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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Twin Deficits

Twin Deficits

Mises Daily: Thursday, January 12, 2012 by 

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[LewRockwell.com, 2011]

There are two deficits that we hear about most: the federal government's deficit and the balance of payments of the United States. They are linked, but they are very different in their effects.

The federal deficit is seen by Keynesians as mostly a benefit and by Austrians as mostly a liability, and for the same reason: higher government spending.

The balance-of-payments deficit is seen by virtually all economists as a benefit for Americans and their creditors. Otherwise, the exchanges would not take place.

At some point, the twin deficits will become unsustainable. Then the debtors will have a choice: either default or else adopt a systematic reversal of policies: debt repayment. This means a federal-budget surplus and a balance-of-payments surplus. Balanced budgets won't do it. There will have to be surpluses.

That day is coming. That will be the day of reckoning — of counting up.

The participants give no indications that they believe that day is coming.

Neither did Greece's politicians in early 2010.

Federal Deficits

The heart of the disagreement between Keynesians and Austrians is easy to state. Each group has a unique selling proposition (USP). I have boiled them down into four words each.

Keynesians: Federal deficits overcome recessions.

Austrians: Tax cuts increase liberty.

If you are a glutton for punishment, you can view my presentation on this at the Mises Institute in 2010:

If you think about this, the positions can both be used to justify federal deficits in the short run. The federal deficit exists because tax revenues do not cover expenditures. Austrians favor lower taxes, no matter what. So, Austrians are concerned with the deficit because spending cuts do not match — or, better yet, exceed — tax cuts. The government continues to expand its operations. The goal of Austrians is to shrink the state. This means spending cuts.

The assumption of the Austrians is as follows. The government is not ready — will never be ready — to cut spending prior to a crisis that forces them to cut spending. They recognize that only a financial crisis will stop the government from spending. So, in the meantime, it is best to take whatever tax cuts we can get. This increases the deficit. But, the Austrian says, there are two ways to have a deficit:

  1. with higher taxes, or
  2. with lower taxes.

Congress is going to spend. Which way is better for liberty? Austrians generally conclude: the lower tax / high deficit way.

But doesn't this mean there will eventually be a Great Default? Yes, it does. But there is going to be a Great Default in either case: high tax or lower tax. So, let us keep more of our after-tax money today and prepare for that default. Congress is going to spend every dime that comes in, and then borrow against future revenues. Nothing will change this, short of a financial crisis when lenders will no longer lend at low rates. Call this the "Greek event."

Keynesians applaud the deficit for a different reason. They see increased government expenditures as an enormous advantage for the economy. Federal borrowing enables the government to increase expenditures in the short run without tax hikes. There is therefore no tax revolt by voters. The government can therefore spend more as a result.

Austrians want less government spending. Keynesians want more government spending. Both sides accept a rising deficit. Keynesians think the deficit gives consumers a chance to increase spending, even if this means taking on more personal debt. They also think there will never have to be a Great Default. They trust deficits and central bank inflation to defer the Great Default forever.

Austrians think the deficit gives future-oriented people time to prepare for the Great Default, which is inevitable in a world dominated by Keynesian economics.

Trade Deficits

An analogous pair of attitudes separate Keynesians and Austrians over the long run, yet unites them temporarily.

Both schools of opinion favor free trade, meaning no sales taxes on imported goods and no import quotas. Both see this as an advantage for customers on both sides of a border, just as they see benefits from people trading across the street or even next door. Both schools of opinion favor customer authority. The difference is this: Keynesians think that economic planners, especially the federal bureaucracy, know best what is good for customers. Austrians think customers know best what is good for them. Keynesians want to use state coercion to benefit certain voting blocs over others. Austrians do not.

So, both groups look at the trade deficit, which is a subset of the balance of payments, and conclude, "no problem." If some customers want to buy more than they sell — that is, if they want to borrow — that is their business.

Both groups of economists know there are limits to this process. A payments imbalance can exist only while lenders agree to lend to borrowers at rates borrowers are willing and able to pay. Loans must eventually be repaid.

But isn't this also true of federal debt? Keynesians admit that, in theory, the US government should run surpluses in good economic times, to reduce the debt. But, in practice, Keynesians never say, "Congress should run a surplus next fiscal year." I do not recall that any Keynesian in the last 50 years has recommended this in public. They may admit in theory that there should be surplus years, in which principal should be reduced, but that is always a theory only, never actual policy.

Austrians, understanding Congress and understanding Keynesians, recognize that federal surpluses cannot last long. So, the debt will grow. The goal, then, is to let taxpayers keep more of their wealth. Run the deficits. Let taxpayers keep more of their wealth. The losers will be the short-sighted lenders who let the US government borrow at historically low rates.

The economists have the same view of trade deficits. It's up to customers to decide where to put their money. If they want to buy imported goods, that is their decision. If exporters want to sell on credit, that is their decision. This is what customer authority and seller's authority is all about.

But isn't it better to be an exporting nation? That is irrelevant for economic theory, say Austrians. What is relevant is individual authority, not political authority. What is relevant is for the government to butt out.

What about government-funded trade subsidies by exporting nations? Austrians say these are a bad idea. The government should butt out. But these subsidies do exist. The Austrians say, "So what?" But doesn't this make American customers dependent on subsidies from foreign governments? The Austrian responds, "Flat-screen TVs are not heroin. If the exporters' subsidies from their governments ever end, Americans will buy fewer imported goods. There will not be widespread withdrawal symptoms. It is silly to think of families' budgeting as a detox program." Again, this goes back to the Austrians' view of individual responsibility. People should be responsible for what they do with their property. Governments should butt out.

Show me an advocate for tariffs as a tool of social planning, and I'll show you a person with a central planner deep inside, trying to get out. "Tariffs must save customers from themselves." So, the tariff supporter wants the government to send out people with badges and guns to tell citizens that they are not allowed to buy imported goods at "unfair" low prices. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." To which an Austrian-influenced shopper asks, "Then why are you pointing that gun at me?"

The critic of trade deficits says, "This can't go on forever." The Austrian says, "Then it will stop." The critic says, "I think the government should use force to make it stop now." The Austrian says, "Why is Congress competent to decide?"

Congress Is the Problem

The reason why there is a trade/payments deficit is this: foreign central banks buy US debt. They create their own domestic currencies and use them to buy US dollars. Then they use these dollars to buy US government debt.

Why do they do this? Because it subsidizes exports. Their domestic currencies do not rise. Foreigners can buy more imported goods.

Every administration wants this to continue. Each administration wants buyers of the government's IOUs. Each administration thinks that there will never be a time to pay off this debt. "Federal debt is forever. Federal debt will grow forever." So, foreign central bank purchases of T-bills at 0.01 percent is free money for the administration.

Politicians like free money even more than customers do. There is a reason for this: the all-or-nothing position of most members of Congress. Congress wants the export nations' subsidies, which holds down Treasury debt interest rates. Unlike Congress, a customer can cut back on his spending and still muddle through. He cuts back at the margin. The politicians cannot cut back on their spending without being threatened by a loss at the next election. It's all or nothing for members of Congress. It's not all or nothing for a buyer of imports.

If a defender of tariffs wants to take a free-market position, he should call for a ban on the sale of all government debt to foreigners. That is where the main export subsidy is. The government should pass a law: "As of [date], the United States government will no longer make interest payments on its debt to any owner of this debt who is not an American citizen. It will also no longer redeem its debt held by noncitizens." Foreigners would start selling their US debt on the day some Congressman begins sending the draft around to other House members. Interest rates would soar. The depression would begin. The Great Default would be next, either openly or by Federal Reserve hyperinflation.

Links between the Deficits

This is why the twin deficits are connected. The US government is running massive deficits. Foreign central banks buy US government debt. This is the main form of their export subsidies: holding down their domestic currencies' price in relation to the US dollar.

There are other links. The main cause of the trade deficit is the cost of imported oil. The US government offers a military safety shield for Saudi Arabia. It allows the Saudis to buy American jets and weapons. The Saudi military is dependent on these exports from the United States. So, the government accepts dollars for oil. It gets OPEC to do the same.

Again, the connecting links are made at the highest level: government to government.

This is good for American consumers of energy. It keeps oil prices low. It is a subsidy from OPEC.

The Austrian economist says, "Make hay while the sun shines. Consume cheap oil while it is still cheap. If Saudi bureaucrats want to sell us their only valuable resource in exchange for government promises to pay, good for American consumers."

It is true that Americans may squander this cheap oil. They may not use the savings to save money the way intensely future-oriented people would. Americans will probably remain present oriented. They will not sacrifice consumption today for more consumption later. But I do not expect Congress to balance the federal budget by cutting spending. I do not expect Congress to become the exemplar of future orientation anytime soon.

Future Orientation

Ludwig von Mises called this time preference. Some people are highly future oriented. They are willing to sacrifice present consumption for even greater future consumption. Mises said they have low time preference. Other people are the reverse. So, at any given interest rate, some people will save more than others.

Mises did not pass judgment on people's motivations. He did pass judgment against government policies that use coercion to restrict people's peaceful pursuit of their own self-interest, as they see it.

There is a crucial economic chapter in the book of Deuteronomy that recommends thrift. It is chapter 28. Here, we read of positive sanctions and negative sanctions relating to credit/debt.

The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow (v. 12).

The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail (vv. 43-44).

These passages indicate that it is better to be a creditor than a debtor. But this is another way of saying that it is better to be future oriented than present oriented. Low time preference is better than high time preference. Leadership is better than followership. "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7).

These are ethical issues. They are not technical issues. There is great debate over whether a specific debt is a good idea or a bad idea. The old answer is correct: it depends mainly on whether the debt is for a tool or consumption. Even here, it is not always clear. A consumption debt — water in a drought, food in a famine — may be a good idea. The issue is (1) goal and (2) future orientation. What is the purpose of the goal? If it is accumulation of assets, then the question arises: accumulation for what?

The future-oriented person prefers greater capital in the future to present capital. He may be a miser. He may be a philanthropist with a vision. In either case, his desire for greater wealth in the future is reflected in his low time preference. He will save at a lower rate of return than a high-time-preference person will.

When this outlook is widespread in a society, it will be marked by reduced debt and increased credit. The old Jewish gag is this:

Question: "Why are there gentiles?"

Answer: "Someone has to pay retail."

(This is qualified by an observation made by my Jewish roommate regarding Fresno, California in the 1940s: "When the Armenians moved in, the Jews moved out.") But the gag has a corollary: "Somebody has to borrow." To sell more, you must lend more. Low-time-preference people lend to high-time-preference people. It's win-win, given the time perspective of both groups. But it may be win-lose if either side is incorrect about what lies ahead.

If a nation has the power to inflate its currency, the high-time-preference person may be a winner. The low-time-preference person lends in a currency that is worth a lot. After the inflation, the high-time-preference person pays off the loan by selling an egg. This happened in the German inflation of 1922–23. Farmers won. Urban people lost.

Is the American shopper stupid for buying cheap imports that have been subsidized by some Asian central bank's domestic inflation and its willingness to buy bonds from the US government? Not necessarily. When the Fed inflates, as it will, the Asian central banks will find out how shortsighted their monetary policies were. They will discover that mercantilism fails.

Conclusion

The twin deficits — trade and federal — are linked. They are linked by

  1. the mercantilistic central-bank policy of inflating the domestic currency in order to buy IOUs from the US government, and
  2. the Keynesian policy of increasing US government spending by borrowing.

We have two fiat-money governments specializing in what each does best. The Asians specialize in lending fiat money to buy fiat promises. Congress takes advantage of this blindness of Asians. Both sides say, "Let's party!"

The winners are American consumers — for as long as the party continues.

Gary North is the author of Mises on Money. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible. Visit his website: GaryNorth.com. Send him mail. See Gary North's article archives.

This article originally appeared on LewRockwell.com, December 8, 2011.

Comment on this article.


Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
Diplomado en Gerencia en Administracion Publica ONU
Diplomado en Coaching Ejecutivo ONU( 
  • PUEDES LEERNOS EN FACEBOOK
 
 
 
 CEL: 93934521
Santiago- Chile
Soliciten nuestros cursos de capacitación  y consultoría en GERENCIA ADMINISTRACION PUBLICA -LIDERAZGO -  GESTION DEL CONOCIMIENTO - RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL EMPRESARIAL – LOBBY – COACHING EMPRESARIAL-ENERGIAS RENOVABLES   ,  asesorías a nivel nacional e  internacional y están disponibles  para OTEC Y OTIC en Chile

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Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Perry v. Perez by Ilya Shapiro and Anna Mackin

The decennial redrawing of electoral districts

 

Perry v. Perez

by Ilya Shapiro and Anna Mackin

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The decennial redrawing of electoral districts consistently produces extensive litigation. The most notable cases this cycle come, as they often have, from Texas. A number of activist groups challenged the Texas legislature's maps for state house, state senate, and congressional districts, alleging racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a special three-judge federal district court in San Antonio. At the same time, Texas is seeking in another three-judge district court in D.C. the "preclearance" of its maps that it needs to implement them under the VRA's Section 5. Enacted in 1965 to combat pervasive discrimination against black voters in the South, the VRA has exceeded expectations in excising that shameful phenomenon. Its application now, however, stymies the orderly implementation of free and fair elections, particularly in jurisdictions subject not only to the general prohibition on race-based voter discrimination, but also the Section 5 preclearance requirement. Originally conceived as a check on states where discrimination was prevalent in the 1960s, preclearance requires certain jurisdictions to obtain federal approval before changing any election laws. (The Section 5 list is bizarre: six of the eleven states of the Old Confederacy — and certain counties in three others — plus Alaska, Arizona, and some counties or townships in five other states as diverse as New Hampshire and South Dakota. Curiously, (only) three New York counties are covered, all boroughs in New York City. What is going on in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan that is not in Queens or Staten Island?) To obtain preclearance, proposed changes may not result in "retrogression," a reduction in minority voters' ability to elect their "preferred" candidates. Section 5 was originally a valuable tool in the fight against systemic disenfranchisement, but now facilitates the very discrimination it was designed to prevent. Indeed, the prohibition on retrogression effectively requires districting that assures that minority voters are the majority in a set number of districts — an inherently race-conscious mandate. The law, most recently renewed in 2006 for another 25 years, is based on deeply flawed assumptions and outdated statistical triggers, and flies in the face of the Fifteenth Amendment's requirement that all voters be treated equally. In any event, because the D.C. court here had not yet ruled on preclearance, the San Antonio court felt obligated to draw "interim" maps for use pending final adjudication of both the Section 2 and 5 cases. Texas filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower court insufficiently deferred to the Texas legislature's maps. Now on an expedited briefing and argument schedule, Cato filed an amicus brief supporting neither side and arguing that this case demonstrates all that is wrong with the VRA as it currently exists — highlighting the tension between the VRA and the Constitution and the practical difficulties that conflict engenders for election administration. Put simply, the VRA's success has undermined its continuing viability; courts and legislatures struggle mightily and often fruitlessly to satisfy both the VRA's race-based mandate and the Fifteenth Amendment's equal treatment guarantee. We also point out that Section 5's selective applicability precludes the establishment of nationwide districting standards, confounding lower courts and producing different, often contradictory, treatment of voting rights in different states — in large part because Sections 2 and 5 themselves conflict with each other. We note that regardless of the outcome of this litigation, it is unlikely that Texas will have fully legal electoral maps in time to administer the 2012 elections in a fair and efficient manner. These difficulties — constitutional, statutory, and practical — disadvantage candidates, voters, legislatures, and courts, and undermine the VRA's great legacy of vindicating the voting rights of all citizens. The Court should thus schedule this case for broader reargument on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act as presently conceived.

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Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
Diplomado en Gerencia en Administracion Publica ONU
Diplomado en Coaching Ejecutivo ONU( 
  • PUEDES LEERNOS EN FACEBOOK
 
 
 
 CEL: 93934521
Santiago- Chile
Soliciten nuestros cursos de capacitación  y consultoría en GERENCIA ADMINISTRACION PUBLICA -LIDERAZGO -  GESTION DEL CONOCIMIENTO - RESPONSABILIDAD SOCIAL EMPRESARIAL – LOBBY – COACHING EMPRESARIAL-ENERGIAS RENOVABLES   ,  asesorías a nivel nacional e  internacional y están disponibles  para OTEC Y OTIC en Chile

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Why Do Languages Die?

Why Do Languages Die?

Mises Daily: Wednesday, January 04, 2012 by

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The history of the world's languages is largely a story of loss and decline. At around 8000 BC, linguists estimate that upwards of 20,000 languages may have been in existence.[1] Today the number stands at 6,909 and is declining rapidly.[2] By 2100, it is quite realistic to expect that half of these languages will be gone, their last speakers dead, their words perhaps recorded in a dusty archive somewhere, but more likely undocumented entirely.[3]

What causes this? How does one become the last speaker of a language, as Boa Sr was before her death in 2010? How do languages come to be spoken only by elders and not children? There are a number of bad answers to these questions. One is globalization, a nebulous term used disparagingly to refer to either global economic specialization and the division of labor, or the adoption of similar cultural practices across the globe.

The problem with globalization in the latter sense is that it is the result, not a cause, of language decline. Another bad answer, encompassed in the former definition of globalization, is trade and capitalism. Trade does not kill languages any more than it kills any other type of cultural practice, like painting or music. Trade enhances the exchange of cultural practices and fosters their proliferation; it does not generally diminish them. Historically, regional trade has fostered the creation of many new lingua francas, and the result tends to be a stable, healthy bilingualism between the local language and the regional trade language. It is only when the state adopts a trade language as official and, in a fit of linguistic nationalism, foists it upon its citizens, that trade languages become "killer languages."

Most importantly, what both of the above answers overlook is that speaking a global language or a language of trade does not necessitate the abandonment of one's mother tongue. The average person on this planet speaks three or four languages. Must youth in Japan abandon Japanese in order to partake in global English commerce? Must a business executive in Germany stop speaking German to her kids in order to be successful at her English-speaking office? Why bother giving up one language for another when you can just speak both?

The truth is, most people don't "give up" the languages they learn in their youth. They tend to speak those languages either until they die or they no longer have someone to speak them with. Instead, languages are lost when the process of intergenerational transmission is altered or interrupted. To wipe out a language, one has to enter the home and prevent the parents from speaking their native language to their children. Given such a preposterous scenario, we return to our question — how could this possibly happen?

One good answer is urbanization. If a Gikuyu and a Giryama meet in Nairobi, they won't likely speak each other's mother tongue, but they very likely will speak one or both of the trade languages in Kenya — Swahili and English. Their kids may learn a smattering of words in the heritage languages from their parents, but by the third generation any vestiges of those languages in the family will likely be gone. In other cases, extremely rural communities are drawn to the relatively easier lifestyle in cities, until sometimes entire villages are abandoned. Nor is this a recent phenomenon. The first case of massive language die-off was probably during the Agrarian (Neolithic) Revolution, when humanity first adopted farming, abandoned the nomadic lifestyle, and created permanent settlements. As the size of these communities grew, so did the language they spoke. But throughout most of history, and still in many areas of the world today, 500 or fewer speakers per language has been the norm. Like the people who spoke them, these languages were constantly in flux. No language could grow very large, because the community that spoke it could only grow so large itself before it fragmented. The language followed suit, soon becoming two languages. Permanent settlements changed all this, and soon larger and larger populations could stably speak the same language.

Quite impressively for someone with little to no knowledge of the linguistics of his day, Mises had already come to understand these connections between language decline, community growth, and economic exchange even in his earliest writings:

In primitive times every migration causes not only geographical but also intellectual separation of clans and tribes. Economic exchanges do not yet exist; there is no contact that could work against differentiation and the rise of new customs. The dialect of each tribe becomes more and more different from the one that its ancestors spoke when they were still living together. The splintering of dialects goes on without interruption. The descendants no longer understand one other.… A need for unification in language then arises from two sides. The beginnings of trade make understanding necessary between members of different tribes. But this need is satisfied when individual middlemen in trade achieve the necessary command of language.[4]

Thus urbanization is an important factor in language death. To be sure, the wondrous features of cities that draw immigrants — greater economies of scale, decreased search costs, increased division of labor — are all made possible with capitalism, and so in this sense languages may die for economic reasons. But this is precisely the type of language death that shouldn't concern us (unless you're a linguist like me), because urbanization is really nothing more than the demonstrated preferences of millions of people who wish to take advantage of all the fantastic benefits that cities have to offer.

In short, these people make the conscious choice to leave an environment where network effects and sociological benefits exist for speaking their native language, and exchange it for a greater range of economic possibilities, but where no such social benefits for speaking the language exist. If this were the only cause of language death — or even just the biggest one — then there would be little more to say about it. For as Mises so lucidly states,

Since nobody is in the position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented. The critic either tells us what he believes he would aim at if he were in the place of his fellow; or, in dictatorial arrogance blithely disposing of his fellow's will and aspirations, declares what condition of this other man would better suit himself, the critic.[5]

Far too many well-intentioned individuals are too quick to substitute their valuations for those of the last speakers of indigenous languages this way. Were it up to them, these speakers would be resigned to misery and poverty and deprived of participation in the world's advanced economies in order that their language might be passed on. To be sure, these speakers themselves often fall victim to the mistaken ideology that one language necessarily displaces or interferes with another. Although the South African Department of Education is trying to develop teaching materials in the local African languages, for example, many parents are pushing back; they want their children taught only in English. In Dominica, the parents go even further and refuse to even speak the local language, Patwa, to their children.[6] Were they made aware of the falsity of this notion of language displacement, perhaps they would be less quick to stop speaking their language to their children. But the decision is ultimately theirs to make, and theirs alone.

Urbanization, however, is not the only cause of language death. There is another that, I'm sad to say, almost none of the linguists who work on endangered languages give much thought to, and that is the state. The state is the only entity capable of reaching into the home and forcibly altering the process of language socialization in an institutionalized way.

How? The traditional method was simply to kill or remove indigenous and minority populations, as was done as recently as 1923 in the United States in the last conflict of the Indian War. More recently this happens through indirect means — whether intentional or otherwise — the primary method of which has been compulsory state schooling.

There is no more pernicious assault on the cultural practices of minority populations than a standardized, Anglified, Englicized compulsory education. It is not just that children are forcibly removed from the socialization process in the home, required to speak an official language and punished (often corporally) for doing otherwise. It is not just that schools redefine success, away from those things valued by the community, and towards those things that make someone a better citizen of the state. No, the most significant impact of compulsory state education is that it ingrains in children the idea that their language and their culture is worthless, of no use in the modern classroom or society, and that it is something that merely serves to set them apart negatively from their peers, as an object of their vicious torment.

But these languages clearly do have value, if for no other reason than simply because people value them. Local and minority languages are valued by their speakers for all sorts of reasons, whether it be for use in the local community, communicating with one's elders, a sense of heritage, the oral and literary traditions of that language, or something else entirely. Again, the praxeologist is not in a position to evaluate these beliefs. The praxeologist merely notes that free choice in language use and free choice in association, one not dictated by the edicts of the state, will best satisfy the demand of individuals, whether for minority languages or lingua francas. What people find useful, they will use.

By contrast, the state values none of these things. For the state, the goal is to bind individuals to itself, to an imagined homogeneous community of good citizens, rather than their local community. National ties trump local ones in the eyes of the state. Free choice in association is disregarded entirely. And so the state forces many indigenous people to become members of a foreign community, where they are a minority and their language is scorned, as in the case of boarding schools. Whereas at home, mastering the native language is an important part of functioning in the community and earning prestige, and thus something of value, at school it becomes a black mark and a detriment. Given the prisonlike way schools are run, and how they exhibit similar intense (and sometimes dangerous) pressures from one's peers, minority-language-speaking children would be smart to disassociate themselves as quickly as possible from their cultural heritage.

The result is that, two generations ago, after the Prussian model of compulsory education had firmly taken root in countries across the world, an entire generation of minority peoples decided that their language was worthless, and when they had children of their own, refused to teach it to them. The impending die-off of languages is no less the result of processes put in motion a century ago by the state as it is the result of continuing hegemony today.

Mises himself, though sometimes falling prey to common fallacies regarding language like linguistic determinism and ethnolinguistic isomorphism, was aware of this distinction between natural language decline and language death brought on by the state. In fact, the entire first chapter of one of his earlier works, Nation, State, and Economy, is devoted to issues of language and the state. He notes,

Quite distinct from natural assimilation through personal contact with people speaking other languages is artificial assimilation — denationalization by state or other compulsion.… If individuals are put into an environment where they are cut off from contact with their fellow nationals and made exclusively dependent on contacts with foreigners, then the way is prepared for their assimilation.[7]

This is precisely what the Bureau of Indian Affairs accomplished by coercing indigenous children into attending boarding schools. Those children were cut off from their culture and language — their nation — until they had effectively assimilated American ideologies regarding minority languages, namely, that English is good and all else is bad.

Nor is this the only way the state affects language. The very existence of a modern nation-state, and the ideology it encompasses, is antithetical to linguistic diversity. It is predicated on the idea of one state, one nation, one people. In Nation, State, and Economy, Mises points out that, prior to the rise of nationalism in the 17th and 18th centuries, the concept of a nation did not refer to a political unit like state or country as we think of it today. A "nation" instead referred to a collection of individuals who share a common history, religion, cultural customs and — most importantly — language. Mises even went so far as to claim that "the essence of nationality lies in language."[8] The "state" was a thing apart, referring to the nobility or princely state, not a community of people (hence Louis XIV's famous quip, "L'état c'est moi.").[9] In that era, a state might consist of many nations, and a nation might subsume many states.

The rise of nationalism changed all this. As Robert Lane Greene points out in his excellent book, You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity,

The old blurry linguistic borders became inconvenient for nationalists. To build nations strong enough to win themselves a state, the people of a would-be nation needed to be welded together with a clear sense of community. Speaking a minority dialect or refusing to assimilate to a standard wouldn't do.[10]

Mises himself elaborated on this point. Despite his belief in the value of a liberal democracy, which would remain with him for the rest of his life, Mises realized early on that the imposition of democracy over multiple nations could only lead to hegemony and assimilation:

In polyglot territories, therefore, the introduction of a democratic constitution does not mean the same thing at all as introduction of democratic autonomy. Majority rule signifies something quite different here than in nationally uniform territories; here, for a part of the people, it is not popular rule but foreign rule. If national minorities oppose democratic arrangements, if, according to circumstances, they prefer princely absolutism, an authoritarian regime, or an oligarchic constitution, they do so because they well know that democracy means the same thing for them as subjugation under the rule of others.[11]

From the ideology of nationalism was also born the principle of irredentism, the policy of incorporating historically or ethnically related peoples into the larger umbrella of a single state, regardless of their linguistic differences. As Greene points out, for example,

By one estimate, just 2 or 3 percent of newly minted "Italians" spoke Italian at home when Italy was unified in the 1860s. Some Italian dialects were as different from one another as modern Italian is from modern Spanish.[12]

This in turn prompted the Italian statesman Massimo D'Agelizo (1798–1866) to say, "We have created Italy. Now we need to create Italians." And so these Italian languages soon became yet another casualty of the nation-state.

Mises once presciently predicted that,

If [minority nations] do not want to remain politically without influence, then they must adapt their political thinking to that of their environment; they must give up their special national characteristics and their language.[13]

This is largely the story of the world's languages. It is, as we have seen, the history of the state, a story of nationalistic furor, and of assimilation by force. Only when we abandon this socialist and utopian fantasy of one state, one nation, one people will this story begin to change.


Fuente:

Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
Diplomado en "Responsabilidad Social Empresarial" de la ONU
Diplomado en "Gestión del Conocimiento" de la ONU
Diplomado en Gerencia en Administracion Publica ONU
Diplomado en Coaching Ejecutivo ONU( 
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