Statism, still a cult. A response to Michael Lind.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/libertarians_still_a_cult/

Your article "Libertarianism, still a cult" marked the triumph of libertarian thought.  When our enemies make arguments like these it means we have won the logical field.  There are no arguments left against us.

When your main argument is "nobody's done it yet, so it must be bad" you don't get to criticise anyone else's logic, nor call anyone else paid shills. If you really believed that that nobody else having done it means it can't be done you would not be writing for a "progressive" mag. Progressivism by definition adopts programs that haven't been done before. That's why they advocated things like minimum wage laws, which were novel at the time. Should those have been rejected because if they had been workable some other country would have adopted them? Ok, they weren't workable but how about abolition of slavery? At one time nobody had abolished slavery (as far as anyone knew at then). Should noble goal have been rejected for that reason?

In any case you yourself admit you don't have any logical reason to believe libertarianism wouldn't work. Otherwise why would it be "The one question" we can't answer? If you had reason why any particular libertarian policy wouldn't work, either individually or in combination with all the others then make it. The fact that libertarians haven't convinced either dictators or the voting public tells us nothing about whether our policies would work.

"But if the libertarian ideal is a stateless society, then libertarianism is merely a different name for utopian anarchism and deserves to be similarly ignored."

Ok, firstly if you knew anything about libertarianism you'd know that there are "minarchist" and "anarcho-capitalists" both of whom call themselves libertarian. If you don't know that much then how do you know anarcho-capitalism is utopian or should be ignored? You don't but then since your entire article was based on a philosophy best described as "Reactionary Stupid" that doesn't surprise me. There have been societies that were functionally "anarcho-capitalist" and they seemed to have worked rather well. While I don't expect you to just believe this, the fact that you don't know about the argument suggests you are being paid to ignore facts, not illuminate them.

The enemy of Boston is still the government.

In the wake of the Boston Bombings there has been a lot of melodrama, a lot of calls for increased police powers and surveillance and the usual statist mumbo-jumbo about how this changes things.  It does not change thing.  In 2012 there were 51 murders in Boston, and from what I've read at least 10% of these would be drug related.  In other words the "War on (Some) Drugs" killed at least 40% more people than terrorists.  That's not including people who died from AIDS because someone couldn't get a clean needle (not necessarily them, they could have caught it from a junkie) or because they couldn't get condoms in jail and couldn't stop getting raped either.  It's also not including people who die because government interference in the health sector makes it harder to get treated (including but not limited to, licensure, FDA hoop-jumping, the bizarre insurance system).  So remember, the terrorist are _an_ enemy, they're not _the_ enemy, that is and will always remain, the State.

The death or Aaron Swartz, or how the FBI does it's job.

Firstly my sympathies go out to the Swartz family.  Your son, and through him you, were creully and unjustly persecuted, punished for the most virtuous behaviour.  Your son will truly be missed by all lovers of freedom and integrity. 

Those who have faith in the core idea of the State will see the hounding to death of this innocent man as a cruel anomaly.   Something that should have been prevented by safeguards within the FBI and other Federal Agencies.  More controls are needed, they will conclude, to eliminate the persecution of those who do no harm and concentrate on the FBI's real purpose, detecting and prosecuting crime. 

Those who believe the actions of State employees are designed to benefit the "ruling class" by crushing movements against it's interests will believe the FBI was concentrating on it's real purpose.  Charging an innocent man with nonexistant or trivial crimes (that even the "victims" didn't want punished) was retaliation for peacefully, legally, constitutionally and above all sucessfully opposing SOPA and therefore entirely consistent with the FBI serving the "ruling class". 

I would like to put forward a third possible function of the FBI, the FBI exists to justify it's own existance, both to the general public and to the "ruling class".  Periodic persecutions of people connected to movements the "ruling class" don't like is simply an attempt to convice them that the FBI is acting in their interests.  No actual success in promoting "ruling class" interests is neccesary or even necessarily desirable from the point of view of those deciding what the FBI does. 

The FBI opposed organised crime, the civil rights movement, communism, "right wing" "radicals", environmentalists and other causes.  In order; 1) organised crime flourised for decades and continues to do so individual syndicates only being destroyed when they fell to internal rot, 2) blacks not only got the equal rights they deserved but arguably much more and one of them is in the White House, 3) communism was not only kept alive by the membership dues of FBI agents but was given massive cover by the FBI's bungled attempts to crack down on it (e.g. the Rosenberg executions which massively undermined anti-communist credibility), 4) right wing radicals were massively justified and empowered by the Waco fiasco and continue to be grow as a movement (depending on how you define "right wing" and "radical", and finally environmentalists are dictating the diversion of perhaps trillions of dollars of resources into probably useless "green" projects and aims.  So only when the success of a movement opposed by the FBI would imply the failure of another movement opposed by the FBI is such success not assured.  The fact that the FBI opposes you seems to be an infallible indication that you will triumph.

While saying this might seem like just a dig at the competence and professionalism of the FBI (and believe me there's plenty to criticise there) it's not, it's a fundamental part of the FBI's role as the security blanket of the "ruling class".  The FBI is sicced on groups the ruling class can't stop with it's normal means.  When they start to feel powerless (and yes, that can happen to the "ruling class" they think "Well, we'll just send in the Feds, that'll stop them dead in their tracks.".  Saying this to themselves makes them less worried, allows them to feel in control of the situation.  It is however an illusion.  If they were really in control of the situation they would have used the media, government zoning regulators or your own neighbours to stop it.  That they resorted to the FBI means deep down they know they can't stop something and simply want to remain in denial. 

So this is my prediction, on the 25th anniversary of Arron Swartz's death, we will look back and say "Everything he wanted came to pass" (except maybe no ads).

Some of you might be wondering why I kept using "ruling class" in parenthesis.  That's complicated and will be my next blog post.

The Chicago teachers are doing their job really well.

Now let's see what their job is.

By Michael Price

tThe Chicago teachers currently on strike are very good at their job. This statement is likely (certain) to be contested ao I will define my terms carefully to defend it.

By "teachers" I mean those in the Chicago school system whose job title includes the word "Teacher". By "their job" I mean that which they must do to avoid being fired. Clearly what you have to do to avoid being fired is your job. So my proposition can be restated as "Those whose job title includes the word teacher in the Chicago public school system are very good at doing what they need to do to avoid being fired.".

Some might object that it's very hard to get fired in the Chicago PS system, but why is that so? It is so because of the public perceptions of teachers. The teacher's union power is largely dependent on this. If every time teachers went on strike they were condenmed and the public demanded stern action and no concessions to those who held education* hostage the union would have much less power. Certainly the power of unions political contributions allows them to achieve some goals but which goals? If the public had their heart set on making teachers accountable then politicians would oblige them. Union leaders would be told "You can have your raises, your pensions etc. but on accountablility we can't budge.". And since their job is to get a deal they'd take it.

So clearly teachers have convinced the public that givng them job security is important for society. Not only are they convinced of the value of public school teachers in general but the value of any teacher who hasn't failed months of appeals.

That is their job after all, to convince people of their value. It is not to teach, or even to mind, the children . It is to make it politically impossible to disband or even substantiallly reduce, the public school system. Currently most people in America and the Western world generally believe that without public schools their children would be labouring in sweatshops. Creul taskmasters would tease them by offering them their newspaper on their 10 minute lunchbreak, knowing the proles can't read it. Truely this is a magnificant success on the part of the teachers (helped by their own steadfast belief in it) especially considering the historical reality. So disparage them all you want, but remember, they're probably better at their job than you are at yours.

* I'm well aware that teachers can only hold schooling hostage not education. The public perception is different.

This is a response to "Thank god for taxes" by Andrew Leonard http://www.salon.com/2012/07/13/thank_god_for_taxes/

Wow, someone on $150,000 a year does five extra minutes work and he wants to pin a medal on their chests. For that amount of cash I want a lapdance, not just a photo album. You criticise yourself for "bad parenting" for letting an album burn, but you're enabling the crippling debt that will rob your children of years of their life. What is wrong with you? Everything you claim you want, better education, lower taxes on the poor, better infrastructure services, all these are being sacrificed to overpay a politically connected group of high income earners. And you call yourself a leftist.

Let's start with your economic fallacies, first of all it's not the fault of globalisation or Walmart that you won't spend the money on a grill that won't burn your house down. That's your fault.

Secondly you dishonestly try to link the health insurance mandate to your mortgate provider requiring home insurance. The worst your mortgage provider could have done is refused you a mortgage, he couldn't have demanded money at gunpoint like the government. These are not the same things. Not that health insurance as currently practiced in the USA is anything like actual insurance in the first place.

Then we go on to your

own private stimulus package. Wow, it's only been 160 years since Bastiat explained the broken window fallacy, way to keep current. Does Salon pick it's economic commentators for ignorance? No your disaster did not create lots of benefits, it just diverted labor and capital from providing other benefits.

The most startling claim in your article is that you "got your money's worth" out of high taxes. It is startling because nothing you say shows this to be true and everything you say shows it to be irrelevant. Suppose it were true that you, and everyone else whose house caught fire, got their money's worth. What about the other 90% of the people that didn't?

But even this claim is dubious. The cost of firefighting services should be about $75/year* or $1875 for the 25 years you've been there. Are you saying that you haven't paid much more than this in excess taxes?

Of course my $75/year figure is based on the fees a city firefighting service charges for fire protection outside city borders. Private firefighting firms might well be cheaper as they don't have to pay the absurd costs of firefighters salaries and pensions. That you what someone does doesn't mean that they deserve more money. Would private firefighters take the same care with your scrapbook? Why wouldn't they if it meant positive publicity and word of mouth?

When women have to defend themselves against lying feminists.

So the professional misser of the point Erin KLG has defended her article “When Women Don’t Want Daughters. This seems to be at least in part in reply to girlwriteswhat completely disembowling said article. Erin claims that "the world was harder for women. ". Let's take a look at her justifications and see if they hold water or more hot air.

Number one men have almost all the positions of power. Therefore there lives are all easier. Here Erin fails to make the basic logic distinction between "All of X are Y" and "All of Y are X". The fact that I share a type of chromosome with almost all world and national leaders doesn't actually help me. It's not like I can say "Hey I'd like special treatment from you Mr. Powerful on account of how we both have dicks.". Well I could but unless he's really into dicks that's not likely to help. Having a vagina, which most powerful men are into (not all but a large majority) generally helps a lot more. Maybe that's why, as GWW pointed out, more money is spent, anything from 8 to 100 times more on female than male problems.

For the second point Kan't Learn Gentleness (I'm going to try and give her as many deserved acronyms as I can) complained "We" haven't had a female president. By this she means just the USA, presumably. But a female US president would be a massive advantage to the men's right's movement because she would not have to prove her feminist credentials and could look at men's disadvantage without being massacred in the press. I don't think it WOULD happen but it could. In any case I haven't lead a country either and I don't whine about it.

For sheer assininity (real men don't just use words they CREATE them) the third point can't be beat. Women get portrayed badly in the media. She gives a number of examples of the horrible, horrible ways they get portrayed. Of these some didn't mention women at all, some didn't imply any judgements on women and NONE showed unambiguous violence against women. There was one ad that showed a woman in a sexual situation with several men, but whether it was consensual or not wasn't clear. Another showed a woman dead, but it she didn't appear to have died by violence.

Being the distractable guy I am I then clicked some links from these pages and got to one allegedly showing the 10 funniest TV ads. One of these showed a man who looked like a Pinata with a broken arm and bandage on his head, the joke being that he had been beaten with a stick to get skittles. Not on the violence against men specifically mentioned, and the results clearly visible but it was played for laughs. So possible violence against women, (admittedly sexual which is touchier) ad gets banned. Definite violence against a men, ad gets laughed at. Note that I didn't look for an ad like this. I didn't need to. A few minutes clicking links about advertising and I get to one. Count the number of ads where the woman is stupid, insensitive, insane or evil, then count the number of ads the man is, it's not a contest.

Nor is the actual entertainment any better in this regard. Aside from the occasional show like "Modern Family" or "Married with Children" (both with the brilliant Ed O'Neill) which treat the male and female characters about equally, most TV shows show men to be incompetent, inconsiderate, insensitive fools. Sometimes like in Tim Allen's "Home Improvement" that's most of the joke of the series.

Her fourth point is that 85-90% of the people in the USA with eating disorders are women. My fourth point is that 80% of the people who suicide are men. Her point is "Not unrelated" to media portrayals, at a guess I'd say mine is too. But if you had to choose, gun to your head so to speak, would you rather be the person who splattered chunder all over the floor or brains all over the wall?

Then she brings up the most horrible thing in the world. The wage gap still exists. So does the huge amount of differences between male and female labor that create it, including but not limited to, the willingness of males to work stupid hours*, to work outside often in terrible weather, to do dangerous work, to remain in a job without taking time off for a child etc. anyone who doesn't know that the work men and women do is very different is startlingly ignorant.

Erin Knowledge-Less Girl tries to claim that justifying the wages gap on the grounds of, "lifestyle choices" (which are also choices about work) is condemning women because they can give birth. This is poppycock and if she actually watched to GWW's video she's know this. I suspect she does unless she's totally ignorant of how men and women run their lives. It's not giving birth reduces a woman's value to the employer. No doubt taking time off to deal with the physical aspects of pregnancy and childbirth is a factor but it's a minor one. If it were not then women would be back in the workforce 2 months after giving birth. Instead many women drop paid employment for years, even decades, after becoming a mother, and/or radically reduce their hours of paid work. They could choose not to do this and have their husband do the stay at home thing (this is not unknown, in fact Stefan Molyneux the biggest philosopher on the web did exactly that). The choice is a lifestyle choice and it's one that negatively impacts their value to their employer.

Then she's gets on to men graduating with the degrees that pay the most. Yeah I'm guessing that women's studies and social work degrees don't pay that well. How is this a case the world being harder on women? The women made the choice, presumably they had their reasons to believe that it would make them happy. Men also had their reasons to believe that the higher paying degrees would make them happy. I don't see why the fact that one choice leads to more money neccesarily implies it leads to more happiness. What Erin Knotted Logic, Gordian is saying here is that women unfortunately are too stupid to make the right, money-making course choices and so end up miserable because they lack the power money brings.

But do they lack the power money brings? Money is not powerful in the earning but the spending. As David Thomas pointed out in "Not guilty the case in defence of men" women make or influence much even most of the major spending decisions. In fact he lists 10 areas of financials services and all but 2 or 3 the woman clearly wears the pants regarding them. So how does the fact that women don't even have to earn the money they spend men it's tougher for them?

Then she talks about how 2/3s of the world's illiterates are female. This is a bit of a switcheroo because up until this point she was talking about the experience of women and men in the USA. All the facts related to the USA and similar western cultures, there was no indication that the world she considered stretched to Kabul or Karachi or indeed beyond Rio Grande. Her original article also didn't seem to address anything but the Western experience. In the 3rd world certainly it's rough beting a chick. In fact it's so rough that some feminists have said women were the primary victims of, for instance, the war in Afghanistan. Why? Because it often left them without husbands or sons. But none of this has anything to do with the original article, unless Erin is totally ignorant of why people in other cultures prefer sons. The original article was all about her own culture, nothing about others. Don't worry she'll turn back to being totally US-centric when she compares rates of violent victimisation, because she certainly won't be making the case on that with figures from down south of the border.

Now we come to a bad word "slut". Well some people use it as a bad word, others use it as a fun word, even a compliment, but she's got a point, calling people slut is not nice. Neither is calling someone "coward". The difference is that nobody ever fought a useless war to stop someone calling them a slut. If the worst you have to worry about is being called a slut you've got a pretty good life.

From slut we transition straight to honour killings and "purity balls" as though giving a girl a celebration for a choice you approve of and killing her for one you do not are the same class of phenomena. Some people think that "saving yourself for marriage" is a good idea. Plenty of those people think the males should do it too. How this makes the world tougher for females (other than that some people Erin doesn't like anyway won't like them) is beyond me. Honour killings are of course horrific, but is there a country in the world where they outnumber infanticides? Let alone killing of men for absurd reasons? Note that her case was that the world is tougher for women than men, not that it is tough for women.

She then goes on to the discrepancy between male and female criminal vicitimisation rates. Well she pretends to. She presents a graph that appears to show the discrepancy is being radically reduced. The thing is that violent crime is often underreported, particularly if the victim feels they are unlikely to get justice or may suffer retaliation. Male vicitims of domestic violence, who are just as common as female victims, are one such group. Females have been reporting domestic violence more often, males, not so much. Male victims of prison rape* are another. Assaults on females are taken much more seriously and everyone knows this (and most would be upset if it weren't so) so naturally males are less likely to believe it's worth making a complaint. One way to eliminate reporting errors is to look at homicide, which is not greatly underreported for obvious reasons. Luckily the page she sent us to is part of a site that has such information. Find a year where men weren't murdered at twice the rate women were. Go ahead, find it. Now look at that realise this is actually pretty good for men. In the Mexican border areas (where feminists worried that there was an epidemic of woman murder) the ratio is more like 10-1. If anyone knows of a country that has more females murdered than males please tell me. Well maybe India with the infanticides, which are of course almost never carried out by males.

Speaking of perpetrators she then mentions that 90% of perpetrators are male. Of course this depends on official statistics which almost certainly underreport assaults by females, particularly domestic abuse. But let's a ssume she's right. How does that show that women have it tougher? Does she assume that the life of a violent offender is a happy one? A stress-free one? Sure these guys have to take resonsibility for their actions, but somewhere there is a woman who's job it was to raise them to be healthy and happy, he is pretty clearly not.

The question isn't, why is a woman not afraid or raising a female victimiser, but why isn't she more afraid of raising a male vicitim than a female one, given that they probably outnumber them 3-2 at least? The answer is because like Erin they don't really love any male. They think it's fine to ignore their pain, denigrate and insult them openly, clearly state, to their faces that they are by nature stupid, uncultured, insensitive, cruel and violent and arrange everything in society to someone else's benefit with their money. Then the cruelest trick in the female arsenal, telling them that this is love. Telling them that the warped twisted relationship where the male can be barely tolerated in return for being useful is the wonder, joyous, mutual, respectful, kind and enlightening thing we call love. Then they wonder why we like hookers and porn.

She claims that men being called "girls" or "pussies" proves that women are considered the lesser sex. Hmm.. let's see, what would you rather have, your gender being used as an insult or spending on the health of your gender being several times lower? Having your genitals being a term of abuse or losing your children in custody battles pretty much every time? Dying on the job or being whistled at in public? Where is this woman's self-respect? What happened to her that she can advance such baloney without drinking herself into a stupor to cope with what she does for a living? I don't know and I don't care, I'm just glad I'm not her.

How to turn a leftist into a fascist, just add China.

In an article in "The Guardian" Will Hutton has supported the theivery of the Argentine government, based on zenophobia, boundless faith in government and argument from personal belief. Here is my disection of this particular piece of the rotting corpse of government worship. "Suppose the British government knew that a key shareholder in Centrica, our last great British energy company and owner of British Gas, was to sell its stake to Gazprom, so making Russian state ownership inevitable. I hope that, in this scenario, the government would expand the provision of the Enterprise Act that allows Britain to block takeovers that are against the national interest to include gas and nuclear power. (The act is currently confined to defence, financial services and the media.)" The fact that you hope for something doesn't mean it's good.

"No country can be indifferent to the ownership of strategic assets and thus the use to which they might be put. Its first obligation is to the well-being of its citizens." Which you haven't shown is at all served by not being indifferent to the ownership of "strategic assets". In fact government control of such assets has crippled investment in them in more than one country.

 "The Argentinian government was faced with just this dilemma last week. YPF is its national oil and gas company, which it sold to the Spanish oil company Repsol for $15bn in 1999 as part of its privatisation drive. It has not been a great deal for either party. Argentinian oil and gas production has slumped, exploration for new reserves has been run down and this oil-rich country is now an oil importer, with Repsol accused of looting the company and betraying its obligations. Repsol's excuse is that Argentinian price controls are absurdly tough." When there is a lack of investment leading to a shortage of supply and price controls any economists worth his salt points out the obvious connection. But instead the author calls this an "excuse". If he's so certain that the price controls didn't lead to the lower production let him and likeminded people buy the company and see if they can lift production without going broke. "It has wanted to sell its holding for some time and last July finally found a potential buyer: the Chinese state oil company Sinopec. On Monday, fearing that the deal was about to be done, the Argentinian government seized the lion's share of Repsol's stake to get majority control. Better that YPF is owned by the Argentinian government than the Chinese Communist party is their reasoning. Many governments would have done the same. Ownership matters. Yet Argentina has been roundly condemned – the EU, Spain, Mexico and even Britain have all weighed in. The Economist thunders that President Cristina Fernández's antics must not go unpunished; nationalisation is a sin beyond redemption. The inference is that Repsol should have been allowed freely to dispose of its shares to whichever buyer and at the best price it could achieve. Argentina and its citizens have no right to intervene." When Repsol bought the shares the government clearly didn't set any limits on who it could sell to, if it had they wouldn't have to confiscate shares. So the government clearly did what nobody has a right to do, make a deal, get the money and then change the terms. Argentina has no right to intervene because to do so is simple fraud, and it's citizens have no right to "intervene" in property that isn't their's. "But to portray Repsol as an injured innocent whose natural rights have been unfairly suborned is to traduce economic and political reality." Actually it's entirely accurate at least as far as the author knows. If Repsol wasn't innocent then where is the proof? Where is the legal decision, hell even the legal proceeding, against it? In the absence of such the companies shareholders have the right to have the company presumed innocent, and yes that is a natural right. The idea that someone should have their property taken from them because of unproven and untested allegations is obviously unjust. "For too long, companies and the rich worldwide, egged on by American Republicans and British Tories, have shamelessly exploited the proposition that there is only one proper relationship between them and society: they do what they want on their own terms." Who says this? Nobody. In fact free market thinkiing is that people have to deal in mutually acceptable terms, and this is what the author has a problem with. He believes the government should be able to deal with people on it's own terms, regardless of rights, facts, justice, due process or any other limit on immoral behaviour. "And society must accept this because it is the sole route to "wealth generation". Capital exists above state and society." Note that the shareholders were quite willing to accept the State being above their capital (a moral and practical mistake in my opinion) and the author makes direct reference to this (price controls). The capitalists were quite willing to accept the rules, it is the government, that made the rules that objects to following them and instead makes new rules as it goes along. "Fernández's actions, however clumsy and unfair in their execution, are part of a growing worldwide reaction to the excesses that this proposition has brought. Repsol does not, and did not, have a God-given right to sell control in YPF to whomever it pleases while Argentina's interests can go hang." Quite right, it's rights come from the objective nature of reality not a mythical god. " It exists in a symbiotic relationship with the society in which it trades. The right to trade and to own are privileges that come with reciprocal obligations as the Ownership Commission, which I chaired, argued earlier this year. " Yes there are reciprocal obligations, the obligation not to violate the similar rights of others, i.e. the oblations not to steal. This obligation the author apparently finds too hard to live up to. "They cannot exist in a vacuum because companies' actions have profound effects." So what? Ghandi's right to speak had "profound effects" that doesn't mean the government had the right to control it, nor did it make it a privilege. "Moreover, companies, especially energy companies, need public agencies to help mitigate the risk of undertaking huge investments in a world where the future is unknowable." Actually it's blatantly obvious that public agencies create not mitigate risk. What do you think the GFC and the Euro debt crisis were? That alternet is pushing this fascist, corporatist codswallop that government should mitigate risks of businesses, is nothing short of astounding. Why not just take a job as a shilll for Goldman, Sachs if that's what you're going to vomit out into the public discourse? " Across the globe, business and the rich insist on denying these elementary truths. " Well aside from the fact that nothing you said appears to be an elementary truth business and the rich have in fact been pushing what you just pushed, that "public agencies" should mitigage the risk for companies. "The reaction [against supposedly free market capitalism ] is long overdue and is producing some long-needed corrections. For example, in the last fortnight alone, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, Barclays' Bob Diamond and Citibank's Vikram Pandit have all faced angry shareholders, responding to the new mood, protesting about the extravagance of their bonuses compared to their institutions' paltry performance. They are being forced to accept less." God that's a moronic conclusion. Shareholders insisting that failing executives get paid less is not a reaction against the free market, it's a reacion within the free market. It's not the 1% being forced to get less, it's the 1% paying someone (who happens to be in the 1%) less. "But the mood needs to be channelled. Argentina may have done everyone a service by forcibly reminding global business that there are unpleasant consequences for neglecting economic and social responsibilities," Well no, Argentina, or rather Fernández has shown their are unpleasant consequences for doing something that a politician doesn't want. Whether they neglected their "economic and social responsibilities" which conveniently enough, weren't defined either in the article or the law is unknown. What is known is that a politician reacted to something they didn't like by stealing. "but summary nationalisation without compensation is hardly a solid template for the future. It is a harbinger of Chinese-style arbitrary government; a move from crony capitalism to crony statism." The author clearly doesn't know what crony capitalism or statism is. " It is time to reassert that while capitalism may be a proven route to prosperity, it only works in a complex interdependence with the state and society. There have to be rules at home and abroad to make a desirable world of open borders, free trade and free business work. " If there have to be rules then why is the author cheering on those who violated the rules at the expense of those who followed them? What he really wants is for their to be the illusion of rules, lots of little laws that change whenever it takes the whim of "the people" or their "representatives". " The mood is changing. It needs to be channelled: the creation of a new and different compact with business, finance and the rich. It is what electorates across the world want to see. President Fernández, in her gauche way, has tapped into a global mood." Yes the mood is changing, people are in the mood to steal. This is understandable but naive, for the governments that steal for them will steal from them.