Nietzsche Strikes Out

Today I picked up some tomes penned by Friedrich Nietzsche, including his  The Will to Power, which I started to read immediately.

What struck me immediately from reading the first few pages of The Will to Power, and why I say the man struck out, is that he assumed that Christianity staved off nihilism in the ancient world when, in fact, it did no such thing.  The false certainty of superiority of Christianity, when it fails-- as it must-- is what will create nihilism in modernity.  Of that I have no doubt, but there simply is no reason to believe that nihilism existed in the ancient world.  Nietzsche's assumption seems to be that before Christianity (or perhaps Judaism), the Western world was marked by nihilism, but I don't see any evidentiary basis for that assumption.  In all likelihood, the man was simply projecting his despair at learning that what he was taught as a Lutheran was morally bankrupt, that like Freud, Nietzsche was incapable of thinking beyond himself, that at best he could extrapolate from his own experience and project it upon others.

Update:  To be clear, my criticism relates solely to the unstated assumption that morality sprang from Christianity.  Many people mistakenly believe that there can be no morality without religion, so Nietzsche is not alone.  Interestingly, CHS seems to make similar observations solely in a secular sense, in his various discussions of "When Belief in the System Fades."

On Risk and Uncertainty

This is a placeholder more than anything else.

Some other things that struck me as ideological in CHS's Survival+ are the unfounded assumptions that (1) free market capitalism is not only possible but existed in the past, (2) the middle class has always been a part of civilized human existence, (3) prices are determined by supply and demand, and (4) transparency will ensure the proper operation of the free market.  I don't see any evidence for item (1).  Item (2) is marred by CHS' conception of the middle class he grew up in, which was the result of massive State intervention into the normal operation of laissez-faire captialsm.  Item (3) fails to account for the fact that both supply and demand can be artificially manipulated (as is happening every day these days in the financial markets).  As to item (4), that's a fantasy as financial "innovators" (read fraudsters) can and do invent new fraudulent offerings to avoid transparency obligations.  In any event, there is a difference between being transparent and sharing insights and information that only you have.

CHS: Mischaracterizing Market Risk as Natural

Charles Hugh Smith' Survival+ is one of the many books I am reading these days.  I have read enough of the book to highly recommend it, as it displays all of the insight and thoughtfulness we've come to expect from CHS, and it does so in a concentrated, cogent manner.  It also suffers from some of his ideological blindspots, which I have noted in the past.  This passage struck me in particular:

A similar mechanism is the exempting of capital and high-caste Elites from risk-- that is, from the risk inherent in free markets.  Just as monopoly capital strives to eliminate "uncertainties" (i.e. losses) by eliminating competition, capital and high-caste Elites (public employees, technocrats, etc.) strive to exempt themselves from risk by constructing fiefdoms protected by the States

Risk is not a characteristic of capitalism or free markets; it is a characteristic of life which markets simply reflect.

While I agree that risk is a natural part of life, market risk is not at all natural and nothing like what we experience in life.  That is because all market risk arises from the demand for compounding interest (i.e., yield), a human invention for making money from money, a distinctly unnatural thing to do with an inanimate, fictive object. I further believe that exempting capital and high-caste Elites from risk is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.  The owners of the money supply WILL be paid for allowing its use.

CHS's mistake was assuming that risk in capitalism and risk in life are one and the same.  Interestingly, CHS less than a page later notes recognizes how words can obscure the truth:

The tool, language, easily becomes a weapon in skilled hands, and the strongest group will do all in its power to protect its own interest.

And later, he says:

Some ideas are easier to express and understand than others.  This stems from language being an ontological force in itself; language carries with it vast powers and equally vast difficulties of interpretation and ambiguity.

So CHS clearly understands the mechanism, language, as well as the cognitive biases that, when applied to the interpretation of language, create blind spots.  But that did not stop CHS from writing an entire book about another language-induced blindspot called An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times.  What CHS actually discusses there is speculation, not investment.

TAE: Modern Slavery, Part Deux

Really good stuff here.

The worst part about the dominant neoliberal paradigm-- and what makes it evil-- is that it was designed to normalize and rationalize debt slavery.  In hindsight, there is no other way to read what the Hayeks, Mises and Friedmans wrote.  Their double truths reveal themselves to any who care to look.

TAE: Understanding Modern Slavery

The Automatic Earth explained modern slavery well here.

People need to understand that laws like Arizona's SB 1070 are designed to perpetuate modern slavery of the type described by The Automatic Earth in the above-linked post.  When a society outsources its prison systems, prisons must be profitable, and profitability must grow perpetually.  Neofeudalism is the necessary result.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

Charles Hugh Smith is one of the few bloggers I still follow, but I rarely remark on him these days unless I'm critiquing him.  So, it is with some joy that I can recommend this excellent CHS piece without comment: When Debt is More Important Than People, The System Is Evil.


Some people insist that language created the system, but that's nonsense.

Haiku for a Boy Named Debbie

Language creates naught
It is nothing but a tool
That can't wield itself