wes.whitman's blog

Radical centrism and third-way political economy are honestly the most reasonable positions to hold. Unfortunately, radical centrism looks like extreme leftist in America because America is a nation of right-wing extremist basket cases.

There are two socialist calculation problems:

Hayek: Knowledge is distributed in the minds of individuals with specialized knowledge of particular circumstances of time and place. That knowledge can't be centrally collected and analyzed, meaning centrally-planned economies will inevitably make uninformed decisions that result in inefficiency.

Mises: With all industry owned by government, materials would be traded government-to-government, meaning there's no market for the determination of prices. Without the price mechanism, resources would be allocated inefficiently.

A lot of leftists want to reject universal basic income as a right-wing idea, because it has been advocated by Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, & Charles Murray. And, because it was advocated by the Founding Father, Thomas Paine, in the form of a citizen's dividend. But it's an idea that transcends ideologies. C. H. Douglas broke from the Fabian socialists to advocate UBI in the form of a national dividend. It was advocated by socialists like Fred M. Taylor, Oskar Lange, & Abba Lerner in the form of a social dividend as a share of the profits of socialized industry.

Why don't we have land value tax? It's universally recognized as a good idea. It was advocated by the American Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. It was advocated by classical liberals like Adam Smith and John Locke. It was advocated by libertarians like Albert Jay Nock and Milton Friedman. It was advocated by the most important conservative thinkers, from Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley Jr.

(my response to something posted on a forum):

MMT is mostly the result of having a scientific approach to economics rather than an abstract theoretical approach. It's what you learn about economics if you look at facts and data rather than contemplating abstract hypotheticals.

Classical/Austrian/Chicago economists: "I wonder how money and taxes work? Let's suppose that Robinson Crusoe is stranded on a desert island with his friend Friday...."

Fiscal policy is monetary policy. You can't have an efficient and functional monetary system or market without taxation. The only feasible vision of market anarchism is geo-mutualist, where you have something like democratic confederalism, a sovereign money issuing bank of the people, and a system of taxation. Most modern anarchists think that geoism, Proudhonian mutualism, and democratic confederalism looks a lot like statism. Perhaps. The lines do blur. It's a spectrum, not a binary. The anarchist social democracy that I used to advocate really does look a lot like statism.

Neo-republicanism, which tends towards social democracy, departs from classical republicanism in one important sense. Whereas traditional republicans wanted liberty for propertied white men, neo-republicans want liberty for all, which means universal healthcare, abolition of wage-slavery, etc.

The Republican Party is not republican. They are conservative with propertarian leanings. Modern conservatism is the bastard child of traditional conservatism and classical liberalism/individualist libertarianism.

Language is a system of symbols used for communication. A flag is a symbol, a word; it represents an idea and sends a message. This is why flying a Confederate flag is protected as freedom of speech. The Confederate flag is basically the n-word. It is a racist symbol. That flag represents the Confederate States. The Confederate States declared their cause when they seceded from the United States. That cause was white supremacy. That's what the Confederate flag stands for.