with what I have seen with my own eyes. I can't say the same about most of the financial theory I have read in libertarian literature.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

Hi Michael,

I believe you when you say you saw some big money in Brazil "sitting around trying to stay under the radar." I don't know why they hid their wealth instead of openly investing it. Confiscatory, redistributive taxation? Funds came from "illegal" timber?

But, I was talking about a free market.

Do you believe that in a free market meaningful sums of accumulated capital would stay buried, hidden, idled—rather than gainfully deployed? Why?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Do you believe that in a free market meaningful sums of accumulated capital would stay buried, hidden, idled—rather than gainfully deployed? Why?

Jon,

Let me say I sounded like a show-off and that was not my intent. To be brutally frank, I was totally a fish out of water in the circles I ran in. I received no formal training in international finance, so back then I stayed up night after night studying laws, financial books, which I couldn't make heads or tails of, and haunting the Internet (which was just getting its stride) for as much information as I could cram into my brain. Lots and lots and lots of it didn't make any sense to me. And I had to do it in three different languages, too (Portuguese, Spanish and English).

I have since learned that Occam's Razor is almost always the rule.

For instance, you asked if I believe the super wealthy here in a free market would want to keep massive sums of their wealth hidden. Not all will do that, of course, but many will. And the reason I speculate is that they want to keep their money and they don't trust anyone.

It's as simple as that.

I wish I had learned to think this way when I was running with the wolves. I know I kept asking things like, "Where does all this money come from?" and so forth.

Nowadays, whenever I read a super-complicated answer, I know it's smoke and mirrors. For example, the subprime debacle here in the USA was outside my area of activity, so I never really understood it. But recently, when I read Michael Lewis explain that a credit default swap on tranches of subprimes, being a zero-sum game, was not a swap at all, but a weird kind of insurance policy on an asset the person doesn't own, so it was more like a bet on a roulette table where the downside was small and fixed, and the potential gain was humongous, that clicked for me.

I have seen big players use that kind of thinking in a different scheme, including the gobbledygook language. In my case, instead of normal legalese, I had to deal with oodles of pages of technical explanations and agreements in documents drawn up from models by English bankers from India speaking the English of the pre-WWI empire days. (Believe me, that's like a totally different language from an alien planet.)

The true issue is that they fooled someone into holding the bag and they were playing the person or institution for all they were worth. Just like the subprime mortgage folks did with AIG. A hell of a lot of times I know about and speculate, it was the government (the USA and other countries) that was left holding the bag.

And here's another thing. If you want to have a chuckle one day, look into a concept called "euro-dollar." These are USA dollars in foreign banks in foreign countries (not just Europe). There is a crap-load of them out there in the world. Trillions and trillions and trillions. If all those dollars were repatriated, (which is essentially meaningless--the correct is if they were "patriated" in the first place), the economy here inside the USA would explode.

That's how the USA exported its inflation.

Notice that nobody ever talked about a trillion dollars until Obama took office. Now the term trillions keeps coming up as normal and the number keeps growing. The Fed is printing, but not that much money, even with quantitative easing (check it out), so it's a good idea to ask on what basis they are suddenly making such calculations. Where is all that money coming from?

We're getting it sent back, that's where.

It's not coming in directly. There are oodles of monkey-shines going on to get it here. Wars and nation-building are quite useful, but they are not the only game in town.

Here's the simple explanation from what I have seen and concluded. There are two economies in the world--the USA and the rest. I'm talking about the network of central banks, including the Fed, connected by BIS (The Bank for International Settlements). Here in the USA, there is an appearance of a free market (I'm talking about banking right now) and it runs reasonably well as such. But it lives under a dark, dark cloud on the macro level.

People who hide their money know this. They want to keep their money, so they spit as much out of the system as possible for when things go boom.

Anyway, whatever...

I haven't thought about this stuff for a while and now I'm sad...

I certainly can't do anything about it.

Dayaamm!

Michael