My Theory of the Brontosaurus

end of an era?

Does Reagan have a legacy? If there was no conservative revolution? If he was elected because not Carter, and re-elected because he did nothing, but made us feel good about ourselves (so there was nothing to do; we all napped together)? Did alzheimers prevent him from establishing his legacy, or symbolize it? Will it be known as the Gorbachev era? The John Paul II era? Isn't it strange that he died without much of an event? Are we lucky that he faced no crises beyond the Challenger disaster? That his war was Grenada? That Volcker was at the Fed?

Reagan and the reality based community

Conservatives like Romney because he is without a core; they want people they can manipulate according to ideology, not the leaders they speak of: Reagan, truly a leader, was also a disappointment ideologically: negotiating with Soviets, reinforcing Social Security. He was actually rational, responding to 'reality.'

is there an economist in the house?

Reagan believed in infinity, that capitalist wealth creation made poverty, and hence government, obsolete. This is more optimistic than a Randian/Nozickian libertarianism. For Reagan there was always a frontier, whether to the west, or in space. American seques into mankind. (Channelling Frances Fitzgerald here.)

What interests me is the question of whether economics is so complete. Not per Romer, which is beyond me (not that that has ever stopped me), excluding exogamous variables; not per Friedman, who was happy to commoditize everything. But taking off from Friedman: why is there a choice between full employment and inflation? Why is economics fundamentally at odds with itself?

The answer must be money; that money itself behaves like a commodity. Inflation is too much money, so its value goes down. Friedman's solution was to tightly control the money supply, which is to address the symptom, but not the disease. Is money debt: and is there a possibility of private money, ie a creditor of not unlimited resources? Interest on debt reflects inflation. Money always was understood to be a commodity; thus a gold standard; but the gold standard was also understood to be a hedge against inflation (paper money). Capitalism (investment = debt) requires an abstracted form of money, but money keeps behaving like a commodity.Ie, capitalism requires an initial debt it cannot acknowledge, a push on the wheel of the perpetual motion machine.  

The farce came first

The American conservative (Reagan) sees an infinity of world for man to conquer. There is always, in a literal way, an external to the government. Don't tread on me. Reagan was deeply Jeffersonian: after the land ran out, we were blessed with capitalism: property could be created. (For a conservative, I don't think he thought much about law or religion: he really wanted government to be unnecessary. Like in the "wild" west, there would be bad guys, who steal other people's property, and a sherriff to contain them: his vision was entirely executive ; the law was always already and obvious.)

The American liberal sees limited resources and many needs; he argues that freedom from government is freedom in government, or a desert island. The only real freedom from governement is (within, consent) civil disobedience: the recognition that the majority is not to be identified with the true or justice. Universal suffrage--unjustified, refusing justification, or calling for justification--is messing with property.

Bush Two thought Reaganism was real. Inverting Marx's dictum about tragedy and farce. They thought the ideal could be created by force, that the key was asserting the strength of the executive in defiance of the law (the legislative, which is just an invitation to the people to be false to themselves, to recreate themselves when they are natural as they are, always already).