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April
April
John Bogle Slams Managerial Capitalism
25 comments Posted in: BusinessTagged with Bogle, Capitalism, John, Managerial, Slams
Complete video at: fora.tv John Bogle, founder and retired CEO of The Vanguard Group, holds the managers of mutual funds liable for the financial crisis. He blames the “sea change” in the nature of capitalism — from “traditional owner’s capitalism” to a “new and virulent manager’s capitalism” — for the crisis. —– The Seventh Annual John M. Templeton, Jr. Lecture on Economic Liberties and the Constitution considers the social, cultural, and moral causes of the current financial crisis in the United States. In doing so, the Lecture revisits basic lending principles and examines our nation’s skyrocketing debt, our lack of savings, and basic understanding of economic principles within the household, as well as corporate America, and the effects of our political and legislative effort to reduce discriminatory credit practices. – National Constitution Center John Bogle created Vanguard in 1974 and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until 1996 and Senior Chairman until 2000. The Vanguard Group is one of the two largest mutual fund organizations in the world. Vanguard comprises more than 120 mutual funds with current assets totaling more than $1 trillion. Vanguard 500 Index Fund, the largest fund in the group, was founded by Mr. Bogle in 1975. It was the first index mutual fund. In 2004, TIME magazine named Mr. Bogle as one of the world’s 100 most powerful and influential people. In 1999, Fortune designated him as one of the investment industry’s four “Giants of …
25 Responses
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Specifically, Durrenburger goes into great length again and again to show how the lack of any “real” state (there was a hierarchical system of control whereby the few ruled over the many through violence and appeasement) affected property rights. Essentially, might made right, as in, I physically can take whats yours, thus I’m going to. And, in fact, if you wanted to remain a powerful Godi, you damn well better take from the weak to supply your followers.
April 7, 2010 at 1:30 pm -
You should pick up E. Paul Durrenburger’s “The Dynamics of Medieval Iceland”. Its a good in-depth anthropological overview of medieval Iceland and you can see they used your ideas and where they didn’t.
April 7, 2010 at 1:48 pm -
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Fine, and your philosophy is your philosophy, but this discussion is about finding real world examples where what you believe has come into being, and medieval Iceland does not appear to be that. I’m sure you’re an intelligent person, and you’re thinking outside the box, which is more than most can say, but I think your worldview is colored by idealistic ideology.
April 7, 2010 at 2:24 pm -
so elect a tyrannical bureaucracy which decides how kind men should be to their families. let them regulate your life and take a third of your paycheck and kill thousands of people overseas at yours and their expense. Ill stick with my ideas, thank you.
April 7, 2010 at 3:08 pm -
Your use of the the word governing is pointlessly specific. Has anarcho-capitalist come to mean clan-based? Male heads of households having legal control over the lives of members of their household is hardly individualistic. The “State” is simply a semantic word you’ve given special meaning to. Those subject to the rule of the wealthy male Icelandic society were no more free individuals than any citizen of any state, not even in terms of contract-makig.
April 7, 2010 at 3:55 pm -
“there was nothing wrong with their system of minimal governance.” That is a very sweet-sounding evaluation on your part, but incredibly vague. Expound, please. I cited specific laws/examples showing that individual freedom was not there as you claim. What do you mean by “minimal governance”? Is enforced castration an acceptable level of minimal governance for you?
April 7, 2010 at 4:47 pm -
Oligarchy: a form of government in which power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royal, wealth, family, military or religious hegemony. Medieval Iceland: A society in which select individuals maintained control over other individuals through the use of hegemonic violence, as laid out in the examples I just gave. I have the writings of a Professor Emeritus of History at Towson. What do you have?
April 7, 2010 at 5:28 pm -
Since I am talking about a society which is not governed and you are reflecting upon how primitive people had a much more chauvinistic marriage process than us… I think A: it was NOT an Oligarchy, and B: there was nothing wrong with their system of minimal governance.
April 7, 2010 at 6:20 pm -
So, in conclusion, if you anarcho-capitalism to you means an oligarchy in which wealthy males have “freedom” to associate and everyone else is subjugated through violence in some way, than, by all means, medieval Iceland is your place.
April 7, 2010 at 7:02 pm -
Oh, also, I forgot, women were married off by the male members of their household, with no consent or knowledge needed. While you might be please to know that the language involved was very much like a business transaction, the woman had no power or right to make a choice in the matter. Yet again, we find that an individual’s right to form contracts is not there.
April 7, 2010 at 7:19 pm -
My point about outlaws has nothing to do with what you or anyone considers “ethically proper”. Rather, outlaws are individuals who are denied any legal status, not because they breached some infallible universal ethical absolute, but because the state made this decision. Therefore, individual legal status in medieval Iceland was subject to the arbitration of the state, just like every other non-anarcho-capitalist society in history.
April 7, 2010 at 8:09 pm -
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A few points: Pre-Christian. Pre-Norse Iceland was an oligarchy. Poor people could not marry and the unemployed could be castrated at will by any landed person, so as not to proliferate poverty. That is a violation of the individual’s right to form contracts (marriage is a personal contract, yes?) and the state sanctified use of violence against individual citizens. So, does that fit with the anarcho-capitalist image of medieval Iceland you were claiming?
April 7, 2010 at 9:29 pm -
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Alright, I haven’t even started “The Dynamics of Medieval Iceland”, but already I’ve found an article that appears to invalidate this. “Germanic Marriage: The Case of Medieval Iceland” by Jenny Jochens, found in the book “The Medieval Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy” published by Arizona State in 2005. Jochens, unlike Friedman, is a historian, employed by Towson’s Dept of History.
April 7, 2010 at 10:08 pm -
yea those things were good, but France also had a King, who over taxed his citizens and then was overthrown by a people who demanded as little government as possible, like Iceland. I don’t think criminals should be tolerated in a free society, people would exclude them from everyday life and they would be ostracized and they would eventually die.
April 7, 2010 at 10:54 pm -
How so? 12th century France had land ownership. In fact, inheritance, manorial, property and contract law were huge parts of the newly developing canon law. Land owners had every right to their own land, but owed allegiances of varying kinds to their lords, exactly as medieval Iceland. And there was definitely a “law” so to speak, because Iceland, like all Med. Europe, had an “outlaw” status, that is, a person banished from the law and its protection.
April 7, 2010 at 11:45 pm -
the land ownership aspect would be what separates the Anarcho from the Anarcho-Capitalist, making medieval Iceland an Anarcho-Capitalist state.
April 8, 2010 at 12:06 am -
Okay, I never said anything about anarchist societies, rather anarcho-CAPITALIST societies, and whatever David Friedman says, I have always understood medieval Iceland to have been neither stateless nor capitalist in the modern sense. Rather, it was a modified form of feudalism (which, you’ll recall, is based on private property ownership) with heavy family connections. However, I’m willing to admit my knowledge of it is amateur, so I’ll do a bit of study and maybe get back to you.
April 8, 2010 at 12:33 am -
Pretty obvious indeed! You ought to remember that Rome started as a republic and ended up an empire until its destruction. History is more than a story when you look at it!
April 8, 2010 at 1:31 am -
Our empire will be our demise. I picked up a book titled “are We Rome?” recently, i havent read it but the title gives the gist if you get mine haha.
April 8, 2010 at 2:05 am -
Glad to find a brother in mind! Regardless, as the fundamentals of free markets capitalism has been subsituted by a bureaucratic corporatism, there is no surprise that we are finding ourselves in this mess. But the virus has been working its way since 1913 and slowing eating up the barriers against tyranny. We ought to remember that prior ww2, the US was pretty much a non-interventionist Nation in world’s affair. You can not have a capitalist nation and an empire at the same time!
April 8, 2010 at 2:53 am -
Oh, I agree. I think you misread my comment. I meant that if you DIDN’T get rid of the Federal Reserve, and instead decided to regulate, then you would still be left with the boom and bust cycle (Which is caused by the Federal Reserve pushing the interest rates below equilibrium value).
There aren’t too many economists left who don’t accept this model. Now, only if economists would start taking a look at the other economic models from the Austrian School.
April 8, 2010 at 3:19 am
Last point, I promise. Although there was a “market”, so to speak, in Commonwealth Iceland (chieftains traded wool for luxury goods to keep their followers happy), all property values, labor compensation and prices were set by assembly, not by the market.
April 7, 2010 at 12:48 pm