Category Archives: Republicans

Why I Am Not a Conservative

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There is nothing inherently evil about government and nothing inherently good about private business.  Those that would insist on either can only do so based on dogmatic, immutable and therefore, un-falsifiable, ideological grounds.  Once an ideology is calcified into a meta-ideology of this sort no contrarian, empirical event can dislodge it.  A meta-ideology can only re-prove itself.  It becomes an object of faith and ultimately requires violence to maintain it. 

The necessary condition that determines the merit of government or private business is vigilance.  Government and private business is actually an organizational continuum from large to small.  Those that deem big government as evil also deem small government as good.  Those that deem big business as evil deem small business as good.  A powerful government is like a monopoly.  It can determine the “free market” cost of its products and services. It can also determine its cost of materials (i.e., negotiating mass purchases) and salaries (i.e., forbidding collective bargaining and unions, outsourcing, relocating) based on its economies of scale.  This inherent organizational capacity actually diminishes viable competition.  While governments generally can’t go global, multinational corporations are global.  To the degree that a multinational corporation is global, it can subsidize its many business ventures vis-à-vis its enormous capital resources.  This results in decreased competition in the market.  For example, when a government subsidizes agriculture it makes it much harder for other countries to compete on equal footing and therefore, minimizes the possibility for viable competition.  Likewise, when the availability of capital is subsidized by corporations with huge reserves of capital it can leverage itself to such an extent that it can offer its products at a much lower cost than other competitors.  Thus, for example, mortgages can be cheaper in all the countries that it competes in than mere regional companies.  Economies of scale are what make anything such as a “free market” only possible as a meta-theology.  The “free market” left to itself will not encourage competition – it will stifle it. 

If the values implied by the use of the word “free” are innovation and increased value for the consumer then the more successful a corporation is and the larger it becomes the less meaningful these implications are and, in the worst case, the word “free” becomes only a bankrupt ideal.  The disadvantages of economies of scale in government or big business are the loss of efficiency and therefore, vigilance.  To the degree that inefficiency grows in an organization, bureaucracy grows and organizational entropy increases.  Diversity is suppressed and conformity is encouraged.  In this case, the organizational dynamic is reductionary and is aimed at self-preservation rather than innovation.  Conserving the inertia of the organization reduces the need for responsiveness to conditions outside the organization.  Responsiveness is vigilance.  Increasing organizational vigilance increases value to the consumer.  To the degree that an organization is enmeshed within itself also decreases value to the consumer and simultaneously makes competitive entry more difficult.  The result is a monopoly.  Furthermore, when a few large multi-national corporations determine a market segment without limitations the dynamics of a traditional single corporation monopoly equally apply to the market segment.  Competition decreases and inefficiencies increase.

Historically, such super-structures will collapse in on itself whether it is a government or a multi-national corporation but not before much misery and even tragedy has been expended.  The question that must be brought to the fore is, can we influence structures that are created by us to intervene before the natural death of our super-structures to prevent its cataclysmic havoc or do we adopt a lassie-faire approach in adherence to a non-retractable mega-ideology?     Government regulations can be implemented to protect the integrity of a governmental super-structure (self-protection) or to break down super-structure tendencies in multi-national corporations and increase competition and innovation in the market.  If government regulations stifle competition and innovation then, in a democracy, voters regulate the regulators by getting rid of them or, if not a democracy, then revolution. 

Revolution is the natural consequence for an oppressive government, super-structure to die.  However, the human cost is enormous.  Democracies intervene before this natural consequence is allowed to play itself out.  Democracy proves that it is possible to intervene and stifle the inertial effect of our government, super-structures.  Likewise, sound regulations whether on a national or international level can intervene in the natural death of a multi-national corporation.

 It would be sheer pessimism to insist that regulation cannot reduce the fallout from the natural death of global monopolies.  What this position really demonstrates is a mindless adherence to the meta-ideology of a mythical “free market”.  In this case, pessimism assumes nothing can be done to intervene in global monopolies and resulting economic catastrophes.  Lassie-faire hides an economic fatalism under the unquestioned metaphysic of a “free market”.  Pessimism always protects its underlying, unquestioned metaphysic.  If there is no underlying metaphysic then it is simply nihilism and pessimism is itself meaningless.  Unabated nihilism may rarely lead to creation but most typically results in infantile narcissism.  The only practical, alternative course of action is to intervene in the natural course of the market to prevent its global, cataclysmic demise. 

                Another inequality built into the global market is the varying temporalities of capital acquisition.  Multi-national corporations that are imbued with its own guiding value for self-preservation tend to make major decisions with its guiding principle favoring short term capital gain versus long term capital gain.  Ventures like research and development into fundamental new technologies are long term capital ventures.  If a large company can see a viable way to preserve itself by reducing this type of research and development, it will generally choose to do so.  This is how the auto industry in the United States has lost its way.  Instead of pursuing alternative energy for cars, they spent their time leveraging their current gasoline based technology and simultaneously trying to intervene in government regulations to preserve their existence.  Long term fundamental research into new technologies can never be equally competitive with short term capital gains for multi-national corporations.  If the natural tendency to realize short term capital gain in the market is not overcome and intervention does not occur then research and development is put off until it is too late.  The temporality of this type of research and development cannot be made to realize short term capital as other alternate strategies. 

                In medicine government has proven that public funding can offset the inherent inequities in long term research and development.  The government has used grants successfully for many years to introduce fundamentally new technologies into the market.  This technique can be generalized into energy and other pressing needs.  While this is not government intervention in the form of regulation it is a pro-reactive government intervention.

                The last point that needs to be made here is the crash course that traditional conservatism set us on.  Conservatives want “free market”, lassie-faire capitalism.  They also want less government.  This means less government intervention.  As has been pointed out smaller is good in terms of efficiency and innovation but in terms of checks and balances for multi-nationally corporations (or super-structures) less government intervention means the market is left to implode unimpeded from time to time.  Since the market is global and corporations can and will expand beyond the borders of a country, a policy of non-intervention and small government will not favor any particular country.  Capital and wealth can freely flow out to other countries beyond our borders as has been the case in recent years.  To insist that a “free market” thrive as conservatives would like is simultaneously to give up the notion to maintain our government’s status and ultimately, our self-preservation.  To insist that we are always going to be the best at every major undertaking and therefore always prolonging the existence of our government is to ignore the lessons of history and demonstrates another meta-ideology.  In the practical world, both conservative positions cannot be simultaneously held without sacrificing one.  While we do not want to condemn our country to oblivion we also do not want the government of the United States to take on the super-structure, inefficiencies previously discussed.  A global market owes no allegiance to a country.  The only way out is not to conserve but to intervene wisely.

Freedom Handout

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While the notion of freedom is a high and lofty ideal, exactly what it means and how it gets implemented demands thought prior to action.  Otherwise, we may find ourselves defending a “freedom” that is nothing other than a self-serving delusion and stuck in a quagmire while the body bag count goes up.  Did anyone give us a “freedom handout” when we wanted it?  We wanted it bad enough to make great sacrifices.  We had a resolve that included the vast majority of people in the colonies.  We did not have to convince a lot of “traitors to humanity on the left” (a convenient way of dismissing the majority without thought) to break away from England.  We do not need to lose our idealism but we do need to get real.   If we try to fight every battle for freedom for every one we may end up losing the war and ourselves in the process.  The resolve we had to implement our freedom did not depend on any “freedom handout”.  We would not have appreciated it if it had been given to us from another country.  The call of freedom is the call for self-responsibility.  Anytime someone is given something they did not earn they take it for granted.  If it comes cheap it goes cheap.  This does not mean we condone brutal, self-serving aggression when we see it.  It does mean that we have a realistic understanding of what freedom means and how it has value.  Knee-jerk reaction is not what makes freedom real.  A “freedom handout” does make freedom real.   To make freedom real a majority of people must thoughtfully resolve to make it their own no matter what the consequences.   Our resolve does not effortlessly apply to everyone, everywhere.  This is magical thinking (or no thinking at all).  Our anger and indignation does not create a resolve for freedom in other countries.  It only gives us an occasion for own angry, narcissistic catharsis while we sacrifice our young and cheapen the value of freedom.

Note: While I would not want to minimize the involvement of France, Spain and Holland in the Revolutionary War I would point out that the resolve of the colonies was already demonstrated and forged in the three years it took for France to get involved (four for Spain and Holland).  Washington himself was totally surprised by the fortunate, “Divine Providence” of these countries involvement.  In any case, I think if those countries had initially invaded England to give the colonies “freedom” my point would have failed.  As it is their involvement years later for their own reasons does not negate the patriots resolve.  I might also add that “freedom” in the case of the Revolutionary War may also have more meat on it than simply a lofty ideal (i.e., taxation without representation, etc.).

Republican Spin

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“Perception is everything” appears to be the organizing paradigm of modern political campaigns in the US.  Technology and capital have combined into the perfect storm for managing perception.  Perceptions thrust into the early years of technology kept the Republicans largely out of office for decades after FDR and the Great Depression.  Republicans were portrayed as the elitist party of the rich.  They were opposed to the plight of the average working guy.  In the seventies with the economy worsening and gas lines growing long the Republicans saw the chance to grab the reins of perception.  Instead of the perception of concern for the working man in a time of economic affluence the Republicans saw that the economic reality of a weakening economy was a perfect moment to launch their perception of tax and spend.  The Democrats were not the party of the working man.  They opposed the working man by spending frivolously and even selfishly.  The Democrats were the true elitists.  However, the underlying necessary condition that allowed this perception its oxygen was a changing economic reality.  In a time of affluence, social programs are a plus in political marketing.  When money is not a concern it is easy to spend, to create images of ourselves as holy, caring, giving.   However, when economic needs start dominating the day to day experience of voters, the time is ripe for creating the perception that tax and spend liberals are to blame, leftist elitists bent on nothing other than benefiting themselves at the cost of the common Joe.   The Republicans seized the perceptional opportunity with Ronald Reagan and controlled the perceptions and dialogs for decades.  They cloaked their conservative ideology in the modern garbs of egalitarianism and the working Joe’s fight against the liberal elite.  Liberal, the “L” word was profane. 

Now, the managed perception of Republican ideology has become fat and ripe for takeover.  Economic realities have again given an occasion ripe for perception’s paradigm shift.  The elite have now become the ones in power, the ones to blame, the party of the elite.  The true Republican believers have fled into the concaves of their historical, conservative ideology and left the neo-cons to fend for themselves.  The righteous indignation of the true conservatives is set to blast the folks that enabled their political domination.  While Republicans were all too happy to get votes and cater to their perceptual electorate, they also discovered that managing perception came with a cost.  It cost them their conservative soul.  Now that they appear soulless, bereft of new ideas, bearing the burden of the image of fault and elitism they have retreated.  Those that are the party faithful have hunkered down into their ideological roots to regroup and try to re-forge an image for another day, an opportunist day.  Conservatives are looking at perhaps decades in the perceptual doldrums.  The smart ones know it.  The last desperate screams of the dying McCain campaign are shrill and are now working to dismantle the last bastions of their credibility.  As many Joe’s are saying, “If a Republican’s lips are moving they are lying”.

What shows itself in this spectacle is that “perception is not everything”, perception is an opportunistic infection of economic reality.  When reality happens the managers of perception lose.  They are ripe for takeover.  When “management” begins to believe its own propaganda it loses touch with the shifting sands of reality beneath their feet.  However, necessity requires that “Joes” keep a healthy stand in underlying realties, that they do not take the manufactured perceptions too seriously and, when perceptions grow thin, the perceptual power brokers find they are touch with their own economic realities.