"...both my husband and I were determined that the concept of microcredit would have universal relevance. We looked for ways to apply microcredit in America, taking the best of the principles and values that it represented, but making it sure that it could be put into practice in different settings."--Hillary Clinton (February 3, 1997)
Microcredit has gotten a lot of attention in recent years from politicians as well as celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and micro-lender Muhammad Yunus even won a Nobel Peace Prize. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, I will review briefly; An NGO such as Grameen Bank recieves funds from philanthropists, the UN, and the countries in which it operates. It then distributes these funds to individuals under the care of "solidarity groups." These groups see to it that the funds are repaid with interest. As the name suggests, the members of the group are cojointly liable for the repayment of funds. If a microcredit recipient does not repay the other members of the group have to cough it up. So there each member has a vested interest in seeing to it that a borrower repays whether or not that borrower is able to turn a profit from his/her enterprise. It is unclear whether the methods of ensuring repayment are monitored by the NGO, but suffice to say that high repayment rates show that whatever methods employed are highly effective. There have even been reports of borrowers having to turn to loan sharks in order to meet their solidarity requirements.
So one might ask: Why shouldn't we use such an effective lending system to solve our luquidity crisis? Well good news-- the new administration is all about microcredit! Take Treasury secretary Geithner. His father ran The Ford Foundation's microcredit program in Indonesia (One of his employees was one Ann Dunham Soetoro). Ray LaHood introduced microcredit legislation is Illinois. Hillary Clinton helped bring Yunus and microcredit to Arkansas.
So what does this suggest about how our credit liquidity problem is to be solved? Maybe we'd better get used to the idea of solidarity.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/012235.php
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Church and State
"Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents."--Thomas Jefferson, Jan 23, 1808
There has been a lot of churchy talk in politics lately. From President Obama's Prayer Breakfast Speech which concluded:
"So let us pray together on this February morning, but let us also work together in all the days and months ahead. For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God. I ask you to join me in that effort, and I also ask that you pray for me, for my family, and for the continued perfection of our union. Thank you."
...to his January 20th Proclamation:
"NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century."
To Tony Blair's coercively worded keynote address at Obama's Prayer Breakfast:
"I finish where I began: in the Holy Land, at Mount Nebo in Jordan, where Moses gazed on the Promised Land. There is a chapel there, built by pilgrims in the 4th Century. The sermon was preached by an American, who spent his life as an airline pilot and then, after his wife’s death, took holy orders. His words are the words of a Christian but they speak to all those of faith, who want God’s grace to guide their life. He said this:
'While here on earth, we need to make a vital decision ... whether to be mere spectators, or movers and shakers for the Kingdom of God... whether to stay among the curious, or take up a cross. And this means: no standing on the sidelines ... We’re either in the game or we’re not. I sometimes ask myself the question: If I were to die today, what would my life have stood for... The answer can’t be an impulsive one, and we all need to count the cost before we give an answer. Because to be able to say yes to one thing, means to say no to many others. But we must also remember, that the greatest danger is not impulsiveness, but inaction.'
It is fitting at this extraordinary moment in your country’s history that we hear that call to action; and we pray that in acting we do God’s work and follow God’s will. And by the way, God bless you all."
As to what end we are to be directed by this sermon, we need only look to Mr. Blair's contribution to the British Labour Party Platform, the re-wording of Clause IV:
"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning the religious faith of elected officials (even if that religion resembles Christian Socialism), I merely wish that our public servants would govern in a manner befitting the core values upon which our nation was founded. The Enlightenment which gave rise to our system of laws, placed value upon individual liberty first and foremost. This was a striking departure from the system which preceded it, in which an hereditary caste, and an accompanying caste of ascetic volunteers--and the preservation thereof--were the primary concern of government. A government in which the decisions over the fate and fortune of the individuals who composed the lesser castes of society were primarily in the hands of the former two castes. This government was based on a corrupt belief in a god who gave sacred authority to the first caste, divine right and privilege to the second, and little concern or mercy to the third. That fragments of such beliefs still exist is understandable, for even a god said to be immutable is able to conform to human understanding. But to begin again down the path to a hierarchical society with an ever-diminishing tolerance for individual variance from convention--and to enlist the service of a now more enlightened version of the same said god in order to accomplish it--is an abomination. That there is a benevolent Creator of our whole existence, I believe fully. But to recycle old traditions of barbaric understanding; to accept these as anything but parable to glean some understanding of ourselves, is folly. To apply such fatalism--such cowering defeat before the ghosts of ignorance--to the guidance of a civil government, is to turn backward down the dark path of history, even as the enlightened path lies just beyond us. Let us remember that progress can only occur when moving forward. Through the dismantling of artificial structures constructed by the ignorant. That our Creator loves his children so greatly that he gives them freedom from involuntary servitude, I have no doubt. That some may govern this land according to any other order, is surely both treason and disobedience!
There has been a lot of churchy talk in politics lately. From President Obama's Prayer Breakfast Speech which concluded:
"So let us pray together on this February morning, but let us also work together in all the days and months ahead. For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God. I ask you to join me in that effort, and I also ask that you pray for me, for my family, and for the continued perfection of our union. Thank you."
...to his January 20th Proclamation:
"NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century."
To Tony Blair's coercively worded keynote address at Obama's Prayer Breakfast:
"I finish where I began: in the Holy Land, at Mount Nebo in Jordan, where Moses gazed on the Promised Land. There is a chapel there, built by pilgrims in the 4th Century. The sermon was preached by an American, who spent his life as an airline pilot and then, after his wife’s death, took holy orders. His words are the words of a Christian but they speak to all those of faith, who want God’s grace to guide their life. He said this:
'While here on earth, we need to make a vital decision ... whether to be mere spectators, or movers and shakers for the Kingdom of God... whether to stay among the curious, or take up a cross. And this means: no standing on the sidelines ... We’re either in the game or we’re not. I sometimes ask myself the question: If I were to die today, what would my life have stood for... The answer can’t be an impulsive one, and we all need to count the cost before we give an answer. Because to be able to say yes to one thing, means to say no to many others. But we must also remember, that the greatest danger is not impulsiveness, but inaction.'
It is fitting at this extraordinary moment in your country’s history that we hear that call to action; and we pray that in acting we do God’s work and follow God’s will. And by the way, God bless you all."
As to what end we are to be directed by this sermon, we need only look to Mr. Blair's contribution to the British Labour Party Platform, the re-wording of Clause IV:
"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning the religious faith of elected officials (even if that religion resembles Christian Socialism), I merely wish that our public servants would govern in a manner befitting the core values upon which our nation was founded. The Enlightenment which gave rise to our system of laws, placed value upon individual liberty first and foremost. This was a striking departure from the system which preceded it, in which an hereditary caste, and an accompanying caste of ascetic volunteers--and the preservation thereof--were the primary concern of government. A government in which the decisions over the fate and fortune of the individuals who composed the lesser castes of society were primarily in the hands of the former two castes. This government was based on a corrupt belief in a god who gave sacred authority to the first caste, divine right and privilege to the second, and little concern or mercy to the third. That fragments of such beliefs still exist is understandable, for even a god said to be immutable is able to conform to human understanding. But to begin again down the path to a hierarchical society with an ever-diminishing tolerance for individual variance from convention--and to enlist the service of a now more enlightened version of the same said god in order to accomplish it--is an abomination. That there is a benevolent Creator of our whole existence, I believe fully. But to recycle old traditions of barbaric understanding; to accept these as anything but parable to glean some understanding of ourselves, is folly. To apply such fatalism--such cowering defeat before the ghosts of ignorance--to the guidance of a civil government, is to turn backward down the dark path of history, even as the enlightened path lies just beyond us. Let us remember that progress can only occur when moving forward. Through the dismantling of artificial structures constructed by the ignorant. That our Creator loves his children so greatly that he gives them freedom from involuntary servitude, I have no doubt. That some may govern this land according to any other order, is surely both treason and disobedience!
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Collective Capitalism
For those unwilling to accept Adam Smith's views on joint-stock companies (see The Real Laissez Faire) There is fortunately an alternative form to draw upon. It is described by the German economic theorist Karl Marx in Capital Vol. 3 as follows:
"Capitalist joint-stock companies as much as cooperative factories should be viewed as transition forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, simply that in the one case the opposition is abolished in a negative way, and in the other in a positive way."
The fact that such a collectivist scheme met with much the same corruption and suffering (by the end of the 19th Century) as those schemes practiced under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. should then come as no suprise--and such examples should help us to understand what makes our current system so completely unsustainable.
"Capitalist joint-stock companies as much as cooperative factories should be viewed as transition forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, simply that in the one case the opposition is abolished in a negative way, and in the other in a positive way."
The fact that such a collectivist scheme met with much the same corruption and suffering (by the end of the 19th Century) as those schemes practiced under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. should then come as no suprise--and such examples should help us to understand what makes our current system so completely unsustainable.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Preocupation With Minutiae
The history books do us an injustice, and so do the newspapers today. If one bases ones knowledge of the world and our nations place within it merely on the basis of mass media and an inadequate education system, one would be led to believe that our independence from England was based upon not paying the stamp act, and that our continuing Independence is based upon the government procuring for us jobs and other trinkets through their benevolent housemanagement. Rather, then--as now--it was based upon a declaration. The Right of the individual in society to enjoy the guarantee of those rights which were endowed by the state of Nature. Life--that one's physical person is protected from harm, that one has the right to sustain oneself, and that if one is physically unable to care for oneself that this will be provided to such a degree as possible by other means. Liberty--the restraint of authority over the individual, to be limited to the protection of other individuals within society. The Persuit of Happiness--That one should not be arbitrarily restrained from persuing ones interests, except for the case of its infraction upon those rights of others. With exception to those functions of raising revenue for the function of government, and those of protecting society from outside invasion, these are the legitimate functions of republican government. The protection of property is but a subset of these three rights, and as such it should be acknowleged that the land of a nation, that said to be 'real' property ought to be acknowleged as nominally alloidal. With such understanding it should be thought absurd in the extreme if some other entity than the individual within society should be entitled to any right whatsoever. So too, one might wonder if justice could be achieved for the individual if large portions of the resourses within the borders of the state were owned collectively and allocated to such collectives under the administration of one or more employee. That there have been government that operated under the auspices of such an arangement--whether it be through Lenin's Soviet, or Mussolini's Fasci, or Lincoln's Corporation--should only strengthen our resolve against such a breeding ground for moral corruption. While the true market based upon a relationship between the parties to business exchanges does result in the invisible hand that acheives the greatest good for the economy as well as the necessity for moral self governance--and the opportunity to mantain control over the minutiae of life.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Real Laissez Faire!
Adam Smith is generally recognized as the father of Laissez Faire capitalism. Yet many who call for free trade and other non-regulatory measures fail to recognize--as Smith did--the most basic form of intervention within modern capitalism; the public issuance of joint-stock ownership in a company.
"To establish a joint stock company... for any undertaking merely because such a company might be capable of managing it successfully; or to exempt a particular set of dealers from some of the general laws which take place with regard to all their neighbours, merely because they might be capableof thriving if they had such an exemption, would certainly not be reasonable. To render such an establishment perfectly reasonable, with the circumstance of being reducible to strict rule and method, two other circumstances ought to concur. First it ought to appear with the clearest evidence, that the undertaking is of the greater and more general utility than the greater part of common trades. and secondly that it requires a greater capital than can easily be collected into a private copartnery."
Smith accepts that such conditions may be met by the banking trade or large projects such as canal building. One might add in modern times, perhaps aerospace manufacture and certain capital intensive technologies, but as far as those smaller manufactured items and durable goods Smith makes clear his beliefs:
"The joint stock companies, which are established for the public spirited purpose of promoting some particular manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the dimunition of the general stock of the society, can in other respects scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. Notwithstanding the most upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to particular branches of the manufacture of which the undertakers mislead and impose upon them is a real discouragement to the rest, and necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements the greatest and the most effectual."
So there you have it a compelling statement for non intervention when it would hinder entreprenuership--and a call for reducing to "strict rule and method" those sectors such as banking for which joint stock ownership is justified. Sounds like a sustainable recipe for crash-free capitalism to me. Laisser Passer Laisser Faire indeed!
"To establish a joint stock company... for any undertaking merely because such a company might be capable of managing it successfully; or to exempt a particular set of dealers from some of the general laws which take place with regard to all their neighbours, merely because they might be capableof thriving if they had such an exemption, would certainly not be reasonable. To render such an establishment perfectly reasonable, with the circumstance of being reducible to strict rule and method, two other circumstances ought to concur. First it ought to appear with the clearest evidence, that the undertaking is of the greater and more general utility than the greater part of common trades. and secondly that it requires a greater capital than can easily be collected into a private copartnery."
Smith accepts that such conditions may be met by the banking trade or large projects such as canal building. One might add in modern times, perhaps aerospace manufacture and certain capital intensive technologies, but as far as those smaller manufactured items and durable goods Smith makes clear his beliefs:
"The joint stock companies, which are established for the public spirited purpose of promoting some particular manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the dimunition of the general stock of the society, can in other respects scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. Notwithstanding the most upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to particular branches of the manufacture of which the undertakers mislead and impose upon them is a real discouragement to the rest, and necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements the greatest and the most effectual."
So there you have it a compelling statement for non intervention when it would hinder entreprenuership--and a call for reducing to "strict rule and method" those sectors such as banking for which joint stock ownership is justified. Sounds like a sustainable recipe for crash-free capitalism to me. Laisser Passer Laisser Faire indeed!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Death of Liberalism part 2
Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright were the least of our worries! Meet Rahm Emanuel (Obama's pick for cheif of staff) He voted to make the patriot act PERMANENT, and his 2006 book Big Plan further reveals his strong disdain for individual liberties:
"It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service."
Although he assumes that only "Republicans will squeal about individual freedom," this Big Plan would require altering the 13th amendment which has--for the last century and a half--prohibited forced servitude. So now should those 18-24-year-olds who voted for Obama in record numbers expect to be enslaved building a business infrastructure as part of this new post-bailout corporatist economy?! Lets compare this take on "patriotic duty" to that of a true liberal--consumer advocate and former Presidential candidate Ralph Nader--in his essay We Need A New Kind of Patriotism:
"If patriotism has no room for deliberation, for acknowledging an individual's sense of justice and his religious principles, it will continue to close minds, stifle the dissent that has made us strong, and deter the participation of Americans who challenge in order to correct, and who question in order to answer. We need only to recall recent history in other countries where patriotism was converted into an epidemic of collective madness and destruction. A patriotism manipulated by the government asks only for a servile nod from its subjects. A new patriotism requires a thinking assent from its citizens. If patriotism is to have any 'manifest destiny,' it is in building a world where all mankind is our bond in peace."
related links:
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2008m11d6-Obamas-chief-of-staff-choice-favors-compulsory-universal-service
http://growingvertical.com/2008/11/rahm-emanuel-and-13th-amendment.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Nader/NewPatriotism_RNR.html
"It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service."
Although he assumes that only "Republicans will squeal about individual freedom," this Big Plan would require altering the 13th amendment which has--for the last century and a half--prohibited forced servitude. So now should those 18-24-year-olds who voted for Obama in record numbers expect to be enslaved building a business infrastructure as part of this new post-bailout corporatist economy?! Lets compare this take on "patriotic duty" to that of a true liberal--consumer advocate and former Presidential candidate Ralph Nader--in his essay We Need A New Kind of Patriotism:
"If patriotism has no room for deliberation, for acknowledging an individual's sense of justice and his religious principles, it will continue to close minds, stifle the dissent that has made us strong, and deter the participation of Americans who challenge in order to correct, and who question in order to answer. We need only to recall recent history in other countries where patriotism was converted into an epidemic of collective madness and destruction. A patriotism manipulated by the government asks only for a servile nod from its subjects. A new patriotism requires a thinking assent from its citizens. If patriotism is to have any 'manifest destiny,' it is in building a world where all mankind is our bond in peace."
related links:
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2008m11d6-Obamas-chief-of-staff-choice-favors-compulsory-universal-service
http://growingvertical.com/2008/11/rahm-emanuel-and-13th-amendment.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Nader/NewPatriotism_RNR.html
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Death of Liberalism
I should start off this obituary by noting the overall rightward shift in the Democratic Party. For those who haven't heard Howard Dean is out and Tim Kaine is in as Chairman. Howard Dean is the former presidential candidate who I would have voted for, if only he had met the height requirement. Tim Kaine is the Third Way (mixed socialist-hierarchal capitalist economic thought--not to be confused with 'third entry' although metaphorically speaking the result is the same) conservative former Virginia Governor. While Howard Dean was a moderate on civil-libertarian issues like gun ownership, Tim Kaine is moderate in that he is a social moderate and as one Virginian blog puts it:
"Kaine kept his pro-business promise, even to the extent of re-appointing aThis is bad news for those of us who wanted a clean break from Bush's policies. Way to keep it real, DNC.
member to the state water control board who had been cited twice for violating
the state’s clean water laws he was sworn to uphold. Next, Kaine fully embraced
a new coal fired power plant in the Virginia coalfields and stood firm as his
liberal base accused him of being owned by the power plant applicant, a slave of
coal."
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