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.(And, I am sure, vice versa.)94 Murray N.Rothbard: Making Economic SenseEither Bush or Dukakis can be relied upon to continue the expansion ofgovernment power and domination over the individual and the privatesector.Thus, when  wild spender Jimmy Carter became president, hefound a federal government that was spending 28% of the private nationalproduct.After four years of Carter s wild spending, federal governmentspending was about the same: 28.3% of private product.Eight years ofRonald Reagan s  anti-government and  get government off our backpolicy has resulted in the federal government spending 29.9% of privateproduct.We can certainly expect Bush and Dukakis to do no less.Neither is  deregulation an issue when we realize that the majorderegulatory reforms of the last ten years (CAB, ICC) were installed bythe Carter administration, and when we understand that the Reaganadministration has greatly added to the weight of regulation particularlywhen we focus on the savage attack that it has conducted on the non-crimeof  insider trading.Neither can we conjure up  protectionist Democrats versus  free-trade Republicans; the Reagan Administration has been the mostprotectionist in American history, imposing  voluntary as well as outrightcompulsory import quotas, and organizing a giant government-businesscomputer chip cartel to battle the efficient Japanese.The farm program has become truly monstrous, as governmentintervention doubles and redoubles upon itself; whatever happens,whatever the climatic conditions whether the crops are good andtherefore there is a  glut or whether there is a drought ever morebillions of taxpayer money are ladled out to the farmers so that they mayproduce less for the consumer.Bush will certainly do no less; and, furthermore, he promises tointensify federal government spending on  education (i.e.the swollenand inefficient Department of Education that he and Reagan promised toabolish), and on  cleaning up the environment, which means further cost-raising regulations on American business.In short, we are seeing, more than ever before, a bipartisan Keynesianconsensus, an economic policy to match bipartisan policies in all otherspheres of politics.But the single most dangerous aspect of the economicsof the next four years has gone unnoticed.Politics As Economic Violence 95Since he replaced Donald Regan as Secretary of the Treasury, James R.Baker (a close friend of Bush and slated to be Secretary of State in aRepublican administration) has been unfortunately effective in pushing theKeynesian agenda on the international economic front: that is, worldwidefiat money inflation coordinated by the world s central banks, ending inthe old Keynesian goal; a world paper currency unit (whether named the bancor [Keynes], the  unita [Harry Dexter White], or the  phoenix[the Economist]) printed by a World Central Bank.The World Central Bank would then be able to inflate the phoenix, andpump in reserves to all countries, so that the national central banks couldpyramid their liabilities on top of the World Bank.In that way, the entireworld could experience an inflatio n controlled and coordinated by theWorld Central Bank, so that no one country would suffer from itsinflationary policies by losing gold (as under a gold standard), losingdollars (as under Bretton Woods), or suffering from a drop in its exchangerate (as under Friedmanite monetarism).There would be no remainingchecks on any country s inflation except the wisdom and the will of theWorld Central Bank.What this amounts to, of course, is economic world government,which, because of the necessity of coordination, would bring a virtualpolitical world government in its wake.Because of his powerfulinternational financial connections, Baker has been able to move rapidlytoward this coordination, to bring European and even Japanese centralbankers into line, and to help bring, a new European currency unit andcentral bank, which would be an important prelude to a world papercurrency.Whoever Dukakis would appoint to his Cabinet would not have thepowerful financial connections, or the track record of the last four years,and so the only real difference I can see in a Dukakis victory is that itwould significantly slow down, and perhaps totally derail, the menacingdrive toward Keynesian economic world government.96 Murray N.Rothbard: Making Economic Sense30Perot, The Constitution,And Direct DemocracyRoss Perot s proposal for direct democracy through  electronic townmeetings is the most fascinating and innovative proposal for fundamentalpolitical change in many decades.It has been greeted with shock andhorror by the entire intellectual-technocratic-media establishment.Arrogant pollsters, who have made a handsome living via  scientificsampling, faulty probability theory, and often loaded questions, blusterthat direct mass voting by telephone or television would not really be as representative as their own little samples.Of course they would say that; theirs is the first profession to berendered as obsolete in the Perotvian world of the future as the horse andbuggy today.The pollsters will not get away with that argument; for ifthey were right, the public has enough horse sense to realize that it wouldthen be more  representative and  democratic to dispense with votingaltogether.And let the pollsters choose.When we cut through the all-too-predictable shrieks of  demagogyand  fascism, it would be nice if the opponents would favor us with somearguments against the proposal.What exactly is the argument againstelectronic direct democracy?The standard argument against direct democracy goes as follows: directdemocracy was fine, and wonderful in colonial town meetings, whereevery person could familiarize himself with the issues, go to the localtown hall, and vote directly on those issues.But alas, and alack!, thecountry got larger and much too populous for direct voting; fortechnological reasons, therefore, the voter has had to forego himself goingto a meeting and voting on the issues of the day; he necessarily had toentrust his vote to his  representative.Well, technology rolls on, and direct voting has, for a long while, sincethe age of telephone and television, much less of the computer andemerging  interactive television, been technologically feasible [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]