Economic Despotism uncovered...

The Covid-19 pandemic has uncovered many nefarious aspects of our society: racism, ethnic disparities and raw poverty.

Another aspect of our society is what I call economic despotism.  It is more insidious because, though it is right before our eyes, we cannot see it.  We take for granted that it is good to have free choice, which allows us to be free.  Also, that we have an open society (though Trump makes that less-and-less a reality).  And, that "property" is our right.  But this pandemic has laid bare the fact that these ingredients leave open for a new kind of totalitarianism to take root: Economic Despotism.

When we argue for “freedom” and “private property”, and mean limitations on open government, we are opting for another form of government…the de facto authority that develops in the world of that space left by freedom.  We call this “freedom”, and we deem it a positive thing, and leave it at that.  We disregard an actual analysis of it.  But it has an existence.

For, what is freedom, but ungoverned space.  We think of it as a vacuum, but experience teaches us that nature abhors a vacuum.  Our concept of “freedom” is open space, ripe for someone’s tilling.  Simultaneously, it is the abyss of nothingness.  The abyss of nothingness is a designation, or name that I give to that space resulting from freedom.  It is nothing because it is unseen; but it is everything in the form of open space.  We think of it as “nothingness”, but it is indeed something. It is what is allowed to happen in the absence of deliberative government.

It is in this ungoverned space, that a new despotism takes shape.  The invisibility acts as cover for what takes over.  And what takes over is what the seventeenth-century political theorist Thomas Hobbes called, The State of Nature.  It is an analytical state of human existence prior to the existence of society and government.  Hobbes had a negative view of the state of nature—“Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”—and it is rooted in the competitiveness of man: “The condition of man...is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.”  Because this space we call “freedom” is unseen and ungoverned, the basic instincts of selfishness take over, and those with advantage impose their will on others.

Economic despotism takes shape in this other space, the abyss of nothingness.  It is that authority and seeming meritorious legitimacy that is assigned, in the absence of open, deliberative politics.  It is the unseen substance that develops in the absence of legitimate, rationally chosen, government authority.  It is economic because ungoverned mankind (state of nature) is selfish and, in the absence of a higher purpose, seeks basic economic advantage.  It is despotic because it seeks to impose rules on others in the vacuum of the abyss.

Economic despotism makes legitimate, what is otherwise unthinkable.  In this unruled space, strange contradictions arise, owing to the fact that everything is governed by selfishness.  For instance, the economic movers and shakers (the economic despots) see the danger in shutting down their economic fiefdoms.  Having no restraints, they invent a new norm: it is better to suffer death of the few, than for the many to suffer economic loss.  Even Hobbes held back life as an entitlement superior to all else: “The right of nature...is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.”

The movers and shakers of the abyss of nothingness have managed to elevate their fiefdoms into the stratosphere of economics itself.  So now the dichotomy is between economic wellbeing and physical wellbeing, or that is to say, death.  Who would have thought that an element of our society could become more restrictive than Hobbes?

Thats all very well Quill, but without the economy, there will be no infrastructure, no everything....so>>>>>>>>>???????????????????????????
the farmer isnt going to till his fields unless there is a market for his grain
the plumber isnt going to fix folks plumbing if they cant pay him....so he cant provide that market for the farmer,
the folks who would call the plumber wont because they cant pay him, because the car factory isnt open...
the car factory isnt open because no one is buying cars and folks dont want to risk the virus......
CRUNCH!

Is this from the guy who sends his Thai servant out to do his shopping?

Maddog wrote:Is this from the guy who sends his Thai servant out to do his shopping?

Nothing but whataboutism, eh?  I thot not.

What is amazing is that back in 1641, Thomas Hobbes thought more about life than industrialists today, in 2020.  Is that because it's done in the name of private property, rather than any political entity that might put truth over interest.

Libertarians pshaw! They just want a free path to screw others. Profit over lives.