Must read: Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent's Stealth Takeover of America

[octoberlib]

Last edited Tue Dec 4, 2018, 02:23 PM - Edit history (2)

This article has been re-circulated due to what Republicans are trying to pull in Wisconsin and Michigan. Highly recommend McClean's book Democracy in Chains

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean


Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America’s burst of radical right-wing attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you’ve taken several classes in economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students have little understanding of his work.

The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.

That is a dangerous blind spot, MacLean argues in a meticulously researched book, Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. While Americans grapple with Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, we may be missing the key to changes that are taking place far beyond the level of mere politics. Once these changes are locked into place, there may be no going back.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america



Important to note that the Koch Brothers aren't Republicans, they're Libertarians , and they're just using the party to undermine democracy and install a corporate authoritarian state. Their aim is to destroy both parties and Republicans are happy to help them do it.

[calimary]

1. Bookmarked for further study.

[octoberlib]

3. They want to kill public education because it tends to foster community values. Really evil

With Koch’s money and enthusiasm, Buchanan’s academic school evolved into something much bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable.

[Girard442]

2. I believe the appropriate term here is "toady".

The fact that he wrote extensively about sophisticated concepts doesn't change the underlying reality.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Nobel Laureate?

Economic theory based upon enforced darwinian principles and no supporting mathematical or practical basis? This wins a Nobel.

I think the Nobel committee needs to rethink the criteria. Being a novel crackpot without regard to human beings seems quite the opposite of what Alfred intended.

[octoberlib]

6. McClean made that point. They awarded Buchanan the Nobel based on abstract theory

not empirical data. It's why Koch funded politicians have been waging a war on facts.

[ProfessorGAC]

8. Yeah I Saw That

That's why i was directing my criticism at the Nobel committee. Would they give the prize in physics based only on abstract theory? I know they've given the prize for theory, but there was at least some mathematical proofs demonstrated in that work.

This guy getting a Nobel is kind of ridiculous.

On Edit: She actually pointed out that he eschewed the math and practical applications in favor of abstraction. How convenient is that? "Here's how i think it should work, even though there is not a shred of proof that things would actually work that way."

[octoberlib]

9. Yep, it's how they operate. An Oklahoma Republican introduced a bill the other day

to abolish public education in that state. I expect to see this in other red states, soon. Thank god, Democrats took back 7 Governorships to thwart their call for a constitutional convention.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. I Read That Right Here on DU

Then on the side piece about that guy, WOW! What a giant tool that guy is.

[superpatriotman]

5. As a Keynesian

This guy and his admirers can go F themselves

[Girard442]

7. Tom Tomorrow's brilliant take on the logical final consequences of this philosophy.

https://www.thenation.com/article/one-rich-guy-who-owns-everything/

[marylandblue]

10. Scary!

[appalachiablue]

12. Good that MacLean uncovered this radical economist, libertarian.

Buchanan’s view of human nature was distinctly dismal. Adam Smith saw human beings as self-interested and hungry for personal power and material comfort, but he also acknowledged social instincts like compassion and fairness. Buchanan, in contrast, insisted that people were primarily driven by venal self-interest.

Crediting people with altruism or a desire to serve others was “romantic” fantasy: politicians and government workers were out for themselves, and so, for that matter, were teachers, doctors, and civil rights activists. They wanted to control others and wrest away their resources: “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty.

The people who needed protection were property owners, and their rights could only be secured though constitutional limits to prevent the majority of voters from encroaching on them, an idea Buchanan lays out in works like Property as a Guarantor of Liberty (1993).
MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was often more stark, warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and “predators” out to fleece them.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america

[realmirage]

13. America will have a second Revolution

It will be unavoidable due to human tendency among the rich to take more and more power. History shows this. It’s a never ending cycle.