Seeing Like a State, by James C Scott
The book describes systematic partial or total failures of various "high modernist" government sponsored projects, including German "scientifically managed" forests, planned cities (especially Brasilia), collective farms in the Soviet Union, and agricultural "modernization" policy in Tanzania.
The faults of the central planners include an unwarranted love of grand scale for its own sake, a fondness for structures that look orderly (that is to say, show obvious regularity when seen from a distance), a tendency to consider a region as a producer of one particular product of uniform quality (and hence quantity produced being the sole criterion of success), planning based on abstract "average fields" that do not reflect actual local conditions, and contempt for the hard-won local knowledge of the people whose lives the planners presumed to direct.
The book is well worth reading for the details, but I think after consideration certain elements seem obvious. A central planner has to feel infinitely wiser than the people who will be subject to his decrees. If he felt only marginally superior, he would conclude that the advantage in perspective of actually being there on the ground would outweigh his slight edge in intelligence, and would have to get out of the central planing business. A central planner has to be willing to abstract away almost a huge amount of detail, otherwise planning becomes humanly impossible.
Certain plans seem particlarly boneheaded. For example, mandating separate residential districts, shopping districts, districts full of nothing but office buildings, etc obviously forces a lot of wasted extra travel over mixed use, and it's hard to see how it does anything else. Polycropping has numerous benefits over monocropping; the main advantage of monocropping is that it is better suited for mechanization. Forcing farmers to live in villages away from their fields wastes time in travel, and does little else.
The one area where I would fault Scott is that he seems to fully credit the intentions of the planners and of the regimes that forcibly impose their schemes as being fundamentally good, at least in cases where those regimes were democratically elected. I see no reason to believe this is true. If there was ever any good reason, theoretical or practical, to believe that the various policies described in his book (other than the tree farms) would actually lead to an improved quality of life for anyone, Scott does a poor job of showing what it might be. So far as I can tell, the only practical advantage for anyone of most of these schemes is that it simplifies the job of the tax collector. There is one intangible advantage: the implementers get to build massive monuments to themselves, using other people's bodies as bricks and mortar.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Meta-information Markets
It is a general characteristic of information that it is often impossible to know, or even to have a good estimate of, how useful a piece of information will be until one has it.
People do buy books, of course, but it is quite common to feel afterward that the purchase of a particular book was not really worth it, and conversely a great many worthwhile books go unread by people who have no way of knowing in advance how much they would appreciate those books. Similarly with other forms of information.
In this particular post I will discuss what might be called meta-information, by which I mean information which leads to other information which the reader will (hopefully) find useful or otherwise interesting. The information pointed to may be further meta-information, but somewhere at the end of the chain there must be something will value for its own sake.
The problem in its full generality is too complicated for me to discuss here. I will assume that there is some entity which I will call the "publisher" who will be able to obtain some payment from the reader, direct or indirect. I will assume for now that there are no coercive entities that need concern us; the publisher is operating openly and "legally". However, unscrupulous publishers potentially may employ "shills" to promote their goods, and their competitors or others who dislike their ideas for whatever reason may say untrue negative things about their works. My goal is to briefly sketch how some sort of useful "reviewer" system might work.
In my proposed system, the reviewer describes the work using with some sort of standardized system which allows the reader to quickly find works of interest to him. Semantic web type stuff. Either the reviewer is a relatively large organization, or many mutually independent reviewers have agreed to use the same system. The reviewer's primary function is to accurately describe the work and only secondarily to give a subjective assessment of its quality. The publisher pays the reviewer in hopes of receiving a wider readership. The reader has access to reviews for free.
The reason the publisher pays rather than the reader is that the reader is highly uncertain as to the value to himself of the service of the reviewer, whereas the publisher has the relatively simple task of assessing whether the additonal sales due to the review justify the reviewr's fee. Even though the reviewer is paid by the publisher, the reader can have more confidence in the review than he could in advertisements because the reviewer is not merely acting on behalf of the publisher but is using some sort of objective criteria, and the reviewer's value is solely based on his reputation for honesty and accuracy. Yes, reviewers would review each other.
Whatver the details of the reviewing system, provided that all reviews are specific and digitally signed, it seems to me that the system as a whole should be verifiably almost completely "honest". If Alice reviews Bob and says something "I agreed to read six books reviewed by Bob at random, here are the six books and his reviews, I found them completely accurate", this is not sufficient for a reader who trusts Alice to trust Bob 100%, but it's pretty good evidence that he's generally reliable. Provided that it can be kept unambiguous whether or not a review is "correct", one false review could be enough to destroy a reviewer's reputation. In order to establish themselves, reviewers might have to at first review a few books for free and pay to have themselves reviewed by established reviewers.
People do buy books, of course, but it is quite common to feel afterward that the purchase of a particular book was not really worth it, and conversely a great many worthwhile books go unread by people who have no way of knowing in advance how much they would appreciate those books. Similarly with other forms of information.
In this particular post I will discuss what might be called meta-information, by which I mean information which leads to other information which the reader will (hopefully) find useful or otherwise interesting. The information pointed to may be further meta-information, but somewhere at the end of the chain there must be something will value for its own sake.
The problem in its full generality is too complicated for me to discuss here. I will assume that there is some entity which I will call the "publisher" who will be able to obtain some payment from the reader, direct or indirect. I will assume for now that there are no coercive entities that need concern us; the publisher is operating openly and "legally". However, unscrupulous publishers potentially may employ "shills" to promote their goods, and their competitors or others who dislike their ideas for whatever reason may say untrue negative things about their works. My goal is to briefly sketch how some sort of useful "reviewer" system might work.
In my proposed system, the reviewer describes the work using with some sort of standardized system which allows the reader to quickly find works of interest to him. Semantic web type stuff. Either the reviewer is a relatively large organization, or many mutually independent reviewers have agreed to use the same system. The reviewer's primary function is to accurately describe the work and only secondarily to give a subjective assessment of its quality. The publisher pays the reviewer in hopes of receiving a wider readership. The reader has access to reviews for free.
The reason the publisher pays rather than the reader is that the reader is highly uncertain as to the value to himself of the service of the reviewer, whereas the publisher has the relatively simple task of assessing whether the additonal sales due to the review justify the reviewr's fee. Even though the reviewer is paid by the publisher, the reader can have more confidence in the review than he could in advertisements because the reviewer is not merely acting on behalf of the publisher but is using some sort of objective criteria, and the reviewer's value is solely based on his reputation for honesty and accuracy. Yes, reviewers would review each other.
Whatver the details of the reviewing system, provided that all reviews are specific and digitally signed, it seems to me that the system as a whole should be verifiably almost completely "honest". If Alice reviews Bob and says something "I agreed to read six books reviewed by Bob at random, here are the six books and his reviews, I found them completely accurate", this is not sufficient for a reader who trusts Alice to trust Bob 100%, but it's pretty good evidence that he's generally reliable. Provided that it can be kept unambiguous whether or not a review is "correct", one false review could be enough to destroy a reviewer's reputation. In order to establish themselves, reviewers might have to at first review a few books for free and pay to have themselves reviewed by established reviewers.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Problems with Choice
In general it is always better to have the opportunity of making a choice than not. However, being required to make a choice is often unpleasant. Making meaningless or irrelevant choices is a boring nuisance, and making choices without the necessary information to ensure one is making the "correct" choice can be frustrating or worse, particularly if the consequences for making the "wrong" choice could be severe.
This being the case, it's no surprise that in many situations people may prefer to rely heavily on the advice of some trusted authority, or even have the decision-making capabilty taken out od their hands entirely. But this solution, if undertaken voluntarily, may only push the problem back a level. One must still decide which authority to trust among many contenders, none of whom have perfect confidence, and all of whom may have motivations other than giving the recipient the best advice possible. Thus, the problem of deciding whom to trust may be scarcely easier than making the original decision oneself.
It is only by having the option to choose itself removed that the entire burden of an unpleasant choice is lifted, and so it should not come as a surprise that many people prefer to have the government mandate decisions for them, or at least do not object when the government does this. And often, it appears to be doing a reasonably good job. But the value of lost opportunities due to government mandates is usually invisible.
I remember a discussion on Usenet many years ago in which the libertarians were arguing that it was absurd that licenses were required to cut hair, and the antis dismissed the libertarian position as arguing for a "right to a bad haircut". Of course, governemnt certification is virtually worthless as a guarantee of quality, whereas the fact that a person has managed to stay in business for any length of time in an occumaption that relies heavily on repeat customers is actually a pretty strong assurance of competence, but this misses the primary practical effects of mandatory licensing policies. I don't want to pay the effective "haircut tax", but to me it's chump change anyway. But to lower income people, an extra expense of a couple bucks for a haircut or the loss of an opportunity to make a small amount of money cutting hair is nontrivial. In the greater scheme of things the losses to the world due to these kinds of restrictions are small taken one at at time, of course, but they add up.
It would be advantageous if there were such a thing as a knowledgeable and fully trustworthy party one could go always to for advice, but there are good reasons why this cannot be. Even an agent wholly dependent on his good reputation for acquiring an retaining customers can often get away with misleading them in subtle or even gross ways, and despite this may deceive others into thinking that it is the exemplar of honesty and wisdom and that those who dispute its pronouncements are quacks. But an entity with the power to compel will not only have at least equal opportunities for this type of corruption, it will tend to lose even the concept that it is some supposed to be an agent working on behalf of another, and will naturally progress from having the de facto power to make arbitrary decisions to feeling it has the right to make arbitrary decisions.
I have never understood the thought process which leads people to believe that something should be better because it came about as a result of a political process, democratic or otherwise, rather than a market process. I don't know of any theory that purports to explain why it should be true, I only know of theory that predicts the reverse, and indeed observation seems to bear this out. But the demonstration of this has not yet been made sufficiently clear.
This being the case, it's no surprise that in many situations people may prefer to rely heavily on the advice of some trusted authority, or even have the decision-making capabilty taken out od their hands entirely. But this solution, if undertaken voluntarily, may only push the problem back a level. One must still decide which authority to trust among many contenders, none of whom have perfect confidence, and all of whom may have motivations other than giving the recipient the best advice possible. Thus, the problem of deciding whom to trust may be scarcely easier than making the original decision oneself.
It is only by having the option to choose itself removed that the entire burden of an unpleasant choice is lifted, and so it should not come as a surprise that many people prefer to have the government mandate decisions for them, or at least do not object when the government does this. And often, it appears to be doing a reasonably good job. But the value of lost opportunities due to government mandates is usually invisible.
I remember a discussion on Usenet many years ago in which the libertarians were arguing that it was absurd that licenses were required to cut hair, and the antis dismissed the libertarian position as arguing for a "right to a bad haircut". Of course, governemnt certification is virtually worthless as a guarantee of quality, whereas the fact that a person has managed to stay in business for any length of time in an occumaption that relies heavily on repeat customers is actually a pretty strong assurance of competence, but this misses the primary practical effects of mandatory licensing policies. I don't want to pay the effective "haircut tax", but to me it's chump change anyway. But to lower income people, an extra expense of a couple bucks for a haircut or the loss of an opportunity to make a small amount of money cutting hair is nontrivial. In the greater scheme of things the losses to the world due to these kinds of restrictions are small taken one at at time, of course, but they add up.
It would be advantageous if there were such a thing as a knowledgeable and fully trustworthy party one could go always to for advice, but there are good reasons why this cannot be. Even an agent wholly dependent on his good reputation for acquiring an retaining customers can often get away with misleading them in subtle or even gross ways, and despite this may deceive others into thinking that it is the exemplar of honesty and wisdom and that those who dispute its pronouncements are quacks. But an entity with the power to compel will not only have at least equal opportunities for this type of corruption, it will tend to lose even the concept that it is some supposed to be an agent working on behalf of another, and will naturally progress from having the de facto power to make arbitrary decisions to feeling it has the right to make arbitrary decisions.
I have never understood the thought process which leads people to believe that something should be better because it came about as a result of a political process, democratic or otherwise, rather than a market process. I don't know of any theory that purports to explain why it should be true, I only know of theory that predicts the reverse, and indeed observation seems to bear this out. But the demonstration of this has not yet been made sufficiently clear.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Don't Follow the Money
Attempts are often made to "explain" financial downturns with the metaphor, "the economy is like an engine, and sometimes it overheats". This is more of a STFU than an actual explanation. No attempt is made to explain in what sense the economy resembles an engine, nor why it should overheat, or what that even means. There is perhaps an implication that there should be a "cooling off" period after a "boom", but no meaningful explanation as to why that should be so. The content essentially boils down to "shit happens". Shit does happen, but it doesn't JUST happen.
I think a great deal of confusion is caused by people being distracted by money valuations. Even when a dollar referred to a specific quantity of metal, the purchasing power of a dollar would vary over time. Now that a dollar doesn't mean anything in particular, it is particularly foolish to act as if a valuation in dollars is anything like a "true" measure of value.
Of course, there isn't and can't be a single number which is an absolutely true measure either of stored value or of productive capacity. The relative values of goods and services will change unpredictably over time, and there are no generic factories but rather there is the capacity to produce particular goods and services.
A speculative bubble happens when there is an unsustainable accelerating increase in the relative value of some kind of good or service. There are two related phenomena which characterize a speculative bubble. First, there is a great deal of illusory wealth. Income producing assets such as stock or rental property, are valued far above what they "should" be worth based on the actual amount of income they produce based on the belief that their future valuations will rise still higher. Second, there is a misallocation of resources toward production both of the overvalued goods and services themselves and of increasing the capacity to produce them still further.
There are two important points here. First, the "losses" incurred at the "bust" at the end of a "boom" are inevitable, because much of the wealth was never really there in the first place. Second, there is not and cannot be such a thing as a generic boom. The world has never had a problem with too much productive capacity for everything, and it is doubtful that it could. Excess productive capacity for certain goods can be harmful to those who possess skills or equipment which are useful only for producing those goods, but their problem is not so much that too many other people can produce what they can as that they can't competitively produce anything else either.
I think a great deal of confusion is caused by people being distracted by money valuations. Even when a dollar referred to a specific quantity of metal, the purchasing power of a dollar would vary over time. Now that a dollar doesn't mean anything in particular, it is particularly foolish to act as if a valuation in dollars is anything like a "true" measure of value.
Of course, there isn't and can't be a single number which is an absolutely true measure either of stored value or of productive capacity. The relative values of goods and services will change unpredictably over time, and there are no generic factories but rather there is the capacity to produce particular goods and services.
A speculative bubble happens when there is an unsustainable accelerating increase in the relative value of some kind of good or service. There are two related phenomena which characterize a speculative bubble. First, there is a great deal of illusory wealth. Income producing assets such as stock or rental property, are valued far above what they "should" be worth based on the actual amount of income they produce based on the belief that their future valuations will rise still higher. Second, there is a misallocation of resources toward production both of the overvalued goods and services themselves and of increasing the capacity to produce them still further.
There are two important points here. First, the "losses" incurred at the "bust" at the end of a "boom" are inevitable, because much of the wealth was never really there in the first place. Second, there is not and cannot be such a thing as a generic boom. The world has never had a problem with too much productive capacity for everything, and it is doubtful that it could. Excess productive capacity for certain goods can be harmful to those who possess skills or equipment which are useful only for producing those goods, but their problem is not so much that too many other people can produce what they can as that they can't competitively produce anything else either.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Left
Many years ago on Usenet a remember reading a post by a Muslim who argued that, although the Koran in English may seem unimpressive, if one were to read it in the original Arabic one would be convinced that it must be the direct word of God, that it is such sublime poetry that it could not have been written by a mere man. I wasn't an active participant in that particular thread, just a reader, but the argument made an impression on me because it so clearly illustrated a principle. It seemed absurd that the poster would expect his readers to go to the trouble of learning Arabic just to refute him, and yet in principle there was nothing really wrong with his argument, nor was there any real way he could make it without expecting the other participants to learn Arabic. I had perhaps been somewhat suspicious of the assertion that one should investigate all ideas for one's self rather than merely relying on the judgments of others, but never before had it been so clear what an utter crock it is; there isn't time, wouldn't be sufficient time in a thousand lifetimes, to actually examine all possibilities sufficiently, even if one restricted examination to ideas with a substantial number of adherents.
This post is not about the political left, but rather about the left side of the intelligence curve, and not just the left tail, or even the left half, but more like the bottom 95%, and perhaps in some cases still more. That is, nearly everyone.
I have a pretty high opinion of my own intelligence, but although I'm samrter than the average bear, I know that there are millions of people in the world who are at least approximately as smart as I am, and some of them are substantially smarter. Occasionally I have come across an argument that seemed sufficiently complicated that not only was I unwilling to devote the time and effort to puzzle it through, I thought perhaps it might be beyond my ability to follow (and I'm not counting cases where the author is deliberately being obscure). I can't remember the particular incidence, but I do remember once being shocked by the insight: most people are like that all the fucking time.
There are important implications of this. First, people are generally being sensible when they dismiss unconventional or outlandish ideas as "nonsense". Most such ideas are nonsense, and most people are incapable of distinguishing the occasional profound insight from madness, Either they can't do it all, or they can't do it within the constraints of time and effort the idea seems to deserve. Second, that when new ideas do overtake the old, it happens not so much because everyone is convinced as an individual of the truth of the new idea as that an influential few embrace the new idea and the rest follow "expert" opinion. That's all they can do. Finally, if an idea is popular with the most influential members of a society it is likely to become regarded as "true" regardless of the idea's actual merits. This is, I think, true in all societies, but particularly those like ours which have a reasonably well defined class of professional intellectuals.
It follows that it's generally a waste of time trying to persuade the masses of anything new by argument. The following one can get will depend more on one's skill as a persuader than on the quality of one's ides, and in any case that following will remain small unless one has the support of the influential ones.
But where argument fails, demonstration may succeed. Technology advances because the new methods can be directly observed to be better at accomplishing desired aims than were the old methods, or even are capable of accomplishing that which could not be done before.
This post is not about the political left, but rather about the left side of the intelligence curve, and not just the left tail, or even the left half, but more like the bottom 95%, and perhaps in some cases still more. That is, nearly everyone.
I have a pretty high opinion of my own intelligence, but although I'm samrter than the average bear, I know that there are millions of people in the world who are at least approximately as smart as I am, and some of them are substantially smarter. Occasionally I have come across an argument that seemed sufficiently complicated that not only was I unwilling to devote the time and effort to puzzle it through, I thought perhaps it might be beyond my ability to follow (and I'm not counting cases where the author is deliberately being obscure). I can't remember the particular incidence, but I do remember once being shocked by the insight: most people are like that all the fucking time.
There are important implications of this. First, people are generally being sensible when they dismiss unconventional or outlandish ideas as "nonsense". Most such ideas are nonsense, and most people are incapable of distinguishing the occasional profound insight from madness, Either they can't do it all, or they can't do it within the constraints of time and effort the idea seems to deserve. Second, that when new ideas do overtake the old, it happens not so much because everyone is convinced as an individual of the truth of the new idea as that an influential few embrace the new idea and the rest follow "expert" opinion. That's all they can do. Finally, if an idea is popular with the most influential members of a society it is likely to become regarded as "true" regardless of the idea's actual merits. This is, I think, true in all societies, but particularly those like ours which have a reasonably well defined class of professional intellectuals.
It follows that it's generally a waste of time trying to persuade the masses of anything new by argument. The following one can get will depend more on one's skill as a persuader than on the quality of one's ides, and in any case that following will remain small unless one has the support of the influential ones.
But where argument fails, demonstration may succeed. Technology advances because the new methods can be directly observed to be better at accomplishing desired aims than were the old methods, or even are capable of accomplishing that which could not be done before.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Cost of Conflict
There are two opposite opinions as to what the cost of violent conflict ought to be. One side holds that war or something like war is inevitable, and therefore that it is desirable that there be such a thing as "rules of war" which are designed to minimize the length of war, the damage done, and the impact on nonbelligerents. This idea is the inspiration for such things as the Geneva Convention. The opposite view is that the high cost of war itself is a major impediment to war, and that peace is only likely if each side of a potential conflict realizes that it will lose more than it can gain in the event of an actual outbreak of hostilities. This idea has led to, among other things, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.
I think most people would agree that neither extreme is really satisfactory. What's missing is a moral dimension. It's true that the stronger side may back down from a potential conflict on the grounds that the costs of victory exceed the rewards, and most people would regard this as a good thing, but only when the stronger party is in some sense the aggressor. For something like MAD to work, there must be enough sense of agreement on moral questions that it is usually reasonably clear which side "ought" to back down. If it become simply a question of who "blinks" first, with the reward going to the more reckless player, eventually a conflict will come in which neither side will "blink" until it is too late.
Voting can be considered as a form of nearly costless battle, with all that implies: people attempt to enforce their will upon others in whatever asinine way that pops into their minds. My personal favorite example is the California ballot initiative banning horsemeat for human consumption. It doesn't do the horses any good. Retired horses are made into dog food, it's hard to see why being made into human food would be worse for them. Then again, the ban doesn't do any practical harm. Nobody in California was eating hoses pre-ban anyway. If the people advocating forbidding other people from eating horse knew they would have to personally enforce their ban with guns, the whole idea wouldn't even have come up for discussion. Of course, nobody would fight for the right of others to eat horse either, but I think people would fight to avoid a situation where a numerical majority could micromanage their lives in arbitrary ways, if the issue was put to them in such a straightforward way. As it was, of course, that wasn't at issue. As far as the state is concerned, the principle has been completely established that any law, no matter how intrusive or pointless, is valid so long is it is enacted by the proper procedure.
I think most people would agree that neither extreme is really satisfactory. What's missing is a moral dimension. It's true that the stronger side may back down from a potential conflict on the grounds that the costs of victory exceed the rewards, and most people would regard this as a good thing, but only when the stronger party is in some sense the aggressor. For something like MAD to work, there must be enough sense of agreement on moral questions that it is usually reasonably clear which side "ought" to back down. If it become simply a question of who "blinks" first, with the reward going to the more reckless player, eventually a conflict will come in which neither side will "blink" until it is too late.
Voting can be considered as a form of nearly costless battle, with all that implies: people attempt to enforce their will upon others in whatever asinine way that pops into their minds. My personal favorite example is the California ballot initiative banning horsemeat for human consumption. It doesn't do the horses any good. Retired horses are made into dog food, it's hard to see why being made into human food would be worse for them. Then again, the ban doesn't do any practical harm. Nobody in California was eating hoses pre-ban anyway. If the people advocating forbidding other people from eating horse knew they would have to personally enforce their ban with guns, the whole idea wouldn't even have come up for discussion. Of course, nobody would fight for the right of others to eat horse either, but I think people would fight to avoid a situation where a numerical majority could micromanage their lives in arbitrary ways, if the issue was put to them in such a straightforward way. As it was, of course, that wasn't at issue. As far as the state is concerned, the principle has been completely established that any law, no matter how intrusive or pointless, is valid so long is it is enacted by the proper procedure.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
On Our Way
On Our Way is President Roosevelt's book describing the policies of his first year or so of presidency and the rationale behind them.
Perhaps the most important quote fromthe book is on its very first page:
"Some people have called our new policy 'Fascism'. It is not Fascism because it springs from the mass of the people themselves rather than from a class or a group or a marching army. Moreover, it is being achieved without a change in fundamental republican method".
That is, the fact that his economic policies were very much modeled after those of Fascist Italy is of no significance, since there is nothing wrong with those policies. The only thing objectionable about fascism is the methods used to gain and hold power. This theme echoes throughout the book. The ideas that there is a clearly defined national good, that the great helmsman can clearly see where this good lies, that those who pursue their own interests rather than acting to advance this general good are utterly wicked and undeserving of any rights, to Roosevelt these are not even subject to question.
The combination of arrogance and idiocy is astonishing. Here's a particularly egregious quote, from page 86 of the John Day 1934 edition: "We had for many weeks, and indeed months, subscribed to the general principle that if the hours of labor for the individual could be shortened, more people would be employed on a given piece of work. That was the purpose behind Senator Black's bill that called for a thirty-hour week for all employees in every industry and in every part of the country. Closer study, however, led us to believe that while the ultimate objective might be sound, the convulsive reorganization necessary to put such a law into effect might do almost as much harm as it would do good."
Roosevelt breaks his arm patting himself on the back for establishing relations with Stalinist Russia... at the height of the Ukrainian terror famine! He does not dismiss objections to opening relations with the brutal despotism. He does not acknowledge there could be any such objections. He merely proclaims, "thus, after many years the historic friendship between the people of Russia and the people of the United States was restored", as if the government was synonymous with the people.
Roosevelt's main objection to the free market seems to be that it is far too productive, although why less productivity would be better in his mind is not made clear. He was certain that "speculation", that is, buying low in order to sell high is by nature sinful and destructive. It would degrade the purity of assertion to explain why this is so.
Roosevelt more or less acknowledges that much of what he did, he did because he could not do what he really wanted to, which was to reduce the nominal debt, both of the government and of private individuals. The purchasing power of a dollar is far from constant, and Roosevelt argues that it is more just to require debtors to repay their debts in "dollars" which have approximately the same purchasing power for goods and services in general as "dollars" had at the debt was initially issued rather than "dollars" having the same value in gold. In 1933 it was not yet feasible to simply print paper "dollars" until their purchasing power had returned to pre-crash levels. So instead he chose to decimate productivity in order to raise the prices of goods, and restrict employment in order to raise wages. Sort of like tying a tourniquet around a patient's neck to stop a bleeding head wound. In fairness, it was a severely bleeding head wound.
Perhaps the most important quote fromthe book is on its very first page:
"Some people have called our new policy 'Fascism'. It is not Fascism because it springs from the mass of the people themselves rather than from a class or a group or a marching army. Moreover, it is being achieved without a change in fundamental republican method".
That is, the fact that his economic policies were very much modeled after those of Fascist Italy is of no significance, since there is nothing wrong with those policies. The only thing objectionable about fascism is the methods used to gain and hold power. This theme echoes throughout the book. The ideas that there is a clearly defined national good, that the great helmsman can clearly see where this good lies, that those who pursue their own interests rather than acting to advance this general good are utterly wicked and undeserving of any rights, to Roosevelt these are not even subject to question.
The combination of arrogance and idiocy is astonishing. Here's a particularly egregious quote, from page 86 of the John Day 1934 edition: "We had for many weeks, and indeed months, subscribed to the general principle that if the hours of labor for the individual could be shortened, more people would be employed on a given piece of work. That was the purpose behind Senator Black's bill that called for a thirty-hour week for all employees in every industry and in every part of the country. Closer study, however, led us to believe that while the ultimate objective might be sound, the convulsive reorganization necessary to put such a law into effect might do almost as much harm as it would do good."
Roosevelt breaks his arm patting himself on the back for establishing relations with Stalinist Russia... at the height of the Ukrainian terror famine! He does not dismiss objections to opening relations with the brutal despotism. He does not acknowledge there could be any such objections. He merely proclaims, "thus, after many years the historic friendship between the people of Russia and the people of the United States was restored", as if the government was synonymous with the people.
Roosevelt's main objection to the free market seems to be that it is far too productive, although why less productivity would be better in his mind is not made clear. He was certain that "speculation", that is, buying low in order to sell high is by nature sinful and destructive. It would degrade the purity of assertion to explain why this is so.
Roosevelt more or less acknowledges that much of what he did, he did because he could not do what he really wanted to, which was to reduce the nominal debt, both of the government and of private individuals. The purchasing power of a dollar is far from constant, and Roosevelt argues that it is more just to require debtors to repay their debts in "dollars" which have approximately the same purchasing power for goods and services in general as "dollars" had at the debt was initially issued rather than "dollars" having the same value in gold. In 1933 it was not yet feasible to simply print paper "dollars" until their purchasing power had returned to pre-crash levels. So instead he chose to decimate productivity in order to raise the prices of goods, and restrict employment in order to raise wages. Sort of like tying a tourniquet around a patient's neck to stop a bleeding head wound. In fairness, it was a severely bleeding head wound.
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