Diatribe: Libertarians, Corporatists, and “Anti-Statism”

So I was doing my usual thing after coming home from the clinic at 3:00PM, having started my shift at 230 this morning, which is idly browsing through the New York Times and relaxing. I don’t usually read Thomas Friedman, but I just finished Maureen Dowd’s interview with Jimmy Carter and I kinda wanted something a little more didactic. So I went to see what new thing in China he had to rave about.

He was being a bit more philosophical, saying that in a certain sense it was the can-do attitude displayed in China that he envied most. He was also careful to clarify that he envied China’s accomplishments, but not anything else about their autocratic, human-rights violating government. So it would seem.

Anyway, on the whole I thought it was a mildly interesting article and it occurred to me how much ire this man has earned from Thom Hartmann, the nation’s most popular progressive radio host. On a whimsy I typed into google: “why does thom hartmann hate thomas friedman so much?”

Rather than any real returns to THAT question, I saw a blog post saying “How do you deal with Thom Hartmann acolytes?” An unexpected twist, but following random but related links is one of my favorite things about the web (and wikipedia – THE BEST.) Guessing that some right-wing nutbaggery would be afoot, I steeled myself and dived in.

What I found, actually, were a bunch of extremely pie-in-the-sky libertarian arguments for a complete abolition of the state in favor of the free market. Generally speaking, they were the sorts of arguments that blame the state for everything bad that has ever happened in our capitalist society. One or two points seemed reasonable for a moment, before I realized that they were essentially founded on a misconception surrounding the flawless operation of the poorly-named “free market.” The invisible hand guides all, you see. To libertarians, the economy is some sort of perfectly just force that, if just given complete and total freedom, will just make everything all wonderful because everyone gets to keep everything they earn, and everyone will just get along, and bad companies will die out because no one will buy their products, you know, after ten thousand people die from mutated e-coli…and so forth. The problem with this so called free-market is it’s never truly free because we – human beings – are the ones who actually implement it.

You see, no matter how much they say, greed is good – that self-interest becomes useful in a market-driven society – they don’t seem able to comprehend the harm that the market can and will do in the hands of unscrupulous human beings. There are dozens of examples – not just recessions! – of the market as a driving force behind some of our worst catastrophes. The BP Oilcano, the Enron fiasco, completely unjust goddamn wars like Iraq, occupying of foreign countries at the behest of transnational megacorporations – the price we pay isn’t just in recessions – the price we pay for capitalism is the ability of greedy, selfish people to inflict harm on a massive scale. Global warming – why won’t these companies understand that the time they get to do whatever they want is over – we have to start changing our ways, or one day, all of us are going to die. Those extra million dollars will do you a whole lot of good when your grandchildren are gasping for the last breathable air on Earth and cursing your name. But I’m sure if we just freed up the market MORE, why, then we’d be green in no time at all!

Goddamnit.

What’s particularly telling about this whole rigmarole is the site I found these delusional comments on is the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, a school that deliberately promotes these sorts of ultra-libertarian views; its stated stance is “complete anti-statism.” Now, surely even I, lefty as I am, never operate to quite that extreme. I’m not utterly anti-capitalist, I’m just anti-predatory capitalism. I’m not in favor of unlimited government – in fact, I may be a socialist but I have definite views as to where the government ought not to intrude (ironically this is where religious screwball teabaggers want government to intrude the most – hypocritical assholes). But apparently this school teaches to complete anti-statism. So I went to wikipedia to see this school.

Now what a goddamn surprise, there’s some controversy about this school being founded by the diabolical Koch Foundation. So let me see if I understand this – one of the richest families in America gives over a huge chunk of money to create a school that tries to indoctrinate as many people as it can into an utterly pro-market ideology…..hmmm….diabolical indeed.

I mean if even a few of these drones managed to infiltrate the economic areas of government, why there’d be things happening like continuous deregulations of banks, uncontrolled economic speculation, and huge recessions caused by multiple bubbles bursting in sequence – but thank god we live in the USA, where that hasn’t…oh.

Goddamnit.

But honestly you don’t even need to know that the Mises Institute is a fascist-capitalist propaganda factory to know that their arguments are bullshit. The anti-statism argument is disingenous at its very core because it draws no comparison between the control of one’s life by the state and the control of ones life by a corporation.

Those that oppose the control of a state or government over their lives don’t seem to see that in reality much of their lives is dictated so much more tangibly by the companies for which they work. When there is a depression, market capitalism becomes a de-facto state all by itself – example: when you are literally in a position where you cannot quit your job – your family is depending on you, you need the health insurance, or what have you – whatever restrictions the corporation puts on your behavior are absolute – you have no choice whatsoever. At least in a democracy, you can cast a vote. But when you’re a worker at a company, your boss is your lord and master, the CEO – a king. And you my friend, are a serf, gladly accepting every pay cut and slashed benefit just so you can hold on to your miserable job.

Why, what’s this? It looks like a government doesn’t it? For when your economic reality becomes literally your whole reality – when you are no longer a willing participant, but have no choice – you are simply a slave. And how is that better than socialized healthcare? Public schools? Everybody pays in – everybody takes out. In capitalism, everybody pays in, and the top 1% scrape off the best stuff and toss the scraps to the starving masses below. Capitalism is feudalism at its heart, and its wealthiest proponents royalists – they are people who long to put those they perceive as below them in their place.

Which explains why this bullshit ideology of anti-statism is simply a front for insane pro-capitalism. When confronted with calamities one after another caused by market-driven ideology, these people just ignore the facts. Errr…market’s not…free enough. Tell me this lads: if a somewhat free market can wreak this much havoc, why would we possibly want to make it any freer?

Feh. Nuff said.