Talent in Society

August 24, 2014

Duncan Whitmore Method and Strategy, Morality and Ethics, Short Posts , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Extremely talented individuals are often lauded for their achievements in apparently furthering human endeavour and accomplishment. While effort and hard work is a vital component of any great achievement so too must we recognise that particular individuals are especially gifted by nature in one way or another and that lesser beings such as ourselves have little hope of matching the achievements of these people, however hard we might work.

However, the precise talents that we are wont to recognise and celebrate today all appear to be concentrated in highly specific areas. The artistic and sporting talents of actors, directors, football players and so on – and the often very lucrative salaries that professionals in those areas can attract – receive not only a (sometimes obsessive) degree of praise and attention but also an overwhelming amount of encouragement and nourishment. Television shows such as The X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent attempt to attract hidden singers and artists amongst the general public; children at school are persuaded to “express themselves” and find their “artistic personality” and to “aspire” to “creative” achievements.

There is nothing basically wrong with any of this, of course, and talent should be encouraged where it is found – although with children one might to wish to ensure that they are literate and numerate before attempting to find their “inner selves” and deceiving them too much into thinking that they are likely to emerge as anything other than normal, regular taxpayers. The problem is that when you strip out any highbrow rhetoric all of these talents – even great art, stirring music and record-breaking sporting achievements – basically achieve little more than provide entertainment; they are luxuries that must be funded out of more basic, material productive accomplishments. One very vital talent, the one talent that both provides all of the resources that maintain our standard of living and provides the wherewithal for us to enjoy art and sport is ignored. This is the ability to serve the needs of consumers as the head of a productive enterprise – in short, entrepreneurial talent.

The role of the typical leader of a multinational business, far from being lauded as a pinnacle of accomplishment and receiving praise and adulation for directing scarce resources to the ends that consumers most desire, is usually painted as a greedy, overpaid “fat cat” who exploits his workers and customers. Although it is true, of course, that many of these large firms are in bed with government and do not necessarily achieve their riches through voluntary trade, somehow one does not sense that this is the consciously acknowledged reason for the zealous lambasting thrown in the ir direction and that this attitude exists in spite of, rather than because of, any government ties. So-called “public service” – in other words, becoming a bureaucrat who leeches off productivity rather than creates it – is seen, for its alleged selflessness and altruism, to be a more noble pursuit that stooping into the grubby gutters of business. In reality the contrast between entrepreneurial talent and political talent is completely the other way round. Entrepreneurs have to be able to direct the scarce goods available to their most highly valued ends in order to bake a bigger pie; politicians, on the other hand, do nothing more than persuade everyone else why you and your sponsors should have a larger slice of that pie without adding anything to it.

Our inability to recognise and nurture this very vital talent upon which our lives depend is nothing short of tragic. Even television programmes that highlight the entrepreneurial spirit paint aspiring entrepreneurs as either whimsical and unrealistic day dreamers to be laughed at (such as in The Dragon’s Den), or as hard-hearted, self-centred and antagonistic (such as in The Apprentice). Popular entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson have had to mould their image as an underdog, portraying the mainstream, established business community as greedy and exploitative of the consumer.

Of course it is hard to believe that the entrepreneurial spirit will ever be entirely killed as there will always be people hot on the heels of any profit opportunity. But when we are doing all we can to kill or ridicule the entrepreneurial spirit and when we create more “profit” opportunities through fleecing the public rather than serving them we have to begin to wonder how our standard or living will be maintained in years to come. At the very least, the great entrepreneurs of the future – the John Rockefellers, the Henry Fords, the Andrew Carnegies, the Bill Gates– are unlikely to be from the West, and Asia will take over as the productive power house of the world. We in the West will simply become lazy and dependent, expecting our mouths to be filled with goodies by someone else’s spoon. Although all of this might seem like a relatively minor issue compared to what else is going on in the collapsing Western Empire – debasement, debt, war, and so on – it is all part of the same calamitous catalogue of problems that we face. By recognising the true origin of productivity and encouraging the genuine virtue in entrepreneurship then we can, at least, begin to pull some of the nails out of not the West’s coffin and bring us on a path towards resurrection.

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Liberty in our Lifetime

August 10, 2013

Duncan Whitmore Essays, Method and Strategy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Perusing many libertarian and “Austrian” oriented websites, podcasts and newsreels, it is very easy for one to lapse into despair when considering the possibility of ever achieving a world of liberty. The stories and the commentary are always the same – of collapsing economies, increasing government interference in our private lives, and the increased propensity for war and conflict. Indeed, at times, the state can seem so overwhelming in its march towards total domination that the typical libertarian, normally isolated as he is, can only sink into despondency over how any of this may be stopped let alone reversed.

There are, however, five reasons to be optimistic for the prospect of gaining liberty, even in our lifetime. Furthermore these are not mere fleeting trivialities but, rather, relate directly to aspects that are pertinent and essential to the existence and strength of government. Let us consider each of them in turn.

1. Government is Small

As government is parasitic upon the productive element of the economy it can never, in its totality, consist of more than a mere fraction of the total population. If the majority become the parasite and the minority the host then the latter will simply collapse under the weight of the burden. Government cannot continue to siphon labour and capital from the productive sector and divert it to the unproductive. Even if we live in an era when all of our emails and telephone calls are stored, the government will always be in the position of having only a handful of people who will be able to scrutinise and read these emails. It takes even more than that – talent and intelligence – to analyse these communications and to put two and two together. In short there will never be enough man-hours in order for the government to manage and spy on the lives of everyone from dawn until dusk. Even before we had mass electronic communication and had to rely on snail mail the government still failed to crack down on black markets, drug shipments, smuggling, and all of the other free market responses to the non-crimes that it created, the circumvention of which was successful because it served the needs of the majority. Government will forever be burdened by the fact that it is in the minority and this is a major obstacle towards both its growth and the effectiveness of its meddling.

2. Government is Stupid

Why was Great Britain the biggest imperial superpower of the nineteenth century and why was that role taken on by the United States in the twentieth? By contrast, why did the Soviet Union fail to make any headway at all in international dominance after World War II up until the point it collapsed? Both Great Britain and the US were internally liberal countries in their respective eras, both accumulating a massive amount of capital that enabled a vast number of goods to be produced and the resulting standard of living to rise. There was, therefore, a plentiful store of wealth into which the government could tap in order to fund its foreign ventures. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, with its centralised, socialised economy, could not produce the wherewithal necessary to enable it to enforce itself imperialistically on foreign nations. In other words, government relies on keeping the society on which is leeches relatively free in order to guarantee the productivity that will enable government to expand its operations. In contrast, government itself, as has often been said, cannot even run the post office. Indeed government has failed to invent anything valuable or worthwhile during its entire existence and is only able to take over and operate industries that were kindled and developed in the private sector. This is true of every government operation that is, today, taken for granted – roads, healthcare, communications, utilities, and so on. The only thing that government has ever been able to do with modest efficiency is construct gallows and develop nuclear weapons, i.e. to invent the machinery that kills millions of people. Because of the absence of prices, profits and losses, totally socialised societies failed to harmonise the stages of production that is necessary in order to produce a vast amount of wealth, and very quickly these societies had to revert to at least a kernel of market activity. Indeed, it was a running joke among Soviet economists that they needed at least one country to remain free of international socialism so that the planners and bureaucrats would know what the prices of goods should be. Government without the free market is blind and stupid, unable to generate the resources it needs to carry on its overreaching activities. Therefore, if government was to extend itself to an all-encompassing dominion the only thing it could be certain of achieving is suicide.

3. Government is Greedy

Libertarians often point out that what is often forgotten in mainstream discussion of government is the fact that it too is populated with human beings who have desires, choices and ends and that they will happily use the legitimated violence through the mechanism of the state in order to achieve these ends. It follows, therefore, that as soon as that system fails to enable them to grab the wealth and riches that they desire, then they too, the government officials and the bureaucrats, will lose faith in their own organisation. One of the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed is not because the people revolted but because the inner circle themselves began to see that the very system they were operating was not even giving them a particularly high standard of living. They were simply (to use a clichéd phrase) rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, playing around vainly with an ever diminishing pool of wealth on the path to destruction. It is, therefore, a mistake to suggest that any post-Cold War politician is a “socialist” or a “communist” in the true sense of those words. Rather, they have to keep the capitalist means of production going in order to blood suck from the wealth that is furnished by private industry. The most we are likely to get today is government partnership with big business, a form of fascism (minus, perhaps, the excessive nationalistic overtones of Hitler and Mussolini) rather than strict forms of socialism or communism. Ironically, therefore, government’s own greed for luxury and largesse will itself stop government from becoming too powerful and overreaching.

4. Government Cannot Risk Revolution

All governments, being a minority of the population, require, at least, the tacit acceptance of the majority of the population in order to remain in power. As soon as this acceptance is lost and there is active resistance then government ceases to function and will simply collapse. One of the reasons why the majority of the population today has become so tacit is because the standard of living, compared to previous ages, is so high. Although this standard would be much higher in the absence of any government at all, it is still the case that capitalist production and free exchange is able to both fund all of government’s boondoggles and also ensure that even an average wage earner in the Western world can live in relative comfort. It must be admitted that, on balance, in spite of the proportion of their productivity that is siphoned off by the government being at its highest point in history, people are relatively content. Although we are not yet quite as soma-induced as the inhabitants of Huxley’s Brave New World, the attractions of entertainment and leisure time that are made possible by capital accumulation through the free market provide a permanent and satisfying distraction from all of the nasty things that government is doing. Indeed some people’s thoughts never move much beyond analysis of the last football game or of the latest participants in The X Factor. The resulting apathy towards political and social matters, we might say, is the very bedrock of the tacit acceptance of government. Government, therefore, cannot risk destroying the origin of the production of the standard of living that makes this possible if it is to continue to gain its tacit acceptance. Whereas in previous ages there was nothing much to lose from the tightening of a king or emperor’s grip, today there will be a very marked change in the efficacy of production if the government’s tentacles strangle the capitalist system. Deprived of supermarket shelves stocked full of food, water that runs as soon as the tap is turned on, lights that illuminate with the flick of a switch, and televisions that flood their living rooms with Strictly Come Dancing, people would flock to overthrow the government that had so obviously failed. Indeed, it has been said that any nation is only three meals away from revolution but with our standard of living so much higher now it might not even take an empty stomach to arouse the masses. Hence any government worldwide could be less than a single day away from being toppled if its citizens are deprived of some comfort that was, hitherto, taken for granted. Food for thought, one might say, for any politician in power.

5. Government will be Out-Innovated

It is something of a truism amongst military historians that generals are always fighting the last war. They fail to adapt their methods of assault and defence to the new technologies and methods of fighting that have emerged since the previous conflict. Hence the mechanised horror and destruction of World War I made possible by twentieth century technology was met with strategies and tactics that dated from the nineteenth. This points to what is, perhaps, the biggest hope that we have for liberty in our lifetime – that government will not be able to keep up with the pace of free market innovation. The free market is necessarily heterogenous, decentralised and unbureaucratic whereas government is the precise opposite – big, unwieldy and burdened by procedure in a lengthy chain of command which always puts it on the back foot compared to the scattered mass of private citizens. We have already stated that government cannot create anything useful and must largely rely on the innovation of capitalists from which to draw its expertise and technological know-how. And further, we have also already pointed out that government has always failed to control black markets and underground trading that emerge in response to government induced shortages and prohibitions. These aspects can only accelerate in the technological age, when it is possible to transfer wealth and information to the other side of the world at the click of a button. Already innovations such as virtual currencies have emerged in response to the debt-laden and corrupt government-approved financial system and no doubt, in the wake of the scandal of the US’s spying program as revealed by a former NSA contractor and CIA operative, Edward Snowden, there will be increased market innovations to provide for privacy and security. Indeed we might even say that the internet itself caught government on the back foot – with a worldwide network of information and resources emerging and developing successfully before they were even aware of it, it’s difficult to believe that government wouldn’t want to turn back the clock and put strangleholds on such a boon to freedom. In short, government always has to react to the obstacles that are put in its way by innovative forces that are far superior. If the free market invents letter writing government has to find a way to intercept letters. If the free market invents the telephone it has to find a way to tap phone lines. And if the free market invents email then the government must determine how it can download and read these. The ultimate achievement will be when each individual person will be able, at very low cost, to protect his/her person and property from the aggression of others – perhaps through some kind of invisible force field or other such futuristic invention. The precise means are not as important as the concept; for if this could be achieved it would, in one fell swoop, eliminate both the means through which government leeches off its productive citizenry (force) and its very raison d’être – the production of security and the protection against private criminals and foreign, invading states. Indeed the latter might prove to be more important than the former given that the very justification of government for most people lies in the fact that society would be consumed by plundering and pillage in the absence of government. Take that alleged necessity of government away and what reason is left for it to exist? The fact that it would not even be able to exist in such a world where it would obviously be deprived of tax revenue might just be the icing on the cake.

Conclusion

Far from sinking into depression or despair at the state of the world today, we have demonstrated that there is, in fact, much to be hopeful for in the prospect for liberty. Furthermore, if the last point we noted above is true, then we should also be optimistic of the chances that there will also be very little violent revolution and we can look forward to a libertarian world emerging peacefully and with little bloodshed.

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Optimism for Liberty

March 7, 2013

Duncan Whitmore Method and Strategy, Short Posts , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Taking a look at a single day’s page of the Libertarian website www.lewrockwell.com, one would think that the world is about to collapse. Indeed it is hard to not be pessimistic when confronted with the following type of line-up:

  • The bankruptcy of Western nations, particularly the US;
  • Increasing wars and overseas intervention; the expansion of imperialism;
  • Increased Government invasion into privacy;
  • Economic stagnation, endless money printing, the recommended flight into previous metals;
  • The dangers of Government medicine;
  • The dangers of Government schooling;
  • The lack of integrity of the political class; official lies and corruption.

This is just a selection of the most frequent topics and some days one feels like it is enough to engender complete despair about the future of the world in which we live. Such a feeling would not be unjustified; indeed the website, apparently the best read Libertarian website in the world, is almost unique in drawing attention to these important aspects.

Nevertheless it is vital not to lose optimism in the face of such adversity. And while it may seem that the state is increasing its stranglehold to choking point on the average citizen, there are several key reasons that give cause for optimism.

The first is the increased ability to disseminate information with ease; the growth of the internet left Government control behind and now that it is firmly out of the bag it is unlikely that it will ever be brought under the Government’s heel. Within seconds it is possible to communicate information at very low cost from one side of the world to the other and at the very least for those who want to become educated and to find the true reasons for the way the world turns the ability is that much greater. In some quarters it is true that this aspect does tend to be overplayed. Technological development can also serve opposing ideologies just as it can serve the cause of freedom and there is also the tendency that people will go looking for the answers they want rather than for the truth. Nevertheless this development cannot be overlooked on the road towards liberty.

The second and greater reason, however, is that today we are still enjoying a standard of living that is the fruit of two centuries worth of relative economic freedom. The accumulation of capital that could take place in this epoch is unique in history and whereas pre-Industrial generations could only accept their meagre lot in life as serfs it is difficult to comprehend how this attitude could be repeated today. For today’s average citizen lives far more luxuriantly than did a king of the Middle Ages; not only is our time that of the PC, the iPhone, and communications gadgets but also of such “humbler” luxuries such as cars, refrigerators, supermarkets stacked full of food, clothes shops, and an almost endless array of products that can be bought from some outlet somewhere for relatively a modest price. This standard of living requires the maintenance and growth of its underlying capital structure, a structure that we know, from “Austrian” Economics, can only be produced and nurtured under a condition of free-market capitalism. Indeed so powerful has been this productive tendency of free-market forces that they have even been more than able to mask statist interference. During the 1920s for example productivity was so high that prices still managed to decline in the face of excessive increases of the money supply. And even today the fact that the world still holds together suggests that capitalism and freedom are for the most part still being allowed to work. But more important than that it is very unlikely that a rapid descent of the standard of living could occur without exciting a revolution. When people have become accustomed to living as they do then it would be a “brave” politician indeed who would bring about the destruction of that standard. In the back of their minds I happen to think that this is realised; that they know that freedom is what produces the goods we enjoy today and that, in any case, it is only when free individuals are able to become so productive that the Government has a source of wealth that it can confiscate.

For this reason, therefore, I remain an optimist for the cause of freedom – optimistic that the capitalistic structure of the Western world has not yet totally collapsed and optimistic that, should it come close to doing so, our “leaders” will have the angry masses, pitted and plundered to the hilt, with which to contend.

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