Communists Are Industrialists Too

It seems to me that we continue to suffer from the industrial revolution. No, not the wonderful benefits, but the political nature of things. Wealthy industrialists noticed they could go to whatever political authority that was near them and use nationalist propaganda to secure a pro-industrial agenda, and then turn around and use that to secure legal protections against workers.

The communists subverted the government and the industrialists, but kept the pro-growth policies. They industrialized, even when, and in many cases because it killed people. Ukrainian farmers not getting on board with the new industrial farming plan? Starve them to death! The plan was more important than the people, despite odes to the proletariat.

So we see the same frustrating game here today. OWS or tea party, corporation or government, bureaucrat A or bureaucrat B.

For much of human existence, capital goods existed mainly in the hands of families. Labor and capital were pretty much in the same hands, or at least in the hands of family members, and your local authorities (grandpa, your local priest, mom, etc...) will likely start fussing at you if you don't treat your own kin right. The rise of large scale manufacturing was good for technological advancement, but it is not at all clear that this always has to be this way. Indeed, at the periphery, there is reason to believe that the 'means of production' should be undergoing the same sort of decentralization and miniaturization as cell phones. Gadgetry is gadgetry, but the size of corporations is both political and economic in nature. Regulation represents a cost and if sellers really do try to get anywhere near where marginal cost=marginal revenue, politicians push costs onto corporations and the corporations respond by becoming bigger. Costs for lawyers and regulation represent a cost of being in business, not a cost on each transaction, so people maximize the number of transactions to drop the cost per transaction. Leftist Wal-mart haters have only themselves to blame, but then they've never reconciled themselves to the existence of economic laws anyway.

So, folks notice the system is fraudulent, or at least have some vague sense that SOMETHING IS WRONG, but all their solutions involve keeping the same system. The system is going down now. Ideally, we orderly shut down all processes so that we can have a clean reboot; not, that's a great analogy, because the current system doesn't understand capital. It equates capital with money, so if they destroy a big part of the capital structure, or eat the seed corn, they pretend like it is easily replaced because they can just make more money. Which is precisely the problem; they can make more money, more pieces of paper and more electrons, but they can't grow more food if they've eaten all the seed. Or replace entire factories, steel, etc... First, the supply will shrink, is shrinking, and then people see the flood of money coming; prices go up.

Ah, well, little chance this little tirade matters...