Kevin Carson reexamines the term and sorts out the stigma. "If anything, it's the choice of "capitalism" as the conventional term for a free market that needs explaining. Why name an economic system based on free markets after one factor of production in particular, especially when even neoclassical orthodoxy regards capital as only one coequal factor among several? The choice of terms, perhaps unwittingly, suggests a system in which the interests of capital have an especially privileged status; it may also suggest something about the sympathies of those who chose the term."
The Wall Street Journal examines the idea of secession.
It's hard for me to describe how awesome this video is, but truly it's among the internet's very best. Just perfect.
Kevin Carson looks at lean manufacturing from a Mumfordian perspective at the Peer2Peer Foundation blog: "The true potential of lean manufacturing is to eliminate inventory altogether by gearing production to demand. It doesn't matter how lean a factory is internally, if the inventory is just swept under the rug -- or into the factories and trucks, rather -- with a thousand-mile distribution chain. True lean production will only be achieved in a completely relocalized economy, in which the machinery is not only scaled to production flow within the factory, but the factory itself is scaled as closely as possible to local demand and sited as close as possible to the point of consumption."
Corporations started out as entities chartered by the state for particular purposes. The economic crisis implies that it might be time to return to a more limited form of incorporation.
"I'm reminded of James O'Connor's The Fiscal Crisis of the State, written in 1973.
State spending in a capitalist society, he said, must fulfil two functions: to raise profits, for example by maintaining aggregate demand; and to legitimate the system by ameliorating inequalities. But, he said, these forces for higher spending increased faster than people's willingness to pay tax. The upshot was a tendency to bigger budget deficits, even in decent economic times."
Brutus discusses why he doesn't like to discuss politics with friends: "How do you maintain friendships with people who have implicitly told you they have no problem with armed men threatening to beat, imprison, or kill you because you disagree with their political agenda?"
Kirkpatrick Sale discusses the recent rise in secessionist talk.
Marcel Votlucka makes a crucial point about radical activists' attitudes in a new article at Black Oak Media: "...the very concept of 'sheeple' is perilous because it evokes the kind of arrogance, contempt and deep-rooted fear the State has for free, motivated and empowered people. It brings radicals dangerously close to thinking along the same lines as hard-core Statists even as we attempt to offer an alternative way."
"Belief in big government rests upon the notion that there's an elite of leaders which has the wisdom and know-how to manage our affairs from the top-down; this is why New Labour found common cause with corporate bosses - both share the same ideology. But it is an utterly anti-egalitarian notion. It is also utterly wrong."
The truth behind the astroturf tea parties.
Spare me the mewling about "ordered liberty," please - 50 years of conservative pieties about "ordered liberty" led to Dick Cheney and a movement full of "men" who dared not open their mouths to defend liberty when she needed it most. Give me disorderly hinterland rebels any day.
- Bill Kauffman
Brady and I went to the Richmond Tea Party today at Kanawha Plaza. It was interesting, with turnout in the thousands. The events were sold as the start of something big in the conservative movement. They may, in fact, end up becoming just that. But I think the whole thing smells.
First, the not so bad observations. There's obviously a lot of concern about Obama's program of stimulus spending, bailouts, and more. These expenditures are going to burden the next generation with even more debt. It is right to object and organize resistance. And they claim that this is a non-partisan mission; both parties have failed them.
That said, one questions the timing of these protests. For the past eight years, the presidential candidate conservatives put in office twice expanded the size and scope of government more than any president in history. He created a new entitlement program (the prescription drug benefit), started two massively expensive and destructive wars, and initiated the bailouts of big businesses that Obama is merely continuing. He even created an entirely new department of the executive branch. This was all accomplished by further sinking the country into trillions in debt. Where was the conservative outrage then?
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