[ExI] Money and Human Nature (was Re: Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal)

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 18 05:06:40 UTC 2011



From: Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2011 8:04 AM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Money and Human Nature (was Re: Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal)

> Stefano wrote:

> European aristocracies, OTOH, used certainly to have a more lavish lifestyle. But even there, at the origins of feodalism, you were not the owner of the land you ruled on, and the king (or the higher vassal) could take it away at any moment if you did not perform the duties for which it was entrusted to you: military protection, economic production, enforcement of laws, administration of justice, resolution of conflicts, collection of taxes... Paradoxically, it was the new ideas brought by capitalism that achieved to make them essentially parasitic classes, especially in continental Europe.

Agreed. One of the more troublesome aspects of plutocratic capitalism is that it does away with the feudal concepts of chivalry and noblesse oblige. In other words, capitalism offers a few fortunate individuals most of the power and privilege of the ancient aristocracies with few of the responsibilities or even simple accountability for the billions of dollars, jobs, and lives that they move around like pawns on a chess-board.
 
After all you don't read too many accounts of nobleman kicking old peasants off their land, to allow young strong peasants to his work his fields, without so much as a thank you for 40 years of taxes. Come to think of it, you don't hear about too many Southern plantation owners not feeding their slaves once they got too old to work. Instead, they usually got the easier assignments.
 
Yet, in capitalism apparently, the only loyalty that counts, is brand loyalty.
 
> Moreover, the idea is still widespread in the West that those who (at least officially) rule a country need not be the richest people in that country, or even that they should forfeit the control of any significant assets they may have during office. 

Funny you should mention that. Toward the end of Feudal Japan but before the Meiji Restoration, there came a point when the Emperors of Japan, memebers of the Yamato family literally believed to be the direct descendants of the Shinto Sun-Goddess, were desititue. One had to pawn some of his regalia to pay for the funeral of his father the former Emperor and then wait twenty years for peasants to donate enough money to him for a coranation ceremony. The reason for this is that by this point the political intrigue, deciet, and ruthlessness of the nobility had gotten so great and violence so common place that all that mattered was who had the armies. So at the time it was the Oda clan that was the real power. The Emperor was the puppet of an impotent Shogun who was a puppet of the Oda because the Oda had land, money, and armies. Neither Emporer nor Shogun were titles that anybody in the Oda clan were qualified to hold, yet they managed to bribe,
 murder, and even slaghter their way into de facto rulership of the country. 
 
 
> What many consider a distortion is the fact that today poorer, albeit theoretically more powerful, rulers are in fact over-influenced by richer private citizens, or much more often headless, self-referential institutions, cartels and circles, such as bankers and speculators,  without any office or answeerability or visibility, through corruption, lobbying, campaign financing, media control, etc. 

See point #1 above about noblesse oblige.

>Actually, what distinguished medieval European (and Japanese) feudalism was that lords had a great deal of stability of inheritance and property rights (and so did "free men") compared to "absolute monarchies." The situation was quite different in the Middle East, for instance, where the ruler could and did replace "nobles", including appoint eunuch slaves to the positions of greatest power. Eunuchs and slaves were the extreme example of the perfect loyal drones. They had no lineage to protect, so they wouldn't fight for their own land rights, and since they owed their power directly to the calif or sultan, they protected him to protect themselves. This lack of secure lordly property rights, combined with polygyny (and no primogeniture) made Middle East politics much volatile than European politics. Essentially, there was a civil war every time the government changed from one king to the next.

So caliphate politics share traits with western liberal democracy in the sense that the top-level beauracrats share the executive's fate, with elections replacing civil war? Interesting. 
 
>Capitalism, like autism, is a spectrum. Even a little bit of respect for property rights is better than no respect, and a little bit more is better than a little.

I agree with this sentiment mostly. But sometimes I question the validity of land ownership. The idea that you can *own* something that was here long before you were and will be here long after you are gone is very strange and illogical.
 
 If anything, then you are a property of the land you own, rather than vice-versa. 
 
>By the way, the complaint that the greedy, money-grubbing rich and the conniving, scheming money-lenders have too much influence is not at all new, and long antedated the formal practice of capitalism. The complaint was heard all the time in the middle ages (in both Europe and the Middle East). Nor is there anything at all new (or noble) about the Occupy cries to "Behead the Bankers!" (and yes, I have heard this, seen it on a sign, and saw it repeated by a friend on Facebook.) This is just the same old, old, old ugly that resulted in pogroms against the Jews, who were hated because they were owed money. 

If you hate bankers, then you got to hate the Swiss too! ;-)
 
 
> It's so much easier to kill your lender than to pay back loans… then as now.

Hell your lender can't kill itself by jumping off of cliffs, these days. What do you think TARP was all about? Those banks deserved to die and didn't. So now a bunch of people somewhere are going to have to die of poverty to make up the difference. Such a shame. It's fine to treat capitalism as a game, but don't let banks play that game by a different set of rules than everybody else.
 
Stuart LaForge
 
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." -Clay Shirky
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