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July 30, 2004

Marketing A Free Society: Education, Persuasion, and Conversion by Edward W. Younkins

Ideas are the most powerful forces in the world and the motive power of human progress. There already exists a body of well-articulated, theoretically consistent, systematic, and intellectually sound defenses of capitalism which expound the principles of traditional liberalism, voluntary cooperation, and individual fre... (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (32 messages)

Post 20

Monday, August 2, 2004 - 4:13am

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Hey, Regi, Linz would probably agree with you that I suffer from acute academiosis (he dislikes my use of "Polish" language every so often).  But I am a bit curious why you'd think I was endorsing a "collective solution" to any of the problems I'm mentioning. The world changes one person at a time. But if I just focus on my own life, as if it were a self-contained universe, while giving not one iota of thought to how the Fed inflates the money supply, or how various interests vie for special privileges at each other's expense, and so forth, how on earth do we ever expect to really change these institutions? That's not a call for "collective" action, but it is sure going to require more than a solipsistic focus.

You're probably right that the vast majority of people will not be changed, no matter what kind of education they receive; people's premises are rather tenacious, and the statement "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" is one that has a lot of truth. Right now, of course, our educational institutions are hopelessly at war with radical thinking.   They teach students to disintegrate; their curricula are aimed at disintegration. This is what a statist economy requires: because learning how to integrate the bits and pieces of this system will lead many principled people to advocate its overturning. Statism has evolved by bits and pieces over a long period of time. To dismantle it is going to require a similar movement by bits and pieces. But it is also going to require an integrated understanding of how the bits and pieces fit together.

Institutional problems are going to require institutionalchanges.   People acted in concert to create an income tax. People acted in concert to create a Federal Reserve System. People acted in concert to create the public school system. People acted in concert to create an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies. People acted in concert to create prohibitions, controls, and so forth. How on earth do we change these regulations on our lives without some kind of re-action based on radically different moral principles?

You're right: Ultimately, the battle is one that each individual must take up. But it's going to require a wholesale checking of the premises of the mixed economy for this system to be changed radically. And that's why it is important to study that system, to understand its workings, and to identify the means by which the system, and its props, might be changed.

Post 21

Monday, August 2, 2004 - 9:14am

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People, people, people ...

Please take out your copies of "Atlas Shrugged" and READ them. There is no need to convert the unconvertable to bring about an Objectivist heaven on Earth. An irrational society such as the modern American welfare state is unsustainable. It will collapse due to its own contradictions. All the savvy Objectivist needs to do is wait in the wings, rather like Lenin did as Tsarist Russia fell, and then seize the day. I figure you have about 25 years to get ready -- so make your plans.

Meanwhile, get on with enjoying your lives.

Regards,
Bill

Post 22

Monday, August 2, 2004 - 12:20pm

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good grief!! whoever said a sequel would mean continuing the characters!... any proper 'sequel' to any of Rand's works [ or of any other's works dealing with ideas] would be to garner the furtherances of the ideas, exploring consequences and extrapolations and so forth... in this case, yes, the actual development and successfulness of a truly functioning objective society in the midst of this world... to use Rand's words, '...show - to hold up to man a concretized image of his nature and his place in the universe... the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved... one's ideal world'... in other words, the extrapolation od galt's gulch into today's world, as much a possible as i can conceive...

Post 23

Monday, August 2, 2004 - 7:34pm

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Hi Chris,

Linz would probably agree with you

I seriously doubt that. Does he agree with people?

But I am a bit curious why you'd think I was endorsing a "collective solution" to any of the problems I'm mentioning.

I am certain you would never intentionally or overtly suggest collectivism in any form. But, inadvertently and unintentionally, the "solutions" you suggest "smack" of collectivism. You frequently say things like, "We can't possibly get there without a full-bodied and comprehensive analysis of those institutional means." Who is "we?"

I know when forced to think about it you will say "we" is anyone who has the same interest in the same objectives you are avowing. But, in fact, there are no places "we" can't possibly get to, because there are no collective objectives, only individual ones.

Is heavier-than-air flight a good human objective? Most people, until recently (within the scope of human history) thought the idea was a crackpot one. But, suppose, it was decided it was a pressing objective that human beings just had to accomplish. Your method of reaching the objective would be "checking the premises of institutions, traditions, and customs across politics, economics, culture, and ethical practices," which process would have gone on forever, but human heavier-than-air flight would never have come about. Except, of course, unless a couple of individuals who didn't give a rap about the politics, social implication, cultural effects, or any of the other dialectical "contexts" came along and just built an airplane.

I've alway like something F. Scott Fitzgerald said about the poverty problem. He said, "the problem with the poor is, they don't have any money." Obviously a humorous inanity, but there is a spark of truth in it, which is why it is funny. All of the social problems reduce to the same thing. For example, unemployment. You can study all of the possible political, economic, cultural, and institutional contributions to the problems of unemployment, but in the end, those who have a job, have no unemployment problem at all, and those who have an unemployment problem can eliminate it immediately, by going to work.

Now quickly...

They teach students to disintegrate; their curricula are aimed at disintegration.

Oh yes. How sad. But, there is a working solutions, howbeit, an individual one actually being implemented--the home/private school, "movement," (a manifestation of many individuals making the right choice about their own children), and it is scaring the daylights out of establishment government education. Watch this one. This is the place where violence between the state and individuals may very well be realized.

Institutional problems are going to require institutional changes.

An "institution" is some kind of "collective," such as an organization. If there is a problem with an institution, the solution is to ignore or eliminate it. Fixing broken institutions never works.

You're right: Ultimately, the battle is one that each individual must take up.

Then what are you arguing about? ;>)

Regi

(Edited by Reginald Firehammer on 8/02, 7:40pm)

Post 24

Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - 5:02am

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Regi writes:

An "institution" is some kind of "collective," such as an organization. If there is a problem with an institution, the solution is to ignore or eliminate it. Fixing broken institutions never works.

Great. How do you ignore the Federal Reserve System when it inflates the money supply and creates a boom-bust cycle? How do you eliminate it if not with some kind of political action that dissolves it? Such action can only be taken when people who share the same values act to dissolve it.

Post 25

Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - 9:52am

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Chris,

How do you ignore the Federal Reserve System when it inflates the money supply and creates a boom-bust cycle?

Oh, for example:

Digital Monetary Trust

e-gold

NORFED

Still using Federal Reserve Notes? Concerned about your money
and the market? Thousands of Americans are just like you and they have found the solution: The Liberty Dollar - the inflation-proof currency owned by the people, not the Federal Reserve.

The Liberty Dollar
America's inflation-proof currency
100% backed and redeemable in gold & silver
New! Easily convertible to and from U.S. Dollars

The Liberty Dollar is real money, better than Federal Reserve Notes! Just as
FedEx brought competition to and improved the U.S. Postal Service, NORFED brings competition to America's most basic economic unit, its currency.

Regi

Post 26

Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - 3:24pm

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Hi, Regi.

I think competing currencies are excellent idea. Indeed, we already have that with state-sponsored currencies in the international currency markets. Better yet are private currencies, which other than E-Gold, I didn't know existed. Are these private currencies primarily marketed as a store of value or a medium of exchange?

Regards,
Bill

Post 27

Tuesday, August 3, 2004 - 6:17pm

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Bill,

Are these private currencies primarily marketed as a store of value or a medium of exchange?

Both. The links in my post all work and lead to pages that are just dying to explain themselves.

Regi

Post 28

Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - 6:29am

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Hi, Regi.

The links didn't work. No doubt a problem on my end. However, my intrepid investigative skills (or was it Google?) got me the information I was looking for.

I find it interesting that the Liberty Dollar and e-Gold are making serious pitches to be mediums of exchange. Not a bad racket. Maybe I should start issuing negotiable receipts for my silver Eagles at nine dollars a pop to give the Rat Buck a competitive edge.

This does raise a serious question for me. If private currencies did take hold, obviously competition would drive down the seignorage of the issuers. It is one thing to exploit the inefficiencies and other ills of a government monopoly, such as the Federal Reserve, but what shape would an entirely private market in currencies take?

I'm not sure the Liberty Dollar would be the model. I suspect it would be more like the era when banks issued their own currency denominated in the common yardstick of dollars after Jackson dismantled the U.S. national bank. Other than the problem with bimetallism, in which the Treasury fixed the price of silver in terms of gold, that was an era of real competition in currencies. In fact, I think even foreign money (coinage at least) was legal tender in the U.S. until the 1850's.

I think the problem with the Liberty Dollar in a genuinely free market in currencies is that buying dollars from them would be rather like going to the hardware store to buy inches to measure the 2x4 I need to cut. Money, at bottom, is merely a measure of wealth. We shouldn't confuse the units of measure with thing being measured. Granted the nature of money and wealth allow for a lot of mischief in surreptitiously transferring wealth from one party to another -- e.g., the hidden tax of government-induced monetary inflation -- but we should not reify the measure of wealth as wealth itself.

For that reason, I must think that the business of issuing currencies in a free market probably would be derivative of some other activity involving the storage or investment of wealth, like banking. (Of course, private mints issuing coinage would be another matter.)

Regards,
Bill

Post 29

Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - 11:25am

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Bill,

I can't imagine why the links would not work. I just copied them directly from my post, to here:

Digital Monetary Trust http://www.orlingrabbe.com/dmt_guide.htm

e-gold http://www.e-gold.com/

NORFED http://www.norfed.com/

Are you behind a firewall? (Just curious, because I don't like it when my links don't work for any reason.)

By the way, I agree the Liberty dollar is not the right model. I think paper money ought to be a certificate for a specific amount of some real commodity, like gold, silver, or platinum. The "value" of the money would be determined by the total wealth (available products and services) competing for that commodity in the open market, the commodity itself being one of those products. When government fiat money looses its value through inflation, commodity backed money would hold its value.

The way NORFED has designed their system, the Liberty Dollar will suffer the same inflationary loss of value as the American Dollar. There is no advantage to the Liberty Dollar that I can see except to NORFED.

The DMT business is good if you want your monetary transactions to be both secure and confidential. I like the RAND, but its also not money.

e-gold is the only true money of the three. "e-gold is accounted by weight of metal, not US$ or any other national currency unit." The problem with e-gold is twofold: you have to go to, "the money changers," if you want to covert it to something else, and it only works on the Internet.

Still, I think private money is the solution.

Regi

Post 30

Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - 1:14pm

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Hi, Regi.

>>By the way, I agree the Liberty dollar is not the right model. I think paper money ought to be a certificate for a specific amount of some real commodity, like gold, silver, or platinum. The "value" of the money would be determined by the total wealth (available products and services) competing for that commodity in the open market, the commodity itself being one of those products. When government fiat money looses its value through inflation, commodity backed money would hold its value.<<

I agree that paper money must be a claim upon wealth to be sound; however, I am not so certain that we need to have a commodity in between the currency (the representation of wealth) and the wealth itself. After all, the purpose of money is to denominate wealth to facilitate its storage and exchange. At a time, not so long ago, when information was limited, it certainly made sense to have an intermediary commodity like gold to provide assurance that the paper money actually represented something more than, say, your local bank's say-so that it's good.

But now that information flows freely and instantaneously, we can adjust for fluctuations in the denominations we use to measure or transfer our wealth. With the international currency markets helping to keep government fiat currencies fairly honest (if not entirely so), we are seeing that money really is only a yardstick. I whole-heartedly agree that we'd be better off if the government got out of the business of regulating that yardstick. I certainly have no confidence that in crisis, the government would resist manipulating it to our detriment.

However, because money is NOT wealth, only its measure, I do wonder that if the market for currencies were entirely private, would a currency tied to an intermediary commodity like gold be at a competitive disadvantage to one that floated with the total amount of wealth within a system. What I getting at, Regi, is: Are we witnessing a fundamental change, one of the same magnitude as the invention of money 2,500 years ago, in which money is becoming fully abstract as a measure of wealth? If so, I think the era of fiat currencies will be coming to end whether central banks like it or not.

Regards,
Bill

P.S. The problem with links is on my end. The computer I was using at the plant yesterday I had set a few years back with restrictive web settings to prevent surfing by the employees. When the protection is on (which is set through the browser) only a whitelist of sites is available. Having forgotten that I set up this protection, I Googled the sites on another computer and found the sites you had linked to. So you don't need to make any changes in what you posted. I just need to remember what the hell I do to the equipment here at the plant. ;)

Post 31

Thursday, August 5, 2004 - 4:06am

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Regi, I'm all for private currencies... and building parallel institutions among a free people. But that only proves my point. People, over time, act in concert; they can spontaneously generate alternative institutions through private dealings. But they must act further to eliminate the levers of power, over time, since such levers as the Fed concentrate "ultimate decision-making" in the hands of an "aristocracy of pull," which profoundly affects the entire structure of production and global political economy.