Sep 26, 2022·edited Sep 26, 2022Liked by Toby Rogers
I've been thinking a bit along the same lines as you, Toby. However, I specifically feel that the weakness in the medical freedom movement is that it is missing some ethical grounding with regard to technology.
To be clear, I wholeheartedly agree with medical freedom (and will vote for whatever candidate supports it best). However, the fact is that the forces of authoritarianism are doing an end-run around freedom-loving progressives in recent years. By espousing progressive-seeming policies, WEF and its minions are either suckering progressives into authoritarianism or scaring freedom-minded people from progressive values. Another way to look at this is that WEF is partly "right" on issues, but WEF is basically grooming the population for authoritarian "emergency" control, because--according to its ethos-- democracy is not good enough to respond to a changing world. The grave problem with this is that authoritarianism never works out as planned, and always works out to benefit those with the reins.
In response, I think what is necessary is a new ethical system that becomes widespread from the base of the population, a movement that both rejects authoritarianism and embraces a new morality regarding use of technology. People have generally been viewing technology as an amoral thing, but practices such as genetic engineering and mRNA manipulation of your immune system are not only incredibly reckless, but also simply immoral. More and more people need to see them as such before good change can happen at the top. Good change in society is not attained from the orders of the elite, it must come as a cultural values shift from the base.
I hope you are sincere in welcoming corrections. Because there are some fundamental errors here, and I hope you will be open to hearing about them.
Let me start by saying that there is a story about free markets that is told to everyone who goes through a government school in America (and I imagine elsewhere). The story goes something like this: "Free markets are all well and good in theory, but in practice they produce monopolies that are no longer accountable to their customers and must be reined in by the government."
This story is a lie. And if you understand why the government lies about all the other things it lies about, I think you'll understand why it has an interest in perpetrating this lie too.
With that in mind:
1. You say: "The dirty little secret of classical liberalism is that it came to depend on both slavery and colonial empire to infuse wealth into the system."
In fact, colonial empire was a drain on the British economy. Yes, it made a few people - "John Company", and other cronies, along with the crown itself - very wealthy. But it did so at the expense of everyone else in Britain.
"…empire profits were earned at a substantial cost to the taxpayer. [The authors] depict British imperialism as a mechanism to effect an income transfer from the tax-paying middle class to the elites in which the ownership of imperial enterprise was heavily concentrated, with some slight net transfer to the colonies in the process."
The reality is that both the ideals of classical liberalism, and the economic interests of the population as a whole, were very much at odds with British imperialism, and the mercantilist system - which was precisely what Adam Smith addressed in his "Wealth of Nations."
2. You say: "…and "Adam Smith’s famed “butcher, baker, and brewer” got rich from being downstream of the enormous wealth generated when Scotland cornered the market for new world tobacco (which was slave-grown…"
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. That markets cannot function without an assist from slavery? But that's patently untrue. You must recognize that the world is overflowing with examples that contradict that claim. So what are you saying?
3. Your description of progressivism:
"Progressivism was a reaction by the middle and upper classes against the failures of both liberalism and Marxism while attempting to retain the best aspects of both — seeking to preserve individual liberties while using the state to impose limits on corporate power. Progressive muckraker Upton Sinclair described the disgusting practices of meat packing plants in The Jungle and this led to the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Support for anti-trust action to break up large monopolies was another hallmark of progressivism."
"…historians with an ideological axe to grind against the market usually ignore an authoritative 1906 report of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Husbandry. Its investigators provided a point-by-point refutation of the worst of Sinclair’s allegations, some of which they labeled as “willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact,” “atrocious exaggeration,” and “not at all characteristic.”"
and:
"According to the popular myth, there were no government inspectors before Congress acted in response toThe Jungle, and the greedy meat packers fought federal inspection all the way. The truth is that not only did government inspection exist, but meat packers themselves supported it and were in the forefront of the effort to extend it so as to ensnare their smaller, unregulated competitors."
It's worth reading the whole piece by Reed, to get the full sense of the extent to which this novel really was nothing more than anti-capitalist propaganda. (There's a reason it is required reading in so many government schools.)
More broadly, the myth that government regulation was borne of a desire to "impose limits on corporate power" is simply not true. The historical reality is that established businesses not only supported regulation of their industries, but were instrumental in setting up the regulatory state.
"…makes a deep inquiry into the attitudes of business leaders toward competition during the years 1918 through 1938 to see how those attitudes were translated into proposals for controlling competition, through political machinery under the direction of trade associations.
"What he finds is a business sector not only hostile to free markets but aggressively in favor of restrictions that would protect their interests. This, he finds, is the very source of the origins and development of the regulatory state."
4. You write: "And now the progressive regulatory state has failed because it was captured by the industries it was supposed to supervise."
I don't know how to emphasize this enough: Regulatory capture is a feature, not a bug. It's how regulation began, and how it will continue. To think that the regulatory state somehow "failed" or that it is broken but we can fix it and then it will serve our interests, is to badly understand how this all works.
If you recognize that monopoly is a problem, then you must also recognize that seeking to solve that problem with yet another monopoly doesn't actually solve the problem.
Here's the problem with monopolies - and I mean genuine monopolies, the kind markets can't put out of business. The kind that really do behave the way the textbooks tell us monopolies behave. The problem with real monopolies is that they are not accountable to the people they serve.
Think DMV. Think your local public school board. Think the TSA, DEA, IRS, etc. What these entities all have in common is that not a one of them has any meaningful accountability to those they claim to "serve." If any private business did the things to its customers that these agencies do to us, not only would customers stop frequenting the business, but in some cases, its proprietors would end up in prison.
The institution of the state is the biggest monopolist around. And the regulatory and other alphabet agencies comprise the least accountable "branch" of the state. To expect that regulatory agencies will ever serve the interests of "the public" (whoever that is), rather than their own interests and the interests of their cronies, is like expecting a pack of lions to decide to become gazelle-rights activists. They simply have no incentive to do so.
Again, I cannot stress how important it is to get this. The coercive state, the regulatory state, cannot be made accountable, because the very fact of its being a coercive monopoly itself precludes any accountability to anyone else. This is at the heart of our frustration with "stupid politicians" (they're not stupid - their interests just aren't aligned with yours), and "corrupt regulatory agencies" (it is their nature to be "corrupted" by the entities they claim to regulate - it is literally how they were designed.) And those of us who fail to learn this lesson will end up spending a lot of time drawing up plans for optimal deck-chair placement in the coming years.
5. You write: "But the enormous problem with classical liberalism is that it has a tendency to lead to concentrated power (monopolies)."
No. It. Doesn't.
You're repeating the narrative that was handed to us in high school and in mainstream college econ. classes. The problem is: it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
It is true that in a free market individual players can come to dominate the market. What they cannot do, is maintain that dominance while behaving the way econ. textbooks tell us monopolies behave. As long as it is a free market, those companies are still subject to market forces, and must still satisfy the needs and wants of their customers, or they will lose market share to competitors.
Why do you think the most powerful corporations have always promoted government regulation of their industries? It's because the last thing they want is competition. The last thing they want is a free market, because then they have to work hard to maintain their position.
The world we live in now is the world of crony capitalism. So it's easy to look around and say things like "but look at Amazon! It's a big monopolist that dominates the market while mom and pop shops are going under!" And indeed, our world is characterized by an awful lot of giant corporations succeeding in an environment that seems harder and harder every year for the little guy.
…which is exactly what one would expect to find in a crony capitalist system. Not to be confused (although it always is) with a free market.
Even large corporations that do not receive direct largesse from the state, or special favors of any kind, still benefit from the regulatory state. How? The same way that all those businesses that pushed for antitrust laws benefitted from that particular kind of regulation: A more regulated marketplace is a much harder place for competitors to enter, and to flourish in and grow big enough to become a threat. Every single regulation represents more of a burden for the smaller companies (and raises the entry barrier for complete newcomers) than it does for the big, established ones.
And so this is what we get: The Amazons and the big fast-food chains and the Ikeas and giant grocery stores – and the small independent businesses closing down at record speed. None of this should come as any surprise to anyone who has a clear understanding of the nature of the regulatory state.
6. Finally: "It seems to me that whatever political system comes next must wrestle with the question of how to preserve individual liberties while limiting the corrosive effects of concentrated power."
You're making this more complicated than it needs to be. The classical liberals were right, and those public-school narratives about the dangers of individual liberty in an economic setting are wrong.
Freedom is not our enemy, and it doesn't need to be "balanced" with anything. Concentrated power is the product of the state, not of liberty, and if we are to have a new political system that allows humanity to flourish, then it cannot allow for the kind of violence-based monopoly that characterizes our current world. What we need are systems that allow for, and protect, individual liberty. It's really not more complicated than that.
I hope that you will take this in the spirit in which it is meant: As a heartfelt attempt to correct what I see as a fundamental misunderstanding of both free-market theory and history, on the part of someone I think of as one of the true heroes of the medical-freedom movement.
And I didn't write all of this because I think it's critical that you, Toby Rogers, get this right. I felt compelled to write it because so very many people - good people, smart people, lots of people on the right side of things these days - have absorbed the government-school version of economics and economic history. Getting this wrong costs us dearly, because if we start out from fundamental misunderstandings of how the world works, it's going to be very very hard to come up with good solutions. My hope is that you will take what I've said here to heart, but even if you don't, I imagine some others who read this will.
That's quite a comment! I have copied and pasted for good old, eye-balls on paper weekend reading. I am prepared to accept accounts claiming that much anti-free market discourse is incorrect. I have bookmarked your substack.
And a thank you to Dr T for eliciting such copious responses at this level of thoughtfulness. A real tribute to his contribution.
Jul 27, 2022·edited Jul 28, 2022Liked by Toby Rogers
By way of analogy, the problem is only this: it's as if you have a tribe of people trying to launch a rocket to the moon, but without having the discipline to go through discovering/learning arithmetic, algebra, calculus, materials science, chemistry, and so on first.
All these past systems you name are just crude "cargo cult" political philosophies; they are not philosophically serious, ergo the spaceship explodes on the launchpad. But it's difficult to explain this concept to a cargo cult.
We've never left feudalism in practice. Slavery is one example of how we didn't have a legitimate free market system, in spite of "classical liberalism". Patents are a modern day example. Nobody had ever given a valid moral argument proving you could own another human being back then, and nobody has ever given a valid moral argument today proving that you can own patents. And the existence of patents leads to much of those evils you are blaming on classical liberalism.
Are slavery and patents classical liberalism's fault? "Yes" in some sense and "no" in another. Yes, because that era had never resolved what are the methods by which we determine whether something is legitimate property. Even the idea that there can be "legitimate" anything has been cast by the wayside due to the philosophical failures of that era, which we continue to be steeped in today.
The point of mentioning patents isn't to say that is the whole issue, far from it. But it's a great example of how nobody ever bothered to think in terms of "first principles" regarding how our system works. And like I said before, that lack of explanation explains everything.
Those are fantastic points! Thank you for raising them. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and patents/intellectual property protections for Pharma are at the root of our current catastrophe. Yes, we need to have a much wider conversation about property, legitimate vs. illegitimate property, and how all of that ties into power.
thank you for this very well-written summary, much appreciated. My only "correction" is in your list of countries taken over by Fascism in 2020 you forgot mine - Canada. It's a total nightmare here. And while this is by no means an answer of any kind, a website I enjoy is https://consilienceproject.org/, the banner is "critical conversations for the future of human civilization". Well, enjoy is perhaps not the right word. A website I appreciate.
I found it all very suggestive and thoughtful - obviously not meant to be a treatise. You also forgot perhaps the first real experiment in fascism, Italy - 1920s. And your timeline is off: Germany 1930s - the work of fascism was done in the 30s; the 40s was the war that Germany (and just about everyone else) planned in the 1930s. I would also date USA Fascism to the 1930s - plenty of high ranking officials in the Roosevelt admin were drooling over Italian and German policy making - oh, if only we could do the same.
And I think the emphasis has to be on collaboration between executive political power and the industrial/banking elite; not merely the latter "taking over" (I think your words) the former. And I think you have to work in to the account, initially, political parties/"movements" (almost a technical term in the history of fascism) and, subsequently, executive bureaucracies; in the USA at least, that was and is the engine of fascism.
One more finally: the Eugyppius article was a good one: I came in on the "rapacious... no sincere ideological commitments" side - early fascism was ideologically driven (see above: "movements") something happened after WW2 when the rulers discovered and deployed the technologies of secrecy and direct psychological manipulation.
Okay here is something a friend referred me to. The interviewee is talking about the year 2060, and and how this information was obtained. Some of you may not find this credible, but from my experiences with animal communicators I am able to believe stuff happens that totally cannot be explained by current science. Anyway this is a very enjoyable report; I hope it brings happiness to some of you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7upQskK4LgY
Tobi, it’s a hamster wheel. Mankind seems trapped by its dark side—greed and control of others. Do-gooders try to fix it, but in the end are often destroyed or merge with the dark they were trying to fix. We’ll need God & the wisdom of Solomon to raise our vibration and thankfully I see that happening from so many good folk—you among them. Stay the course.
Again I apologise if I am repeating others points. If I am it is merely seconding that motion from those posting. Here goes:
__________________________
Toby Rogers wrote:
Liberalism was a welcome reaction to feudalism. Smart people, who weren’t quite at the top of the hierarchy, advocated for economic liberalism (the right to trade goods on their own) and political liberalism (the right to have a voice in who runs the place). Over several centuries, those rights expanded to include more and more people.
The dirty little secret of classical liberalism is that it came to depend on both slavery and colonial empire to infuse wealth into the system. Adam Smith’s famed “butcher, baker, and brewer” got rich from being downstream of the enormous wealth generated when Scotland cornered the market for new world tobacco (which was slave-grown because indentured servants won’t do it — harvesting green tobacco makes people nauseous).
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Oil and fossil fuels power today's technological slaves that replaced the slavery of old. We feel we have evolved beyond slavery because it is slightly hidden. That augments the "dirty little secret..." Toby spoke about.
_______________________
Toby Rogers wrote:
Making matters significantly more complicated, the billionaires have taken over the political system and weaponized progressive values (equality, environmental protection) and institutions (U.N., W.H.O.) in the attempt to enslave the developed world. So we have an unholy alliance of the technocrats (the top 10% of well-educated people) + the predatory billionaires, using weaponized PR and elaborate psyops to force their twisted ideas upon us by any means necessary.
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I share this view. But having lived with a more or less attentive mind since the late 1960s I see it evolving differently. There was a book by Rachel Carson "Silent Spring" that makes the point. I will pick on one company most are familiar with, Monsanto.
From Wikipedia:
Post-WWII
... In 1954, Monsanto partnered with German chemical giant Bayer to form Mobay and market polyurethanes in the United States.[36]
Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along with some 15 other companies ... including Monsanto, Ciba,[16] Montrose Chemical Company, Pennwalt,[17] and Velsicol Chemical Corporation.
******
This is the laundered version of Monsanto's involvement with DDT. I didn't take time to find out all the companies in the US that manufactured DDT products.
The shift that Toby points out is to absolve all corporate malfeasance and to obscure the causes of these toxins and other harms to the environment, the damage and extinction of countless life forms on Earth. Ultimately to shift the blame to you the public. It easy to see why. Tobacco manufactures said nicotine was not addictive and that smoking didn't cause lung cancer. Now currently litigation against Monsanto/Bayer with regards to glyphosate (roundup) is being prosecuted through out the US.
The jury at San Francisco’s Superior Court of California deliberated for three days (concerning cancer and glyphosate) before finding that Monsanto had failed to warn Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers.
It awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.
The process is such that the vast majority of people think these thing are just accidents...
Brent Wisner, a lawyer for Johnson, in a statement said jurors for the first time had seen internal company documents “proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer.” He called on Monsanto to “put consumer safety first over profits.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the crimes against life on Earth committed by corporate greed. So this is the reason behind ..."the attempt to enslave the developed world." The enslavement is to prevent discovery of their crimes. By shifting the blame to the common man by saying YOU ASKED FOR IT and we did our best to create these products to make you happy. We had no idea of the harms they would cause. All harms are really YOUR FAULT. If you hadn't wanted these things the harms wouldn't happen.
_________________
Toby Rogers wrote:
But the enormous problem with classical liberalism is that it has a tendency to lead to concentrated power (monopolies). Power corrupts and when these monopolistic firms take over the state we lose political liberalism and we are left with fascism. That’s not theoretical — that’s what actually happened in 1940s Germany and 2020s United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. (I’m sure many readers will take issue with this characterization.)
This was greatly facilitated in the US by:
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was argued in 2009 and decided in 2010. The court held 5-4 that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.
I remember on TV as a kid and later as an adult up until Citizens Untied, there was paid political advertisement. The opposing view point had to be presented with equal time. Speech is no longer free actually. The Rich and Corporations are the only ones who can afford to get their message to the public. This as led to rapid erosion of ethics and responsibility in politics. Only those supported by money have the means to address the electorate.
Surprise, not really. In this case we got what we didn’t pay for.
In summery:
1) Humans have never gotten past slavery.
2) Corporation and Government Agencies imply that the electorate is apathetic and get what they vote and pay for with their taxes. The citizens are responsible for the mess we face now.
3) Citizens United ruling basically said money is speech. The outcome is those with money do the speaking.
4) Not covered above is the work of GOTTFRIED FEDER. He was opposed to Capitalism and Communism. He wrote a small pamphlet called “THE PROGRAMME OF THE NSDAP - THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN WORKERS' PARTY - AND ITS GENERAL CONCEPTIONS by Gottfreid Feder”
His work is obscured by its association with NAZI Germany. But he did not support Hitler’s drive to weaponize the German economy.
I share his basic ideas because he realized that farming was the foundation of all economic development. Today in many of these substacks people realize the need for agriculture that is environmentally friendly and deeply nourishing of mind and body. I believe that his work needs to be understood because it was misapplied by Hitler and Feder was not a militarist.
That said I am not convince that is the way to go. Just that it hasn’t honestly been examined. Rather it has been paved over with our horror of NAZI Germany.
___________________
Toby Rogers wrote:
In the comments, please let me know your answer to the question above — what comes after the failures of classical liberalism, Marxism, progressivism, and psychotic billionaire fascism?
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We as citizens of the United States and of Planet Earth need to take full responsibility for the harms of international corporations. This is not easy to do. We feel we are some how innocent. Wwe are not. Feeling innocent makes us dis-empowered. How do we own this and claim our power?
Covid has shown us how Pharma has seeming blanket immunity for toxic jabs. WE gave them that through our elected representatives in 1986 with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.
We need to do what was not done then. Thank Pharma for their candor, admitting that it is impossible to make an absolutely safe vaccine. WE THEN Take the responsibility upon ourselves to resolve this and dismiss Pharma. REMEMBER they said they couldn't do it!
Only this time we assume full responsibility for the environmental, economic, and health catastrophe we now face. We dismiss International Corporations. We revoke Corporate Personhood. We start with a candid assessment of our situation and determine ways of solving it.
The fact is corporations can’t save us. There is no money in our good health or any other activity of self sufficiency. Yes we can do this. It is a barn raising and we used to do this all the time. This is not the yellow brick road. This path is exquisitely painful. But birth is a bloody mess. Once that is done the mother forgets the pain and suffering filled with love for the baby, holding and nursing her new born child.
Jul 27, 2022·edited Jul 27, 2022Liked by Toby Rogers
One important thing is stopping Bill Gates etal from large scale land ownership. Some people think he is speculating on land values. I believe Gates etal are planning to put us all to work in the NEW FEUDALISM. You know “You'll Own Nothing and You'll Be Happy”. The history of how small farms disappeared from America accelerates with Ag Sec Earl Butz in the 1970s. His mantra was “get big or get out” to small farmers.
The media is controlled the land is controlled etc. Still the path ahead is taking ownership of where we are, how we got here and then charting a course that transforms and heals our heart ache and our miserable health. It is a bloody mess. But it is also a birthing. We are both the mother/father and the new born children.
If you are wondering where and how to start? It begins in your back yard. If you don't have a yard, then your community garden. If you don't have that start one. But get your hands dirty. Make the land an health a right by claiming ownership. Humans have always owned the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness! It begins with the Earth/land.
I mean Earth/Land in the way Archimedes of ancient Syracuse Sicily did. He said “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth.” However for me the Earth is the place to stand to change the trajectory of mankind.
Term limits for all high level gov officials. Truly Blinded research proposal approval process. Banning any income and stock trading with the exception of one run by an independent company for retirement purposes by any upper level or mid level gov employee.
Realizing that government isn’t always the solution too. Many that are attracted to it are the wrong types- the types that want power and money more than doing the right thing. For that reason we need to outright ban any anonymously made donations to campaigns through other groups and massively limit individual campaign donation amounts. Ban corporate donations entirely.
What comes next? Liberal democracy has provided the best answer yet to the problem of power, and being a conservative in the sense of preferring to build on established institutions, I tend to think reform of these institutions, including radical reform, is the way forward. Malone has made some suggestions.
We the People must return to honorable and virtuous principles with God Our Creator as the one true authority. Entrusting governance to corruptible humans is always going to fail.
and then there is Anarcho-syndacilism stem of mutual cooperation not based on coercion from the state or belief in authority but an individual free to make own choice. for example people can learn the use of herbs and medicine the doctor would not have a monopoly on knowledge. the oil industry old seek to use state power to suppress dissent such as protesters. to abolish the monetary system and live in autonomous zones such as in an are of Seattle can be done. seeds are distributed and food is free. such an attempt was made in Spain which did not appear to succeed due to a world war. the and corporate propaganda or corporate propaganda using the state as a proxy might seek to portray Anarcho-Syndicalists in a negative light so use of UNODOC and U.N. Charter can be of use. authority above that of police who suppress protests against oil pipelines and regard genuine concern an inconvenience.. Anarcho-Syndicalism might also include Libertarianism ,The Libertarian Party, and Independent Candidates as ay to increase independent thought. .while Anarchists might decry political parties as part of state apparratus it is in line with Anarchist as ideas applied to an autonomous zone as elected official not so important the power being in revenue agencies. o citizens take regional power as many mainsttrem parties ignore anyway so set up on local basis.
I've been thinking a bit along the same lines as you, Toby. However, I specifically feel that the weakness in the medical freedom movement is that it is missing some ethical grounding with regard to technology.
To be clear, I wholeheartedly agree with medical freedom (and will vote for whatever candidate supports it best). However, the fact is that the forces of authoritarianism are doing an end-run around freedom-loving progressives in recent years. By espousing progressive-seeming policies, WEF and its minions are either suckering progressives into authoritarianism or scaring freedom-minded people from progressive values. Another way to look at this is that WEF is partly "right" on issues, but WEF is basically grooming the population for authoritarian "emergency" control, because--according to its ethos-- democracy is not good enough to respond to a changing world. The grave problem with this is that authoritarianism never works out as planned, and always works out to benefit those with the reins.
In response, I think what is necessary is a new ethical system that becomes widespread from the base of the population, a movement that both rejects authoritarianism and embraces a new morality regarding use of technology. People have generally been viewing technology as an amoral thing, but practices such as genetic engineering and mRNA manipulation of your immune system are not only incredibly reckless, but also simply immoral. More and more people need to see them as such before good change can happen at the top. Good change in society is not attained from the orders of the elite, it must come as a cultural values shift from the base.
I'm too old but I would say Revolution!
The problem is not the free market, but crony capitalism, which has been called "the free market" by propagandists for a long time. Butler Schaffer's daughter, Bretigne explains in depth at https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/07/bretigne-shaffer/when-the-good-guys-get-it-wrong/ (and also posted her entire response as a comment here too).
Translation: Man is inherently evil.
Toby,
I hope you are sincere in welcoming corrections. Because there are some fundamental errors here, and I hope you will be open to hearing about them.
Let me start by saying that there is a story about free markets that is told to everyone who goes through a government school in America (and I imagine elsewhere). The story goes something like this: "Free markets are all well and good in theory, but in practice they produce monopolies that are no longer accountable to their customers and must be reined in by the government."
This story is a lie. And if you understand why the government lies about all the other things it lies about, I think you'll understand why it has an interest in perpetrating this lie too.
With that in mind:
1. You say: "The dirty little secret of classical liberalism is that it came to depend on both slavery and colonial empire to infuse wealth into the system."
In fact, colonial empire was a drain on the British economy. Yes, it made a few people - "John Company", and other cronies, along with the crown itself - very wealthy. But it did so at the expense of everyone else in Britain.
This book (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0521236118/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) presents an accounting of all of this. From the description:
"…empire profits were earned at a substantial cost to the taxpayer. [The authors] depict British imperialism as a mechanism to effect an income transfer from the tax-paying middle class to the elites in which the ownership of imperial enterprise was heavily concentrated, with some slight net transfer to the colonies in the process."
The reality is that both the ideals of classical liberalism, and the economic interests of the population as a whole, were very much at odds with British imperialism, and the mercantilist system - which was precisely what Adam Smith addressed in his "Wealth of Nations."
2. You say: "…and "Adam Smith’s famed “butcher, baker, and brewer” got rich from being downstream of the enormous wealth generated when Scotland cornered the market for new world tobacco (which was slave-grown…"
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. That markets cannot function without an assist from slavery? But that's patently untrue. You must recognize that the world is overflowing with examples that contradict that claim. So what are you saying?
3. Your description of progressivism:
"Progressivism was a reaction by the middle and upper classes against the failures of both liberalism and Marxism while attempting to retain the best aspects of both — seeking to preserve individual liberties while using the state to impose limits on corporate power. Progressive muckraker Upton Sinclair described the disgusting practices of meat packing plants in The Jungle and this led to the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Support for anti-trust action to break up large monopolies was another hallmark of progressivism."
To begin with, "The Jungle" was completely made-up fiction. Lawrence Reed has written a thorough expose of this book and the mythology around it. (https://fee.org/articles/29-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-proved-regulation-was-required/) He writes:
"…historians with an ideological axe to grind against the market usually ignore an authoritative 1906 report of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Husbandry. Its investigators provided a point-by-point refutation of the worst of Sinclair’s allegations, some of which they labeled as “willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact,” “atrocious exaggeration,” and “not at all characteristic.”"
and:
"According to the popular myth, there were no government inspectors before Congress acted in response toThe Jungle, and the greedy meat packers fought federal inspection all the way. The truth is that not only did government inspection exist, but meat packers themselves supported it and were in the forefront of the effort to extend it so as to ensnare their smaller, unregulated competitors."
It's worth reading the whole piece by Reed, to get the full sense of the extent to which this novel really was nothing more than anti-capitalist propaganda. (There's a reason it is required reading in so many government schools.)
(Continued...)
2/
More broadly, the myth that government regulation was borne of a desire to "impose limits on corporate power" is simply not true. The historical reality is that established businesses not only supported regulation of their industries, but were instrumental in setting up the regulatory state.
My dad wrote a book about this (https://mises.org/library/restraint-trade-business-campaign-against-competition-1918-1938). In it, he:
"…makes a deep inquiry into the attitudes of business leaders toward competition during the years 1918 through 1938 to see how those attitudes were translated into proposals for controlling competition, through political machinery under the direction of trade associations.
"What he finds is a business sector not only hostile to free markets but aggressively in favor of restrictions that would protect their interests. This, he finds, is the very source of the origins and development of the regulatory state."
OK, I'm biased - it's my dad. But he's not the only one who has written about this history. Most notably: Dominick Armentano (https://mises.org/library/antitrust-case-repeal), Tom DiLorenzo (https://mises.org/library/6-protectionist-origins-antitrust), Don Boudreaux (https://cdn.mises.org/rae6_2_3_5.pdf), and Murray Rothbard (https://mises.org/library/progressive-era-0/html#7.+Theodore+Roosevelt:+The+First+Progressive,+Part+I).
4. You write: "And now the progressive regulatory state has failed because it was captured by the industries it was supposed to supervise."
I don't know how to emphasize this enough: Regulatory capture is a feature, not a bug. It's how regulation began, and how it will continue. To think that the regulatory state somehow "failed" or that it is broken but we can fix it and then it will serve our interests, is to badly understand how this all works.
If you recognize that monopoly is a problem, then you must also recognize that seeking to solve that problem with yet another monopoly doesn't actually solve the problem.
Here's the problem with monopolies - and I mean genuine monopolies, the kind markets can't put out of business. The kind that really do behave the way the textbooks tell us monopolies behave. The problem with real monopolies is that they are not accountable to the people they serve.
Think DMV. Think your local public school board. Think the TSA, DEA, IRS, etc. What these entities all have in common is that not a one of them has any meaningful accountability to those they claim to "serve." If any private business did the things to its customers that these agencies do to us, not only would customers stop frequenting the business, but in some cases, its proprietors would end up in prison.
The institution of the state is the biggest monopolist around. And the regulatory and other alphabet agencies comprise the least accountable "branch" of the state. To expect that regulatory agencies will ever serve the interests of "the public" (whoever that is), rather than their own interests and the interests of their cronies, is like expecting a pack of lions to decide to become gazelle-rights activists. They simply have no incentive to do so.
Again, I cannot stress how important it is to get this. The coercive state, the regulatory state, cannot be made accountable, because the very fact of its being a coercive monopoly itself precludes any accountability to anyone else. This is at the heart of our frustration with "stupid politicians" (they're not stupid - their interests just aren't aligned with yours), and "corrupt regulatory agencies" (it is their nature to be "corrupted" by the entities they claim to regulate - it is literally how they were designed.) And those of us who fail to learn this lesson will end up spending a lot of time drawing up plans for optimal deck-chair placement in the coming years.
(Continued...)
3/3
5. You write: "But the enormous problem with classical liberalism is that it has a tendency to lead to concentrated power (monopolies)."
No. It. Doesn't.
You're repeating the narrative that was handed to us in high school and in mainstream college econ. classes. The problem is: it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Remember Standard Oil? The Standard Oil that was broken up by the government in 1911, and is cited as the textbook example for why we need the monopoly state to protect us from private monopolists? Here's a fun paper you might want to read that tears apart that myth: (https://www.jstor.org/stable/724888) (And here's a TLDR version: https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-standard-oil-was-a-predatory-monopoly/)
It is true that in a free market individual players can come to dominate the market. What they cannot do, is maintain that dominance while behaving the way econ. textbooks tell us monopolies behave. As long as it is a free market, those companies are still subject to market forces, and must still satisfy the needs and wants of their customers, or they will lose market share to competitors.
Why do you think the most powerful corporations have always promoted government regulation of their industries? It's because the last thing they want is competition. The last thing they want is a free market, because then they have to work hard to maintain their position.
The world we live in now is the world of crony capitalism. So it's easy to look around and say things like "but look at Amazon! It's a big monopolist that dominates the market while mom and pop shops are going under!" And indeed, our world is characterized by an awful lot of giant corporations succeeding in an environment that seems harder and harder every year for the little guy.
…which is exactly what one would expect to find in a crony capitalist system. Not to be confused (although it always is) with a free market.
Even large corporations that do not receive direct largesse from the state, or special favors of any kind, still benefit from the regulatory state. How? The same way that all those businesses that pushed for antitrust laws benefitted from that particular kind of regulation: A more regulated marketplace is a much harder place for competitors to enter, and to flourish in and grow big enough to become a threat. Every single regulation represents more of a burden for the smaller companies (and raises the entry barrier for complete newcomers) than it does for the big, established ones.
And so this is what we get: The Amazons and the big fast-food chains and the Ikeas and giant grocery stores – and the small independent businesses closing down at record speed. None of this should come as any surprise to anyone who has a clear understanding of the nature of the regulatory state.
6. Finally: "It seems to me that whatever political system comes next must wrestle with the question of how to preserve individual liberties while limiting the corrosive effects of concentrated power."
You're making this more complicated than it needs to be. The classical liberals were right, and those public-school narratives about the dangers of individual liberty in an economic setting are wrong.
Freedom is not our enemy, and it doesn't need to be "balanced" with anything. Concentrated power is the product of the state, not of liberty, and if we are to have a new political system that allows humanity to flourish, then it cannot allow for the kind of violence-based monopoly that characterizes our current world. What we need are systems that allow for, and protect, individual liberty. It's really not more complicated than that.
I hope that you will take this in the spirit in which it is meant: As a heartfelt attempt to correct what I see as a fundamental misunderstanding of both free-market theory and history, on the part of someone I think of as one of the true heroes of the medical-freedom movement.
And I didn't write all of this because I think it's critical that you, Toby Rogers, get this right. I felt compelled to write it because so very many people - good people, smart people, lots of people on the right side of things these days - have absorbed the government-school version of economics and economic history. Getting this wrong costs us dearly, because if we start out from fundamental misunderstandings of how the world works, it's going to be very very hard to come up with good solutions. My hope is that you will take what I've said here to heart, but even if you don't, I imagine some others who read this will.
God bless you, and keep up the good fight!
That's quite a comment! I have copied and pasted for good old, eye-balls on paper weekend reading. I am prepared to accept accounts claiming that much anti-free market discourse is incorrect. I have bookmarked your substack.
And a thank you to Dr T for eliciting such copious responses at this level of thoughtfulness. A real tribute to his contribution.
Thanks! And yes - he's raising the big questions we should all be asking.
By way of analogy, the problem is only this: it's as if you have a tribe of people trying to launch a rocket to the moon, but without having the discipline to go through discovering/learning arithmetic, algebra, calculus, materials science, chemistry, and so on first.
All these past systems you name are just crude "cargo cult" political philosophies; they are not philosophically serious, ergo the spaceship explodes on the launchpad. But it's difficult to explain this concept to a cargo cult.
Okay I'm game. Name a right proper political philosophy in your opinion.
We've never left feudalism in practice. Slavery is one example of how we didn't have a legitimate free market system, in spite of "classical liberalism". Patents are a modern day example. Nobody had ever given a valid moral argument proving you could own another human being back then, and nobody has ever given a valid moral argument today proving that you can own patents. And the existence of patents leads to much of those evils you are blaming on classical liberalism.
Are slavery and patents classical liberalism's fault? "Yes" in some sense and "no" in another. Yes, because that era had never resolved what are the methods by which we determine whether something is legitimate property. Even the idea that there can be "legitimate" anything has been cast by the wayside due to the philosophical failures of that era, which we continue to be steeped in today.
The point of mentioning patents isn't to say that is the whole issue, far from it. But it's a great example of how nobody ever bothered to think in terms of "first principles" regarding how our system works. And like I said before, that lack of explanation explains everything.
https://reasonandliberty.com/articles/patents
Those are fantastic points! Thank you for raising them. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and patents/intellectual property protections for Pharma are at the root of our current catastrophe. Yes, we need to have a much wider conversation about property, legitimate vs. illegitimate property, and how all of that ties into power.
thank you for this very well-written summary, much appreciated. My only "correction" is in your list of countries taken over by Fascism in 2020 you forgot mine - Canada. It's a total nightmare here. And while this is by no means an answer of any kind, a website I enjoy is https://consilienceproject.org/, the banner is "critical conversations for the future of human civilization". Well, enjoy is perhaps not the right word. A website I appreciate.
Good point. I'll add Canada now. 🙌
I found it all very suggestive and thoughtful - obviously not meant to be a treatise. You also forgot perhaps the first real experiment in fascism, Italy - 1920s. And your timeline is off: Germany 1930s - the work of fascism was done in the 30s; the 40s was the war that Germany (and just about everyone else) planned in the 1930s. I would also date USA Fascism to the 1930s - plenty of high ranking officials in the Roosevelt admin were drooling over Italian and German policy making - oh, if only we could do the same.
And I think the emphasis has to be on collaboration between executive political power and the industrial/banking elite; not merely the latter "taking over" (I think your words) the former. And I think you have to work in to the account, initially, political parties/"movements" (almost a technical term in the history of fascism) and, subsequently, executive bureaucracies; in the USA at least, that was and is the engine of fascism.
One more finally: the Eugyppius article was a good one: I came in on the "rapacious... no sincere ideological commitments" side - early fascism was ideologically driven (see above: "movements") something happened after WW2 when the rulers discovered and deployed the technologies of secrecy and direct psychological manipulation.
Okay here is something a friend referred me to. The interviewee is talking about the year 2060, and and how this information was obtained. Some of you may not find this credible, but from my experiences with animal communicators I am able to believe stuff happens that totally cannot be explained by current science. Anyway this is a very enjoyable report; I hope it brings happiness to some of you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7upQskK4LgY
Tobi, it’s a hamster wheel. Mankind seems trapped by its dark side—greed and control of others. Do-gooders try to fix it, but in the end are often destroyed or merge with the dark they were trying to fix. We’ll need God & the wisdom of Solomon to raise our vibration and thankfully I see that happening from so many good folk—you among them. Stay the course.
not really an answer but I find it helpful to have a source in Russia tracking what is going on there https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/big-pharmas-attack-on-russia-a-beginners?utm_source=email
Again I apologise if I am repeating others points. If I am it is merely seconding that motion from those posting. Here goes:
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Toby Rogers wrote:
Liberalism was a welcome reaction to feudalism. Smart people, who weren’t quite at the top of the hierarchy, advocated for economic liberalism (the right to trade goods on their own) and political liberalism (the right to have a voice in who runs the place). Over several centuries, those rights expanded to include more and more people.
The dirty little secret of classical liberalism is that it came to depend on both slavery and colonial empire to infuse wealth into the system. Adam Smith’s famed “butcher, baker, and brewer” got rich from being downstream of the enormous wealth generated when Scotland cornered the market for new world tobacco (which was slave-grown because indentured servants won’t do it — harvesting green tobacco makes people nauseous).
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Oil and fossil fuels power today's technological slaves that replaced the slavery of old. We feel we have evolved beyond slavery because it is slightly hidden. That augments the "dirty little secret..." Toby spoke about.
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Toby Rogers wrote:
Making matters significantly more complicated, the billionaires have taken over the political system and weaponized progressive values (equality, environmental protection) and institutions (U.N., W.H.O.) in the attempt to enslave the developed world. So we have an unholy alliance of the technocrats (the top 10% of well-educated people) + the predatory billionaires, using weaponized PR and elaborate psyops to force their twisted ideas upon us by any means necessary.
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I share this view. But having lived with a more or less attentive mind since the late 1960s I see it evolving differently. There was a book by Rachel Carson "Silent Spring" that makes the point. I will pick on one company most are familiar with, Monsanto.
From Wikipedia:
Post-WWII
... In 1954, Monsanto partnered with German chemical giant Bayer to form Mobay and market polyurethanes in the United States.[36]
Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along with some 15 other companies ... including Monsanto, Ciba,[16] Montrose Chemical Company, Pennwalt,[17] and Velsicol Chemical Corporation.
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This is the laundered version of Monsanto's involvement with DDT. I didn't take time to find out all the companies in the US that manufactured DDT products.
The shift that Toby points out is to absolve all corporate malfeasance and to obscure the causes of these toxins and other harms to the environment, the damage and extinction of countless life forms on Earth. Ultimately to shift the blame to you the public. It easy to see why. Tobacco manufactures said nicotine was not addictive and that smoking didn't cause lung cancer. Now currently litigation against Monsanto/Bayer with regards to glyphosate (roundup) is being prosecuted through out the US.
The jury at San Francisco’s Superior Court of California deliberated for three days (concerning cancer and glyphosate) before finding that Monsanto had failed to warn Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers.
It awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.
The process is such that the vast majority of people think these thing are just accidents...
Brent Wisner, a lawyer for Johnson, in a statement said jurors for the first time had seen internal company documents “proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer.” He called on Monsanto to “put consumer safety first over profits.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-cancer-lawsuit-idUSKBN1KV2HB
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This is just the tip of the iceberg of the crimes against life on Earth committed by corporate greed. So this is the reason behind ..."the attempt to enslave the developed world." The enslavement is to prevent discovery of their crimes. By shifting the blame to the common man by saying YOU ASKED FOR IT and we did our best to create these products to make you happy. We had no idea of the harms they would cause. All harms are really YOUR FAULT. If you hadn't wanted these things the harms wouldn't happen.
_________________
Toby Rogers wrote:
But the enormous problem with classical liberalism is that it has a tendency to lead to concentrated power (monopolies). Power corrupts and when these monopolistic firms take over the state we lose political liberalism and we are left with fascism. That’s not theoretical — that’s what actually happened in 1940s Germany and 2020s United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. (I’m sure many readers will take issue with this characterization.)
This was greatly facilitated in the US by:
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was argued in 2009 and decided in 2010. The court held 5-4 that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
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I remember on TV as a kid and later as an adult up until Citizens Untied, there was paid political advertisement. The opposing view point had to be presented with equal time. Speech is no longer free actually. The Rich and Corporations are the only ones who can afford to get their message to the public. This as led to rapid erosion of ethics and responsibility in politics. Only those supported by money have the means to address the electorate.
Surprise, not really. In this case we got what we didn’t pay for.
In summery:
1) Humans have never gotten past slavery.
2) Corporation and Government Agencies imply that the electorate is apathetic and get what they vote and pay for with their taxes. The citizens are responsible for the mess we face now.
3) Citizens United ruling basically said money is speech. The outcome is those with money do the speaking.
4) Not covered above is the work of GOTTFRIED FEDER. He was opposed to Capitalism and Communism. He wrote a small pamphlet called “THE PROGRAMME OF THE NSDAP - THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN WORKERS' PARTY - AND ITS GENERAL CONCEPTIONS by Gottfreid Feder”
His work is obscured by its association with NAZI Germany. But he did not support Hitler’s drive to weaponize the German economy.
I share his basic ideas because he realized that farming was the foundation of all economic development. Today in many of these substacks people realize the need for agriculture that is environmentally friendly and deeply nourishing of mind and body. I believe that his work needs to be understood because it was misapplied by Hitler and Feder was not a militarist.
That said I am not convince that is the way to go. Just that it hasn’t honestly been examined. Rather it has been paved over with our horror of NAZI Germany.
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Toby Rogers wrote:
In the comments, please let me know your answer to the question above — what comes after the failures of classical liberalism, Marxism, progressivism, and psychotic billionaire fascism?
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We as citizens of the United States and of Planet Earth need to take full responsibility for the harms of international corporations. This is not easy to do. We feel we are some how innocent. Wwe are not. Feeling innocent makes us dis-empowered. How do we own this and claim our power?
Covid has shown us how Pharma has seeming blanket immunity for toxic jabs. WE gave them that through our elected representatives in 1986 with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.
We need to do what was not done then. Thank Pharma for their candor, admitting that it is impossible to make an absolutely safe vaccine. WE THEN Take the responsibility upon ourselves to resolve this and dismiss Pharma. REMEMBER they said they couldn't do it!
Only this time we assume full responsibility for the environmental, economic, and health catastrophe we now face. We dismiss International Corporations. We revoke Corporate Personhood. We start with a candid assessment of our situation and determine ways of solving it.
The fact is corporations can’t save us. There is no money in our good health or any other activity of self sufficiency. Yes we can do this. It is a barn raising and we used to do this all the time. This is not the yellow brick road. This path is exquisitely painful. But birth is a bloody mess. Once that is done the mother forgets the pain and suffering filled with love for the baby, holding and nursing her new born child.
But the process of birth is a bloody mess.
One important thing is stopping Bill Gates etal from large scale land ownership. Some people think he is speculating on land values. I believe Gates etal are planning to put us all to work in the NEW FEUDALISM. You know “You'll Own Nothing and You'll Be Happy”. The history of how small farms disappeared from America accelerates with Ag Sec Earl Butz in the 1970s. His mantra was “get big or get out” to small farmers.
The media is controlled the land is controlled etc. Still the path ahead is taking ownership of where we are, how we got here and then charting a course that transforms and heals our heart ache and our miserable health. It is a bloody mess. But it is also a birthing. We are both the mother/father and the new born children.
If you are wondering where and how to start? It begins in your back yard. If you don't have a yard, then your community garden. If you don't have that start one. But get your hands dirty. Make the land an health a right by claiming ownership. Humans have always owned the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness! It begins with the Earth/land.
I mean Earth/Land in the way Archimedes of ancient Syracuse Sicily did. He said “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth.” However for me the Earth is the place to stand to change the trajectory of mankind.
Thank you! I truly ❤️ your thought process and invaluable information!!
Term limits for all high level gov officials. Truly Blinded research proposal approval process. Banning any income and stock trading with the exception of one run by an independent company for retirement purposes by any upper level or mid level gov employee.
Realizing that government isn’t always the solution too. Many that are attracted to it are the wrong types- the types that want power and money more than doing the right thing. For that reason we need to outright ban any anonymously made donations to campaigns through other groups and massively limit individual campaign donation amounts. Ban corporate donations entirely.
The problems are many.
What comes next? Liberal democracy has provided the best answer yet to the problem of power, and being a conservative in the sense of preferring to build on established institutions, I tend to think reform of these institutions, including radical reform, is the way forward. Malone has made some suggestions.
We the People must return to honorable and virtuous principles with God Our Creator as the one true authority. Entrusting governance to corruptible humans is always going to fail.
https://upontheserocks.co/petition-read-and-sign-the-declaration-of-utter-dependence/
Please Read and Consider Signing and Sharing.
Declaration of Utter Dependence on God
And For Love of Our Fellow Man
and then there is Anarcho-syndacilism stem of mutual cooperation not based on coercion from the state or belief in authority but an individual free to make own choice. for example people can learn the use of herbs and medicine the doctor would not have a monopoly on knowledge. the oil industry old seek to use state power to suppress dissent such as protesters. to abolish the monetary system and live in autonomous zones such as in an are of Seattle can be done. seeds are distributed and food is free. such an attempt was made in Spain which did not appear to succeed due to a world war. the and corporate propaganda or corporate propaganda using the state as a proxy might seek to portray Anarcho-Syndicalists in a negative light so use of UNODOC and U.N. Charter can be of use. authority above that of police who suppress protests against oil pipelines and regard genuine concern an inconvenience.. Anarcho-Syndicalism might also include Libertarianism ,The Libertarian Party, and Independent Candidates as ay to increase independent thought. .while Anarchists might decry political parties as part of state apparratus it is in line with Anarchist as ideas applied to an autonomous zone as elected official not so important the power being in revenue agencies. o citizens take regional power as many mainsttrem parties ignore anyway so set up on local basis.