Diocletianus Redivivus

Dear Dr. Bones,

Let’s raise prices seascraper | Fri, Aug 31, 2012 5:40 PM EST Quantitative Easing is a confusing subject. Let’s make it simple. Quantitative easing means raising prices. In the current economy, you can see the effect. Monetary stimulus has raised the price of gold from $800 to $1600, the DJIA from 7,000 to 13,000 without adding any actual value. When you read that the Fed will attempt further monetary stimulus, know that all it means is the Fed will attempt to raise prices and hope that has some kind of positive effect on the real economy.

To be randy is so unbecoming, so laughable, (( fold here )) viewed from the outside, that naturally one wishes to accuse ALL political badvolks of it, be the true nature of their self-servicement what it may. Mow if Eye were out to annoy Freedame Seascraper, I would leave the late Miss Rand of Petersburg and Mister Nozick of H*rv*rd well out of it, and discover ostentatiously that her freeladyship is the sole remainin’ exponent of Diocletianomics. Everybody with even the faintest beginnings of Intellectual Bottom is aware that His Majesty, whose seventeen hundredth anniversary we were all recently celebrating, was first to market with a crank system [1] in which to raise prices, simply as such, is diabolical; to fix prices, salvific. First to market that we are significantly aware of, anyway. Seascrapernomics is only another pea from the August (in the strict sense) Imperial pod, quite a different crankcase than that in which Ayn an’ Bobby an’ "adult-onset adolescence" were hatched. Her freeladyship’s ideological age is no doubt neither a sedate 1701 nor a lusty 16.88, but even a native taste in concepts, completely uninformed with / polluted by Intellectual Bottom, ought to judge that ’scraperism falls far nearer the former than the latter. Her freeladyship scribbles in a thoroughly old-maidenly tone. If poetic justice reigned, her freeladyship would be "Miss Brill" in the Katherine Mansfield story, a living (?) antithesis to all things randy an’ nozzicky. [2] Geithner von Hindenburg and Bernanke von Ludendorff will not be taking advice from the likes of me, but they might find somebody better-credentialled to suggest that, if worst comes to worst, Q.E. might conceivably be defended by a strategy parallel to that of "Living Constitution" lieberals. Though doubtless a little more challenging to live in, ¿would not a world where prices remain alive and kicking be better for everybody’s moral fibre than some sad an’ dismal Planet Seascrape where continental drift an’ vulcanism ceased aeons ago, where nothin’ remains to be creationalistically destructivated between now an’ the heat death of the universe? Seascraperanity is beneath grown-up notice, except from a Comp. Lit. perspective, yet the gruesome twosome might conceivably advise our All-Highest One to deploy something vaguely similar against orthodox whightist economic reaction of the kind that thinks we ought to shut our eyes an’ clap our hands an’ REALLY BELIEVE in Comrade Krugman’s "Confidence Fairy." It appears that our bright-eyed, steel-claptrap-minded entrepreneurs won’t be steerin’ many pennies back into specuvestment an’ jobcreation until they are perfectly sure the future has been nailed dead as a dodoe. Among the more obvious symptoms of American Decline is this Miss-Brillish or Seascraperoid unwillin’ness to take a few chances. If the Mallory Factors of great wealth indeed refuse to start blowin’ us a new bubble before they detect what the freelordly baincounters take for an Absolute Sure Thing -- an’ see their fresh A.S.T., moreover, in an environment at least ninety-nine percent free of discouragin’ words against or about "The One Percent," -- why, we may languish in a bubble-free doldrums for whole decades and degenerations to come. "¡Hello there, Japan!" This last, I repeat, has nothing to do with her freeladyship the NeoDiocletian, whose economic courage-challengedness is entirely a demand-side phænomenon, an’ therefore howlin’ly heretical by the standards of the received AEIdeology an’ Heritagitarianism an’ Hoovervillainy. Diocletianomics 1.0 was heretical as well, for, despite His Imperial Majesty’s hard-to-deny personal connections with The Wicked State, the purpose of the exercise was clearly to reduce how much Diocletianus had to shell out when he went shopping exactly as Miss Brill’s will have been. The two protowhightists would have been equally astonished to be accused of jobcreativity, or destructive creationism, or any other supply-sider jazz. They simply never heard of fancy-dan neostuff like that. Freedame Seascraper, bein’ both nonfictional an’ contemporary with ourselves, can scarcely have failed to have heard of supply-sidin’. Obviously she has not profited. This obtuseness (or whatever) separates her freeladyship from the vast majority of original-thinkin’ whightist bozoes quite as much as from economic neoörthodoxy as parroted by the dupes of TopPercenterdom to lure the marks thereof. Probably the fact that her freeladyship is neither (A) a decent political grown-up nor (B) a duped kiddie selfservative of the ordinary type is what has lead Comrade Horatio to assimilate her overhastily to (C) Miss Rand an’ Master Nozzick an’ all the pomp an’ panoply of Planet Dilbert. Actually, the vast empire of economic self-crankiness is no tripartite Gaul of Cæsar, ’tis far, far wider than that, though admittedly many provinces are lightly inhabited, or even, in this age, depopulated altogether. At least (D) through (ZZZ) exist as well as { A, B, C }, with Mme. la baronne de Seascrape located out somewhere around (XX). You need not pardon my French, I shall defend it myself. The keyword to all ’scraperoid mythologies is, pretty plainly, rentier, with poujadiste running a respectable second. Comrade Keynes had her freeladyship’s number proleptically when he spoke of inflastion being "the euthanasia of the rentier." Her freeladyship would prefer not to be put down like a Seamus or a Rafalca, and really, ¿Who can blame her? As for le poujadisme de Mme. la baronne, you may read about in her freeladyship’s own words. She gave a sort of after-dinner address to the BoZo Skipper’s wardroom the other day in which there ies enough self-anecdotal evidence to begin to make NeoDiocletianomics intelligible. Indeed, her freeladyship has a marked tendency to honor the WhightGuard Officers Mess with fuller accounds of what washes ashore here at the foot of the Great Blue Hill as merest CliffsNotes™. As mentioned, Seascraperanity is utterly unorthodox by WhightGuard standards, so heathen an’ alien that Robertus Feldadmiral von Eno merely promioted the freeladylike scribble without comment, whilst the couple of ensigns an’ J. G.’s who tried to make a little conversation about it afterwards quickly lapsed into vulgar union-bashin’. Apparently the youngkers were unable to grasp that two-hundred-proof demand-siders still exist. ’Tis the "History is bunk" crew of which we speak after all. ¿What is Diocletianus to them, or they to Diocletian? The ignorance is so blank an’ virginal an’ (one must charitably hope) blissful over to WhG GHQ that the selfservative kiddies would never detect her freeladyship’s horrible heresies just from the heresy. As long as she pretends a little [*] to run with the neopack, Freedame Seascraper is extremely unlikely to be unmasked an’ burnt for what she is. By the same cause, naturally, her freeladyship’s influence on what the neopack thinks (?) an’ barks is bound to be indistinguishable from zero. Hence "beneath grown-up notice, except from a Comp. Lit. perspective." Happy days. ___ [1] Hardly anybooby in eighty-fivescore years has had a good word to say for Diocletianomics 1.0. Paddy McTammany attributes this upshot to incompetence in the way the price-shrink product was packaged and shrink-wrapped. That is to say, ¿Would YOU stand in line half the night in the chariot lot at your local ValMartium all agog to clamp your paws down on a new goodie called Edictum de Pretiis Rerum Venalium? Me neither. I just checked out what my old pal Sappy (Ms. Sapientia Conventionials to strangers) attributes the universally supposed failure. Her freeladyship of SS will be horrified to be informed that "the maximum prices in the Edict were apparently too low." ¡Too LOW, for Pete Peterson’s sake! As if His Imperial Majesty had taken Geithner von Hindenburg and Bernanke von Ludendorff for his braintrust. Now if Freedame Seascraper be as prone to self-sorrowin’ as are most of her fellow whight-wingnuttes an’ -wingnuts, it ought to keep her whinin’ happily for a month to discover that even in the Ancient Bunk Department, pretty well the last ditch conceivable for any crankery to take cover in, wild-eyed rule the roost.

[*] Her freeladyship did not in this case post something less cryptic to her suppossed ideobuddies, but in looking to see whether she had, Eye encountered the following bit of self-camouflage:

Democrats' Medicare by Napster by: seascraper Fri Aug 31, 2012 at 00:06:15 AM EDT The Democrats aren't cutting money to Medicare recipients -- they're only cutting to providers! Doctors and hospitals will treat Medicare patients because they love to do medicine! If they are worried about giving away their product, then they can sell T-Shirts at their live shows!

Nobooby amongst the base an' vile of America's Otherparty is likely to find that anythin' but highly edifyin'. Only an icky Psocialist would come back with "If they want to keep their licenses to practice, perhaps they had better comply with certain . . . " &c. &c.

Not bein' a brand-name Dilbertarian, her freeladyship most likely thinks there is in fact somethin' to be said for licensin' quacks, though for obvious reasons she did not care to say it there.



This one illustrates rather the poujadiste side of Mme. la baronne than the rentier side. Whatever pricey luxury items it may be, exactly, that her freeladyship flogs personally or microcorporationally do not, I presume, require special dispensation from The Wicked State. How it worked for medicosunder her freeladyship's economic guru C. Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus, I do not happen to know, and would not be surprised if nobody knows. No doubt the victim or patient’s heirs could sue after the fact for poisoning or the like, but that is not licensing as we understand it.

For that matter, if a nifty whzbang from Seascraper Inc. landed some TopPercenter señoritoe's yacht on a reef several hundred kilometers in the opposite direction from what Don Avarosito de Murdoch y Bahamonde had typed in, well, little Donnie could sue her freeladyship under the existing régime also.