Mission Impossible
Persuading a libertarian that a negotiation between one worker and a huge corporation is not a simple free market transaction.
Persuading a libertarian that the Lord gave us the earth for our use, not for our maximum exploitation.
Persuading a Republican that tariffs were NOT responsible for America’s past prosperity.
(Tariff “protection” did not create wealth. It only diverted the wealth toward certain interests. The more things change . . . . The same Big Business interests that once got rich from what they falsely called tariff “protection” are now getting rich from what they falsely call “free trade.”)
Persuading a Liberal that it is important and to everyone’s long-term benefit to tell the truth even if it might hurt somebody’s feelings.
Persuading a Republican that invading and killing foreigners is not necessarily “defending our country.”
Persuading a Republican that “our country” is not the same thing as the federal government and armed forces.
Persuading a leftist or a neoconservative (but I repeat myself) that not all societies need, want, or are capable of democracy.
Getting a Liberal or a Republican, or a federal judge or a news reporter, or just any ordinary pseudo-intellectual American, to admit that there is more peace and harmony between black and white people in the South than anywhere else in the U.S.
Persuading many Americans that knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence are not determined by the amount of time spent in “educational” institutions.
Persuading any American pseudo-intellectual or professor (but I repeat myself again) that he is deluded to think he is smarter than other ordinary Americans.
Getting the public to accept that the "War on Drugs" is, as any honest person expected, a complete flop (except as a source of profit for interested parties).
Getting the media to act as though candidates for high office should be measured by more than popularity and cuteness.
Getting the politicians and bureaucrats to admit that the U.S. educational system is a very expensive failure (except to the degree that it intends on purpose to dumb down the population).
Getting the American public to accept the truth about their government: That the government is operated for the benefit of politicians, the rich and the foreigners who can buy politicians, minority group leaders who can intimidate politicians, and federal employees, contractors, and grant recipients. To everyone else the federal government is a burden and imposition.
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Your third point takes Pat Buchanan to task. He often talks of the prosperity in America's past because of tariffs.
Persuading a neocon that Jese Helms was a better man than Jesse Jackson.
Your first point is somewhat misguided, for it is a market transaction in which workers, in aggregate, have about the same bargaining power, assuming that state does not distort the market one way or another.
Your third point is true, however, tariffs can cause that if done well. Due to social planner problem they rarely do so, however, it is possible.
Dr. Wilson:
Your words:
"Persuading any American pseudo-intellectual or professor (but I repeat myself again) that he is deluded to think he is smarter than other ordinary Americans."
I was at a local social just the other day. At some point during the gathering, I found myself among some folk discussing a constitutional question related to Hamilton's and then Marshall's infamous "implied powers." Some of the good people I knew and others I did not. One of the number and I were have a gentlemanly disagreement when out of the blue he asked me what training I had had on the Constitution. Without giving me an opportunity to respond, he told the group, some of whom already knew, that he was an attorney and had no little training in constitutional law.
In my upbringing, I was taught to be gracious, even when pressed. Well, I suppose I either forgot my upbringing or answered to some higher law because I said that the study of constitutional law had little if nothing to do with the Constitution.
The fat which we had been chewing was thereupon in the fire.
Well, I think you did the right thing by responding the way you did, Mr Peters. Too many people are allowed to get away with such inexcusable behaviour as this attorney committed, and even though many of the people who saw him do that probably were put off by it, that didn't stop him from lowering the level of discourse almost to that of apes in the jungle. If any kind of decent society can survive today, then people have got to stop putting up with petty barbarisms like that coming from worthless dirtbags with a veneer of civilised culture that so often cracks, showing the rotten personal character and total lack of decency that is what they really are.
Dr Wilson
You surprise me sometimes, as a conservative with some very strong libertarian leanings yourself (I have never seen another 'Paleo' defend free trade as well as yourself) I am surprised you say these things:
"Persuading a libertarian that a negotiation between one worker and a huge corporation is not a simple free market transaction."
Aside from the usual libertarian's distaste for labor unions, there is also the here and the now: unions no longer represent the average worker. The are simply a drag on productivity and another tax. Surely your friend Murray Rothbard had some influence on you?
"Persuading a libertarian that the Lord gave us the earth for our use, not for our maximum exploitation."
OK, well there are some Randians that celebrate 'egoism' and perhaps such views are an outgrowth of that. But I am curious how far you think one should go to use the resources of the Earth? Do Paleos support environmental laws now? You do make a valid point overall though.
Mr. Maxwell @ 5
Dr. Wilson I am, of course, not. However, I would like to comment on your post.
I have come to understand that my upbringing in the polity of Pollock, with its commonwealths of households, churches and other institutions, made manifest in and through me as a participant in and partaker of those commonwealths the concept of stewardship: all things are God's - life, the commonwealths themselves, their common polity, etc., and we hold them as stewards and are accountable to God and to one another for them. Although I did not know it at the time, I had and retain a very ante-modern (perhaps now anti-modern) upbringing.
The environmental laws are a product of something quite different. Modernism produced by cutting man off from subjectivity and solidarity the post-modern man: a soulless being who nevertheless tries to find the old commonwealths and polities from which he has been estranged but finds only a soulless collective of fellow soulless beings. The abstract cause of environmentalism has nothing to do with the loving concern for God's creation. Environmental laws are, in fact, the imposition of a soulless heteronomous belief system on individuals and the commonwealths and polities with which and in which they intercourse - a meaningless search for meaning by post-moderns.
As to the "one worker" versus the "huge corporation," I submit that the "one" alienated from his life-sustaining commonwealths of household, the Church and local community, is as naked before a huge corporation as he is before the national state. Labor unions were and remain an artificial Ersatz for natural commonwealths - households, the Church and the local community. "Huge corporations" as we know them today are products of state capitalism (soft fascism) and are not natural outgrows of free enterprise, freedom of association and free men entering into contract with one another.
I think, but I am not certain, that Dr. Wilson and I are close on the issue of free trade: what it is not is protectionism or NAFTA. These are, for my understanding, false dichotomies in a discussion of free trade.
One of the main problems lies in the misconception of "capitalism". Most people think of it as a sort of monolith, but that isn't the case, nor is what many believe to be "capitalist" institutions any such thing.
First, of course, capitalism is the only economic system that leads to progress and wealth. Socialism does not and, except in religious communities such as monasteries (and Celesteville in the Babar books). The concept is utopian and therefore practical nonsense except for the very few who - while not exactly prospering - will do better than the vast majority of the rest of the populace.
But "unrestrained" capitalism isn't much better. True, it will lead to wealth in far greater measure than socialism but there is a tremendous divide between the "haves" and the "have nots". As well, there is no interest in the welfare of others including the environment. Whatever has to be done to make money "now" is done no matter how shortsighted and eventually destructive it may be.
On the other hand, what is called "enlightened" or "CHRISTIAN" capitalism is something else again. The economic policies of capitalism with a Christian moral base is, I believe, the foundation of America's wealth. While not always 100% successful - at least in its more Christian aspects - a Christian moral worldview has resulted in those who HAVE being concerned about the welfare of those who do NOT have and efforts made to "bring them into the process".
We see "enlightened" capitalism at work even today (though our nation has lost its Christian foundations) in most of America's small and mid-sized businesses. We see "unrestrained" capitalism in our mega-corporations and multinationals, especially in their "partnership" with government. Unfortunately, however, the latter seems to be spreading downward as the mega-corps simply drive their competition out of business or buy it up. Meanwhile, of course, the government grows exponentially using its commercial partners as a means of gaining more control of the people.
This malignant relationship reminds me of an astronomical state in which a large star is caught in the grips of a smaller black hole. The two revolve around each other in a dance of death, with the substance of the star being sucked into the black hole. Eventually, all that will be left is the hole. In the dance of government and commerce, eventually all that is left is government.
Dr Wilson, I believe that you, and I think also Dr Fleming, are the only conservatives I know of who are willing to condemn the 'war' on drugs as the disaster that it is. The fact that neocons wont do so is one more bit of proof that they are big government goons.
"Getting the American public to accept the truth about their government: That the government is operated for the benefit of politicians, the rich and the foreigners who can buy politicians, minority group leaders who can intimidate politicians, and federal employees, contractors, and grant recipients. To everyone else the federal government is a burden and imposition."
Does that include federal aid to students Dr. Wilson? How about tenured academics at public schools? How about pensioners of the state? You've been on the dole of the taxpayers for a number of years, Dr. Wilson. Was the milk of the state which you have been suckling on for some decades now "a burden and imposition" ? Where would the publicly funded University of South Carolina be without Title IV, Pell and Montgomery GI funds? I think you've feasted well on the taxpayers while cursing the cook. Yet you kept gorging all the while.
@robert m. peters
"“Huge corporations” as we know them today are products of state capitalism (soft fascism) and are not natural outgrows of free enterprise"
I am going to have to disagree with you here for the most part. It might be try that most corporations try to get in the bed with the state once they have become influential enough, but most became big via only their own success. Google is a good example of this. Wal-Mart, although much hated today, prior to Sam Walton's death is another good example.
@Allen Wilson
I have noticed a trend among so called 'paleos' of the past 10 years or so, and it is not unique to just Dr. Wilson or Dr. Fleming - weakening support for the drug war.
Mr. Maxwell @ 10
I am tempted to cede to your point but cannot. Internal improvement subsidies on the part of the state, i.e. transferring wealth via taxes to build infrastructures such as roads to service a specific industry or set of industries, is part of state capitalism. Creating fiat money to make capital available to industries is a part of state capitalism. Passing "progressive" laws under the guise of noble causes to protect "our health" are part of state capitalism. I run a private school for profit. I was tempted just four years ago to take out a small business loan. During the application process, I became aware that I was about to become a state capitalist and be in league with the general government. Upon that realization, I stopped the process.
I am relatively new to Chronicles and to a knowledge of and about paleo-conservatives. I have merely been that which I am. However, the war on drugs is like the war on poverty and the war on terror. All three enhance the power of the central state while draining the legitimate authority from the more intimate polities of states, localities and families. They transfer wealth from those who produce it to those who do not. And, they become the disease of which they claim to be the cure as the problems which they allegedly address get worse. Opposing the war on drugs based on sound principles does not mean that one embraces libertine license or is giving a clarion call to vote Libertarian.
It's impossible for a politician to be in favor of "crime," except his own, and he hopes that stays secret.
Hence moral panic about "crime" is a recurrent theme of those who would increase state power. "Child abuse" is another variation on the theme. Who could favor abusing children?
Paul Craig Roberts, who often seems to me overwrought, is very good on prosecutorial abuse.
People who want to are going to put unhealthy stuff in their veins. Making the enterprise criminal jacks up the price and empowers the wearers of jackboots and the bearers of listening devices.
I noticed that the first day I came back from out West. A black taxi-cab driver, seeing me lose my change in a newspaper rack, honked his horn and offered me his paper.
In the South, blacks and whites may freely criticize each other, but they have an obvious affection for each other.
Everywhere else, they say loudly how much they don't dislike each other, but they can't stand looking at "them."
The first time someone from another race calls you "Miss Betty" or "Mr. Jim," you will know that there is something special about the South. The third, twelfth, or five hundredth time you hear it, you are home.
PcH,
The kids in the tiny school in which I am privileged to serve call me "Dr. Robert." It strikes the perfect balance between intimacy and respect.
To the pseudonymous "Rob" in No. 9. Take an elementary course in logic. The ad hominen is not an argument. My time at the public trough (along with millions of others) could hardly be called "gorging," nor did I claim any particular innocence. And where do you think I learned and became convinced of what I said?
Dr. Wilson:
If you would be so kind, I would appreciate your explaining your statement about free trade in greater detail. I am usually in favor of it, except where it might put industries essential to our security in peril. I did not, I regret to say, pay much attention to NAFTA, but just assumed it was a genuine free trade agreement. Is this a false assumption?
Now to Rob, #9. Your tone in response to Dr. Wilson I find typical of a certain breed of self-satisfied fool, usually hiding behind the guise of an educated person. Dr. Wilson is certainly aware of the funding wasted at the University of South Carolina and its drain on the state and it citizens. I'm certain he wouldn't hesitate to argue that it should not now, nor never should have been allowed. That said, he would likely agree with Thomas Jefferson that a fine education, the kind unavailable at our institutions of higher learning, ought to be made available to all who are able to profit from it. The state (not the Federal government) should, therefore set aside funds to make it available to benefit the inhabitants of that state. I am saddened that you are no such person, and that you have the effrontery to chastise someone so much your superior in learning, intelligence, and wisdom. I suppose your parents failed you, but it is not too late to rectify their mistake. Meanwhile, we are fortunate that Dr. Wilson does what he is able to educate and inform those with the ability to discern.
And for Daniel Maxwell, #10, may I remind you that the Internet was a creation of the Federal Government. Google could not have assembled such a world-wide network on its own. Wal-Mart operated under corporate law, an artificial creation of the Federal Government. Both, in other words, products of THE STATE.
"The first time someone from another race calls you “Miss Betty” or “Mr. Jim,” you will know that there is something special about the South. The third, twelfth, or five hundredth time you hear it, you are home."
Amen.
Mr Peters has defined the proper attitude toward drugs and the war against them with perfection.
I would like to add two things, both of which come from leftists with strange ideas, but they are worthy of our consideration. Timothy Leary always maintained that LSD, though potentially a very dangerous drug, had great potential for the treatment of psychological disorders when used with proper clinical procedure and under the care of qualified practitioners. He may have been wrong about that, but how are we to know? Based on hysteria, the government shut down LSD research in it's infancy.
Alan Watts said that modern psychology and psychiatry had become almost like a state religion with a priesthood. He was mainly referring to the Freudianism which was ascendant in his day, but he also meant the forms of psychology and psychiatry which are the mainstream today. He said that a psychologist or psychiatrist could walk into any classroom in the country, observe the behaviour of the children, and begin to give labels to each child. He would be able to label some kids as 'over acheivers', and some as 'under acheivers', and give labels to the kids that are generally dull and bored, etc., as well as to those that are often unruly and misbehaving. Every single kid in the class could be given a diagnostic label, as if there were something wrong with him. He said he thought that this was a very dangerous thing.
He said that back in the 60's, and it has turned out to be prophetic. Look at all the undisciplined kids, who have not been taught proper behaviour by their parents, who are being diagnosed with 'ADHD', and are then told that they have something wrong with them, which excuses and encourages their bad behaviour, and are then being fed drugs which turn them into zombies and possibly warp the development of their brains, and certainly the development of their personalities.
Mr. Robert M. Peters, I am suprised to learn that you are new to this site and paleoconservatism. But then again, maybe like me, you were surprised to learn that there was a name for what you are by birth and upbringing. I was quite astonished that much is written in defense of what seems only natural.
Ms. Valerie Protopapas, I am happy to see you among us. I have long admired your posts at SHNV.
I would add to Dr. Wilson's:
"Persuading a libertarian that big corporations don't give a damn about the "free market" and said "market" is mostly a figment of their imagination."
That, too, is my rejoinder to the critics of environmental laws. The notion that opponents of such laws care about stewardship, et al., but merely have a philosophical aversion is beanbag. Mountain top mining, strip mining, the Ft. McMurray horror, etc., that is what the "free market" produces for the environment these days. Those who think differently are just deluded shills for big corporations.
No need to have any of those you mention "persuaded", simply ask the lot of them to explain themselves in detail. With what knowledge you posses you surely could interogate these ideologues with a few simple questions, and let them make fools of themselves.
Allen Wilson @ 18 said:
Right on the money.
There's is one more layer to that. Most of the kids being drugged for ADHD are drugged for being boys. Behaviors that were acceptable 50 years ago are now verboten, such as: respectfully asking questions, thinking things through, honesty, openness, a love of life, an energetic enthusiasm for what God hath wrought, and worst of all – courage.
These behaviors were valued 150 years ago, but now they are threats to the prissy people (actually, I say, wicked people) that hold all positions of status everywhere in the United States now.
When I was in school, I was known as well-behaved and especially cheerful. Today I would be fed Aderol.
Mr. Simmons #21. They would have to be forced to have a lie detector hooked up before interrogation.
"to admit that there is more peace and harmony between black and white people in the South than anywhere else in the U.S."
I live in a neighborhood of older, 1,000+ square foot homes, built of wood or, brick. There are 5 black families, and a half-way house on my street. None of the homes are rented, which likely helps things. The neighborhood is both safe and, quiet. My home would be easy for a burglar to break into, but I've never had that problem.
I wonder how many comparable neighborhoods like mine are found up north?
Cyde Wilson
What evidence do you have for your claims about tariffs?
A very interesting book came out a few years ago on the history of protectionist trade policy on European and American economic development by a Korean economist who teaches economics at Cambridge University. The name of the book is: Kicking away the ladder.
He reanalyzed the same historical econometric data that the pro-free trade economists use to make the case for free trade and came to the opposite conclusion that protectionist trade policies were crucial to European and American economic development. The only exception was Ireland which had a free trade policy imposed on it by England. For years Ireland was econmically undeveloped nation. The author of this book found a statistical casual relationship between free trade policies and underdevelopment.
The current economists can find statistics to claim anything they want. We know those economies grew. The question is, what part did the tariff play in the growth compared to other variables? The concept of "development" itself is highly elastic. MIght the growth or even greater growth have occurred if the tariff had not been creating immense, unprecedented fortunes for the few? Do you really think that the industrial capitalists propagandized, lobbied, and bribed for a high tariff policy for a century or more because they wanted to protect the high wages of American workers?
Dr. Wilson,
My instinct is to agree with you because you are older and wiser than me in every way, but on this free trade stuff don't two impossibilities come into play ?
1) Persuading a libertarian that a negotiation between one worker and a huge corporation is not a simple free market transaction.
2) Persuading a libertarian that the Lord gave us the earth for our use, not for our maximum exploitation.
It seems to me that economics is or ought to be about scale and home management and not about freedom to lie, cheat and steal in the name of property rights and liberty. Once a culture degenerates to the point that traditions and morals are corrupted to deprive labor of honest wages, issues of free trade do not really matter. The depressed economies of the southern yeomen and the european peasantry were based upon a mans choice to either use or withold his labor for his own or his family's benefit. Yet, with the break up of the agrarian culture ( that is to say, growth as we now conceive it ) by oligarchs and business men, the choice for the craftsmen, herdsmen, and plowmen was to withold labor or starve to death, which brings into play another impossibility --- a bigger government" for the people.'"
PcH - as long as schools receive federal money for every student who has a diagnosis that affects their learning, children will continue to be labeled as ADD or ADHD and medicated. Our school continually suggested that I have my son tested, and I refused. Several of his friends were not so lucky.
Dr. Wilson,
"Getting the American public to accept the truth about their government: That the government is operated for the benefit of politicians, the rich and the foreigners who can buy politicians, minority group leaders who can intimidate politicians, and federal employees, contractors, and grant recipients. To everyone else the federal government is a burden and imposition."
Sad and oh so true. It's impossible because of the government education (in all its forms) imposed on all who come under its influence. Today that is most people, young and old, one way or another.
There is virtually no one today that doesn't feed at the public trough in some way. It's sad, but its built into the system. If more people did actually understand that the government is the problem I think there would be more hope that a correction might possibly in time be made.
It's amazing that you survived within the very belly of the beast. Thank you for the words of wisdom.
Much can be said about a tariff. It is an indirect tax. It is a tax collected by the state which has a monopoly on police power, hence the power to tax. People who pay the tax on goods under the tariff are paying for those goods more than they would otherwise have had to pay. The difference between the amount paid on the goods including the tax and the amount they would have paid without the tax is wealth lost by the purchaser and transferred to the state.. The purchaser has thus lost wealth which he would have otherwise retained and used in some other manner at his discretion.
It is here that some fundamental principles come into play. If this tax simply goes to fund the legitimate functions of government as enumerated in a constitution, and the functions of the government are to serve the commonwealths of the polity - republics of the union and other commonwealths withing those republics such as households - and not to negatively impact those commonwealths, then the tariff will likely cause little difficulty in policy and politics.
If, however, the transfer for wealth by means of the tariff is not a transfer to the government so that the government can fulfill its constitutionally enumerated duties and thereby equally serve all of the commonwealths of the polity but rather to give some party and/or region within the polity advantage over the other. Then it is a different matter entirely.
Sorry about the last sentence. The electricity went off and is likely to go off again.
"And for Daniel Maxwell, #10, may I remind you that the Internet was a creation of the Federal Government. Google could not have assembled such a world-wide network on its own. Wal-Mart operated under corporate law, an artificial creation of the Federal Government. Both, in other words, products of THE STATE."
So are roads, sidewalks, nuclear power plants, etc, etc etc. Does that mean one should have to destroy them, lest they be 'tainted'? No. All of those are market goods, and well...I wont go into road privatization on this forum.
In the end, Wal-Mart, if it was a flop would have been in the dustbin with other failed companies that dont make it in the (relatively) free market - regardless of corporate law.
"......as long as schools receive federal money for every student who has a diagnosis that affects their learning, children will continue to be labeled as ADD or ADHD and medicated."
This brought to mind another similar "federal money" scheme which was glaringly revealed by Dr. Robinson, who is the founder, along with his many children, of Robinson's Self-Teaching Home Curriculum which my fifth daughter, Dixie, uses.
http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/view/rc/s31p718.htm
(Fourth/last post from above link)
Excerpt below from "The New Jersey incident. What motivates bureaucrats."
".......most states have passed laws allowing them to receive child abuse money from the federal government. When a child is seized, these programs provide over $100,000 per child which pays the people who seize the child and their retainers in the police dept., child services, foster homes, etc. Our family was worth at least $500,000 to the social services industry of New Jersey."
Dr. Wilson, may I suggest another area for Mission Impossible, namely the federal income tax? Having most working Americans to understand that earnings gained thru activities of common occupations in the private sector fall outside the taxing scope of the federal govt. As Uncle Remus mused: "it ain't what you don't know that puts a hurtin on you. What puts a hurtin on you is what you know for certain that just ain't so."
Like tariffs, today's federal income taxes are an indirect tax and are mainly levied against activities of federal privilege. Sadly, most believe that all that comes in is taxable because they think and are led to believe that their earnings are derived from federal activities and dutifully give away much of their wealth to the central state..to do all the dreadful things mentioned and known as well as much, I suspect, that is unknown.
If that gross misunderstanding was corrected and folks started to keep most of their earnings, it would go along way to help correct this financial mess in which we now find ourselves.
Clyde Wilson
Yeah I agree with your points..most of them. Also, there are very likely serious questions about the quality of data. This is a serious problem in the study of labor markets in years past.
Having said all this, American workers tend to be protectonist and they must have good reasons for being so. I can't think of better data points than the the experiences of millions of American workers-the White ones of course-with different economic policies.
American workers would like protection against foriegn scab labor. Now there are two ways to expose America workers to foriegn scab labor. One way is through a free trade low tariffs policy;the other way to expose them to foreign scab labor is to have an immigration policy justified by its diversity blessing powers.
White American workers oppose being exposed to foreign scab labor whether its through free trade or a race replacment legal immigration policy. In both situations, White American workers are being denied the benefits of of a severe labor scarcity.
The book "Kicking away the ladder" is still worth a read.
Well said, Clyde.
Daniel Maxwell
Dr. Wilson said:
““Huge corporations” as we know them today are products of state capitalism (soft fascism) and are not natural outgrows of free enterprise”
You disagreed and said:
"but most (corporations) became big via only their own success."
My response was to this statement. You are confusing apples and oranges.
"So are roads, sidewalks, nuclear power plants, etc, etc etc. Does that mean one should have to destroy them, lest they be ‘tainted’? No. All of those are market goods, and well…I wont go into road privatization on this forum.
In the end, Wal-Mart, if it was a flop would have been in the dustbin with other failed companies that dont make it in the (relatively) free market - regardless of corporate law."
Do roads make money for themselves, or for a privileged few? Sidewalks? They are hardly market good, either. They benefit us all, so we all pay for them via taxes. The state contracts out their construction. Though corruption may infiltrate the process, the roads and sidewalks are built, and we use them. Is Google making money for you and me? Wal-Mart? The www is benefiting all of us. Like roads and sidewalks it is a product of government and our taxes. Might it have been created privately? I have no idea. Google may be growing solely for the service it provides us, but its growth is now privileged by its corporate status. Does that guarantee its survival or success? No. It does make it different than true "free enterprise," entrepreneurship without government benefit or restriction. Corporations have special accounting practices just for them. They can use these in ways to increase wealth at other's expense (or perhaps you have already forgotten Kenneth Lay and Enron Corp.) Do you really think you and I, or the bike shop down the street can do that?? What about influencing government policy? Do you and I and that bike shop stand on equal footing with Google and Wal-Mart there??
@ 39
This was addressed in 1930 in I'll Take My Stand, a classic and essential reading for Americans.
Roads make money for the privileged few. Roads completely redesigned the American commercial landscape and were pivotal in destroying the American farm. By redesigning the landscape, it became no longer possible to get to work or shop by other means, such as walking. Strip development and the obliteration of the inner city are two results of roads that have ended American independence and allowed all commerce to be centralized into the hands of a few headquartered in the Northeast.
Roads were built without the consent of the owners whose land was confiscated and who were taxed to pay for them. For the now extinct American farmer, this forced him to send his family out to work for someone else in order to have the capital whereby to pay the taxes for the roads he didn't want.
Roads also mean that it is no longer possible to leave the capitalist system, buy a farm and live independently. Taxes still must be paid, and that means cash on hand and dependence on the economics dictated by others.
Because of roads and the redesign of the landscape, all persons in the US are forced to buy cars whether they want to or not. They are a necessity to get to work to collect a paycheck assigned to him by someone else, or to buy food at prices set by someone else. Of course we know what roads mean as far as buying gas: you must buy gas whether you want to or not and you must accept the prices set by someone else.
Modern roads were not built as a public service. Not only were roads built to force everyone to get a job working for someone else to have the cash to pay the taxes for the roads, but they were a way to bring tax dollars to politicians and his bosses straightaway.
Road contracts are awarded to those with the necessary connections, to the privileged few – such as Google and Wal-Mart. Campaign funds are filled and other kickbacks paid, all "legal", to enforce those necessary connections between big money and the politicians who seize the taxes on their behalf.
Your tax dollars go straight into another person's pocket.
Our government = organized crime.
These criminals cannot stand on their own two feet. If they were able to make money on their own, they would not need to seize yours at gunpoint. Yes, the police will come if you fail to pay taxes or fees or interest or fines or any other form of your money they want. Even your food, clothing, and shelter are controlled by the privileged few.
Jeff @39
You're missing the point. At it stands now, roads etc are not a market good. They do good for a privileged few. (corporatism)
My point was, simply because the roads were for the most part built by the state doesnt mean that they would all have to be destroyed if the state were to get out of the road socialism business.
Most roadbuilding in the U.S. results from the fact that it provides tremedous profits for companies favoured by politicians and lucrative kickbacks to the politicians.
Dr. Wilson @ 42
There are several good cases in point here in Louisiana. Interstate 49, was built, taking most of the traffic off U.S. 71 and U.S. 171. Yet, with still little traffic, these two highways are being four-laned, not only consuming thousands of acres of land but putting money into the pockets of hundreds of contractors and politicians.
In my early years, we lived about one-half mile down a sand-dirt lane just off an old gravel road, a road which had only two houses on it - ours and that of a neighbor about one-quarter of a mile away. One summer's day, they came and paved the gravel road with asphalt. My father, who was a cement mason, told me to come with him. His intention was to teach me something about politics. We walked out into the middle of the newly paved road. As we walked, he told me that the road, at its center, was to have eight inches of asphalt. With a small pick, he cut some small holes in the middle of the road along some 100 yards and measured the asphalt. It measured a little over four inches in every case. My father then explained to me that the missing four inches of pavement was in the pockets of contractors and politicians. Our internal improvements at work, transferring the wealth of those who actually make it into the hands of the politicians and the oligarchy which they serve. But the theft is always for a noble cause: the goddess of progress.
to admit that there is more peace and harmony between black and white people in the South than anywhere else in the U.S.”
I wonder how many comparable neighborhoods like mine are found up north?
Not too many up here in the Detroit area, but then again that isn't entirely "whiteys" fault. After the '67 riots up here, and the increase in crime, it was "Whitey get out!" Coleman Young( Mugabe lite) ran on that theme and kept a rather antagonistic relationship with the majority white suburbs throughout his tenure as Mayor of Detroit. Now they have this idiot in charge who has stayed in office and has kept his popularity intact as he blames all his legal problems on whitey trying to bring him down. Now, almost 40 years without the white middle class, the money has long dried up, along with the jobs, and you have god awful neighborhoods that look like an Iraqi or Afghan warzone with hookers and crack houses galore. Thing is this has happened to some degree in every major rust belt metropolis and beyond. Blacks got pissed after MLK got capped, whitey got scared, pulled up and left for the suburbs and took their money with him and the inner cities started to die. Even some medium sized cities up here are mini Detroits like Flint. Cleveland is pretty much shot to hell also.
RMP @ 43
When I was growing up out West, I remember walking and biking around the valley where I was born. Every half mile was a long, straight concrete road. Every few yards was a stamp: "Bickenbaugh Construction Co. 1928." I knew from photographs that until after WWII, the area was dry farming, meaning unirrigated wheat. There were no home anywhere around until long after the war. I used to wonder why all the roads to nowhere.
A few years ago, I lived in a cabin in the mountains and a retired LAPD captain took a liking to me. He it thought funny the way I spoke frankly with a cherubic face. One day he lent me a book a friend of his had self-published. It was the history of Southern California that no one knows. Since his friend was also a former officer, he had access to records that no other historian has had.
The book named the Chandlers, the Otises and other old families from Massachussetts who sent their second sons out West in the years following the Civil War. With their money and connections, they soon took over the dusty little town of Los Angeles. These people are still in power (look at the masthead of the LA Times), so it is no wonder the book was not published.
Anyways, the book was well cited and of a scholarly quality. It detailed just how LA was built after the War. To summarize, the West was taken over and run by organized crime and one of the principle means was to build roads that no one needed at exorbitant prices to tax-payers. The contracts were awarded to close friends of officials and by a system of bribing more sophisticated than that associated with the Third World. Business licenses were awarded to car dealers on the same principles. The same pattern applied to the oil companies, particularly notable since up to around WWII, Southern California dominated oil production like Kuwait does today. So the whole economy was tied together and run by one small gang.
I want to repeat "organized crime;" the system of bribes, beatings, hits, thefts, slander, and censorship documented in the book can be described as nothing else.
I am sure Southern California is one example of a pattern that happened everywhere in the US after the Civil War and is being repeated the world over today. Even the physical appearance of every city is the same.
As Clyde Wilson says above: "Most roadbuilding in the U.S. results from the fact that it provides tremedous profits for companies favoured by politicians and lucrative kickbacks to the politicians."
Now I know why there were all these old concrete roads everywhere where I grew up.
PcH @ 45,
What is the name of the book on the History of Southern California (Los Angeles)? Can it still be purchased? It sounds like a book worthy of promotion and dissemination.
Thanks
Right now there is a certain city in Arkansas which is located away from the freeway system. Yet, a big loop is being built around the city. Why is it being built? Because the powers that be plan to bring gambling back to the city once famous for it. Just think of all the slime and scumbags who will make their way there when the dice get rolling.
Meanwhile, toward my neck of the woods, quite a few miles from the city, the state highway is being widened between the city and a certain retirement community full of old yankees. Why is the road being widened at taxpayer expence? In order to serve the vanity of the residents and rulers of that retirement community, nothing more.
The loop and widening will facilitate travel between the city and my neck of the woods, which means that all the outsiders, scum, slime, and worthless trash will pour out of that city and head into my neck of the woods, perhaps obliterating it in the long run. Wonderful!!!!!!!