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Capture is not inevitable. This is blatantly obvious, because if it was, history would be 100% a series of casestudies in feudalism.

The current status quo is not the working out of inevitable historical forces - To the contrary, the very problem is that politically active plutocrats have worked out how to disguise their personal desire to rearrange the world beneath their bootheel as the common weal, the looting of the treasury and the common weal as optimal policy, and their immunity from justice and the law as necessary for peace and order.

They accomplish this by the systematic and organized bribing, corruption and ownership of public discourse and the so-called discipline of economics.

In the post-WWII era it became obvious that who-so-ever formulated the intellectual tools politicians use to set policy determines the course of governance to a far greater extent than any politician could. Because the ghostly hand of Kenyes guided all the western world.

At this point, people noticed that endowing university chairs is much cheaper than winning elections.

And so economics died as an academic discipline.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing which has been written in economics since Keynes died should be trusted without massive piles of real world evidence backing it up. If an economist says the sun is shining, look out the window to check.

If this sounds like the rantings of a paranoiac? Yes. I am aware. It is unfortunately also true. This isn't a secret conspiracy. The heritage foundation and all the other conspirators have webpages and press releases where they brag about what they are doing.
It's a chutzpah conspiracy. Where people don't give in credence because it is fracking audacious.  

by Thomas on Sun Jun 1st, 2014 at 08:58:11 AM EST
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I wonder if Thomas Piketty has broken the logjam on that?

People are talking about economics. OK, relatively few people are reading his book, but for example : I was in New Zealand two weeks ago, and he was on the cover of the widest-circulation magazine (and the articles were quite good). The fact that he has expounded some simple ideas, which have strong moral overtones, and that the high priests of economics are reduced to hand-waving and bluster, will surely bring more people to seriously question their unquestionable orthodoxy.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II

by eurogreen on Sun Jun 1st, 2014 at 12:00:10 PM EST
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Hand waving and bluster has worked so far.  I don't see why it won't continue through the near term.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
by ATinNM on Sun Jun 1st, 2014 at 12:45:49 PM EST
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