WEB OF DEBT BLOG

A LITTLE POPULIST RETRIBUTION: MAKING WALL STREET PAY ITS FAIR SHARE

21 Responses

1. 

   DD5, on December 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm said:

   “Wall Street traders compete to design trading programs that can move many shares in microseconds, allowing them to beat ordinary investors to the “buy” button and to manipulate markets for private gain.”

   Why don’t you suggest to tax the number of times people trade courtesy gestures on the street, like saying hello? Or how about a tax on every time two people trade favors? Seriously, how much more individual freedom do you want to abrogate so that your crony government can continue to control every aspect of our lives until they finally go belly up and take the vast majority of us with them?

   And what does the “manipulate markets for private gain” mean exactly? Ignoring the baseless use of the term “manipulate” in this context, what is the complaint about “private gain” suppose to allude exactly? Do you want people who trade private property tittles not to trade for the benefit of their own “private” gain? What other gain do you have in mind when people are using their own money?

   They’re using tax payers money you say?

   Well, first of all, most of them (traders) don’t! Most traders are either ordinary people or working on behalf of ordinary people. It is impossible to separate bailout net gainers on wall street from bail out net losers.

   Second, why don’t you start to go after the crony political system that actually conducts these transfers of wealth from ordinary people to well connected people in Washington.

   The only possible explanation is that you buy into the “too big to fail” nonsense and that you support the bailouts yourself, in which case, you have no right to blame anybody but yourself. Perhaps you should tax yourself!

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   • 

     Ellen Brown, on December 2, 2009 at 11:41 pm said:

     Saying “hello” is not a sale. Virtually every form of sale is taxed. If we have to pay tax on shoes, schoolbags and gas, traders should pay a tax when they buy stock. Everyone has to have shoes and gas. Stock trades are the casino of people with money to spare. Why should the poor have to pay 9% sales tax for shoes, and the rich pay nothing to buy stock? How you conclude that I must support the bankers’ “too big to fail” argument is so vague that I can’t respond to it. They should fail. Bankrupt banks should fail just like bankrupt businesses. If they are too big and critical to dissolve, they should be put through bankruptcy, taken over by the FDIC, and nationalized like was done with Continental Illinois in 1994.

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   • 

     Jere Hough, on December 3, 2009 at 5:42 am said:

     “Why don’t you suggest to tax the number of times people trade courtesy gestures on the street, like saying hello?…Or how about a tax on every time two people trade favors? …The only possible explanation is that you buy into the “too big to fail” nonsense and that you support the bailouts yourself, in which case, you have no right to blame anybody but yourself. Perhaps you should tax yourself!”

     DD5, Your arguments are pure straw men, red herrings, and other diverse sophistries. The “only possible explanation” for your absurd statements above (and below) is that you are some kind of shill for the central banksters and Wall Street Ponzi schemers that have so thoroughly corrupted our federal government. Alternatively you must be one of those wonderful wizards of oz that think a world without rules and regulations would be nirvana. You believe that a society without rules or regulations would be ideal, right? “No rules, just right”, huh? Of course that has to be the only explanation for such “upside down” thinking.

     Of course I am using the same logic you use in your arguments, but hey! turnabout is fair play, right?

     Or maybe another possible explanation is that you have not read Ellen Brown’s Book, Web of Debt, which is the basis for all the articles and comments on this blog. That would explain the uninformed nature of your comments.

     You fail to note that Ellen is speaking of taxing “exotic” trades, like derivatives or credit default swaps, mortgage bundles, etc. You do not even address the obvious dangers of these kinds of unregulated inflated Ponzi style gambles based on “financial bubbles”, or the fact that it was these kinds of “exotic trades” that even Greenspan and Bernake acknowledged could not be supervised or properly regulated that got us into the banking collapse and bailouts in the first place.

     Perhaps you just don’t understand the nature and danger of monopolies, either financial or governmental. Both lead to tyranny if left unregulated and unchecked. Our founding fathers knew this, and tried to provide checks and balances in our Constitution. They failed to close the door to unlimited and unchecked financial monopoly, however. That’s why we have a collapsing economy and a puppet government controlled by Wall Street and the City of London privateers.

     The “taxpayer money” Ellen was talking about was that “bailout” extorted from our government by the international central banksters during the massive collapse of 2007-2008. Including trillions of dollars that was pumped into the failing institutions directly by the Fed’s emergency powers. that amount runs into perhaps 7 trillion in taxpayer money that went into the “black holes” of these corrupt, “too big to fail” institutions.

     Market manipulation is a fact, and financial market manipulation is the mother of all monopoly manipulations.

     Finally, your “why don’t you’s” are arrogant and obnoxious. Why don’t you go after the financial monopolies that are more powerful than governments, and in fact control them? It is monopoly power that is to be feared and guarded against.

     But you really do know that, don’t you?

     Reply
2. 

   DD5, on December 3, 2009 at 3:45 am said:

   Yes, saying “hello” is not a sale, but it is a social voluntary exchange between two individuals, and if you’re OK with the principle of having an institution in society that is allowed to use coercion to collect fees on arbitrary voluntary transactions, then the distinctions between the different types of social interactions becomes superficial and arbitrary anyway. A “sale” using money is just a more complex social phenomena. That is all!

   To help the poor, you could actually argue to the other direction. Since there is no sales tax on stocks, why not remove the sales tax from all consumer goods? It won’t help the poor to tax financial transactions, but it will help them if you eliminate those taxes. Contrary to what government will like you to believe, confiscating money from wealthier people does not make the less wealthy any more wealthier, but on the contrary, it makes them poorer. More revenue for the government will just divert capital from productive use into non-productive use. That won’t help anyone but the bureaucracy and the well connected people in Washington. Those aren’t the poor.

   If you have a problem with well connected bankers or special interests that benefit from tax payers money, then it is, I think, wiser to eliminate the source of the power that makes this possible. That is only your government. Only the government provides a legal channel to loot.

   Unfortunately, you seem to be under the impression that government reform, or worst, more government bureaucratic control over parts of the economy is what is required. As if lack of power is what is missing in Washington. I don’t even know how to respond to such an upside down theory.

   Stocks are the casino of people with money to spare!?
   Are you serious about this comment? Casino? The government is certainly doing all it can to turn it into a casino when the Fed pours new money into the credit markets, it’s regulatory institutions disrupt trade and create moral hazards, it outlaws inside trading, so yeah it is gradually turning into a casino, but that is not an inherent feature of a stock market. It is what is becoming a government owned stock market.

   Money to spare? Do you not own any stocks? And if it is there money to pare, what do you care? I was under the impression that you at least understood that it is the central fractional reserve banking system that is the cause of the boom/bust cycles, so what do you want from people trading their own wealth with each other. Never mind that the comment about spare money is absurd.

   The only institution that seems to act as if it has spare money is the government. In fact it does, doesn’t it? It spends other peoples money, as oppose to private traders and investors.

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   • 

     Jere Hough, on December 3, 2009 at 6:13 am said:

     “If you have a problem with well connected bankers or special interests that benefit from tax payers money, then it is, I think, wiser to eliminate the source of the power that makes this possible. That is only your government. Only the government provides a legal channel to loot.”

     DD5, Why don’t you just read Ellen’s book, or some of the thousands of comments and articles on this blog that make all your rants against Ellen sound silly?

     The source of power is not the government, but the financial puppeteers behind the government who corrupt that institution and use it as their pawn in their money games. We all understand that campaign money, financial favors, bribes, enticements, lobbies, intimidation and outright extortion is what influences the congressional votes. When are you going to get a clue?

     You are apparently unaware that the Fed and the government are two separate things. The Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as the Federal Express delivery trucks. It is private and independent, and prides itself on being so. Only the board of governors is a “hybrid” Franken-creature, invented by financial monopolists on appropriately named Jekyll Island. Educate yourself about the Fed before you come here spreading the propaganda that the Federal Reserve system is a part of the federal government. It isn’t, and we know it.

     The so-called “bureaucracy” you want us to hate and blame is the lapdog of the international central banksters, owned lock, stock and barrel by them. We really do have the best bureaucracy that money can buy.

     Overly large, sprawling bureaucracies are to be feared and treated like the plague they are. But they are only as bad as those they serve, and their masters are the financial money-masters whose motto is “allow me to control a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” That was coined by the father of central banking, Mayer Amschel (Bauer) Rothschild, and subsequent events have proven it to be quite true.

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     • 

       DD5, on December 3, 2009 at 10:07 pm said:

       What do you want me to say to all of this? Do you not see what the institution of government is? It is a tool! nothing more.

       Government is the one and only institution that is allowed to use violence to achieve its goals. It is the system of compulsion and coercion, period!

       It is the only legal channel to loot and kill.

       So what did you expect such an institution to be used for? All those who have the most political pool will use it to their advantage. They will use it to take what they could not earn by voluntary means.

       So of course there are special interests behind all government action, but that is what a government is and all it can be, unless you think it is a God or something.

       Your “financial puppeteers” are gaining all they want by means of what if not government? The source of power to achieve their goals is the government. It is not bankers who will come to my door to collect their bail out money, but the police force of the government if I do not pay my taxes.

       The source of the power is always the government. The government is the only legal channel to achieve all that you yourself have elaborated on in your response.

       You want to maintain the power of government, but have it serve only your interests. Good luck with that.

       How can I be a “shill for the central banksters” if I want to eliminate the one and only tool they have to do all that you claim they do; the government!

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       • 

         Jere Hough, on December 4, 2009 at 4:50 am said:

         I’d have to write a book to point out the logical, moral, ethical and practical fallacies in the above Orwellian nonsense. But Ellen Brown, among many others, has already done that with her book, Web of Debt. So I can once again only suggest that you read it, and find a clue. Your world is backwards and upside down, either deliberately or through the multiple kinds of errors listed in my first sentence.

         You state you want to “eliminate” the government. Yet government is synonymous with civilization, and eliminating one would eliminate the other. This is dangerous and irrational thinking in the extreme. In fact, every single statement in your above message is devoid of fact, truth and logic.

         When I have time, I may take your nonsense apart, line by fallacious line, but that will have to await another day. In the meantime, you would be advised to confine your arguments to actual issues, rather than “inventing” positions that are not mine (or Ellen’s) to rail against. To list but one quick example that is totally false: “You want to maintain the power of government, but have it serve only your interests”. The continuation of this kind of perversion of facts will result in your expulsion from this forum.

         In the meantime you might read Ellen’s latest article here:

         http://www.opednews.com/articles/Lessons-from-the-Japanese-by-Ellen-Brown-091201-536.html#comment245665

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         • 

           DD5, on December 4, 2009 at 5:16 pm said:

           ad hominem attacks don’t convey anything.

           If you’re using the term synonymous literally, then maybe government should be synonymous with theft, murder, plunder, extortion, and any other form of violence you can think of, but certainly not civilization.

           Civilizations is a product of the division of labor that results from the voluntary exchange between individuals.

           If you mean that the existence of governments have been historically correlated with past civilizations, then I would agree. But a mere statistical correlation does not prove causation. It could be, as I believe the case, that governments are simply able to thrive better in “civilized” societies that have some minimum degree of division of labor. But then that would also apply to your common mafia gang, terrorist organizations, and mass murderous dictators. They too cannot exist outside the “civilized” nexus. Should they also by synonymous with “civilization”?

           The crux of my argument is not necessity to convince you of anarchy, but to debunk your assertions that government power is a prerequisite for a civilized society. It is not, and if I am wrong and some government is always inevitable, it would at least be desired that it was as small and powerless as possible, so that your “money puppeteers”, or anybody else for that matter,could not use it to gain anything at the expense of others.

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           • 

             Jere Hough, on December 8, 2009 at 12:51 am said:

             DD5, I find your arguments spurious, evasive, and shallow. You cannot name even one civilization that has ever existed without a government. Not one. AS XO points out below, as soon as there are two or more people associating as a group, some form of social organization is necessary.

             There are two extremes of social and political power: 1) “bottom-up” or democratic, shared and distributed power of “the people” (commonwealth); and, 2) top-down, or monopolistic, authoritarian power (tyranny).

             The same is basically true of economic power. It is either shared or distributed among the people fairly, or it is monopolized by a few individuals or organizations and doled out as the dominant powers dictate. (Only economic power (wealth) has traditionally been inherited, or passed from one generation to another in families of landed aristocracy. This is economic monopoly.) Money (currency) monopoly is the subject of this blog, and Ellen Brown’s book.

             So the choices are democratic (shared) power, or monopolistic or dictatorial power, and that goes for social governance and economic enterprise.

             ANARCHY IS NOT A CHOICE. Anarchy can no more exist in nature than can a vacuum. The concept of the absence of government (anarchy) is a compete fiction, a fantasy, a sophistry.

             As to the SIZE of government, it must always be kept to a minimum of that needed to fulfill its functions. But it must be large enough to fulfill those function.

             The essential debate here is what the proper roles and functions of government (the commons) should be. “Government” is nothing more than social order and group or community organization. This mean deciding what enterprises and activities should properly be left to individuals and which should be run by the group or community. This is essentially the argument about which should be profitable or non-profitable organizations. I believe all natural monopolies should be public non-profit enterprises, not private ones. The idea of private “public utility companies” is obnoxious to me, as it should be to any moral and thinking person.

             In other words, contrary to DD5’s assertions, “government” is not the “bad guy” or enemy. The misdeeds of government are the blame of those who control it. DD5 even conceded that government was “only a tool”. What he refuses to see (or admit to) is that it is the tool of the wealthy power elite – that one hundredth of one percent (or less) or the world’s population that control 80 or more percent of it’s wealth (and money). Yet they contribute little or nothing to the actual production of new wealth that is accomplished by the action of labor upon the land and its natural resources.

             It has been the purpose of the wealthy power elite to destroy the American hope for a democratic government, and it appears they are succeeding, with the help of those like DD5. It is past time for the people to awaken to their danger of being once again enslaved by ancient economic powers.

             Reply
3. 

   Xavier Onassis, on December 6, 2009 at 3:45 pm said:

   There is no such thing as a voluntary exchange: never has been. I’ve covered this in the forum, in the lounge (though i’m in bad health and have had to stop posting for now).

   Government will not disappear until the second from last person disappears, and government leadership will not change until people’s ideas change (like the fantasy that there has ever been a voluntary transaction.)

   The primary legal theft resides in the very nature of transaction itself because the 2 things exchanged in any and EVERY transaction are not of equal workvalues.

   The workvalues in the things exchanged cannot even be calculated. Agreement on guessed-at “values” is not at all the same thing as the amount of sacrifice of individuals’ time (and energies) gone into each product or service.

   Only this sacrifice of time and energies is work, and only work creates wealth so only work deserves pay.

   The pool of wealth is FINITE.

   Overpay has nowhere to come from but from underpay –
   and not a single person anywhere in the world can give justification for forcing the underpaid to overpay the overpaid when it is not possible for anyone to work more than twice as hard as average people working average hard do.

   Egalitarians are the only sane people on this planet. Everyone else is refusing to deal with REALITY.

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   • 

     Xavier Onassis, on December 6, 2009 at 8:50 pm said:

     Pretend we are tremendous friends – the best friends who ever had a friendship in the whole history of the whole wide world – who would rather die than rip-off our bestest pal…and we both understand, of course, that ripping off our pal means making him give over to us the fruits of his labor for none of our laborfruits in return.

     You have a car you want to sell.

     I want to buy it

     We are both determined to charge and to pay the exact fair price of the car, so neither buyerfriend nor sellerfriend donates any money, any labor, to the other.

     But in spite of the magnificent degree of our determination to figure out the exact fair price, we find ourselves on an impossible mission: the fairprice of the car is unknowable. it does exist, but it is incalcuable. oh yes, we will come to a figure that we both agree to call the fairprice, but we will not have been able to reach this agreement by calclating the actual workcosts/workvalue that exist in the vehicle, we will only have taken our best guesses and reached consensus, ie an agreement to be off by some amount that seems to us can’t be too far off either direction.

     But no part of our agreeing to be somewhat wrong in one direction or the other can erase the fact that one of us has indeed lost some bit of our own laborfruit, and the other of us has gained laborfruits that were self-earned by an other party – no matter how hard we tried to avoid this outcome of our transaction.

     Yes, every transaction does indeed shift wealth from earners to nonearners. it happens with or without human agency helping it along, it happens even in the very rare occasion when the 2 parties are trying their damndest to make it not happen. the primary legal theft going totally unnoticed by every economist and every reformer RESIDES IN THE VERY NATURE OF TRANSACTION ITSELF.

     But Economics seems to have always been the pseudo-science to justify immorality.

     In the middle ages, before economists, it was thought wrong to profit from scarcity.

     Economics was built on the doubtful claim that greed would serve the community – a nonsense, in fact – how can the merchant’s aim to sell dear and buy cheap, to manipulate cost and price to maximise the difference, in order to grab the difference and call it profit and virtue and godly wealth, possibly help the community? The merchant extracting a private tax on the community’s need to trade products of job-specialisation is a nonsense, but in this decadent phase of history, a virtue, a pillar of our principles – the merchant’s desire for trade is supposed to force him to do exactly what serves the community – provide products – but since it is clear that his intention is to give less than he gets [and not just a fairpay for his services, but any amount he can wangle by whatever puffing of the product and defrauding of the workers], how can this theft serve the community? – unless a community needs a thief.

     It used to be understood that where there was profit there was loss, ie, if things are exchanged and their workvalues are x and x+y [as they cannot help but be], then one loses by y and the other gains by y – and maximisation of y is maximisation of an unfortunately unavoidable theft [because no one can know the exact value of the items, however friendly the participants may be in not wishing to defraud, or get more or less than they give]

     Everywhere in economics one finds that the principles of economics are rogues’ principles, the principles of unprincipled men – no wonder trade was looked down on, if by trade was understood the defrauding of people, and the selfjustification of the fraud – trade could be honest, if the trader took fairpay for his services, and ploughed back any incomings in excess of this in services and paybacks to his customers and suppliers, to prevent his accumulating what is not his by right of working and earning it.

     It is the easiest thing for a merchant to sell for $11 something for which his total costs [including his fair pay for his services] are $10 – stealing or begging $1 – instead of saying, at the end of the year, and finding that after paying himself and employees and all costs, that he has money over: whoops, i have overcharged customers or underpaid workers, economics has taught the merchant to say in his selfdeceptional greed, what a good boy am i, what a superior and very fine person i am, how holy and godly!

     Economics seems to have been born to cater to this stage of humanity when it turns theft into the backbone of culture and virtue – when it is able to justify to itself the taking of profits from scarcity without a blush, and actually preen itself on its virtue and spit on the robbed workmen and customers.

     If profit is defined as the difference between total outgoings [costs, including costs of work input by owners], and total incomings [prices] then profit is by definition theft – getting more than you give – the product contains x workvalue, and the price is x+y – making y the profit – in big firms, where the owners, managers etc get salaries as well as profits, it is clearer that profits are theft – in small businesses, the term profit is what the owners pay themselves for their workinput.

     In any case, there is nothing in the system to prevent incomings from exceeding outgoings by any amount.

     The true original purpose of trade is to swap goods, to mix products of specialisation in jobs, so everyone gets the mix of goods they need and want – therefore ideally the two items exchanged should be equal in workvalue – ie, they should contain equal amounts of sacrifice of time and energy – and in honesty, they should be of as equal value as practically determinable.

     The protestant ‘virtue’ of profit is really a vice – simple fraud, theft, or beggary – but economics seems from its inception to have been a justification for the activity of dishonest greedy people – and it has become ‘virtue’ in these decadent times . Conception of greed is so vague that it is possible to flaunt it as virtue or glory.

     I can think of nowhere in economics where it admits that the unavoidable inequality of the two items exchanged is an unjust shift of value.

     Nowhere does economics [as far as i know] explore the implications of this inequity, equal to y, the difference in value, which over trillions of transactions must cause a bell curve of gain and loss – must in fact cause an endless drift of value from some to others – cause unjust wealth concentration – which causes the emergence of classes, of rulers and ruled, of lucky and unlucky, of increasingly powerful and increasingly powerless, of masters and slaves – even without outright plundering and conquering.

     The rich get richer, etc – money makes money – the first thousand is harder to make than the second million – after the first million money multiplies like rabbits – the merchant buys cheap and sells dear – business is others people’s money – business is just selling for more than it cost you – all these admit the fraudulence of profit – but so many are seeking to repair their underpay by getting overpay that few know or can be prevailed upon to admit its dishonesty and viciousness, its social destructiveness.

     A nonprofit organisation without volunteers pays every working contributor – so what are profits? – obviously not earnings – profits beyond payment for owner work services are by definition theft, injustice, fraud – but who can see it?

     Profits are legal theft – injustice, which destroys the state – but profiteers are beacons of light to this mad age – it doesnt matter how much over maximum possible honest earnings profits are, they are only more highly praised the higher they are.

     Such disgusting madness. The world writhes in hell absolutely needlessly.

     Reply
     • 

       Jere Hough, on December 8, 2009 at 7:30 am said:

       “I can think of nowhere in economics where it admits that the unavoidable inequality of the two items exchanged is an unjust shift of value.”

       That is because this is such a vague and undefinable concept that no one would seriously entertain it, much less hold it out as axiomatic. There is no such thing as a quantifiable “intrinsic value” of any item, good or service. Value is only determined in the marketplace, by supply and demand, absent some monopoly cornering of the market or decree of some dictatorial governmental power.

       Reply
   • 

     DD5, on December 8, 2009 at 2:57 am said:

     You sure solved that one very eloquently. Simply deny the mere existence of any form of voluntary cooperation among individual in order to justify the coercive elements in your philosophy.

     If “work creates wealth” then if I work [hard] to dig up a load of sh_t from the ground, put in a box, and hand it over to you, you will calculate based on my hours the value of the sh_t? You will trade wit me for that load of sh_t something of value according to you? It’s time you reconsider your value theory.

     The error in your “reason” is the insistence on objective value. There is no such thing! Value is subjective! You and I value things according to different value scales. In the sphere of humans, there is no sense in defining value (or wealth) in any other way.

     A little economics (particularly post the subjective theory revolution) won’t do you harm.

     “Kenloe’s The Book of the Blind”?????
     Sure! continue to learn your market theory from all those who want to destroy it.

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   • 

     Jere Hough, on December 8, 2009 at 7:14 am said:

     XO, I’m afraid your definition of a “voluntary transaction” and mine (or nearly anyone’s) must be very different.

     Voluntary means of one’s own free will, or consent. How is my willingness to exchange my apple for your orange not a voluntary transaction?

     How is any exchange of goods and services between two adult and sane free persons anything but “consensual” or “voluntary”?

     Your evaluation of pay justice does not involve the “market value” of what that work produces. What about desirability? Is the work of a Rembrandt or Michaelangelo to bring the same value in the marketplace as an equal amount of time and effort invested in making mudpies? Or making castles in the sand?

     If “agreement in workvalues” involved in an exchange cannot even be calculated, then how can how can anything OTHER than “agreed upon” values be used as a basis of exchange?

     What are “egalitarians”? Specifically what qualities of “equalness” would egalitarians wish to see in the world?

     Do you think everyone is “equal” in all aspects or being, or endowments of physical or mental capacity? Or in their utilization of that capacity?

     Reply
4. 

   Xavier Onassis, on December 6, 2009 at 3:53 pm said:

   People?

   This is your current economics: everyone is believing in going for all they can get from the pool of wealth and no one is believing in going for what you put in by your own sacrifice, no less and no more.

   Your world is going to blow up if you don’t campaign for fairpay justice.

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   • 

     Jere Hough, on December 8, 2009 at 6:43 am said:

     Please define “fairpay justice”.

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   • 

     Jere Hough, on December 8, 2009 at 6:51 am said:

     Please explain how one can determine “the pool of wealth” from which each is entitled to “take out” only what is “put in” by one’s own “sacrifice”.

     How is campaigning for something no one can fully explain and/or comprehend going to keep out world from blowing up?

     Wouldn’t the campaign have to be successful?

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     • 

       Xavier Onassis, on December 8, 2009 at 2:45 pm said:

       There is now a new thread in the forum in the lounge titled “The amazing thing the egalitarian discovers” where i have tried to answer all questions asked of me:

       http://forum.webofdebt.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=240&p=552#p552

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       • 

         Jere Hough, on December 9, 2009 at 2:57 am said:

         XO, As far as I can determine, this new thread does not answer ANY of the simple and direct questions I’ve asked of you here.

         Furthermore, it does not even answer what is promised by the title. After reading it I am still left puzzling over “what the egalitarian discovers”, much less whether or not it is “amazing”.

         And you have STILL evaded the essential question of what you consider the word “egalitarian” to mean.

         No reasonable or rational discussion is possible without a shared understanding of terminology: definitions that make sense.

         Reply
5. 

   Xavier Onassis, on December 6, 2009 at 7:15 pm said:

   DD5’s objections come straight out of Kenloe’s The Book of the Blind…about page 481…from Edward Bellamy’s “Equality”. You can read it here: http://books.google.com/books?id=gFhBJq8hv44C

   DD5 is arguing that because some government officials do rob the people, the people’s business is better left to forces designed to rob them even more and give them even less (nothing) in return. Some plan. The government is corrupt so it’s mad to have government? Better to leave our prosperity to the whims of those wealthpowerful private capitalists whose reason for being is to take all the money they can off the people? DD5 doesn’t see that the corruption he objects to is a government official falling to the level at which the private capitalist operates by definition.

   Political corruption is when the public servant abuses his trust by using the administration under his control for private gain instead of for the public wellbeing, or in other words it’s when he takes a businesslike view of the opportunities of his position and manages the public trust as if it were his own private business, and seeks to profit by it. Proper outcry is made when such conduct is detected, therefore corrupt government officials must operate under difficulties, cloaked in secrecy, ever in danger of detection and punishment.

   But what is the very theory and constant practice of the capitalists in carrying on the machinery under their control? They do not even profess to act in the public interest, nor to have any regard for it. The avowed object of their whole policy is to use the machinery of their position so as to make the greatest personal gains for themselves out of the community.

   That is to say, the use of the control of the public machinery for his personal gain – which on the part of a public official is denounced, and punished as a crime – is the avowed policy of the unlimited-personal-fortunes capitalist.

   Political corruption merely means the occasional application to the public administration of the profit-seeking principle on which all private business is conducted.

   The fact that we don’t have perfectly faithful stewards does not argue for protecting ourselves by putting our affairs in the hands of professional thieves.

   Think FEARLESSLY

   (I heart Edward Bellamy)

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6. 

   Jere Hough, on December 8, 2009 at 7:44 am said:

   Hear, hear. I could not agree more.

   I would only add that DD5 would not agree that there should be any “public machinery” at all. He would “privatize” it all.

   All corruption is a violation of “public trust” (or stewardship) and IMO such violations should be among the most egregious crimes, carrying the gravest penalties.

   The essential point, however, is that the people (citizens) now have at least some degree of control over the elected government, and none at all over the wealth-elites that actually exercise economic control over most of the earth. Corrupt public officials must at least face re-election, censure, impeachment or recall. The wealthpower elites are absolute laws unto themselves. They are not accountable to any de-facto authority or oversight, and are working to eliminate what little actual accountability remains.

   The neo-liberal, neo-conservative, libertarian Austrians represent the wealthpower philosophy down though thousands of years of history. Their drumbeat has always been: the great god “Hand the Invisible” is all we need to protect us against monopolies and to insure totally free markets. It is way past time to call attention to this great fallacy. It is irrational and suicidal, and unless the system is corrected it will self-destruct.

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