There was a thread on /lit/ a few months ago about the book Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, and I was reminded that I really need to write about that one. I’ve been putting it off for so long because, to be honest, it’s a little intimidating. I did read the book through, and I can remember the general points reasonably well, but I’m kind of a brainlet and not at all qualified to talk about economics. I’ve already talked about my insecurity about my intelligence/ intellectual ability before though, I’m not here to do that today, just a warning not to expect anything impressive from what I have to say in this post. I’ll talk about politics, kinda, but not exactly my politics. Anyway, I read this book when I was going through my ebin libertarian phase around 2016 and first starting to become susceptible to right wing ideas. This post is really not going to be much about books either, like several of the posts in this series. I’m just using this book as a jumping off point to talk about other things.
It’s a story you’ve heard countless times, young male visits /pol/ (for me and quite a lot of others between 2014/16) and goes from generic middle class lefty to literal Nazi. Now I’m not a Nazi, obviously, but I am maybe.. fashy? a little bit. I’ve come back around to “left wing” ideas about certain actual policies though, like on economic issues. Though that’s perfectly in line with a lot of “third position” thinking actually. I think that the reason that so many young men go through this “libertarian phase” is because neoliberal or laissez faire economic ideas are the only acceptable form of appreciation of hierarchy/ social structure in the modern day. So this ideology which breaks them out of the bubble they’ve been raised in naturally earns their immediate allegiance, not unlike how I still have a lot of respect for a friend of mine despite how much we’ve drifted apart in the decade we’ve known each other for similar (in a sense) reasons.
This is probably why arguments about politics online very often involve these people, they argue with a particular vigour. I was the same, nowadays I feel far less interested in actually trying to argue about my beliefs. In part because sort of of lost a lot of faith in the idea of politics, they’re kind of a cope let’s be honest. Pol9k isn’t just a meme, there’s some definite truth to the idea as I’ve talked about before that people who are generally unsuccessful tend to drift towards radical ideologies. Of course it makes sense that those who are disenfranchised or doing poorly in life will see the problems we all face more easily, but we can tend to focus on these faults too much in order to escape from our own personal troubles. So if you’re reactionary or whatever, that’s fine but just keep this in mind to temper yourself a little. At least that’s what I’ve done, just trying to have some self awareness.
The libertarian party in the US (the most prominent outlet of activism for the ideology), is an interesting device. It’s a political party that is designed to never actually win an election, but simply to push the overton window in a certain direction. Again that being in favour of free market ideas like free trade, lower taxation, privatisation. This is why in 2016, the first year the party could have made some actual serious progress to becoming a viable political party in the system, they chose as their representative Gary Johnson. A man who seemed to make it his job to make libertarianism look like a joke. Which it sort of is, but not to libertarians. He was also a former state governor, as a member of one of the actual established political parties from what I understand and not the LP. None dare say conspiracy but, it’s funny isn’t it?
Libertarianism is not simply a joke though, it’s also a very deliberate collection of ideas that is never meant to be implemented in reality (as if they could be) but to simply allow mainstream politicians to seem less crazy in comparison. That’s one part of it anyway. There’s also the fact that politicians can push for certain policies under the guise of a “libertarian influence”. There may not be many self identified libertarians in mainstream politics but there are a hell of a lot of politicians who are “libertarian leaning”. So individual policies that libertarians tend to advocate for might be pursued, but of course the more fringe ideas are always ignored. The left are correct to imply that it’s kind of hollow, that the “ideology” is just something propped up by the super wealthy and then argued for by nerds on the internet whose sense of principle is manipulated and turned against them.
There’s also this quirk that many online libertarians have (not unlike internet communists/ Marxists) where they’ll hand wave away the obvious negative effects of libertarian style policies by saying that it doesn’t count because it’s not true libertarianism (or true capitalism/ a free market system) because there’s still state involvement. If only we completely privatise everything, then suddenly charity will actually work and then competition will work how they say it does rather than simply cartelising, and then monopolies will no longer form, etc etc. This in turn allows the politicians and policymakers to say that the left (as in socialists and trade unionists, not progressives) stopping them from going as far as they’d like is the reason for the problems that poorer people deal with, it’s quite ingenious actually.
I’ve talked before about how I think contrarians have a lot of value, because you need people to say things that sound completely crazy to help you realise that there are other ways of thinking sometimes. The libertarian strategy is exactly like this, the actual ideological believers (Rothbardians I guess you can call them) respond to the excesses of capitalism (the gutting of the welfare state, the importing of cheap foreign workers, etc.) by saying that it’s because we haven’t gone far enough yet. If we actually go all the way, eliminate any kind of social safety net or regulations, sell off all nationalised industries, stop enforcing state borders, then suddenly everyone will be wealthy and you’ll basically have the well armed middle class nation where there’s Christian values but also gay people defending their marijuana farms with M16s.
The entire ideology rests on the assumption that government could hypothetically not exist, because all libertarians eventually follow the natural trajectory to becoming “anarcho-capitalists”, but there has never not been government. The idea that the economic system and the government are somehow distinct is quite silly when you actually think about it for a second. The very idea that there is “an economy”, as in a measurable and definable thing, is a very modern way of thinking. In the past the term was really used to simply describe a process, one entirely contingent on various other converging entities. Various ancient civilisations had a complex trade and banking system, standardised currencies, etc. and yet economics as an area of study never developed.
Most of the sciences we have today have their roots in these Greco-Roman or Persian schools, mathematics, and physics, etc. The Romans had a fucking steam engine, they were only a few steps away from industrialising. They didn’t have the agricultural techniques developed in the late middle ages, or gunpowder and various other inventions sure, and the slave economy prevented progression in some respects. Nevertheless, they were a sophisticated civilisation and with what would be considered a complex economic system. Nowadays economics is a recognised area of study, so what’s different?
Now Rothbard himself of course became a lot more hard right in his later years. That is, when it comes to societal/ moral issues, in contrast to his more libertine inclinations earlier on. A path which many of the actual ideological believers in libertarianism, as opposed to the knowing opportunists described above who are really in charge, indeed seem to follow. The trend is frequently remarked upon, by both the left and the far right. So why is this? Well again in my opinion once that appreciation for some sense of hierarchy (which in my opinion is innate, but supressed by state education and the popular culture at large) is made (or remade), it can then quite easily be transferred onto a different “tier system”. This can mean leading to support of military rule or a racial caste system or more esoteric and religious ideas about how people should be differentiated.
I suppose Moldbug is the first, he’s the guy who started the whole red pill meme back in like 2007 or whatever, and the comments section on his blog is where NRx was born. Since him the scene has changed pretty drastically, most notably with the whole racial element being thrown into the mix, but even in his own time before he stopped writing (although he very recently made a return, with the “clear pill” which seemed to just be a recap of his old ideas but we’ll see what he has to say in his upcoming posts) you can see him evolve as he interacts with his commenters over the years. The original blog is dead now, and with it those many comments sections after each post, but apparently he’s working on restoring those too eventually.
It’s definitely worth checking out his writings, maybe just the posts of his that made the most noise, because he was one of the first of the internet libertarians to drop the ideology meme and just say that maybe we should acknowledge that like at all other points in history there’s simply just a raw power structure running the show and not some grand material system that is above any individual or group. He also said a whole lot more, and maybe even what I just said is kind of a mischaracterisation. Just read his stuff for yourself if you’re interested, it’s certainly very interesting and probably relevant to the ideas you’re surrounded with if you’ve ended up on this blog. He’s the guy that started the “redpill” meme, as in he took that imagery from the matrix and applied it to politics. If nothing else he’s worth reading because of the influence he had.
I’m not a political or reactionary blogger, I just talk about myself a lot of the time it’s all very narcissistic, but as I have been around these ideas and personalities for so long they also come up from time to time in my posts. Like today, and I know this post is a complete shitshow I’m working on one that’ll be more well structured and talk about my beliefs regarding various issues but it might take a while to finish. In fact it may end up being a series of posts actually, I’m in the very earliest stages of planning. This post is just something I’m trying to get out because it’s been over a week since my last upload and I started writing it today, hopefully I can finish it up tonight or tomorrow evening and then because I have quite a few days off work early next week I’ll get started on my next post much earlier.
Now Thomas Sowell is more of a mainstream figure than Rothbard, who in turn is a more mainstream figure than dweebs on the internet like Moldbug. He’s written actual books that get used in universities, he’s written for mainstream publications and been on big TV news channels. Yet this book is entirely misleading, it’s less respectable than the more “wishy washy” you might say, or philosophical writings from those guys because it cloaks itself in this scientific garb. It’s a generic and “normie accessible” text clearly advocating supply side economics and claiming to simply be an impartial academic treatise. Acting like economics (specifically that of the “Chicago school”) is some kind of hard science like physics or biology, which is just so absurd. Sure they have a bunch of graphs and things, economics as a discipline might help us understand certain micro economic trends/ patterns.
This book doesn’t have any of those complicated studies and statistics though. It is simply just a series of drawn out anecdotes that just so happen to support the kind of economic policies that Sowell has advocated for his entire academic career and in lots of other books more explicitly. He goes in search of stories that will help validate his point and this search takes him everywhere from Africa to the Orient. You could probably find an equally compelling anecdote to counter every one he has if you had the time and resources. Sure he’s an actual economist, maybe he really believes what he claims will result from what he advocates. It doesn’t matter if he’s just a shill for certain major moneyed interests or a true believer, what matters is that the fundamental premise of this book is dishonest.
And furthermore I think that this entire idea that economics is a mostly settled science is not merely a convenient lie on it’s own but also an idea that is very damaging outside of this book. Again I’m aware that some economic phenomena have been studied and explained (although how they can actually test these things reliably and repeatably is a mystery to me), like hyperinflation, supply and demand, or price controls. After all, they do have graphs and so that means they must be trustworthy. I just think that the idea that there’s a perfect way to run an economy in the most efficient way possible and that it can be proven by “science”, to be an entirely absurd claim. Here in Europe alone we have countries with pretty drastic differences in economic policy that for the most part are doing pretty similarly in terms of how well off the populations are.
There are no major disagreements between different governments around the world when it comes to any other of the sciences. There are no first world countries where evolutionary theory is disputed for example, or the laws of motion. Scientific research and experimentation continues in every field but the settled science is accepted pretty much universally. That’s just not the case with economics, economics really is more a branch of philosophy than what we in the 21st century think of by the word “science”. Indeed, coming back around to libertarianism there is a huge emphasis on muh principles like “the NAP” or freedom of association and so on in that movement. Let’s all be entirely honest, the overwhelming majority of the people who support libertarianism don’t care about the fucking graphs.
All arguments devolve into these weird hypotheticals that try and present various moral quandaries, not rigorous scrutiny of the actual data. And I don’t care about the graphs either, because ultimately there will always be graphs and statistics and charts and polls and trends and all that faggy shit to support whatever system I choose to support for moral reasons. If there were a series of policies that actually lead to more wealth creation and prosperity universally then everyone would be doing it. No exception, if you could just put a supercomputer in charge of the economy (again, as if such a thing really exists) then it would have been done. The reality is that there are simply competing interests, and lots of propaganda.
Politics, ideology, is not about economic policy. When you win, you can do whatever you want with the economy. You can decide what is necessary not because of some abstract principles (or some shadowy hidden interests) but because you see where the problems currently are and respond to them. By “you” here, I mean the regime or individual in charge. Did the tyrants, kings or emperors of antiquity ever worry about increasing a tax on a certain economic category or seizing assets because that would be unprincipled? No, of course they didn’t. What we need is a government that has the best interests of it’s citizens in mind, and can dynamically respond to various situations. But don’t listen to anything I have to say on this, because as I’ve said many times before I am just an unqualified dropout wageslave.
Although to be fair to myself, I do have to say one thing. I got into an argument with a guy in the very thread referenced at the start of this entry about exactly what I’ve spoken about in this post, and I was honestly expecting to get BTFOd because I really don’t know a lot about this subject but that didn’t happen. I know that it’s not a great look to talk about how I totally won this internet argument and then not post a link, but I’m not saying I won anything just that I was actually able to argue my point without being made to look like an idiot right away. You can find the thread in the archives as well but good luck, I’ve been trying but unless you have some keywords it’s almost impossible to navigate them. All I’m saying is that maybe my premise here isn’t entirely retarded, even if the method of delivery has been. As I said I do plan to write some more well planned out posts about some of my views eventually.
So, I’m gonna get rid of this book. I kind of want to hold on to it because it’s a big academic looking hardcover which looks cool on my shelf, and it was also kind of expensive at least compared to most of the books I own. But given everything I’ve said the right thing to do is to throw it into le trash. There’s also another big book about economics by one of these similar types that I own. Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, which I will hold onto because I never actually finished it. It was also rather expensive, again relatively speaking, and also I started it so I feel obligated to go back and finish the job. In fact it was a few years ago when I gave up on it, at slightly before the half way point, so I’ll probably need to restart from the beginning.
From what I remember it is way more “out there” and philosophical than Basic Economics, in fact the book is trying to develop what is supposedly an entirely new area of study called Praxeology. Praxeology is apparently the study of deliberate human action, as opposed to instinctive or unthinking behaviour. Or something like that, lots of talk about rational self interest and that sort of thing. Mises is associated with the Austrian school, who you’ve probably heard of before, so you can tell from there what kind of ideas he was pushing. In fact when it really comes down to it, although many would completely disagree, these books are ultimately pushing a similar agenda which is why I bought both of them while still in the same phase of my development.
Human Action might be a little more interesting, because it doesn’t try and push this meme that the science and the graphs all support my moral system as the best system. It’s just saying that this moral system is the best system because of muh morals. I’m being a little facetious throughout this post, and here specifically of course but my point should be clear. It’s true that I’ve talked a lot about deliberate conscious choice and unthinking behaviour myself in this blog so maybe on a second read I’ll actually find a lot to talk and think about in this book. I’m going to end this post here, I don’t really have anything else to say. Again I know this post is not my best, but I did get to say a lot even if it may be better to say less but more articulately. I treat this blog like a work in progress, I’m trying to get better with every new entry. Thanks for reading.
Ramblings of a neurotic mess 