Context for the Bailout - Confessions of a Monopolist

[jaqeboy]

[deletions for brevity]

...central banking is not a postitive to capitalists, it is the demand of the politicians to have control over the system in a manner that meets their founding documents.
The Industrialist grew out of the period prior to the Federal Reserve Act.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_the_United_States

Au contraire, central banking has always been sought by the (finance) capitalists - in re the Federal Reserve System, see Griffin, The Creature From Jekyll Island, or Mullins before him, Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Some politicians were in bed with them, esp. Sen. Nelson Aldrich, who championed the Aldrich Plan, with propaganda help from the Citizens League (banker/capitalist financed). Some were against it, notably Rep. Charles Lindberg Sr., who wrote:

The Aldrich Plan is the Wall Street Plan. It is a broad challenge to the Government by the champion of the Money Trust. It means another panic, if necessary, to intimidate the people. Aldrich, paid by the Government to represent the people, proposes a plan for the trusts instead. It was by a very clever move that the National Monetary Commission was created. In 1907 nature responded most beautifully and gave this country the most bountiful crop it had ever had. Other industries were busy too, and from a natural standpoint all the conditions were right for a most
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[Footnotes]

12. Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., Banking, Currency and the Money Trust, 1913, p. 131

* In 1911, the Aldrich Plan became part of the official platform of the Republican Party.
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prosperous year. Instead, a panic entailed enormous losses upon us. Wall Street knew the American people were demanding a remedy against the recurrence of such a ridiculously unnatural condition. Most Senators and Representatives fell into the Wall Street trap and passed the Aldrich Vreeland Emergency Currency Bill. But the real purpose was to get a monetary commission which would frame a proposition for amendments to our currency and banking laws which would suit the Money Trust. The interests are now busy everywhere educating the people in favor of the Aldrich Plan. It is reported that a large sum of money has been raised for this purpose [to fund the Citizens League]. Wall Street speculation brought on the Panic of 1907. The depositors' funds were loaned to gamblers and anybody the Money Trust wanted to favour. Then when the depositors wanted their money, the banks did not have it. That made the panic.

The Lindbergh quote gives us pause to reflect on how this "crisis" is being used as the lever to get the people to go along with another major power grab.

[jaqeboy]

To be a true monopoly means that no other competition or option exists.
The Moulton family, Fernald family, and my family originally all made our own power... and did so during the time of our business operations.
Obviously not a great monopoly!

So you were able to make your own power and compete with the main utilities company? I'm blanking on it's name at the moment. I didn't know there was more than one ulitilities company in NH. Or if there was there is one more. Definitely not a free market in power generation.

Currently several power suppliers, and a couple of distribution networks.

Probably best for another thread - there is an existing one for electric utilities, but there are regional monopolies (they call it "a mutually exclusive franchise territory") - see description on the Public Utilities Commision's (PUC) website: http://www.puc.state.nh.us/Electric/electric.htm. There were 7 regional monopolies, but in 96, the legislature ordered a restructuring to allow retail choice - see the site, too much to go into here.

[John Edward Mercier]

You think central banking began with the Federal Reserve System?

Central banking entered the US in 1791...
What you are claiming as Capitalism is Corporatism... you still don't note the difference between those that act in a consensual manner as compared to those that act using the force of governing body.

[Porcupine_in_MA]

Jack's claiming that the words "capitalist" and "capitalism" originally meant the same as "corporatist" and "corporatism" remember? I'd still like to see evidence to this effect. Even if it did originally mean that I don't think it is as confusing to everyone as he is making it out to be.
Folk who are against "capitalism" most of the times are against a real free market (I know because I've asked them) so it works out the same.

[John Edward Mercier]

I think his period of reference is too short.
Originally capitalism is as perceived, but it was annexed by what we would later perceive to be corporatism. Even today politicians tend to talk about the free market... but the term is being annexed.
They use it to reference something that is not a free market.

[BaRbArIaN]

All it took was a few hundred billion more in pork products and the legislature rolled over.  Welcome to the USSA.  Papers, please....

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/03/news/economy/house_friday_bailout/index.htm?postversion=2008100309

[jaqeboy]

Here's a current usage of "capitalism" and you can see that it doesn't refer to free markets. He's probably a little muddled and generalistic, but it don't mean freedom.

A Little Problem With Capitalism

[jaqeboy]

Or another current usage:

One Nation under Capitalism; It's Time for a Crucifixion

These folks are obviously using a different definition than the mistaken in-movement usage of the word to mean "free markets"

[John Edward Mercier]

'We have afflicted the globe with the fatal contagions of the American Way and corporatism. And all of us, to varying degrees, are culpable. From bicycle-peddling vegans to limo riding corporados, we are each complicit in perpetuating American capitalism, a system so rotten that were it a piece of decaying meat, starving maggots would reject it.'

[jaqeboy]

'We have afflicted the globe with the fatal contagions of the American Way and corporatism. And all of us, to varying degrees, are culpable. From bicycle-peddling vegans to limo riding corporados, we are each complicit in perpetuating American capitalism, a system so rotten that were it a piece of decaying meat, starving maggots would reject it.'

PS: he also references "capitalism" in the same para. I reference the article to show that the in-movement usage of capitalism to mean free market is out-of-step with others' usage, which makes one's statements unclear, or makes one appear to be an apologist for a criminal elite (when one says "I love capitalism", for example, or "enjoy Capitalism", a la the Bureaucrash T-shirt slogan).

[jaqeboy]

Here's another reference (from a Bureaucrash post on their social site):

Barron's: Taxpayers Need to Do Still More for the Capitalists
http://bureaucrashsocial.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2310103%3ABlogPost%3A8680
"...many of us have been saying about this giveaway—it is the socialization of risk for capitalists."

You may have to log in on the BureauCrashSocial site to see the article.

[BillKauffman]

Free market competition naturally pushes price to cost squeezing out profits. That is why owners of capital needs the state to protect their profits.

Without the state we would have "laborism" not "capitalism". Where everyone receives the "full produce" of his own labor

[BillKauffman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)

Contemporary mutualist author Kevin Carson holds that capitalism has been founded on "an act of robbery as massive as feudalism," and argues that capitalism could not exist in the absence of a state. He says "it is state intervention that distinguishes capitalism from the free market". He does not define capitalism in the idealized sense, but says that when he talks about "capitalism" he is referring to what he calls "actually existing capitalism." He believes the term "laissez-faire capitalism" is an oxymoron because it has never existed. However, he says he has no quarrel with anarcho-capitalists who use the term "laissez-faire capitalism" and distinguish it from "actually existing capitalism." He says he has deliberately chosen to resurrect an old definition of the term.

Carson argues the centralization of wealth into a class hierarchy is due to state intervention to protect the ruling class, by using a money monopoly, granting patents and subsidies to corporations, imposing discriminatory taxation, and intervening militarily to gain access to international markets. Carson's thesis is that an authentic free market economy would not be capitalism as the separation of labor from ownership and the subordination of labor to capital would be impossible, bringing a class-less society where people could easily choose between working as a freelancer, working for a fair wage, taking part of a cooperative, or being an entrepreneur. He notes, as did Tucker before him, that a mutualist free market system would involve significantly different property rights than capitalism is based on, particularly in terms of land and intellectual property.

[Caleb]

Capitalism is a tricky thing to define.  What do anarcho-capitalists have to do with Capitalists? Almost nothing.

The main thing seems to be the belief that right to landed property must be given preference over right to ownership of labor, isn't that correct? As best as I can tell, that is the only thing that anarcho-capitalism has in agreement with capital C Capitalism.

[Caleb]

Jack's claiming that the words "capitalist" and "capitalism" originally meant the same as "corporatist" and "corporatism" remember? I'd still like to see evidence to this effect. Even if it did originally mean that I don't think it is as confusing to everyone as he is making it out to be.
Folk who are against "capitalism" most of the times are against a real free market (I know because I've asked them) so it works out the same.

What do you mean by this? "Folks who are against capitalism are against a real free market"

See, the problem that I have with the idea of the "free market" is that it is a meaningless term. Everybody believes in a free market - of things that they believe can be owned.

Do you believe in a free market of human slaves? How about of food composed of human beings? How about a free market of states (where your opponents can choose a state to subdue you)?  Do you believe in a free market of Mr. Burns blocking out the sun and then charging you for energy?

The question isn't whether someone believes in a free market or not, it's what do they believe can be legitimately owned.