George Soros: economic buffoon and enemy of democracy
Monday 27 August 2007
Comments by Soros on markets and democracy clearly reveal just how ignorant of economics and history this genius really is. Back in March 1997 he used the op-ed pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian to push the asinine line that many American Democrats began to parrot — and still do. According to this billionaire financier and profound political thinker it is not Islamo-fascism that threatens democracy but free markets and President George W. Bush. His thesis is a mere echo of the socialist accusation that markets are to be condemned for encouraging “excessive individualism” and ignoring the “common interest” in favour of personal gain. In addition, market economics is nothing but ideology.
The conservatives of old, especially aristocrats, attacked the market because they knew it was subversive. Left alone the market would undermine their privileges, create more financial independence and higher living standards for the ‘lower orders’ and make social mobility a social norm. The Nazis and Marxists were basically in agreement in their mutual detestation of the free market. The market challenged the state by stressing the individual. It was the Nazis, not the Marxists, who coined the phrase “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz”; roughly translated, the common interest over private interest. That the badly read Soros and his equally badly read supporters do not know any of this should come as no surprise. All that Soros does is regurgitate hoary anti-market prejudices and give them some credibility among the ignorant, particularly in the media, by presenting them as the product of his own ‘profound’ business experience.
His attack on the free market is really two-pronged. First, the free market generates “excessive individualism” and “too much competition”. Now I must confess that I honestly do not know what “excessive individualism” can mean in the context of a free society. To a Nazi, for example, it would be any behaviour that the party disapproved of. To a genuine liberal, however, the term has no meaning. If it refers to selfish or boorish behaviour, Soros should say so. Of course, he would then have to explain why free markets make people more selfish and boorish than totalitarianism. The truth is that it is just a shabby ideological term with which to beat free market ideas.
Soros contends that “too much competition and too little cooperation threaten democracy”. This statement alone makes it abundantly clear that he has not grasped the fact that free markets could not exist unless they were based on voluntary cooperation. In other words, peaceful competition is simply another aspect of voluntary cooperation. By calling for more of one and less of the other he has only shown his confusion between fighting and competition. The function of competition is not destruction, as in war, but to ensure that production and the allocation of factors are carried out in the most rational way that is beneficial to consumers. This where entrepreneurship enters the scene.
One of the entrepreneur’s principle tasks is to select from a range of alternative production techniques the one that will minimise the costs of production. Those who fail in these endeavours will be replaced by more competent entrepreneurs. That any genuinely informed person could suggest that such tasks could be achieved in the absence of social cooperation beggars belief. In other words, through social cooperation the free market is continually selecting those who are best fitted to serve the needs of consumers. There is nothing Darwinian about this process. No one is killed or enslaved, cities or towns are not razed or plundered. What really happens is that some people now have to find alternative occupations.
Without voluntary cooperation states would have to rely on jackbooted goon squads, the secret police and the threat of the labour camp to maintain their existence. Not so with free societies. The likes of Soros cannot see that market cooperation is of the highest order: it is one in which the actions and expectations of millions of people are continuously coordinated without the direction of any agency. People volunteer to work for Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Proctor and Gamble, the local supermarket or a courier service. No one is coerced or visibly directed to these enterprises.
True, these enterprises compete with one another but their competition is of a peaceful nature and occurs within a legal framework. This is kind of competition that stimulates progress, brings about superior methods of production and generates material abundance. Every country that substituted the power of the state for the workings of the market has, without exception, impoverished its citizens and robbed them of their liberty. If Soros was as widely read as he pretends to be he would know all of the above. (But then again, maybe he does).
He makes much of his commitment to democratic values. Yet Soros spent close to $15,000,000 to help get McCain-Feingold passed. The effect of this bill, now upheld by a slim majority of the Supreme Court, is to restrict political speech in defiance of the First Amendment. Another effect is to increase Soros’s influence in the Democrat Party. Having helped financed McCain-Feingold measure he actively circumventing the law by financing political groups that are nothing but Democrat Party fronts.
And this slimy toad had the gall to publicly state that America needed “To dramatically reduce the role of big special-interest money in American politics”. The greatest threat to democracy at the moment is arrogant self-righteous ignorance. And Mr Soros is full of it — and I suspect that it is not the only thing he is full of. Soros is a liar and a coward who refuses to publicly defend his views
Monday 27 August 2007
Comments by Soros on markets and democracy clearly reveal just how ignorant of economics and history this genius really is. Back in March 1997 he used the op-ed pages of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian to push the asinine line that many American Democrats began to parrot — and still do. According to this billionaire financier and profound political thinker it is not Islamo-fascism that threatens democracy but free markets and President George W. Bush. His thesis is a mere echo of the socialist accusation that markets are to be condemned for encouraging “excessive individualism” and ignoring the “common interest” in favour of personal gain. In addition, market economics is nothing but ideology.
The conservatives of old, especially aristocrats, attacked the market because they knew it was subversive. Left alone the market would undermine their privileges, create more financial independence and higher living standards for the ‘lower orders’ and make social mobility a social norm. The Nazis and Marxists were basically in agreement in their mutual detestation of the free market. The market challenged the state by stressing the individual. It was the Nazis, not the Marxists, who coined the phrase “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz”; roughly translated, the common interest over private interest. That the badly read Soros and his equally badly read supporters do not know any of this should come as no surprise. All that Soros does is regurgitate hoary anti-market prejudices and give them some credibility among the ignorant, particularly in the media, by presenting them as the product of his own ‘profound’ business experience.
His attack on the free market is really two-pronged. First, the free market generates “excessive individualism” and “too much competition”. Now I must confess that I honestly do not know what “excessive individualism” can mean in the context of a free society. To a Nazi, for example, it would be any behaviour that the party disapproved of. To a genuine liberal, however, the term has no meaning. If it refers to selfish or boorish behaviour, Soros should say so. Of course, he would then have to explain why free markets make people more selfish and boorish than totalitarianism. The truth is that it is just a shabby ideological term with which to beat free market ideas.
Soros contends that “too much competition and too little cooperation threaten democracy”. This statement alone makes it abundantly clear that he has not grasped the fact that free markets could not exist unless they were based on voluntary cooperation. In other words, peaceful competition is simply another aspect of voluntary cooperation. By calling for more of one and less of the other he has only shown his confusion between fighting and competition. The function of competition is not destruction, as in war, but to ensure that production and the allocation of factors are carried out in the most rational way that is beneficial to consumers. This where entrepreneurship enters the scene.
One of the entrepreneur’s principle tasks is to select from a range of alternative production techniques the one that will minimise the costs of production. Those who fail in these endeavours will be replaced by more competent entrepreneurs. That any genuinely informed person could suggest that such tasks could be achieved in the absence of social cooperation beggars belief. In other words, through social cooperation the free market is continually selecting those who are best fitted to serve the needs of consumers. There is nothing Darwinian about this process. No one is killed or enslaved, cities or towns are not razed or plundered. What really happens is that some people now have to find alternative occupations.
Without voluntary cooperation states would have to rely on jackbooted goon squads, the secret police and the threat of the labour camp to maintain their existence. Not so with free societies. The likes of Soros cannot see that market cooperation is of the highest order: it is one in which the actions and expectations of millions of people are continuously coordinated without the direction of any agency. People volunteer to work for Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Proctor and Gamble, the local supermarket or a courier service. No one is coerced or visibly directed to these enterprises.
True, these enterprises compete with one another but their competition is of a peaceful nature and occurs within a legal framework. This is kind of competition that stimulates progress, brings about superior methods of production and generates material abundance. Every country that substituted the power of the state for the workings of the market has, without exception, impoverished its citizens and robbed them of their liberty. If Soros was as widely read as he pretends to be he would know all of the above. (But then again, maybe he does).
He makes much of his commitment to democratic values. Yet Soros spent close to $15,000,000 to help get McCain-Feingold passed. The effect of this bill, now upheld by a slim majority of the Supreme Court, is to restrict political speech in defiance of the First Amendment. Another effect is to increase Soros’s influence in the Democrat Party. Having helped financed McCain-Feingold measure he actively circumventing the law by financing political groups that are nothing but Democrat Party fronts.
And this slimy toad had the gall to publicly state that America needed “To dramatically reduce the role of big special-interest money in American politics”. The greatest threat to democracy at the moment is arrogant self-righteous ignorance. And Mr Soros is full of it — and I suspect that it is not the only thing he is full of. Soros is a liar and a coward who refuses to publicly defend his views
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