Resisting the Thom Hartmann Acolytes

Economics Economics Questions
1

In order to better understand the democratic-socialist mindset, I’ve been frequenting the message board on Thom Hartmann’s website. Hartmann is an anti-corporate Air America talk show host.

I was amazed at the attitudes of many of the posters in the forum. Basically, they see no possibility of liberty because they feel as if any reduction in the scope of government will only mean a growth in the power of corporations. They also assert that a free market economy naturally leads to a concentration of wealth and disappearance of the middle class.

Here are a couple of quotes to serve as examples

"What the far right has yet to get, is…our economic system over time pushes larger and larger percentages of the nation’s wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Our current economic meltdown is one result of that.

Eventully, you end up with a nation like Mexico…38 families owning over half of the nation’s wealth…and a destitute population. Government is the moderating hand in that."

And here’s another one:

"Nope, I see the London of Dickens and warlords in rural fiefdoms. Government is how we govern ourselves when we own it. So we better own it rather than rent it or have it stolen by powers too big to fight. Like the health insurance companies who presume to have a right to pillage us for no value added.

I describe them as pirates who loot us under threat of rape and pillage, and then who make us walk the plank when we are no longer profitable or “useful.” In their unregulated freedom, I do not see them changing their business plan to see us as clients they will serve by standing with us at that time of health crisis to insure that our doctor can get everything we need. Oh, no, we will still be a revenue source and possible cost liability. They will serve their investors by getting as much out of us as they can for the least expenditure. And if they set the rules, what market dynamics offset their power?

If there were a market and if it were not subject to the control of the dominant pirates, we would have seen its blessings by now. These deregulator, free market ideologues had every opportunity to demonstrate how well their theories could work. I think the proof is in. Utter failure. That it ought to have been obvious is beside the point. Theory busted."

I really have no idea how to even go about countering such attitudes. Any suggestion that the government has too much power is answered with, “Why don’t you move to Somalia. It’s a libertarian’s dream.”

I realize that many on that board are “true believers”, and have no interest in the truth, but there are probably a few fence-sitters who might benefit from a good counter argument. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to counter such a view?

I would urge anyone who can make a good argument for freedom to come over and join me in the belly of the beast.

2

Tell them that reagan should be their favorite president. When they ask why send them this

3

with the truth?

Your question may be too general. what do you need help with specifically?

4

Oh my.. I don’t know where to begin in how backwards he’s got it. Especially the bit about monopolies and threats of pillage and loot.

5

On 2nd thoughts there is an obvious commonality to their absurd positions. Tthey don’t realise that everything they find ugly and distasteful is an inevitable consequence of state intervention, of middle-of-the-roadism.

These are all non-problems in free markets.

They have no direct experience of free markets. but only ‘free-er’ markets. (which they should at least appreciate somewhat) Furthermore, they owe it to themselves to educate themselves, if only just a little, in economics; they are just arguing from ignorance. its embarrassing.

6

I’d like to start by offering counter evidence to the following positions -

  1. Recessions are caused by a concentration of wealth.

  2. Free markets lead inevitably to monopolies

  3. Free markets lead to concentrations of wealth.

Most of their positions seem to stem from simple envy. They hate the rich, and they hate corporations. They make a big deal of the fact that limited liability is a “government granted privilege.” (However, they also seem to conflate this with the concept of non-owner management, which is not limited to corporations.)

I sometimes wonder whether it’s worth trying to argue with them, but they really do seem to have some crazy ideas that cannot simply go unchallenged.

7

Their observations are correct, only their theory is wrong. If you disagree that the current economic system in the USA has created mass impoverishment, then you are going to have a hard time defending freedom.

8

Caused by central banks. See extensive literature on Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT)

Government controls lead to monopolies. Even rockefeller’s standard oil only had 68% of market share at its peak. By the time it was broken up it had 11% market share. Also, the price of oil went down 75% under this “monopoly”. If a company nowadays could come along and take oil from $2.50 a gallon to $.50 a gallon, i’m pretty sure everyone would think that is badass.

Maybe. But you have to serve the consumers to get money in the free market. Voluntary trade is always win-win. The win-lose kind of market that government promotes leads to even greater concentrations of wealth.

If the rich get richer in the free market, it is because they have invested their money in expanding things the masses want. In the status quo, the rich get richer because they cartelize and exploit their government enforced monopolies to put out crappy services at high prices.

This is the difference between a free market “monopoly” and a government monopoly. You can still enter into the market and compete with standard oil if you’re good enough. You can’t enter the market to compete with Rupert Murdoch or Bank of America because the government prevents you from doing so. Why do you think that all the most profitable industries in the united states (banking, medicine, military industry) also are the most government involved? Why do you think that all the leanest and cheapest industries like consumer electronics are without government intervention? The international competitiveness of these industries reduces prices and improves products. Who can complain about a 15 dollar 2gb MP3 player?

Well it is, and its bs.

9

They see what is happening they are just placing blame. Try and get them to connect cause and effect. Socratic method.

10

Snowflake - Thank you. Those are all very good points. The difficulty is that many of them have very little understanding of what a free market really is, or how unfree our current system is. So they point to the fact that Glass-Steagall was changed, and say, “See what happens when we deregulate.” Never mind that there are still massive amounts of regulation in the financial sector, including the central bank.

I’ll have to use your information on Standard oil.

So you are against limited liability? I’ve read Michael Rozeff make an argument against limited liability, and I can see his point. He argues that firms and/or shareholders would simply use insurance as a similar protection.

I think it’s also worthwhile to focus on the incredible wealth of even the poorer segments of our society. Your example of a $15 mp3 player is case in point. There are tons of items that would have been inconceivable for the King of England in 1776 to have, and now every Joe in the US has them. That’s capitalism.

11

Don’t cite me. Cite wikipedia.

If I do something illegal, I get tried for it in court. So why is it that the same laws don’t apply when a group of people pollute? A group of people, or a corporation, is not morally different from a single person.

Right. And the real selling point of free markets is not that it will make the rich richer but that it will make the poor richer. It is only up until recently that we have secured food as a common regular thing. Feudal Europe used to have famines every 10 years. One man could barely grow enough food to feed 5 people. Now one man can grow enough to feed thousands.

Which system has an easier time feeding its people?

Why is it that advocates of government can brush off thousands of failed states, the pointless deaths of hundreds of millions, and then the free market fails because it produces are recession once every 20 years (supposedly). Even if you believe all the bad press about the free market there is MUCH worse press on government.

12

Maybe you could advocate free and voluntary association (free market) without saying private this or enterprise that.

And then advance whatever policies they want by suggesting they go outside of the government, since the government is owned by elites. So if democrats want their single player health care, there is no reason they can’t start a plan where you pay into it and it covers everybody involved. If its really a good idea, other people will join it and it will grow.

There is no reason why any ideas, laisez-faire, socialism, religion etc have to be coercive. They can be established peacefully without the state. It doesn’t even matter if corporations control a bunch of resources because you don’t have to deal with them. You can have whatever silly centrally planned socialist communes. Just look at the Amish.

13

Thom Hartmann is easily the biggest economic fool in the media today. Think Paul Krugman is frustrating? Thom Hartmann is frustrating a billion times more.

His economic views are nauseating: he basically thinks that free markets causes all the problems, tax cuts cause recessions/depressions (he blames the Great Depression on some big tax cuts that took place in the early 20s), basically thinks without unions we’d all be working 80 hours a week for 2 cents an hour, is violently protectionist, etc. I wrote a Mises Daily last September refuting his claim that we could stimulate the economy by LIMITING THE HOURS WORKERS WORK. Every single economic recommendation he puts out is practically indistinguishable from the fallacies that Hazlitt destroys in Economics in One Lesson.

What frustrates me the most is that his viewers think he’s right about this because he makes these arguments, then has the WORST and most fake libertarians come on the show to debate him. If any single person from the Mises Institute like Thomas DiLorenzo or Mark Thornton were on his show, he would be annihilated. But he instead usually makes the “libertarians” on there look like idiots because they aren’t real libertarians at all (I’m talking people like John Lott, Yaron Brook, and various Catoites – some of the “libertarians” who are constantly on his show.

He keeps whining about bank bonuses and bank deregulation, yet ignores the Federal Reserve which essentially nationalizes the banks and thus is responsible for every action of the bank. He also had a piece entitled Debt is Not Money where he blames excessive bank debt as the cause of the crisis, but BLAMES THIS ON DEREGULATION AND NOT THE FEDERAL RESERVE! An excerpt from the economic genius:

" Without regulating debt, a government will be taken hostage and an economy destroyed by for-profit institutions that are able to create debt without regulation (banks)."

In the article, he also states that recessions/depressions will occur if the Fed doesn’t print money proportional to wealth entering the economy. So for all his hatred of Milton Friedman, it’s apparently blinding him so much he doesn’t even realize he agrees with Friedman’s belief about recessions/depressions. Yet he blames this crisis on deregulation. Yeah, “deregulation”.

Quite frankly, Krugman is not that bothersome to me. He’s an idiot, but merely a nuisance. Hartmann on the other hand is quite a source of frustration for me.

14

I agree with you that Hartmann is incredibly frustrating. If you really want your head to explode, you should spend some time on his forum, where you get to interact with dozens of Hartmann wanna-be’s, all spouting the same inane pseudo-economics. Like most liberty lovers, I’ve always equated less government with more liberty. They have the exact opposite view. They see government as the only thing standing between us and the evil corporations, which they refer to variously as pirates, warlords, and privateers.

To them, if you are not for big government, then you are for big business, which they view as the enemy. They put little stock in our ability to organize ourselves, and insist that any relaxation of their precious regulation will result in the USA turning into Somalia, which they idiotically cite as “the only libertarian country in the world.”

I don’t participate much in the Hartmann forums any longer. It was too frustrating. But I certainly did get an education regarding statist ideology. Know your enemy, as Sun Tzu says.

15

I may go to the forum to test the waters. I had a HUGE debate with a guy on Youtube last year (his sn was “alvagoldbook” – that acct was close and now he’s at “alvagoldbook2”). He and I are actually friends now, but turns out he is Thom Hartmann’s video production specialist.

Anyways, Alva claims to be an anarcho-syndicalist, but he is a completely vulgar one because he supports social-democratic crap that Hartmann espouses right now (so he’s a hypocritical “freedom later, statism now” type like Chomsky and all libertarian minarchists).

One piece of advice: next time you hear a Hartmannite claim that, for example, Greenspan is libertarian, tell them that’s the EXACT SAME as saying Obama is a Marxist. That’ll really nail them.

16

I think your main problem is that you’re trying too hard. You’re trying to create somewhat cogent arguments that defend their positions and then disprove those arguments. Don’t even try to do that. Ask them to create their own arguments. When they make an absurd claim ask them to prove it. My case in point:

Prove it. How does the concentration of wealth cause recessions? Is there any empirical data to back up this thesis?

Prove it. How do free markets lead to monopolies? Don’t the free entry and exit of business ensure that no monopolies form in a truly free market?

(Another question which might kill them is Are free market monopolies bad? Prove it.)

Prove it. How do free markets lead to concentrations of wealth? Don’t free markets increase wealth for everyone? (show them this and this)