Sarah "Frodo" Palin and The Cancer School of Economics

Both Democrats and Republicans want America atop the world's economic food chain. After all, it's better to be the Great White Shark than the seal. They differ on what to do to keep us there, of course. Generally, Republicans want businesses operating free of taxes and government intervention, while Democrats believe certain limits on businesses and our financial markets are necessary to keep Americans safe and prosperous.

Republican economic policy is based on the Theory of Natural Law first advanced by Aristotle. Since nature doesn't make intellectual decisions intellectualism is considered artificial, or unnatural. Regulation is an intellectual act, so it's not natural and therefore doomed to fail. Therefore our economy, Conservatives believe, if free of any regulation, will naturally fall into a stable balance of permanent prosperity. Regulations and intervention, they claim, are wholly unnatural and illegitimate.

Conservatives have been working for decades to deregulate markets and businesses. In 1999 they succeeded in removing important regulations set up after the Great Depression to ensure market safety. So why did the markets crash?

Because Natural Law economic theory never existed.

Nature, in fact, places the most severe limits on animals and their behavior to make sure they stay balanced. Sharks don't have a "stop eating" mechanism in their biological blueprint. Under normal conditions sharks can't catch food fast enough to do themselves damage from over-eating. Nature has limited their ability to catch food. A shark in a feeding frenzy, however, given enough food, will eat until it quite literally bursts open like an overstuffed sausage. Its guts just explode out into the water. In some cases crazed, gut-busted sharks eat their own entrails, unable to distinguish between their innards and their kill.

A shark is just a dumb beast driven by a killer instinct. If nature's limits break down, so does the shark. The only thing keeping sharks from eating themselves to death are the physical limits nature places on all apex predators. Because nature has perfected the art of limitation, a shark eating itself to death is extremely rare, and usually occurs only when humans get involved and temporarily throw food supplies out of balance. Nature is nothing if not a series of carefully orchestrated restrictions. True Natural Law economics is not laissez faire it is structured guidance, like the rules in a football game. It's a bad idea to give 22 men pads, helmets and a football and say laissez faire, unless you want every one to get killed.

Animals have a complex system of internal and external limits to make sure they don't outgrow their eco-system either in body or population. In Aristotle's day nature had total control over human beings. His people could only move so quickly, gather and grow only so much food, and had only rudimentary tools. These and other physical limits contained human population growth for millennia. Human economic activity required minimal governmental oversight if any at all, so laissez faire seemed natural.

Today huge groups of human beings are largely free of nature's constraints. We, as a race, can, and will, apparently, out grow our eco-system- something Aristotle did not consider in his extensive writings on natural law. Given the political freedom 21st century human beings could and would extract every fish in the ocean in a few years time. But for nature's limits sharks would, too. Soon genetic engineering breakthroughs will clear away whatever constraints nature has left over humanity. Conservative economic theory, which depends entirely on constraints provided by nature, is fantasy.

Out growing nature's restraints means nature can no longer stop us from destroying ourselves if we get off track. With nothing to contain us we have to assume nature's former corrective role in all our endeavors and provide necessary limits ourselves.

We should not be afraid of limits. Everything growing thing in nature is limited in some way except cancer. Limitless, unregulated growth is disease, not freedom. If we strip our markets of all restrictions and let the sharks go into frenzy we will create cancer not growth.

In 1999, what I call the Cancer School of Economics succeeded in removing entrenched banking regulations created after the 1929 belly burst that triggered the Great Depression. Stripped of structure, predictably, America's powerful economic killer instinct has run amok ever since. America's economic sharks have gorged on fossil fuels, unfettered financial predation, incomprehensible budget deficits and Keating/Enron style corruption. They ate more than their eco-system allows and busted open yet again. Today America is no longer an apex predator in a sustainable food chain but a cancerous tumor on the world's economy.

A few months ago as the world's economic waters began running cloudy with America's guts, Bush, McCain and Fed Chairman Bernanke said the fundamentals of our economy were sound and strong. What else would a dumb beast say with a mouth full of its own entrails? A dumb beast only knows one thing: if it is eating its happy.

And just like a simple, natural, not at all pointy-headed or intellectual shark eating its own entrails, the Republicans and hapless Democrats are incapable of stopping their self destruction. They passed a bail out/rescue package with toothless over sight provisions that ignores the causes of the meltdown and is funded by borrowed money and a massive cash infusion from the treasury created out of thin air by printing dollars. Apparently they believe self cannibalization will stop us from eating ourselves to death. How very dumb beast of them. In effect we now have a bubble propped up by a bubble, or The Weimar Republic.

Conservatives see a Democrat in the character Quint from Steven Spielberg's still excellent 1975 blockbuster Jaws. Quint was a shark hunter. He shot little steel harpoons tied to big, buoyant barrels into sharks which severely reduced their ability to swim. Conservatives see every regulation as just another barrel slowly killing American business.

The Cancer School of Economics doesn't get that forcing Detroit to make cars safer back in the 50's and 60's through Government intervention in the market place made the auto industry more profitable. They can't see that safe cars increased the market for cars and increased dependence on cars which helped create a pervasive car culture and increased sales. That kind of thinking is for pointy-headed intellectuals, not simple, natural folk. All they can see is "bigguvment" got on the backs of poor, poor businessmen and tried to choke the auto industry. They still think we'd all be better off without brake lights, seat belts and turn signals waiting for Detroit to make safe cars.

Republicans don't see health and prosperity in regulation. They see Democrats and their regulations as another kind of shark competing for living space and fish- a smaller, less aggressive, toothless kind of shark who deserves to die, who unfairly restricts stronger sharks who should be allowed to run free and rule the seas. They don't see Democrats as noble or compassionate or evolved or helpful in the least. They see them as whiny, traitorous runts who have turned themselves into un-natural parasites who leech off of their larger, stronger brethren and therefore need to be wiped off the face of the earth lest everything die.

Anyone who wants no rules at all is an adolescent. Like a bratty teenager caught up in a rebellious tantrum, Republicans can't see any limit as healthy. Conservatives point to people who truly are parasitic runts and claim they were created by healthy limits which keep our economy from bursting.

All these Cancer School of Economics financial experts swimming around with their guts hanging out argue the finance, credit, loan and banking system is already the most heavily regulated industry in the nation. Governments don't heavily regulate the greeting card industry. Everything depends on financial stability, confidence, fairness and predictability. The financial markets need intelligent, tough, strictly enforced regulation so our nation's super sharks can do what they were born to do without bursting. Obviously it is the quality of regulation not the quantity that is the issue at hand. Funny -- with all the regulations on the financial industry conservatives targeted just the ones that if removed would cause a meltdown. Weren't interested in all the others, were they?

Republicans, like troubled teenagers, are unable to understand their own behavior is the problem. Conservatives look at the deregulation disaster that is the last eight years of Republican rule and have come to the conclusion that they were corrupted by eight years of power. Power doesn't corrupt. Washington is a petri dish for all one's latent dysfunction. Power revealed who Republicans truly are. They came to Washington and did exactly what they wanted to do and they destroyed themselves. Self knowledge is a bitch.

For all the evil Washington has done to Republicans, they sure don't want to leave. They most definitely want to stay despite the horrible things power does to one's conservative credentials.

To convince Americans they have learned their lesson and should be given the reigns of all-corrupting power one more time, conservatives have brought forward Sarah Palin, someone they advertise as too simpleminded to be affected by Washington's irresistible evil, like some kind of Alaskan version of Frodo Baggins. Basically, Republicans are promising Americans they'll be dumb as hell if we give them another chance in 2008.

The biggest problem Conservatives face right now is that no one has faith in unfettered predation anymore. America's corporate sharks are gut busted and floating belly up. Sarah Barracuda is meant to prove conservative economic ideology is still healthy, wholesome, natural and as dumb as a big fish. Conservatives think just by letting Sarah "Frodo" Barracuda swim into the White House our nation will return to prosperity.

Republicans don't understand there is no Quint slowing them down. Market regulations are not the equivalent of a barrel tied to a shark. The life sustaining financial regulations they greedily stripped away in 1999 were a positive structural force that provided stability, scale, security and confidence. Massive exploitation of resources coupled with an unrestricted financial system is not economic freedom. It is unbalanced, unstructured and un-natural. It is cancerism, not natural law. Limits on risking other people's money is not un-Godly interference, or the life sucking evil of parasitic runts, its protecting the human eco-system, which humanity must do for itself, because, after all we're not dumb beasts. Acting like one won't help anybody, Sarah.

Comments

[alclau]

Outstanding explanation! It does contribute quite a lot to clarify the subject. Congrats!!!

[DarthVector]

While catfish are known to have burst intestines due to overeating:

Boon, J.H.; Oorschot, R.W.A.; Henken, A.M.; Van Doesum, J.H. Ruptured intestine syndrome of unknown etiology in young African catfish, Clarias gariepinus (Burchell 1822), and its relation to the feeding level. in AQUACULTURE 63,

things are more complicated. Sharks also evidence what is known as intestinal inversion. That is, they turn their insides out in order to clean them in the water. In close captivity, this can lead to other sharks amputating the trailing colon:

Gerald L. Crow, James A. Brock, Jeffrey C. Howe, Beth E. Linnon, Shark bite wounds of the valvular intestine: The cause of an acute mortality syndrome of captive blacktip reef sharks, Carcharhinus melanopterus, Zoo Biology, VL 10 NO 6, PG 457-463, 1991

Nonetheless, the argument that "growth-only economics is like cancer" is morally persuasive. Instead of sharks, I would use the example of microbes growing on an agar plate.

Eventually, there's not enough space and resources, and they cannibalize each other. As below, so above. Go ask Jared Diamond.

Cheers...

[LuckyBlessed]

Reminded me of a famous Republican talking about another cancer;

"What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity....? If this is true, how do you propose to improve the condition of things by enlarging......, by spreading it out and making it bigger?
You may have a wen or cancer upon your person, and not be able to cut it
out, lest you bleed to death; but surely it is no way to cure it, to
engraft it and spread it over your whole body. That is no proper way of
treating what you regard a wrong. You see this peaceful way of dealing
with it as a wrong, restricting the spread of it, and not allowing it to
go into new countries where it has not already existed. That is the
peaceful way, the old-fashioned way, the way in which the fathers
themselves set us the example."

Lincoln was talking about the institution of slavery as a cancer. Today it is the institution of Corporate Welfare, Lobby Blood Money, Privatization bleeding the turnip that was once America dry. Bush, McCain are no better than Communist , see Communists = Privatization Capitalism at
http://kittendiatribes.wordpress.com/

[endr678]

Whoops. I am new to this, and didn't realize that my comments would be added to the top of the page and not the bottom. So my post actually starts a couple of posts down and then goes up from there. Please do read it, as I am interested in what people think. Thanks

[endr678]

The author also made another fundamental error in reasoning when he made the analogy that growth somehow equals consumption. The only way that this could possibly be true is if the author believes, falsely, that money is an end and not a means. Profit making buisnesses, the ones that produce the growth that he is talking about, are, by definition, taking in more money than they are spending (Otherwise they wouldn't be making a profit). What this means, is that the value of the goods and services that the business is producing is greater than the value of the goods and services that that business is consuming.
Notice that, since this is true, profit making businesses are actually giving more to the world than they are taking from it, and the higher the profits, the greater the difference between what they are giving out and what they are receiving in return.
It is understandable how the author could see large businesses taking in all this money and drawing the analogy to a shark that is eating and eating until it bursts. But you can't eat money. You can't build a shelter out of money. Money won't sew your shirts, and money won't treat your diseases. The only things that you can eat or use are goods and services. And given that profit making businesses are actually producing more goods and services than they consumer, the analogy to an ever-consuming shark is simply a mistaken one.

[Querent]

You are confusing this argument by assuming that goods and services are somehow in the same category as value, which they are not. If raw materials are worked into more easily usable form and then sold, the value of the product has increased because the finished product is more easily usable, or consumable. We don't want to put raw wool on our beds, because we can't spread it evenly over the surface, and it is not easy to rearrange it to provide warmth. Therefore we want to use blankets. The blankets are easier to use, so they are of more value as bedding than raw wool. But when the blanket is produced from the wool, while value has been added, it is likely that at least some of the wool was actually discarded, so the producer has actually reduced the amount of material to be sold from that which he bought. You are pretending that value is a thing, which it isn't. Money is a thing, or at least it is the surrogate for a thing. When you say businesses are giving more to the world than they are taking from it, you are equating value to material, and by eliding this equation, you are confusing your terminology, which causes your conclusions to be suspect. I don't know whether your conclusions are valid, but I know that the way you reach them isn't.

[endr678]

Here's the problem with your argument. You say that I am confusing goods and services with value. But there is no other way to correctly measure the amount of these goods and services except by their value. If I need to destroy 20 pocket calculators to make a PC (somehow), but everyone would pay way more for the one PC than they would for all 20 calculators, would you say that the amount of goods and services in the world has increased or decreased? You might say that because the world has lost 19 objects, the amount has decreased. But what would be the use of this way of thinking? This method of summing up goods and services would lead us to think that a manufacturer of roller skates is more productive than a car manufacturer because he produces far more wheels. It would also be nearly impossible to add services into this calculation. A doctor might consume 5 hamburgers in the time it takes him to diagnose and cure one patient, but would this make him a drain on society? Value is the only way to measure how much you have produced and consumed, and money is the easiest and best way of measuring value. And if the value (read: market-clearing price) of the company's goods are higher than the the value of the goods used to produce them, then clearly they must be increasing the total value of goods in the world.

[Querent]

Actually, on second thought, the conclusion that businesses are producing more goods and services than they consume is clearly not true, and was reached by the equivocation I explored in my earlier post. So I do know that that part of your conclusion is not valid. The author's analogy is valid for his rhetorical purpose, but it is only an analogy, so it can't be completely valid, by definition.

[endr678]

The idea that government intervention is unnatural stems from the fact that any government intervention can never have this effect. If both parties were to benefit from the trade, there would be no reason to use force to make the trade occur. The only reason to use force is if one party (or both) would rather not make the trade the government is enforcing. Since the trade would not occur without the use of force, it is unnatural.
Notice also that government intervention means that it is very unlikely that the total valuation of goods in the world will increase. Concievably, it is possible that the decrease in one persons value might be made up for by the increase in the other person's. However, there would be no way of knowing this, since valuation is extremely subjective, and there are strong reasons for people to lie about it when asked. The only way to ensure that the amount of wealth in the world increases is to only allow trade that both parties consent to.

[Querent]

Government regulation of trade is not the use of force to make trade occur. It is the use of law to force both parties to the trade to refrain from deception in the course of the trade, and to guarantee that the terms of the agreement the trade represents are fairly and equitable enforced. You are arguing from analogy just as much as the author, except where he is analogizing corporate behavior to that of a shark, you are analogizing it to a man with an apple and another man with a dollar. While these analogies may provide insight into the larger situation, they are arguments about something other than the larger situation, and the conclusions reached in that way can therefore not by themselves be valid in the larger situation. When someone takes a loan out from a bank to buy real property, we do not have the situation of one man dealing with another man. We have the situation of a man dealing with a corporation. So your analogy falls.

[endr678]

I have zero objection to the type of government intervention in the economy that you describe. I think that protection of property rights is basically the only real pupose of government, and preventing deception and enforcing contracts go hand in hand with protecting property rights.

The problem is that the government intervention the author speaks of clearly goes beyond that. The author would have no problem with the government preventing a trade that both parties would agree to, even if both parties were acting totally honestly. He talks about how the auto industry has been made more profitable by the regulations placed upon it. Why, if this were true, the auto industries would not produce the safety features themselves, is left unsaid. What is also left unsaid is whether or not the author would support such regulations even if they didn't result in increased profitability for the auto companies. While I don't usually like to attribute opinions to people, I don't think it would be unfair to assume that he would.

Regardless, the point stands that the unnaturality of government intervention stems from the fact that it prohibits trade that would normally and honestly occur without the intervention, not from its intellectual nature

[endr678]

Also, I don't see how dealing with a corporation is relevantly different from dealing with a person, especially in this situation. Aren't corporations simply groups of people? Aren't they interested in increasing their wealth just like individual people? If so, how would the situation with the apple relevantly change if one of the parties was replaced by a corporation?

[endr678]

(This is kind of a long post, so I have to split it up. Apologies)

So, I read this article, and I have to say, I have no idea what the author is talking about.
Take the first paragraph for example. While conservatives may agree that regulations are unnatural and illegitimate, the idea that the unnaturality of the regulations stems from their intellecual nature is absurd. Economies cannot exist without thought. Sharks can't trade with other sharks because they cannot think about and place value on goods.
The idea that regulations are unnatural stems from this simple statement: when two people make a voluntary trade, both parties come out ahead. The idea behind this is simple. If I have an apple, and you have a dollar, and I value your dollar more than my apple, and you value my apple more than your dollar, we will most likely make a trade. What is fantastic about this situation is that this simple trade caused the total amount of value in the world to go up. Since I now value the totality of my assets more than I did before the trade, and you feel the same way, the total amount of value has increased.

[Liberal813]

Great article. Easy to understand with a great analogy of nature. Should be easy to understand even for children and hard core Republicans. The only sad thing is that Republican don't want to understand the basic law of natural selection that is behind it. The harsh truths is that there is no second chance in natural selection. You float dead like the greedy exploded shark or you live by exercising restrained that comes with some over site.

[WeAreTheBorg]

Not to mention that an economy is not a natural organism or system, either.

An economy is a human-created system. Therefore, the argument that regulation is somehow "tampering" with a "natural system" is doomed from its first premise.

We are the Borg.
Resistance is Futile, Republicans.
We will vote for Obama.

[Querent]

Good point. This is the inherent limitation of argument by analogy.

[peacegurl48]

As Palin has been aptly called a "cancer" on her party so is our economy a cancer on the country.
The insidious substitution of "unfettered predation" and moving money around for our old system of manufacturing goods and providing service.
We need regulation because "humanity's natural restraint/goodness" is trumped by greed and profiteering. The current crisis is the sad proof that people do not restrain themselves when there is no regulation and the sky's the limit for their greed.
Further proof is the disconnect between the reality of the real middle class/ working poor versus the Republican view that someone who earns $250,000/year is middle class or that the richest Americans deserve the largest tax breaks. I think that paying taxes is a patriotic act, I just want taxes to be equitable.

[AngelaQuattrano]

"Paying taxes is a patriotic act."

Adding that one to my arsenal.

[Jennifer]

Outstanding post. Thank you! Jenni

[Bluedog12]

It"s not Frodo but Fredo. Sarah"s smart, not dumb like people say, she"s smart and she wants respect.

[twofish]

She's smart like a junkyard dog. The dog knows that anyone who comes through that fence, I bite. The notion that there is a world beyond the junkyard is totally outside its ability to grasp or care about.

[Bluedog12]

I guess you've never seen The Godfather.

[DomainDiva]

Conservative economic thought assumes that people know how to act in a deregulated business environment. I would cite the current crisis and all others before (how about the S&L collapse in 1988) as proof.

It's fine that Aristotle had self control. His behavior obviously did not play forward now did it?

It's not rocket science, it's behavior of the inflated ego.

[gigi09]

She is trying to appeal to her base only! To the ones that don't read, and the ones that find humor in the present state of our economy, the ones that would risk the future of this great nation, for their own person and selfish prejudices. I will not watch SNL. Sarah Palin has been an advocate for racial divide for the past few weeks...she is like an evil demon,and I find it totally offensive that SNL will give her this platform. BOYCOTT SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE!

[putitupmike]

The merging of smaller, community oriented, and reliable businesses into mega corps is a large part of our problem. Too much consolidation into the hands of too few companies means that if they go sideways they take too much of our capital with them. Where was regulation when they went in front of Congress for approval? Large corporations were allowed to purchase far too many of our assets. Now that they are failing, and for whatever reason, they are impacting our financial structure. Break them up.

Second,I could never have imagined that four mega-banks would exist, and we are on the road to that right now. CitiBank and Wells Fargo are going to be in court to buy Wachovia. This sounds more and more like Cheney's New World Order. The huge have but one desire, and that is to get even larger. Mutual funds are but a tool to convince all Americans that they have a stake in all of the companies which are not behaving rationally. If you have a small stake in a company which is moving jobs off shore, how can you complain? After all, you get to see your assets getting larger every quarterly statement. This meltdown is starting to feel like a setup. I am not comfortable with the manner in which we seem to be saving our economy. This is not Socialism, this is the very opposite. This is consolidation into the hands of a few, and it is not the Government.

[Querent]

I certainly agree.