Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"

Started by LouisIX, April 05, 2016, 12:50:54 PM

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james03

QuoteHaha. You don't even know anything about me.

I know that your education is not in economics.

QuoteHahaha. The irony. Well, thank you for trying to educate me, James. That was so humble of you, especially given my lowly status as forum imbecile.
There is no irony Louis.  You are sophomoric at best when it comes to economics.  Why wouldn't I try to educate you?  Well, it's because you lack humility and won't ask me for help.

Compare our discussions on philosophy vs. our "debates" on economics.  In philosophy it is evident you are at least self taught, and I believe you have received formal training.  You have more knowledge than me on that topic and I respect that.  Our discussions on philosophy are without rhetoric.  Note this is not because I always agree with you either, as I am from the Bellarmine school.  But we still have good discussions even on things like Free Will.

On economics you throw up ambiguous feel goods, non-sequiturs (e.g. just wage) and have now resorted to virtue signaling (I only respect people with money.).  You will not acknowledge one point of mine (which are well accepted economic principles.  I believe Hayek won the Nobel Prize on the calculation problem) so we can't build a discussion.  The problem is your pride.
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

james03

Let's take a closer look at the just wage.  What we have here is the need to efficiently allocate the increase that comes from production between capital and labor.  You can subdivide labor into professional and line workers.  Note that in the US, the Capitalists by and large are pension funds, even in private companies.

In my situation no one is advocating that I should have access to collective bargaining, or that I need some government puke to tell my employer what to pay me.  I am in a balanced situation.  The pension fund capitalist owns very large capital (oil production/refining).  However it is worthless without people like me.  Therefore they need me to use their capital to provide value and an increase (called a profit).  I bring education (limited to a relative few), and experience (even more limited).  So I have a lot of power during negotiations.  On the flip side I need THEM, because my education and experience are completely worthless if I don't have the capital available to employ.  So they have power over me.  I have other options, and they have other options.  In North Dakota their options are very limited, so I can get paid a lot more.  I can do the same job somewhere else and get paid half. 

Now look at the situation where you have one main employer in a small town.  Labor has one option for a decent wage.  In this case the owner of capital has all of the power.  It is this case where Pope Leo advocated using collective bargaining to level the playing field and avoid undue interference from the State.  It is the same negotiations I have to go through, but labor strengthens their position and can negotiate a better rate.  Note keep in mind the miller/farmer, there is no right answer (though there are plenty of wrong answers as I will discuss).
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

james03

One of the problems in economics that most people miss is the allocative function of prices.  We tend to think of prices as a source for revenue.  I charge more, so I make more.  But the most important aspect of prices is that it is used in the capitalist system to allocate resources.  That is why central banks and banking guilds always wreck an economy, they end up causing prices to be distorted and you get misallocation.  The banking guild cut rates too low in 2005, and you ended up with the market overallocating resources to condominiums in Las Vegas.  The Fed cut interest rates too low in 2009 and you had the market allocated too many resources to oil production.  While we like the resultant lower gasoline prices, we are not going to like it when our pensions get cut due to the huge losses.

So when you dictate a wage, and it is too high, you are signaling to the market that the economy is labor constrained.  Now normally when you get the feel that wages are low the reason is because the economy is capital constrained.  What you are doing is sending out a pricing signal to increase labor and decrease capital.  Note that this is the worst possible thing you can do in a capital constrained market.

Now in the US the major causes of capital constraint are due to absurd regulations and high taxes on profits.  Signaling that you are labor constrained  makes it worse, but the converse is not necessarily true.  Removing any restraints on wages will cause wages to drop, but this does not fix the problem of capital constraint.  So if we took away all minimum wage laws, wages would drop to the point where we could compete with a freer economy like communist China or communist Vietnam.  On the plus side, such a move would stop the false signaling to increase labor and your would see illegal immigration disappear, unless done for social reasons (escaping head hunters.)
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

LouisIX

Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 03:28:46 PM
QuoteHaha. You don't even know anything about me.

I know that your education is not in economics.

QuoteHahaha. The irony. Well, thank you for trying to educate me, James. That was so humble of you, especially given my lowly status as forum imbecile.
There is no irony Louis.  You are sophomoric at best when it comes to economics.  Why wouldn't I try to educate you?  Well, it's because you lack humility and won't ask me for help.

:laugh:

Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 03:28:46 PMCompare our discussions on philosophy vs. our "debates" on economics.  In philosophy it is evident you are at least self taught, and I believe you have received formal training.  You have more knowledge than me on that topic and I respect that.  Our discussions on philosophy are without rhetoric.  Note this is not because I always agree with you either, as I am from the Bellarmine school.  But we still have good discussions even on things like Free Will.

On economics you throw up ambiguous feel goods, non-sequiturs (e.g. just wage) and have now resorted to virtue signaling (I only respect people with money.).  You will not acknowledge one point of mine (which are well accepted economic principles.  I believe Hayek won the Nobel Prize on the calculation problem) so we can't build a discussion.  The problem is your pride.

You're right that my formal area of study is not economics and that is part of the reason that I have espoused no formal set of guidelines as to economic theory. What I have discussed is the moral-political theology of the Church, which is my area of formal study. We're discussing concepts here that apply to justice, not merely the prudential and practical applications of those principles. That might be "vague" to you, but it's how people discuss issues without simply resorting to calling their interlocutor a "leftist" when they disagree with their practical conclusions.

Do you have significant formal education in economics or are you self-taught? What about philosophy? Theology? Political Science?

The reason that you're pissy about this is because you can't get over the fact that your own opinions are not "accepted economic principles" to every Catholic. You're dogmatizing your own interpretation of Leo on private property.

Also, when you tell people that they should learn from you, you ruin any credibility that you would otherwise have to preach to someone else about their humility. You're not an instructor here nor are you a superior to anyone so get over yourself.

IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

james03

In economics Louis you aren't even in my same league.  You are sophomoric at best.  Yes, I've taken Masters levels Micro and Macro.  I believe getting A's.  B at worst.  I also have taken Masters level courses in accounting (financial and cost), tax, and finance.  High GPA throughout.  I'm also self taught, reading von Mises, Ricardo, Say, Bastiat, Hayek, Rompke, Pesch, and Marx.  I've never finished Pesch as he was too stupid to endure.  On Marx I believe I have only read his Manifesto and excerpts from Das Kapital.  Milton Friedman also.  Adam Smith.  I don't believe I have ever read any Keynes.  Plenty of critiques of his work though.  I've also written a book on economics that was downloaded about 2,000 times.  The second edition will be on Amazon soon.

Quoteand that is part of the reason that I have espoused no formal set of guidelines as to economic theory.
And that is an offense against Prudence.  If you are not educated in economics then you can't comment on government policy that is economic policy.  This statement is very dangerous for someone at best sophomoric on economics:  "It recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them. "

By the way, you were not aware that the term "social justice" is a recent invention?  I would have guessed that you had studied Justice.
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

Jacob

Quote from: james03 on August 25, 2016, 07:11:45 AM
Quoteand that is part of the reason that I have espoused no formal set of guidelines as to economic theory.
And that is an offense against Prudence.  If you are not educated in economics then you can't comment on government policy that is economic policy.  This statement is very dangerous for someone at best sophomoric on economics:  "It recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them. "

Before there were separate disciplines of political science and economics, there was political economy.  Gotta know one to really know the other.
"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
--Neal Stephenson

LouisIX

#81
EDIT: Accidentally modified this post from the original.

Quote from: james03 on August 25, 2016, 07:11:45 AM
By the way, you were not aware that the term "social justice" is a recent invention?  I would have guessed that you had studied Justice.

I would have thought that, you know, with all of your high training on these issues that you might be familiar with the term's Catholic history and papal origin. I would have guessed that someone offering to educate us would not make such simple mistakes.

Quote from: Quadragesimo AnnoTo each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.

In fact, "social justice" (socialis iustitiae) appears no less than nine times in that encyclical.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

james03

QuoteYou've shown nothing which speaks to my concerns regarding basic issues of economic justice.
I have posted what the Church teaches and have been arguing for the overseeing of the relief of the poor by the Catholic Church.  And I have not seen you mention any concerns about economic justice, if you truly mean economic justice.

QuoteYou assume my positions (on this thread and others), presume my education,
I don't assume your positions.  I respond to what you write.  Your education, as revealed by yourself elsewhere, is Liberal Arts, not economics.  If my memory is faulty on this, you had plenty of chances to correct me.  You've conceded that you were not educated in economics.

Quoterefuse to engage with the points that I am making by appealing to your own authority,
No Louis, I quoted the Church.
Quoteand then you slap a "leftist" tag onto it and call it a day.
No Louis, you are a leftist.  To be clear (and I've already written this) we are talking about the American spectrum.  On the economic spectrum, you are left.  You have admitted supporting a leftist party, you supported Bernie's economic policies, you support "It Takes a Village", and you supported Francis's leftist economic manifesto.  You are part way down the path of "From each according his ability, to each according to his need."  You aren't all the way there and I don't call you hard left or commie.  Not even socialist.  Interestingly that statement is the opposite of economic justice.  A statement of economic justice: "To each according to what he produces".  But Catholics aren't taught what Justice means anymore.
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

Baldrick

I just would like to chime in to say that, really, everyone who has a critical knowledge in anything is "self taught."  Teaching isn't like shoving information and skills and whatnot into a brain.  Even in the most intimate learning situation (say, in tutorials) the student is ultimately teaching him or herself.  To suggest otherwise is not only to misconceive how education "happens" but it puts those with "formal" training on a false pedestal.  In this day in age especially (where you can contact and correspond with world-class experts etc.), I think the distinction between a credentialed academic and an independent scholar is mostly smoke and mirrors.   

james03

QuoteI just would like to chime in to say that, really, everyone who has a critical knowledge in anything is "self taught.
True, but you have to have the knowledge and it should be fairly broad.  I've studied communism, socialism, fascism, keysianism, monetarism, and Austrian school.  Let me give you two examples on this forum where someone was making economic commentary and obviously did NOT have critical knowledge.

1.  Someone posted an article (or excerpts) of E. Michael Jones.  I read it and stated Jones was a Marxist.  People initially thought I was using rhetoric ("You sound like one of them there commie pinkos).  No, I was serious.  Jones evidently knew nothing about the core belief of Marxism, the labor theory of value.  And yet he wants to comment on economics.

2.  In this very thread I stated the Louis is a leftist.  He responded that I was trying to insult him and I was being "pissy".  No, I'm stating a fact.  Louis obviously lost track of a basic leftist tenet: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." (lost track, because I assume everyone is familiar with that statement).  This is in fact HARD left.  So Louis holds that the State should take from the producer and give to the taker.  Why should the government take from the producer?  Because they have the money.  That is, they have the ability to produce.  Why should the government give to the taker?  Because he has the need.  This is classic leftist thought.

Now I make a distinction that Louis is NOT hard left.  The reason is that he would say that there are limits that the government would follow as he idolizes government.  He can not give a way to figure out the limits (the calculation problem), and he must insist on not seeing the hippo in his bathtub called Original Sin.  Beyond that is the problem of misallocation, which he is completely ignorant about.  Anyhow, for these reasons he is not hard left.
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

John Lamb

Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 10:03:50 AM
What we have is the question on the proper way to allocate production between owners of capital and labor.  The market does this, kind of like an optimization engine (it is never "right", it tends towards the optimum)

Yes, but isn't the problem that what's optimal for the market may not be optimal for men? If the end of the market is the optimization of profit margins, human happiness is just an accident that may or may not result from the optimization of profit margins. It may be optimal for the market to reduce a good portion of the populace to slave labourers. Isn't that what free market liberals are doing on the international scene, e.g. when they outsource their manufacturing to Chinese sweatshops? The market may also be blind to the destruction of other goods not directly related to profiteering, such as the preservation of the local environment, of local customs and traditions, and public morals (e.g. the pornography industry is wonderful if you idolize markets, but not if you care about public morals).
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

John Lamb

#86
Also, Dr. Jones is aware that Marx's version of the labour theory of value is false, or what he calls "exaggerated". He says the following:

Quote from: E. Michael Jones
Karl Marx came up with what you would call an exaggeration of the value of labor. Primarily because I think he was an atheist and an atheist cannot understand the purpose of creation. Creation was made by God and human wealth comes about by a collaboration between man and God, through creation. So what he had was a labor theory of value which said that all value comes from labor. Well, that's not true. You could say there is no value without labor, I think that is true. I think that Locke would agree with that, I think Smith would agree with that. But, you can't say that all value comes from labor because you're leaving creation out of the picture. So for example, let's take a vineyard. There's a vineyard in a place like France that grows great wine with little effort. Okay, that's the value. There's relatively little human labor that goes into it. On the other hand, you could have a vineyard in let's say... Iceland, in which case there's a huge amount of human labor that goes into it and you get crappy wine or virtually nothing. This is the refutation of the labor theory of the value and I think this runs aground on Marx's atheism.

The Marxist theory of labor value is false for the reason that Dr. Jones provides: equal labor does not necessarily produce equal goods. However, the idea that value is totally subjective I find even more unsatisfactory. Goodness is not primarily in the human will, but in the substances towards which the human will is directed. For example, God is good regardless of whether or not men love Him. A stream of water in some hidden cove, that men have never seen, is good, even though there is nobody around to "value" it. The idea that value is subjective seems to come from Descartes, and his idea that the world is made up of nothing but "extended substance", and all "secondary properties" are in the mind. The idea that value is subjective leads to absurdities just as much as the extreme labor theory of value. It means that those atrocious modern art pieces that decadent billionaires spell millions on, really are worth millions. It means that a man could justly demand a starving man to pay him a fortune for a glass of water, on the grounds that a glass of water is worth a fortune "to someone who is thirsty enough"; when, on the contrary, everyone knows that such an action would be grossly unjust.

Here's a reductio ad absurdum I found against the labor theory of value, from another forum:
Quote
Values are subjective. If you dig a hole and fill it up again hour after hour, you have produced nothing of value despite the labour involved.  So values are not based on labour.
I can produce just such an argument to prove that values are not subjective: if you take a dump you have not produced anything of value, yet it's not implausible that some pervert would value your excrement to be worth more than enough food to feed a small nation for a year. So values are not subjective.

I think E. Michael Jones must be right, that value must come partly from the inherent worth of things in creation, and partly from labor, in the sense in which the bible says that: "the labourer is worthy of his hire", i.e. he deserves a reward for having turned something of relatively little value to relatively great value, on top of the inherent value of the product itself.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

John Lamb

I thought of a better way of refuting the following:
QuoteValues are subjective. If you dig a hole and fill it up again hour after hour, you have produced nothing of value despite the labour involved.  So values are not based on labour.

If values are subjective, then digging a hole and filling it up again hour after hour may be deemed to be worth millions. Maybe it's a work of postmodern performance art, or whatever. Producing food, clothing, or technology would not have any more value, objectively, than filling a hole up again and again. This would destroy the basis of economics, because we would no longer be able to tell how healthy an economy is, because the value of the whole economy being subjective, a starving country would not objectively be any better off than a fat one. Therefore, the must be some objective standard of value in commodities and in an economy generally.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

Prayerful

This may or may not be relevant here, but the ease with which the 'neo-con' Republicans switched to supporting HRC is perhaps indicative of how little conservatism is in neo-conservatism. A conservative politician is typically traditionalist to a notable degree, supportive of religion and family, and as concepts independent of state control. Distinguishing conservatism and traditionalism is reasonable, but putting them in manichaeist opposition is simply an error. HRC likes war, neo-cons like war, and they are mostly indifferent to social issues unless it somehow clashes with their authoritarian, militarised, internationalism.
Padre Pio: Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.

LouisIX

Quote from: Prayerful on August 30, 2016, 11:50:47 AM
This may or may not be relevant here, but the ease with which the 'neo-con' Republicans switched to supporting HRC is perhaps indicative of how little conservatism is in neo-conservatism. A conservative politician is typically traditionalist to a notable degree, supportive of religion and family, and as concepts independent of state control. Distinguishing conservatism and traditionalism is reasonable, but putting them in manichaeist opposition is simply an error. HRC likes war, neo-cons like war, and they are mostly indifferent to social issues unless it somehow clashes with their authoritarian, militarised, internationalism.

Political traditionalists have been saying this for decades. The "right-wing" of American politics is simply a different variety of liberalism. Those most educated on the "right" will fully admit to being classical liberals who espouse classical liberalism.
IF I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.