The Administrative state
The plutocrats on the right want to dismantle the administrative state, so they say. Of course, their wealth derives directly from the fiction of private property and an administrative state is required to enforce that fiction. Their wealth is monetized in currency, which is another fiction that the administrative state holds a monopoly on.
The Bolsheviks destroyed the ruble through hyperinflation: they printed money at an unprecedented rate, causing the supply of paper money to grow exponentially, and they issued their own paper currencies called sovznaki, or Soviet tokens, to try to deny that they couldn’t do away with money. The result was that the ruble’s value was reduced to 1/20,000th of its 1917 value.
There’s a huge difference between the agrarian economy of 1917 Russia and 2024 America, but abolishing the Administrative state that underpins the American economy will cause extensive and lasting harm for the majority of Americans. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Donald Trump and the rest of the plutocrats believe they’ll be fine. I’m not so confident. I suspect they’ve been seduced by what Alfred North Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
Hosea 8:7
The Bolsheviks destroyed the ruble through hyperinflation: they printed money at an unprecedented rate, causing the supply of paper money to grow exponentially, and they issued their own paper currencies called sovznaki, or Soviet tokens, to try to deny that they couldn’t do away with money. The result was that the ruble’s value was reduced to 1/20,000th of its 1917 value.
There’s a huge difference between the agrarian economy of 1917 Russia and 2024 America, but abolishing the Administrative state that underpins the American economy will cause extensive and lasting harm for the majority of Americans. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Donald Trump and the rest of the plutocrats believe they’ll be fine. I’m not so confident. I suspect they’ve been seduced by what Alfred North Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
Hosea 8:7
When they say they want to destroy the administrative state what they mean, I think, is to severely limit the power to regulate so that they are able to do as they wish industrially and within the economy without significant and consistent obstacles. The parts of the administrative state they destroy will be carefully selected to preserve their private property rights.
JackD:
I agree with what you say. I think there is more to it. Eric Kramer’s post on canvassing in Pennsylvania stated Repubs had pretty much abandoned canvassing the state. If trump loses and the election is close; they will dispute, dispute, and dispute. They did so in the past. They are preparing for such rather than canvassing.
Remember what Repubs said about the Administrative state? Make it so small they could drown it in a bath tub.
@Jack,
IOW, they’re fine with an administrative state that administers to their interests alone.
People get mystical about private property. It’s a government service and it’s enforced by violence. Most wealthy people are wealthy because they own government issued currency, shares of government chartered collectives, title to government defended land, government backed debt, government granted economic right and so on.
There’s a lot of discussion lately about ownership. What does it mean to own that movie or book or videogame you bought online? What does it mean to own a share of a corporation? “Ownership” comes with all sorts of terms and conditions. You might not be able to charge admission to play that movie or sell that book when you are done with it. You might not have any say in the operation of that corporation you own shares in.
Sure, those restrictions rankle, both those applied by the private and the public sectors, but that’s the way property works.
@Kaleberg,
Exactly my point.
They want an administrative state for me but not for thee.
“Ownership” is the problem. Dominion over all
Dr Joel, as an educator, might be familiar with this though I learned it overcoming something to be overcome: you can’t keep anything until you give it away. You really haven’t learned something until you can teach it, until you can give it away
I think “ownership” is the same root problem as religion …
The dichotomy of the administrative state is a natural evolution of the subversion of livelihood taken from investment in and protection of the labor production economy to subordinate its output into earning our livelihood from the ownership economy wherein production of real output tends towards being securitized and financialized (domestically represented by intellectual property rights and stocks and bonds) with actual production labor mostly off-shored. IOW, this BS began with Truman and Ike and only came out of the closet with Nixon and Reagan. For those of us that still need to work at something resembling a real job then this is called the service economy, which is a real disservice to the labor movement.