Why does the whole thing fail as theater? Two reasons:

First, it lacks the true conflict essential to a good yarn. Protagonists and antagonists. Winners and losers. One side wants one thing, the other wants something not just different, but substantially incompatible. “Cromnibus” fails on that level because all sides transparently want the same thing — to keep things going exactly as they’ve always gone.

Secondly, the stakes are too low. “Government shutdown” just isn’t the bogeyman it used to be. Multiple iterations of invoking it and occasionally bringing it on stage for real expose it as, well, not very scary. “Non-essential” government services will temporarily shut down if we don’t settle this, quick! Woooooh, scary. Pass the popcorn, please. And change the channel.

When even “progressive” Democrats like Elizabeth Warren threaten “shutdown” to get their way, it’s just too obvious that there’s no real shutdown in play. Per Chekhov, “[i]f you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” If Warren is willing to pull the trigger, we know that the gun isn’t really loaded.

Inside the Beltway, the big question — passed back and forth between cast, directors, producers, etc. — is never “should we stop doing what we’re doing?” That’s just not on the playbill, folks. The only question of importance to politicians is “how do we keep doing what we’re doing without losing the audience?”

Here are my big questions for the audience:

1)  A government “shutdown” applies only to “non-essential services.” If the services aren’t essential, why are they provided by the state in the first place? Or to elaborate a bit, if we’re going to tolerate a coercive monopoly like the state at all, shouldn’t that monopoly at least be limited to things that are absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, essential?

2) If something is absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, essential, why would we trust that thing to a coercive monopoly either? Lacking incentives to deliver the goods — since it forces us to pay for them whether they’re delivered or not and forbids us to seek them elsewhere — such monopolies invariably degenerate into the kinds of amateur theatrical productions we’re talking about here.

Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren, John Boehner et. al concern themselves constantly with how to keep the show going. Time for the rest of us to start thinking about lowering the curtain on it.

Thanks to Carmen Segarra, however, we now have some keen insight to the inner operations of the Federal Reserve System.

Segarra was recently employed at the New York Fed as a bank examiner, charged with ensuring the bank followed internal regulations and conducting “oversight” of the economic powerhouse. During her tenure, Segarra grew suspicious the Fed was rather lenient with powerful, well-connected investment banks — notably Goldman Sachs (a key player in the 2008 financial crisis). To document her concerns she recorded 46 hours of private meetings and conversations. Her recordings reveal the Fed is, in fact, rather cozy with the financial institutions it’s supposed to regulate.

With evidence in hand, Segarra voiced her objections.

She was soon fired.

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Qualche tempo fa, la Segarra è stata assunta dalla Fed di New York come esaminatore bancario, cioè con il compito di controllare che la banca seguisse tutti i regolamenti interni e di “supervisionare” questa centrale di potere economico. Durante il suo lavoro, la Segarra ha cominciato a sospettare una certa condiscendenza della Fed con le banche d’investimento che avevano buone amicizie; soprattutto la Goldman Sachs, protagonista chiave della crisi finanziaria nel 2008. Per confermare i suoi sospetti, ha registrato 46 ore di incontri privati e conversazioni. Le registrazioni rivelano un atteggiamento piuttosto accomodante della Fed con le istituzioni finanziarie che avrebbe dovuto controllare. Prove alla mano, la Segarra ha dato voce alla sua protesta. È stata subito licenziata.

La donna è andata ad aggiungersi ai ranghi di altri informatori e ha passato le registrazioni a Jake Bernstein, un giornalista investigativo di ProPublica, e al programma radiofonico This American Life. In un’intervista con l’emittente Npr, Bernstein nota: “Questa è gente che lavora dentro le banche. Incontra queste persone tutti i giorni, ha bisogno di informazioni dalle banche. È più facile ottenerle se si hanno amici e buone relazioni, ma a volte si scade nell’ossequio.” Le registrazioni rivelano molte cose, come gli accordi segreti definiti “oscuri” dagli stessi rappresentanti della Fed, e rivelano la cultura corrotta che regna nella banca centrale.

“Scadere nell’ossequio” non è il termine appropriato. Meglio chiamarlo furto. La popolazione è derubata della propria libertà di agire e della propria sicurezza. Un furto sotto forma di salvataggi bancari e di una politica economica basata sul “troppo grande per fallire”, a vantaggio del capitalismo di stato.

Dopo le rivelazioni, il senatore democratico Elizabeth Warren, del Massachusetts, ha invocato un’indagine sulla corruzione della Fed. Assieme a lei il suo collega democratico Sherrod Brown. Illusioni.

Sono tantissimi anni che le grandi aziende e il settore finanziario godono di privilegi economici garantiti dallo stato con la premessa che queste istituzioni sono indispensabili alla società. La finanza è separata ma allo stesso tempo legata profondamente allo stato. Questo significa che l’economia della nazione è connessa direttamente con queste istituzioni. Questi legami danno forza ad un’economia politica corporativa in cui lo stato ha interesse diretto a far sì che queste concentrazioni di capitale, oggi definite “troppo grandi per fallire”, abbiano successo. Se vuole conservarsi in salute, lo stato deve garantire la stabilità del capitalismo.

Le normative appaiono così come uno spreco di tempo, energie e denaro pubblico.

Noi che apparteniamo alla sinistra di mercato siamo contrari a queste concentrazioni di potere e capitali, che in primo luogo permettono l’esistenza di istituzioni “troppo grandi per fallire”. Crediamo che spetti al potere della società, liberato dalla simbiosi stato-capitale, guidare il mercato. Immaginiamo un sistema economico e di governance decentralizzato e partecipativo. In una società basata sulla libertà personale e di associazione non c’è posto per il potere.

Chi è a capo della Fed, così come gli altri presunti controllori, crede di poter programmare l’economia. Il loro problema è che il mercato, come tutto ciò che dipende dal comportamento umano, non è fatto per essere programmato: il mercato è spontaneo. La volontà di controllare l’economia porta necessariamente all’ingabbiamento dell’attività umana e dell’innovazione. In un mercato liberato, al contrario, il potere sarebbe diffuso tra tutti, e questo richiederebbe libertà di agire e di seguire le proprie inclinazioni. È tempo di chiudere la Fed e di mettere in pratica un’economia basata sulla libertà.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Segarra was recently employed at the New York Fed as a bank examiner, charged with ensuring the bank followed internal regulations and conducting “oversight” of the economic powerhouse. During her tenure, Segarra grew suspicious the Fed was rather lenient with powerful, well-connected investment banks — notably Goldman Sachs (a key player in the 2008 financial crisis). To document her concerns she recorded 46 hours of private meetings and conversations. Her recordings reveal the Fed is, in fact, rather cozy with the financial institutions it’s supposed to regulate. With evidence in hand, Segarra voiced her objections. She was soon fired.

Segarra joined the ranks of other whistle-blowers and leaked her recordings to Jake Bernstein, an investigative reporter from ProPublica, and to the public radio program, This American Life. In an interview with NPR, Bernstein notes: “These are people who work inside the banks. They see these people every day, and they need to obtain the information from these banks, and it’s easier to obtain the information if you’re friendly and if you have a good relationship, but sometimes that can slide to deference.” The tapes reveal much, such as back-room deals described as “shady” by Fed officials, but at their heart, the recordings tell the story of a corrupt culture within the central bank.

A “slide to deference” is not the proper description. Theft is more accurate. The theft of labor, property and security from the populace, in the form of bailouts and “too big to fail” economic policy, for the benefit of the state capitalist system.

Because of the leaks, US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is trumpeting the call for a corruption investigation into the Fed. She is joined by her Democratic colleague Sherrod Brown. Such calls are folly.

State-sanctioned economic privilege has long been granted to big business and the financial sector under the premise that these institutions are necessary for social organization. The financial sector is separate from, but intimately related with, the state. As such, the economy of the nation-state is directly linked to these institutions. This relationship forges a corporatist political economy where the state has direct interest in the success of these now “too big to fail” concentrations of capital — the state must keep capitalism stable for its own preservation..

Regulation is thus a waste of time, energy and taxpayer dollars.

Those of us on the market left, however, oppose the very concentrations of power and capital that allow “too big to fail” institutions to exist in the first place. We believe social power, liberated of state-capital symbiosis, should steer the market. We envision decentralized and participatory systems of governance and economics. There is no room for archism in a social order of liberty and free association.

Those that head the Fed, and other would-be regulators, imagine they can design economic systems. The problem is markets, like all human behavior, are not structured for the command and control mentality — markets are spontaneous. The desire for control of economic systems necessarily requires the restriction of human labor and innovation. The liberated market, in contrast, with power diffused to the public arena, requires liberty and the inclined labor of human-beings. It’s far past time we end the Fed and actualize the economics of liberty.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Chiudete la Fed: L’Economia della Libertà.

Consider Warren’s speech introducing emergency legislation to allow refinancing of student loans. She noted, “Congress set interest rates on student loans at artificially high interest rates that generate extra money for the government. … These young people … deserve a fair shot at an affordable education.” Her indignation at mounting student loan debt is admirable, but her cures may be worse than the disease.

It’s absurd to suggest that the solution to overpriced government student loans is to eliminate profit from the program. Loans are supposed to be the current use of one’s future capital. Interest rates signal how efficient this advance is. Given that government cannot determine the efficiency of investment in education, it has no business setting prices by fiat. Still, Warren’s program is not merely one among a million other arbitrary suggestions for government set prices. In her words, “Our work will not be done until we have eliminated all of the profits from the government-run student loan program.” One wonders if she has any concept of what prices do. Warren doesn’t just want government to continue putting students in massive debt; she wants it to give students even more reason to malinvest their savings and throw themselves at the mercy of the state’s financial caprice.

Government distorts supply by propping up banks whose oligopoly power makes the real cost of lending money obscure from public view and undiscoverable even by the banks themselves. When costs are unknowable, market-clearing prices are unknowable to at least the same degree. Neither government nor banks can set efficient prices. However, even if the government were capable of effectively pricing loans, there’s no good reason to believe it would try to. Politicians, bureaucrats and their lobbyist friends aren’t interested in market efficiency. Politicians like Warren get elected by trumpeting the cause of the debt-drowned graduate while others get campaign support by driving students from expensive government loans into the hands of private banks.

However inscrutable the precise equilibrium price, it’s reasonable to think that, without government, the supply of student loans would skyrocket, making education exceptionally affordable. Without barriers to entry, crowd-funded education loans might allow people to make small investments in many students, spreading risk and decreasing upfront costs to any individual lender. Mutual funds in student loans provided through Indiegogo or Kickstarter analogs would open the floodgates of investment money even from those just barely out of poverty. With the possibilities for new funding mechanisms, interest rates on student loans would fall enormously.

With good reason to expect a market-clearing price of student loans lower than today’s price, it is almost unbelievable that Warren manages to suggest a figure guaranteed to be TOO low. Market competition seeks out prices where resources are most efficiently used to satisfy people’s preferences. If it happens that the efficient price falls below the cost of a good, that good simply won’t be produced. No supplier wants to lose money. If Warren understood this, she would see the absurdity of her anti-profit mandate. She wants to force expenditure of resources in ways that underutilizes them. That money could be used to pay wages to workers not in school, or to fund the education of students who wouldn’t be working. In a classic case of Bastiat’s seen and unseen, Warren improperly redirects financial capital toward education.

New York Federal Reserve data shows an underemployment rate of about 44% for recent US college graduates. Though recent grads are more prone to underemployment than experienced workers, this still reveals a considerable problem with the notion that simply by going to college automatically improves employment opportunities.

Among the alternatives: Praxis is building an education program designed to compete with bachelor’s degrees in the job market on a mere ten month learning period, $12,000 tuition and paid partnership with businesses that pay ten dollars per hour for forty weeks at thirty hours per week, covering that $12,000 tuition. Surely Senator Warren would agree that ten months at no net cost is better than four years at even a low-interest loan if it creates the same job opportunities.

So what does Warren want? A simple supply and demand argument shows that if enacted, her vision would indebt more students by encouraging them to enter an overvalued self-investment plan, misusing what little financial capital is available in the US, stunting job growth for her maleducated aspiring wage slaves and encouraging more dependency on people like Warren. This doesn’t sound like a “fair shot” for “these young people.”

I fraintendimenti del suo intervento sono rampanti. Confonde cooperazione e governo dicendo: “Nella nostra democrazia, il governo è semplicemente ciò che noi come popolo abbiamo già deciso di fare insieme.” Sciocchezze. Non è la democrazia a governare ma una classe privilegiata di politici, burocrati e aziende clientelari. La vera cooperazione e la comunità stanno fuori dallo stato. Ogni giorno le persone collaborano tra loro senza costrizioni governative. La mutua assistenza esiste senza il governo. Sindacati e altre associazioni di lavoratori esistono senza il governo. I centri sociali esistono senza il governo. Federazioni e cooperative esistono senza il governo. Il governo non è comunità, cooperazione o fratellanza. Il governo è coercizione che fin troppo spesso schiaccia la viva collaborazione sociale.

“Il governo spauracchio è come lo spauracchio sotto il letto; è finto,” dichiara la senatrice Warren. Ma i danni fatti dal governo sono reali e concreti. Le sanzioni contro l’Iran causano povertà, insicurezza alimentare e carenza di medicinali. La senatrice Warren è a favore di queste sanzioni. Dalle nostre parti, una recente ricerca ha scoperto che nel 2011 quasi 200.000 carcerati hanno subito abusi sessuali. Sempre secondo la ricerca, a perpetrare gli abusi sono più spesso i secondini, stipendiati e armati dallo stato, che altri carcerati.

Durante la “chiusura” la brutalità del governo continua. La settimana scorsa, la polizia della capitale ha sparato e ucciso una donna disarmata davanti a suo figlio. L’Fbi ha chiuso il sito Silk Road mettendo in pericolo la popolazione. Un attacco Nato in Afganistan ha ucciso almeno cinque civili, tre dei quali bambini. Violenza e imposizioni sono caratteristiche costanti di un governo, anche durante la “chiusura”.

La senatrice Warren ha irriso i deputati repubblicani chiamandoli “la cricca anarchica”. La “chiusura” non è stata orchestrata da noi “anarchici”, per i quali essere paragonati ai deputati repubblicani è un insulto. La “chiusura” ha lasciato in piedi gran parte della violenza di stato che gli anarchici combattono, come il militarismo, la sopraffazione poliziesca, il monopolio dei brevetti dello stato clientelare, le incarcerazioni di massa, lo spionaggio e le deportazioni di massa. Ha tagliato programmi relativamente inoffensivi, come quello per le donne, gli infanti e i bambini, che è un cerotto sulla povertà strutturale tenuta in piedi dallo stato. Alcune parti di questa “chiusura”, come il divieto di accesso nei parchi e il divieto per gli scienziati di parlare di ricerca scientifica in pubblico, sono imposte con la violenza di stato.

Warren sparge paura riguardo la sicurezza chiedendo sarcasticamente: “Quando è stata l’ultima volta che qualcuno ha chiesto a chi fa le regole di andare leggero con le ditte che mettono il piombo nei giocattoli?” Ma la realtà è che non è necessario che sia il governo a imporre le regole dall’alto in basso. Ci sono altri modi. La Coalizione dei Lavoratori di Immokalee, ad esempio, usa il boicottaggio, la pressione sociale e l’azione di base per spingere le ditte a firmare il contratto con il loro Programma per un’Alimentazione Corretta, un programma organizzato dai lavoratori agricoli che stabilisce controlli rigorosi e protezione per i lavoratori migranti, che spesso sono abusati brutalmente sia dai loro capi che dal sistema legale. Questo programma innovativo è stato elogiato sia da persone di sinistra che da anarchici. I consumatori potrebbero organizzarsi e adottare simili controlli a livello di cittadini per la sicurezza del prodotto. Il Programma per un’Alimentazione Corretta si è imposto grazie ad azioni di base, ed è promosso con sistemi libertari come i contratti, il boicottaggio e la pressione sociale. Per contro, i regolamenti statali sono spesso usati dalle grandi aziende per restringere la competizione, consolidare il potere ed evitare responsabilità. Questo problema pervasivo si chiama cattura normativa.

Elizabeth Warren ha torto. Il governo è un male superfluo.

Di Nathan Goodman. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il dieci ottobre 2013 con il titolo The Authoritarianism of Elizabeth Warren. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Misconceptions run rampant in Senator Warren’s speech. She conflates cooperation and government, stating “In our democracy, government is just how we describe the things that we the people have already decided to do together.” Nonsense. Government decisions are in practice not made democratically, but rather by a privileged class of politicians, bureaucrats and corporate cronies. Real community and cooperation happen outside the state. People do things together without government coercion every day. Mutual aid exists without government. Unions and and other labor groups exist without government. Community centers exist without government. Federations and cooperatives exist without government. Mutually beneficial market exchanges exist without government. Government is not community, cooperation or togetherness. Government is centralization and coercion that all too often crushes vibrant social cooperation.

“The boogeyman government is like the boogeyman under the bed; it’s not real,” proclaims Senator Warren. But the harm done by government is real and concrete. For example, U.S. sanctions against Iran are causing poverty, food insecurity, and medical shortages. Senator Warren supports those sanctions. Closer to home, recent research shows that nearly 200,000 inmates were sexually abused in American prisons, jails, and detention centers in 2011. This same research finds that prison guards, employed and empowered by government, perpetrated these rapes more often than inmates did.

The violence of government continues during the “shutdown.” Last week, Capitol Police shot and killed an unarmed woman in front of her child. The FBI shut down the website Silk Road, making the public less safe in the process. A NATO air strike in Afghanistan killed at least five civilians, three of them children. Violence and coercion are constant features of government, even during a “shutdown.”

Senator Warren derisively refers to the House Republicans as “the anarchy gang.” The “shutdown” was not engineered by “anarchists,” and it is insulting to anarchists to compare us to the House Republicans. The “shutdown” has kept intact most of the state violence that anarchists oppose, including militarism, police violence, crony capitalist patent monopolies, mass incarceration, mass surveillance and deportations. It has cut off relatively harmless programs like Women Infants and Children that serve as bandages over the structural poverty that the state maintains. Some parts of the “shutdown,” such as barring citizens from national parks and prohibiting scientists from speaking about research, are enforced through state violence.

Warren fearmongers about safety regulations, snidely asking “when was the last time anyone called for regulators to go easier on companies that put lead in children’s toys?” But the reality is that regulations need not be administered by top-down government. There are other ways to establish oversight. For example, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers uses boycotts, social pressure and grassroots action to pressure companies to sign contracts with their Fair Food Program, a farmworker organized program that establishes rigorous oversight and worker protections for migrant farmworkers who are often brutally abused by both their bosses and the legal system. This innovative program has been praised by liberals and anarchists alike. Consumers could organize to implement similar grassroots oversight for product safety. The Fair Food Program was won through grassroots action, and is maintained through libertarian means like contracts, boycotts and social pressure. State regulations, in contrast, are often used by big business as a way to restrict competition, consolidate power, and dodge accountability. This is a pervasive problem called regulatory capture.

Elizabeth Warren is wrong. Government is an unnecessary evil.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, L’Autoritarismo di Elizabeth Warren.