What's going on with Adam Creighton? Is he hanging up his soft libertarian, capitalism-is-great-and-let's-leave-it-alone credentials for good with today's column "Maybe it is time we accepted greed was never good"?
He's never impressed me, as many posts here over the years will attest, so I'm not going to be one to welcome him into the centrist, capitalism-needs-good-regulation-as-all-reasonable-people-have-known-since-about-1850 fold. He'll probably have another change of heart next week, anyway.
And didn't he write a whinge about our immigration program last week, that it was letting in too many unskilled?
As with Jason, it seems, soft libertarian types are now lost and wandering around listening to anyone from Pauline Hanson via her acolyte Mark Latham (who, I see, has re-joined Twitter because he couldn't bear to be around without annoying people) to "I'm just being reasonable, having articles both anti immigration and anti urgent climate change action" Lehmann.
Sad.
Adam has been pretty nuanced for awhile hasn't he? Nuance isn't tolerated at Catallaxy. Try it on and they'll mistake you for me and you'll get the smite. I used to see Sinclair smite others thinking they were me. Saw him do it twice a few months back. PZ Myers won't tolerate nuance with the theory of evolution. He calls it "concern blogging"
ReplyDeleteAny balanced approach and you will get smited because they are used to me saying that the problems come from monetary factors, in the first instance, failure to meet Henry George part way secondly. But now the business ecology is so far out of whack that even fairly socialist industry policy interventions are needed to guide industries back to a balanced free enterprise setting.
I was talking about some of the things this young man was a dozen years ago. No-one showed any interest. But this fellow has done a more thorough job of showing that our corporate governance isn't in line with price discovery or natural law and you cannot have a balanced Misean economy if your corporate setup isn't following Misean assumptions.
You will get smited if you post this fellow on Catallaxy and they don't know who you are. Because you cannot have that sort of doubt or you would destabilise the people there. They have allowed themselves to be defined by their opponents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umzje_5nMD4&t=3s
as Lenin ssid, the capitalist will sell you the rope for you to hang him https://twitter.com/GideonCRozner/status/1174161003367419904
ReplyDeleteJason, I'm supposed to be dismayed because KMart wants to employ someone with a job title you and the IPA don't like?
ReplyDeleteFrom the first item on the job description:
"Develop and lead an integrated human rights strategy and roadmap for Kmart Group (e.g. living wage, responsible purchasing practices, traceability, modern slavery, women’s empowerment)"
A large part of the sounds related to the fact that the company buys huge amounts of cheap clothes (and other items) from countries like Bangladesh and China, where the issue of worker standards - particularly for women in clothing manufacture - has been a major concern for a a long time.
If they want their purchasing practices to have an influence on their overseas manufacturers, so what? I see no threat to my way of life, or capitalism, or my ability to buy cheap underwear from KMart.
They might well be able to deal with the issue without hiring an overqualified lesbian from Macquarie Uni, but then again, the $300,000 (guesstimate) salary is probably small change to the company anyway.
I keep telling you, those Mark Latham brand supplements are just angry pills that you need to stop taking.
Jason you know that there is no solution to all this bullshit but to swing back to the sole trader and then reform the corporate sector. Modern corporations are just like Stalin’s Communist party. The communist Congress is the shareholders meeting. They appoint a central committee, which is like a non-executive directors board. The politburo is like the executive board. This has nothing to do with Misean Praxeology, natural law, or anything that could justify Randian social ethics. We need serious business reform. Misean reasoning is flawless but it doesn’t conform to anything we have on the fly right now.
ReplyDeleteWe have got to get rid of all this communism. In a way I agree with both of you. I mean if its a communist outfit, you'd want it to act socially responsible. I guess. Its mostly window-dressing though isn't it Steve? You really think that Kmart can help reform the Indians, and help us reconcile with Beijing after they send their wages up high?
No we want to get it right here. Have a form of voluntary business that really works. Kicks ass. Every sole trader a King and every worker doing real well. So one territory in India sees what we are doing and emulates us. Then it gets infectious. Then Beijing decides that they need to do better so that they are not overmatched by the Indians and so forth. We want to get it right at home so other people emulate us.
Let us be that shining city on the hill. The eyes of the world are upon us. And what we have now is not good enough for Australians.
Graeme
ReplyDeleteI am increasingly receptive to your (economic) thinking, Pull the whole rotten edifice down. Including fractional reserve, you were right about fractional reserve.
Even the Financial Timws is willing to print this now
https://www.ft.com/content/5a8ab27e-d470-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77?segmentId=6132a895-e068-7ddc-4cec-a1abfa5c8378
Gawd, Jason: you'll be endorsing Piketty soon enough. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
ReplyDeleteI see nothing much wrong with the Martin Wolff article. Much of it has been obvious for some time, though, no? And it is anti-populist explanations, which I thought you and best bud Latham were pretty much into now.
Also - illustrates how puny "woke" issues are in relation to the real problems in the world.