The top ten statist myths.

Economics Political Theory
1

I’ve come up with a top ten list for statist myths. Tell me what you think of them.

#1- The fed helps combat inflation. Of course it may, but it allows 2-3% of inflation per year. If that happens year after year the currency will become more and more devalued over time. It doesn’t take long for one to figure out how fallacious it is to have a monetary economic policy of constant inflation. The fed doesn’t combat inflation because it doesn’t want deflation. It only slows down inflation but not enough to cause deflation.

#2- They are fighting for our freedoms. We’ve all heard this slogan since like we were in Middle School or something like that. We know it’s not true. We know that the government is really in the Middle-East to secure our international interests and to make sure various corrupt authoritarian regimes are still in power. Leftists are right in the sense that we are in the Middle-East for oil. But we aren’t there to topple authoritarian regimes. We’re there to be in bed with them.

#3- The Patriot Act is there to preserve our liberty. What kind of society do we live in where someone can claim that they are fighting for liberty but they dismantle the bill of rights which all of our liberty in our society was founded upon? That makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever. The Patriot Act suspends the right of Habeaus corpous, allows people to jail someone if they are suspected of a crime, allows the government to warantless wiretap people for no real reason, and it dismantles the 4th amendment. It is quite ironic that these people claim that they are fighting for freedom. They don’t even know what real freedom is since they’ve practically destroyed it!

#4- Man-made global warming can be solved with wind-farms and solar technology. I’m not an environmentalist or anything and I do agree with the need for more of the country to go on alternative energy sources and that we need to build thorium reactors and maybe more nuclear reactors. But, if the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit, what is the point? These developing societies like China and India are just going to pick up where we left off. It’ll take more of a global effort through the private market-place to do it rather than through just one nation and one people doing it.

#5- Israel is completely innocent and we should be standing by it no matter what. You know what? I hate the people who worship the nation of Israel no matter what they do. The point of the Jewish religion or the Christian religion is not to worship Israel, but it was to pay homage to their God or gods. Israel is just one holy location out of many places. Just because it is holy doesn’t mean that it can’t do no wrong. Throughout many religious texts they clearly state that if they do things that are wrong that they’ll lose favor with their God, so, the idea that we shouldn’t be critical of Israel just because it’s a holy place, and that they do nothing wrong is insane. It’s not just right-wingers who don’t understand the bible and want the end-times that support Israel like this. It’s also people of other ideologies as well.

#6- That the federal government actually follows the constitution or the rule of laws! A lot of time in grade-school or middle-school or even in high-school we’re always told about how the government is set up on a system of laws. The laws and rules only seem to apply to us. They don’t apply to the criminal psychopathic elite. These people who are elected to the government have no ethical standard. It doesn’t matter what party they’re from and they’ll always ignore laws that are passed and they’ll try to get around ethical violations no matter what is happening at the moment.

#7- That the US is a benign world institution. Maybe it’s a benign world institution for the states that like us and the states that are allies with us. But it’s true for us and it’s also true for other states. If we don’t like another state the US historically goes to war with them, enacts sanctions on them and tries to strangulate them economically, or tries some other way to hurt them. So the US is only benign when it comes to our allies, but not to elsewhere. If you read about Latin American history you will learn the true meaning of the Monroe Doctrine.

#8- That NATO and the UN are non-interventionist. Oh my, how people’s memory fades so quickly. I’ve argued with people before that think that Europe is less neoconservative than the United States. They’re so wrong. NATO and the UN originally supported the intervention in Boznia-Hergozivana (sp?), Somalia, and they liked the Afghanistan war (although that was somewhat justified, but still). Several European countries were also intervening in the horrible tragedy of East-Timor. The story of East-Timor is a sad story.

#9- That international institutions and organizations like the WTO, the GATT, and the IMF are supposed to help stabilize the rest of the world. They help stabilize the developed world. But the WTO and the GATT forcibly impose economic liberalism on nations that don’t want to do it or aren’t ready to do it yet and they have to surrender their national sovereignty because of it. Argentina is still recovering from what the IMF did to it. The IMF imposes strict rules on various countries and makes it harder for them to recover than it actually needs to be (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KE19Dj05.html).

#10- They hate us for our freedom! Of course if someone would study history in the Middle-East we would know that they’re constantly sick of being occupied by other nations and they’re upset at foreign influence when they are in their countries if they’re not welcomed. Before we were involved in the Middle-East the British were, and yeah, that wasn’t all that great for them. Radical Islam dislikes the West also because of our freedoms, but that is not primarily why they hate us.

Are there any other ones that I am missing? I think I’ve covered most of them.

2

I hate the Israel thing, too. I’m not Alex Jonesy in the sense that I’m not conspiratorial about “bankers” and I’m not paranoid about the state of Israel, but I do recognize that they have a powerful lobby in the United States and the US likes them there because they antagonize the Muslim region. It just so happens to have the support of religious fundies to go along with it.

3

That can’t qualify as a statist myth.

In most states other then the US, that “myth” would have to be stated to the contrary.

4

These are American political myths.

5

@DD5, correct.

6

LS is right. These are not refutations of the state, as much as US politics.

My 10 statist myths;

  1. Democracy (i.e. mass/public/decentralized governance) can co-exist with the state. Elite’s will always use their money and influence to grab control of the state to protect themselves

  2. States can protect against absolutism. While this may be generally true in the short run under a democratic state, any kind institutionalized violence will be siezed by power-mongers to further their own interests, and crush those who oppose them.

  3. States drive civilization and progress. In fact, civilization had been progressing fine for at least 3-4k years (lets say 6k bce to 4k bce, when agriculture and towns developed to when sumer started conquering its neighbors, and it is arguably ok to drive that first date back to 10k bc or earlier) just fine without the state.

  4. States engage in warfare to protect their hegemony. This is only partially true. They engage in war to protect their domination of markets (commercial, labor, and cultural), hegemony is only another tool towards that end.

  5. States are needed for the rule of law. Culture protects the rule of law. States are notorious for breaking it.

  6. States are solely a monopoly on violence. This is the major facet of the state. But a more accurate representation would be to define states by a centralization of and institutionalization of violence designed to protect elite interests. A private legal system could be just as tyrannical as a modern state if there is minimal competition working in tandem (not to say that is likely).

  7. Government = state. No, public entities do not require a monopoly on violence.

8 9 and 10. State’s are legitimate. Governments are legitimate through consent of the majority. States can never be legitimate unless there is 100% agreement, which is virtually impossible.

That’s all I could think of off the top of my head.

7

That’s a good point. I’d add the following:

  • The government is by the people, for the people.
  • A democratic country is a free country.
  • The country is the same as the government is the same as the people is the same as society
8

Yeah, myths about the state are a little different in other parts of the world.

One major myth around here is that honest public figures who keep their word will bring a beneficial state. Little do they know that the worst problems were caused unintentionally by the most well-meaning and moral public figures - just see the disastrous waste of starting a “Green Revolution” in India, a replication of a Mexican research in the hopes of raising the country’s food production to make it self-sufficient. It was simply not understood that it was cheaper to import better quality grains and this Revolution only redistributed costs and/or brought benefits that couldn’t be feasibly implemented in most of the country.

Although people on other conservative publication, Chronicles Magazine, often are of the opinion that there are truly no unintended consequences, and anybody is both guilty and evil if he implements policies with very bad side effects. It should have been his duty to know that it could have great costs and could make things worse. It’s a view based on ancient Greek understanding of justice that you can’t avoid making people unaccountable just because of them having different intentions. I guess it’s why economics and knowing “What is seen and what is not seen” is important for people to know.

9
  1. The Market is imperfect thus the government must remedy its imperfections.
10

The most important one: “We are the government or the government is us”.

The greatest trick of the devil.

11

The most important one: "We are the government or the government is us

This one, I wouldn’t necessarily call false. Even in a totalitarian state, the government is stil there by consent. If noone allowed themselves to be ruled, what is the govt going to do, kill everyone? Then who would they rule?

The failure of democracy is this;

[YOUTUBE.COM]

<param](http://www.youtube.com/v/xIraCchPDhk?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></cke:param><cke:param) name=“allowFullScreen” value=“true”>

[/YOUTUBE.COM]

I hope I embedded that right…

EDIT: nope, try this

12

The threat of death is not consent.

13

Most people don’t care about the fact that they can’t kill everyone, they care about not being killed themself.

By your reasoning, the slaves that didn’t escape conscented to be slaves, and everything is dandy?

Not resisting does not imply conscent. If a robber ask you for your money or your life, giving your money doesn’t mean you conscent, and it is voluntary. It is a coerced exchange, because he implicitly take control of your life by force.

All that matters to the state is that a large number obey because they are brainwashed to believe the state is for their own goods, and those who don’t swallow the lies are in low enough number so keeping them in check by sheer force and threat of force is not too expensive.

If a large percentage of the population would stop believing the propaganda, then it would become too expensive for the state to rule them, and it would collapse.

14

Most people don’t care about the fact that they can’t kill everyone, they care about not being killed themself.

By your reasoning, the slaves that didn’t escape conscented to be slaves, and everything is dandy?

Not resisting does not imply conscent. If a robber ask you for your money or your life, giving your money doesn’t mean you conscent, and it is voluntary. It is a coerced exchange, because he implicitly take control of your life by force.

All that matters to the state is that a large number obey because they are brainwashed to believe the state is for their own good, and those who don’t swallow the lies are in low enough number so keeping them in check by sheer force and threat of force is not too expensive.

Basically when people believe that they can’t get away with resisting, no matter if they conscent or not, they won’t rebel.

If a large percentage of the population would stop believing the propaganda, then it would become too expensive for the state to rule them, and it would collapse.

15

If a large percentage of the population would stop believing the propaganda, then it would become too expensive for the state to rule them, and it would collapse

Did I not just say the same thing? I wasn’t positing that consent = choice. Rather that consent = not taking direct action against. So…

By your reasoning, the slaves that didn’t escape conscented to be slaves, and everything is dandy?

Is what I am saying, but not in the context you put it. They didn’t choose to be slaves, but through their non-running away, they did (imo) consent to it.

If a robber ask you for your money or your life, giving your money doesn’t mean you conscent, and it is voluntary

It is not voluntary, but you are consenting to it.

The larger part of my critique of democracy does not sit on the consent issue. It stems from the populace getting themselves into office in a democracy, and if they suck, the democracy will as well.