May 6, 2014

Does this even start to make sense?

From a book review of The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor:

This seems to be a massive misunderstanding of Adam Smith's notion of the invisible hand - That from a mired individual selfish acts emerges an over-all condition conducive to the general welfare, and that this occurs without the "visible hand" of explicit political agency - without the power to make the government accountable, without the right to redress grievances, without political will of the people or anyone else, outside of and without the democratic, or any other, political process.

Now I admit that I have not read The Wealth of Nations or Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments - but I have read about his theories and thoughts and I just cannot reconcile what I know with the claim made by the author - or perhaps imposed on the author by a careless reviewer.

Am I right about this? Could any characterization of Smith's invisible hand be more wrong? Or have I missed something?

May 4, 2014

These legal instruments...

... international law, the Geneva convention, the other world-wide international treaties, have no over-arching interpretive and enforcement authority. Each nation / state is free, within the limits of its own power and resources, to interpret the (so called) "international law" or "treaty" as it sees fit and to act accordingly.

This is why both Russia and the United States believe, or at least claim to believe, that "international law" is on their side, and continue to pursue their interests accordingly.

The United Nations and the International Criminal Courts have no intrinsic authority or coercive power to interpret and to enforce their standard of "international law". In fact, there is no "THEIR" there. They are simply forums for discussion amongst nations, creating a "hub and spoke" communications structure that facilitates international diplomacy without doing anything in particular to resolve the inherent problem of a Hobbseian "War of all against all".

Like the Pope, the United Nations has ZERO divisions.

As Kant said, there is no such thing as a TREATY. Every so called "treaty" is in reality just a TRUCE. And until there is an over-whelming power in the world that can make and ENFORCE law over the various nations / states (a real SUPER power), that will remain the reality. Like it or not.