In Response To An Self Styled Anarchist

Convincing a population committed to entrenched stupidity is simply so much effort wasted; and, for no particular good effect in stopping, or even slowing down the American slide into oblivion, or worse, the possible extinction of the species.

The problem for shows like West Wing is that they little time to explain themselves, and so very easily lapse into slogans. The complaint regarding a particular episode about job outsourcing and media monopolization is that they had behaved outside their normal practice, which is to give some brief rational justification for some point of view. Within the context of their own practice they violated even the brief justification because they had none.

Problems of economy are often expressed in what appear to be slogans. It is simply not possible to put an entire book, past papers, huge descriptions and rationales into each and every 5 page paper. So what may appear as slogans, or what are assumed to be slogans are not without rational justification, whether there is space and time to list them or not.

Some slogans persist simply because they are true, or effective, or both. Mostly they are convenient metaphors for the lengthy arguments that they are based on. This is entirely different from bald assertion which has no rational support.

In any case, discussions about slogans and other means of technique become methods of avoiding the issues are of no particular interest.

First of all - free markets are neither free nor markets. The definition of markets as "a voluntarily exchanging ideas or things is a market," will do.

That is barter, pure and simple. As such, it is a reasonable definition and ethically inoffensive. But it is disingenuously used by free market apologists as a ruse to ethically justify what they really mean by free market, which something way beyond barter and exchange. It is not a market in the sense that it actually interferes with exchange and barter by introducing a predatory element based on middle men, brokers, currencies, taxes, fees, stocks and other financial instruments, profit, monopolies, extortion and naked threat. That is not a market based on simple exchange. It is the use of market as an excuse for theft.

It is not free. The anarchist definition is either naive or disingenuous. The naive view is that anything with the label of "free" must be anarchic, must be good. This is based on the is conception that all definitions and labels of "free" are somehow ethical and correct. They are not. his is simply a matter of not applying critical thinking. The label does not make it so. The disingenuous view is something like the Libertarian view of "free" which is essentially right wing, conservative economics based on the assumed right to plunder. By free, they mean the deregulated ability of powerful economic entities to cooperate as monopolies in order to eliminate competitors and to extort wealth. That s their freedom in actuality and has nothing to do with the free exchange of ideas and things among individuals.

One definition of Free Markets includes the idea that the free market is a means of voluntary wealth-creation through cooperation due to the natural strive in man to increase the standards of living.

It is neither voluntary nor free for individuals or for the less powerful when cooperation is defined as monopoly. Otherwise they espouse social Darwinism as the free and voluntary right of the powerful, monopolized, financial institutions to prey on economic cattle. In fact, it does not fulfill its own stated goal. The overall standard of living for humans at large is decreasing, including the future of Americans, and the only increases accrue to the powerful elite; something like a Pareto's law of parasitic economics.

Other than simple might makes right there is no rational or ethical justification for free market fundamentalism other than those based on social Darwinism and complexity theory.

But, like all Darwinian systems, free markets, America and even the human species is slated for extinction.

A committed anarchist wants to believe that total freedom should be the asymptote. This utopian concept is disturbed by sheer human stupidity and the all too human inability to live in an ethical state of anarchy. The problem is that no culture rises higher than its least member and this culture is full of rotten apples. That means anarchic utopias are at best reliant on the perfection of human individuals, which is not going to happen anytime before we face global catastrophes.

Human intelligence; more correctly, the potential for intelligence must be taken into account. It serves no Darwinian purpose and is contrary to complexity theory. Given the self destructive behavior of Darwinian and anarchic systems, which are not free by any means in that they are totally subservient to base line laws of the jungle and genetics, the only possible use of human intelligence is to transcend such base line laws in order to avoid extinction and to manage racial survival and evolution.

The bottom line, it turns out, for all conservative, free market, anarchistic economic schemes is not only that they are not free and entirely programmed, and not only is it suicidal and ethically unsupportable, but they are based on the idea that human evolution and culture is already fixed at it apex, without any need for further evolution and that its complex cultural systems such as economics are as fixed and immutable as the putative laws of the jungle. This is simply nonsense.

Selective anarchism seems more appropriate; that is individual freedom, civil rights, bearing arms, freedom from oppression including freedom from the oppression of free markets, no victimless crime, etc.

On the other hand humans need to regulate complex systems that are uninteresting, non-productive and certainly self destructive as free market economics.

The anarchist wishes to abolish state and government as the roots of the problem; the use of force and coercion to create non-voluntary and oppressing hierarchical structures in society.

The slogan "state and government as they are the roots of the problem" is an irrational mixed metaphor. Certainly government is at the root of numerous type of human suffering such as legislating morality, death penalty, economic extortion, etc. And this is correct; it ought to be eliminated. That does not mean that government has no use at all. For the sake of the survival of species, government must be used to regulate the rapacious greed and economic predation of free market economic systems, which is the actual root of the problem.

The only force and coercion that is destroying the human right to dignity, to a useful anarchic freedom, and to a bare bones right to survival is that coercion employed by monopolized, cooperating hunting bands of economic predators that espouse free markets.

As for anarchic relief from oppressing hierarchical structures, we are using it right now, the leveling of information flow on the internet. True oppressing hierarchical structures are Enron, The World Bank, the WTO, the IRS, the NYSE, World Com, etc. Trickle down arguments regarding free markets are ludicrous at best; and what is good for Enron and Bill Gates is never good for we helots, the lowly economic cattle.

The market today is indeed enforced by government and military might and needs to be immediately dismantled. But if government is eliminated entirely, it also eliminates the only regulating force standing between the population and Enron, and its numerous clones and other economic predators. This does yield freedom, only government by supra-national corporations.

The problem with dialogue on these issues is that so many are talking at cross purposes, using mixed metaphors, tags that are conveniently defined and redefined for different usages, etc.

Based on the assumption that many interested people are motivated by good will toward the human condition, there is no reason why an intelligent species cannot redefine itself and the laws that oppress it.

Ah, but there's the rub; homo sapiens is not an intelligent species and is not in charge of its own destiny, especially as threatened by obedience to the idiotic and primitive laws of free market fundamentalism.

In Liberty, if we can engineer it

Michael Andrews

04/23/2004