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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Inclusion of lurkers
  • Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2016 06:16:25 -0500

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 11:58 PM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
wrote:

> One of the reasons I did a rollcall is obvious, the election of the worst
> president in our nation's history. I won't give him the benefit of the
> doubt but still hope for the best and that he learns things on the job that
> lead to an epiphany. God forbid that Internet alt-right troll Bannon, an
> outright racist billionaire Goldman-Sachs employee (no nobless obligue for
> that ultimate throwback creep), just when I thought the nation was getting
> over racism. The only good thing is if Bolton is appointed Secretary of
> State. He will put that sadistic Stalin-clone in the Kremlin, Putin, in his
> place. People like Steve & friends who spammed us with anti HRC propaganda
> will be hoist on their own petard.
> No, Everything Is Not Going to Be Alright | Common Dreams | Breaking News
> & Views for the Progressive Community
> http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/15/no-everything-
> not-going-be-alright
>

The Deep History Behind Trump’s Rise
<http://www.monbiot.com/2016/11/15/the-deep-history-behind-trumps-rise/>

Posted: 15 Nov 2016 02:08 AM PST

How a ruthless network of super-rich ideologues killed choice and destroyed
people’s faith in politics

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14th November 2016

The events that led to Donald Trump’s election started in England in 1975.
At a meeting a few months after Margaret Thatcher became leader of the
Conservative party, one of her colleagues, or so the story goes, was
explaining what he saw as the core beliefs of conservatism. She snapped
open her handbag, pulled out a dog-eared book, and slammed it on the table
<https://www.aei.org/publication/margaret-thatcher-was-a-powerful-voice-for-free-enterprise-and-liberty/>.
“*This *is what we believe,” she said. A political revolution that would
sweep the world had begun.

The book was *The Constitution of Liberty by Frederick Hayek
<http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo9253956.html>*. Its
publication in 1960 marked the transition from an honest, if extreme,
philosophy to an outright racket. The philosophy was called neoliberalism
<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot>.
It saw competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. The
market would discover a natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a
more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or
design. Anything that impeded this process, such as significant tax,
regulation, trade union activity or state provision, was
counter-productive. Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that
would trickle down to everyone.

This, at any rate, is how it was originally conceived. But by the time
Hayek came to write *The Constitution of Liberty*, the network of lobbyists
and thinkers he had founded was being lavishly funded by multimillionaires,
who saw the doctrine as a means of defending themselves against democracy.
Not every aspect of the neoliberal programme advanced their interests.
Hayek, it seems, set out to close the gap.

He begins the book by advancing the narrowest possible conception of
liberty: an absence of coercion. He rejects such notions as political
freedom, universal rights, human equality and the distribution of wealth,
all of which, by restricting the behaviour of the wealthy and powerful,
intrude on the absolute freedom from coercion he demands. Democracy, by
contrast, “is not an ultimate or absolute value”. In fact, liberty depends
on preventing the majority from exercising choice over the direction that
politics and society might take.

He justifies this position by creating a heroic narrative of extreme
wealth. He conflates the economic elite, spending their money in new ways,
with philosophical and scientific pioneers. Just as the political
philosopher should be free to think the unthinkable, so the very rich
should be free to do the undoable, without constraint by public interest or
public opinion.

The ultra rich are “scouts”, “experimenting with new styles of living”, who
blaze the trails that the rest of society will follow. The progress of
society depends on the liberty of these “independents” to gain as much
money as they want and spend it how they wish. All that is good and useful,
therefore, arises from inequality. There should be no connection between
merit and reward, no distinction made between earned and unearned income
and no limit to the rents they can charge.

Inherited wealth is more socially useful than earned wealth: “the idle
rich”, who don’t have to work for their money, can devote themselves to
influencing “fields of thought and opinion, of tastes and beliefs.” Even
when they seem to be spending money on nothing but “aimless display”, they
are in fact acting as society’s vanguard. Everything the rich might do is,
by definition, good.

Hayak softened his opposition to monopolies and hardened his opposition to
trade unions. He lambasted progressive taxation and attempts by the state
to raise the general welfare of citizens. He insisted that there is “an
overwhelming case against a free health service for all” and dismissed the
conservation of natural resources. It should come as no surprise to those
who follow such matters that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/press.html>
.



--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared




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