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American Character - Ch. 5: The Rise and Fall of Laissez-Faire (1877-1930)

#167: Sept. - Nov. 2019 (Non-Fiction)
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DWill

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Re: American Character - Ch. 5: The Rise and Fall of Laissez-Faire (1877-1930)

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Taylor wrote:The Bonner interview is interesting; Prop 13 was a conservative republican initiative during Reagan’s influence in politics. It’s libertarianism front and center but Bonner fails to call that aspect out. It is that failure of “calling out” that has me wondering if it’s because people are quietly in favor of these tax schemes or are people just blind to the obvious. Where does a 22 trillion dollar debt come from?.
Could the answer to your question be that wealthy interests are successful in persuading the rest of us that we are overtaxed, when in reality we are not, compared to almost any other affluent country? When we rebel against taxation, we aid the 1%, who may think they don't need the services that taxes buy, anyway. But the super rich gain a lot more money, compared to the piddling amounts we save.

A 22 trillion dollar debt comes from many sources, but you're right that a big one is granting tax cuts based on wishful thinking that the economy will be stimulated, leading to more tax revenue.
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Taylor

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Re: American Character - Ch. 5: The Rise and Fall of Laissez-Faire (1877-1930)

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DWill, I think that it is more than wealth persuasion but that is certainly a part of the problem. I think that there is also pure ideological desire as well. I see it as a paranoia towards the government, a position that can easily be embraced by any individual. I think that it is a self-fulfulling prophecy of anarchy. Tax rebellion is an easy way to rile the masses to no certain outcome other than massive debt, which would be one way of overwhelming a powerful authority like the government. What better way is there within our system to require austerity. This clearly plays into the hands of libertarian Social Darwinist such as those so ably described by the author.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: American Character - Ch. 5: The Rise and Fall of Laissez-Faire (1877-1930)

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Taylor wrote:there is also pure ideological desire as well. I see it as a paranoia towards the government, a position that can easily be embraced by any individual.
I’ve been pondering the emotional psychological attraction of laissez-faire capitalism. There is an exhilarating thrill associated with individual freedom, and a sense of moral toughness associated with relying on your personal skill and talent to succeed in the world. On the other side, relying on others seems like an admission of failure, a dull conformity, a trap that lets us fall into the anonymous crowd.

This reminds me of the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger that I studied for my Masters thesis. Heidegger defined authenticity in terms of the existential individual having resolute anticipation of the future in the moment of freedom, while he condemned inauthentic life as involving surrender to collective thinking, accepting gossip, shallow curiosity and ambiguity as moral values.

This existential mentality focused on personal achievement against the inertia of the world creates an image of the Ayn Rand hero John Galt as an inspiring figure, the entrepreneurial inventor who can save the world. That obviously has a lot of merit to inspire startup companies whose products and services can transform the world.

But laissez-faire thinking also has a dark side, an emotional fantasy, more Walter Mitty than John Galt, that sees the crushing of public services as morally purgative, harsh medicine that forces people to become self-reliant for their own good.

Such moral political reasoning has a resonance far beyond the wealthy elite who benefit from it by cutting taxes on the rich. Many people just see the moral compass as requiring a shift toward responsibilities and away from rights, toward what we do as individuals and away from what we do as a collective, which is seen to justify the perverse results of the Trump Presidency and similar authoritarian populist demagogues around the world.

Looking back at Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech in support of Barry Goldwater, it has so many points that chime with these deceptive sentimental arguments.
Ronald Reagan wrote:This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
But if we compare this with Abraham Lincoln’s argument cited by Woodard that there are in fact many things that government can do that are fully worthwhile and necessary, it is clear the US pendulum has swung too far away from the ability to constructively cooperate through government systems.
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Re: American Character - Ch. 5: The Rise and Fall of Laissez-Faire (1877-1930)

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President Reagan wrote:This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
Note the propaganda regarding self-government. Although our slave owning founders spoke of the "unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," we understand they actually referred to a national elite of white property owning males. The founders could not accept that as propaganda - it took two amendments to the Constitution to correct it.

I found this chapter particularly upsetting as I believed in Libertarianism many decades ago. One of their tenets at that time was laissez-faire capitalism has never been implemented in a pure form, so it has never been tested. Ayn Rand / Objectivists have even argued that fire suppression regulations are not warranted, stating workers should move to factories that offer safe practices. That logic was destroyed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 3/25/1911. This chapter destroyed the rest of that "logic."
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