William Galston sees things along the oppressor-oppressed axis.
There’s nothing we can do, says Mr. Cowen, to avert a future in which 10% to 15% of Americans enjoy fantastically wealthy and interesting lives while the rest slog along without hope of a better life, tranquilized by free Internet and canned beans…He seems not to have considered the possibility that his depiction of our future might fill [us] with justified revulsion.
Patrick J. Deneen chimes in along the civilization-barbarism axis.
Thus, a philosophy that places in the forefront a theory of human liberty arrives at the conclusion that certain historical, technological, and economic forces are inevitable, and it is futile to resist them. One might bother to ask the Amish if this is true, but they didn’t go to Harvard. Clearly, they don’t value human freedom, since they are not on the historical merry-go-round to inevitable human liberty—and degradation.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
What could Deneen possibly have been thinking when he wrote that paragraph?
The Amish are able to resist “certain historical, technological, and economic forces” because they are protected by the most technologically advanced military in the world. They are an example of “free riders,” and the example cannot possibly extend to the whole country, unless we want to be much poorer and taken over by a foreign government.
Average is definetely over.
The Dispensation Economics Manifest, is based upon Ephesians 1:10, the biblical revelation that Jesus Christ, is operating in dispensation, that is the household management plan of God to complete and fulfill all things in every age, epoch, era and time period,
The Dispensation Economics Manifest presents Fifteen Corollaries, that is Fifteen New Things, are coming by the Economy of God.
Corollary Number presents a New Paradigm.
Jesus Christ is pivoting the world from liberalism to authoritarianism.
Under liberalism bankers, corporations, government, entrepreneurs, and citizens of democracies were the legislators of economic value and the legislators of economic life.
Under authoritarianism, currency traders, bond vigilantes and nannycrats working in public private partnerships and in regional governance, are the legislators of economic value and are the legislators that shape one’s means and one’s ends.
More details can be found here http://theyenguy.wordpress.com/about/
The interesting thing is neither of these are good fits. The first posits circumstances free from any oppression but one of neglect though not out of our power to address. The second that a conception of liberty that ends up leaving us powerless in the face forces beyond our control is flawed. Both emphasize that choice and power are ours, though that choice is a collective rather than an individual one. Perhaps, these should be powerful vs powerless and choice or desire vs inevitability, with oppression or barbarism merely motifs of our failure to act and take responsibility.
If libertarians are conceding that the result of capitalism (especially free trade/globalization/factor price equalization plus (particularly technological) innovation) will be to create a society with a Latin-American-style divergence between a few rich people and a large mass of plebs, that seems to me to be a big deal.
Why should we care very much for capitalism, if that is the result? A few intellectuals may shrug their shoulders, say that resistance is futile, and that we should accept the inevitability of a society split between Vickies and Thetes, but not only is that a political loser, it seems intellectually weak. How much credibility should such writers now have? The free market’s most ardent defenders never predicted anything like this; it seems to vindicate folk socialism’s fundamental view of capitalism.
Socialism doesn’t appear, at least from where I sit, to be any more capable of solving any of the problems that Average is Over notices coming down the pipeline…namely, that modern societies need less and less unskilled and skilled labor alike. Collective ownership of the capital stock changes that equation how, exactly?
So I just read something that suggested to me a partial response to my own comment, namely, capitalism does not increase inequality, it redistributes it: inequality within nations is increasing, but inequality between nations is declining.