Hello ECT.While normally I rise above ad homs, I'm willing to make an exception for Noam Chomsky. His contributions. I find they don't. His followers seem to act like he's a supergenius and go into 'startled deer in the headlights' mode when anybody looks askance at his arguments. He's practically the secular equivalent of the Pope.For general purpose entertainment, here is a critique, in part of his essay abut also generally because I've read far too much Chomsky.--Chomsky starts out with a quick jab normally delivered to Socialists in the present day. In Russia during Soviet times there was an expression called "Actually Existing Socialism". This was not originally a right wing retort as it has become known to be, but from proponents of state Communism within Russia. Their point was that Socialists outside of Soviet Russia were not 'real' Socialists, that they were content to lie back and critique Russia's 'growing pains'. In short, they were implying that Russians were being subbed for getting their hands dirty making Communism a practical, pragmatic reality while Socialists outside Russia were primarily concerned with building utopian visions without a respect for the hard work and grief that accompanies genuine change. tldr; "You guys should STFU and get stuck in."Chomsky is saying that what people are calling capitalism, and what capitalism actually is, are quite different to each other. Chomsky would call the American economic model 'State Capitalism', or Fascism (in the strict sense of the meaning, not as a slur).Now, pine has absolutely no problem with Chomsky critiquing the American economic model. Since Chomsky and I are both Libertarians, we actually have a lot in common in this area. An example of this is that it is true that the American economic model is some considerable distance from a Free Market, as is the European economic block. For example corn subsidies, tariffs, duties are fundamentally incompatible with a free market, yet the EU (> 50% of the entire EU budget is spent on this) and America persist in practices that make prices for food very much higher than they should be in order to assure 'price stability', which in Pine's view is actually a transparent cover for economic protectionism, and also it is of the worse kind since for developing countries esp. the African continent, agronomy is their main export market since most of those countries are entirely populated by farmers, or it would be if it actually existed. So a small number of rich farmers in Europe and America profit at a colossal expense for literally millions of farmers who could have money in their pockets for the first time instead of subsistence agriculture. It is quite hard to build an industrial base from an agricultural one when the majority of participants are living hand to mouth. Not only is it immoral, but it contravenes both the ideals of capitalism and equality, there's an irony.The trouble is that Chomsky ALSO defines capitalism as whatever he wants it to be, whenever it suits his argument. He is inconsistent. It is no wonder he recognizes the contradictions of people calling one thing capitalism when it's quite another, because he actually does it himself ALL the time. I'm not just talking about this essay, but generally.In the world of Chomsky, he will simultaneously claim that that state intervention is 'capitalist' (capitalist imperialists) and that the state and capitalism are diametrically opposed. Which is it? For the record the Oxford dictionary has this to say:QuoteDefinition of capitalism:noun  an economic and political system in which a countrys trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. Chomsky uses some other dictionary in his head. When referring to environmental subjects he talks of 'market inefficiencies' and 'market externalities' as being Evil Capitalism. When referring to subjects in the political sphere he talks of 'capitalist imperialists' or 'state capitalism' as being Evil Capitalism. Suddenly you're lawyering up with semantic arguments whereby the State and Markets blur into each other even though they are opposites, discrete concepts. Just because things have relationships it suddenly doesn't follow that those things are actually the same thing.Libertarian capitalists are against dead set against the State, especially foreign interventionism. He rails against them on environmental grounds. Nationalists such as the neo-conservatives are heavily in favor of both state intervention and free markets (here we have a guns and butter problem due to their attempt to have their cake and eat it). He rails against those because he finds it morally objectionable. Fine. The problem is that he calls both of these Capitalism.This is analogous to a Libertarian Socialist agreeing with the Soviet variety of Communism . It is a contradiction. Centralized state planning is not Libertarian, end of. It doesn't matter whether it's Capitalism or Socialism we're talking about. Chomsky is simplifying something that really is a Cartesian (x,y) product into a point (x) along a 2 dimensional axis.Chomsky already knows this, because he claims Communism is actually "State Capitalism". This is like the pointless debate between the differences between Fascism and Communism. There is no real difference between the two, their methods of coercion are identical, only the rhetoric is different. Fascism and Communism are equally abhorrent to Pine, there is no meaningful difference betwixt the two.However I do not intentionally conflate Libertarian ideals with Authoritarian ideals, they are quite different. Look at what Chomsky actually does and you'll see he is big pals with Authoritarian leaders, having visited dozens of them, he is not truly invested in Libertarianism. For him Libertarianism is an ideal he talks about a lot, but in practice he is an advocate of coercion. Read about his apologist views on Cambodia, check the fine print and you'll see that right away. His is a left wing form of Holocaust denial, he blames the Khmer Rouge did on America. I'm extremely far away from being a big fan of America's concept of foreign policy, but these are just incredible exaggerations. Chomsky sounds confident on paper when you read his books, but when you fact check, you run into some extremely disturbing qualities.I cannot accept this as honorable debate in the same way a civilized person cannot accept that the Nazis were "misunderstood", the commissioning of the gas chambers somehow humanitarian. Chomsky is beyond the pale. Pine accepts it is possible for a capitalist, even if they are a libertarian to do great evils. For example killing people by flinging them out of airplanes is evil even if it aided market forces in Chile. It is possible to agree with the end without agreeing with the means and having a compulsion to become an apologist for it. You could construct arguments that GDP would rise if we murdered the bottom 10% of the people in IQ tables, or all the physically disable people. It might be even true, but it is still morally wrong. My personal GDP increases when I rob you, but just because it works doesn't imply it's right. Just because humans have been killing each other for thousands of years doesn't suddenly make the prohibitions against murder invalid. Chomsky is not "sophisticated" or a "rebel" just because he hates American foreign policy. It seems perfectly rational to conclude that more than one evil can exist in the world. To focus exhaustively on the impact of American aerial bombing when the Cambodian people are *literally eating each other* in the plains below seems like the height of hypocrisy to me.Chomsky's talent seems to be to say something which is lucid (e.g. democratic ideals are incompatible with market ideals), and then immediately follow up with something which either a contradiction or completely disconnected to the previous statement, but this is difficult to see because he is an exceptional wordsmith.I concur with Bruce Sharp, and recommend you read his article on Chomsky. He explains what I'm saying better than I can.http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htmIf he made a mistake, or even a series of mistakes, and then apologized for them in hindsight, I would not have a problem with Chomsky. Many intellectuals make mistakes, left and right, it's impossible to find one that has not. The real problem is that he persistently misrepresents his previous arguments, other people's arguments in the most unsettling patterns of doublethink I've ever had to unravel. At the heart of his intellectualisms is a troubling insecurity, he is like a child with the inability to be wrong, he is never wrong, only "misunderstood".Chomsky's great talent is to convince his reader that he (thinks he) knows something others are too dim witted to realize. He is a brilliant propagandist, and I pay him the same heed I do Goebbels. It is all sound and fury and in the end you find yourself claiming the Khmer Rouge were only murdering their own people because Americans were murdering them. What. The. Fuck. is the correct intellectual answer to this.