We’ve seen the modern market is not made for the average man, but is instead made for the soulless, high-IQ, homo economicus. So what kind of economic system do we replace it with?
We can not replace it with socialism, communism, or the like, for those systems lead to misery. Distributism looks nice, but is light on details and is unlikely to scale to large urban populations. It is undisputable that free markets are the most effective and efficient means of producing goods and services, but modern free markets are based on the abominations of usury and inflation, and destroys traditional communities and leave those humans not suited for inhuman money-grubbing frozen out.
So, where can we get a system that is a combination of efficient, just (in the proper sense, not in the evil ‘social justice’ sense), and human?
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Before we begin, we first recognize that the market, just like the economy, does not exist in a real, tangible sense. It is an abstraction of billions of trade contracts between millions of people. It is real concept, but not a concrete entity.
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Everybody knows of the tragedy of the commons. It is a major plank of libertarians and conservative thought on economics and their support for the free markets. Everything must be privatized because people inherently tend to abuse and exploit common property, while they generally tend to care for and tend their own property.
Leftists in turn argue that the tragedy can be avoided by settng up complex social schemes (ie. government regulations) to prevent them. Of course, we all know how rapidly these schemes snowball out of control and how regularly they backfire, leading to self-serving, self-sustaining bureaucracies that tend to perpuate problems rather than solve them. The social schemes themselves are common property subject to pillaging.
The problem with free markets though, is that they are free. Libertarians and conservatives do not take their thoughts as fully forward as they should. We can privatize all the goods and services on the market, but that leaves one question, what of the market itself?
The lib/cons wish to privatize everything but the market itself, leaving the market as its own commons. They than argue the socialist argument that the market, and the contracts that it consists of, should be enforced and controlled by the public through the complex social scheme called the government. Of course, the government tends to snowball out of control, and the lib/cons are suprised when a formerly free market country becomes a socialist state.
The solution then, is to privatize markets themselves. We need not free markets, which are subject to the plundering all commons are subject to, but owned markets, markets which are privately owned and controlled for the profit of the owner.
This is neocameralism as applied to the economy. Somebody should own the market and have control over his own property. By this I mean, that the owner of a market should have absolute control over the rules regarding the usage of his property, the enforcement of the rules of said rules, and the right to extract profit from the market.
Now, you’ll notice that control and enforcement sounds eerily like government and that profits sounds eerily like tax. You’re correct in that assessment.
So what makes this different from our current government or from a lib/con free market? Our current government is not owned by anybody and taxes are ostenibly for the good of the people, which in reality means that the government (or rather the many different institutions and individuals that comprise it) is in competition with itself to suck the economy dry to buy off the people with their own money. The lib/con free market it much the same, but instead the limited government not being owned does nothing to prevent the tragedy of the commons as everybody competitively rapes the common market (ie. millions of humans their trade decisions) for personal exploitation and gain at the expense of others and with no eye towards the long-term health of either the market or the people it consists of.
On the other hand, in an owned market, the market owner is the only one who profits (in the narrow sense of the term) from the the taxes he levies and he has a vested interest in ensuring his cash cow remains healthy for not only his own life, but for his legacy as well. He has to ensure that not only is the market and its laws are healthy, but the people who produce his wealth are as well.
An owned market would (generally) be free with strong contract law because the free market works and the owner would aim to hit the optimal point of the laffer curve to maximize his own revenues. The owner would also recognize that the well-being of his people was necessary for profit maximization and so would (effeciently) invest some of his profits into infrastructure and public welfare programs to ensure profit-maximization. Pork and rent-seeking would simply cease to exist as a problem, as the king can do with his own money and property as he wishes. Finally, the owner, having human judgement, would be able step in if an corporation or individual within his market was abusing it and address the issue on an individual basis, without having to create an unwieldy set of regulations (with many exploitable loopholes) to cover every eventuality and a huge, impersonal, self-serving bureacracy to enforce it.
Naturally, none of this is to say that there is no possibility of the owner abusing or misusing a market. Vested self-interest does not necessarily mean wise or correct decisions, he may himself be foolish, sociopathic, or mad, but they do mean that sociopathy and foolishness are temporary states of the current owner rather rather than inherent and permanent structures at the base of the market.
To make the market more human, more just, and more efficient we need human judgment with skin in the game. We need owned markets.
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The obvious owner of the market would be he who owns the country the market is found in, the king. Ideally, the king would own the market, he would extract taxes from the market in exchange for enforcing contracts and policing the market.
The owner could also delegate authority over certain areas of the market, either in specific places or in specific markets. The former would be a form of economic fuedalism, while the latter would be a form of the guild system and the chartered corporation system (where corporations were formed by government charter rather than by registration).
I have one more post on economics upcoming, this one with potential practical economic actions that could be implemented by either the future market owner or by the current government.
Sooner or later markets have to orientate themselves by human nature. Everything else would be a big misunderstanding. Fighting against reality has never lead to success at all in the long run.
from: http://freedompowerandwealth.com
Seriously? Is it that hard to figure out?
I think the Orthodox Christians have it figured out, from how they’ve been talking.
Usury can be eliminated if the Church regulates the money-lending.
All we have to do is make a Christian country without usury. The hard part is making it auditable, because when it gets complicated, it’s easy to re-invent usury without realizing that you’ve re-invented it.
>modern free markets
Implying that modern markets are even moderately free (which they are not, since the end of 19th century; with Keynesian monetary policy in place since the early 20th century, what we got is Full Fascism, rather than free markets). What we have today is already made to be “humane,” we are living in mixed-economy social democracies, are we not? I don’t get all this “arise ye wretched of the earth” mindset in the Alt-Right, isn’t that what we already have right now? Isn’t that exactly what we’re struggling against?
Sovereign de facto owns the markets (through owning a country). However, good sovereign would not want to set the conditions for the flourishing of the low-caste people (that was exactly the problem with Industrial Revolution, it was dysgenic – it made possible the survival of people who would have starved to death under mercantilism, or feudalism). Nicholas Based Stevenson’s proposal of the “ward system,” a form of slavery which would prevent low-caste from breeding is the humane solution here (the alternative solutions being either the absolute laissez-faire AKA “let the invisible hand sort them out,” or Proactive Eugenics – forced sterilizations, etc.).
What would be the difference between owned markets and the guild system of medieval Europe?
Very insightful essay. That is a lot to think about.
“What would be the difference between owned markets and the guild system of medieval Europe?”
As I mentioned, the guild system would be a form of owned markets.
Yes, the more intuitive systems become the more godly they become. Generally, as irresponsible people don’t last long under pressure, the private system is good.
Finally, the owner, having human judgement, would be able step in if an corporation or individual within his market was abusing it and address the issue on an individual basis, without having to create an unwieldy set of regulations (with many exploitable loopholes) to cover every eventuality and a huge, impersonal, self-serving bureacracy to enforce it.
This part reminded me of one of the Rev Rushdoony lectures I heard recently where he mentions that the government of early Massachussets ruled that nobody would be able to earn his living through lawyering. The reason was because that the laws were to be kept simple enough that they could be understood and argued by a non-specialised citizen.
A.J.P.
Dear FN,
The question of how to make markets human is the core idea of Distributism in the Chesterbelloc sense. To sum it up, less employment, more self-employment and entrepreneurship and family business. Do you think owned markets would promote this?
I think the good life is that of the medieval shopkeeper living above his own shop, and the business partners being neighbors and friends, and not commuting to the other side of the city to work for and with strangers. Could owned markets promote this?
The question occurs, if the king owns the market and extracts profit from it, how does he measure the profit, and on what does he spend it?
After all, his profit needs to be a real incentive. And as for goods (commonly) on the market, he could get those some other way, such as being a merchant, which is much less of a drain on his psychic welfare than making sure everyone is playing fair.
The historical answer is that he can spend those taxes on things that aren’t commonly on the market: statues, buildings, extravagant luxuries, wars. This is generally a good answer as far as it goes, but it has two problems:
1) such need to be acceptable in the culture he is king over. Right now, if we made someone king, he’d spend some of his money on jets and cars, and most of his money on starving kids in Africa
2) prudent use of these goods can lead to moral formation, but imprudent use of these goods leads to moral degradation, and you don’t want a morally degraded king, because that rather obviates the point
I’m still with you as to this being probably the best system; certainly one of the best we’ve ever tried. It just does have problems that we need to figure out.
… but I generally find the idea really ingenious. One thing people with a more or less libertarian bent need to consider is: what is actually more important, market exchange or property ownership? I mean, people who tend their gardens just because it is theirs and not expect any monetary reward demonstrate the primacy of ownership. People whose car looks like a dirty litterbox and the only time they clean it up is when they are going to sell it demonstrate the primacy of market exchange and monetary rewards and profit-seeking.
I am more of an ownership-oriented than market-oriented guy, because private property is far older than free markets, the Middle Ages were more about private property than free markets. So if you go reactionary why not go the full length. To the 100% private property oriented Medievals, Gladstonian free markets would have looked like utopian liberalism.
So of I am in favor of private property, less in favor of unregulated markets, market owners regulating markets is an absolutely ingenious solution. It really overcomes the difficulty that if the government regulates your business then you don’t fully own it in all senses of the word. I think the really interesting part of your idea is that there is a difference between market regulation and business regulation. Market regulation simply means can’ sell X here, does not mean cannot produce X and sell it elsewhere. So it does not violate ownership. It is a far far low-impact way to regulate.
But why are private markets such an odd, interesting sci-fi idea anyway? We have them already. Ebay. Alibaba.com, Amazon Marketplace…
Distributism is gibs-me-dats for Vatican-Roman “Catholics”. Nothing more. One should be guarded against these radically ecumenical ideas, or else he’s a traitor.
R.,
A morally degraded king may not be able to maintain his position, and he may be replaced by another nobleman with both good pedigree and good morality (righteousness).
Why don’t you think that a king would be motivated in the area of war any longer? He would likely be motivated in that direction, since the incentives are there. Remember that a merchant does not have the military authority that a king does, therefore the merchants all have to look up to the kingly Commander-In-Chief, so that status itself is a motivator.
Best regards,
A.J.P.
I have your same objections to the current situation, and i think like you like how well capitalism self regulates and rewards healthily, Ideas of replacing elites with AI are not only silly but I see nothing for us humans in that idea. My idea has been more vague but similar to yours i havnt developed it because frankly im not smart enough but because i can see it would have flaws i havnt thought a way around but i have been making the point that the people do have the potential for violence greater than the state and whether king or congress have hired the government conditionally and there fore own the market and should be compensated for its use, the US market should be able to charge international corporations more than the idian market. Probably enough to allow a “middle class lifestyle” for most. But the devils in the details as a commenter points out how is your or mine different from what we have. How do we eliminate the commons or democracy problem.the distorted incentives and still make it human. first i think an ethnostate [guestworkers perhaps] narrows the gaps, Social welfare programs seem popular not only for those who need them but those too squeamish to watch those go without this may be an evolutionary trait not worth the fight when in essence they are simply insurance programs which is a perfectly capitalist idea.The problem of keeping them as such with balanced books is part and parcel of the larger problem. Eugenics while in a sense anti human is a fact of life now and we will have to contend with it like an ethno state [which btw also allows a confident culture which mitigates all sorts of other problems] eugenics can also narrow the gaps that lead to socialism and other social pathologies and social costs it neednt go into Land land. One way to get the country to pull together would perhaps be issuing stock, there could even be different types of stock maybe some has an expiration date, some is voting or non voting, some tradeable inheritable some not. everyone has a place and a value in the nation, maybe 105 IQ idaho farm boys cant outsmart the execs at goldman sachs but without those farmboys manning the guns around the world people will just laugh at goldman when it goes to collect it sovereign debts. The point theres a lot of things that people have a hard time getting paid for or paid a fair price for but without which capitalism could not do its thing, what do you think goldman execs would pay not to have to collect their debts if they didnt get it for free while having no allegiance to the nation that provides the service? a lot more than soldiers get paid.There probably ought to be an option for corporations to be national or international and rights and responsibilities that go with each.
I realize this flies in the face of much reactionary thinking that democracy is the problem it may well be but i dont see the evidence thats because the average american is a communist its because democracy is easy for communists to pwn despite the average american being stilol conservative despite 100 years of overwhelming commie propaganda. todays votes are more like lottery tickets than corporate shares.if your share were in an account showing the current value in cash how easy would it be for someone to talk you out of it particularly in a culturally confident homogeneous society of high IQ, a society like that could implement and incorporate HBD, so tradition patriarchy would be givens maybe womens shares could only vote on some things maybe childrens shares could be voted by parents social ideas would have cost benefit analysis by design.
I dont see the king idea working out any different historically than rebooting democracy i dont think its fair to say a do over from 1766 or 1786 would turn out differently. and i dont think its anymore realistic a sell to european people that they will be ruled again by some king than they will be ruled by some AI. But this scheme could come in to play without a collapse [ a dubious assumption] or a revolution [again] if tech can start using big data etc to outsource government into irrelevance by which i mean the ability to use an app to choose a sanitation collector or school or security on a per family basis for instance then citizenry becomes micro market ownership and government becomes redundant in the old sense too decentralized to pwn. perhaps more importantly it cant be used to say stamp out religion theres no tax anymore to deny a religion a break on theres no school system to influence, theres no state licence for fags to marry either i belong to a church that marries fags or i have pleasantly unaware of fag marriage in some church in provincetown,