Friday, November 18, 2005
The Best of All Possible Worlds
I recently read another vile missive from Victor about France, stinking of intellectual dishonesty and cultural arrogance.
I don’t really need to find inspiration to write when Victor Davis Hanson finds it for me. I could just write an essay to respond to his essay, going point-by-point and refuting him one sentence at a time. I would also have one advantage over him, besides being smarter and better looking: the facts.
Victor labors in a cramped, well-guarded world where there are no poor people and capitalism is the answer for everything, from education to crabs. Any deviation from this doctrine is punishable by termination of employment and public excoriation. He has many companions in this gamy intellectual environment. They call themselves “conservatives.”
Conservatives cherish a sad and brutally simple-minded illusion: the market can fix essentially all ills. If you are smart and hardworking, you will make money and succeed. If you are lazy and/or stupid (or black, which is usually the same thing to them) you will be “punished” with poverty.
This frighteningly simple logic works (miracle of miracles!) both ways: If you are poor, it’s because you have been weighed by the all-seeing Mother of Markets and Liberties and found wanting. If you are successful it is because you are hard working, smart, and generally loved by God.
Voltaire (several centuries ago) laughed at this stupid worldview, this belief that this is the “best of all possible worlds.” Read Candide, for God’s sake. The Bible denied this axiom: read Job. Nevertheless, conservatives maintain that Jobs are the exception rather than the rule.
The complicated part comes when you ask “how many exceptions do there need to be to disprove the rule?” Maybe if 5% of all “rich” people were found to be of average mental abilities, moral standing, and work habits? How about 25%? What about 50%?
What about 100%? The equally brutal truth is that, leaving out those who have inherited wealth, the only personality factor that correlates strongly with wealth is ability to amass wealth. Yes, this is Petitio Principii, or circular logic. The conclusion is the same as the premise. Nothing correlates with wealth. Conservatives might argue that “productivity” does, but what does this word mean? Something like “ability to generate revenue for your company,” which is within a hair’s breadth of being identical.
Unfortunately, only people who can climb to the top of the corporate ladder can control enough of the corporate decision making to be able to personally enact changes that might make the company 10 million more dollars in a year, thus justifying the 1 million dollars worth of stock options they get awarded. Climbing to the top of the corporate ladder, or getting a small business you own to grow into a large business, is based on far more than hard work and smarts. But even Dilbert knows that. Check out this piece from an article Krugman wrote for the nation:
According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez-- confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.)
The truth is that these numbers have been published in a hundred studies over the last ten years. I might ask conservatives this: has the productivity of the top .1 percent of the population risen 343 percent since 1973? Are the big business types really that much smarter or harder working? Are their businesses making that much more money?
Of course not. Their taxes are less. Corporate executives take profit from their companies like never before. And conservatives STILL rammed an abolition of the estate tax and dividends tax through Congress last year.
If anything else so alarming in this country had grown by 343 percent the masses would be howling. If the per capita death rate in Los Angeles grew by 343 percent over the same period the people would vote to triple the number of police officers on the streets. If the national rate of inflation more than tripled over the same period, or if the unemployment rate more than tripled over the same period, there would have been riots and impeachments by now.
The corporate class knows that the masses are largely ignorant and quiescent. As long as they keep the real wages for the serfs stagnant or rising at a super-slow rate there won’t be electoral and legal repercussions. As long, then, as the economy grows they can then pocket the profit for themselves. And the super-rich, so few in number, don’t even need to see the economy grow. Because of their scarcity they can simply take what they can get away with because they are too few to make an impact on the bottom line of the nation.
I can’t know whether these people honestly believe the shit that comes out of Sean Hannity’s mouth. Or Bill O’Reilly’s mouth. Or anything coming from the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation. It’s largely irrelevant. I don’t care whether the liar believes his own lies. I just care whether the sane people do.
When Bill Clinton talked about a “vast right-wing conspiracy” he was talking about these people. If you’ve read this far you probably already know who I’m talking about. Bill O’Lielly. Sean “Misquote” Hannity. Rush “I Make This Up as I Go Along” Limbaugh. Scarborough. FOX News. The above-mentioned institutes. The Federalist Society. The Hoover Institute. The list goes on.
What do liberals have? Move On. That’s the only liberal organization with comparable clout. Maybe the Sierra Club.
The reason is that the corporate class has the money and the connections to make the Cato Institute and its sordid friends. Money is power. It has proven very effective at lining the pockets of selected politicians, buying advertisements, and underwriting entire companies devoted to nothing but telling poor people that they deserve to be poor unless they can play by the rules of the “free” market, rules which they make up.
Don’t think so? Think about it. Ever wonder why, in America, drug companies get to make a newly-developed drug exclusively for twenty years? To recoup the R & D costs, of course, they say. Pay no attention to the fact that drug companies make 15% profit when other companies average around 4% (1), that Pfizer is #4 on the list of donors to the Republican Party over the last thirty years, that they essentially own the Congress of the United States. Check out this article by the New England Journal of Medicine. Paying for R & D doesn’t cost as much as the companies say it does. And with the World Trade Organization bending the arms of developing countries to conform to western standards, Big Pharma will continue to make a killing.
Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, ever wonder why conservative think tanks come to similar conclusions on wildly differing topics? What does conservative economic policy have to do with abortion? How do conservative “think” tanks come to the same conclusions about economic policy and abortion (try this article for one of millions of Heritage Foundation examples)? Why does free enterprise advocacy seem so closely linked to tolerance for intelligent design (See this article from the Cato Institute)?
If you are a worthy audience for my teaching, you already know the answer. They don’t. They are MADE to. The Republican Party is a Frankenstinian monster composed of the head of East Coast Affluence sown onto the body of Rural Cultural Conservatism. The only reason these two groups share the same party is because there are only two parties in this country, and if you leave the Democrats (like the South did in the sixties and seventies) there is only one place to go.
But it’s miraculous how these “think” tanks come up with the same answers to the same cultural questions on wildly different topics. It’s almost as if, instead of being composed of legitimate thinkers independently arriving at conclusions (as they assert they are) they are, hmmmm, coordinated. Coached. Directed.
The truth is they are stinking intellectual whores who will wrap their scabrous lips around any idea their corporate backers tell them to. They will assume any position, no matter how degrading or humiliating, as long as the price is right. They deserve the contempt of all honest people.
As I grew to understand this frightening truth about America I became, well, disturbed. Upset. Rich people are buying politicians, public relations companies, and companies devoted to doing nothing but inventing justifications for policies they want simply because they benefit from them.
Goebbels would be proud.
I don’t really need to find inspiration to write when Victor Davis Hanson finds it for me. I could just write an essay to respond to his essay, going point-by-point and refuting him one sentence at a time. I would also have one advantage over him, besides being smarter and better looking: the facts.
Victor labors in a cramped, well-guarded world where there are no poor people and capitalism is the answer for everything, from education to crabs. Any deviation from this doctrine is punishable by termination of employment and public excoriation. He has many companions in this gamy intellectual environment. They call themselves “conservatives.”
Conservatives cherish a sad and brutally simple-minded illusion: the market can fix essentially all ills. If you are smart and hardworking, you will make money and succeed. If you are lazy and/or stupid (or black, which is usually the same thing to them) you will be “punished” with poverty.
This frighteningly simple logic works (miracle of miracles!) both ways: If you are poor, it’s because you have been weighed by the all-seeing Mother of Markets and Liberties and found wanting. If you are successful it is because you are hard working, smart, and generally loved by God.
Voltaire (several centuries ago) laughed at this stupid worldview, this belief that this is the “best of all possible worlds.” Read Candide, for God’s sake. The Bible denied this axiom: read Job. Nevertheless, conservatives maintain that Jobs are the exception rather than the rule.
The complicated part comes when you ask “how many exceptions do there need to be to disprove the rule?” Maybe if 5% of all “rich” people were found to be of average mental abilities, moral standing, and work habits? How about 25%? What about 50%?
What about 100%? The equally brutal truth is that, leaving out those who have inherited wealth, the only personality factor that correlates strongly with wealth is ability to amass wealth. Yes, this is Petitio Principii, or circular logic. The conclusion is the same as the premise. Nothing correlates with wealth. Conservatives might argue that “productivity” does, but what does this word mean? Something like “ability to generate revenue for your company,” which is within a hair’s breadth of being identical.
Unfortunately, only people who can climb to the top of the corporate ladder can control enough of the corporate decision making to be able to personally enact changes that might make the company 10 million more dollars in a year, thus justifying the 1 million dollars worth of stock options they get awarded. Climbing to the top of the corporate ladder, or getting a small business you own to grow into a large business, is based on far more than hard work and smarts. But even Dilbert knows that. Check out this piece from an article Krugman wrote for the nation:
According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez-- confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.)
The truth is that these numbers have been published in a hundred studies over the last ten years. I might ask conservatives this: has the productivity of the top .1 percent of the population risen 343 percent since 1973? Are the big business types really that much smarter or harder working? Are their businesses making that much more money?
Of course not. Their taxes are less. Corporate executives take profit from their companies like never before. And conservatives STILL rammed an abolition of the estate tax and dividends tax through Congress last year.
If anything else so alarming in this country had grown by 343 percent the masses would be howling. If the per capita death rate in Los Angeles grew by 343 percent over the same period the people would vote to triple the number of police officers on the streets. If the national rate of inflation more than tripled over the same period, or if the unemployment rate more than tripled over the same period, there would have been riots and impeachments by now.
The corporate class knows that the masses are largely ignorant and quiescent. As long as they keep the real wages for the serfs stagnant or rising at a super-slow rate there won’t be electoral and legal repercussions. As long, then, as the economy grows they can then pocket the profit for themselves. And the super-rich, so few in number, don’t even need to see the economy grow. Because of their scarcity they can simply take what they can get away with because they are too few to make an impact on the bottom line of the nation.
I can’t know whether these people honestly believe the shit that comes out of Sean Hannity’s mouth. Or Bill O’Reilly’s mouth. Or anything coming from the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation. It’s largely irrelevant. I don’t care whether the liar believes his own lies. I just care whether the sane people do.
When Bill Clinton talked about a “vast right-wing conspiracy” he was talking about these people. If you’ve read this far you probably already know who I’m talking about. Bill O’Lielly. Sean “Misquote” Hannity. Rush “I Make This Up as I Go Along” Limbaugh. Scarborough. FOX News. The above-mentioned institutes. The Federalist Society. The Hoover Institute. The list goes on.
What do liberals have? Move On. That’s the only liberal organization with comparable clout. Maybe the Sierra Club.
The reason is that the corporate class has the money and the connections to make the Cato Institute and its sordid friends. Money is power. It has proven very effective at lining the pockets of selected politicians, buying advertisements, and underwriting entire companies devoted to nothing but telling poor people that they deserve to be poor unless they can play by the rules of the “free” market, rules which they make up.
Don’t think so? Think about it. Ever wonder why, in America, drug companies get to make a newly-developed drug exclusively for twenty years? To recoup the R & D costs, of course, they say. Pay no attention to the fact that drug companies make 15% profit when other companies average around 4% (1), that Pfizer is #4 on the list of donors to the Republican Party over the last thirty years, that they essentially own the Congress of the United States. Check out this article by the New England Journal of Medicine. Paying for R & D doesn’t cost as much as the companies say it does. And with the World Trade Organization bending the arms of developing countries to conform to western standards, Big Pharma will continue to make a killing.
Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, ever wonder why conservative think tanks come to similar conclusions on wildly differing topics? What does conservative economic policy have to do with abortion? How do conservative “think” tanks come to the same conclusions about economic policy and abortion (try this article for one of millions of Heritage Foundation examples)? Why does free enterprise advocacy seem so closely linked to tolerance for intelligent design (See this article from the Cato Institute)?
If you are a worthy audience for my teaching, you already know the answer. They don’t. They are MADE to. The Republican Party is a Frankenstinian monster composed of the head of East Coast Affluence sown onto the body of Rural Cultural Conservatism. The only reason these two groups share the same party is because there are only two parties in this country, and if you leave the Democrats (like the South did in the sixties and seventies) there is only one place to go.
But it’s miraculous how these “think” tanks come up with the same answers to the same cultural questions on wildly different topics. It’s almost as if, instead of being composed of legitimate thinkers independently arriving at conclusions (as they assert they are) they are, hmmmm, coordinated. Coached. Directed.
The truth is they are stinking intellectual whores who will wrap their scabrous lips around any idea their corporate backers tell them to. They will assume any position, no matter how degrading or humiliating, as long as the price is right. They deserve the contempt of all honest people.
As I grew to understand this frightening truth about America I became, well, disturbed. Upset. Rich people are buying politicians, public relations companies, and companies devoted to doing nothing but inventing justifications for policies they want simply because they benefit from them.
Goebbels would be proud.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 8:02 PM 
