Day 4, The Deep Read (11) , p. 307-- AtD 296-325 (11) June 11-25.

[mikebailey]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>   Pynchon and money power. Why is gold valuable and used to back up national currencies?
>   Some economists point to this ....shared-illusion?.....as the backbone of economic value in the world.....what if the world economy had developed differently?   (Talk about the arbitrariness on the Mason/Dixon line and what it artificially divided....)
>   What would an a (non-violent) anarchist economist say about The Gold Standard?
>
>   That 'value' could all be doubled with Icelandic Spar..........metaphor for what in AtD?
>   Today's major essay question.
>

There's actually an Iceland spar doubling of anarchism in the world
right now.  There's the left anarchists, who basically aren't into
money all that much; they in general perceive ownership as theft,
believe that the workplace should be run by workers' councils,
and the neighborhoods by neighborhood councils.
Although there's much to admire there, it seems like it would
involve more meetings than one might like - and that unless
their parliamentary procedure required unamimous consensus,
it would rapidly require the machinery of a state -
thus vitiating the good of their original tenet.
References: syndicalism.org, iww.org

Oh, but our state would be *good*, and we wouldn't call it
a state... - so the end justifies
the means, and you get Webb out there dynamiting.

But there's also the right anarchists, who like totally are into
the gold standard.  mises.org - lewrockwell.com - the late great
Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul and his magnificent Congressional
speeches!  Ok, he's not overtly anarchist, but the implications
of libertarian thought are.

Although I mostly prefer the flannel shirts, jeans, herbal teas,
and geodesic domes of the left libertarians,
as versus the bowties, suits, shiny black shoes,
crewcuts and golf courses of the righties,
the inclusion of voluntarism in right-libertarian thought
leavens the entire loaf and makes it rise the way no
leftist thought process ever will (imho) -

They believe that all human progress is the result of
people trading voluntarily for what they determine for themselves
that they need --- the medium of exchange should itself
have inherent value --- and for a government functionary
to intervene ends with a debased currency such as we have today.
(as well as vreaking major havoc of many other kinds)

What the left-libs understand that the rightists don't
is the importance of unions. The right-libs hatred of
unions makes them susceptible to the Vibes of the world.
By assuming the executive class is the only one whose decisions
matter in a group effort, they accede to an autocracy of
guys like Vibe.  Their willingness to envision gladly
a managerial class with *enforcement* privileges
vitiates their gains from accepting voluntarism.

coda:

Union representation, in a free market, is
something that a working person might well want to purchase,
and is a force that wise managers could work with to make
things better for everyone.