Freedom or Fascism?

What will you choose?

Too late! America has whole-heartedly embraced fascism. I'm not talking about the rampant racism/nationalism or the totalitarian attempt to create a unified culture. Socially, with the exception of the wars on drugs and terror, American freedom is heralded and fairly well-preserved politically.

Economically, however, we are not free. Nor are we smart.

Economic fascism is known as corporatism, or an economy controlled by corporate-government alliance. Corporations, as typically apparent in fascism, aren't the publicly-traded, privately-owned corporations we see today. In the cases of pre-WWII Germany and Italy, a corporation was similar to the Federal Reserve. Some parts are private and some public. In return for allowing a degree of government control, the government grants the corporation privileges.

The corporatist model is borderline socialism, only without any tenet to redistribute wealth equally or according to need. In many respects, it seems like a palace economy, only instead of owning the entire economy, it only controls the distribution of power that a private venture will require to be successful. Just as in socialism, fascism requires an extremely powerful central government. And just as in socialism, fascism fails miserably.

Our biggest experiment with fascism to date was FDR's New Deal. Here we saw the kind of government control that rivaled Stalin and Hitler. Similarly, we also see the stubborn resistance to admitting failure. For instance, the leading cause of the Great Depression was the inevitable business cycle bust that occurs when artificial credit grows. The already corporatized Federal Reserve was designed to avoid the painful credit contractions associated with fractional reserve banking. In this regard, it failed miserably. In attempting to do the impossible and protect banks from bank runs by cartelizing the entire banking and monetary system, it simply institutionalized fractional reserve banking, causing all banks to over-leverage themselves. When the banks started to drop like flies, and depositors faced losing their money, FDR showed a textbook play from a government official. Blame the market. FDR's response was not to admit that not only central banking but fractional reserve banking was an unsound system that didn't deserve any legal protection. Instead he did the opposite. He said the banking system was sound, and all the problems were being caused by greedy "gold hoarders". So he simply made monetary gold ownership illegal. This was basically a huge privelege to the Federal Reserve, who no longer would have to exchange their paper dollars for the gold they were supposed to represent but the FED didn't have. In the case of failure, fascist corporations are rewarded.

Moreover, the Great Depression didn't really end. WWII and Korea distracted us. Average real wages have declined since the 70's.

Not convinced? Hitler and Mussolini praised FDR for the New Deal, calling it a great experiment in American fascism:

http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=311

How has freedom worked in the economy? In every economic depression prior to the Great Depression, the government's policy was laissez-faire: reduce taxes, spending, and regulation, allowing the market to correct itself. Did such a policy work? Let's put it this way: how many American depressions, besides the Great Depression, have you heard about?

Fascism is marked today by regulatory capture, various subsidies, either direct or as a result of the tax code, and privileges such as exemption from liability. It is the cornerstone of American life now. Nearly any institution you attempt to do business with is touched by fascism. The entire economy uses the money of a fascist cartel. Energy producers, telecoms, farmers, mortgage lenders, local utilities, and domestic automobile manufacturers all receive artificial market power through government force. The most fascist industries, however, are banking, media, medicine, and arms. You will notice all of these industries become less competitive, higher priced, more fraudulent and criminal, and less accountable to market demand. This is the very nature of fascism. It rivals feudalism in its barbarism, and socialism in its impossibility.

Basically, why I'm posting this, is in the vain hope that we don't blame the free market or laissez-faire capitalism when this system collapses. Our president will, and he will propose an even more totalitarian, forcefully controlled economy.