Reason governs the world. World history is therefore a rational process.
Georg W.F. Hegel
A Value(s) Problem
Nowhere in right wing thought is there an obligation to individualism, free market economics, the seniority of self-interest, or the necessity to view all actions economically. Rightism is entirely centered on the role the individual plays for the collective interest. The solidarity of rightism is that it acts in objection to individual self-interest, that there is obligatory truth and goodness, and that man ought to aspire to such perfection. Him not conforming to that is not a testament to individualism, it is a testament to his distance from God.
The primogenitors of this popularized brand of rightism were not rightist themselves. They were hailing from the early development of what we know as libertarianism (and the much more accepted byproduct of this movement — Austrian Economics). Ludwig Von Mises, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard. Now, the obvious common thread of all of these influential economic thinkers is blatant. They’re all secular Jews, and definitely in the case of Ayn Rand, atheistic. The way these people argue for ethical seniority is like that of a leftist, but with more indignance about the place of government. Their ideas of morality are identical to the consent-based ethics of the leftists and liberals before them.
There is an odd man out, though. Thomas Sowell. A black man from Harlem. He grew up in poverty and was a Marxist up until his 30s before finally conceding to his maestro Milton Friedman. Sowell’s personal spiritual beliefs remain just as hidden as the preceding Jewish economists — because they were ultimately philosophical materialists with the same reductive mentalities as the followers of scientism. Sowell, however, has a more conservative kick to his beliefs, and it’s the only grounds that are blatantly shoddier as they stand upon an ethical authoritarianism. Even Milton Friedman conceded that there needs to be a couple departments of government to maintain peace and all of those damn atomic bombs. Ironically, when asked which departments should be kept around, Friedman took a very minarchistic stance, but if he had to tell you how government would operate, he’d shine that smirk at you and give some response like, “Well, the people would democratically choose what needs to be done!” Great intuition, Milt!
The reductive mentality of libertarians has all but disappeared from the parts of the right wing that matter. But the epistemic priors are still the same. The obligation to the wholeness of community is secondary to the Americanist virtues of individualism, free choice, etc. It affects the way they see central banking or government spending (and just the broader idea of collectivism). They believe money shouldn’t be so centralized, nor should it be spent so much. Ultimately, the same priors of “government bad, individual choice good” still dominates their end of the political compass.
Which begs the question of why they even care in the first place about being right wing if they accept the same wrong interpretation of reality as secular economists who don’t believe in God. I think the deep reason why they take these people at such face value is they have no other choice. They have bought into the lie that all great things were caused by boot-strappin’ cowboys and frontiersmen looking to eke a living out in the wild blue yonder.
Yet all it has led to is corporate dominations always erring towards efficiency and against the free choice of the common man. All America has moved in the direction of is the cheapening of once great milestones — the acquisition of a house, having a multi-generational community, maintaining the same job for a long time. There’s no longer a place — just a place for you to serve usurious masters. The longer this free market exists, the less good things are as good, and the less people really care about society as a whole past intermittent convenience.
It appears the zealous protection of this system doesn’t quite pan out well for the rightists in favor of it. It’s a holdover of a since-dead, short-lived era of white man migration (manifest destiny). For the vast majority of capitalism’s history, it has driven most under the rapacious heels of greed. But protestant America would be a bunch of dopes if they didn’t stand up for what their ethnoculture had brought them. They have to stand by it, even when it is nothing but secular Jews who control the way they think.
But that’s the compulsion of a religion that is already in rebellion against its former institutions.
Self-interest
The fundamental principle underlying all economic exchange, and therefore praxeology (the study of human action) is that humans act in their own self-interest as a means to an ends.
Already wrong. Why do they act? For their own self-interest right?
This is where the deep tell that a rightist just doesn’t know what they’re even bothered about in the first place, without abandoning their economic priors. It summarizes how they react to every little issue they have with supposed “economic issues” in the first place. Money is a function of every individual’s subjective view of value that is constantly in flux. Don’t even begin to talk about how the memetic power of the reserve currency, along with an intense amount of worldwide usury, is what backs it, and that it’s just not total flux.
Value as a subjective designation then opens up the possibility for uninhibited free trade, perpetual currency wars, eagerness to cheapen the value of labor by breaking up the ability for laborers to collectivize. The subjective theory works well in the only way it could — a world that has abandoned the inherent value of community and common good. It’s a post-hoc rationalization for “wow so many people want this thing, therefore it is valuable” when the correct sentence about reality is “this theing has value, which is why people want it!” This can be separated between certain appetites, but with an understanding of the good, the true, and the beautiful, isn’t value quite well understood?
If the ability to produce something was inhibited, then its value would go up. The cost of production is the source of all value in commodities, which is why in capitalist society the perception of the value of labor is downgraded so as to perpetuate the most return to the capitalist or landlord.
The answer is to not take this theory of subjective value and run with it, but to realize the value of a nation is in what it produces; that capitalism always errs towards usury and opportunism.
But the extension of self-interest isn’t just found in money. It’s the view all individuals have on broader society, and their lack of obligation to it. Ultimately, they are encouraged, from the day they are born, to have shallow spiritual beliefs and a deep cavernous desire for money. Likewise, their job is nothing more than a means to an ends. It’s a place to stomp on others, and take advantage of every moment to prove they’re valuable as a commodity to a richer man above them.
It is all well and good to say “well self-interest is just an unfortunate fact” rather than looking back in the past at the vast depth of human history that functioned on collective societies with extremely centralized financial systems. Or “the labor theory of value is wrong because I can decide an apple is worth a million dollars.” Is this really up for debate? It’s a foolish post-structuralist mindset to be breaking down the idea of value into nothing more than an individual designation that they just decided to come up with. Okay so if I decide apples are worth twelve bloopy blahs (a thing that I just came up with), then they are just worth that? Isn’t this something an atheist would say about morality?
You base your society on a lie, that lie will most certainly manifest in chaos and flux. Case and point— free market individualism.
Efficiency and the Death of Capitalism
Capitalism itself is already letting out its death rattles in the form of the corporatist society. Not in the cool Mussolini way, but in the epithet hippies yell at Republicans way. This is something Keynesians saw coming in the 1950s like Jonathon Kenneth Galbraith. Eventually a society built on no culture or religion, but the war of different efficient systems psychotically seeking dominance, will end in a society of intense technical efficiency, but a deep diminishing returns on any investment made back into society. This can be seen in the marginal revenue product of debt, wherefor every dollar invested into debt, less and less is gained.
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