Hi Scott, I hope you don’t mind if I respond to some of your posts from your Debate Porch over here. I’m a lurker there and don’t feel like intruding, but I thought a response to two of your posts warranted reply, if only to thank you for what you’ve done in bringing so many articles to this board. Also I thought it might help some folks understand where I’m at right now, since that hasn’t always been entirely clear and will probably continue to be that way into the future. If you want to beat terrorism you have to be flexible not fixed, think of it as me trying to do my bit to add to the confusion.
The first article is called Breaking Iraqi Windows Won’t Help the Economy by Sheldon Richmanand whose last name seems to be a weird mixture of Jewish and Indian, but that’s really just a typo. The second, Deep Concerns, is from Chomsky who is banned here, but who needs to be heard and read occasionally, even if only as the guardian of a dark soul in a turbulent and rapidly evoluting time. As armchair players we have time to play which should give us time to be careful not to confuse progress with simply moving forward through time.
Richman: Message 18730493
Chomsky: Message 18731011
Both recommended.
Frédéric Bastiat was a prescient and profound economist but imo Sheldon Richman miscasts the argument because he misunderstands it. For Bastiat there was nothing more damaging to the state of affairs than State plunder and massive socially engineered regimes, both of which Saddam is or was a prime proponent. Arguing that reconstruction will not lead to economic gain in the US is to misconstrue, to read the letter but not the spirit of what Bastiat wrote. Richman misplaces the centrality of laissez faire to Bastiats writings.
Bastiat’s point was that you have to consider the “unseen” effects — namely, the spending that will not occur because the window has to be replaced…
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The American people are not likely to get off the hook. Besides, without war and under free trade, those oil revenues would be buying products made by Americans (and others). There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Richman is making the altogether common mistake of many economists, assuming that the things he has identified as not being there, are indeed the most important variables. To the detriment of his argument he says “without war,” but this fails to take into account the fact that Iraq has been to all intents and purposes “with war” for years. You cannot assume this away, maybe he just got mixed up - it is one thing to consider the “unseen” effects, and not see the hidden, but it is another thing altogether, to miss the obvious.
He might have been making a narrower argument, but I don’t think so. Say one accepts that Richmans argument - that this war will not bring any net economic gain to the US - , is valid, does that mean then that the US is doing this for altruistic purposes or for other reasons equally stupid, or is it just that it’s immoral to have one without the other. Whether or not this is good for the US economy is secondary, compared to benefit accrued in Iraq.
Bastiat's “broken window” is a good fallacy, and a good argument, but as for the free lunch, Richman is looking in the wrong place which is always a danger when it comes to questions of trees and forests.
Practically speaking, sometimes you have to step outside the law to implement justice, ergo the slide into modernity or anarchy is always problematic. Cheney &Co will make out like bandits, but then it’s always good to get those with experience to do the job, so why not give it to the UN. This is an unusual situation with liberty so close at hand, give credit when and where credit is due, to the victor go the spoils, in more ways than one.
What’s odd about freedom and democracy is that while Bush tries to make it clear that the oil belongs to the Iraqi’s and Blair speaks about setting up some kind of Trust, when the SAfrican govt. moves to increase gold royalties, it is seen as an investment risk. One is only left to imagine why taking care of business has to be so hard, depends upon whom your dealing with I suppose.
In the meantime we must get back to the kitchen and our cooked books heh heh, we must watch the pot, and boil the frog who hopefully will be ready soon, cooked by the tadpoles who want to separate themselves from the froth, if we are to believe the news.
I can't say for sure if Bastiat would be for or against this war, but it would be interesting to know if whether like Chomsky he would be fighting the last war.
It’s easy for me to agree with a lot of Chomsks concerns and I hope his nightmare doesn’t come true, the whole situation being in transition and all, so this is just for fun.
The problem for the US is that being the greatest power with the greatest responsibilities it lands up being easy to criticize, plenty targets of opportunity, not that the current Admin seems to have a problem with this, but Chomsky does. I have no truck with the way in which this Admin pursues policy, to say it is offensive and reckless is self evident. They should have been able to do this with a lot more allies, but then it would no longer be revolutionary, so as it is, it might very well end up costing more than what we paid, but we don't know that yet. But and it is a massive but, if and again it’s a massive if, if this turns out well, not only will the Iraqi’s do better, but the Stateside economy should get a nice kick of confidence, hopefully some of which will stick, the probability of which will depends on what all the worlds cowboys do next, especially when it come to the economy, stupid – now why does that ring a bell.
He offers some good advice but when it comes to things like sanctions, Chomsky shouldn’t fret so much – they are going to be gone soon but Chomsky does not acknowledge the self evidence of this fact. Either he wants them or he doesn’t, you can’t have both. As he says, no-one knows the outcome yet, but the elimination of sanctions is at this point a pretty sure bet.
But the issues are much more fundamental, and long range. Opposition to the invasion of Iraq has been entirely without historical precedent.
This is a sly linguistic trick, the reason that opposition is without historical precedent is that this entire action is without historical precedent, but Chomsky doesn’t say this. This is not unprecedented because of the invasion, been millions of those in the past, but the age we are in is unprecedented in the area of global communications. This is our first internet war. If nothing like this has been tried before under these conditions, then there is no historical basis on which to judge it. He is fighting the last war, and in that way the more things change the more they stay the same, what happens this time is anyone’s gambol.
Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might sometimes be, they do not hold for the very different category of preventive war: the use of military force to eliminate an imagined or invented threat.
Why is that, because he says so. Chomsks thinks that this is an imagined or invented threat, well I’ve got a heads up for him, the war on terror is a secret war and an invisible war. In the communication age, Iraq is an assymetrical diversion, and while gadding about hiding information Saddam provides just enough cover for the operation.
The openly-announced goal is to prevent an challenge to the “power, position, and prestige of the United States.”
What he fails to realize is that these guys are liars of the highest order, but they aren’t bluffing I wonder if Chomsks sees in Bush the anti-Christ, but he’d probably have some problems with that too.
If Chomsks thinks this threat is non existent he is either fighting the last war, again, or he thinks that Iraq is not connected to the war on terror, or that the downside here is more than the upside, or there shouldn’t be a war on terror or he hates the way this Admin does things, or maybe he just stopped thinking, I wonder which it is. I agree that war is not the answer, but sometimes it’s the only solution, especially when forced to it.
One immediate task is to lend what weight we can to more benign outcomes.
He should take his own advice. |
