Here's the thing. "Chile's Collapse Foretells America's If Dems Win." What in the world is wrong with Chile? I thought that since the days of th eevil Gen. Pinochet that Chile had set up a pretty decent free-market economy that was the envy of the rest of South America. But no. Things are not copacetic in Chile these days. Writes Axel Kaiser in the Wall Street Journal about Chile's very own Elizabeth Warren,
Now I am reading Deirdre McCloskey's breezy Why Liberalism Works and you would think, from her, that all good-thinking people know that liberalism, the 18th century Enlightenment one, not the 20th century US version, is the way to go.
But actually they don't. As we know. Because our Educated Gentry are all in favor of race politics, big government politics, gender politics, and canceling anyone that doesn't agree with their secular religion.All over the world.
Now maybe somewhere in Why Liberalism Works I dare say that McCloskey has some winning argument to persuade the Wokies to give it up. But I doubt it. If I had any doubt my mind was made up by the simple notions of Curtis Yarvin in "The Clear Pill."
Yarvin writes that the present ruling class plays beautiful "anthems" -- no doubt on a magnificnt pipe organ -- to the Educated Gentry that appeals to its "ambition, honor, and vanity."
Yarvin's three layer theory of Gentry, Commoners, and Clients fits moderately well with my reductive Three Peoples theory, that we moderns live in a status hierarchy of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates. When you are a creative the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is all tied up in your ability to do creative, original work.
So the problem with the notion that we should all relax and enjoy it because, Why Liberalism Works, is that there is no "ambition, honor, and vanity" for the Creative Educated Gentry in a minimum government society. Yes, yes. Everyone will be prosperous and happy. But what about the workers, er, gentry? What ambition is satisfied for the gentry? What honor will crown the gentry with fig leaves? What will appeal to their vanity (not that the gentry are vain, oh no)?
Let's take a smart ambitious woman like Elizabeth Warren. Here is a woman that has played the Gentry game to the hilt. She has converted herself from her Commoner origins into a rootin' tootin' Gentry mandarin. She got into Harvard Law as a professor by faking Native American heritage. As a graduate of Rutgers Law School she would never have got into Harvard without the Native American scam.
As a smart ambitious woman she knows instinctively that she is never going to have a top-fight political career humming the anthem of Why Liberalism Works to the Gentry. Or telling the Clients that the trouble with big government is that sooner or later you run out of Other Peoples' Money. No. She's running with her pedal to the metal of Big Government Über Alles.
Or take my Four Laws.
"Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices." Oh yeah? Whatabout the homeless? The children stuck in cages at the border? Let's worry about prices and profits next week.
"The administrative state cannot work because it doesn't have the bandwidth to direct the whole economy." Oh yeah? But whatabout the folks that don't have health insurance? Are we just going to sit here while people die?
"The regulatory state cannot work because of the law of 'regulatory capture.'" Oh yeah? So you are going to let monopolies make obscene profits for ever and ever?
"Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them." Oh yeah? So you are going to put little children back to work in the mines because the education system isn't perfect?
Now I think the problem is even bigger than that.
First is the notion I picked up from the best-seller The Millionaire Next Door. Suppose you are the wife of a businessman that made a nice little fortune with a string of dry-cleaning stores? Whatabout your children? So you send them out into the marketplace at age 18 and tell 'em to work it out? No you don't, because in the world of business many are called but few are chosen and you don't want your kids suffering through the agony of failed businesses and bankruptcy. No, what you do is send your kids to university and get them into nice regulated professions like medicine and law, or you buy them a nice pair of striped-pants for a career in the State Department, where you have to go through years and years of fees and 80-hour weeks before you get licensed to print money.
And then there is the basic fact of politics. First, the political leader is the tribal chief that protects you from pirates and plunderers. Second, the political leader recruits his warriors with the offer of loot and plunder. Got a solution to that age old fact of life?
So when are we going to rise above these wee problems? Next week? Next year? Next century?
Well, I offer hope. Three hundred years ago, people in the west were just beginning to worry about slavery. Then Christian evangelicals like William Wilberforce taught us to be ashamed and we abolished slavery. Then lefties created the biggest slave states in history, the sweeties. But the slave states have kinda dialed down the slavery thing because slavery does not pay, Mr. Gorbachev.
Three hundred years ago, according to Nancy Isenberg in White Trash, the lower orders were indeed regarded by all respectable gentry people as rubbish. And if white people weren't slaves, there were plenty of them that were indentured servants. But now they are Commoners. Although the gentry still sneers at them as racist sexist homophobes and deplorables. And along comes Donald Trump to champion the Commoners.
But the problem is that a world with less government and less Studies degrees and less moral lecturing about toxic masculinity and white supremacy is also a world in which the Educated Gentry has less scope for its "ambition, honor, and vanity."
You think that the proud Educated Gentry is going to put up with a world that crimps their style? In fact, as I argue in my Great Reaction series, the Educated Gentry seems determined to take us back to the past, with socialism as a return to slavery, the welfare state as a return to feudalism, identity politics as a return to tribalism, and all the rest of it.
Me neither.
So could the Dems screw the place up like Chile? Of course they could. And they'd blame "greedy bankers" and white supremacists all the way to the guillotine.
That's why I think that a rude crude rootin' tweetin' bigot like Donald Trump who is focusing his program on the needs of the Commoners is a much better prospect than any of the big-government anti-deplorable Democrats.
The economic pain started with the antimarket reforms of the previous government under Socialist President Michelle Bachelet, from 2014-18. Ms. Bachelet increased corporate taxes by 30%; signed a law banning the replacement of workers on strike, thereby dramatically increasing the costs of labor; increased public spending at three times the economic growth rate; and unleashed armies of regulatory bureaucrats on the private sector.Of course, I dare say thaat the reduction in copper prices plays a role in this.
Now I am reading Deirdre McCloskey's breezy Why Liberalism Works and you would think, from her, that all good-thinking people know that liberalism, the 18th century Enlightenment one, not the 20th century US version, is the way to go.
But actually they don't. As we know. Because our Educated Gentry are all in favor of race politics, big government politics, gender politics, and canceling anyone that doesn't agree with their secular religion.All over the world.
Now maybe somewhere in Why Liberalism Works I dare say that McCloskey has some winning argument to persuade the Wokies to give it up. But I doubt it. If I had any doubt my mind was made up by the simple notions of Curtis Yarvin in "The Clear Pill."
Yarvin writes that the present ruling class plays beautiful "anthems" -- no doubt on a magnificnt pipe organ -- to the Educated Gentry that appeals to its "ambition, honor, and vanity."
Yarvin's three layer theory of Gentry, Commoners, and Clients fits moderately well with my reductive Three Peoples theory, that we moderns live in a status hierarchy of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates. When you are a creative the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is all tied up in your ability to do creative, original work.
So the problem with the notion that we should all relax and enjoy it because, Why Liberalism Works, is that there is no "ambition, honor, and vanity" for the Creative Educated Gentry in a minimum government society. Yes, yes. Everyone will be prosperous and happy. But what about the workers, er, gentry? What ambition is satisfied for the gentry? What honor will crown the gentry with fig leaves? What will appeal to their vanity (not that the gentry are vain, oh no)?
Let's take a smart ambitious woman like Elizabeth Warren. Here is a woman that has played the Gentry game to the hilt. She has converted herself from her Commoner origins into a rootin' tootin' Gentry mandarin. She got into Harvard Law as a professor by faking Native American heritage. As a graduate of Rutgers Law School she would never have got into Harvard without the Native American scam.
As a smart ambitious woman she knows instinctively that she is never going to have a top-fight political career humming the anthem of Why Liberalism Works to the Gentry. Or telling the Clients that the trouble with big government is that sooner or later you run out of Other Peoples' Money. No. She's running with her pedal to the metal of Big Government Über Alles.
Or take my Four Laws.
"Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices." Oh yeah? Whatabout the homeless? The children stuck in cages at the border? Let's worry about prices and profits next week.
"The administrative state cannot work because it doesn't have the bandwidth to direct the whole economy." Oh yeah? But whatabout the folks that don't have health insurance? Are we just going to sit here while people die?
"The regulatory state cannot work because of the law of 'regulatory capture.'" Oh yeah? So you are going to let monopolies make obscene profits for ever and ever?
"Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them." Oh yeah? So you are going to put little children back to work in the mines because the education system isn't perfect?
Now I think the problem is even bigger than that.
First is the notion I picked up from the best-seller The Millionaire Next Door. Suppose you are the wife of a businessman that made a nice little fortune with a string of dry-cleaning stores? Whatabout your children? So you send them out into the marketplace at age 18 and tell 'em to work it out? No you don't, because in the world of business many are called but few are chosen and you don't want your kids suffering through the agony of failed businesses and bankruptcy. No, what you do is send your kids to university and get them into nice regulated professions like medicine and law, or you buy them a nice pair of striped-pants for a career in the State Department, where you have to go through years and years of fees and 80-hour weeks before you get licensed to print money.
And then there is the basic fact of politics. First, the political leader is the tribal chief that protects you from pirates and plunderers. Second, the political leader recruits his warriors with the offer of loot and plunder. Got a solution to that age old fact of life?
So when are we going to rise above these wee problems? Next week? Next year? Next century?
Well, I offer hope. Three hundred years ago, people in the west were just beginning to worry about slavery. Then Christian evangelicals like William Wilberforce taught us to be ashamed and we abolished slavery. Then lefties created the biggest slave states in history, the sweeties. But the slave states have kinda dialed down the slavery thing because slavery does not pay, Mr. Gorbachev.
Three hundred years ago, according to Nancy Isenberg in White Trash, the lower orders were indeed regarded by all respectable gentry people as rubbish. And if white people weren't slaves, there were plenty of them that were indentured servants. But now they are Commoners. Although the gentry still sneers at them as racist sexist homophobes and deplorables. And along comes Donald Trump to champion the Commoners.
But the problem is that a world with less government and less Studies degrees and less moral lecturing about toxic masculinity and white supremacy is also a world in which the Educated Gentry has less scope for its "ambition, honor, and vanity."
You think that the proud Educated Gentry is going to put up with a world that crimps their style? In fact, as I argue in my Great Reaction series, the Educated Gentry seems determined to take us back to the past, with socialism as a return to slavery, the welfare state as a return to feudalism, identity politics as a return to tribalism, and all the rest of it.
Me neither.
So could the Dems screw the place up like Chile? Of course they could. And they'd blame "greedy bankers" and white supremacists all the way to the guillotine.
That's why I think that a rude crude rootin' tweetin' bigot like Donald Trump who is focusing his program on the needs of the Commoners is a much better prospect than any of the big-government anti-deplorable Democrats.
No comments:
Post a Comment