How Republics Die: Plato’s Cautionary Tale
Technology Commerce Society Daily:
By Mark J. Boone
Insofar as an economic downturn has traceable causes, the present recession seems to have origins in the behavior of at least three groups of people: reckless lenders, who encouraged people to spend their money irresponsibly; reckless borrowers, who took their advice and spent well outside the limits of need and the ability to repay; and a government which at times encouraged such behavior through organizations such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
This is old news to the astute observer and the regular reader of TCS. What they may not know is how vividly, and how long ago, great philosophers warned us just how dangerously our society was using money. The great philosophers understood that economics operates on a moral plane, indeed a spiritual plane; that economic problems are often moral problems; and that financial markets are corrupted as much by bad behavior as by bad economic theory. The antiquity of their advice only serves to belie its strikingly acute contemporary relevance.
Read along from an excerpt of Plato’s Republic (Book VIII, 550d-566), and see if any of it sounds familiar. It’s the tragic tale of a declining republic, a tale of war, money, and politics all gone wrong through a combination of bad judgment and disordered cravings. We begin with moneylenders who have a nasty habit of lending money to people they know will use it irresponsibly, especially to youths whom they encourage to fritter it away on useless luxuries. They prefer that their money be wasted on frivolities; the more of it is wasted today, the more they can charge in interest tomorrow.
But their clients are just as bad, if not worse. By spending others’ money on frivolities, they fail to take responsibility for themselves. A group of people recklessly spending other people’s money soon becomes a leech on society: a class of those who have ruined themselves burning through borrowed money.
The class of bitter, bankrupt borrowers finds it has a friend—or what looks and talks like a friend—in a group of politicians who promises them honey, served in a silver bowl at the expense of the moneylenders who got them into trouble in the first place. Their alliance only lasts until one of the honey-tongued politicians stirs up the bankrupted class, whips them into a frenzied mob, and makes war against the wealthy class, seizing their money by force. This politician emerges as a tyrant, and the old republic has died.
Republic is a complex and profound morality tale in which we can see, if darkly, the reflection of our own republic. Its story is not exactly ours, but we have a lot in common with this once-beautiful city. Specifically, we have the same moneylenders and borrowers. The eeriest similarity to Plato’s moneylenders is the agressive marketing of credit cards to college students. However, the reckless use of home loans on the part of both lender and borrower has proven more devastating.
We have been blessedly spared from the final stage of the societal destruction portrayed in Republic, wherein a redistribution of wealth proceeds by way of a violent coup to tyranny. The American republic is stable enough that for the foreseeable future we need not fear such madness.
But the same disease can also kill a republic slowly. Cicero, the great Roman statesman and philosopher who was also a great reader of Plato, warns that redistributing wealth by taking it from lenders and giving it to borrowers is among the worst things a leader can do because it wreaks havoc on a credit system (On Duties, Book II, chapters 83-85). This in turn can cripple an economy and lead to the same awful result: the death of the republic. Since credit is a function of the credibility a borrower has in the eyes of a lender, nothing can damage it more than if lenders expect to be repaid with their own taxes. While we can be grateful we haven’t seen more of this, we should keep a hawk’s eye on the new Congress for any signs of this sort of redistribution.
After all, we would only be deceiving ourselves if we thought that our republic by virtue of its size, technology, hefty GDP, or anything else is somehow immune to what destroyed other republics. Human nature destroyed ancient republics, and it could destroy ours.
(H/T RC)
 |
|
“We have been blessedly spared from the final stage of the societal destruction portrayed in Republic, wherein a redistribution of wealth proceeds by way of a violent coup to tyranny. The American republic is stable enough that for the foreseeable future we need not fear such madness.”
Says who? Easy to say when living in the now. Most of the American unwashed has willingly given power to a tyrant and look how he has acted in 3 short weeks. When he doesn’t get his way he throws a tantrum, i.e. act like a tyrant.
You Maniacs!
Well you have to admit that Plato’s “The Republic” was biased, and extremely so. He looks at the worst areas of both Democracies and Republics and even literally states that a philosopher-ruled state would be the best government. In other words, he can see the bad in every form, but he cannot see solutions. Relying on Plato is not right. We can’t just sit on our asses and say “Well see this guy was a live thousands of years ago and he said this was going to happen” That’s not getting us anywhere.
Oh God I just looked at the picture. “Planet of the Ape[s]” ROFL
So… the reply to Bambi’s “tired, old theories” rant is Plato and Cicero?
Why gosh.. those two are only slightly older than Bambi’s chief economic asdvisor Paul Volcker.
I’m reasonably certain things like property derivatives weren’t around in Plato’s or even Cicero’s time.
From almost a year ago:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/derivatives-new-ticking-time-bomb/story.aspx?guid=%7BB9E54A5D-4796-4D0D-AC9E-D9124B59D436%7D
Be very afraid.
We are now living that movie…the apes are in charge and they are monkeying around with our future. The people who voted democRAT are bananas. And they called Bush a chimp…oh, the irony of it all.
“We have been blessedly spared from the final stage of the societal destruction portrayed in Republic, wherein a redistribution of wealth proceeds by way of a violent coup to tyranny. The American republic is stable enough that for the foreseeable future we need not fear such madness.”
Ours was a coup by con rather than by violence, but we have suffered our coup.
Some of us were simply not duped, and now we struggle to deny them the full benefits of their successful con game coup.
EVERYONE will be affected.
The bible says after the collapse of the world banking system, the devil steps in says he can fix it.
He does, but only for a short while and it gets worse.
The only way out I see, is too start all over.
We will have to have everything collapse for a day. Put no value on derivatives and hang all the ones that caused this mess.
Plato was the original collectivist.
His goal was a state in which the “elite” controlled every aspect of the lives of the citizens.
His ant-hive of a society was to be based on a breathtakingly audacious lie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie
In the fictional account of Plato’s republic, he talks of a stratified society, where it is believed that God has composed the different kinds of people from different types of metal.[1]
Rulers have gold, auxiliaries have silver, farmers have bronze. Most children of rulers have gold, but some will have silver or bronze and would be demoted to lower classes, whereas some farmers or auxiliaries would be born with gold and promoted.
Plato claimed that even though this would be false, if the people believed it, then an orderly society would result. This is his noble lie (”gennaion pseudos”, although this two-word expression does not appear explicitly).
Plato preferred this to the concept of democracy which he called mob rule.[citation needed]
The Republic also seemed to say that different lies should apply to the governors; for example:
The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is, therefore, their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege, they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it.
fuck that….it will never die in me or my house!!!