One thing that all these free-marketeers ignore is that Adam Smith saw moral behavior as a precondition for capitalism, not a result of market forces.

The market can only function the way Smith intended if people are honest and not (gasp!) greedy. But these dopes seem to think that the open market is somehow magically endowed with the power to reform human nature.

Matt, your point is very good. The concept that greed is good is so embedded in our society, that it overrules all other values. Lakoff says this comes out of the precepts of "Appropriate Reward and Punishment" and "Self-interest". In the Strict Father metaphor of morality, the rich are rich because they are the best at exploiting things for their own self-interest. It certainly has lost the concept that greed is one of the 7 deadly sins.

Exactly. A strong institutional infrastructure and the just rule of law is critical for capitalism to work. That's what Adam Smith said, anyway.

I think this is part of the reason our soldiers are dying right now.

And that is exactly the reason the Bush administrations 'compassionate corporatism' is killing this country as they gut the institutional safety nets and 'leave no profit left behind'.

I found this observation to be interesting. Insofar as it's valid, it means that the interest is more in ripping Iraq off than in setting up a demonstration project.

The idea that the reconstruction of Iraq could be financed by mortgaging the future oil revenue stream has not gone away.

A group called the 'Coalition for Employment Through Exports' (where do they get these names, and what could that possibly mean?), whose members include Halliburton and Bechtel, is lobbying to use oil revenues as security to borrow money from commercial banks for projects in Iraq. The American Export-Import Bank, an organization used and abused by Cheney when he ran Halliburton, is also considering the issue.

The obvious worry is that continued unrest in Iraq may drive the American carpetbaggers out before they have a chance to leech out all the money they can from the Iraqi people. They thus want to mortgage the future of the Iraqi people so they will be in a position to take the money and run. With the money available immediately before the oil starts to flow, they can work on their contracts now, hoping to have billed as much as possible before they are forced to leave.

They can probably arrange to be paid even if their contracts aren't fulfilled as long as the reason they had to leave was the danger of remaining in Iraq.

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=2988992

There would need to be some kind of infrastructure to support any kind of corporate investment of Iraq.

When a company looks to relocate from one town to another, one thing they look at is the availability of utilities. Last I heard, Baghdad didn't have much to offer in this category.

Another thing a company would look at is the level of crime. I think Bremer's Baghdad flunks this test as well.

Then there is a consumer base. With no jobs, just who would Coke and McDonald's sell to? The under-paid GIs?

The more I go through this, the more I know Bremer is a total incompetent and if he were an elected official, should be impeached.

The more I go through this, the more I know Bremer is a total incompetent and if he were an elected official, should be impeached.

Maybe he's secretly working for the Democratic Party; he's certainly not doing much to make Bush look good.

That Baum article provides another perspective on the getting the money and running.

The General Accounting Office and several watchdog groups say it's not yet even clear that Pentagon contractors are cheaper in the long run than a larger military; the experiment is still too young. And there are other concerns, first among them the uncomfortable fact that the military can find itself dependent in wartime on people it doesn't fully control. Often, the only people who know how to run the military's new high-tech gear are the geeks of the company that makes it, so the soldiers manning, say, an Abrams tank don't necessarily know how to fix it if it breaks. After visiting Arifjan I met a reserve Air Force colonel in the lobby of the Kuwait Hilton who told me the communications gear on which his job depends is entirely maintained by civilian employees of the manufacturer (he wouldn't tell me which). "We had a problem in the middle of the night and called down for the contractor; they told us he doesn't come in until 9 a.m.," the officer told me. "We're fighting a war, and the contractor doesn't come in until 9 a.m.!" And really, there's no guarantee the contractor will be there at all if things get ugly. Soldiers have to stay put when the shells start falling or face punishment for desertion; contractors who decide the high pay isn't worth the risk can simply leave. As the Defense Department itself put it in a 1991 report, "D.O.D. Components cannot ensure that emergency-essential services performed by contractors would continue during crisis or hostile situations." And that was before the big increase in Pentagon contracting.

Incompetence is Bush's middle name. Josh has a column talking about Cheney's incompetence too. Why the Dems can't get any traction on this is definitely depressing.

theologicus,

do you know who writes for the xymphora site?

Why the Dems can't get any traction on this is definitely depressing.

This is because incompetence is non-partisan.

When is someone going to come up with a utopian dream that nobody has to get killed for?

And going back to the original Adam Smith comment, I seem to recall that one of his biggest targets of fear and loathing was mercantilism. Where government gives sweeping concessions to one or a few people, cutting out the small or individual business, which he held up as the epitome of free enterprise. I have a feeling that he would have railed against Halliburton & friends just as he did against the mercantilists of a previous era.

To Mary.

I don't know. From the early posts, it seems that he's Canadian.

I looked up "xymphora" in Greek, and it seems to be an allusion to a passage from Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil," where Nietzsche contrasts the superior ones (Übermenschen) to those on the bottom -- xymphora means "misfortune."

In any case, one can get a at least a partial profile of xymphora. He's widely read in philosophy, I think, and has a kind of insider's vast knowledge of how things work inside the government bureaucracies. Is he a former intelligence operative? He finds very interesting things on the net that I encounter nowhere else. He seems to write his posts in the wee small hours of the morning, perhaps indicating that he has a day job to hold down. He reminds me of nothing, in his tone, so much as Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground." (I am assuming that x is male.)

He is slightly more cynical than I am, but only slightly. I understand the dark conspiratorial anxieties that dog his mind, though I hold them a little more tentatively than he does. He once mentioned Peter Dale Scott, who I think is also more tentative about these things.

But the evidence he works from is disturbing. I don't necessarily dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. I worry that such dismissals might turn out to be one of the greatest propaganda victories of all. But the evidence also seems to be ambiguous enough that alternative construals are also not impossible. One hopes for the best and fears the worst.

In short, I think he is well worth reading and needs to be taken seriously. "Xymphora" is probably a pun signifying not only the state of our world, but also that there is someone out there who knows exactly how to penetrate into the subterfuges, the dark recesses, and the crimes of the powerful.

Mary; Good job; an interesting read.

theologicus, thank you for information. Yes, xymphora is a very interesting read.

I have been reading Xymphora's posts for a couple of years now and I feel like I'm definitely getting more of the picture from his posts than from any of the mainstream media sources available in the US today. If he isn't already an intelligence analyst then somebody should certainly offer him a job.