\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is nothing inherently evil about government and nothing inherently good about private business.\u00a0 Those that would insist on either can only do so based on dogmatic, immutable and therefore, un-falsifiable, ideological grounds.\u00a0 Once an ideology is calcified into a meta-ideology of this sort no contrarian, empirical event can dislodge it.\u00a0 A meta-ideology can only re-prove itself.\u00a0 It becomes an object of faith and ultimately requires violence to maintain it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The necessary condition that determines the merit of government or private business is vigilance.\u00a0 Government and private business is actually an organizational continuum from large to small.\u00a0 Those that deem big government as evil also deem small government as good.\u00a0 Those that deem big business as evil deem small business as good.\u00a0 A powerful government is like a monopoly.\u00a0 It can determine the \u201cfree market\u201d 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.\u00a0 This inherent organizational capacity actually diminishes viable competition.\u00a0 While governments generally can\u2019t go global, multinational corporations are global.\u00a0 To the degree that a multinational corporation is global, it can subsidize its many business ventures vis-\u00e0-vis its enormous capital resources.\u00a0 This results in decreased competition in the market.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thus, for example, mortgages can be cheaper in all the countries that it competes in than mere regional companies.\u00a0 Economies of scale are what make anything such as a \u201cfree market\u201d only possible as a meta-theology.\u00a0 The \u201cfree market\u201d left to itself will not encourage competition \u2013 it will stifle it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the values implied by the use of the word \u201cfree\u201d 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 \u201cfree\u201d becomes only a bankrupt ideal.\u00a0 The disadvantages of economies of scale in government or big business are the loss of efficiency and therefore, vigilance.\u00a0 To the degree that inefficiency grows in an organization, bureaucracy grows and organizational entropy increases.\u00a0 Diversity is suppressed and conformity is encouraged.\u00a0 In this case, the organizational dynamic is reductionary and is aimed at self-preservation rather than innovation.\u00a0 Conserving the inertia of the organization reduces the need for responsiveness to conditions outside the organization.\u00a0 Responsiveness is vigilance.\u00a0 Increasing organizational vigilance increases value to the consumer.\u00a0 To the degree that an organization is enmeshed within itself also decreases value to the consumer and simultaneously makes competitive entry more difficult.\u00a0 The result is a monopoly.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Competition decreases and inefficiencies increase.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Government 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Revolution is the natural consequence for an oppressive government, super-structure to die.\u00a0 However, the human cost is enormous.\u00a0 Democracies intervene before this natural consequence is allowed to play itself out.\u00a0 Democracy proves that it is possible to intervene and stifle the inertial effect of our government, super-structures.\u00a0 Likewise, sound regulations whether on a national or international level can intervene in the natural death of a multi-national corporation.<\/p>\n
\u00a0It would be sheer pessimism to insist that regulation cannot reduce the fallout from the natural death of global monopolies.\u00a0 What this position really demonstrates is a mindless adherence to the meta-ideology of a mythical \u201cfree market\u201d.\u00a0 In this case, pessimism assumes nothing can be done to intervene in global monopolies and resulting economic catastrophes.\u00a0 Lassie-faire hides an economic fatalism under the unquestioned metaphysic of a \u201cfree market\u201d.\u00a0 Pessimism always protects its underlying, unquestioned metaphysic.\u00a0 If there is no underlying metaphysic then it is simply nihilism and pessimism is itself meaningless.\u00a0 Unabated nihilism may rarely lead to creation but most typically results in infantile narcissism.\u00a0 The only practical, alternative course of action is to intervene in the natural course of the market to prevent its global, cataclysmic demise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another inequality built into the global market is the varying temporalities of capital acquisition.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Ventures like research and development into fundamental new technologies are long term capital ventures.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This is how the auto industry in the United States has lost its way.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Long term fundamental research into new technologies can never be equally competitive with short term capital gains for multi-national corporations.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The temporality of this type of research and development cannot be made to realize short term capital as other alternate strategies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In medicine government has proven that public funding can offset the inherent inequities in long term research and development.\u00a0 The government has used grants successfully for many years to introduce fundamentally new technologies into the market.\u00a0 This technique can be generalized into energy and other pressing needs.\u00a0 While this is not government intervention in the form of regulation it is a pro-reactive government intervention.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The last point that needs to be made here is the crash course that traditional conservatism set us on.\u00a0 Conservatives want \u201cfree market\u201d, lassie-faire capitalism.\u00a0 They also want less government.\u00a0 This means less government intervention.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Capital and wealth can freely flow out to other countries beyond our borders as has been the case in recent years.\u00a0 To insist that a \u201cfree market\u201d thrive as conservatives would like is simultaneously to give up the notion to maintain our government\u2019s status and ultimately, our self-preservation.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In the practical world, both conservative positions cannot be simultaneously held without sacrificing one.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 A global market owes no allegiance to a country.\u00a0 The only way out is not to conserve but to intervene wisely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 There is nothing inherently evil about government and nothing inherently good about private business.\u00a0 Those that would insist on either can only do so based on dogmatic, immutable and therefore, un-falsifiable, ideological grounds.\u00a0 Once an ideology is calcified into a meta-ideology of this sort no contrarian, empirical event can dislodge it.\u00a0 A meta-ideology can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,16,18],"tags":[63,90],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-and-marxism","category-politics","category-republicans","tag-conservative","tag-free-market"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3939,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/3939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}