[EugenicHegemony] Income Tax debate advice

[EugenicHegemony]

You live in a fascist country and your terrorist government is spreading this cancer into Central Asia under "freedom on the march", lies.

[This should be good...lets have some fun kids! And lets make it clear from the start that everything here is a lovely little appeal to authority...]

Nationalized Economy
by Richard M. Ebeling, economist- August 1991

[I note that it says economist, rather than Economist...a job title rather than a publication? Lets carry on regardless. Ooh...and Richard M. Ebeling wouldnt happen to be the same one that's in charge of the Future Freedom Foundation! It sounds like it's escaped from a really bad comic book...]

February 1991 saw the release of the latest annual Economic Report of The President. Prepared by the President's Council of Economic Advisors, the report is meant to provide a detailed summary of where the American economy has been during the past twelve months [and whether it has been cleaning its room, taking the garbage out and doing its chores...] and to offer various projections as to where the economy is heading for the next twelve months. Both retrospect and prospect are offered in an interpretive framework meant to reflect the economic philosophy of the current administration. [They look at it the way they think it works...gee...whoda thunk it?] And in the context of this economic philosophy, the President's economic advisors suggest various economic policy changes believed to be in the interests of the nation's economic well-being. [And there was me thinking they were going to suggest doing things to fuck the nation up...]

The President's advisors insist that "the Administration's economic policies are designed both to mitigate the current downturn and to strengthen the foundations for a solid recovery and a return to sustained economic growth." They say that "[tlhe global wave of market-oriented reform . . . shows that the world has learned from America that reliance on free markets is the key to sustainable long-term growth and prosperity. In the U.S. economy," they say, "free markets fuel and direct the process of economic growth."

The impression conveyed is that America is a free-market economy. Furthermore, the implication is that the policies advocated by the Bush administration are both compatible with and supportive of a free-market economy. Unfortunately, the conveyed impressions have very little to do with reality. [Much like Junior here's ideas of reality...lets see where he's going with this.]

Also in February, the Cato Institute of Washington, D.C.,[for our viewers back home they're a libertarian think tank] released a policy analysis by their fiscal policy director, Stephen Moore, entitled "The Profligate President: A Midterm Review of Bush's Fiscal Policy."

"Between the time that Reagan left the White House in 1989 and next year (FY 1992)," Mr. Moore points out, "domestic spending will have climbed by $300 billion — from $670 billion to $970 billion. Since 1989, the federal government's domestic outlays, adjusted for inflation, have grown by an enormous 10 percent per year.... Incredibly, Bush is on the way to being the biggest champion of new domestic spending since Franklin Roosevelt."

Here are some of the figures for the percentage increases in various governmental programs between 1989 and 1991, as provided by Mr. Moore: NASA, 28 percent; high-energy physics & superconducting collider, 44 percent; drug programs, 73 percent; pollution control and abatement 20 percent; "America the Beautiful," 73 percent; global change research, 57 percent; energy programs, 18 percent, housing programs, 17 percent; public housing assistance, 24 percent; federal job-training programs, 11 percent; legislative functions, 28 percent.

And if we look at the percentage increases in federal spending by governmental agencies, Mr. Moore informs us, we find the following: Transportation Department, 20 percent, Labor and Health & Human Services Departments, 31 percent; Interior Department, 18 percent; Housing & Urban Development Department and Independent Agencies, 31 percent; Energy Department, 13 percent; Education Department, 21 percent; Commerce and State Departments, 30 percent; Agriculture Department, 12 percent. Only the Defense Department should see a reduction — of 5 percent.

As a result of these increases in government expenditures in the fiscal years 1991 and 1992, the federal government will consume 24 percent of United States gross national product.

Another way of saying this is that almost one out of every four dollars directly spent on goods and services in the U.S. economy will be spent by the federal government. If we were to add in state and local governmental spending, that figure would rise to over 40 percent of the U.S. gross national product.

I used the words "directly spent on goods and services" because these figures hide an important fact. Every one of these dollars creates a spiderweb of indirect dependency upon the government. A multitude of industries and markets supply goods and services to those who are the direct recipients of these governmental dollars. Therefore, what these industries and markets produce and earn are indirectly influenced by how much the government spends — and on what and whom. Thus, the full impact of governmental spending is far greater than that suggested by either the 24 or 40 percent of GNP figures.

In a real and Fundamental sense, practically the entire American economy has been nationalized — [here comes the good bit] if we broaden the term "nationalized" to mean the allocation and use of resources directly or indirectly determined or influenced by government's spending plans [it's nationalized if we change the meaning of the term nationalized!]. And in this sense, the United States has a planned economy.

But governmental spending is only the tip of the iceberg. Federal, state and local governmental licensing laws determine who is allowed to enter practically every occupation and profession [because I know that I certainly would feel better with no regulation and licensing of doctors or engineers damnit! We need more freedom!]. The various federal and state regulatory agencies specify what products and services may be offered on the market [such as preventing the sale of services such as "hitman" via the yellow pages...]; they stipulate the work conditions under which these goods may be manufactured [it's easy to spot the moonbat libertarians, they talk about health and saftey laws like they're something evil]; they restrict the materials and methods of production under which the goods may be produced [No cyanide in baby food...oh where has liberty gone?]; and they sometimes determine the prices and wages at which resources may be bought and the products sold.

We have been on the road towards a planned economy since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s. Convinced by the Great Depression that capitalism had failed, increasing numbers of American intellectuals became attracted to the idea of social engineering. They swarmed into the halls of power after Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. Few advocated outright nationalization of private industry. Instead, their model was Mussolini's fascist Italy.

Under fascism, business enterprises were organized into state-mandated cartels. The cartels, under government supervision, specified what would be produced, how much each cartel member could produce, at what prices they might hire labor and resources, and for what prices they might sell their output on the market. Labor, in turn, was organized into state-mandated trade unions; in partnership with the business cartels, the unions, again supervised by the government, determined work conditions and wages.

It was a planned economy with the outward facade of private ownership. But ownership of property was reduced to a mere title on a legal document [I've always wondered, what else could it be for things too big to put in your pocket or strap to your back?]. Everyone in the society was a servant of and subservient to the state.

Roosevelt's centerpiece New Deal programs — the National Recovery Act (NRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) — were constructed almost [I'd like to draw attention to the preceeding word, it's a great big warning sign that someone is about to pull some bullshit...] like carbon copies of the Italian fascist model. Only the Supreme Court decisions of 1935, declaring the NRA and AAA unconstitutional, saved America from a comprehensive fascist future.

Being defeated in their drive for fascist-style planning, the social engineers retreated into piecemeal planning in the form of a new mercantilism. Regulatory agencies proliferated; public-works projects abounded; fiscal and monetary policy was implemented to influence the direction and form of economic activity in the American economy; economic subsidies and political privileges were provided to increasing numbers of special-interest groups. [And so it not being facisit, made it facist...in Libertarianland we'll get you coming AND going.]

And what began under Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s remained in place in the 1950s and 1960s. The Great Society programs initiated in the mid-1960s merely extended and accelerated the growth of state control through the explicit introduction of the welfare-redistributive ethic as a cornerstone of governmental policy. [Welfare is fascist...and probably commie too eh?]

But the piecemeal policies of the neo-mercantilist, interventionist, welfare state have now cumulatively brought us back to where the process began with the New Deal. The incrementally introduced controls, regulations, spending programs, income-redistributive powers, subsidies, tariffs, monopoly privileges and licensing procedures have so extended the direct and indirect influence of government over the economy that America has acquired a planned economy "through the back door."

We have stumbled and groped our way back into a fascist-type economic order. Property remains in private hands and individuals do possess degrees of discretion over its use and disposal. But the right of private use and disposal has become so increasingly confined by state controls, and so pervasively influenced by governmental spending and taxing, that it is no longer possible to say that America possesses a free-market economy. [Because damnit, I dont have the freedom to make babyfood with cyanide in it anymore! Or call myself an engineer without a qualification! Or operate a business in unsafe conditions! Liberty *spits* Where's the liberty in any of that?]

The dilemma we face is that the change has occurred so gradually that most people now honestly believe the claims of the President's Council of Economic Advisors in the latest Economic Report of the President. The vast majority of our fellow citizens think that America's mercantilism and fascism constitute a free-market economy. They cannot conceive of a state that limits itself to the protection of life and property — and that leaves men free to decide peacefully what they wish to do with their freedom and property.

Our task, as friends of liberty, is to teach our fellow Americans the difference between freedom and fascism — before it is too late.

[Damn right. Whew, now then, lets see what's behind door number two!]


by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, economist

[This fellow wouldnt happen to be the same DiLorenzo who was guest editor of The Freeman, another libertarian think tanks propoganda rag, would he?]

When most people hear the word "fascism" they naturally think of its ugly racism and anti-Semitism as practiced by the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. But there was also an economic policy component of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," that was an essential ingredient of economic totalitarianism as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler. So- called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a "model" by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe. A version of economic fascism was in fact adopted in the United States in the 1930s and survives to this day. In the United States these policies were not called "fascism" but "planned capitalism." The word fascism may no longer be politically acceptable, but its synonym "industrial policy" is as popular as ever.

The Free World Flirts With Fascism

Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the 1930s. The American Ambassador to Italy, Richard Washburn Child, was so impressed with "corporatism" that he wrote in the preface to Mussolini's 1928 autobiography that "it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit dimensions of permanent greatness equal to Mussolini. . . . The Duce is now the greatest figure of this sphere and time." Winston Churchill wrote in 1927 that "If I had been an Italian I am sure I would have been entirely with you" and "don the Fascist black shirt." As late as 1940, Churchill was still describing Mussolini as "a great man."

U.S. Congressman Sol Bloom, Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said in 1926 that Mussolini "will be a great thing not only for Italy but for all of us if he succeeds. It is his inspiration, his determination, his constant toil that has literally rejuvenated Italy . . ."

One of the most outspoken American fascists was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book, The Coming American Fascism, Dennis declared that defenders of "18th-century Americanism" were sure to become "the laughing stock of their own countrymen" and that the adoption of economic fascism would intensify "national spirit" and put it behind "the enterprises of public welfare and social control." The big stumbling block to the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."

Certain British intellectuals were perhaps the most smitten of anyone by fascism. George Bernard Shaw announced in 1927 that his fellow "socialists should be delighted to find at last a socialist [Mussolini] who speaks and thinks as responsible rulers do." He helped form the British Union of Fascists whose "Outline of the Corporate State," according to the organization's founder, Sir Oswald Mosley, was "on the Italian Model." While visiting England, the American author Ezra Pound declared that Mussolini was "continuing the task of Thomas Jefferson."

Thus, it is important to recognize that, as an economic system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s. The evil deeds of individual fascists were later condemned, but the practice of economic fascism never was. To this day, the historically uninformed continue to repeat the hoary slogan that, despite all his faults, Mussolini at least "made the trains run on time," insinuating that his interventionist industrial policies were a success.

The Italian "Corporatist" System

So-called "corporatism" as practiced by Mussolini and revered by so many intellectuals and policy makers had several key elements: The state comes before the individual. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines fascism as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized, autocratic government." This stands in stark contrast to the classical liberal idea that individuals have natural rights that pre-exist government; that government derives its "just powers" only through the consent of the governed; and that the principal function of government is to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of its citizens, not to aggrandize the state.

Mussolini viewed these liberal ideas (in the European sense of the word "liberal") as the antithesis of fascism: "The Fascist conception of life," Mussolini wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual."

Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights: "The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature's plans." "If classical liberalism spells individualism," Mussolini continued, "Fascism spells government."

The essence of fascism, therefore, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the people. Think about this. Does anyone in America really believe that this is not what we have now? Are Internal Revenue Service agents really our "servants"? Is compulsory "national service" for young people, which now exists in numerous states and is part of a federally funded program, not a classic example of coercing individuals to serve the state? Isn't the whole idea behind the massive regulation and regimentation of American industry and society the notion that individuals should be forced to behave in ways defined by a small governmental elite? When the nation's premier health-care reformer recently declared that heart bypass surgery on a 92-year-old man was "a waste of resources," wasn't that the epitome of the fascist ideal-that the state, not individuals, should decide whose life is worthwhile, and whose is a "waste"?

The U.S. Constitution was written by individuals who believed in the classical liberal philosophy of individual rights and sought to protect those rights from governmental encroachment. But since the fascist/collectivist philosophy has been so influential, policy reforms over the past half century have all but abolished many of these rights by simply ignoring many of the provisions in the Constitution that were designed to protect them. As legal scholar Richard Epstein has observed: "[T]he eminent domain . . . and parallel clauses in the Constitution render . . . suspect many of the heralded reforms and institutions of the twentieth century: zoning, rent control, workers' compensation laws, transfer payments, progressive taxation." It is important to note that most of these reforms were initially adopted during the '30s, when the fascist/collectivist philosophy was in its heyday.

Planned industrial "harmony." Another keystone of Italian corporatism was the idea that the government's interventions in the economy should not be conducted on an ad hoc basis, but should be "coordinated" by some kind of central planning board. Government intervention in Italy was "too diverse, varied, contrasting. There has been disorganic . . . intervention, case by case, as the need arises," Mussolini complained in 1935. Fascism would correct this by directing the economy toward "certain fixed objectives" and would "introduce order in the economic field." Corporatist planning, according to Mussolini adviser Fausto Pitigliani, would give government intervention in the Italian economy a certain "unity of aim," as defined by the government planners.

These exact sentiments were expressed by Robert Reich (current U.S. Secretary of Labor) and Ira Magaziner (current federal government's health care reform "Czar") in their book Minding America's Business. In order to counteract the "untidy marketplace," an interventionist industrial policy "must strive to integrate the full range of targeted government policies-procurement, research and development, trade, antitrust, tax credits, and subsidies-into a coherent strategy . . . ."

Current industrial policy interventions, Reich and Magaziner bemoaned, are "the product of fragmented and uncoordinated decisions made by [many different] executive agencies, the Congress, and independent regulatory agencies . . . There is no integrated strategy to use these programs to improve the . . . U.S. economy."

In his 1989 book, The Silent War, Magaziner reiterated this theme by advocating "a coordinating group like the national Security Council to take a strategic national industrial view." The White House has in fact established a "National Economic Security Council." Every other advocate of an interventionist "industrial policy" has made a similar "unity of aim" argument, as first described by Pitigliani more than half a century ago.

Government-business partnerships. A third defining characteristic of economic fascism is that private property and business ownership are permitted, but are in reality controlled by government through a business-government "partnership." As Ayn Rand often noted, however, in such a partnership government is always the senior or dominating "partner."

In Mussolini's Italy, businesses were grouped by the government into legally recognized "syndicates" such as the "National Fascist Confederation of Commerce," the "National Fascist Confederation of Credit and Insurance," and so on. All of these "fascist confederations" were "coordinated" by a network of government planning agencies called "corporations," one for each industry. One large "National Council of Corporations" served as a national overseer of the individual "corporations" and had the power to "issue regulations of a compulsory character."

The purpose of this byzantine regulatory arrangement was so that the government could "secure collaboration . . . between the various categories of producers in each particular trade or branch of productive activity." Government-orchestrated "collaboration" was necessary because "the principle of private initiative" could only be useful "in the service of the national interest" as defined by government bureaucrats.

This idea of government-mandated and -dominated "collaboration" is also at the heart of all interventionist industrial policy schemes. A successful industrial policy, write Reich and Magaziner, would "require careful co-ordination between public and private sectors. Government and the private sector must work in tandem. Economic success now depends to a high degree on coordination, collaboration, and careful strategic choice," guided by government. The AFL-CIO has echoed this theme, advocating a "tripartite National Reindustrialization Board-including representatives of labor, business, and government" that would supposedly "plan" the economy. The Washington, D.C.-based Center for National Policy has also published a report authored by businessmen from Lazard Freres, du Pont, Burroughs, Chrysler, Electronic Data Systems, and other corporations promoting an allegedly "new" policy based on "cooperation of government with business and labor." Another report, by the organization "Rebuild America," co-authored in 1986 by Robert Reich and economists Robert Solow, Lester Thurow, Laura Tyson, Paul Krugman, Pat Choate, and Lawrence Chimerine urges "more teamwork" through "public-private partnerships among government, business and academia." This report calls for "national goals and targets" set by government planners who will devise a "comprehensive investment strategy" that will only permit "productive" investment, as defined by government, to take place.

Mercantilism and protectionism. Whenever politicians start talking about "collaboration" with business, it is time to hold on to your wallet. Despite the fascist rhetoric about "national collaboration" and working for the national, rather than private, interests, the truth is that mercantilist and protectionist practices riddled the system. Italian social critic Gaetano Salvemini wrote in 1936 that under corporatism, "it is the state, i.e., the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. In Fascist Italy the state pays for the blunders of private enterprise." As long as business was good, Salvemini wrote, "profit remained to private initiative." But when the depression came, "the government added the loss to the taxpayer's burden. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social." The Italian corporative state, The Economist editorialized on July 27, 1935, "only amounts to the establishment of a new and costly bureaucracy from which those industrialists who can spend the necessary amount, can obtain almost anything they want, and put into practice the worst kind of monopolistic practices at the expense of the little fellow who is squeezed out in the process." Corporatism, in other words, was a massive system of corporate welfare. "Three-quarters of the Italian economic system," Mussolini boasted in 1934, "had been subsidized by government."

If this sounds familiar, it is because it is exactly the result of agricultural subsidies, the Export-Import Bank, guaranteed loans to "preferred" business borrowers, protectionism, the Chrysler bailout, monopoly franchising, and myriad other forms of corporate welfare paid for directly or indirectly by the American taxpayer.

Another result of the close "collaboration" between business and government in Italy was "a continual interchange of personnel between the. . . civil service and private business." Because of this "revolving door" between business and government, Mussolini had "created a state within the state to serve private interests which are not always in harmony with the general interests of the nation." Mussolini's "revolving door" swung far and wide.

Signor Caiano, one of Mussolini's most trusted advisers, was an officer in the Royal Navy before and during the war. When the war was over, he joined the Orlando Shipbuilding Company. In October 1922, he entered Mussolini's cabinet, and the subsidies for naval construction and the merchant marine came under the control of his department. General Cavallero, at the close of the war, left the army and entered the Pirelli Rubber Company. In 1925 he became undersecretary at the Ministry of War. In 1930 he left the Ministry of War, and entered the service of the Ansaldo armament firm. Among the directors of the big companies in Italy, retired generals and generals on active service became very numerous after the advent of Fascism.

Such practices are now so common in the United States-especially in the defense industries-that it hardly needs further comment.

From an economic perspective, fascism meant (and means) an interventionist industrial policy, mercantilism, protectionism, and an ideology that makes the individual subservient to the state. "Ask not what the State can do for you, but what you can do for the State" is an apt description of the economic philosophy of fascism.

The whole idea behind collectivism in general and fascism in particular is to make citizens subservient to the state and to place power over resource allocation in the hands of a small elite. As stated eloquently by the American fascist economist Lawrence Dennis, fascism "does not accept the liberal dogmas as to the sovereignty of the consumer or trader in the free market.... Least of all does it consider that market freedom, and the opportunity to make competitive profits, are rights of the individual." Such decisions should be made by a "dominant class" he labeled "the elite."

German Economic Fascism

Economic fascism in Germany followed a virtually identical path. One of the intellectual fathers of German fascism was Paul Lensch, who declared in his book Three Years of World Revolution that "Socialism must present a conscious and determined opposition to individualism." The philosophy of German fascism was expressed in the slogan, Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz, which means "the common good comes before the private good." "The Aryan is not greatest in his mental qualities," Hitler stated in Mein Kampf, but in his noblest form he "willingly subordinates his own ego to the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it." The individual has "not rights but only duties."

Armed with this philosophy, Germany's National Socialists pursued economic policies very similar to Italy's: government-mandated "partnerships" between business, government, and unions organized by a system of regional "economic chambers," all overseen by a Federal Ministry of Economics.

A 25-point "Programme of the Party" was adopt-ed in 1925 with a number of economic policy "demands," all prefaced by the general statement that "the activities of the individual must not clash with the interests of the whole. . .but must be for the general good." This philosophy fueled a regulatory assault on the private sector. "We demand ruthless war upon all those whose activities are injurious to the common interest," the Nazis warned. And who are these on whom "war" is to be waged? "Common criminals," such as "usurers," i.e., bankers, and other "profiteers," i.e., ordinary businessmen in general. Among the other policies the Nazis demanded were abolition of interest; a government-operated social security system; the ability of government to confiscate land without compensation; a government monopoly in education; and a general assault on private-sector entrepreneurship (which was denounced as the "Jewish materialist spirit"). Once this "spirit" is eradicated, "The Party . . . is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health from within only on the principle: the common interest before self-interest."

Conclusions

Virtually all of the specific economic policies advocated by the Italian and German fascists of the 1930s have also been adopted in the United States in some form, and continue to be adopted to this day. Sixty years ago, those who adopted these interventionist policies in Italy and Germany did so because they wanted to destroy economic liberty, free enterprise, and individualism. Only if these institutions were abolished could they hope to achieve the kind of totalitarian state they had in mind.

Many American politicians who have advocated more or less total government control over economic activity have been more devious in their approach. They have advocated and adopted many of the same policies, but they have always recognized that direct attacks on private property, free enterprise, self-government, and individual freedom are not politically palatable to the majority of the American electorate. Thus, they have enacted a great many tax, regulatory, and income-transfer policies that achieve the ends of economic fascism, but which are sugar-coated with deceptive rhetoric about their alleged desire only to "save" capitalism.

American politicians have long taken their cue in this regard from Franklin D. Roosevelt, who sold his National Recovery Administration (which was eventually ruled unconstitutional) on the grounds that "government restrictions henceforth must be accepted not to hamper individualism but to protect it." In a classic example of Orwellian doublespeak, Roosevelt thus argued that individualism must be destroyed in order to save it.

Now that socialism has collapsed and survives nowhere but in Cuba, China, Vietnam, and on American university campuses, the biggest threat to economic liberty and individual freedom lies in the new economic fascism. While the former Communist countries are trying to privatize as many industries as possible as fast as they can, they are still plagued by governmental controls, leaving them with essentially fascist economies: private property and private enterprise are permitted, but are heavily controlled and regulated by government.

As most of the rest of the world struggles to privatize industry and encourage free enterprise, we in the United States are seriously debating whether or not we should adopt 1930s-era economic fascism as the organizational principle of our entire health care system, which comprises 14 percent of the GNP. We are also contemplating business-government "partnerships" in the automobile, airlines, and communications industries, among others, and are adopting government-managed trade policies, also in the spirit of the European corporatist schemes of the 1930s.

The state and its academic apologists are so skilled at generating propaganda in support of such schemes that Americans are mostly unaware of the dire threat they pose for the future of freedom. The road to serfdom is littered with road signs pointing toward "the information superhighway, health security, national service, managed trade," and "industrial policy."



by Paul Bigioni

[Well, the first non-loony libertarian, and a Canadian to boot, well despite my current loathing of Canada, lets take a look and see where he stands on your ideas...]

Observing political and economic discourse in North America since the 1970’s leads to an inescapable conclusion: the vast bulk of legislative activity favors the interests of large commercial enterprises. Big business is very well off, and successive Canadian and U.S. governments, of whatever political stripe, have made this their primary objective for at least the last 25 years. Digging deeper into twentieth century history, one finds this steadfast focus on the well-being of big business in other times and places. The exaltation of big business at the expense of the citizen was a central characteristic of government policy in Germany and Italy in the years before those countries were chewed to bits and spat out by fascism. Fascist dictatorships were borne to power in each of these countries by big business, and they served the interests of big business with remarkable ferocity. These facts have been lost to the popular consciousness in North America. Fascism could therefore return to us, and we will not even recognize it. Indeed, Huey Long, one of America’s most brilliant and most corrupt politicians, was once asked if America would ever see fascism. His answer was, “Yes, but we will call it anti-fascism”.

By exploring the disturbing parallels between our own time and the era of overt fascism, I am confident that we can avoid the same hideous mistakes. At present, we live in a constitutional democracy. The tools necessary to protect ourselves from fascism remain in the hands of the citizen. All the same, I believe that North America is on a fascist trajectory. We must recognize this threat for what it is, and we must change course. I propose to identify the core economic elements of fascism. In doing so, I will show that present-day political fashions are leading us down the path already trodden by Italy and Germany.

Consider the words of Thurman Arnold, head of the Anti-trust Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939:

“Germany, of course, has developed within 15 years from an industrial autocracy into a dictatorship. Most people are under the impression that the power of Hitler was the result of his demagogic blandishments and appeals to the mob… Actually, Hitler holds his power through the final and inevitable development of the uncontrolled tendency to combine in restraint of trade.”
Arnold made his point even more clearly in a 1939 address to the American Bar Association:

“Germany presents the logical end of the process of cartelization. From 1923 to 1935 cartelization grew in Germany until finally that nation was so organized that everyone had to belong either to a squad, a regiment or a brigade in order to survive. The names given to these squads, regiments or brigades were cartels, trade associations, unions and trusts. Such a distribution system could not adjust its prices. It needed a general with quasi-military authority who could order the workers to work and the mills to produce. Hitler named himself that general. Had it not been Hitler it would have been someone else.”
I suspect that to most readers, Thurman Arnold’s words are bewildering. Most people today are quite certain that they know what fascism is. When I ask people to define fascism, they typically tell me what it was, the assumption being that it no longer exists. I have asked this question on numerous occasions, and the usual answer contains references to dictatorship and racism which trail off into muttering when the respondent realizes that he or she knows almost nothing about fascism’s political and economic characteristics.

Before the rise of fascism, Germany and Italy were liberal democracies. Fascism did not swoop down on these nations as if from another planet. To the contrary, fascist dictatorship was the end result of political and economic processes which these nations underwent while they were still democratic. In both these countries, economic power became so utterly concentrated that the bulk of all economic activity fell under the control of a handful of men. Economic power, when sufficiently vast, becomes by its very nature political power. The political power of big business supported fascism in Italy and Germany.

Business tightened its grip on the state in both Italy and Germany by means of intricate webs of cartels and business associations. These associations exercised a very high degree of control over the businesses of their members. They frequently controlled pricing, supply and the licensing of patented technology. These associations were private, but were entirely legal. Neither Germany nor Italy had effective antitrust laws, and the proliferation of business associations was generally encouraged by government. This was an era eerily like our own, insofar as economists and businessmen constantly clamored for self-regulation in business. By the mid 1920’s, however, self-regulation had become self-imposed regimentation. By means of monopoly and cartel, the businessmen had wrought for themselves a “command and control” economy which effectively replaced the free market. The business associations of Italy and Germany at this time are perhaps history’s most perfect illustration of Adam Smith’s famous dictum: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices”.

How could the German government not be influenced by Fritz Thyssen, the man who controlled most of Germany’s coal production? How could it ignore the demands of the great I.G. Farben industrial trust, controlling as it did most of that nation’s chemical production? Indeed, the German nation was bent to the will of these powerful industrial interests. Hitler attended to reduction of certain taxes applicable to large businesses, while simultaneously increasing the same taxes as they related to small business. Previous decrees establishing price ceilings were repealed such that the cost of living for the average family was increased. Hitler’s economic policies hastened the destruction of Germany’s middle class by decimating small business. Ironically, Hitler pandered to the middle class and they provided some of his most enthusiastically violent supporters. The fact that he did this while simultaneously destroying them was a terrible achievement of Nazi propaganda.

Hitler also destroyed organized labor by making strikes illegal. Notwithstanding the socialist terms in which he appealed to the masses, Hitler’s labor policy was the dream come true of the industrial cartels that supported him. Nazi law gave total control over wages and working conditions to the employer. Compulsory (slave) labor was the crowning achievement of Nazi labor relations. Along with millions of people, organized labor died in the concentration camps. The camps were not only the most depraved of all human achievements, they were a part and parcel of Nazi economic policy. Hitler’s untermenschen, largely Jews, Poles and Russians, supplied slave labor to German industry. Surely this was a capitalist bonanza. In another bitter irony, the gates over many of the camps bore a sign that read “Arbeit Macht Frei” – “work shall set you free”. I do not know if this was black humor or propaganda, but it is emblematic of the deception that lies at the heart of fascism.

The same economic reality existed in Italy between the two world wars. In that country, nearly all industrial activity was owned or controlled by a few corporate giants, F.I.A.T. and the Ansaldo shipping concern being the chief examples. Land ownership in Italy was also highly concentrated and jealously guarded. Vast tracts of farmland were owned by a few latifundisti. The actual farming was carried out by a landless peasantry who were locked into a role essentially the same as that of the share cropper of the U.S. deep south. As in Germany, the few owners of the nation’s capital assets had immense influence over government. As a young man, Mussolini had been a strident socialist, and he, like Hitler, used socialist language to lure the people to fascism. Mussolini spoke of a “corporate” society wherein the energy of the people would not be wasted on class struggle. The entire economy was to be divided into industry specific “corporazioni”, bodies composed of both labor and management representatives. The corporazioni would resolve all labor/management disputes, and if they failed to do so, the fascist state would intervene. Unfortunately, as in Germany, there laid at the heart of this plan a swindle. The corporazioni, to the extent that they were actually put in place, were controlled by the employers. Together with Mussolini’s ban on strikes, these measures reduced the Italian laborer to the status of peasant.

Mussolini the one-time socialist went on to abolish the inheritance tax [And I thought the presence of inheretence tax was a sign that America was a commie hellhole according to our little friend here?], a measure which favored the wealthy. He decreed a series of massive subsidies to Italy’s largest industrial businesses and repeatedly ordered wage reductions [Which seems to be rather different from the concept of a minimum wage...doesnt it?]. Italy’s poor were forced to subsidize the wealthy. In real terms, wages and living standards for the average Italian dropped precipitously under fascism.

Even this brief historical sketch shows how fascism did the bidding of big business. The fact that Hitler called his party the “National Socialist Party” did not change the reactionary nature of his policies. The connection between the fascist dictatorships and monopoly capital was obvious to the US Department of Justice in 1939. As of 2005, however, it is all but forgotten.

It is always dangerous to forget the lessons of history. It is particularly perilous to forget about the economic origins of fascism in our modern era of deregulation [Well well well, I thought excessive regulation was the problem...]. Most Western liberal democracies are currently held in the thrall of what some call market fundamentalism. Few nowadays question the flawed assumption that state intervention in the marketplace is inherently bad [This fellow says that your assumption is flawed, any particular reason you're citing him or did you just not read it?]. As in Italy and Germany in the 20’s and 30’s, business associations clamor for more deregulation and deeper tax cuts. The gradual erosion of antitrust legislation, especially in the United States, has encouraged consolidation in many sectors of the economy by way of mergers and acquisitions. The North American economy has become more monopolistic than at any time in the post-WWII period. Fewer, larger competitors dominate all economic activity, and their political will is expressed with the millions of dollars they spend lobbying politicians and funding policy formulation in the many right-wing institutes which now limit public discourse to the question of how best to serve the interests of business. The consolidation of the economy, and the resulting perversion of public policy are themselves fascistic. I am quite certain, however, that President Clinton was not worrying about fascism when he repealed federal antitrust laws that had been enacted in the 1930’s. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is similarly unworried about fascism when it lobbies the Canadian government to water down our Federal Competition Act. (The Competition Act regulates monopolies, among other things, and itself represents a watering down of Canada’s previous antitrust laws. It was essentially written by industry and handed to the Mulroney Government to be enacted.)

At present, monopolies are regulated on purely economic grounds to ensure the efficient allocation of goods. If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence of big business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way which recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions. Antitrust laws do not just protect the marketplace, they protect democracy. [Seems like he's advocating more regulation...odd that you should cite him eh?]

Our collective forgetfulness about the economic nature of fascism is also dangerous at a more philosophical level. As contradictory as it may seem, fascist dictatorship was made possible because of the flawed notion of freedom which held sway during the era of laissez-faire capitalism in the early twentieth century. [Amazing my good chum, this fellow seems to be saying it's your idea of what to do that would lead to fascism, rather than the other way around...] It was the liberals of that era that clamored for unfettered personal and economic freedom, no matter what the cost to society. Such untrammeled freedom is not suitable to civilized humans. It is the freedom of the jungle. In other words, the strong have more of it than the weak. It is a notion of freedom which is inherently violent, because it is enjoyed at the expense of others. Such a notion of freedom legitimizes each and every increase in the wealth and power of those who are already powerful, regardless of the misery that will be suffered by others as a result. The use of the state to limit such “freedom” was denounced by the laissez-faire liberals of the early twentieth century. The use of the state to protect such “freedom” was fascism. Just as monopoly is the ruin of the free market, fascism is the ultimate degradation of liberal capitalism.

In the postwar period, this flawed notion of freedom has been perpetuated by the neo-liberal school of thought. The neo-liberals denounce any regulation of the marketplace. In so doing, they mimic the posture of big business in the pre-fascist period. Under the sway of neo-liberalism, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney and George W. Bush have decimated labor and exalted capital. (At present, only 7.8 per cent of workers in the U.S. private sector are unionized – about the same percentage as in the early 1900’s.) Neo-liberals call relentlessly for tax cuts which, in a previously progressive system, disproportionately favor the wealthy. Regarding the distribution of wealth, the neo-liberals have nothing to say. In the result, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As in Weimar Germany, the function of the state is being reduced to that of a steward for the interests of the moneyed elite. All that would be required now for a more rapid descent into fascism are a few reasons for the average person to forget that he is being ripped off. The racist hatred of Arabs, fundamentalist Christianity or an illusory sense of perpetual war may well be taking the place of Hitler’s hatred for communists and Jews.

Neo-liberal intellectuals often recognize the need for violence to protect what they regard as freedom. Thomas Freidman of the New York Times has written enthusiastically that “the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist”, and that “McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15…”. As in pre-fascist Germany and Italy, the laissez-faire businessmen call for the state to do their bidding even as they insist that the state should stay out of the marketplace. Put plainly, neo-liberals advocate the use of the state’s military force for the sake of private gain. Their view of the state’s role in society is identical to that of the businessmen and intellectuals who supported Hitler and Mussolini. There is no fear of the big state here. There is only the desire to wield its power. Neo-liberalism is thus fertile soil for fascism to grow again into an outright threat to our democracy.

Having said that fascism is the result of a flawed notion of freedom, I respectfully suggest that we must reexamine what we mean when we throw around the word “freedom”. We must conceive of freedom in a more enlightened way. Indeed, it was the thinkers of the Enlightenment that imagined a balanced and civilized freedom which did not impinge upon the freedom of one’s neighbor. Put in the simplest terms, my right to life means that you must give up your freedom to kill me. This may seem terribly obvious to decent people. Unfortunately, in our neo-liberal era, this civilized sense of freedom has, like the dangers of fascism, been all but forgotten.

When people think of fascism, they imagine Rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.

Observing political and economic discourse in North America since the 1970s leads to an inescapable conclusion: The vast bulk of legislative activity favors the interests of large commercial enterprises. Big business is very well off, and successive Canadian and U.S. governments, of whatever political stripe, have made this their primary objective for at least the past 25 years.

Digging deeper into 20th century history, one finds the exaltation of big business at the expense of the citizen was a central characteristic of government policy in Germany and Italy in the years before those countries were chewed to bits and spat out by fascism. Fascist dictatorships were borne to power in each of these countries by big business, and they served the interests of big business with remarkable ferocity.

These facts have been lost to the popular consciousness in North America. Fascism could therefore return to us, and we will not even recognize it. Indeed, Huey Long, one of America's most brilliant and most corrupt politicians, was once asked if America would ever see fascism. "Yes," he replied, "but we will call it anti-fascism."

By exploring the disturbing parallels between our own time and the era of overt fascism, we can avoid the same hideous mistakes. At present, we live in a constitutional democracy. The tools necessary to protect us from fascism remain in the hands of the citizen. All the same, North America is on a fascist trajectory. We must recognize this threat for what it is, and we must change course.

Consider the words of Thurman Arnold, head of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939:

"Germany, of course, has developed within 15 years from an industrial autocracy into a dictatorship. Most people are under the impression that the power of Hitler was the result of his demagogic blandishments and appeals to the mob... Actually, Hitler holds his power through the final and inevitable development of the uncontrolled tendency to combine in restraint of trade."
Arnold made his point even more clearly in a 1939 address to the American Bar Association:

"Germany presents the logical end of the process of cartelization. From 1923 to 1935, cartelization grew in Germany until finally that nation was so organized that everyone had to belong either to a squad, a regiment or a brigade in order to survive. The names given to these squads, regiments or brigades were cartels, trade associations, unions and trusts. Such a distribution system could not adjust its prices. It needed a general with quasi-military authority who could order the workers to work and the mills to produce. Hitler named himself that general. Had it not been Hitler it would have been someone else."
I suspect that to most readers, Arnold's words are bewildering. People today are quite certain that they know what fascism is. When I ask people to define it, they typically tell me what it was, the assumption being that it no longer exists. Most people associate fascism with concentration camps and rows of storm troopers, yet they know nothing of the political and economic processes that led to these horrible end results.

Before the rise of fascism, Germany and Italy were, on paper, liberal democracies. Fascism did not swoop down on these nations as if from another planet. To the contrary, fascist dictatorship was the result of political and economic changes these nations underwent while they were still democratic. In both these countries, economic power became so utterly concentrated that the bulk of all economic activity fell under the control of a handful of men. Economic power, when sufficiently vast, becomes by its very nature political power. The political power of big business supported fascism in Italy and Germany.

Business tightened its grip on the state in both Italy and Germany by means of intricate webs of cartels and business associations. These associations exercised a high degree of control over the businesses of their members. They frequently controlled pricing, supply and the licensing of patented technology. These associations were private but were entirely legal. Neither Germany nor Italy had effective antitrust laws, and the proliferation of business associations was generally encouraged by government.

This was an era eerily like our own, insofar as economists and businessmen constantly clamored for self-regulation in business. By the mid 1920s, however, self-regulation had become self-imposed regimentation. By means of monopoly and cartel, the businessmen had wrought for themselves a "command and control" economy that replaced the free market. The business associations of Italy and Germany at this time are perhaps history's most perfect illustration of Adam Smith's famous dictum: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

How could the German government not be influenced by Fritz Thyssen, the man who controlled most of Germany's coal production? How could it ignore the demands of the great I.G. Farben industrial trust, controlling as it did most of that nation's chemical production? Indeed, the German nation was bent to the will of these powerful industrial interests. Hitler attended to the reduction of taxes applicable to large businesses while simultaneously increasing the same taxes as they related to small business. Previous decrees establishing price ceilings were repealed such that the cost of living for the average family was increased. Hitler's economic policies hastened the destruction of Germany's middle class by decimating small business.

Ironically, Hitler pandered to the middle class, and they provided some of his most enthusiastically violent supporters. The fact that he did this while simultaneously destroying them was a terrible achievement of Nazi propaganda.

Hitler also destroyed organized labor by making strikes illegal. Notwithstanding the socialist terms in which he appealed to the masses, Hitler's labor policy was the dream come true of the industrial cartels that supported him. Nazi law gave total control over wages and working conditions to the employer.

Compulsory (slave) labor was the crowning achievement of Nazi labor relations. Along with millions of people, organized labor died in the concentration camps. The camps were not only the most depraved of all human achievements, they were a part and parcel of Nazi economic policy. Hitler's Untermenschen, largely Jews, Poles and Russians, supplied slave labor to German industry. Surely this was a capitalist bonanza. In another bitter irony, the gates over many of the camps bore a sign that read Arbeit Macht Frei — "Work shall set you free." I do not know if this was black humour or propaganda, but it is emblematic of the deception that lies at the heart of fascism.

The same economic reality existed in Italy between the two world wars. In that country, nearly all industrial activity was owned or controlled by a few corporate giants, Fiat and the Ansaldo shipping concern being the chief examples of this.

Land ownership in Italy was also highly concentrated and jealously guarded. Vast tracts of farmland were owned by a few latifundisti. The actual farming was carried out by a landless peasantry who were locked into a role essentially the same as that of the sharecropper of the U.S. Deep South.

As in Germany, the few owners of the nation's capital assets had immense influence over government. As a young man, Mussolini had been a strident socialist, and he, like Hitler, used socialist language to lure the people to fascism. Mussolini spoke of a "corporate" society wherein the energy of the people would not be wasted on class struggle. The entire economy was to be divided into industry specific corporazioni, bodies composed of both labor and management representatives. The corporazioni would resolve all labor/management disputes; if they failed to do so, the fascist state would intervene.

Unfortunately, as in Germany, there laid at the heart of this plan a swindle. The corporazioni, to the extent that they were actually put in place, were controlled by the employers. Together with Mussolini's ban on strikes, these measures reduced the Italian laborer to the status of peasant.

Mussolini, the one-time socialist, went on to abolish the inheritance tax, a measure that favored the wealthy. He decreed a series of massive subsidies to Italy's largest industrial businesses and repeatedly ordered wage reductions. Italy's poor were forced to subsidize the wealthy. In real terms, wages and living standards for the average Italian dropped precipitously under fascism.

Antitrust laws do not just protect the marketplace, they protect democracy

Even this brief historical sketch shows how fascism did the bidding of big business. The fact that Hitler called his party the "National Socialist Party" did not change the reactionary nature of his policies. The connection between the fascist dictatorships and monopoly capital was obvious to the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939. As of 2005, however, it is all but forgotten.

It is always dangerous to forget the lessons of history. It is particularly perilous to forget about the economic origins of fascism in our modern era of deregulation. Most Western liberal democracies are currently in the thrall of what some call market fundamentalism. Few nowadays question the flawed assumption that state intervention in the marketplace is inherently bad.

As in Italy and Germany in the '20s and '30s, business associations clamour for more deregulation and deeper tax cuts. The gradual erosion of antitrust legislation, especially in the United States, has encouraged consolidation in many sectors of the economy by way of mergers and acquisitions. The North American economy has become more monopolistic than at any time in the post-WWII period.

U.S. census data from 1997 shows that the largest four companies in the food, motor vehicle and aerospace industries control 53.4, 87.3 and 55.6 per cent of their respective markets. Over 20 per cent of commercial banking in the U.S. is controlled by the four largest financial institutions, with the largest 50 controlling over 60 per cent. Even these numbers underestimate the scope of concentration, since they do not account for the myriad interconnections between firms by means of debt instruments and multiple directorships, which further reduce the extent of competition.

Actual levels of U.S. commercial concentration have been difficult to measure since the 1970s, when strong corporate opposition put an end to the Federal Trade Commission's efforts to collect the necessary information.

Fewer, larger competitors dominate all economic activity, and their political will is expressed with the millions of dollars they spend lobbying politicians and funding policy formulation in the many right-wing institutes that now limit public discourse to the question of how best to serve the interests of business.

The consolidation of the economy and the resulting perversion of public policy are themselves fascistic. I am certain, however, that former president Bill Clinton was not worried about fascism when he repealed federal antitrust laws that had been enacted in the 1930s.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is similarly unworried about fascism as it lobbies the Canadian government to water down proposed amendments to our federal Competition Act. (The Competition Act, last amended in 1986, regulates monopolies, among other things, and itself represents a watering down of Canada's previous antitrust laws. It was essentially rewritten by industry and handed to the Mulroney government to be enacted.)

At present, monopolies are regulated on purely economic grounds to ensure the efficient allocation of goods.

If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence of big business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way that recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions.

Antitrust laws do not just protect the marketplace, they protect democracy.

It might be argued that North America's democratic political systems are so entrenched that we needn't fear fascism's return. The democracies of Italy and Germany in the 1920s were in many respects fledgling and weak. Our systems will surely react at the first whiff of dictatorship.

Or will they? This argument denies the reality that the fascist dictatorships were preceded by years of reactionary politics, the kind of politics that are playing out today. Further, it is based on the conceit that whatever our own governments do is democracy. Canada still clings to a quaint, 19th-century "first past the post" electoral system in which a minority of the popular vote can and has resulted in majority control of Parliament.

In the U.S., millions still question the legality of the sitting president's first election victory, and the power to declare war has effectively become his personal prerogative. Assuming that we have enough democracy to protect us is exactly the kind of complacency that allows our systems to be quietly and slowly perverted. On paper, Italy and Germany had constitutional, democratic systems. What they lacked was the eternal vigilance necessary to sustain them. That vigilance is also lacking today.

Our collective forgetfulness about the economic nature of fascism is also dangerous at a philosophical

[Elheru Aran]

Copied and pasted appeals to authority. How droll. It's been nice knowing you...

[Keevan_Colton]

Fucktard, everything needed to rebutt every piece of shit you're spouting can be found right here, if you're too lazy to go and read it yourself, well then fuck you.

[EugenicHegemony]

Fucktard, everything needed to rebutt every piece of shit you're spouting can be found right here, if you're too lazy to go and read it yourself, well then fuck you.

You can't refute any of it, just as I thought....

[EugenicHegemony]

Copied and pasted appeals to authority. How droll. It's been nice knowing you...

Would you rather I make it up?

[Keevan_Colton]

Copied and pasted appeals to authority. How droll. It's been nice knowing you...

Would you rather I make it up?

The folk you've pasted did. I'll get back to my editing now...'scues me.

[Ace Pace]

Fucktard, everything needed to rebutt every piece of shit you're spouting can be found right here, if you're too lazy to go and read it yourself, well then fuck you.

You can't refute any of it, just as I thought....

Sidenote: I've got no interest in this debate but I thought I should add something.

This board has many, well educated people, many of them studying or holding economic degrees.

Think it over.

[EugenicHegemony]

Fucktard, everything needed to rebutt every piece of shit you're spouting can be found right here, if you're too lazy to go and read it yourself, well then fuck you.

You can't refute any of it, just as I thought....

Sidenote: I've got no interest in this debate but I thought I should add something.

This board has many, well educated people, many of them studying or holding economic degrees.

Think it over.

That's great. They claim the U.S. has a free market, and it's complete bullsh!t. Can we use any economic system we please, no. In a free market you use any you please, and the state has no say in the matter. They don't seem to care, and I can see all that science fiction one world government propaganda is working on them. They embrace the despotic idea.

[Ace Pace]

That's great. They claim the U.S. has a free market, and it's complete bullsh!t. Can we use any economic system we please, no. In a free market you use any you please, and the state has no say in the matter. They don't seem to care, and I can see all that science fiction one world government propaganda is working on them. They embrace the despotic idea.

Think for a second about what your saying, I won't claim vast economic knowledge but I can allready see the issue with this.

When you say use any economic system we want, think. You and I are in the same city, theres a dozen differant As you please markets, each built around something. One gives away food freely, another demands you be white and pray to its god, etc. Tell me how you expect this to function.

[Surlethe]

I used the words "directly spent on goods and services" because these figures hide an important fact. Every one of these dollars creates a spiderweb of indirect dependency upon the government. A multitude of industries and markets supply goods and services to those who are the direct recipients of these governmental dollars. Therefore, what these industries and markets produce and earn are indirectly influenced by how much the government spends — and on what and whom. Thus, the full impact of governmental spending is far greater than that suggested by either the 24 or 40 percent of GNP figures.

By the same logic, the full impact of Chinese spending is far larger than the minimal portion of our GDP they occupy. Thus, China is in control of our government. It's a grand conspiracy! OMFG!

In a real and Fundamental sense, practically the entire American economy has been nationalized — if we broaden the term "nationalized" to mean the allocation and use of resources directly or indirectly determined or influenced by government's spending plans. And in this sense, the United States has a planned economy.

But governmental spending is only the tip of the iceberg. Federal, state and local governmental licensing laws determine who is allowed to enter practically every occupation and profession. The various federal and state regulatory agencies specify what products and services may be offered on the market; they stipulate the work conditions under which these goods may be manufactured; they restrict the materials and methods of production under which the goods may be produced; and they sometimes determine the prices and wages at which resources may be bought and the products sold.

Your entire point is predicated upon the dishonest redefinition of the word "nationalized" and a false dilemma between an anarchic, entirely unregulated market and utter government control. Game, set, match, motherfucker.

[EugenicHegemony]

Copied and pasted appeals to authority. How droll. It's been nice knowing you...

Would you rather I make it up?

The folk you've pasted did. I'll get back to my editing now...'scues me.

All you've done is post your opinion and not refute any of it. Nationalization doesn't have to be such a confined stringent term if you use common sense. Why should they have any right to control a free people's economy? I guess you like the government being the boss and us it's employees. I guess you like Corporate welfare, and that too is fascism. I guess you like the fact the citizenry are forced to absolve the failures, and fiascoes of big capital corporations in a monetary fashion.

[Surlethe]

That's great. They claim the U.S. has a free market, and it's complete bullsh!t. Can we use any economic system we please, no. In a free market you use any you please, and the state has no say in the matter. They don't seem to care, and I can see all that science fiction one world government propaganda is working on them. They embrace the despotic idea.

Tell me again: how the hell can we expect to use any market which is run entirely by the government when the government cannot intervene? Moron.

[Ace Pace]

All you've done is post your opinion and not refute any of it. Nationalization doesn't have to be such a confined stringent term if you use common sense. Why should they have any right to control a free people's economy? I guess you like the government being the boss and us it's employees. I guess you like Corporate welfare, and that too is fascism. I guess you like the fact the citizenry are forced to absolve the failures, and fiascoes of big capital corporations in a monetary fashion.

Think about what you are saying. What you are basicly saying is that the goverment should be hands off on the economy? Am I right?

[EugenicHegemony]

That's great. They claim the U.S. has a free market, and it's complete bullsh!t. Can we use any economic system we please, no. In a free market you use any you please, and the state has no say in the matter. They don't seem to care, and I can see all that science fiction one world government propaganda is working on them. They embrace the despotic idea.

Think for a second about what your saying, I won't claim vast economic knowledge but I can allready see the issue with this.

When you say use any economic system we want, think. You and I are in the same city, theres a dozen differant As you please markets, each built around something. One gives away food freely, another demands you be white and pray to its god, etc. Tell me how you expect this to function.

What does economics have to do with laws and rights, and how is that even a possible scenario? Where not talking about the removal of government, just the decentralization and relinquishing control of the economy.

[Ace Pace]

What does economics have to do with laws and rights, and how is that even a possible scenario? Where not talking about the removal of government, just the decentralization and relinquishing control of the economy.

So your saying the goverments job is to keep law and order, and defend the citizens?

Then how do you propose to deal with someone taking over the economy? What you are suggesting is a completly free market yes?

Just yes no.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

That's great. They claim the U.S. has a free market, and it's complete bullsh!t. Can we use any economic system we please, no. In a free market you use any you please, and the state has no say in the matter. They don't seem to care, and I can see all that science fiction one world government propaganda is working on them. They embrace the despotic idea.

Think for a second about what your saying, I won't claim vast economic knowledge but I can allready see the issue with this.

When you say use any economic system we want, think. You and I are in the same city, theres a dozen differant As you please markets, each built around something. One gives away food freely, another demands you be white and pray to its god, etc. Tell me how you expect this to function.

What does economics have to do with laws and rights, and how is that even a possible scenario? Where not talking about the removal of government, just the decentralization and relinquishing control of the economy.

Because economics helps shape the sorts of laws and rights that are available. You, as a anarchist whack-a-loon who cries yourself to sleep at night after posting your insane rantings in a blog that nobody other than other anarchist whack-a-loons read. If you remove all controls on the economy, then you will wind up with a similar situation to the one which existed at the end of the nineteenth century, which required that folks like Teddy Roosevelt push through anti-trust laws.

That is to say that, with complete deregulation of the economy, there will be nothing at all to prevent the formation of enormous monopolies, and we would return to the days of massive currency speculation generating routine depressions and panics . . . the situation of the early 19th century before the creation of a managed currency.

Of course, since you are evidently so completely ignorant of history, you wouldn't know this. The only rights and laws available under an anarchistic economy are thus: A) Take up a hard-scrabble agrarian existence, where you are only reliant on yourself . . . and the climate for the year. Good if the growing season is long, bad if there's a drought. B) You are compelled to work for a sweatshop, owned by one of the giant monopolies, for a complete pittance. You have no rights, because you're both completely replaceable and you can be shot if you try to unionize.

Oh yeah, and you wouldn't know the definition of "plutocrat" if it raped you up the ass. A plutocracy isn't the . . . what the fuck was it you called it the "installation of a puppet president"? A plutocracy is a form of government where he who has the vote happens to be he with the most money. As monopolies with considerable political influence are one of the possible end-results to an unregulated economy, your mastubatory anarchist fantasy would very possibly generate a plutocracy.

[EugenicHegemony]

What does economics have to do with laws and rights, and how is that even a possible scenario? Where not talking about the removal of government, just the decentralization and relinquishing control of the economy.

So your saying the goverments job is to keep law and order, and defend the citizens?

Then how do you propose to deal with someone taking over the economy? What you are suggesting is a completly free market yes?

Just yes no.

What do you mean, 'someone taking over the economy'? Yes, I mean free market, free trade, no tariffs, no manipulation of supply and demand, pure unencumbered competition to set prices. I laid out a 17 point plan, and they were just some ideas. Yet, all here flamed me for everysingle one of them. I never claimed to have all the answers or even any of them. I enjoy discussing alternatives to a better freer society.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

*Read thread. Marvels at the "Bury Thy Opponents Under An Enormous Mountain of Copy-And-Paste Bullshit" 'debating' tactic used by the flamebait of the hour. Goes to launder toga and practice the appropriate thumb gesture.*

Oh, and I would look forward to voting in your ban poll, but you seem so singularly incapable holding a debate that you make teenaged religious fundamentalists and C&P free-energy whack-a-loons look good. And such people are so singularly worthless that bringing them up before us in the Senate would be a mere formality, at best.

Hell, your carcass will make a fine example for the next copy-and-paste troll who comes through here.

[EugenicHegemony]

Think for a second about what your saying, I won't claim vast economic knowledge but I can allready see the issue with this.

When you say use any economic system we want, think. You and I are in the same city, theres a dozen differant As you please markets, each built around something. One gives away food freely, another demands you be white and pray to its god, etc. Tell me how you expect this to function.

What does economics have to do with laws and rights, and how is that even a possible scenario? Where not talking about the removal of government, just the decentralization and relinquishing control of the economy.

Because economics helps shape the sorts of laws and rights that are available. You, as a anarchist whack-a-loon who cries yourself to sleep at night after posting your insane rantings in a blog that nobody other than other anarchist whack-a-loons read. If you remove all controls on the economy, then you will wind up with a similar situation to the one which existed at the end of the nineteenth century, which required that folks like Teddy Roosevelt push through anti-trust laws.

That is to say that, with complete deregulation of the economy, there will be nothing at all to prevent the formation of enormous monopolies, and we would return to the days of massive currency speculation generating routine depressions and panics . . . the situation of the early 19th century before the creation of a managed currency.

Of course, since you are evidently so completely ignorant of history, you wouldn't know this. The only rights and laws available under an anarchistic economy are thus: A) Take up a hard-scrabble agrarian existence, where you are only reliant on yourself . . . and the climate for the year. Good if the growing season is long, bad if there's a drought. B) You are compelled to work for a sweatshop, owned by one of the giant monopolies, for a complete pittance. You have no rights, because you're both completely replaceable and you can be shot if you try to unionize.

Oh yeah, and you wouldn't know the definition of "plutocrat" if it raped you up the ass. A plutocracy isn't the . . . what the fuck was it you called it the "installation of a puppet president"? A plutocracy is a form of government where he who has the vote happens to be he with the most money. As monopolies with considerable political influence are one of the possible end-results to an unregulated economy, your mastubatory anarchist fantasy would very possibly generate a plutocracy.

Everything negative you have mentioned above, we already have in the U.S..

[Surlethe]

If you remove all controls on the economy, then you will wind up with a similar situation to the one which existed at the end of the nineteenth century, which required that folks like Teddy Roosevelt push through anti-trust laws.

That is to say that, with complete deregulation of the economy, there will be nothing at all to prevent the formation of enormous monopolies, and we would return to the days of massive currency speculation generating routine depressions and panics . . . the situation of the early 19th century before the creation of a managed currency.

See, the thing about late 1800s USA is that anarchists blow their load daily over the Gilded Age's economy. That's their ideal economy: it's the sort of deregulation that gives Ayn Rand an orgasm just thinking about it. [Gah, bad Surlethe, I do not want any image of Ayn Rand orgasaming in my forum! Take your Libertarian porno and get out! ]

[Ace Pace]

What do you mean, 'someone taking over the economy'? Yes, I mean free market, free trade, no tariffs, no manipulation of supply and demand, pure unencumbered competition to set prices. I laid out a 17 point plan, and they were just some ideas. Yet, all here flamed me for everysingle one of them. I never claimed to have all the answers or even any of them. I enjoy discussing alternatives to a better freer society.

So now you are suggesting a market completly freed of any influence?

I'm no history expert, just a hobbyist, but I recall this period, roughly around the end of the 19th century, where we invented the term robber barons. Those were men who took advantange of the fact there were Zero laws regarding the economy and manipulated it into complete dominance.

Now I'm fairly certine the same would happen today, we would all love an ideal economy, but since humans arn't ideal, no economy will ever be completly free to be manipulated.

A free economy, will allways be manipulated to the utter gain of the most ruthless business manegers, now, more then ever.


It's like that old saying "Democracy is the worst system of government except for all others that have been tried." We've tried other systems, we've tried a de-regulated system(U.S 19th century), we've tried communisim(USSR, North Korea, Cuba for example), we've tried nearly every economic system ever proposed. What humanity has slowly, collectively discovered, is that while Capitalisim is at best, a working solution, there is nothing better.

[Plekhanov]

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

The father of the free market could see that a true free market actually requires government intervention to maintain it, odd that so many of those who claim to be his followers can’t.

[Surlethe]

What do you mean, 'someone taking over the economy'?

Say -- for example -- China decides to wage economic war on the US. How is the US to deal with this?

Yes, I mean free market, free trade, no tariffs, no manipulation of supply and demand, pure unencumbered competition to set prices.

And, yet, a pure free market leads to market failures; since you've not taken even Econ 101, though, I've no doubt you have no idea what a market failure is.

I laid out a 17 point plan, and they were just some ideas. Yet, all here flamed me for everysingle one of them. I never claimed to have all the answers or even any of them. I enjoy discussing alternatives to a better freer society.

It's because your ideas were stupid, and we flame stupid ideas here. Is that so fucking hard to grasp? If you'd recognized they were wrong and conceded them, you'd have a lot fewer problems; but you're a trolling piece of dogshit, you use that flamage as a smokescreen to ignore the content of the posts. Imbecilic dumbass.

[Surlethe]

[Gah, bad Surlethe, I do not want any image of Ayn Rand orgasaming in my forum! Take your Libertarian porno and get out! ]

Sorry! *hides the Ayn Rand ... pics*

[SirNitram]

All you've done is post your opinion and not refute any of it.

There's nothing to refute. The vast majority of what you've posted are Appeals to Authority; your own or someone else's. None of it has been backed by solid, logical arguments, but this is unsurprising: Your position is so completely untenable that you can't actually hold it without changing the meaning of words. Which, by the way, you can't do.

That's the core of it, really. Your laughable position is based only on the blatherings of other loonies like you, and in an arena where you must provide solid, reliable evidence and sound logical reasoning, you're revealed for the worthless sack of shit you are, unable to hold your position.