My Blog at Republican Liberty Caucus

The Republican Liberty Caucus has set me up to blog on their site, and I will be blogging there a few times a week as well as here. My first RLC blog appeared a day or two ago.

My wife Freda and I had lunch this afternoon with Lee Currie, excecutive director of the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington on Hudson, New York. I heartily recommend this organization for anyone concerned about the economy. FEE has played a historic role in furthering economic ideas. Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley and Ralph Nader (yes, you read right) published early articles in their journal, the Freeman, and FEE was the means by which Ludwig von Mises was able to make a living after fleeing the Nazis in the late 1930s.

Where is America going? Things have not been going well for libertarians and conservatives. Our problem HAS NOT been the election of President Obama. As Shakespeare put it in Julius Ceaser, "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings". I don't like to think of myself as an "underling" but if the sandal fits, I'll wear it.

The public is unhappy with the bailout, but what have libertarians done to push the issue? We need a new Andrew Jackson who is going to run against Nicholas Biddle Bernanke and John Quincy Obama. Now is the time.

My old friend, Professor Chuck Gengler of Baruch College in New York forwarded this clip from the old movie Network. Let's not take it any more. It is time to start overthrowing the old guard in the Republican Party. We need to get revved up.

Managerial versus Statist Ideology

In Work and Authority in Industry the sociologist Reinhard Bendix traces the evolution of managerial ideology in England, the US, Russia and East Germany (the book was published in 1956). Bendix dissects the ideologies of managerial power in each nation. In the case of the nations that turned out to be economically successful, the United States and the UK, there was an evolution of ideology. Bendix traces the pattern whereby Calvinism gave way to an emphasis on virtue, as in the case of Benjamin Franklin's writings on success. In turn, the virtue ethic morphed into social Darwinism and social Darwinism into the New Thought ideas that positive thinking leads to success. In turn, the success-conscious ideology was replaced by scientific management. Bendix implies that the scientific management and human relations school ideas that were prevalent in the 1950s were themselves ideological rather than empirically based. That was not the case. Scientific management had an efficiency rationalization that 19th century managerial ideologies, based on justification to aristocrats in England and to the public, lacked. However, scientific management in fact increased productivity. To the extent that the human relations school tempered scientific management and reduced labor problems while maintaining constant or increasing levels of productivity, it too could be validated. However, the chief advances in the second half of the twentieth century in management, lean manufacturing, computer integrated manufacturing and total quality management, had even greater effects on productivity.

Political ideologies have not advanced in the same manner as managerial ideologies. THe ideology of the 19th century, laissez faire, was associated with rapid industrial advance. Its competitor, mercantilism, had been associated with economic progress in the 17th and 18th centuries, but paled in comparison to the progress that laissez faire generated in the 19th. This was true in Britain and the US. Marxism, various strands of socialism and in the late 19th century progressivism evolved as critiques of some of the social ramifications of laissez faire. These ideologies, though, once implemented, were unable to evolve, unlike the managerial ideologies. Marxism today does not posit an economic model much different from Marxism in the 19th century. Oskar Lange was unable to overcome the arguments of Ludwig von Mises, and in any case socialism in practice was unable to efficiently implement Lange's idea. Similarly, the ideas of Progressivism intensified into the New Deal, but have not evolved since the early twentieth century. Progressives today still rely on scale economies rather than innovative management practice as a source of value. But scale is no longer a critical source of economic value. Correspondence of output to customer needs, reduction of loss through stabilization of the production funciton and taut management of production processes (along with evolution of organization structure to flatten hierarchy and increase employee responsiveness) have not been viewed as possible within the public sector. Much as processes have failed to improve, so program conceptualization, strategy and flexibility in the public sector remain rooted in early twentieth century bureaucratic forms. The evolution of centralizing tendencies in public sector management goes back to the 17th century and reflects the ideas of Lord Shaftesbury and other mercantilists. The debate between Federalists and anti-Federalists, Whigs and Jacksonian Democrats and Progressives and advocates of laissez faire revolved around the question of the relative merits of centralization and decentralization, of price versus central plan, of economies of scale versus dynamism of innovation. However, unlike the ideology of decentralization and laissez faire, which considerably evolved in the twentieth century, the ideology of Progressivism and planning stagnated.

A Resolution Declaring Independence of National Television News

WHEREAS: National television news has failed to tell the truth or perform the function of providing truthful and valid information to the American public;

WHEREAS: National television news has failed to inform the American public about vital facts concerning the presidential election and the candidacy of President Barack Hussein Obama;

WHEREAS: National television has failed to inform the American public about vital public policy and political questions, specifically, the activities of the Federal Reserve Bank; monetary inflation; national economic policy; and subsidies to corporations and banks;

WHEREAS: National television has lied to the American public about the Iraqi War:

I hereby urge all Americans to discontinue viewing network or national cable television or any television station that carries nationally distributed news and to hereby join me in declaring:

"I desist from watching or turning on any television station that carries or broadcasts network- or cable- based news in any form."

The Internet and Group Directedness

Riesmann identifies a transition from tradition to inner to other directedness. The transitions relate to technology and religion. Tradition-directedness exists in most societies. The Protestant reformation led to an emphasis on conscience and individual responsibility that previously had not been known in most societies. Most important in the transition to inner directedness was the invention of the printing press that facilitated publication of the Bible in the vernacular. This led to a new emphasis on conscience and faith. The printed word was thus associated with the development of inner directedness. Inner directedness was potent in developing major breakthroughs in science, business and technology. The United States was transformed from a small agricultural frontier nation to the leading manufacturing nation in the era of inner directedness. Naturally, technological advance led to transformation of communication from the telegraph to the telephone to radio and television. With respect to transportation, inner-directedness progressed from sea, foot and animal-based power to canals and railroads, then trucks, automobiles and air travel. As these developments occurred, inner-directedness gave way to other directedness. In the book The Achieving Society David McClelland identifies success not only with focus on achievement or achievement motive, but also other-directedness. Yet McClelland's classic study was done after inner directed society had made major technological advances. In the period since McClelland wrote The Achieving Society, the era of other directedness, there has been considerably less achievement and technological innovation than there was in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, there has been one critical invention: the computer and its attendant telecommunications and Internet capacities that have revolutionized communication and mass media.

Much as David Riesmann argued that mass media played a pivotal role in the transformation from inner-directedness to other-directedness, so it must be that the new communication methods, the Internet, computer, cellular phone and related, emerging technologies (my students are ahead of me on that) are likely to revise modes of personality.

Other-directedness involved a focus on the opinions and needs of others. But the Internet focuses people not on all others but on peer-group others. Interpersonal skills are minimized because much communication occurs on the Internet. Therefore, while interpersonal skills remain crucial for success in the other-directed world, much as a number of inner-directed traits do as well, group directedness is replacing other-directedness in many contexts. Group directedness calls for different skills from other directedness. It is hinged on narrower segmentation than was other directedness. Tastes are increasingly fragmented, and segmented preferences can now be tailored to so that pleasing the crowd becomes less important. Much as today's students may be gay or straight, they may prefer different lifestyles and need not feel obliged to fit in in the way that students did in the 1950s.