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» babble   » walking the talk   » labour and consumption   » The hidden hand will never work without a hidden fist.

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Author Topic: The hidden hand will never work without a hidden fist.
N.Beltov
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Babbler # 4140

posted 17 September 2005 05:05 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
“The hidden hand of the market,” Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer-prize-winning foreign policy columnist for the New York Times, opined, “will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without a McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps” (New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1999)

Discuss.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4600

posted 17 September 2005 05:25 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hee. There's an economics blogger who regularly rants about the improper use of the hidden hand metaphor (an example); I wonder what he'd do with this.

Anyway, all you really need is a mechanism for enforcing property rights and contracts. That may or may not require an army, depending on whether or not there's a credible external threat to those mechanisms.


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
N.R.KISSED
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Babbler # 1258

posted 17 September 2005 05:48 PM      Profile for N.R.KISSED     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Anyway, all you really need is a mechanism for enforcing property rights and contracts. That may or may not require an army, depending on whether or not there's a credible external threat to those mechanisms.

The whole concept of property began as a violent act of plunder by imperial armies abroad and against peasant commons in their own countries. Anyone who challenges such claims to ownership even to unutilized properties will be met with violent force. This has been the driving force of capitalism much more than trade, unless you consider the exchange of bullets and explosives for land, resources and labour trade.


From: Republic of Parkdale | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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Babbler # 4140

posted 17 September 2005 06:12 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yea, well given out friendly economists' conflation of the Labour Theory of Value with the Theory of Surplus Value (can't find the thread for the moment) it's clear that he hasn't read Capital or any other of the more critical histories of capitalism that deal with such issues as clearance of the commons and so on.

The quote that I provided, by the way, comes from John Bellamy Foster's Review of the Month called Naked Imperialism in which Foster tries to show the continuity between the policies of the current US administration and past ones. Foster again:

quote:
The argument advanced here points to a different conclusion. U.S. militarism and imperialism have deep roots in U.S. history and the political-economic logic of capitalism. As even supporters of U.S. imperialism are now willing to admit, the United States has been an empire from its inception. “The United States,” Boot writes in “American Imperialism?,” “has been an empire since at least 1803, when Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory.

I like this guy. He combines traditional "Red" views with a very developed "Green" awareness.

quote:
Foster: The unprecedented dangers of this new global disorder are revealed in the twin cataclysms to which the world is heading at present: nuclear proliferation and hence increased chances of the outbreak of nuclear war, and planetary ecological destruction. These are symbolized by the Bush administration’s refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol as a first step in controlling global warming.

Gotta go for now.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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Babbler # 4600

posted 17 September 2005 06:33 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

[exits echo chamber]


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
maestro
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7842

posted 17 September 2005 06:33 PM      Profile for maestro     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It is no surprise that the G8 nations spend 75 - 80% of the world's total military expenditure.
From: Vancouver | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged

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