Part 2 Preliminary Research on the 2-Stage Hypothesis of Foundation Funding of Libertarians

When a funding relationship is discovered to exist between a libertarian researcher and a Foundation--usually perceived of as an "evil" Foundation with malevolent intentions--the standard explanation seems to be what I will call the 2-Stage Hypothesis of Foundation Funding.  Let me illustrate what I mean with two cogent examples from libertarian history.

In the Mises Institute forum post entitled Lyndon Larouche's Mises-Hayek conspiracy theories, a poster named Aragon notes, in part, that one of the accusations against the Austrian School of Economics is that the Austrian School is a "front" for the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA. "The National Review is considered the most influential CIA publication. It consistently puffs Jean Kirkpatrick, Milton Friedman, and other cognoscenti of the intelligence community and the Viennese School of Economics" (emphasis mine). What this argument is trying to say is simply that Murray N. Rothbard was a "puppet" for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Did Murray N. Rothbard work for the CIA-publication called the National Review? The answer is unequivocally yes. Was the National Review really a CIA-publication in the first place?

According to Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the CIA did fund the National Review. Hoppe writes in his book Democracy: The God That Failed (p. 190, footnote 3, paragraph 2) that

a second, somewhat older but nowadays almost indistinguishable branch of contemporary American conservatism is represented by the new (post World War II) conservatism launched and promoted, with the assistance of the CIA, by William Buckley and his National Review. Whereas the old (pre-World War II) American conservatism had been characterized by decidedly anti-interventionist (isolationist) foreign policy views, the trademark of Buckley's new conservatism has been its rabid militarism and interventionist foreign policy. (bold emphasis mine; italics in the original)

There is also no question that Murray N. Rothbard did, in fact, work for the National Review and for William or Bill Buckley. We know that Rothbard worked for the National Review because he speaks quite candidly about his role in the organization. Rothbard himself was quite aware of the fact that he was working for the CIA. Rothbard writes in his book The Betrayal of the American Right that the CIA was pulling pretty much all the strings at the National Review:

We should now ask whether or not a major objective of National Review from its inception was to transform the right wing from an isolationist to global warmongering anti-Communist movement; and, particularly, whether or not the entire effort was in essence a CIA operation. We now know that Bill Buckley, for the two years prior to establishing National Review, was admittedly a CIA agent in Mexico City, and that the sinister E. Howard Hunt was his control. His sister Priscilla, who became managing editor of National Review, was also in the CIA; and other editors James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall had at least been recipients of CIA largesse in the anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom. In addition, Burnham has been identified by two reliable sources as a consultant for the CIA in the years after World War II. (168)

 Rothbard also speaks quite openly about the role he played at the National Review. Rothbard, writing about himself, observes that

National Review's image of me was that of a lovable though Utopian libertarian purist who, however, must be kept strictly confined to propounding laissez-faire economics, to which National Review had a kind of residual rhetorical attachment....But above all I was supposed to stay out of political matters and leave to the warmongering ideologues of National Review the gutsy real-world task of defending me from the depredations of world Communism, and allowing me the luxury of spinning Utopias about private fire-fighting services. I was increasingly unwilling to play that kind of a castrate role. (177)

Common sense tells me that something is rotten here in our metaphorical State of Denmark. The issue of "shared confession" plays a predominant role in this type of "conspiracy theory" research. As serious historical researchers, we must look for "a shared world view" and for "shared ideas." In fact, Gary North explains, in his article Writing Conspiracy History: Lists Are Not Enough, the correct procedure for doing historical research in a "conspiracy theory" type setting:

There are many levels of association, dependence, and interaction among political groups and activist organizations. What matters most is shared confessions, not shared money. Shared ideas, not a long list of names on the yellowing letterhead stationery of a short-lived, peripheral, one-man organization like the Religious Roundtable, are what matters.

Serious historical research involves more than collecting membership lists and letterhead lists from old archives or Web-based data bases.  The researcher must ask himself: "So what?" He must show that the connections have to do with a shared worldview and shared sources of funding, especially funding by an organization or a family with an identifiable agenda that stretches across two generations or more. (bold emphasis mine)

So, is there a "shared worldview" or "shared ideas" between the National Review and Rothbard? From Rothbard's own discussion above, the National Review saw him as "lovable though Utopian libertarian purist" who was "strictly confined" to "safe topics." But on the core issue--i.e., on foreign policy--ROTHBARD AND THE NATIONAL REVIEW STRONGLY DISAGREE. The National Review became an advocate of "rabid militarism and interventionist foreign policy." The obvious question to ask is: did Rothbard support militarism or an interventionist foreign policy? The simple answer is NO, he did not. Some evidence to support this conclusion can be found in David Gordon's article entitled Rothbard against War.  Gordon writes of a Rothbard who not only intellectually disagrees with the National Review but also openly opposes their policies. Gordon writes of Rothbard's strong stand against the National Review and the Cold War:

Although Rothbard was an early contributor to William Buckley's National Review, he rejected the aggressive pursuit of the Cold War advocated by Buckley and such members of his editorial staff as James Burnham and Frank S. Meyer. He broke with these self-styled conservatives and thereafter became one of their strongest opponents. (bold emphasis mine)

One attempt to explain this "bizarre" relationship between the pro-militarist and statist National Review and the anti-militarist and anarchist Rothbard is to use what I am calling the 2-Stage Hypothesis of Foundation Funding mentioned by Daniel McCarthy in his National Review Isn't Right.  McCarthy writes explicitly about this 2-Stage Hypothesis when he describes the history of Rothbard's relationship with the National Review. The basic sequence of events for a NEW Foundation is (1)Stage 1: hire big names in order to build credibility for the new foundation, (2)purge the undesirables in order to transition into Stage 2; (3)Stage 2: now launch the "real" politically motivated agenda:

 Was there ever a time when National Review was conservative? Certainly conservatives were once published in its pages, especially in the early years when National Review was seeking to establish itself as the voice of the American Right and American conservatives were in desperate need of a journal. But once National Review had counterfeited its credentials it soon began to purge anyone on the Right who disagreed with its line, from the John Birch Society to Murray Rothbard, and later Joseph Sobran.... Having slandered most of its rivals on the Right as kooks or anti-Semites, National Review can now afford to be more open about its imperial agenda. (bold emphasis mine in order to highlight the process: first credibility building, then purging of heretics, and finally real agenda launching, i.e., coming out of the closet in favor of American imperialism)

To summarize, the 2-Stage Hypothesis of Foundation Funding is:

1. Hire famous names in order to build credibility for the new Foundation
2. After purging the heretics (who were hired in Stage 1), launch the "real" political agenda 

Recently, on August 31, 2012, the 2-Stage Hypothesis of Foundation Funding was applied by Tom Woods in his Circle Bastiat article entitled Was Mises Bankrolled by the Financial Elite? In this article, Woods is addressing another Lyndon LaRoche inspired conspiracy theory leveled against the Austrian School of Economics. In this conspiracy theory, the claim is made that Austrian School Economics is a front for the power elites. The rich, powerful, and famous apparently want to adopt the policies advocated for by Mises. In Woods's explanation of what he thinks happened between Mises and the Rockefeller Foundation, Woods follows the same 2-Stage Hypothesis that Daniel McCarthy followed earlier. I will, once again, add emphases in order to make it explicit that Woods is following the 2-Stage Hypothesis:

 The RF [Rockefeller Foundation] started funding Mises because he was already a major representative of Viennese intellectual life. Mises was part of the European intellectual establishment before he received financial support from US financial aristocracy. Like all new private research institutions, the RF first tried to hop into bed with the already existing scientific establishment to prop up its own reputation [or get the credibility it needs as the new kid on the block]. Only in a second step did the RF (and similar organizations) try to steer the scientific agenda according to its own political and philosophical prejudices. When they proceeded from Step One to Step Two, there was no more place for Mises precisely because his views were unacceptable to RF. (bold emphasis mine)

Summarizing Woods's discussion:

1. The Rockefeller Foundation as the new foundation (just as the National Review was the new voice of conservatives back during the Cold War) hires a famous name, Mises, in order to build up the Foundation's credibility and reputation.
2. Mises gets purged (fired) when the Foundation proceeds from Step One to Step Two. Mises is the heretic who got purged. Then the real "steered scientific agenda" comes out into the open.

I am going to stop this blog at this point. For my next blog, Part 3, I plan to carry on where this blog ends. The plan for Part 3 is to attempt to answer the following research question: Does the 2-Stage Hypothesis fit the historical facts pertaining to the history of Mises being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation? To be frank, I am not sure at this point. From Part 1, I think that Mises's liberalism might have been of value to the Rockefeller Foundation because liberalism enables foreign imperialism and the Rockefellers might favor more American imperialism. I am also unsure about whether this Stage 1 and Stage 2 type setup actually existed. I kind of think that the Rockefeller Foundation was "steering the political agenda" from day one, that is, the Foundation did not wait for a Stage 2 in order to finally launch its manipulations. But I still have to do a lot more research before coming to any definitive conclusions.    

Part 1 Some Preliminary Research on the Mises-Rockefeller Foundation Funding

On the Ludwig von Mises webpage, one can find a few posts discussing the historical fact that Ludwig von Mises did, in fact, receive funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. My curiosity regarding the funding of Mises was aroused when I stumbled across the post entitled WTF Rockefeller funded Mises? I have been thinking about this for some time because this funding arrangement seems really odd to me. Why on earth would the Rockefeller Foundation show any interest in Mises? In the introduction to Murray N. Rothbard's A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II, Joseph T. Salerno raises an important point. He notes that "the question of 'Cui bono?'--or 'Who benefits?'--from changes in policies and institutions receives very little attention." This has been precisely the question I have been asking myself for some time: how did the Rockefeller Foundation benefit (if at all) from funding Ludwig von Mises? What were their motives for funding him? Moreover, how does Mises benefit (if at all) from receiving Rockefeller Foundation support? Actually I have a number of unanswered questions such as the following:

1. Could the motive for funding Mises be to advance an imperialist agenda, which would probably be beneficial to the Rockefellers? The reason I put this forward as a possibility is because of three fascinating (at least to me) quotations. One is by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his article The Paradox of Imperialism, and another is by Samuel Edward Konkin III who is quoted by Wally Conger in the essay entitled Agorist Class Theory: A Left Libertarian Approach to Class Conflict Analysis.  The third is by Gary North in his article EUthanasia. 
1. Hoppe mentions that internal or domestic liberalism in states such as the United States of America--remember Mises was a strong advocate for classical liberalism--is the breeding ground for external imperalism.  Conversely, the internal or domestic repression of states such as the former Soviet Union is the breeding ground of just the opposite foreign policy, namely, a peaceful foreign policy. Let me quote Hoppe at length because it seems to suggest that a motive for funding domestic liberalism is to advance foreign imperalism.
1. "Other things being equal, the lower the tax and regulation burden imposed on the domestic economy, the larger the population will tend to grow and the larger the amount of domestically produced wealth on which the state can draw in its conflicts with neighboring competitors. That is, states which tax and regulate their economies comparatively little--liberal states--tend to defeat and expand their territories or their range of hegemonic control at the expense of less-liberal ones. This explains, for instance, why Western Europe came to dominate the rest of the world rather than the other way around. More specifically, it explains why it was first the Dutch, then the British and finally, in the 20th century, the United States, that became the dominant imperial power, and why the United States, internally one of the most liberal states, has conducted the most aggressive foreign policy, while the former Soviet Union, for instance, with its illiberal (repressive) domestic policies has engaged in a comparatively peaceful and cautious foreign policy.
2. Konkin also comes out, more directly than Hoppe did, and says that liberalism is a trick of the ruling class. Konkin basically sees liberalism in the same way that Hoppe does, namely, that liberalism is just a more efficient way of feeding the state apparatus. I want to also cite Konkin at length because he seems this internal "skimming" process going on with classical liberalism. Konkin is effectively saying that the classical liberalism advocated for by Mises is purely statism. From Roderick T Long, the State is the cause of the ruling class. Long writes in his article Can We Escape the Ruling Class? that "economic analysis suggests that the ruling class is primarily a creation of the state and not vice sersa." Hence, the ruling class is inherently statist; the ruling class has a motive to keep the state in existence. Since Mises's liberalism is statist as well, then Mises poses no threat to the ruling class when he advocates for classical liberalism.
1. "Remember, the liberal statists want to restrain the State to increase the production of the host to maximize eventual parasitism. They 'control their appetites' but continue the system of plunder. The recent political example of supply-side economics starkly illustrates the basic statist nature of such ideas: the tax rate is lowered in order to encourage greater economic production and thus a greater total tax collection in the long run."
3. North mentions in his article, EUthanasia, that Raymond Fosdick, who wrote the important book The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation and who was definitely a long-time Rockefeller "insider," approached Mises supposedly for the purpose of advancing the cause of "free trade." I suspect that "free trade" is being used euphemistically to mean "mercantilism." This is the same problem with modern "free trade" agreements such as NAFTA. They pretend to be about "free trade" when, in fact, they are really about its opposite. This is what I like to think of as the "bait-and-switch" problem with these alleged "free trade" agreements. Moreover, maybe by "free trade" they are really talking about some sort of "imperialism" in the sense of using the United States government to "open up" foreign markets. This was the argument used to justify imperialism in the 19th century and reported upon by Murray N. Rothbard in his book The Origins of the Federal Reserve. Rothbard notes that the imperialists of the late 19th century dressed up imperialism as "free trade" or as "opening up new markets." Rothbard writes that "By the late 1890s, groups of theoreticians in the United States were working on what would later be called the 'Leninist' theory of capitalist imperialism....To save advanced capitalism, it was necessary for Western governments to engage in outright imperialist or neo-imperialist ventures, which would force other countries to open their markets for American products and would force open investment opportunities abroad" (emphasis added). Gary North's important quotation is as follows.
1. "Raymond Fosdick was a long-term strategist. In the 1940s, he financed the best free market economists he could locate to promote the ideal of free trade. Ludwig von Mises and his disciple Wilhelm Roepke each published a book that had been financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. [Given the 1940s date and the Rockefeller funding, my best guess is that Gary North is alluding to Mises's Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, published in 1944 originally and admittedly funded by "the Rockefeller Foundation and...the National Bureau of Economic Research."] Yet neither of them believed in setting up a world government. This did not bother Fosdick. He and [Jean] Monnet adopted the same strategy: first free trade [or maybe bait and switch by telling the public you want free trade but then implementing "managed" or "rigged" trade, but that is my guess], then the creation of a regional government that possess judicial sovereignty. This plan has been systematically promoted by the Trilateral Commission, created in 1973 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s son, David.

Some evidence from the historical record suggests that it was Mises who approached the Rockefeller Foundation initially for funding, and not the other way around. "In Vienna, one of the first to seize the Rockefeller opportunity was actually von Mises, who, in 1930, although he viewed social planning and control as antithetical to contemporary civilization, approached Van Sickle for support," writes Robert Leonard in his essay entitled From Austroliberalism to Anschluss: Oskar Morgenstern and the Viennese Economists in the 1930's.  However,  in Jörg Guido Hülsmann's biography of Mises's life entitled Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, Mises seemed to be somewhat delighted or maybe even flattered that the Rockefeller Foundation had begun to hang out with him around 1926. [I think, but I can't remember for sure at the moment, that Mises says somewhere that the Rockefeller Foundation had been "following his work" for some time prior to this.] Writing about Mises's 1926 journey to America, Hülsmann observed that Mises was interacting with the movers and shakers in the Rockefeller world. He wrote that "In New York City, he [Mises] also met the leadership of the Rockefeller Foundation and seems to have made an excellent impression....He later recalled that the Rockefeller Foundation had 'taken a kind interest in my teaching and research work.'"

Hülsmann's book also provides another possible motive for the Rockefeller Foundation's funding of Mises. It might be that the Rockefeller Foundation needed to keep Mises around as opposition to one of their other stated objectives of this time period, namely, the objective of turning economics into applied statistics. Maybe they wanted to create the illusion of "intellectual choice" even though they were funding the positivist side of this debate very heavily. Hülsmann writes that

[Allyn] Young was known as a diehard positivist, and he was expected to make the economics department [at the London School of Economics] a center for the transformation of economic science into applied mathematics. This had been a longstanding plan of the socialist founders of the school, and of the New York-based Laura Spelman Memorial [i.e., the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial], which donated large sums to LSE for research on the "natural bases" of economics.

 

Mises on Why Capitalism is to Blame for Everything Bad in this World

This is a hilariously funny quotation from Ludwig von Mises on why capitalism is to blame for everything bad in this world!

Mises writes that

nothing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism.  Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism.  The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity.  But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our contemporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigorous in their indictment of capitalist greed.  Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist imperialism.  But the adamant nationalist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its "bourgeois" pacifism, contrary to human nature and to the inescapable laws of history.  Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness.  But the "progressives" blame capitalism for the preservation of allegedly outdated rules of sexual restraint.  Almost all men agree that poverty is an outcome of capitalism.  On the other hand many deplore the fact that capitalism, in catering lavishly to the wishes of people intent upon getting more amenities and a better living, promotes a crass materialism.  These contradictory accusations of capitalism cancel one another.  But the fact remains that there are few people left who would not condemn capitalism altogether.  

Austrian Macroeconomics on Economic Depressions with a Monetarist Twist!

This is a quotation from Richard M. Ebeling's Austrian Macroeconomics:  Review of Roger W. Garrison's Time and Money.

What is going on here is this:  Ebeling first provides the standard Austrian School explanation of economic depressions.  This is the story involving the money supply being artificially increased followed by the artificial lowering of the market interest rate.  This then causes resources to shift into producing long-term investment projects as opposed to consumer goods production.

Then, he mentions an objection raised by Sir John Hicks.  Hick argues that the traditional Austrian theory cannot be the explanation of depression because the economy, based on this theory, will self-correct too quickly, i.e., a serious investment boom could never really start up and get going.  Resources would quickly shift back to the consumer goods industry from the longer-term investment projects and the "boom" in the longer-term investment area would quickly come to an end.  However, since long-term investment booms have started and have lasted for some time, then there is obviously a problem with having a theory that does not allow for the boom phase to even get started.

Then Ebeling mentions Roger W. Garrison's proposed solution to this problem.  Garrison brings in ideas from the Monetarist school in order to "stick a time delay" into the model.  Then, with this "time delay" a prolonged "investment boom" will occur, to be followed by the "bust" part of the business cycle.

Here is how Ebeling puts it (all emphasis is mine):

Garrison retells the Austrian story by taking his cue from the type of analysis used by the Monetarists in explaining how in the short-run a monetary expansion can push unemployment and resource use BELOW the "natural rate of unemployment."  In the short-run, an economy always has some slack, even when it is operating at "full employment."

Garrison argues an economy has the capability of temporarily functioning BEYOND its "normal" full employment production possibilities.  This, he says, is what enables the investment boom to continue for a significant period of time before the "self-reversing" process of rising consumer demand brings the investment boom to a halt.

 The longer-term investment projects CAN CONTINUE for a prolonged period of time because simultaneous with this, the short-term slack in the economy enables consumer goods production to expand as well, delaying any reduced supply of consumer goods and a rise in their prices sufficient to swamp the investment boom.

 Let me try to put this into my own words.  In the standard Austrian model of depression here is what happens.

1. The monetary authority expands the money supply and creates an artificially low market interest rate. 
2. Investors (assuming "elastic expectations," i.e., investors will react to the lower interest rates and start investing in longer-term projects) are induced to borrow and invest in longer term projects (as opposed to shorter-term projects and consumer goods production)
3. To invest in these longer-term projects, they have to "bid away" resources (labor, tools, equipment) from the other shorter-term and consumer goods industries.  
4. The factor owners (owners of the factors of production) in these longer-term industries are making really good large monetary incomes.  They want to spend their money on consumer goods.
5. The problem is this:  if the factors of production have been shifted to longer term projects then obviously they are not available to work on the shorter term and consumption goods projects.  In other words, if the workers and machines are all dedicated to building bridges they cannot be dedicated to building consumer goods. 
6. So now the pent up demand for consumer goods will tend to bid up prices for consumer goods.  Also, consumer goods manufacturers, seeing the potentially much higher prices, can bid up wages and other payments to factors in order to shift the factors of production BACK to the consumer goods producing industries.

Now, Garrison wants to introduce a "time delay" into his model in order to explain the prolonged investment boom.  To do so, he brings up this Monetarist idea of SLACK in the economy.  With slack (e.g., marginal workers, people working overtime, factories being used below 100% of capacity and so on), the economy can expand in BOTH sectors, i.e., the longer-term investment boom can happen AND more consumer goods can also be produced!  In the traditional version above, resources would have to "shift back" from the longer-term projects TO the consumer goods production section.  But, if the economy can tap into this "slack," then the resources DO NOT HAVE TO SHIFT BACK RIGHT AWAY.  The resources dedicated to the longer term projects can STAY THERE; the slack can fill the needs to produce the additional consumer goods demanded.

That is my interpretation of what Ebeling wrote about Garrison's model. 

  

The Abe Simpson Version of Macroeconomics?

This is a quotation from Richard M. Ebeling's article entitled Austrian Macroeconomics:  Review of Roger W. Garrison's Time and Money.  This quote reminds me of Abraham Simpson from the Simpsons show!  See if you can guess why!  In my own person life, I remember my grandpa telling me about his lived experiences in the Soviet Union (the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic).  These stories certainly left a mark on me--when I think of communism, I think of how the total State starved my family members almost to death.  Also, the discussion in Ebeling's quote is very relevant to today's economic situation:  he is talking about the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s.

After an experience of credit expansion, inflation, and the business cycle, the memory remains, both of the details of how it has effected various people in their respective corners of the market and what they have learned about the mechanisms and consequences of government policy in general. 

Many Germans, over several generations, seemed to have retained a "living memory"--even when it was based on what grandpa has told--about the dangers of monetary abuse and hyperinflation derived from the experiences of the early 1920s.

The Role of Prices in a Free Market: The Hayekian Knowledge Problem

F. A. Hayek wrote about the importance of using the price system as a coordination tool.  "Far from being appropriate only to comparatively simple conditions," Hayek writes in The Road to Serfdom, "it is the very complexity of the division of labor under modern conditions which makes competition the only method by which such coordination can be adequately brought about."  Then Hayek adds:  "This is precisely what the price system does under competition, and which no other system even promises to accomplish.  It enables entrepreneurs, by watching the movement of comparatively few prices...to adjust their activities to those of their fellows."  (all emphasis mine)

 Richard M. Ebeling, in an article entitled Austrian Macroeconomics:  Review of Roger W. Garrison's Time and Money, writes a very concise definition of "the role of prices."  I want to put this up because I think it clearly explains why communism is impossible, i.e., why it is impossible to eliminate prices.

The role of prices under conditions of imperfect knowledge in markets with continual change is precisely to have an institutional mechanism that enables actors to coordinate their activities WITHOUT their needing to possess ALL "the data" of the market as a whole. Market actors can use their special and localized knowledge of time and place in the division of labor WITHOUT ANY OF THEM POSSESSING THE GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE ENTIRE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. (emphasis mine)

It is NOT the People's Fault for the Plastic Bag Ban in Toronto

It is NOT the People's Fault

Ah, the blame game.  Who is to blame for the recent plastic bag ban in Toronto?  According to the National Post article by Terence Corcoran, the list of possible suspects worthy of condemnation is rather long. 

Maybe the science-be-damned environmentalists are out to get the evil plastic industry. 

Or maybe opportunistic small-time but power-hungry municipal politicians are pouncing on the chance "to make their mark."  How such slander that besmirches the reputation of our normally "altruistic" politicians could be published in a reputable newspaper is beyond me. 

Or maybe these same municipal politicians are simply "dumb" city councilors who place more value in the opinion of the Easter Bunny than in studies and research.  Why waste time and money on conducting objective research when one can simply appeal to the all-knowing wisdom of elected politicians.  The divine-right of the city councilor is, after all, a well established principle of political economy. 

Or maybe The Retail Council is a spineless jellyfish that is selling out the plastic industry due to its cowardice.  If only it had a backbone to stand up to these dumb and/or opportunistic city councilors, then something good might happen in Toronto. 

Or maybe the prime suspect is the people themselves.  As Mayor Rob Ford so eloquently put it, "it's the people's fault." 

The mayor laments the lack of citizen engagement in municipal politics.  "People are just sitting back and listening, but they don't pick up the phone, they don't go down to city hall, they don't ask questions," he says.

But the most obvious objection is simply this:  how can they, Mr. Mayor?  Doesn't the surprise nature of the vote make citizen "engagement" next to impossible?  When will the people get the chance to organize an effective opposition if the city council pulls surprise out-of-the-blue votes?  The city council is certainly not signaling much of an interest in encouraging further citizen participation.

Of course, the mayor's comments may be directed not so much at this particular incident with banning plastic bags as at a general apathy towards municipal politics.  The people have tuned out; they have abdicated their responsibility to keep these city councilors accountable.  The people have voted in terrible representation, and now they are doing nothing to correct their earlier electoral mistake. 

To begin, there is no such thing as "the people."  The mayor might as well blame Martians for the political problems in Toronto.  There is no collective blob called "the people"; there is no collective brain that does the thinking for the collective people; there are, however, many individuals living within the monopoly territory called the city of Toronto.  So the problem the mayor should be asking himself is, "why does an individual not care enough to be engaged in municipal politics?"

Maybe the reason why an individual just does not care is because he or she feels powerless to bring about effective change.  After all, the relationship between the city and an individual is an antagonistic.  A citizen may not even be a voter; clearly he or she has given no consent to any of these politicians, yet this citizen has no way to opt-out of the decisions that the city council imposes upon him or her.  The citizen is, in effect, living under the communistic principle of majority rule.  He or she, as an individual, has no power; the fictitious "will" of the majority must be obeyed. 

Maybe the citizen realizes that he or she has absolutely no way to financially control the behavior of his or her official representative, who may very well be a person the citizen did not vote for in the first place.  A government, by definition, cannot be held accountable by anyone because taxation is not voluntary.  The city does not send out friendly flyers with pixies and leprechauns on them in order to encourage the citizen to donate some love money to the city.  If the citizen doesn't pay then the city is not going to sit idly by; the city will enforce its taxation bill.

So far, the individual has no way to guarantee who his or her representative will be because the individual has this communist philosophy of majority rule imposed upon him or her.  Was the individual ever asked to sign up for such an arrangement?  Nope.  One must begin by doubting whether any of this is a true expression of individual consent, i.e., whether any of this "legitimizes" the government.  Moreover, the individual has no way to financially control the city's behavior.  This is because the city has effectively said to every individual:  you don't own your property.  Pay us your taxes or you will be in trouble big time.

So what does the mayor want an individual to do?  Call a politician on the phone.  Attend a meeting.  Ask a question.  Does the city call you politely on the phone and ask for a friendly donation of funds to pay for city's operations?  Does the city attend any public meetings or ask the people any questions?  According to Corcoran's article, the city couldn't be bothered to engage in a public review.  Instead, the city has the power to use force against you.  "Obey or die," said Trotsky.  "Obey or lose your property," says the city. 

This is not a fair fight.  This is a rigged game.  And the game is rigged against the individual.  That is the point. 

In fact, the game is so rigged that each politician has a vested interest in keeping things just the way they are now.  We will not see a parade of politicians swooping in to take advantage of this "opportunity" to increase individual participation in municipal politics.  There will be no crusade to get people excited about municipal politics as a result of this plastic bag ban.  It is against the individual self-interest of a politician to do so.  Isn't it easier to rule over people who passively submit than to rule over people who are monitoring your every move?

In conclusion, the mayor is wrong to blame the fictitious phantom he calls "the people" for the Toronto city council's decision to ban plastic bags.  What he is doing is that he is effectively blaming the victims for the crime.  Instead, he should be attacking a system without legitimate consent from all individuals, without any protection of private property, without any way for an individual to financially control politicians, and without any meaningful way for the individual to exercise his or her will.  The problem is ultimately that the city council can use coercion on its subjects and impose a non-voluntary outcome on them.  With such an imbalance of power, the people are not to blame.  The communistic rule by majority and voting are to blame.