Chyden Finance: profit from hypocrisy

It is sad that this point is not more widely understood, especially among those who really should know better, but way too many individuals conflate ‘corporatism’ (or ‘corporate fascism’, if you prefer) with ‘capitalism’.

Conventionally, a) the belief in the rights of humans to move their persons, goods, and money freely to and from wherever they wish and b) the engaging in market dominium rather than government imperium go by the same name: capitalism.

However, Big Business corporatism (dominium) bears a much stronger resemblance to Big Government socialism (imperium) — whether of the national sort or the international sort — than it does to individual responsibility, community mutual aid, and freedom of vocation.

OpenSecrets.org maintains a Revolving Door database that tracks the movements of individuals from high-level government positions to high-level corporate positions, and vice versa.

Whether Timothy Geithner is at Goldman Sachs, the New York Fed, or the US Treasury Department — and he is only one example of many — your interests are not his special interests. By now it should be obvious that this has nothing to do with any illusory distinctions within the Demopublican/Republicrat duopoly. Whether it is Nixon/Reagan/Bush or Carter/Clinton/Obama, Big Government and Big Business are virtually indistinguishable at the individual level.

As things stand today, we do not have an identifiable category of action, thought, and conventions that stands in opposition to this colossalism.

Unfortunately, ‘libertarian’ has come to mean any number of conflicting things, and it has been tainted in the USA by the hapless and self-contradictory Libertarian Party, which supports the idea running for political office and does not emphasize local community involvement or charity work.

Most maddening of all is that many self-styled libertarians cut their teeth on Ayn Rand’s works, which promote free markets, strong property rights, and individual liberty, but treat her idiosyncratic tastes — for, e.g., tobacco, rough sex, and industrial pollution — as moral imperatives. Her aesthetics are a throwback to the 19^th Century, which are as useful today as a longing for the Age of Discovery, and they gloss over the race, class, and gender relations that prevailed in those eras.

It is time for a new approach to governance that eschews Big Government, Big Business, and centralization in all its forms, and does not seek to establish a neo-Edwardian retro-futuristic utopia that looks like a set from David Lynch’s Dune.

The only time that a future century looked like a past century is now known as the Dark Ages. We must look to the cutting edge of today for guidance, and not one or two centuries ago.

As the basis of a name for this new movement, the term ‘capital’ is will not do, as it implies physical assets used in production. We need something that conveys the idea that all value is ultimately human knowledge, insight, and culture; everything else is ultimately land, sea, plants, and animals. Take away the humans, and earth would revert to a natural state that bears very little resemblance to today’s status quo in a relatively short time.

This is not to be confused with labor, which does not require humans, per se, once robots are installed.

Whatever we end up calling this ‘Entrepreneuritarian’ <bleh!!!> movement, we must recognize that the Cult of the Colossal leads inexorably to a duopoly of Big Government and Big Business, and that corporatism is not laissez faire.

Invest accordingly.

CWE