Republican Failure Is Their Ticket To Success

As the history of conservative, Republican dominated “red” states shows, Republican policy failure is their ticket to electoral success. Let’s look at some reasons for that having to do with intellectual artifacts, ideas, rhetoric. 

It seems conservatives, Republicans are taking advantage of the American electorate’s clear tendency to turn right when under stress, particularly economic stress. Republicans know the more dysfunction, poverty, sickness, ignorance, violence they create, the stronger their hold on power. American voters’ tendency to turn right likely relates to the long Cold War against authoritarian, undemocratic communism, followed by conservative rhetoric suggesting the problem with communism was not that it was authoritarian, undemocratic, but was too “big,” tried to do too much. During the 1980s right wing Reagan Revolution, this rhetoric was applied to democratic government, so the source of all our problems was meant to be big democratic government as our form of “communism,” and conservatives’ objective was to fight for small, weak, inactive democratic government.

This was the era in which the notion of a “welfare state,” a state that accepts as an objective the welfare or well-being of its citizens, became anathema, when the typical ethical thinking behind it became characterized as false, empty “virtue signaling,” a cover for promoting “big” government. This meshed very well with ubiquitous anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style, which promotes market utopianism, suppresses the role of democracy in transmitting the normative views of voters, and presents democracy only as something that “interferes with” or “distorts” markets. The rhetoric is calculated to take advantage of Americans’ traditional distaste for authoritarian government, as undemocratic communism, and turn it to supporting right wing undemocratic fascism, by equating “communism” with big democratic government. It’s basically an equivocation on terms.

Although some particularly foolish sorts followed the rhetoric of a maximally minimized democratic government to its logical conclusion in bloody, lawless, utopian anarchism. Most understood we would still need laws for property, markets, contracts, thus also law enforcement, government. They took up the notion of government that could establish and enforce the necessary laws while preventing voters using democracy from ever reconsidering or changing those laws, making a government “too big” or “too active” by revising the allocation of goods, using non-market mechanisms, etc. This led them naturally to “small” fascism, the quest to find an authoritarian Leader they trusted enough to establish the right sort of state, strong enough to resist pressure from the governed, voters, democracy. Even as they may have seen the risks involved, they saw it as the only solution. Their idea of politics evolved away from reasoned discussion as understood by those who support the ethos of democracy toward politics as installing the right Leader some old way, promoting political violence not only for that but as their proposed means of later swapping out Leaders as necessary. 

That’s where we are today. Some conservatives, Republicans explicitly support “small” fascism, some equate fascism with communism and then suppose they’re fighting it in the form of overly big or active democratic government, some suppose they’re fighting for utopian anarchism, others theocratism. Conservatives, Republicans are working toward dysfunction as a necessary first step to fomenting an American fascist regime they suppose will end the ostensible sources of all our problems, democratic government, the US Constitution, US law, and usher in a conservative utopia. 

The important thing to realize is there’s no self-correcting mechanism at work. It’s just not realistic to expect American voters to see conservative, Republican policy failure and respond by voting for something else. They will vote for the same thing, albeit maybe a more extreme form of it. Conservative, Republican voters cheer on corruption and incompetence not only because it corresponds to their priors that democratic government is inherently corrupt but because they suppose it shows democratic government must be small, weak, inactive, hopefully one day nonexistent. There is no end other than fascism because of course everyone, or most people anyway, understand one must have government at some level to have a functioning society, thus it can always be “too big” and responsible for whatever problems remain as long as democracy exists. With “small” fascism that cares nothing for the welfare, well-being of the population but only expresses conservative values on economics, ethics, allocation of resources, conservatives suppose they will finally have a government able to rebuff the foolish whims, normative views of the governed. One suspects conservative, Republican voters may hubristically exaggerate their own influence over any such fascist regime. They suppose their guns mean they can intimidate it into doing whatever they prefer, being whatever “size” they like. But surely the intimidation may go the other way.

The main impetus in the realm of ideas is anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style and its sequelae, promoted or at least not forcefully refuted by academic economists, who are the main proponents of the fascist cause, albeit typically concerned to deny or anyway not acknowledge it. If one would like to disrupt this trend toward fascism in the USA, the most important thing one can do is take on academic economists, learn what real neoclassical welfare economics says, distinguish it from false, misleading, anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style.

Bad Economics In The Conservative Style, Round Two

 I thought this week I might re-introduce my primary topic: differentiating the restricted, abstract, normative or ethical theory of neoclassical welfare economics and the expansive but false, misleading misinterpretation I call “bad economics in the conservative style.” If one is aware at all of the changes in normative economics going from classical economics to neoclassical economics, one might readily understand the discussion as addressing an attempt to artfully conflate the two in the right wing rhetorical artifact bad economics in the conservative style. “Neoclassical” welfare economics was an attempt to defend the basic normative ideas and values of the embattled and increasingly discredited classical economics by playing terminological, rhetorical games apparently to facilitate misunderstandings, create confusion. As a theory, it says what it says. It’s not false or wrong, per se, although of little relevance to real world ethical issues. However, the larger issue is it appears to have been purpose built to support common misinterpretations of what it says and may be criticized on that account.

One significant element was re-defining “utility” to mean preference ranks of given individuals, thus rendering it nonsensical in interpersonal contexts and irrelevant to discussions of the ethics of resolving interpersonal conflicts of preferences, allocating resources. This deft maneuver set aside the lion’s share of ethics, involving resolving interpersonal conflicts of preferences, needs, desires, and so on, to transform neoclassical welfare economics into an ethical half-theory rather than a full ethical theory as was classical economics. This change in the proposed normative or ethical significance of the theory, as well as confusion associated with the notion of economists as a point of professional conduct representing only that ethical half-theory but proposing to give policy advice on that basis, creates much confusion. This led to a similarly idiosyncratic, restricted, potentially misleading definition of “welfare,” which no longer referenced many of the issues one might normally associate with the term, and in which a “welfare maximizing” outcome might leave many quite miserable indeed. Another notable element was defining “efficiency” to mean (usually) so-called “economic efficiency,” restricted to what one can say on the basis of the preference ranks of individuals, on “utility” defined in that way, using concepts derived from Italian fascist Mr. Pareto.

The end result is very typical types of misinterpretations relating to the assumed existence of ethical propositions relating to the definition, distributional, and use of economic power to resolve interpersonal conflicts of preferences, allocate resources, that are not in fact present. This leads to a sort of bait and switch in which the conclusions of old classical economics in terms of free market utopianism are expressed via a theory that does not actually support them, leading to confusion and conflict until one distinguishes the real theory from the misinterpretation of it. The two intellectual artifacts involved, real neoclassical welfare economics on one hand, and anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style on the other, are distinct, but they’re most easily understood together in relation to one another, lest one cycle confusingly between them.

It’s important to address because anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative stye is a primary basis for anti-democracy sentiment in the USA, suppressing the role of democratic government in market systems, suggesting it can only do harm by “interfering with” or “distorting” market outcomes. Those operating under the influence of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style are prone to not understand the normative or ethical issues involved in economic systems, the role of voters, and to suppose democratic government must be weak, small, inactive, or eliminated.

The actual rhetoric of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style is not simple. It’s clever, subtle, arcane, difficult to work through. It involves a great deal of purposeful rhetorical trickery as terminological equivocation, conflation of issues. Simply ignoring it is ineffective. The people one might normally rely upon to address such intellectual errors, in this case academic economics and philosophers, are either not up to the task or choose instead to actively promote those errors for gold or possibly to promote outcomes they prefer using underhanded means. Everyday people, people involved in other intellectual disciplines, must endeavor to get involved, learn the bits of normative economics that are relevant and significant (and it’s a smaller universe than one might expect), even as economists and philosophers do what they can to stop one. Insincere academic economists will do whatever they can to prevent one learning real economics. They will use endless complications, obscure references, math, arcane terminology, scorn and derision, to defend the walls of their discipline from a great height. But it’s all there in black and white.

I’ll be reviewing various aspects of these issues in the future. I feel they’re important. Want to get involved? You may want to take a look at my book of short essays on elements of anti-democracy bad economics in the conservative style I wrote on a different site from 2020 to 2024.