A New Dark Ages!?? | 69 comments (69 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (none / 1)

Seems to me that he throws over all "social contract" theories and bases Neo-Classical Economics squarely on "Might Makes Right." Given the size, political organization, (including unrestricted immigration), and wealth of the USA, even in 1888, at least his choice of founding principle was feasible for at least 100 years. Mason Gaffney, one of whose professional specialties is land use and land taxation, notes that Clark is still the foundation for US tax policy on land.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Apr 4th, 2009 at 11:28:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (4.00 / 3)

ARGeezer:

Seems to me that he throws over all "social contract" theories and bases Neo-Classical Economics squarely on "Might Makes Right."

I.e. Theft is property.

Is anyone really surprised that this is what NCE boils down to?

We're already in a Mad Max scenario. It's not the roving bands of big-haired people in leather we should be frightened of - the academic economists and think tanks are far more dangerous, and far less sane.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 06:05:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (4.00 / 4)

The amusing thing is that when you sync this up with the thread Nomad and Migeru are having you get the clarity that some people have realised (De Soto?) you can't have a market economics when most people have nothing.

Thus, one guy's proposal is that the first step for development in the 3rd world is to go around defining property ownership, so some people have something.

Then the NCE game can start, the purpose of which is to go from this starting state (where we distributed things to people to get things moving) to funnelling all the wealth back to a small minority. i.e. Essentially back to the point where we were before we distributed some property rights around.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 06:47:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (4.00 / 4)

Except that the people who had rights no longer have them, and the people who used to be outsiders now have the rights - over the informal property, as-was, and also over the people, through debt slavery.

So it's all very neat, efficient and economically praise-worthy.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 07:37:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: A New Dark Ages!?? (none / 1)

Many of the various tribes, or nations, occupying the pre-Colombian Americas had established governing councils, an area of land over which they claimed exclusive rights, defended from others and sometimes sought to expand and generally fulfilled the definition of "nation" as applied to the German peoples by the Romans, if not the later definition of "nation-state." They had two serious deficiencies with respect to the Europeans: a late stone age level of technology and immune systems that were relatively much more vulnerable to infectious agents largely arising from domestication of animals.

Europeans arrived, imposed their version of written law, dismissed preexisting law and custom, though often retaining place names, and proceeded to delegitimate native American society and appropriate
their land, either forcing cultural assimilation and effective slavery on their victims or exterminating them and expropriating their land. It was might makes right, cultural and religious arrogance or both.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Apr 7th, 2009 at 10:32:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

A New Dark Ages!?? | 69 comments (69 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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