I’d like to remind Mr. Gordon that the current economic mess we’re in now is directly due, at least in part, to the relaxation or non-enforcement of government regulations on high finance.

I can’t imagine living in a society without some laws to control bad behavior.  And as businesses are composed of the same fallible human beings that society is, we’re seeing the result of what happens when the laws are effectively removed.

I’ve seen a few of the fruits of Mr. Gordon’s vision of the way things should be.  I don’t want any part of it.  The question is why Mr. Gordon feels differently.

Wendell Berry is a national treasure and a lovable personality.  He is largely out of his element when it comes to hard economics. 

The Austrian theory of the boom-bust cycle caused by central (government) banking has been thoroughly vindicated by recent economic events. However, the philosophical foundation of Misesian thought is highly questionable given the strong cultural and social bonds in mankind.

Berry is great writer/social critic and the Austrians are proven economists.  Can we all (this side of Leviathan) just get along?

Actually, in an earlier draft of my reply I included the remark:  “To do justice, I’m confident Mr. Gordon would find this episode in our history almost as disgusting as I do.”

The reason I did not include this in the final draft is because I figured anyone who knows anything about serious libertarians would regard it as self-evident and redundant.  Obviously a libertarian is no more inclined to cheer for the TVA than myself.

My point was that those on the receiving end of TVA-attentions would probably react with no small amount of bitterness to Gordon’s remark, that it is dangerous to assume that the triumph of agribusiness over small farmers has been solely the result of a happy and smooth flow of free-market buying-and-selling, and that Mr. Gordon’s theoretical knowledge of agricultural economies may not be matched by first-hand knowledge of the histories of their communities.  Given that he typified Berry as (unlike Ezra Pound) lacking “a wide knowledge of history” I felt it pertinent. 

A possibly constructive point vis-a-vis the whole “paleo” vs. libertarian issue, which I raised in my article—and I’d like to claim I thought it up myself, but actually I got it partly from Berry—is that one has to question to what extent the power of global-capitalism is due to programs and initiatives driven by government and its Big Thinking experts who are always committed to promoting industry, R&D;, etc.

For example, how well would corporations fare if they could no longer rely on public universities to tailor their students’ “educations” toward the manufacture of useful idiots? 

I don’t claim that all soulless corporations would suddenly wither away without all the infrastructure government provides for them—but on the other hand at present it seems to me extremely problematic to try to say where government ends and where a really large (to pick an obvious example) defense contractor begins.

Don’t worry about the misspelling of my name, BTW—it’s been an extremely common mistake made by people ever since I was in kindergarten, though of course from my point of view it seems odd.

Are “l” and “y” really so seductively interchangeable, Mr. Specner?

“...one has to question to what extent the power of global-capitalism is due to programs and initiatives driven by government and its Big Thinking experts who are always committed to promoting industry...”

Mr. Salyer, if I understand Rockwell & co. correctly, they consistently oppose corporate welfare in all forms, including contracts for R&D;and other advantages that come with political-connectedness.  “Empire” is the word that comes to mind, and the Austrians have fought that concept tooth and nail.

Mr. Hicks,

As I said, though I’d like to be able to claim to have originated this observation, I cannot.  Of course I’m aware of the libertarian interest in debunking the welfare-warfare state.  I’m mildly familiar with and have an affection for the folks of LewRockwell.com, having written some meager satires for them on a few occasions myself.

My point is not that this idea has never occurred to libertarians, but that I wish we could focus more on this point of agreement.  IMO the only place a libertarian can hope to find anything approaching a free market would be at the local level, just as the only thing a “paleo” could hope to find approaching a serious leader committed to preserving Western civilization and the Republic would be at the local level (Ron Paul being an exception, a happy glitch in the system).  At the national level the tentacles are everywhere and seem to permeate everything.  So I see no reason to defend agribusiness; it’s not just a matter of a few subsidies but the entire federal infrastructure which stacks the cards against small farmers.

The objective of my article was not to attack libertarianism—I go out of my way to make the point that I’m not addressing the principles of libertarianism itself, many of which I can agree with.

My aim was

A.) to defend Berry’s reputation against what I saw as an ill-conceived critique (the first and most obvious mistake being to exaggerate the association of Mr. Berry with “Crunchy-con” Rod Dreher)....
Obviously Berry is not a libertarian, no—but nor is he Willie Stark or Huey Long…

and

B.)secondarily, to highlight the possibility that the power of corporations may in fact be in opposition to libertarian principles.

I agree with your writeback at the Chronicles site, BTW—not only the Cherokees, but Confucius expressed a similar sentiment—“The rule of virtue can be compared to the Pole Star which commands the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place.”

I.e., ideally power would not come from brute law but from the moral authority & example of wise elders holding sway over men’s hearts.

That’s ideally, of course.

All this comment here about the TVA and government support for agribusiness totally misses the real point.  In Gordon’s libertarian paradise, a place with no government subsidies, family farmers would still be forced off their land, not at gunpoint, but by those free consumer choices that supposedly justify anything.  That’s because factory farms really can out-compete small farms when it comes to producing cheap and flavorless food, and we wonderful autonomous consumers don’t give a damn who produced our goods or how they did it, as long as the price is low.  Is the consumer king?  That’s the question for libertarians and conservatives here.

Ploni Almoni,

The corollary is: the consumers will be forced off their bad habits because without government subsidies (highways and the such), they (the consumers) will be forced to buy local; and will grow up in a culture that prefers local, unlike what we have today.

Thank you for mentioning state highways, Mr. Hall.  Another perfect example of state-corporate “internal improvements,” an early point of contention for Anti-Federalists.

Mr. Salyer, I appreciate your thoughtful reply.  You are absolutely correct that free markets really only exist at the local level.  Agribusiness, foreign trade and off-shoring are tentacled to the managerial state.

Thank you, Mr. Hall!

In the present it is the Nationalist and the Conservative whom more often then not support transaction subsidies (roads, rail, power, water access, mineral rights etc.) It’s neat trick of the left-conservative to pin transaction subsidies on certain parts of the right.

Mr. Salyer;

I thought your piece was solid, and thought Mr. Gordon had picked an odd time to go after real agrarians rather than slay Kauffman-lite, the words without the soul, Republicans who shop at Whole Foods.

Thanks kindly to Mr. Hicks and Mr. Bowen.

“Kauffman-lite,” heh-heh.

Small farmers and ranchers are harmed by the Dept of Ag. and various government laws which enforce the economic power of the large agribusiness businesses over the family farm.  Examples being the various laws against selling raw milk and meat processing rules on selling meat products unless they processed at certain plants.  This harms many small farmers and limits consumer choice and is based on the doubtful theory that government has to take care of consumers, they are not smart enough to figure out who is selling safe food and who is not.  After all our current system is so good (at importing tainted products from mexico and china).  There are numerious other examples I could list but will not in the interest of time and space.  The major question is whether or not we are Conservatives or Free Marketers.  A part of what true conservatives want to preserve is our traditions of free markets but only a part.  Such things as our Christian heritage, rural communities and family farms are also things which should be preserved.  As some have previously stated most if not all large international corporations got that way based on some type of government favor, franchise, or subsidy.  The natural result of a true conservative society would be mostly small and local.

Having lived in the city and lived out in the country, I cannot believe in this so-called free market.  Regarding farms, they produce the food so people can live - an ESSENTIAL activity.  In the olden days, farming was labor intensive where landowners would hire seasonal help (labor) to harvest the crops.  Now it is capital intensive where one has to expend mucho moolah in captial expenditure for tractors, combines, etc. to farm the land.  This made many family farms “economically unviable” because the size of their landholdings could not return the income to pay off the debt to obtain the capital equipment.  This has led to a “latifundiazation” of agriculture in many states.  Another consequence of capital intensive farming is that the size of farming families has drastically decreased.  Using my family as an example, my paternal grandfather had 7-8 siblings, he had four children and my mother’s generation (urban dwellers) had two children at most.

Compare this to the urban rich.  Financial institutions are granted the right to create money out of nothing to try to earn more money.  How do they pull this off?  Why don’t libertarians and “free market” fundamentalists ever go after them as much as the “subsidized” farmer?  The other fat cats typically are the significant owners or upper management of big business entities which use their colossal size to have superior bargaining power in the marketplace.  Indeed, this is what globalization is all about. 

Industrialized economies are trying to use their currencies (dollar, euro, pound, yen) as “reserve currencies” to get the raw materials for their manufacturing processes, and since these “developing countries” now have dollars, euros, pounds, etc to spend and invest.  This creates the demand for retailers and their suppliers to enter these new markets.  In the process, they are creating the most totalitarian regime in human history where a handful of financial institutions in alliance with multinational corporations have practically all of the materials and labor of the world under their control and a standardized portfolio of consumer goods.  Cui bono?

Not the small producers of commodities in the industrial or post-industrial West.  The agricultural regions of the United States are becoming depopulated and lots of the stores and businesses in those communities are closing down.  If it weren’t for these people, the global businessmen in the cities wouldn’t be able to live, and in return they want to throttle the people who settled and tamed the continent they inhabit.  There is no hell hot enough for these global economic gang rapists or their “free market” worshipping cheerleaders.  These monomaniacs who compass land and sea to make one proselyte to their unit of exchange or product and make the world two fold the child of hell!  Looking at my confreres in my MBA classes, none of them think about social justice or fair play.  They think about economic and financial data, loopholes to exploit, and potential investing or business activities.  They aren’t evil per se, but they don’t think of the consequences of their actions on others and the more ruthless or unscrupulous of the lot may be “successful” and amass an enormous personal fortune.  Rootless insatiable global capital in incapable of leadership, but self-sufficient agrarian communities are, for there is room for giving back to others and protecting the weak instead of exploiting them.

“Financial institutions are granted the right to create money out of nothing to try to earn more money.  How do they pull this off?  Why don’t libertarians and “free market” fundamentalists ever go after them as much as the “subsidized” farmer?  The other fat cats typically are the significant owners or upper management of big business entities which use their colossal size to have superior bargaining power...”

El Lay Writer, I mean no disrespect, but you apparently haven’t read anything by the Austro-libertarian economists.  And I never intended to become their apologists, but these fallacious and economically heterodox attacks against the “free market” are astounding.  What form of command economy do paleos want?

Clarification: the last part of my second paragraph above is in reaction to a host of Taki commentors who regularly assault free market economics.  What they consider the “free market” is not what the Austrians stand for.

For the record, the Austrians have consistently denounced institutions that create money out of nothing.

Free Market....what “Free Market”? If what is tanking as we speak is a Free Market, I’d hate to see the effects of a “planned economy” because then there would be bureaucrats to blame for the mess and that would clog the courts and .....perish the thought, cause the people to question the ethics and intelligence of their , ahem, elected officials....not to mention the various donors to said elected officials.

Sure, there was private greed at work but it was fueled by government malfeasance of historic proportions and this lapse of judgement coincided with one of the worst abuses of bankrupting military opportunism in the lapsed-republic’s history. Those ruthless Wahhabi Sheiks importing expensive Arabian Horses to entertain themselves in the hardscrabble mountains of Waziristan were trained well in our Cold War with Russia and they likely cannot believe just how easy it has been to bring their former teachers to a self destructive Mexican Standoff.

As to the Federal Highway System, it is important to remember that it was originally intended as a means to move the military and its materiel efficiently.

Much of the impetus behind technological and hence economic growth of the post World War II years has been directly or at the very least tangentially tied to the Military and our claimed role as World Protector. I do not know if the corporate agribusiness model that churns out the fodder we eat is thusly tied but the intertwined relationships of the military and corporate America are vast. Agricultural Policy in the U.S.A. remains the last bastion of Soviet Socialism.

Suffice to say that the 75 year American Era of Military Defense created huge efficiencies in production and great technological advances across a wide spectrum of life. Great wealth was generated by it and the murderous perversions of both Soviet and Chinese Socialism were defeated by it. Unfortunately, the edifice is now an albatross whose diminishing returns are accelerating and we are unable to detach ourselves and arrive at a more prudent mode of living. Until we acknowledge the vast gulf between “defensive needs” and “military adventurism” , any notion of decentralized agriculture or any other form of decentralization and indeed any form of soberly administered “Free Market” will be relegated to the “lifestyle pages”.

Our whipsawed society is organized around the War Industry and as with all advanced War Societies, we either create our own “incoming” or induce others to join the fight. Importantly, it is not the soldier or salary man we have a problem with , it is the vast intermarried and logic-averse Bureaucracy that needs our rebuke.

Any fantasy of “change”....the sui generis password of the moment is impossible without reining in the junkyard dog which is the Pentagon,its partners and it’s assigns. We’ve been spinning the chamber on the revolver for some time and getting away with it but with each sharp “click” comes a greater chance that the bullet will find the breach. In the words of Dirty Harry, anybody feelin lucky?

@ Chuck Hicks

I have a BA in Economics, worked in the Economic Research department at one of the Federal Reserve Banks, and am pretty well read on the captains of industry and finance, particularly in the 19th and first half of the 20th Century.

In all the reading that I have done, I have come across abominable behavior on the part of market participants, and quite frankly all of the “economic schools” leave me cold.

I am of the temperment of Arnold Toynbee and Alfred Milner.  Entrepreneurial spirit has a role to play, but it is not absolute.  When they start stepping on toes when they pursue profit or “create wealth”, those people need to be subject to some check or balance.  Currently, there never seems to have been any external check or balance to the system of financial controls created by big banking and their multinational clients.

I have not read the Austrian cannon(one can only read so much), so if this doesn’t apply to it, I am sorry, but I never attacked Austrian economics in the first place.  I just mean that capital should serve society and not the other way around, which is what my eyes see.

El Lay, I anticipated I would need to apologize, which is why I put the qualifier in my subsequent comment.  I expanded beyond one of your points to address a general frustration with how free market economics are frequently mischaracterized here (and on other sites).  The latter portion was not directed at you.  Thank you for sharing your background in economics, and agree with you that capital should ultimately serve society.

To sum up, what paleos often attack as the free market is almost always a manifestation of cronyism and privilege.

It’s government interference, not a lack of regulation that caused the mortgage meltdown. http://independent.org/newsroom/news_detail.asp?newsID=111

Gordon knows his stuff on economics. You paleocons should confine your criticism to topics you understand.

@Chuck Hicks

Despite my background, I honestly cannot make heads or tails of a lot of economic issues even though I have thought about them and studied them.  Our present economy is VERY complex and difficult to understand.  My instinct is that something so complex and difficult to understand is not good, as it gives license to unscrupulous people to run amock at others’ expense.

My only objection is to people who think that ABSOLUTELY NO interference in the market is to tolerated, especially if it is from “the State”, because they are very doctrinaire on the subject.  When one sees abuses, they need to be corrected or checked and ruling out state interference a priori just doen’t make sense to me.  Just my humble opinion, no hard feelings and definitely no need to apologize.