Georgism, Austrianism and the Far Right
w_b_...@yahoo.com
right:-
"Frank Chodorov had a profound influence on the postwar
American Right. Murray N. Rothbard, William F. Buckley Jr.,
James J. Martin, and many other exponents of the free market have
cited Chodorov's work as vital to the formation of their
worldviews...By the time he was offered, and accepted, the
directorship of the Henry George School of Social Science in
1937, he counted himself firmly within the classical liberal
tradition...Chodorov became an associate editor at Human Events
and stayed there until 1954, when Leonard Read chose him to edit
a revamped version of The Freeman, which Irvington Press (a
subsidiary of FEE) had recently purchased..."
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/steelman-aaron_on-frank-chodorov.html
ro...@telus.net
Ooooh, that sounds sinister, doesn't it?
-- Roy L
w_b_...@yahoo.com
it?"
No, not sinister, necessarily, but does
help explain why when you key in Georgist
code-phrases "Austrian" sites pop up.
Isn't that right, my little Nazi friend?
Sieg Heil.
w_b_...@yahoo.com
he earned a Ph.D. in economics, and was
funded for several years by the
Georgists. The following is excerpted
from gang8 discussions:-
-----------------------------
From: Hudsonmi@...
Date: Sat Aug 5, 2000 12:40 am
Subject: Re: [gang8] Land
The answer is because for georgists there
is only one dimension -- land. They have
no theory of capital, none of interest.
They don't understand capital gains. When
I tried to statistically illustrate what
you just wrote, Gunnar, they immediately
stopped funding my research and destroyed
all computer records, on the grounds that
such thoughts could only disturb their
neat summary of what Henry George himself
wrote. (He was no economist, believe me,
but an angry Christian ranter who wanted
to be president, but didn't even know how
to go about organizing a support group.)
Best never even to ask why the georgists
don't do something obvious and simple. I
guess I'm sounding like one who's gone
through the meat grinder of trying to
explain something to someone who doesn't
want to learn, eh? Well, think of them as
monetarists.
Michael
---
From: Hudsonmi@...
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2000 1:57 pm
Subject: My little joke
Dear Gang8sters,
Chris asked why I e-mailed some "posers"
to Mason Gaffney and the other nutters.
Geoffrey got close to the answer by
calling me Machaevellian. But it was more
surrealistic than that, more like poking
them in the eye. I hoped they might wake
up in the middle of the night with a
nightmare at the way I'd posed the
questions, realizing they were trapped.
Yes, Norway IS said to be taxing 80% of
its oil wealth (a figure I doubt). But
that's just the BEGINNING of its
problems! What does it do NOW? (They have
no answer. But I'll probably ask for
funding from them to come up with it!) We
all have a rather limited scope, being
from planet earth. We couldn't have
possibly imagined the "answer from Mars"
I got from Cliff Cobb. I enclose it for
your reading amusement. Could any of you
have come up with so imaginative -- and
utterly unworkable and alien -- a
suggestion? Great artists and poets are
chosen for their ability to think on such
lines that one must ask, "What planet did
this idea come from?":
Michael, In contrast to Mason, I can see
the merit in a policy similar to what you
propose. I would not make reference to
negative rent, however. That is a
function of productivity. If national
policy requires getting people to live in
places where no one would live without
subsidy, the simplest way to find out
what people would accept would be to
create some sort of bidding system. A
person might say, I'll live at that
latitude (or some other method of
defining a region) if the government pays
me 10,000 kroner a year. Someone else
might require 50,000. Thus, the low bid
wins and then *must* agree to live in
that region for a specified number of
years. This avoids complexity of trying
to ascertain the negative value from
production costs and so on. It's actually
a bit like bribing medical doctors to
spend some time in remote areas in return
for providing them with free schooling.
Cliff
Enough said . . . I have NO interest in
George, except as an example of how NOT
to institutionalize a doctrine. By seeing
what problems to avoid, I think I've been
able to spell out just what we need --
and it seems to be what now may be
opening up in Norway. As Chris says,
quite rightly, there's no point in
talking to academics as such. They won't
jump on our ideas until there's "money"
in them, in the form of promotions or
consulting work. The way to get them is
to talk to people who live in the real
world, not on Mars. The university
scribblers will then rush to try and be
among the first to "translate" our
English into academic-ese, replete no
doubt with the 50-page bibliographies
that we have little time to compile.
However, I do think that if something
positive happens in Oslo, Arno and I
should establish positions at the
university there, if possible. (But what
will we call our subject? It's not
economics, I guess.) The fact is that
universities ARE power houses -- that's
WHY Kaldor got in to "do his stuff" with
the odious Mr. Wilson. That's also why
I've done my archaeology (sorry Cornelia
-- Assyriology) publications to give us
the "historical" approach. And that's why
Chris's work is equally important, as it
gives us the long view that is lacking in
monetarist economics. We take a "genetic"
view of credit, not an abstract "view
from Mars."
Michael
---
From: Hudsonmi@...
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2000 2:48 pm
Subject: The FIRE sector and creditary
economics
Dear Gang8sters,
Now that I have duly made clear to Chris
(I hope) my disgust with georgism, I want
to acknowledge one area of my research
they have funded, whose charts most of
you have seen: the tendency for the
economy's "surplus credit" to be funneled
into land-price gains (and more recently,
stock market gains). I have used the
term, "Land is the economy's liquidity
sink." I might have said, "creditary
sink," but Arno found both terms
confusing. Yet they need to be made non-
confusing, and this happens to be the
single point on which one-note-George
harped. Yet it is not acknowledged by
monetarist theory, largely because both
the financial sector and the real estate
interests are not eager for the public at
large to realize that most "capital
gains" are banal, low-tech real estate
gains, not a "reward for enterprise" by
mom-and-pop high-technology start-ups. I
want this point made to the Norwegians so
that they can avoid the distortions
created by Anglo-American merchant-
mortgage banking, i.e., so that they can
take care to channel credit productively
into industry (and duly cut taxes
thereon). The juxtaposition I want to
emphasize is not only between industrial
credit and "consumer credit" (although I
grant Geoffrey's points on this, of
course), but the classical contrast
between productive credit that brings new
means of production or wealth-creation
into being, and unproductive credit that
merely bids up the price of existing
property (asset-price inflation, of which
the major element is land-price inflation
as a real estate bubble is funded by the
economy's growth in savings and credit).
Monetarists ignore this distinction. They
present their theories and compile their
crypto-statistics as if all investment
were industrial, in a world devoid of
real estate bubble-pyramiding and
securities trading (such as the
"financial engineering" or "zaitech" in
which companies engage when they buy up
their own stock, much to the benefit of
the CEO who promptly cashes in his stock
options). The upshot is a travesty of the
idea of "wealth creation" used as a
euphemism for simply bidding up stock
market prices. In sum, I want to point up
the Listian distinction that Arno
emphasizes between "national economies"
and "business economics" or "mercantile-
financial" economics. It took me about a
year to compile my statistics to
demonstrate how this perversion of credit
has unfolded in the U.S. economy and
Japan. The upshot was my charts (which
the georgists stopped funding, fearing
that their publication would turn
"georgist" economics into "hudsonian"
economics). What we ourselves say about
creditary economists is controversial
enough to shock people used to the usual
monetarist rhetoric. I want to minimize
the shock of ancillary ideas - and also
to show that there is a "right wing
libertarian" version (georgism, which in
this country has become the servants'
entrance to the Ayn Rand movement) so as
to counter Arno's fear that our economics
might be viewed as left-wing inasmuch as
we are not exactly value-free when it
comes to how we think credit creation
should be shaped and institutionalized.
My working plan is to include (at his own
expense, not our budget) Ted Gwartney, a
professor of real estate appraisal,
former land appraiser for British
Columbia, etc. to work with his
colleagues (and perhaps me) to summarize
the "bad credit" phenomenon. He may ask
Cornelia to present his points orally,
and I hope pay her fare to wherever we're
going to hold our meeting. Perhaps his
foundation also may fund the updating of
my statistical charts. In any case, if
there is any criticism of this point by
the Norwegians, Ted will serve as the
lightning rod. That's his job - until any
of you guys will do the grunt-work of
preparing the relevant empirical
statistical documentation. (Joe Hyde of
course would be the perfect person to do
this, if he has the time and inclination.
I can assure you that he is as disgusted
with the georgist institutions as I am,
as you can see from our joint article in
the present just-published Land and
Liberty, edited by Geoffrey's friend Fred
Harrison. We're now on the outside of the
georgist tent pissing in, not inside
pissing out.) So c'mon, Chris. You're
publishing your own pamphlet through SES,
a nominally georgist institution. We're
both pragmatic people, and neither of us
are cultists (well, I won't speak for Joe
on this).
Michael
---
From: Hudsonmi@...
Date: Thu Sep 7, 2000 1:32 pm
Subject: Newcomb
Dear Stephen,
The name is Simon Newcomb, to whom Milton
Friedman dedicated his own monetary book.
I've written much about Newcomb in my
monetary essays, e.g. my Goodhardt essay,
if you have it. Newcomb wrote the first
financial "monetarist" analysis of the
greenbacks, much better than any modern
monetarist could do. You may read my
summary of his work in my book on
American economics in the 19th century. I
devote a chapter to him. Perhaps I-L loan
has that.
I guess you've never visited the Henry
George School in New York. The Ayn Rand
mob has taken it over, led by the
"Frangmants" crowd: Oscar Johannsen, Jack
Schwartzman, little Sid Meyer, etc. they
are as despicable and crooked a bunch as
I've ever met. They're largely the reason
why I refuse to say anything good about
Henry George, becuase that would be
endorsing these rotten loners. I think
they entered georgism only to scuttle it.
To promote George today is to lead people
into their poisonous funnel. That being
said, there ARE some decent people who
came there from the Randites (e.g., Lynn
Yost, and of course also Robin). But most
of these decent people were shunned as
not being suitably cultish. I reject them
precisely because they claim to have a
"moral" view of economic activity. In
their personal behavior I have found them
uniformly to be self-dealing, unethical,
dishonest and immoral, in proportion to
the extent to which they mouth "moral"
values as a kind of symbiotic cover. It's
all hypocrisy. (Stalin mouthed moral
judgments too.) The Mt. Pelerin
connection is through Lowell Harriss.
I've asked Arno to look through the
histories of that organization to tell me
its membership, etc. It is extremely
libertarian and censorial of all other
ideas.
Michael
---
From: Hudsonmi@...
Date: Mon Oct 2, 2000 2:37 pm
Subject: From Ideological Rags to Rags in
3 generations
Chris asks: So can you give please me a
brief RUN DOWN on what Henry Georgism
consists of in the US - is it a
university, in which case is it a large
one or a small one? Is it a whopping
great fund somewhere? if so, how much?
What else?
Well Chris, you yourself got the key in
your weekend note of "from rags to rags
in three generations." In the first place
came a Celebrity Journalist whose book
sold well and made him money. Politicians
of various stripes selected him as their
front man. But he was a writer, not a
talker; a loner, not somebody who worked
with others. He was the Mary Baker Eddy
of American economics in the 1890s -
neither Christian nor Scientist, but
founding a hybrid movement that centered
around his (rather dysfunctional)
personality. In America, you always have
a few rich nuts who do nothing but fight
with their children and relatives all
their life, and use their vindictiveness
by bequeathing their fortunes in a bid
for immortality by leaving it to a cult.
A few rich right-wingers in the 1920s or
so funded a movement in memory of George,
who had died over a generation earlier.
Under such circumstances that "movement"
was a funerary cult from the outset. (Ask
Joe for details on this.) So they had an
endowment, but nothing to spend their
money on, as they were anti-intellectual,
misanthropic loners, and above all much
too mediocre to have enough social scope
to see how to promote a doctrine.
(Otherwise they would have joined the
Technocrats, Socialist Workers Party or
Vegetarians.) By not finding anything -
or anyone - to spend money on, their
endowment grew and grew, largely through
property values (in the case of the Henry
George School, which supplemented its
support by working for Nazi Intelligence
and becoming a center for anti-Semitism
in America down through the 1950s,
recruiting in particular anti-Semitic
self-hating Jews - the same group that
Lyndon LaRouche was able to tap in the
1970s). So the money grew until finally
it attracted people with little interest
in Single Tax, but various other quirky
things. That's where it now stands. The
bottom line is that every idea and
ideology that can be thought up actually
IS developed by someone and takes a life
of its own. Nature continues to
spontaneously mutate. Then, there is a
struggle for existence. The georgists
help explain what part of the DNA is
missing for a viable political movement.
They are now a geriatric cult with money
to be grabbed. Their demographic and
educational profile is the same as the
Christian Scientists, except that they
have few blacks. No credentials, inward-
looking - about to lose their money and
return to rags. So, Chris, why don't you
apply your law of business families to
the law of political subcultures?
More specifically, Georgism does not
exist in any university. It is anti-
academic. I don't think most HGS board
members even have a college education.
Their long-time head, a virulently anti-
white, anti-feminist misanthropic Negro
(George Collins) didn't even have a high-
school education, I think. They speak
about God a lot. At meals, they act just
like socialists -- each pays his own
money down to the penny. I've never seen
anyone pick up a check -- they don't
trust each other to reciprocate.
Schalkenbach has $18 million in a fund,
as does the School. Lincoln has $100
million, but hates Henry George and is
being sued by Schalkenbach seeking to
raid it. The School of Practical
Philosophy is a branch of England's SES
with $40 million, in real estate. Like
other sectarians, georgists are always
suing each other. Lawyers get rich off
them -- part of your rags to rags story.
There is no intellectual capital left to
run down. It is "running on empty," which
is why the interesting story now begins:
what other nut-group will take over the
movement? There are sects here that look
to other well-endowed sects to loot just
as corporations seek M&A targets. The
prime suspects to end up in control of
georgism are Scientology, the Moonies,
the KKK, bulgarian intelligence and the
anti-drug movement (of a sort funded by
drug dealers no doubt). But at present,
the movement has been taken over by the
Mont Pelerin Society and the Ayn Rand
group, so georgism has become the
servants entrance to the Objectivist
movement (known above all for its
subjectivism, naturally). I hope this
nonsense helps.
Michael
---
From: Hudsonmi@...
Date: Tue Oct 3, 2000 4:26 pm
Subject: Where Randy and I agree
Dear Randy,
OK, you're right on your three points of
agreement. So we'll let people argue over
WHICH of us is more accurate within the
framework of these three points. But
remember, I outrank you when it comes to
dealing with assyriology, having
published five books and a dozen essays
on the topic and having Harvard faculty
status in the sphere of Babylonian
economic relations since 1994. (I will
not bother to cite my remarkable
telepathic ability to transport myself
back into the early Neolithic.) Tell your
friend to make an FOI request for FBI
surveillance on the Henry George School,
and to read Keynes's Essays in Persuasion
about the vicious nasty Columbia georgist
who scuttled the British World Economic
Conference at Roosevelt's direction.
(I've blocked out his name right now. He
wrote a book on the Lincoln foundation,
which bankrolled the Georgists, him
included - an anti-labor bastard). My
observations are based on oral
communications from georgists over the
years. As Research Director of the Henry
George School during 1994-95, when its
Exec. Dir. George Collins oversaw the
destruction of all correspondence and
records, my testimony has some weight.
Further information can be obtained from
Ed Dodson, president of that institution
at that time (who resigned in protest
against its corruption, not its Nazism,
but who knows the story). These guys are
really vicious. Their long-term director
in the 1940s and '50s was the Nazi
"libertarian" Frank Chororov, one of the
founders of Spotlight. They gave courses
in how the Holocaust never happened and
other "Revisionist History." The FBI
files will have all this, and probably
are the only remaining documentary source
now that the School has destroyed its
entire history down to its Nazi
eugenicist roots.
Michael
-
ro...@telus.net
>"Ooooh, that sounds sinister, doesn't
>it?"
>-----------------------------
>
>No, not sinister, necessarily, but does
>help explain why when you key in Georgist
>code-phrases "Austrian" sites pop up.
>Isn't that right, my little Nazi friend?
>Sieg Heil.
?? ROTFL!!! You are aware, I assume, that the Austrian School is not
"far right" or fascist in the least, but basically libertarian, as are
the Georgists (geolibertarians)?
-- Roy L
w_b_...@yahoo.com
it is that the Henry George movement has been
taken over by a group of people whose main
concern is to oppose government. I refer
especially to the followers of Ludwig von Mises
and Frederick Hayek, and to the hard-money
advocates that have played so important a role
in the major Henry George institutions, along
with the supporters of Ayn Rand."
Michael Hudson
ro...@telus.net
I'm not sure how this contradicts Henry George's own writings, which
definitely advocate a free market "libertarian" viewpoint. Marx
himself called George, "the last-ditch defender of individualistic
capitalism." I have read enough Mises to know that he opposed land
taxation, so his followers can hardly be called Georgists any more
than Marxists can.
-- Roy L
sinister
<w_b_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1138739911....@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Here's a link to the entire essay:
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/hudson_selling_henry_george.html
Note that on LVT itself, Hudson is in support.
> Michael Hudson
>
w_b_...@yahoo.com
"I guess you've never visited the Henry George
School in New York. The Ayn Rand mob has taken it
over, led by the "Frangmants" crowd: Oscar
Johannsen, Jack Schwartzman, little Sid Meyer,
etc. they are as despicable and crooked a bunch as
I've ever met. They're largely the reason why I
refuse to say anything good about Henry George,
becuase that would be endorsing these rotten
loners. I think they entered georgism only to
scuttle it. To promote George today is to lead
people into their poisonous funnel. That being
said, there ARE some decent people who came there
from the Randites (e.g., Lynn Yost, and of course
also Robin). But most of these decent people were
shunned as not being suitably cultish. I reject
them precisely because they claim to have a
"moral" view of economic activity. In their
personal behavior I have found them uniformly to
be self-dealing, unethical, dishonest and immoral,
in proportion to the extent to which they mouth
"moral" values as a kind of symbiotic cover. It's
all hypocrisy. (Stalin mouthed moral judgments
too.) The Mt. Pelerin connection is through Lowell
Harriss.
"In the first place came a Celebrity Journalist
"Tell your friend to make an FOI request for FBI
surveillance on the Henry George School, and to
read Keynes's Essays in Persuasion about the
vicious nasty Columbia georgist who scuttled the
British World Economic Conference at Roosevelt's
direction. (I've blocked out his name right now.
He wrote a book on the Lincoln foundation, which
bankrolled the Georgists, him included - an anti-
labor bastard). My observations are based on oral
communications from georgists over the years. As
Research Director of the Henry George School
during 1994-95, when its Exec. Dir. George Collins
oversaw the destruction of all correspondence and
records, my testimony has some weight.
"These guys are really vicious. Their long-term
director in the 1940s and '50s was the Nazi
"libertarian" Frank Chodorov, one of the founders
of Spotlight. They gave courses in how the
Holocaust never happened and other "Revisionist
History." The FBI files will have all this, and
probably are the only remaining documentary source
now that the School has destroyed its entire
history down to its Nazi eugenicist roots."
-