Chuck DarwinSep 22, 2023

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions.

If the Tennessee-born economist James McGill Buchanan were alive today, it would suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students have little understanding of his work.

The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly).

If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.

Buchanan’s view of human nature was distinctly dismal. Adam Smith saw human beings as self-interested and hungry for personal power and material comfort, but he also acknowledged social instincts like compassion and fairness.
Buchanan, in contrast, insisted that people were primarily driven by venal self-interest.
Crediting people with altruism or a desire to serve others was “romantic” fantasy: politicians and government workers were out for themselves, and so, for that matter, were teachers, doctors, and civil rights activists. They wanted to control others and wrest away their resources: “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty.
The people who needed protection were property owners, and their rights could only be secured though constitutional limits to prevent the majority of voters from encroaching on them, an idea Buchanan lays out in works like Property as a Guarantor of Liberty (1993).
Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else).
His own language was often more stark, warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and “predators” out to fleece them.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america

Meet the Hidden Architect Behind America's Racist Economics

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

Institute for New Economic Thinking
Show threadChuck DarwinSep 22, 2023

In 1965 James M. Buchanan launched a center dedicated to his theories at the University of Virginia, which later relocated to George Mason University.

Nancy MacLean describes how he trained thinkers to push back against the Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate America’s public schools and to challenge the constitutional perspectives and federal policy that enabled it.

She notes that he took care to use economic and political precepts, rather than overtly racial arguments, to make his case, which nonetheless gave cover to racists who knew that spelling out their prejudices would alienate the country.

All the while, a ghost hovered in the background — that of John C. #Calhoun of South Carolina, senator and seventh vice president of the United States.

Calhoun was an intellectual and political powerhouse in the South from the 1820s until his death in 1850, expending his formidable energy to defend slavery. Calhoun, called the “#Marx of the #Master #Class” by historian Richard Hofstadter, saw himself and his fellow southern oligarchs as victims of the majority.

Therefore, as MacLean explains, he sought to create “#constitutional #gadgets” to constrict the operations of government.

Economists Tyler #Cowen and Alexander #Tabarrok, both of George Mason University, have noted the two men’s affinities, heralding Calhoun “a precursor of modern #public #choice theory” who “anticipates” Buchanan’s thinking.

MacLean observes that both focused on how #democracy constrains property owners and aimed for ways to restrict the latitude of voters.

She argues that unlike even the most property-friendly founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Buchanan wanted a private governing #elite of #corporate #power that was wholly released from public accountability.

Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so that a normal majority could no longer prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions— all these were tactics toward the goal.

But the Holy Grail was the #Constitution: alter it and you could increase and secure the power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980972/

Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean: 9781101980972 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the...

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Show threadChuck Darwin

Gravy Train to Oligarchy:

Historian Nancy MacLean explains that Virginia’s white elite and the pro-corporate president of the University of Virginia, Colgate #Darden, who had married into the #DuPont family, found James #Buchanan’s ideas to be spot on.

In nurturing a new intelligentsia to commit to his values, Buchanan stated that he needed a “#gravy #train,” and with backers like Charles #Koch and conservative foundations like the #Scaife Family Charitable Trusts, others hopped aboard.

#Money, Buchanan knew, can be a persuasive tool in academia. His circle of influence began to widen.

MacLean observes that the #Virginia #school, as Buchanan’s brand of economic and political thinking is known, is a kind of cousin to the better-known, market-oriented #Chicago and #Austrian schools — proponents of all three were members of the #Mont #Pelerin #Society, an international neoliberal organization which included Milton #Friedman and Friedrich #Hayek.

But the Virginia school’s focus and career missions were distinct. In an interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), MacLean described Friedman and Buchanan as yin and yang:
“Friedman was this genial, personable character who loved to be in the limelight and made a sunny case for the free market and the freedom to choose and so forth.
"Buchanan was the dark side of this: he thought, ok, fine, they can make a case for the free market, but everybody knows that free markets have externalities and other problems. So he wanted to keep people from believing that government could be the alternative to those problems.”

The Virginia school also differs from other economic schools in a marked reliance on #abstract #theory rather than #mathematics or empirical #evidence.

That a Nobel Prize was awarded in 1986 to an economist who so determinedly bucked the academic trends of his day was nothing short of stunning, MacLean observes. But, then, it was the peak of the #Reagan era, an administration several Buchanan students joined.

Buchanan’s school focused on *public choice theory*, later adding constitutional economics and the new field of law and economics to its core research and advocacy.

The economist saw that his vision would never come to fruition by focusing on *who rules. It was much better to focus on the rules themselves, and that required a “#constitutional #revolution.”

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980972/

Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean: 9781101980972 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the...

PenguinRandomhouse.com
Sep 22, 2023 at 11:57pmWeb
Show threadChuck DarwinSep 23, 2023

The Oligarchic Revolution Unfolds:

James Buchanan’s ideas began to have huge impact, especially in America and in Britain.

In his home country, the economist was deeply involved in efforts to #cut #taxes on the wealthy in 1970s and 1980s and he advised proponents of #Reagan Revolution in their quest to unleash markets and posit government as the “problem” rather than the “solution.”

The Koch-funded Virginia school coached scholars, lawyers, politicians, and business people to apply stark right-wing perspectives on everything from #deficits to #taxes to school #privatization.

In Britain, Buchanan’s work helped to inspire the public sector reforms of Margaret #Thatcher and her political progeny.

MacLean illustrates that in South America, Buchanan was able to first truly set his ideas in motion by helping a bare-knuckles #dictatorship ensure the permanence of much of the radical transformation it inflicted on a country that had been a beacon of social progress. The historian emphasizes that Buchanan’s role in the disastrous #Pinochet government of Chile has been underestimated partly because unlike Milton Friedman, who advertised his activities, Buchanan had the shrewdness to keep his involvement quiet.

With his guidance, the Chilean #military #junta deployed public choice economics in the creation of a new #constitution, which required #balanced #budgets and thereby prevented the government from spending to meet public needs. #Supermajorities would be required for any changes of substance, leaving the public little recourse to challenge programs like the #privatization of social security.

The dictator’s human rights #abuses and #pillage of the country’s resources did not seem to bother Buchanan, MacLean argues, so long as the wealthy got their way.
“#Despotism may be the only organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe,” the economist had written in "The Limits of Liberty".

If you have been wondering about the end result of the Virginia school philosophy, well, the economist helpfully spelled it out...
https://academic.oup.com/book/36885/chapter-abstract/322112740?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The Limits of Liberty

Abstract. James Buchanan argues that it is rational for persons to agree to restrain their liberty by rules in order to advance their interests. This view has b

OUP Academic
Show threadChuck DarwinSep 23, 2023

A World of Slaves:
Most Americans haven’t seen what’s coming.

Nancy MacLean notes that when the #Kochs’ control of the GOP kicked into high gear after the financial crisis of 2007-08, many were so stunned by the “shock-and-awe” tactics of #shutting #down government, #destroying #labor unions, and #rolling #back #services that meet citizens’ basic necessities that few realized that many leading the charge had been trained in economics at Virginia institutions, especially George Mason University.

Wasn’t it just a new, particularly vicious wave of partisan politics?
It wasn’t.

MacLean convincingly illustrates that it was something far more disturbing.
MacLean is not the only scholar to sound the alarm that the country is experiencing a #hostile #takeover that is well on its way to radically, and perhaps permanently, altering the society.

Peter #Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of "The Vanishing Middle Class", as well as economist Gordon #Lafer of the University of Oregon and author of "The One Percent Solution", have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is headed and why.

MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wing’s playbook.

She observes, for example, that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like #privatization.

Efforts to “reform” #public #education and #Social #Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you don’t agree.

Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, #weakening pro-public forces and #enhancing the #lobbying #power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to #dismantle #democracy and make way for a return to #oligarchy.

The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive.

MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big government is not really the point.

The #oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people.
This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly #expanding #police #powers “to control the resultant popular anger.”
The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s #aggressive use of #state #power.

👉Could these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill #prisons with helpless citizens—or, more profitable still, right-less undocumented #immigrants? ☑️They could, and have.

👉Might they engineer a #retirement #crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s? ☑️Done.

👉Take away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by making them sign #forced #arbitration agreements? ☑️Check.

👉Gut #public #education to the point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back? ☑️Getting it done.

👉Would they even refuse children #clean #water? ☑️Actually, yes.

MacLean notes that in #Flint, Michigan, Americans got a taste of what the emerging oligarchy will look like — it tastes like #poisoned #water. There, the Koch-funded Mackinac Center pushed for legislation that would allow the governor to take control of communities facing emergency and put unelected managers in charge.
In Flint, one such manager switched the city’s water supply to a polluted river, but the Mackinac Center’s lobbyists ensured that the law was fortified by protections against lawsuits that poisoned inhabitants might bring. Tens of thousands of children were exposed to #lead, a substance known to cause serious health problems including brain damage.

Libertarian economist Tyler #Cowen has provided an economic #justification for this kind of #brutality, stating that where it is difficult to get clean water, private companies should take over and make people pay for it. “This includes giving them the right to cut off people who don’t—or can’t—pay their bills,” he explains.

To many this sounds grotesquely #inhumane, but it is a way of thinking that has deep roots in America.

In "Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative" (2005), Buchanan considers the charge of #heartlessness made against the kind of classic liberal that he took himself to be.

MacLean interprets his discussion to mean that people who “failed to foresee and save money for their future needs” are to be treated, as Buchanan put it, “as #subordinate members of the species, akin to…#animals who are dependent.’”

Do you have your education, health care, and retirement personally funded against all possible exigencies?
Then that means #you.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america

Meet the Hidden Architect Behind America's Racist Economics

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

Institute for New Economic Thinking
Show threadChuck DarwinSep 23, 2023

James Buchanan was not a dystopian novelist. He was a Nobel Laureate whose sinister logic exerts vast influence over America’s trajectory.
It is no wonder that libertarian economist Tyler Cowen, on his popular blog Marginal Revolution, does not mention Buchanan on a list of underrated influential libertarian thinkers, though elsewhere on the blog, he expresses admiration for several of Buchanan’s contributions and acknowledges that the southern economist “thought more consistently in terms of ‘rules of the games’ than perhaps any other economist.”

The rules of the game are now clear.
Research like Nancy MacLean’s provides hope that toxic ideas like Buchanan’s may finally begin to face public scrutiny.
Yet at this very moment, the Kochs’ State Policy Network and the American Legislative Exchange Council (#ALEC), a group that connects corporate agents to conservative lawmakers to produce legislation, are involved in projects that the Trump-obsessed media hardly notices, like pumping money into state judicial races.
Their aim is to stack the legal deck against Americans in ways that MacLean argues may have even bigger effects than #Citizens #United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling which unleashed unlimited corporate spending on American politics.
The goal is to create a judiciary that will interpret the Constitution in favor of corporations and the wealthy in ways that Buchanan would have heartily approved.
“The United States is now at one of those historic forks in the road whose outcome will prove as fateful as those of the 1860s, the 1930s, and the 1960s,” writes MacLean.
“To value liberty for the wealthy minority above all else and enshrine it in the nation’s governing rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for and the Koch network is achieving, play by play, is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the outer husk of representative form.”
Nobody can say we weren’t warned.

Lynn Parramore

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america

Meet the Hidden Architect Behind America's Racist Economics

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

Institute for New Economic Thinking
Show threadChuck DarwinSep 23, 2023

The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle.

In "The Vanishing Middle Class" MIT economist Peter Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor.

Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater #equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor.

Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard #education, dilapidated #housing, and few stable #employment opportunities.

And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black.

Conservative white politicians still appeal to the #racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like “us.”

Politicians also use mass #incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society.

Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education.

In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/657969/the-vanishing-middle-class-new-epilogue-by-peter-temin/

The Vanishing Middle Class, new epilogue by Peter Temin: 9780262535298 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about.The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle....

PenguinRandomhouse.com
Show threadChuck DarwinSep 23, 2023

Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger?

Harvard professors Steven #Levitsky and Daniel #Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is YES.

Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady #weakening of critical institutions, such as the #judiciary and the #press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political #norms.

The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to #authoritarianism.

The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary #Hungary, #Turkey, and #Venezuela, to the American South during #Jim #Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/9781524762940

How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt: 9781524762940 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The urgent and influential guide to the forces that have undermined democracies across the globe—forces running rampan...

PenguinRandomhouse.com
Show threadChuck DarwinSep 23, 2023
Our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities.
Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.

In this revelatory book, Levitsky and Ziblatt issue an urgent call to reform our politics.
It’s a daunting task, but we have remade our country before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era.
And now we are at a crossroads: America will either become a multiracial democracy or cease to be a democracy at all.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706046/tyranny-of-the-minority-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/
Tyranny of the Minority by Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt: 9780593443071 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A call to reform our antiquated political institutions before it’s too late—from the authors of How Democracies ...

PenguinRandomhouse.com
Show threadHawkmoonSep 23, 2023

@cdarwin

I have never confirmed this, but someone once told me that, when the US was managing the implementation of the Marshall Plan post WWII, they told countries specifically not to use an electoral college system.

Show threadTofu GolemSep 23, 2023

@cdarwin
Our what?

We don't have a democracy.

We have an oligarchy that cosplays as a democratic republic. Until we get all private money out of elections, that won't change.

We're not choosing between fascism and democracy, but fascism and oligarchy.