Keynes and the Art of Stealing

John Maynard Keynes did understand economics in a sense. At least a very specific, though large, branch of it concerned with "force and fraud". "Government", for short.

See, there is an art to robbery. Yes, it's evil, but there's an art to it all the same. Like anything else, it can be done well or done poorly.

And it's a quite in-depth art, even a science, and it's been perfected - and is still being perfected - since the first supertribes called "cities".

Take the first person to desire practicing it as an art, and not just random hitting people with a club and taking their food. Or otherwise tricking them, which you can really only do once with a nomad.

What if you initially aid them in coming together to practice agriculture? It'll be a tough sell, as the average nomad ate better and for less work than farming.

But say you convince them. After a generation is raised knowing nothing else, they are wedded to the land. A nomad that you seek to rob may run - but a farmer cannot leave behind his invested labor.

It's still not just a case of "let the robbing begin!", though. If you went to each farmer and said, "I'm strong, you're weak, give me a tenth or I'll kill you and take it anyway!" then that might work briefly, but they'd nurse grudges, meet in private, and conspire to kill you.

You have to give them a face saving reason for letting themselves be put upon. So you do not flat out say that you'll kill them, but you speak extensively on the dangers of "random nomads". And you give them a reason for passing over the food - good reasons, of course.

That you'll save it for times of famine. That you will use it to raise up a group of special protectors called "warriors" that will do nothing but keep the peace and keep the nomads at bay.

You offer what can be a real value, and as the person overseeing it, the portion you take would be modest.

Some may honestly find it to be a good deal - and in various times and places, it may even have been a good deal.

Yet even then, you are easing it over into a "required", not a "voluntary" payment. You do this by the simple act of pointing out to those who do contribute voluntarily, that one is not. They find that unfair, and agree to your proposal that all who in any way benefit "must" pay.

For them, that is no hardship, they are paying anyway. And by the time they have a crop failure, and you still expect the same amount, the rule will already have been established, and they will not wish to look a hypocrite, and so will, grudgingly - and somewhat for seeing what your warriors did to the hold out - pay.

A loved cow gives more milk.  Don't beat your cow - too hard.

Now you've a government. Now you've "perfected", for that time, the Art of Stealing.
 

For now all know they must pay, they each tell themselves the soothing story to settle their outraged manhood, and they will of themselves enforce against others with persuasion - or force - because misery loves company, and if they must pay, then all must.

Fast forward six thousand years. An industrialized democracy is not the same as an agricultural village. And we've money now, which along the way, other Artists of Theft learned how to inflate.

Yet still, sometimes the game goes too far. Sometimes rulers of old took too much, and the people rose up, or ran off, or simply starved. Other times, like in Roman times, a partial inflation went well, but then they got greedy and inflated too much, and all collapsed.

The point of the Art of Stealing is to be able to get as much as you can, for as little effort, and for as long as possible.

There is such a thing as a "social surplus", though Ayn Rand (author of "Atlas Shrugged") would disagree. And such does not really belong in a Lockean sense to any one specific individual, even a Hank Reardon*. That surplus, above and beyond the group of individuals efforts, has always gone to the elite. The thieves.

Yet explanations must still be gave. Why a pyramid with that social surplus instead of another irrigation canal? Why does Lucius who is cousin to the Emperor always get the aquaduct contract instead of Gaius who has proved time and again that he is better at it, and cheaper? Why the social programs advocated by the President's wife instead of the more constructive aid - with less graft - that others have proposed?

These questions need answering appropriately. If the theft is to continue. And new ways of theft, unfamiliar to those robbed, must also be sought. Because greed is insatiable, and while you can squeeze a bit more taxes, or give a bit less services, or even inflate a bit more, it all must come to a final maximum point at some time, unless you find a new way.

Inflation, by the way, was such a new way of old. Later, in the middle ages, there are things you can do with banking - like the fractional reserve system - that allows more looting. In each case, the deficit is made up with the people working a bit harder, and for a bit less, that the few might have a lot more. Even the concept of "private property" can be manipulated so that social surpluses can be drained off. Disparities of property ownership allowed the great Lords of England to dispossess many of their tennant farmers, driving them to the cities to work the new factories or starve. This may have been better for such who survived in the end...but was a crap deal all the same, and some died from it.

The elite thieves of the mid-20th century had seen the result of the Federal Reserve system in the market crash of '29 and the following depression. Seen and not particularly minded, since that was the specific plan, it worked perfectly, and they were better off than ever.

But they'd seen that plan gone awry, too, in Czarist Russia and the Weimer Republic of Germany. Which while Ayn attributed those to ideologies, had a lot more to do with the game going too far, and the people starting to starve. Andrei Taganov did not rebel against the Czar because he was a Communist. He was a Communist for wishing to rebel against the Czar.

The trick then, the real art, was spoke of by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. How much do the people need to be content tax-slaves? They had wildly different answers, one based upon raw force and fear, the other on providing mindless hedonistic pleasures. Both were extremes to make a point, the real answer of how to steal, how the art works, is of course, in the middle. Where much may be debated, of course. And is debated. By those far above us who own us.

See, you want your slaves educated enough to provide real goods and services for you. But then they too often see through the game. And want some of that social surplus to come back their way. Or even just want less taxes. Taxes, you handle purely by fear and the dodge that it's everyone's duty for that social good that does exist. From the dawn of agriculture, that has never got old! But the social surplus created by that very social good you just told them about? Ahh, that has always been more delicate.

Because they'll notice that most large surpluses do not go to social service programs. Taxes pay those. And they'll see through inflation nowadays, with our education and knowledge of history. So how to drain the surplus without them getting uppity?

Here's where Keynes came in. He was the codifier of the rules of how to attack and whittle away at that surplus in a dozen more ways than previously known of. Or if known of, not systematized. And he knew how to squeak more out the social machine of a nation than before, building off of the old tricks of inflation and fractional reserves and his baby, "deficit spending". That was his talant, that was his, sad to say, "genius". In learning of, discovering and writing of those ways.

And bear in mind strongly the dark brilliance of it - he had to write it not as a "Guide for the Despot to Milk his People", but as a work of goodness in how a nation as a whole could be better! And for most, who are not economists, thinkers or philosophers, the work has enough sophistries and such to utterly baffle them at best, and at worst, even convince them of the justness of their own robbery!

All the rises and falls, the bubbles bursting, the crises - these are not for the criminal elite being stupid, this is them being smart. Evil, sure, but smart. Has everyone been tricked into stashing their retirement funds in a 401k? Great - time to arrange for a stock market crash so that we can scoop all that surplus up at once, while telling them to stop whining, "You win some and lose some, not our fault!". Has everyone been tricked into thinking that housing and real estate never loses value, but only increases? Yes? And they've all their surplus in there? Great! Time for that bubble to burst, and since we're the ones bursting it, they'll be hurt, but we won't be!

Has the game been played a bit much, and now it's time to get things back on track - for us? Sure, no problem! The social surplus does not exist as grains or gold any more, but by calculations on what a given population can afford, productivity-wise. The figures say several tens of billions? Then we will "quantitatively ease" ourselves, with money printed up which the workers of the nation will have to be good for! And will be good for! True, it inflates things, but calculations show that they'll still be able to keep their refrigerators powered and their internet access current, and the sociological boys assure us that there'll be no armed uprising while those two things hold true! But we'll keep militarizing the police just to be sure!

The Conservatives of America love to preach a "hands off" approach, such that helping no poor person, in theory ushers in capitalism and that famous - and utopic - "rising tide" that "lifts all boats". The reality is that when you stop helping the poor with government money, or don't grant raises in the minimum wage, you may be 100% sure that the rich thieving elite are STILL skimming that social surplus off, and so while the poor see none of it, the thieves still see all of it! And the "rising tide" only raises them up, as with the enormous anchor of regulations, taxations, inflations and burst bubbles tied firmly to the middle classes, the middle and lower class boats are held under by the weight of all that, and rise not at all!

Thus the increasingly large distance between the 1% and the rest. Which under real capitalism could not happen.

Keynes, you can see now, was a genius. Just a really mean one. He's why each generation is not now better off than the previous, except perhaps in access to technological toys. Which are really only allowed because they have not invented Soma yet, or the other fun stuff of Huxley's "Brave New World". But iPhones serve as well as Soma. And we're allowed them for the same reasons. Focus on the tiny screen, and forget the big picture.

This is why, by the way, that while I am a "capitalist" in the sense that Ayn Rand described, I am also as practical as Fred Kinnan* was. I know these thefts are the norm, I know they will continue. Thus I advocate that while they do that - and they always will - that yes, some "come back" in the form of welfare programs and minimum wages. Not for being a "socialist", but for pragmatically recognizing that while they steal trillions for themselves, that tossing some hundreds of billions to the least is appropriate. The CEOs have their billion dollar bailouts and yachts. They can afford to drip some of that down to the singe mother who wants food stamps and Top Ramen.

"Oh, no, that's socialism, end it all!"? Uh huh. If "ending it all" is an option, I choose that, of course. But that option has NEVER existed, and is never going to exist as long as some wish to steal. They are stealing. They always will. I'm simply then up for negotiating the terms of our captivity, and for me, I'd as soon see a more comfortable slave cabin, instead of everyone in tents while they build a third wing to the Plantation house.

* Hank Reardon was a capitalist creator in the novel "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Fred Kinnan was an amoral, but wise and practical Labor Leader in the same novel.