Reasonableness of Anarcho-Capitalism?
Anthony Wile
Books can be read and reread at different times in life and yield new insights and interpretations. This is especially true of great books such as FA Hayek’s Road to Serfdom
. Rereading Road to Serfdom, one is struck anew by the reasonableness of the argument and the quiet eloquence of Hayek’s prose. What also becomes true on rereading Hayek is that he always hoped for the integration of Austrian economics with the world’s larger sociopolitical environment – even though that environment was increasingly hostile (during his lifetime) to free-market ideas.
. Rereading Road to Serfdom, one is struck anew by the reasonableness of the argument and the quiet eloquence of Hayek’s prose. What also becomes true on rereading Hayek is that he always hoped for the integration of Austrian economics with the world’s larger sociopolitical environment – even though that environment was increasingly hostile (during his lifetime) to free-market ideas.Hayek saw merit in certain government activities and believed there was a place for government oversight. Hayek, of course, is the less doctrinaire half of the (Ludwig von) Mises-Hayek tandem. Today, the conversation has moved on and Mises’ more pungent brand of free-market economics is perhaps preferred.
Here at the Bell we have often pointed out the inescapable reality of free-market thinking. Every law and every regulation is a price-fix of sorts and generates – for some service or some product – a queue, a shortage or a forcible redistribution of resources. There is nothing especially radical about this. It is simply the logical outcome of an argument. In fact, it is borne out by the realities all around us; we can see in the collapsing Western economies the bitter fruit of regulatory distortion. Over time, regulatory democracies tend toward more and more distortion. Regulatory overload only makes things worse.
Eventually, we come to the era of fingerpointing and blame-avoidance. The New York Times recently published an article entitled, A Path Is Sought for States to Escape Their Debt Burdens, which suggested that unidentified “policy makers” are beginning to conclude that the US Congress must establish a bankruptcy procedure for states.
The article points out states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. It then adds, “Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign. But proponents say some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal government’s aid.”
The level of desperation must be verging on high tide if “policy makers” are considering state bankruptcy as a way out of local American obligations. Of course this begs the question as to how the federal government is going to handle ITS debts. Outstanding obligations are now said to hover in the area of US$200 trillion, a number the country will find impossible to honor without either hyperinflation or an international jubilee. The Bell wrote about this impossible number here:
Fingerpointing takes several forms. The Anglo-American power elite likes to blame banks and Wall Street. And this tactic is certainly being utilized. Banks are said to have offered a great deal too much credit to the wrong people; comprehensive regulations are being put in place worldwide to make sure they do not do so again.
The blame game is also applied to individuals and individual concepts. The elite-controlled media is working overtime to make sure that people don’t get the “wrong” ideas. Plainly regulatory democracy doesn’t work; the central-banking economy – operating under the color or control of government – is a horrible mechanism that ruins people’s lives. But even as the media and elite proxies blame banks, so they must make sure that new ideas don’t creep into the conversation. This can be accomplished by linking ideas to violence – and then repressing them, forcefully if necessary.
Already at Raw Story, a sizeable alternative (but decidedly not libertarian) news blog, we can see this at work. Raw Story reports on an “anarcho-capitalist” Boston-area blogger who declared “one down, 534 to go” after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords – meaning that others in Congress ought to be shot in the head as well. As a result, the police raided Travis Corcoran’s house, removed his guns, revoked his license and declared him to be “a credible threat.”
Raw Story then pointed out the following: “Corcoran considers himself an ‘anarcho-capitalist,’ a radical branch of libertarianism. In a Tweet on January 8, Corcoran declared, ‘Not all killing is murder. US troops have killed many under Obama’s presidency. Is he a murderer? Or is it legitimate in war?'”
Corcoran runs a comic book store, and has obviously come to his conclusions (whatever they are) on his own. But the labeling has begun. Of course the great hard-money economist Murray Rothbard – late of the Mises Institute – believed in economic and political processes. He was an educator and spent much of his iife teaching, as did his mentor von Mises. There are hundreds of university-situated Austrian economists who are not apt to promote violence. Mises himself fled Europe to avoid World War II.
The problem with this sort of strategy is that it doesn’t work very well in the 21st century. The truth-telling of the Internet has taken a tremendous toll on the elite’s fear-based promotions. The global warming meme is in tatters; America’s serial wars are deeply unpopular; the blame-the-banks shell-game has not distracted public attention from the role of central banks in the West’s latest meltdown.
The Internet, in fact, has thoroughly exposed the centralizing plans of the Anglosphere. Here at the Bell we have written many articles about the elite’s evolving new world order and its haste to implement it. While such perspectives can be labeled “conspiratorial,” I’ve never doubted this analysis. Imagine my astonishment when on reading the current issue of the Economist – an Anglosphere mouthpiece if there ever was one – I found several articles forcefully articulating the concept of a “cosmopolitan, global elite.” Infowars noticed and wrote the following:
A rather bizarre article in The Economist addresses this power structure and far from dismissing it as a conspiracy theory, simply reaffirms the fact that “the cosmopolitan elite” do indeed “flock together” at such gatherings and elusive clubs to shape the world that the “superclass” wishes to inhabit. Of course, The Economist is a perfect avenue for the open conspiracy to be flaunted, given that its editor is a regular attendee at the annual Bilderberg conference, an admission the piece proudly discloses in its opening paragraphs.
Tongue firmly in cheek, the piece describes Bilderberg as “an evil conspiracy bent on world domination”, and then goes on to affirm that actually yes, the group really does dominate world events. It was responsible for the single European currency, it plays host to the world’s most influential aristocrats and business people, as well as a small cadre of journalists, representing the biggest global media corporations, who are sworn to comply with Chatham House rules, meaning they cannot disclose any of the “big ideas” that are hatched at Bilderberg.
“The world is a complicated place, with oceans of new information sloshing around.” the piece continues, “To run a multinational organisation, it helps if you have a rough idea of what is going on. It also helps to be on first-name terms with other globocrats. So the cosmopolitan elite— international financiers, bureaucrats, charity bosses and thinkers—constantly meet and talk. They flock to elite gatherings… They form clubs.”
There is not much the Anglosphere can do at this point but admit the reality of the organizational superstructure that has been created. It is a reportorial staple on the Internet. Query Bilderberg and Google offers nearly two million cites. Query Council on Foreign Relations and Google will provide nearly four million cites. Many blog sites and articles offer informed speculation that predicts the strategic maneuverings of the elite even before it takes place.
The effort to create an Anglosphere-administered new world order is at least 100 years old so far I can tell. But how much longer it will last? The euro is facing considerable turmoil and the EU itself is beset by austerity strikes and riots. All the world’s major fiat currencies are increasingly devalued even as recovery from the Greater Recession looks more and more improbable.
No doubt the power elite intended to take advantage of the current chaos to implement further economic centralizations. But it seems to me that the Internet has made their job a great deal harder. People throughout the West – around the world – understand that there are alternative systems that may be implemented. Gold and silver are money, not the world’s current paper money. Age-old health applications may be preferable to big pharma’s “cures.” Regulations seemingly do not alleviate social or financial misery and may even make them worse.
Yes, as other sociopolitical solutions are tried and exhausted, free markets increasingly may be viewed as a logical alternative to the failed solutions of a centralized and rigid Western system. Anarcho-capitalism itself may even come to be seen as a reasonable evolution of free-market thinking. Times are changing. It is possible that the elite does not have the answers.
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Reasonableness of Anarcho-Capitalism?
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Reviewed by 0x000216
on
May 18, 2018
Rating: 5
