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The narrative that capital and government are natural enemies is deeply flawed. It didn't actually exist in quantity until the Hearst newspapers set it alight.

The narrative that capital and government are natural enemies is deeply flawed. It didn't actually exist in quantity until the Hearst newspapers set it alight. Sure, you had the Wobblies and all, but they were considered lunatic fringe. Taxation is (ab)used, IMO, to promote normative ideas far too much. It should simply be a way to pay for government, nothing more, nothing less. If it could be deployed to promote normative ideas cheaply, and there was general consensus about what norms to promote it'd be different. But there's too much ardent BS from both sides to trust this mechanism - it would be much more honest to withdraw from it. This is doable, with tools from economics but using norms to derive other norms is a good way to end up with entangled and bizarro systems. Just getting people to agree on Coase's interpretation of externalities seems nearly impossible. We have partial technocracy, with ideological shims rather than stern empirical underpinnings.

danharaj 10y ago
Capital and government aren't enemies. Government is the thing that supports the relations that give capital power. However, government is in a balancing act between the working class and the capitalist class. Government is not in conflict with capital, government is the mediating body that balances the conflicts of capitalism. Calling the Wobblies the lunatic fringe is accepting propaganda uncritically. The labor movement, and the IWW was a key institution of the labor movement, was radical, but not fringe and has been persistently defamed for decades. > Taxation is (ab)used, IMO, to promote normative ideas far too much. It should simply be a way to pay for government, nothing more, nothing less. What is the role of government? Everything the government does is normative. > This is doable, with tools from economics but using norms to derive other norms is a good way to end up with entangled and bizarro systems. Just getting people to agree on Coase's interpretation of externalities seems nearly impossible. We have partial technocracy, with ideological shims rather than stern empirical underpinnings. You are being far too optimistic believing there could be a technocracy without ideology. That kind of thinking only can give you a blind spot for your own ideology. Technocracy these days usually means the kind promulgated by neoliberalism, but it has also been pushed as part of authoritarian command economies like the USSR. What exactly is a "full" technocracy supposed to be? > Just getting people to agree on Coase's interpretation of externalities seems nearly impossible. And irrelevant. Coase theorem only applies when transaction costs are minimal. They are not minimal in real life. They can't be. Coase theorem theoretically nice and practically useless. Coase's most substantial contribution to economic theory is how people organize in the presence of transaction costs, not how nice everything would be without them.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  To my ear, "full" technocracy would be purely empirical, without any reliance on ideology that cannot be shown to be critically necessary. In all other cases absent a clear and present danger, when empirical clarity is unavailable, the only action is to do nothing. And I'd be prepared to accept consistency with the legal code as a version of "empirical". Prohibition had some measure of empirical support, but was legally completely indefensible. Alleged "Soviet" technocracy just wasn't - it subsumed all science to the One True Theory which was Communism. Indeed, it's the poster child for what I'd be against. I mean Lamarckianism? It has to be real science. The Coase theorem explicitly excludes consideration of transaction costs, in the same way constants get dropped in differential equations. But my native tendency is to underplay externalities anyway, because it's too hard to get intersubjective agreement on them. This goes to this peculiar property of norms to get weird when attempts to stack them on top of each other occurs. How was it that "state's rights" led to lynchings anyway? Because they linked "Southern Honor" and States Rights in this incoherent manner to produce Jim Crow. Sixth-graders - most of them - could argue that away. Finally, what is the role of government? To enforce and modify law. The minimal role is to enforce land claims, prosecute criminal acts and enforce contracts. Actions of government should not create norms. Anything you can manage beyond that should be a source of skepticism.

danharaj 10y ago

Capital and government aren't enemies. Government is the thing that supports the relations that give capital power. However, government is in a balancing act between the working class and the capitalist class. Government is not in conflict with capital, government is the mediating body that balances the conflicts of capitalism. Calling the Wobblies the lunatic fringe is accepting propaganda uncritically. The labor movement, and the IWW was a key institution of the labor movement, was radical, but not fringe and has been persistently defamed for decades. > Taxation is (ab)used, IMO, to promote normative ideas far too much. It should simply be a way to pay for government, nothing more, nothing less. What is the role of government? Everything the government does is normative. > This is doable, with tools from economics but using norms to derive other norms is a good way to end up with entangled and bizarro systems. Just getting people to agree on Coase's interpretation of externalities seems nearly impossible. We have partial technocracy, with ideological shims rather than stern empirical underpinnings. You are being far too optimistic believing there could be a technocracy without ideology. That kind of thinking only can give you a blind spot for your own ideology. Technocracy these days usually means the kind promulgated by neoliberalism, but it has also been pushed as part of authoritarian command economies like the USSR. What exactly is a "full" technocracy supposed to be? > Just getting people to agree on Coase's interpretation of externalities seems nearly impossible. And irrelevant. Coase theorem only applies when transaction costs are minimal. They are not minimal in real life. They can't be. Coase theorem theoretically nice and practically useless. Coase's most substantial contribution to economic theory is how people organize in the presence of transaction costs, not how nice everything would be without them.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
To my ear, "full" technocracy would be purely empirical, without any reliance on ideology that cannot be shown to be critically necessary. In all other cases absent a clear and present danger, when empirical clarity is unavailable, the only action is to do nothing. And I'd be prepared to accept consistency with the legal code as a version of "empirical". Prohibition had some measure of empirical support, but was legally completely indefensible. Alleged "Soviet" technocracy just wasn't - it subsumed all science to the One True Theory which was Communism. Indeed, it's the poster child for what I'd be against. I mean Lamarckianism? It has to be real science. The Coase theorem explicitly excludes consideration of transaction costs, in the same way constants get dropped in differential equations. But my native tendency is to underplay externalities anyway, because it's too hard to get intersubjective agreement on them. This goes to this peculiar property of norms to get weird when attempts to stack them on top of each other occurs. How was it that "state's rights" led to lynchings anyway? Because they linked "Southern Honor" and States Rights in this incoherent manner to produce Jim Crow. Sixth-graders - most of them - could argue that away. Finally, what is the role of government? To enforce and modify law. The minimal role is to enforce land claims, prosecute criminal acts and enforce contracts. Actions of government should not create norms. Anything you can manage beyond that should be a source of skepticism.