TheMarketForIdeas

(II) Need and Desire 

Once upon decrees and orders from the crude and savage king

With a strike of golden pencil to the subjects’ ears ring

And the blessing of the crowned head be applied upon his folk

Bowing to the ground so humble clothed in their shabby cloak, 

Modern power dynamics are a continuation of a past in which liberty was not a principle to be taken into account by then-leaders. Former times constituted a division between dictatorial societies and authoritarian civilizations. The variation of the degree of statism depended on political movements succeeding one another. History tells us that this perpetually change does not follow a logical slide from a democratic government form to an authoritarian, then dictatorial one. Regardless of this, the giving up of freedoms is an “encouragement” for corruptible power centres to go on with their policies, until a state of anxiety, then fear, instils into a disoriented people. Whatever a “golden pencil” writes is holy, is “for the people” and can hardly be contested, unless one wants to become an enemy of state commanders. 

And across the life they wander saddened by their hunger much

But they guard their masters’ glutton, for they see themselves as such,

By their plenitude of dinners, the roaster-laden tables

Wherefrom while to while for commons fall by luck little pebbles, 

Obedience seems at first a conscious paroxysm and a bizarre hope that one brighter day silent citizens shall follow their heads in their positions of power. Once again, the theme of self-interest against possible hypocrisy comes up, for survival in an imperfect world has never been sinful (no quotations needed), but even a virtue. It means adaptation and flexibility, even cleverness, and paves the way for a welcome refuge from the vicissitudes of our world. For most, family and material wellbeing are the most common escape from shaky ice and unexpected turnarounds. “Pebble by pebble”, prosperity is built – present times are for the better, for people can more easily achieve good fortune if endowed with creative spirit and a success-driven mindset. The effort against these “kings” supported by their dutiful busybodies and intellectuals is not and need not be heroical or sacrificial, but simply constant and structural. 

T’is the same old lustful mindset which adorns its hungry fate

With a bastard thirst for science propagated by a state

Which knows not its ends and limits, on its salty mountains rise

Serfs with hopes of liberation, wait their turn to roll the dice,

Cease the dryness of their throat, the heated-up desire

Making them to take their chances and never stop or tire

To spread the word throughout the world their inebriated sphere

Endless thirst, inner desire does that for the truth’s gain rear. 

This is where education as opposed to intellectualism comes as a question of urgent consideration, but of historical recurrence. The educated man is aware of his surroundings and derives knowledge therefrom, aided by related people of good faith. He is a kind but motivated animal, hopefully for the good of his tribe and also in view of his more distant fellows. The intellectual is a master of deceit by means of rhetoric and extensive ideology. As Friedrich A. Hayek realistically puts it, they are “second hand dealers in (collectivist) ideas”: “The ability to criticise accepted views, to explore new vistas and to experiment with new conceptions, provides the atmosphere without which the intellectual cannot breathe.” (The Road to Serfdom) They are not a different class compared to that of the people they influence – the “serfs with hopes of liberation” – but simply their counterparts possessing a craftier and more complex mind. In a way, these knowledge-spreaders and “experts” are great motivators for the broader remainder, as they construct a paradisiacal would-be world “would-you-listen-to-me”). The betterment of one’s condition is an “endless thirst” and although intellectual scoundrels condemn that as sinful or evil, they are the first to take advantage of this human drive. Liberty breeds success and success later shapes liberty. Like a schoolboy who can only draw representations of “happiness” (him playing his favourite game) or equality (other children of different backgrounds/ethnicities in a cheerful dance) but leaves a blank sheet of paper when asked to “draw freedom”, so is anyone else in search of his final definition of the latter concept. 

Keys and buttons tinkling daily, rolling with their empty blow

Tame inhabitants of cities – borough next to a borough,

And analysis and reports among other breaking news

Like a shabby barter market find for us a novel use, 

Normalcy prevails, no matter what else takes place in the world structure. This normalcy, meaning the totality of habitual and civilizational elements supporting a society, brings about the necessary safety for the average man, who wants to know that what this day offers him shall be available the next day as well. Societal “lameness” – seen by many as modern apathy for potential greatness – transmits “from one borough to another”, now closer than ever in “our globalized and interconnected world” – as the syntagma goes. Infotainment sustains daily activity; without it, our world creates its own sensational and unexpected, at a wide scale and clearly not always for the good of it. In an attempt to exchange ideas on a “shabby market” unprepared for intercultural change, conflict often arises. 

Waiting therein like a donkey with which they can work and plow

These so-called deceiving masters truths and lies so random sow

And they teach to the large public the illusion of critique

So the latter ones could proudly have the choice to bend and pick

The grand pleasure and illusion that they always comprehend

Every printed novel thanks to mister Guttenberg, my friend! – 

Informational wars cannot be waged without special interest and moneyed agencies, sieving the truth and the good from the untruth and the evil. In order to appear as disinterested, yet involved, an attitude of “critical selection” is employed. “Fact-checkers” are quick to do their job, mission statements are issued and organizational policies are revealed to the quick eyes of the great public. It is almost as if a sentiment of adoration for info-consumers obliges modern counterparts of newspapers and magazines to reassure their clients of the quality of the delivered products. Dissimulated objectivity is always more presentable and even more professional-like in a wave of self-interested individuals: “check us out, my friend, ever since the days of Mr. Gutenberg, we have been of the very few to care less about printed banknotes in favour of our more authentic printed news!” Of so many options, we bend unto them and pick thse which suit our convictions and try to make the best out of these offerings. There are endless currents of opinion claiming that they embody this great idea of freedom, from the most democratic regime to the most authoritarian state, from the most liberal to the most restrictive one, bearing the names of communists, national-socialists, capitalists, monarchists, republicans capitalists or Leninists. Because of this, freedom almost seems to be a historical circumstance. In all its relativity, it has been confirmed either by a satisfied majority led by a big-headed clique or a revolutionary minority. From biggest to most constrained, civilizations, nations tribes, families and individuals managing to emerge victorious from the struggle for resources and a better living have been accompanied by a certain discipline allowing them to prosper. Unsurprisingly, one of the great modern debates of our days is whether this has been possible due to each one’s intelligence and abilities or because of a “systemic injustice” with historical background. But the ice is not that thick between mirroring terms: “abuse” and “exploitation” as opposed to inoffensive use of one’s cleverness and opportunity-seeking as a source of good gain and fortune. Whoever associates liberty with a value or moral system might be disappointed by the surrounding reality. Carrying on one’s shoulders this heavy stone of morality, justice and even retribution sometimes makes one crack under its too great pressure. 

Until now and since that moment towards us many have sold

The whatever of the novel under inky, dirty mould...

The variety of pencils that dare spill their colour dark

Not to soak their top so laden on a paper try to spark

And especially the scribblers bowing to a golden ounce

At a random faith and swearing would they hurriedly renounce – 

Under the same roof rest the fourth and the fifth estate, fastened tightly together by a public wishful of novelty and dramatic storytelling. Inky stains are as visible on an electrical screen as on a sheet of paper, for pixels are as maddening as typed-out columns when our visual acuity is tested out by the hard task of distinction and comprehension of textual analysis of world events, from local to transnational. In this context, commercializing witty and masterful “pens” scribbling their best possible arguments in support of their publications is no un(fore)seen reality. However, due to a maturely accepted inability to further progress in this job and reach new heights, many immaturely choose to settle down as “house/court scribblers” and pragmatically renounce at their proclaimed principles. It is therefore no surprise that regulation is called for in this market of ideas, and more so when it seems perfectly justifiable. As with other attempts of “setting things right”, justice seeking and truth protection, this utterly proves to be a failure, since regulating bodies are no less susceptible of corruptible and untruthful practices than the agencies they lord over. Ultimately, truth and fact are decided by the prevailing ideas asserted by the great public or by a corpus of individuals who know how to win the battle of the minds. 

At the whims of evil plotters they give up their childish point

To accomplish the wretched havoc evil-doers so anoint –

T’is the social revolution – tumultuous nation-state –

While said plotter has vigiled laughing o’er its sad fate,

And this master of destruction got to choose from crowds the one

Making up his lying writings shouting aux armes, citoyens! 

Historically affirmed by past revolutions and social unrest, the heartbeat of systematic change begins with a shout in the public square and a few lines in the national newspapers, supported by clever „plotters” with a perfect knowledge of the human psyche and of how to stimulate their deepest needs and instinctual drives. Tribes went a long way to form empires, which were then turned into nation-states, while the latter are now united under the guise of transnational markets and ideological camps. Once again, it is more than likely we witness a further transformation to unknown organisational (re)forms, the great question being what else is bigger than the seemingly all-comprising global world. New state policies often spring from destruction of great proportions, emboldening masses to act accordingly and submit to the chosen way of their governments united in unholy coalitions. 

Over ages, over decades we have found so marvellous

To imagine that the power lays now unto the demos,

Have we witnessed benevolent the same awful dialogs

On equality and ravings of some crippled underdogs; 

Postwar reality urgently required a better opportunity for peace and prosperity, so that democracy was globalized throughout the world via capitalist channels in need to sustain rebuilding and newly enforced economies. The interchange of ideas between Europe and America – the two great actors of the war – was a multi-episodical scenario in the background of historical and political alterations. Before the Second World War, the American continent was the end destination for so many in need of salvation, sheltering the very people who will have a major impact in the reversal of ideas back to a Europe lacking the ideological compass it had before the war, be it in its binary form of fascist and anti-fascist forces. The evolution of these new ideas has eventually been uniformized, so that today our attention is recalled unto the contradictions of an equalitarian McWorld, for capital confronts the voting demos, the latter asking for the distribution of the earlier according to different government policies. 

Conspirators of these epochs of revolt and much unrest

Were assigned again the mission to do such and do the best

Subjugate the earthling commons with their rotten tricky zeal

And as always since the old days do they know what to reveal

To these novices so naive who have learned how to conspire

With a drop of gall and poison over science or satire 

Seen as a liberatory force from unseen oppressors, ideological sheriffs challenge from time to time international structures or form new ones – charts of rules are more easily imposed upon societies which “willingly” become part of international organizations. If anything, it is the tragedy of (democratic) representability: the path from elected to unelected is short and narrow and gives birth to conflict. No wonder it is abandoned every four or five years, when a change of heart and pathfinders take place, only to learn that they can no longer lead the way without the artificial light strips of starry world agencies. Humanly enough, opposition derives its gains and shows up as an opposing force. The modern world is a battle of “conspirators”, guilty of nothing but their desire to affirm their belief in overcoming the means to what they consider to be a higher end for mankind. 

And in banks or on stock markets at New York, Paris, London

Roll on-the-paper capitals back and forth much going on, 

Capital and its continuous augmentation have been the base for the development of modern societies. Traditionally financial centres derive the advantages of historical wealth building, having to face societal changes proper to their size and significance. Related institutions and the global stock market provide the link between these powerhouses and the rest of the world willing to partake in the capitalist paradigm. Herein lie, in truth, the rules of the great game, its gainers and winners provoking the dismay of less trustful and hopeful participants. The latter sometimes voice their consternation for their reduced success or simply the lack of it and look for the means to change their own situation. 

Behind vault doors gathering up on a venture or by chance

Mesmerizing wealth and riches upon which others enhance

Are pretended for the people, the rise-up of lower men

In a world of future revolt upon which its charms shall span 

“Wild capitalism” rolls on unreachable numbers for the common individual, whose disbelief can turn into a pretension for planned economics apparently more favourable to his fate and cause. The powder keg of revolt is always somewhere in the grounded mental of humans, but the “distractions” of reality usually prevail and stir up a broader sense of security and desire for progress and personal improvement. Other channels of action can be detrimental to his immediate comfort. In any case, he is always backed up by “proletarian” ideologies promising of a better life, but never delivering any of its illusions. “Lower men” are limited by their financial state, yet to simply take away from them any real possibility of ascension to higher realms alongside their more fortunate fellows does no good to the two sides. Unfairness certainly exists, but to say it is structural and not situational is prone to lead to revolt in the name of a chimera. 

And their schemas so minutely staying laid on an axis

Uphold capital division and henceforth learn this praxis: 

Schematizing is almost a reflex for the “planner” trying to make order into a world he cannot understand in its socio-historical depth. His trustworthy support derives from whatever notions of morality happen to prevail in his times and he always work “for everyone”, in the service of the collective and with the blessing of a higher goal which relativizes the means to be employed and the methods to be used. Equal distribution of goods is backed by equality before those who share the goods – not for the good, but rather for the unwelcome homogenization of the masses, now all lacking pretty much the same material things and over the years the same spiritual values so difficult to recover when another regime will have taken over, probably after revolts by no means of a peaceful nature. 

First red advocates will follow the advice in manual

And assemble working people telling them we live a dual

Economic phenomenon and a system to enforce

In this world of proles and kulaks, in salvation or in curse, 

Eternally inimical to capital and its role in a free market, dictatorial regimes have succeeded one after another; contemporary history teaches us that two forces of the Second World War had the word “socialism/communism” in their denomination, for they shared their disapproval of capitalistic societies. The Soviet Unionand many other communist societies have allegedly tried to achieve democracy, evidently never living up to such an unrealizable task. But neither Fascist, nor Communist states were eager to abstain from material redistribution, one in the name of love for their own men and race, the other for their belief and secular faith in what they saw as a winning and just system, soon-to-be the socio-economic chart of the entire red planet. 

And their chains be broken, hoorah – this shall make from folk of past

From today or from yestertime some new men ready to cast

A plan to seize in people’s name carried out with comrades’ help

The productive means now public with their sick and joyous yelp –

An earthly paradise be built upon wealth of the bourgeois age

And be revealed by the commune in the predicted higher stage. 

In order to carry out their plans, promoters of cultural and economic socialism deprive the man they think they help – the commoner – of his means of existence. From the very first step, the socialist pretends a “small sacrifice” necessary for the creation of a paradise greener than the abjection of everyday life, the latter normally instituted by other kinds of planners and deceivers. Thousands of pages of Marxist wisdom provide the base for accusations of unfair ownership of capital, land and output and even of “ownership” and entitlement to one’s family and the existing relations between its members. The entire bourgeois class has to be extirpated. This class now comprises not only great proprietors and moneyed officials, but also the more modern entrepreneur, the son of a kulak and of his pet aristocratic wife as socialist propaganda might put it, with no regard of the real early life and struggle of the man in question. 

Just flip the coin and get to see its luscious hopeful opposite

And there you would believe to know a joy which feels so good and right,

Free market within a free world based on the arbitrary will

Of actors who refuse to bow, obey authority, stand still

But free their selves, decide for each with their independent values

How to employ their capital and knowledge to the greatest use; 

What is peculiar about capitalism is that it is served on the same plate with democracy. Since democracy presupposes a government for its imposition and maintenance, this said state structure monopolizes the entire economic system. “Certainly, the hurried pursuit of free markets regardless of social consequences has put democratic development in jeopardy in many nations recently liberated from communism”, says Prof. Benjamin Barber in his well-known signature work, Jihad vs McWorld. Is it the “hurried pursuit” really, the hasty disposition to consume all of a sudden western products, to finally be able to “taste the feeling” and drink Coke with your friends in your local McDonalds, at whatever time, a reckless nation? And, prey, who in the post-communist world “hurried” to create free and deregulated markets? We know only a few people who did or could have done so, as the same author goes on and says “... majorities in all but a handful ex-Soviet lands have been busy re-electing former Communist officials (usually wearing new party labels and carrying new ideological doctrines).” For this, in Prof. Barber’s rightful opinion, happened because people were still awaiting “paternalistic socialist bureaucracies” to command them what to do, all this with the disappointing lack of support of the Western democracies, as the same professor says. So, who hurried for what? To take the home example, certainly not Romanian politicians to free markets, but Romanians to their products, from which no real negative consequence emerged, probably other than even today former communist countries are one step behind many other freer countries. On the other hand, international organizations were not in a hurry either – maybe they should have been. One draws the conclusion that who needed to “hurry”, stood still, and who did nothing should have acted. 

But one should wonder carefully, is this the case on the world’s path

Or fight monopolies for might, for everything that is on Earth? -

Central banks with hidden finance turn idealistic missions

Into reality as willed by their industrial commissions; 

In fact, however, what matters most is an official policy which commands over a society. Rapid growth to success is meant to be carried through by fraternization with political centres. Therefore, monopolies emerge and can be easily attacked as “market failures”. In fact, they are at the pity of their reciprocate friend, the government, for only it can prevent competitors from bubbling up on the free market. Monopolies exist because of corruption and government command. Economic actors are corruptible and do not respect the laws of the system when they do bribe government officials to limit the activity or emergence of competitors, for that is to be punished as a crime. Moreover, if one has set the things right for its great adventure in the world of free market, one can only be hindered by the government or by its other submissive institutions, like the central bank which can reduce one’s money to scrap overnight by printing more of it out of thin air through centrally-imposed decisions – usually for “relieving” an industry with respiratory and circulatory problems. 

Behind each currency a hollow intrinsic to their existence

Remind us for eternity it needs be paid, inheritance

Of olden days when our sweat created assets multiplied

As offering to this so-called value which has deceived and lied 

Inflationary policies lead to a larger supply of money, which in turn leads to higher prices and a market which has to follow a long process of transformation and adaptation to the newly-injected value. The power of one monetary unit is diminished by multiplication without a backing produce. Since leaving the gold standard, an “endless hollow” lays behind each monetary unit, unsustained by a corresponding rapport. The actual corona-context, with significant financial injections into the global economy, brings about a questionable future in which the question asked by Murray N. Rothbard some decades ago resounds as urgently as it ever did: What Has Government Done to Our Money? 

And dreams of mastership they live but each of them’s another goon

One likens to a wolf so wild that screams and barks up to the moon,

Convinced of the injustice say that they would keep and then upkeep

Economic enterprises which for humanity fruit reap – 

In the meantime, economic actors never tire to look for investment opportunities. However, there are many who believe they have been betrayed by an unanticipated reality and so they pretend subsidiary payments from national agencies. On the pretext of “protecting our workforce”, political elements are convinced to come to their “salvation” fearful of potential dismay among the company’s employees, who might keep in mind that, in times of great need, their government chose not to provide them with so valuable a financial aid. This translates to a future reluctance to cast their votes to the same “malevolent” government officials. Guilt is passed from employer to government and from governing party to another in the great Babylon of incapacitated state leadership and is usually settled through by power of the purse. 

Shall mesmerizing capitals and other values lying by

Never hide under oblivion and turn to errors a blind eye,

For behind values and assets a somber shadow plays its dance

On daily clouds with modern wont and thereupon leaves its bad stance 

A free market requires sound monetary policies. Crises have been common and can often be traced to “independent” decisions of particular national governments of monetary expansion. The real tragedy is that the common man has little to no means to counter bad policies always transgressing national boundaries. The only real and peaceful solution is the prevailing of education and the fading hope that future leaders will take into account economic perspectives regardless of potential political pressure, even though this sounds as contradictory as our world politics can get. International capital confronts global politics, befriends it and tries to make the best out of this pragmatic collaboration. Overt war between the two never takes place, for agreement and settlements is always preferable to both. 

While other values still unknown seem to step back and not display

Worthless coloured papers, if not at least the world – this bizarre play

In which by action we gift sense to other bits, now of gold

Even they, save human action, would remain a pointless mould. 

Existence is driven by need and desire. In order to satisfy these, rational behaviour takes over and action becomes purposeful. Reason endows a meaning to one’s surroundings and one’s inner values. These are means to a final goal, having in view one’s prosperity and advancement. Even behaviours usually deemed as socially uncommon or perilous – as long as mental soundness prevails – can be advantageous to the one who dares commit them. This never puts a halt or limits in any way infowars, ideological conflict or ethical arguments for certain practices. Quite contrary, since we well know that no interdiction has reached its destructive objective. By wilful association, we become social. Yet each of us is motivated by individual wants, for even the saint or the charity-contributor mirrors his actions into the imaginative world of wondrousness he creates for himself.