(Part 2) Top products from r/GoldandBlack

There’s an interesting interview over at Jacobin Magazine of Daniel Zamora, who has written a book about Michel Foucault’s fascination with neoliberalism in the latter stages of his intellectual life. The whole thing is worth a read, but there are a few parts that stand out:

>Foucault was highly attracted to economic liberalism: he saw in it the possibility of a form of governmentality that was much less normative and authoritarian than the socialist and communist left, which he saw as totally obsolete. He especially saw in neoliberalism a “much less bureaucratic” and “much less disciplinarian” form of politics than that offered by the postwar welfare state. He seemed to imagine a neoliberalism that wouldn’t project its anthropological models on the individual, that would offer individuals greater autonomy vis-à-vis the state….
Foucault was one of the first to really take the neoliberal texts seriously and to read them rigorously. Before him, those intellectual products were generally dismissed, perceived as simple propaganda. For Lagasnerie, Foucault exploded the symbolic barrier that had been built up by the intellectual left against the neoliberal tradition.
Sequestered in the usual sectarianism of the academic world, no stimulating reading had existed that took into consideration the arguments of Friedrich Hayek, Gary Becker, or Milton Friedman. On this point, one can only agree with Lagasnerie: Foucault allowed us to read and understand these authors, to discover in them a complex and stimulating body of thought. On that point I totally agree with him. It’s undeniable that Foucault always took pains to inquire into theoretical corpuses of widely differing horizons and to constantly question his own ideas.
The intellectual left unfortunately has not always managed to do likewise. It has often remained trapped in a “school” attitude, refusing a priori to consider or debate ideas and traditions that start from different premises than its own. It’s a very damaging attitude. One finds oneself dealing with people who’ve practically never read the intellectual founding fathers of the political ideology they’re supposedly attacking! Their knowledge is often limited to a few reductive commonplaces.

The irony is that Zamora may well be correct in his critique of the “intellectual left,” but as Reason’s Brian Doherty points out, intellectuals outside the left have been quite happy to plumb the depths of neoliberal thinking (though one could argue that the intellectual right has its own bugaboos… such as reading Foucault without mocking him).

Indeed, one could argue that we’re in the middle of a golden age of serious intellectual histories of the topic. Angus Burgin’s “The Great Persuasion,” Daniel Stedman Jones’s “Masters of the Universe,” and Jennifer Burns’s “Goddess of the Market” have all recently looked at how free market advocates managed to emerge from World War II to advance a set of ideas that became intellectually dominant a half-century later. The great thing about these intellectual histories is that they take the ideas and the progenitors of the ideas seriously, without being either hagiographic or oppositional.

Zamora’s interview closes with his pretty astute observation about Foucault’s significance in today’s academy:

>[I]t seems to me that relations of power within the academic field have changed considerably since the end of the 1970s: after the decline of Marxism, Foucault occupied a central place. In reality, he offers a comfortable position that allows a certain degree of subversion to be introduced without detracting from the codes of the academy. Mobilizing Foucault is relatively valued, it often allows his defenders to get published in prestigious journals, to join wide intellectual networks, to publish books, etc.
Very wide swaths of the intellectual world refer to Foucault in their work and have him saying everything and its opposite.

One of the virtues of teaching at a policy school is that Foucault is not quite as central to scholarly conversations as in traditional humanities departments. That said, Zamora’s observation rings true — which is why conservatives should embrace him and his work. From a conservative perspective, the great thing about Foucault’s writing is that it is more plastic than Marx, and far less economically subversive. Academics rooted in Foucauldian thought are far more compatible with neoliberalism than the old Marxist academics.

In some ways, Zamora’s book is an effort by some on the left to try to “discipline” Foucault’s flirtation with the right. It will be interesting to see the academic left’s response to the book. But Zamora also reveals why free-marketeers might want to give Foucault another read and not just dismiss him with the “post-modern” epithet.

So the OP was not the author of this post, I was. But stating property rights just wasn't necessary for the point I was trying to get across here.

In formulating those three dimensions, I was trying to generalize as broadly as possible to encompass the views that liberal Democrats have. The key term there is "however they may be interpreted." As you point out, some liberals, especially libertarians and neoclassical liberals like John Thomasi, view property rights as a basic requirement of justice which pre-exists the formation of the political community. If that's your view, then respect for property rights would be viewed as required by the ethical dimension.

However, that's not the unanimous view. Most contemporary liberals, like Thomas Nagel, take a more Rawlsian view that property rights are not required by any principles of justice (are not "basic liberties), and are only created by the state's legal procedures out of practical necessity. If one takes this view, then respect for property rights would be required under the proceduralist dimension.

I agree with you in taking libertarian view that property rights are required by liberal ethics, but for the purposes of this article I did not need to take a stand on this issue and doing so just would've invited tangential criticisms from Rawlsian liberals. All I was trying to show is that it's not possible to hold attain three dimensions at the same time. Regardless of whether you view property rights as required by liberal principles of justice or required by respect for legal procedure, this point still stands.

If you take the libertarian view that property rights are ethically necessary, respect for proceduralism threatens them when the state's laws run afoul of your conception of property rights, such as with civil asset forfeiture or eminent domain. If you view respect for property rights as required by procedure, some other ethical demands of liberalism might require you to violate the procedure of property rights. For an example, a Rawlsian belief in the difference principle might require the state to violate legally guaranteed property rights to redistribute wealth. And however you justify property rights, majoritarianism obviously still threatens property rights when populist movements demand the state take action against some group.

I also think you're mostly correct here:
>Maybe what is successful about Western "Democracies" is not Majoritarianism at all. Maybe the liberalism (i.e. respect for property) combined with Legal proceduralism (if there ever was any) that limits the state is what has made Western "Democracies" successful. Now that Majoritarianism is more valued than in the founding of the US and Legal proceduralism is potentially more lax, and liberalism no longer refers to respect for property there is less appreciation for what likely made the US succesful.

But I would add one thing to be said for majoritarianism: it acts as a release valve against populist revolutions and allows for more stability. If the majority of people believe, rightly or wrongly, that their opinions matter for the formulation of policy, they're less likely to want to overthrow the state. If people begin to believe that the state is largely unaccountable, they might revolt. This is all that is usually meant when people refer to "release valves of democracy." At the very least, paying lipservice to majority opinion in the way most democracies do helped ensure stability, even if doing so has the danger of leading to crises of populism.

She's got a book mark in the book though. Looks like she read the first 20% or so. Maybe the shirt is worn ironically? (I want to believe)

Meh, fuck it. She's still a leftist witch:

>Great research and writing. A wonderful review of the origins and progress of efforts to repeal the New Deal. Very effective in helping illuminate the work of the conservative movement to remove the US Federal social and financial safety net. This is an important work -- very useful to those of us today who work to preserve and even expand it. Thank you.


https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/0393337669/ref=cm_cr_dp_syn_footer?k=Invisible%20Hands%3A%20The%20Businessmen%27s%20Crusade%20Against%20the%20New%20Deal&showViewpoints=1

Your post sounds smart, but it poses a false dilemma: it implies that we either use nuclear power or get climate change.

There are literally thousands of other alternatives. We can invest more in renewables, which scale up quicker than nuclear, cost less, don't pose the same catastrophic risks, and don't rely heavily on centralized state action. Baseload power is not a big problem for renewables if you ramp up battery storage (already happening) and improve the grid so that energy can be produced where it's windy or sunny and delivered where needed.

We can also simply get more efficient with our energy use in the first place. Economizing energy use should be our first priority, because all sources of energy have serious environmental drawbacks. (Even nuclear would have comparable emissions to oil and gas if scaled globally, because we'd have to dig into far less efficient uranium ores.) It can be as simple as making it easier for people to insulate their houses or planting more vegetation around their houses. (A few good trees can lower ambient temperature by 9F over other forms of shade, because trees evapotranspirate as part of their metabolism, and the phase change from liquid to gaseous water sucks up a lot of heat energy.) . It can also involve more forward-thinking measures, like ending the absurd 20th-century-style subsidies for automotive transport (like dumb zoning laws, parking requirements, federal outlays on auto infrastructure boondoggles, etc. -- these amount to literally trillions of dollars a year).

These are all great alternatives to nuclear power, which creates deadly waste that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years. We still don't know the full effects of Chernobyl, given that the Soviet government repressed Ukrainian and Belarusian public health research in the aftermath of the disaster. (MIT historian Kate Brown makes an interesting case that the international nuclear community, including U.S. nuclear interests, aided in this coverup.) The National Cancer Institute found that radionuclides from weapons testing in Nevada were responsible for 40,000-200,000 cases of thyroid cancer in the American West around the 1960s. We can expect more of that if nuclear accidents become relatively commonplace.

We can do a lot better than letting powerful incumbents lobby our government to keep propping up nuclear power.

There's an excellent book on this and NSA wiretapping that I highly recommend - [The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307279391/).

It's an older book - it's still a fascinating read and still very relevant.

How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X

It's got pictures, and teaches very easy to understand concepts which will allow you to refute economic nonsense. This is the best choice because non-avid readers aren't going to read Bastiat or Hayek or anything heavy.

>I think your trust of private court systems and mercenary law enforcement is incredibly niave to say the least.

I already explicitly pointed out it's partly speculative. That said, it's not naive at all. Read something like Peter Leeson's The Invisible Hook to see what I mean.

I have written some future non fiction. Yes there will be a point where there will be no jobs but that is a good thing. The Future: The Last Job https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PSPV3G1/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_EyH3CbPDP5SYN

Well, it's not as if Feser doesn't have some expertise on Nozick. More to the point, again, as Nozick is a sort of Kantian, what's of utmost importance for him is respecting the separateness of persons and, in particular, respecting their autonomy. Nozick is using the thought experiment to argue the quasi-democracy reached at the end of it no more respects the separateness of persons, their autonomy, and so forth than do the initial conditions of slavery. And the reason for that is because it remains non-consensual.

I just pulled that from memory of various things I read, but there have to be decently sourced books out there about the ratification of the constitution. American historians pore over virtually every letter people sent during that period.

This new 880-page book looks like it probably fits the bill. It popped up when I googled the sanctions against Rhode Island. It looks scholarly, complete, and well-written, but I wouldn't expect libertarian content. For something smaller, here's a writeup of Rhode Island's ratification (pdf).

Economists have used economic methodologies to analyze issues from outside their traditional domain for a long time. And people have been complaining about it for a long time too. The relevant term is economics imperialism.

Gary Becker is a big figure in this regard. For example, his book A Treatise on the Family was a major influence on family economics. (Becker delved into lots of non-traditional areas, like crime and drug addiction, but his work in family econ is the closest to OP's concern.)

In case you like podcasts, EconTalk has done a couple episodes on this. Here's an interview with Becker. Here's a discussion of Becker's work with Edward Lazear.

Foucault makes most of that arguments of the state being made towards violence. Thus having this disstinction between the positive and negative peace in peace studies. Read his lectures before you criticize
https://www.amazon.com/Security-Territory-Population-Lectures-1977-1978/dp/0312203608

Foucault doesn't do any of that because he is a post structuralist (well kind of), so power is always in various methods, it doesn't have to be 1 - 3. He does agree that there is a power-knowledge in which the mechanisms of power produce different knowledge (in this case the political, economic, and cultural means).


I agree with this idea of power that relates to foucault

1. power is not a thing but a relation
   
   
2. power is not simply repressive but it is productive
   
   
3. power is not simply a property of the State.Power is not something that is exclusively localized in government and the State (which is not a universal essence). Rather, power is exercised throughout the social body.
   
   
4. power operates at the most micro levels of social relations. Power is omnipresent at every level of the social body.
   
   5.the exercise of power is strategic and war-like
   
   
   
   

You should read two books on the topic, together, the case against Israel and the case for Israel.

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Israel-Michael-Neumann/dp/1904859461

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Israel-Alan-Dershowitz/dp/0471679526/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=the+case+for+israel+by+alan+dershowitz&qid=1562213983&s=gateway&sprefix=the+case+for+israel&sr=8-2

There was another book I read a long time ago that was something like, “the case against Palestine,” but I can’t find it.

I suggest taking a look at https://www.amazon.ca/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-American/dp/0684824299

Best book on this issue so far

A lot of them are written with the intention of "trapping" people into situations that they feel are morally wrong, but cannot explain why rationally due to a lack of consequence or victim. Haidt lays out where this particular line of moral psychology came from in his book, which I highly recommend.

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Long story short, foreign aid, mostly in the form of government-to-government transfers of assets, has ravaged the continent in a way that is difficult to overstate.

The solution proposed by the author is investment and trade using the vast natural resources there.

Admittedly the author is not "unbiased" but her analysis is backed by numbers and is difficult to reject.