George Will: Upside-Down Economy

WASHINGTON -- From Oct. 18 to Dec. 3, 1961, 116,000 people visited New York's Museum of Modern Art before anyone noticed that Henri Matisse's painting "Le Bateau" had been hung upside down. Modernity is supposed to "transgress" standards of the traditional, which is why Paul Hindemith, while rehearsing one of his dissonant orchestral compositions, said to the musicians, "No, no gentlemen -- even though it sounds wrong, it's still not right."

Proponents of today's world-turned-upside-down economic policies say the policies might seem wrong but really are boldly modern in their rejection of markets in favor of pervasive government intervention in economic life. Hence New York, which until eight months ago was the financial capital of the world, is no longer even the financial capital of the United States. Washington is.

So says Ian Bremmer in "State Capitalism Comes of Age: The End of the Free Market?" in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. It should be read by Americans who are dismayed by the blurring of the line between public and private sectors.

Most Americans assume -- and are encouraged to do so by those doing the blurring -- that the government is doing this reluctantly and is eager to find an "exit strategy" to "unwind" its interventions. Bremmer, president of the consulting firm Eurasia Group, believes that although the governments of many developing nations have made "a strategic rejection of free-market doctrine," governments of developed countries do not intend to "manage" their economies "indefinitely." About the former, he is correct. About the latter, his wish may be the father of his thought.

Among the myriad signs that many nations are developing systems "in which the state functions as the leading economic actor," Bremmer notes that the 13 largest oil companies are owned and operated by governments and that governments...

It seems bizarre that the "mortgage crisis" alone could dissapear trillions of dollars. the numbers dont add up

it seems almost as if the Federal Reserve bank is trying to bankrupt the USA by creating trillions in imaginary crisis debt and shuttling it out into space, and no one is paying attention .

......like those old people with dementia getting cleaned out by gypsies

The end result would be a total collapse of the US dollar in the world, and a breakdown in the US monetary system domestically.

If this is a manufactured crisis as some suggest, and the current capitalist system fails, wont the result be a total dependence of the people on government, because there will be little to no private sector economic activity ?

Trillions and zillions spent on wars to fight communism or terrorism and this is how it ends ?

It seems bizarre that the "mortgage crisis" alone could dissapear trillions of dollars. the numbers dont add up
--snip--

Trillions and zillions spent on wars to fight communism or terrorism and this is how it ends ?

This "crisis" is not about too much credit. That is a symptom provoked by the root cause ..... over $600 Trillion in debt derivatives eating assets around the globe.

Too many clowns trying to make book that can't cover their bets. This wasn't the first time that I saw $600 Trillion. Look up the annual GDP of the USA and the worth of all current assets. These clowns went nuts.

Will could’ve chosen another thinker from 17 decades ago but did not...

The Law...(excerpts)...

For there are two kinds of plunder: legal and illegal.

I do not think that illegal plunder, such as theft or swindling — which the penal code defines, anticipates, and punishes — can be called socialism. It is not this kind of plunder that systematically threatens the foundations of society. Anyway, the war against this kind of plunder has not waited for the command of these gentlemen. The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. Long before the Revolution of February 1848 — long before the appearance even of socialism itself — France had provided police, judges, gendarmes, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds for the purpose of fighting illegal plunder. The law itself conducts this war, and it is my wish and opinion that the law should always maintain this attitude toward plunder.

But it does not always do this. Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder...

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

Frédéric Bastiat 1801-1850.

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