bankers (not ranting...

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

...just trying to pump up some enthusiasm for Webb Traverse's POV...

1893...

farmer has to pay exorbitant prices to put his crops on the
railroad, and the root cause is because some boring old banker
wants to accumulate 50 million to buy another railroad from some
other boring old banker
miners want to organize to gain a measure of control over their
wages and working conditions; Vibe and Rockefeller buy the mines
and hire Pinkertons to ensure that dangerous conditions and low pay
will prevail
bankers decide a gold standard will make them more money, so they
repeal the monetization of silver (I gather this was a pretty big deal
in 1893, and is treated in Adams's _Education_) which adversely affects
a lot of people...

was it Francis or Roger Bacon who had the saying about how we should
emulate the bee rather than the spider, trying to produce sweetness
and light (wax for candles, honey for the bread) not cobwebs?

yet the webs of entrapment, if I look through Webb Traverse's eyes,
are exactly what the bankers produced, while the farmers and miners
labored to produce something useful.

Ur-Anarchist thought - is it any wonder that they envisioned simply
eliminating that class? Yet I can't help but wonder, if the arms
makers and bankers weren't slipping Marx and Bakunin some money
under the table to short-circuit a movement with lots of popular support?
I mean, the FBI during Cointelpro didn't invent "let's you and him fight"

It isn't like it isn't still going on, either --- the activities of
the World Bank, as detailed in Confessions of an Economic Hitman, 
and protested in Seatlle, follow the same (boring) plan: find a tyrant,
lend him millions for some flashy project (or, even worse, for arms),
then for years squeeze the workers of that land, so that export crops
are grown instead of food for the people, interest payments are made
instead of buying medicine, schools, infrastructure; people die and
suffer and the (boring) bank accounts that apparently are the only
thing these guys care about grow. The ability to hand out patronage
strengthens the hand of the tyrant, whose choices rarely are based on
merit. (Wizard of the Crow shows this process beautifully)
  Infrastructure and natural resources are sold to foreign firms
(and it's happening here: toll roads in the US are being sold...)

Indian farmers killing themselves...Mexican immigration due to 
tariff protection for Mexico eliminated while it's kept for the US...

Monsanto able to sue farmers (apparently successfully !) for
copyright infringement when their fucking lousy GMO patented
seeds wafted across and infested the farmers land

Rumsfeld wearing his Searle hat was able, wearing his Cabinet member hat,
to appoint an FDA chief who would approve Nutrasweet despite
overwhelmingly negative test results

Rothbard wrote that it all started with fractional reserve banking...
how non-fractional reserve banking would work is a head-scratcher --
I believe he said something like banking would be warehousing of
money, for which people would pay a small fee.  Giving people funds
to invest would be called such, and would entail more oversight and
better rewards 


with the ability to loan not strongly tied to the ability to attract
investors, the choice of projects goes more and more to the bankers...

with monopoly national banking the choice is totally that of the 
favored bankers -- and with the institution of deficit financing, 
market feedback (which is to say, the sum of numerous autonomous
grass roots decisions) can be safely ignored (safely that is for
the bankers)

the result being uninspired (boring) "deciders" insulated from
the consequences of their decisions, which they can base on their own
criteria and there is no recourse.  (Iraq -- guys like Baker 
must be really excited about de-nationalizing the oil there -- so
excited they are willing to sacrifice other people's lives and
money to do so --- and if that seems exciting to them, I submit they
don't know what real excitement is - maybe possibly something
that one would actually give of one's OWN substance for?)

in 1893, all this was still a gleam in Vibe's eye...but Webb saw the
shape of things and didn't like it.  Rather than actually
traverse the web, though, he thought it could be destroyed.

His dynamiting was futile, even made things worse.  

Reformers used the popular revulsion to the bankers' web of treachery
to enact legislation limiting inheritance, allowing labor unions,
checking some of the virulence of trusts (Utility Holding
Company act), and putting in effect a progressive income tax - 
all of which has now been repealed, partly because the bankers
were able to use popular revulsion to left-wing violence and
associate liberal politics with it (that and they cheated in elections...)

So in using violence, Webb and others were doing the bankers' work.
Not even getting paid for it - dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

Rothbard would say that placing the responsibility for these reforms
in the hands of government was the mistake (political power comes out
of the barrel of a gun, so it circumvents the tendency of the market
to respond to people's wishes, since its essence is coercion)

Webb would probably miss that implication, and suggest instead that
what happened was that the bankers took over the government...which
is why we find anarcho-syndicalists don't seem to cotton to
Mises and Rothbard much - though their perspective would combine
nicely with M&R in terms of organizational structure --- just as
curiously, M&R (particularly R) is scared to death of unions, whereas
I think I see how they could be worked into Austrian economics rather
nicely, obviating the destructive monopolistic centralizing tendencies
of the entrepreneurs that M&R love so much...

But what I see in Webb's skein of AtD - and it engages me DEEPLY -
is a cautionary tale about how violence makes things worse.

So what is the solution, if there is one?  Cultivate individual virtue
and foster it in others, by learning to love them (Webb's kids
grope towards that) 

Not grabbing the bankers by the spider web handle (they're used to that,
really good at it, and the results are predictable - heads they win,
tails we lose - boring) - but trying to find some common ground...

I gave my love a cherry
That had no stone
I gave my love a chicken
That had no bone
I told my love a story
That had no end
I gave my love a baby
With no crying.

How can there be a cherry
That has no stone?
And how can there be a chicken
That has no bone?
And how can there be a story
That has no end?
And how can there be a baby
With no crying?

A cherry when it's blooming
It has no stone
A chicken when in the shell
It has no bone
The story of how I love you
It has no end
A baby when it's sleeping
It's not crying. *

* for help with that, it'd be hard to find anything better than

Oh - Lawrence
Of Arabia, with his 
Wig wag woggledy doo!
In-surance,
In Arabia,
Don't cover what, he do...
No! He's out there with his camel,
In the day or night,
Cruisin' in the desert, just
Lookin' for a fight - he don't care cause he's
Lawrence,
of Arabia, with that
Wig, wag, woggledy doo!