Tea at Trianon: Woke Capitalism

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, October 18, 2021

Woke Capitalism

From Samuel Gregg at Law and Liberty:

The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, was no fan of the merchants of his time. He regarded them as among the most responsible for how “the mercantile system,” as Smith called it, accorded legal privileges to politically connected producers over the interests of consumers. Nor did Milton Friedman have a particularly sympathetic view of the business leaders of late-twentieth-century America. “The two greatest enemies of free enterprise in the United States,” he wrote, “have been, on the one hand, my fellow intellectuals and, on the other hand, the business corporations of this country.”
Whenever I inform students of Smith and Friedman’s unflattering opinions of the business community, they are invariably shocked. But their eyes start opening when I point out that large established businesses don’t actually like competition, aren’t wildly excited about other people’s new ideas and products threatening “their” market share, and are quite happy to hop into bed with complaisant legislators to use state power to make life difficult for new and potential competitors. At this point, students begin realizing that to be pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. The two are at odds in some very important ways.

This is one way of understanding the phenomenon of “woke capitalism,” and it features in Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. For if there is anything that characterizes woke capitalism, it is the desire—like the mercantilists of old—to exclude (ironically, in the name of tolerance, diversity, equality, etc.) particular individuals and groups from “their” markets and corporate America in general. In the case of woke capitalists, the excluded is anyone who doesn’t embrace all the usual progressive orthodoxies or who won’t play the woke game to go along to get along.

But Ramaswamy provides other insights into the underlying rhyme and rhythm of the woke capitalist phenomenon that have long needed wider attention. Part of it is about profit—or at least near-term profit—and locking in political support against potential market competitors to achieve that end. Yet corporate wokeness is also fueled by some serious self-righteousness on the part of prominent business leaders. In many cases, this reflects their embrace of the Gospel of sentimental humanitarianism. Of course, they are hardly the only adherents of the new faith. But woke capitalists, thanks in part to their impeccable connections with the political class, are able to marshal considerable resources behind their beliefs. And it’s not just consumers who pay the price. It’s the American body politic as well. (Read more.)

From Jeffrey Tucker at The Brownstone Institute:

Economies and societies fall apart slowly, then a bit more, then all at once. We seem to be in the middle period of this trajectory. The slow part began March 2020 when politicians around the world imagined that it would be no big deal to shut down the economy and restart it once the virus went away. What a beautiful display of the power of government it would be, or so they believed. We’ll all have a big celebration, said the president.
The virus was never going to go away, which meant that there was no exit ramp. Congress spent money and the Fed cranked up the presses to pay the bills, while checks were stuffed into bank accounts all over the country, all to mask the growing economic devastation.

None of it worked. You cannot turn off an economy and normal social functioning and then turn them back on like a light switch. The attempt alone will necessarily cause unpredictable amounts of long-term breakage, not only of economic structures but also of the spirit of a people. Everything going on now reflects the disastrous presumption that doing that would be possible and not cause dramatic and lasting damage.

It was the greatest failure of politics in a century or perhaps in all of human history, when you consider just how many governments were involved in committing the same idiocy all at once.

Here it is 19 months later. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses are destroyed, while big tech that thrived during lockdowns (which it advocated and supported via censorship) is buying up major swaths of Manhattan. The kids have lost two years of education, and 40% of people report serious financial problems.

Disposable diapers are in short supply and parents are turning to cloth, reversing one of the great innovations of the postwar period. School lunches are dwindling due to food shortages and now fewer people available to work the lunch counters. After all, workers are being fired for declining a vaccination that many people do not want or believe they need.

In US ports, ships are lined up waiting for goods to be unloaded but there is a lack of transportation out. Truckers are in short supply, many having quit before (due to unwarranted regulatory impositions) and during lockdowns and now uninterested in coming back. In addition, domestic flights that once were a reliable means of shipping have been curtailed.

President Biden, like in a scene out of Atlas Shrugged, has ordered the shipyards to stay open 24 hours to get the job done. Just work harder! No one believes that this order will make any difference.

The hashtag #emptyshelves is trending for a reason. It’s very alarming to wander into a random grocery store in this country. Products we’ve always believed would be there are not. Consumers are on the verge of panicking. Their hoarding will soon be denounced by the press office of the White House. If we stay on this path, rationing comes next, then script printed to enforce the rationing as in wartime.

Existing inflation data is bad enough but it is masking the current trends. Producer prices are soaring 20% year over year. Heating oil is in short supply as we head into the winter months. People are talking about having to choose between food on the table and not freezing at night.

This is in a country that only two years ago seemed like the richest place on the planet in all of human history, with good growth prospects. It all ended so quickly and deliberately. (Read more.)

From The Blaze:

If you thought inflation was a problem this summer and fall, just wait until you try heating your home this winter. At least, that appears to be the warning from the U.S. Energy Information Administration in its new Winter Fuels Outlook report released Wednesday. Americans can expect their home heating bills to jump significantly over the winter months compared to last year, the EIA reported — with some citizens possibly paying 54% more. The EIA released its Winter Fuels Outlook report Wednesday, and the news was not good for the American people. Heating prices across all types of heating — natural gas, electricity, propane, and heating oil — are expected to rise significantly for the coming months. (Read more.)