You'd think George W. Bush was never born or had never been
president, since you never hear from him or about him and are often
accused of some kind of dementia if you mention his legacy. To be sure,
I'm grateful that he's keeping quiet and hasn't spent years making dire
predictions of doom and accusations of treason like other parts of the
still twitching corpse of his administration -- none of which have come
to pass, by the way. Perhaps his quiet reclusiveness has to do with the
GOP plan to redact him from the record so that they can't be accused of
wrecking the country and a good part of the world with their drool-down economics, but I'll be kind since I'm grateful not to hear from him for any reason.
Mitt
Romney however, is a sore loser; bleating about how Obama only won
because of all the 'massive' handouts to the "takers" which is his way
of derogating minorities without having to call them wogs and worse.
You'll notice that he prefers to name corporate takers who pay little or
no taxes but get huge subsidies "job creators" and forgets that the
demand for goods and services from the lesser elements create more jobs
than Bain Capital ever did, but typically, he gives no examples of
handouts that can be attributed to Obama and leaves it to the
prejudices of his piteous and self-pitying audience to fill in the
blanks with the usual subjects. Those people aren't real, 100% Americans as the Klan has long told us.
What he does
mention is the 'dream act' which would give an advantage toward legal
residency to unwitting and accidental immigrants that have something to
offer; an education, a valuable skill, military service: something more
than or at least as good as Romney's own immigrant ancestors from Mexico
brought here. It's similar to plans proposed by the invisible
ex-president himself, but that was then, when Romneycare was a good
thing to Republicans and we had a "commander guy" in the oval office
bleeding the economy dry.
But as for the "takers"
as the malphemism dubs most of us of lesser means than the Oligarchs,
surely Romney isn't talking about whole states: states like Texas,
Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina which
gobbled up nearly a quarter of all federal revenues allotted to the
other 47 states. Six of those seven states, incidentally, have gathered
more than 25,000 signatures in petitions to secede from "the greatest
country that ever existed since the Jurassic." But don't call those
states, those places where literacy and having front teeth are
considered "elitist," takers.
They're just sore
losers and they want their Confederacy back; their culture of God, Guns,
grinding poverty and degradation. Don't call them takers, it's far too
kind. Don't call those companies who employ only foreign workers and
don't pay taxes here takers. Let's just keep sniping and
snarking and snarling like sore losers for four more years. Let's look
forward to obfuscation and obstruction and the end of Obama in 2016 when
we can put some rich, white Republican back in the manse where rich,
white Republicans belong -- and laissez les mal temps rouler!
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteI think Mitt would probably categorize me as one of the "chompers" the minute he caught sight of my railroad-spike-sized teeth. I also think Mitt's fundamental problem as a candidate appears most clearly when we put him next to FDR. FDR was born into a rich, illustrious family, too, but he had the common touch. He had suffered with polio, which meant that even though he never knew what it was like to be poor, he DID understand what it was like to suffer and need other people's help, not condemnation or puzzled snark about their membership in "the little people's club." FDR was able to look at a poor, struggling American and think, "How can I help?" rather than ask, "What did you do or fail to do to deserve your fate?" Mitt Romney seems to lack that basic insight into the human condition, and ultimately, it -- and not Hurricane Sandy or any alleged gifts to the 47% Unwashed -- that led to his electoral downfall.
It's funny, a log cabin background used to be such an advantage a candidate almost needed one, but when opposing a dark skinned rival, it doesn't matter all that much. But it isn't evil to have moneyed parents or virtuous to have poor ones and I hate to play on working or middle class snobbery the way some court upper class snobbery. Mitt is second generation money and although that tends to produce philanthropists and liberals, I don't think Mitt is a fit there. Of course we really don't know him. He's as much a manufactured product as a Twinky and has as much substance.
DeleteI think he saw the people's teeth though, and perhaps suspects that he may have used the last chance the old bastards had of stopping the unstoppable tide of change.
I think he lacks insight into many things, like Economics, foreign policy. history, science and the knack of leadership. He seems stuck in the denial phase of being a loser. Denial and anger, just like the vermin who back him and the dull witted vulgus who voted for him.
GWB is a wise man, even if not so smart. Perhaps he got that trait from his father.
ReplyDeleteMittens, well, is he sure of anything? Maybe tomorrow we'll hear version 2.
Who knows. Maybe if no one talks about him he will go away?
George Herbert Walker Bush, maybe the last of the old-school conservatives if you don't count Bob Dole, was wise enough to withdraw from the first Gulf War without conquering Baghdad. Enough said right there. Saying GWB is wise is like saying that fish listen to Mozart in their heads while they swim along the channels of the sea. You should resent his presidency more than anyone else. He completely destroyed the republican party by letting the neocon, PNAC raiders run roughshod over all that is decent and sacred in our nation. He duped the small government dreamers with his promises of destroying Social Security only to let Cheney rape the national treasury. At the same time, his manic-depressive buddy Rumsfeld privatized the entire military. Completely unrecoverable and ridiculous cost overruns and corruption. Truckloads of money divided up between the most dickheaded contractors in the history of mankind. Sadistic, nightmare presidency.
ReplyDeleteShow me one example of anyone complaining about the cost of the Vietnam war.
You are so right. One American did cite the outrageous cost of the Vietnam conflict. Still, it was like a trip to the drugstore compared to the cost of the last two wars in the Middle East.
In our collective lives, our sin rises to even greater heights. See how we treat each other. Races trample over races; nations trample over nations. We go to war and destroy the values and the lives that God has given us. We leave the battlefields of the world painted with blood, and we end up with wars that burden us with national debts higher than mountains of gold, filling our nations with orphans and widows, sending thousands of men home psychologically deranged and physically handicapped... This is the tragic plight of man... So long as he lives on the lower level he will be frustrated, disillusioned and bewildered... Western civilization, like the prodigal son, has strayed away to the far country of segregation and discrimination. You have trampled over sixteen million of your brothers... In the midst of all your material wealth, you are spiritually and morally poverty-stricken, unable to speak to the conscience of this world.
(Check my Inauguration day/MLK Jr. weekend post from January 2009)
You RN, are smart enough to see this. I wish more people had been smart enough to see it coming.
"Show me one example of anyone complaining about the cost of the Vietnam war. "
ReplyDeleteMe, honestly. I complained that we'd see a decade or more of inflation to pay for that abomination, but that was when they'd call you a hippie-longhair-pinko. Libtard hadn't been invented yet and Nixon was still peddling his war on the press which was really a war on accurate information -- and of course his 'secret plan' where the secret was that he had no plan. There's no pleasure at having been right and of course the idiot masses only remember that you weren't a real John Wayne American, bellowing fiercely from a Beverly Hills mansion about how the lights of freedom would go out if we didn't "win."
Yes, I'm still bitter.
Old school or new, the Republicans have been consistently wrong, dangerously and expensively wrong for a very long time. It's horribly obvious if you look at the numbers but nobody does but the libtards. Any reference to the obvious facts brings only hostile denunciation and peremptory references to the Dogma inspired by a work of fiction written by a nymphomaniac Russian emigre.
But yes, King can be stunningly succinct and insightful and powerful. Maybe it's too bad he's become a statue because statues don't speak.
The post-election, fractious in-fighting within the GOP gives me great pleasure. At least some justice has been served (although not enough to compensate for the scale of human suffering they have caused). The fringe will always be among us - human beings are a lemming species - however there may be some in the GOP who are willing to round up the lunatic fringe, return them to the asylum, then padlock the door.
ReplyDeleteFJ,
I can't think of a more apt quote than the one you chose. Many thanks.
Thank you FJ for your compliment.
ReplyDeleteI'm doing my Patriotic part to help in the corralling of the lunatic fringe of the rEpublican party. Although I will remain third party advocate. Libertarian or Whig most likely.
I doubt Romney has a clue about net revenue gainer states vs. the blue states that pay in more and receive less, proportionately. His CEO time and attention are too valuable to waste learning such trivia. He just perceives great unwashed masses of lesser, taker beings who think the country owes them a living.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans are indeed sore losers. Whenever there is a Democratic president, they crave an opportunity to impeach him or drive him from office in disgrace. It's like a sick compulsion. They try to make their chronic and recurring wet dream come true by ginning up scandals. For Clinton it was Whitewater and troopergate. For Obama's first term it was birtherism and Solyndra. Now, it's Benghazi. When that doesn't work for them they will drum up something else, if they have to make it up out of whole cloth. Obama has to be their worst nightmare, because he's a devoted husband and father, and remarkably clean and honest. Clinton, at least, gave them a tawdry sex scandal to work with.
It would be great if Republicans were to keep behaving the way Sens. McCain and Graham have about Susan Rice the past few days. Most of the voting, taxpaying public has had a belly full of their antics, and showed up in huge numbers to vote a short time ago, despite roadblocks put in their way, to send the political right a message. Clear, ongoing indications that message either wasn't received or was rejected the way Republicans reject science, history, budget numbers that add up and climate change will only be helpful as the 2014 elections approach.
I truly hope the public has had a belly full. Living in the Mecca of Tea Party denialism, what I hear are mostly weird stories about why Obama won and isn't truly the president.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall at one point during this election cycle, Romney suggested a constitutional change with respect to the qualifications of president. “Business experience,” he harrumphed as if this meme would somehow bolster his credentials as Capitalist-Vulture-in-Chief at Bain-in-the-Butt.
ReplyDeleteNow (R)-Money is incredulous. Totally blind sighted. Not just (R)-Money but his entire gaggle of far right-wing conservatives who would treat government as a business - and put bean counters on a pedestal.
Except government is NOT a business. Public health and safety, education, justice, equality under law, economic opportunity – these are MORAL DECISIONS, not business decisions predicated on returning profits to investors. Citizens are stakeholders, not shareholders. (R)-Money doesn’t get it, and that is why he lost.
We get that malicious meme every four years. I had a troll tell me W was a "world class businessman" back in 2000, which is hardly true -- all his businesses his parents provided for him failed and had to be bailed out by the bin Laden Bank in one case. I mentioned that bank and was hooted down by the lying, delusional, dimwitted things that call themselves conservative.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm trying hard to think of a highly successful businessman that made a great president.
There are lots of good reasons that Mutt Lost. Being a reprehensible, lying whore willing to contradict himself on every question helped. Even many of the blindly partisan began to catch on that he was lying and misrepresenting and boy, once you find out that someone is taking you for a fool and thinks you're too dumb to see it, you vote for someone else. Too bad so many Republicans really are too dumb.
Octo, just a dumb question, not a statement.
ReplyDeleteIf government isn't a business why in the hell are there budgets like defense budgets, and why in the hell do we budget money for subsidies that prop up business, and why the hell the FED, etc. then?
I always looked at government as a business, hell the concept of the peoples business as the responsibility of government has been around a long time. So I kind of looked at it as though, yeah, government is a business and should have to balance its books, but, it is a non profit business. I sort of thought too that government shouldn't spend the peoples money it didn't have.
I don't know anymore. Maybe I was just too naive.
RN,
ReplyDeleteGovernments have budgets, churches have budgets, charities have budgets, non-profits have budgets, schools have budgets, Little League baseball teams have budgets, my local photo club has a budget, even families have budgets. Please note: Just because the aforementioned entities have budgets, it does not mean any of them are businesses. Budgets afford a means of managing and allocating resources. I believe synonyms are "accounting" and "bookkeeping" - not "business."
Why do we have subsidies? The FED? On paper, the purpose of a subsidy is to promote microeconomic activity deemed to be in the public interest, such as food production, price supports for basic commodities, to encourage the growth of emerging industries, etc. In practice, subsidies have become instruments of chicanery and corruption - the default condition of human beings.
The FED? On paper, the purpose of the FED is to use monetary policy to control inflation and smooth the ups and downs of the business cycle. In practice, extreme greed and speculation overwhelms the Federal Reserve system.
A balanced budget amendment is the stupidest of stupid ideas. Why? Because it will tie up the government during times of national emergency, making it impossible to mobilize for war, deliver disaster relief, or stimulate the economy during periods of severe recession. Moral decisions can never be business decisions.
Anything else you want to know?
Nope. It is as I thought. But it certainly does add a certain clarity to it all.
DeleteAs I sit here typing this, and listening to Armageddon, I can not help but wonder when, if ever the fiscal ship of America willstop listing and right itself.
Call me a cynic, but my money is on it sinking long before we get it right. I suppose though it really won't matter when it does. Everybody will then be equal and the fairness (whatever that subjective word means) so desired by some will have been achieved.
Actually I am damn glad I am 60 and my lovely wife is 66. It is our children and grandchildren we feel sorry for. But, what does a classical liberal know. Especially one who advocates capitalism in the sense it ought to be.
Having said the foregoing I believe I'll head on out to a local Portuguese restaurant with the lovely wife and have one of my favorite dishes, Octopus. One of my greatest joys in life has been to enjoy the cuisine of so many different and varied cultures.
Oh, and did I mention the music? I thought not. Time to go, catch you on the flip side.
"If government isn't a business why in the hell . . . ?
ReplyDelete" . . . I kind of looked at it as though, yeah, government is a business and should have to balance its books, but, it is a non profit business. I sort of thought too that government shouldn't spend the peoples money it didn't have."
Government is about providing services. Defeating the Central Powers in World War I and the Axis powers in World War II were services. The federal government went deep into the red doing both. In WWII we actually spent more than GDP for two or three years! Budget deficits and a growing national debt became the norm for decades during the Cold War. To pay for those conflicts out of current accounts would've crippled the economy and the country. Balancing the budget yearly would've resulted in certain defeat in any of those conflicts.
Such is life in the real world.
A balanced budget yields two worthwhile benefits: 1, we don't have to pay interest on the debt; and 2, a few million Americans who are obsessive-compulsive about balanced budgets can stop bitching and moaning about our ruinous debt for awhile.
Deficit spending can and should be used to limit the damage done by recessions and, even more importantly, by depressions. Same goes for dealing with epidemics/pandemics and natural disasters.
Businesses engage in deficit spending all the time. They set up a line of credit against assets which, if surrendered, would make it impossible for the company to make more money.
Families and individuals deficit spend, too. For example, a guy working in California and on a very tight budget gets a call from home in Maine. His father just died of a heart attack; can he come home right away for the funeral? The guy buys roundtrip airfaire on his credit card knowing there's no way he'll be able to pay it off on the next bill, or even the next three bills. He's going to be paying that credit card debt for a year and a half, at least, and at sky-high interest. Would anyone suggest he stay in California, balance his budget and just send his mother a sympathy card? I hope not.
What it comes down to, RN, is that there are things in this life that people, individually and collectively, consider of overriding importance — far more important than a balanced budget. Far more important than having to pay some interest.
Having said all that, I recognize deficit spending, like anything, can be done badly and can be badly overdone. I also recognize that if you put 20 people in a room and ask them to list the things important enough that the government should deficit spend on them, you'll get 20 different lists. The same thing that makes horse races makes for differing political priorities.
Again, such is life in the real world.
"Everybody will then be equal and the fairness (whatever that subjective word means) so desired by some will have been achieved."
ReplyDeleteYou have a wildly distorted view of what liberals consider fairness. The only times I've heard reference to making everybody equal, in terms of wealth, it's been from conservatives unloading the same BS you did in the above sentence. There is no making everyone equal, and no one I know or know of on the left claims otherwise. Nor is anyone trying to make everyone equal in terms of wealth. Your comment in that sentence is nothing but a drama-queen act and twisting of the reality.
Liberals do favor creating an environment of equal opportunity. Liberals do want to give have-nots willing to try to better their situation a leg up. Or,to put it another way, liberals are willing to invest in them.
Liberals believe that in a civilized society no one should be left to starve, go without shelter, suffer and die from injury or disease, do without police and fire protection, be denied counsel if accused of a crime, and such, because they are poor. But providing those things to poor people by no means brings about anything like equality of wealth or standard of living.
Free-market capitalism is a system of determining value, apportioning resources and accumulating wealth. It can serve as a key component of an economy. But capitalism is unfit to be the organizing principle for a society. Every bit as unfit as communism. They are opposite ends of a spectrum. In the middle of that spectrum you'll find what works to the greatest satisfaction and broadest demonstratable benefit for a free society: democratic socialism of the kind you'll find in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany and quite a few other countries.
" I sort of thought too that government shouldn't spend the peoples money it didn't have."
ReplyDeleteYou posit government as some independent, third force that is utterly divorced from "the people." In fact, our representative government is literally the people's choice. If most voters are dissatisfied with their representatives' policy decisions they can replace their representatives with others who will do things differently.
If a majority of voters decide they want their government to deficit spend on, say, sorely needed infrastructure projects in part to stimulate the economy and get people back in jobs, they have every right to elect politicians who support that policy. That's democracy.
SWA,
ReplyDeleteIt appears RN and Mrs. RN did go to a Portuguese restaurant last night and reduced my cousin Vinnie to a PENTA-PUS !!! As we speak, and in retaliation, the PENTA-POIDS are mobilizing for war.
Years ago, the Vulgar-Rad (equivalent to what humanoids call their "House of Representatives") eliminated the debt ceiling which now makes it possible to mobilize without special sessions of the Vulgate. True, there will be debt for future generations - which future PENTA-POIDS will be forced to shoulder, shoulder, shoulder, shoulder, shoulder - but interest rates to service that debt are so low (effectively zero at current rates), money is a bargain. There are very few bargains in life and debt at zero interest is one of them.
When the cost of borrowing is virtually zero, this is the best time to invest, invest, invest, invest, invest in infrastructure. Yet RN seems to have a Mayan streak. When my PENTA-POID cousins mobilize for war, it will mean ARMAGEDDON alright, and I hope last night's repast of Portuguese WTF gives him serious indigestion.
Ah, the expected replies. In our representative democracy , called a republic, wherein the power is vested in I belive 535 representatives, and 100 senators elected by approximately 50% give or take a few points, and a 9 member Supreme Court picked by the president and confirmed by the Senate the government of half the people, by half the people , and for half the people has done a damn fine job of creating a legacy of debt and war while all the trying to police the world. Yep boys, with all your intellectual firepower I guess I'm just the uneducated dumb fuck of a guy who spent over 40 years trying to make good, doing the right thing, who hasn't missed voting in an election since I was 18.
ReplyDeleteThe intellectual elite did not build this country. Hard working honest and dedicated average Joe's and Jane's did. So thanks for the enlightenment, it was illuminating in ways perhaps unexpected. And tonight, perhaps surf and turf. Oh, and did I mention the music? I thought not.
Talk to the oligarchs, they have the score.
Pardon me, but I'll be the dumb fuck here. Just ask the Republicans. They assure me of this every day.
DeleteI agree with the fact that our history has been very much about needless war and oppression and debt too, but running it like a shoe store or used car lot wouldn't help, particularly when the ability to baffle and enrage the public has allowed the big money to turn us against our own interests and toward theirs. All the money in a few hands makes democracy impossible. Look at Mexico. But much of my argument against "the business of government is business" thing is that the business of government is to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
So my opinion of "run it like a business" depends on what you call running it like a business. If you mean expanding consumerism by putting people to work again, I agree. If you mean trying to pay down the debt by increasing corporate profits, I disagree.
It wasn't high taxes, or Social Security or welfare queens that got us into this mess and it won't be low taxes that gets us out.
RN,
ReplyDeleteSometimes you are utterly devoid of humor, and there is no need for this kind of defensiveness. The writers and readers of this forum are hardly elitist - virtually all have worked hard for their living, raised their children, or are now retired and have paid their dues. My forbearers were average and honest working folks just like you and yours - immigrants, tool and die makers, house painters, teachers, and business proprietors - who played their part of the great American Saga. And for some of them, the social safety net in the form of Medicare and Social Security are EARNED BENEFITS, not ENTITLEMENTS, which they paid in full from their weekly paychecks.
This is not socialism or collectivist income leveling; its called common human decency. No CIVILIZED society allows its citizens to sink into poverty after a lifetime of work. And no CIVILIZED society should tolerate a a fat and greedy plutocracy that feeds off its middle class and reduces them to serfdom.
These are moral - not business - decisions.
Octo,
DeleteJust wanted a point of clarification. My "defensiveness" served that purpose quite nicely, wouldn't you agree?
Very pleased to understand that in many ways the reasonable left and the reasonable right can come to terms. The nation is in great need of that at this point in history.
Oh, I almost forgot, I leaned the above having spent nearly 35 years in management working with the average Joe's and Jane's to get the job done that allowed us all to give our family a better life.
I am a firm believer in capitalism Octo, and so were most of the individuals that worked for me over the years. What most have a problem with (including me) is the great increase in income disparity that has occurred over the last 35 or so years. The middle class of hard working individuals made this nation what it is. It cannot and will not remain so unless it figures out how to rebuild and sustain a vibrant middle class.
Call me a cynic because often I don't see a way out of the mess. On the other hand call me an optimist because when all is said and done I guess I still believe in the American vision and dream created by those that gave birth to this nation by shedding their blood so we might be free of oppressive government.
Today we need to remain cognizant of the dangers of a all powerful government, but we face a danger equally if not greater. The oligarchs (or as you said plutocrats) that see the common hard working individuals as serfs.
And by the way, did I mention the music? Who has the score? It is important to know because whoever has the score is directing the music.
I couldn't agree more, but the definition of oppressive government is critical. In some parts of the country cracking down on lynching, ending segregation and preventing states from jailing you for marrying the wrong race was oppressive government. The only thing that unites America, it seems, is an enemy and perhaps our hysterical and childish aversion to rules of any kind.
DeleteWe're still two cultures forced into one nation - as has been demonstrated!
I have the score, thanks for asking, and the tune for this morning is the Puccini aria Un bel di vedremo one fine day, we'll see. . .
"My "defensiveness" served that purpose quite nicely, wouldn't you agree?"
ReplyDeleteRN,
Very difficult for me to agree when I see internal inconsistencies" in your comments. On one hand, you seem to agree that there is an overbearing, self-aggrandizing plutocracy that doesn't care a fig about the social safety net and just wants lower taxes to line their own pockets while further bleeding and fleecing the middle class. All economic growth for the past 30 years has gone to the plutocracy - the middle class has received no share of the national economic pie at all.
On the other had, you seem to equate "big government" on the same terms as the plutocrats. What entity sets public policy to advance the common good if not government? Exxon Mobile? Walmart?
It is almost as if your comments have a split personality - agreeing with the fine print of economic inequality as we understand them, yet talking the talk of the plutocrats with their platitudes of "freedom" and "capitalism" and all that fine-sounding rubbish.
Don't blame liberals or Obama for the sorry mess that started, but by no means ended, with GWB. We're trying to fix what the GOP-proxies-for-the-plutocracy started.
1) Did I blame Obama? Did I praise the rEpublicans.
ReplyDelete2) We are a nation at odds with itself, not the first time. I recall reading about the last time it was this pronounced. I was al history major.
3) Some have to find the middle.
4) The extremes are dangerous places to dwell.
Do have a fine Sunday, My appology if you don't understand me. The failing is mine.
"In our representative democracy , called a republic, wherein the power is vested in I belive 535 representatives, and 100 senators elected by approximately 50% give or take a few points. . ."
ReplyDeleteThe House has 435 members, the Senate 100. No wonder you see government as too big.
". . . and a 9 member Supreme Court picked by the president and confirmed by the Senate. . ."
At any given time the Supreme Court has members picked by several presidents, usually presidents of both parties. You make it sound as if a president gets to pick nine at a time.
". . . the government of half the people, by half the people , and for half the people has done a damn fine job of creating a legacy of debt and war while all the trying to police the world."
There is a chronic problem with widespread lack of willingness to become informed, think things through and vote. There is another problem that's even more dangerous because it's corrosive of democracy, and actually serves to discourage people from voting and leaves many who might otherwise do so standing on the sidelines instead of running for office.
My mom used to say that idle hands are the devil's playthings. In a similar vein, excessive wealth in the hands of a few inevitably plays the devil with democracy, buying pols and elections, and skewing every possible favor, benefit and advantage to the wealth — typically at the expense of, or to the disadvantage of, the many who are not wealthy. This tends to further discourage people from voting or running for office.
Justice Louis Brandeis put it this way: "We can have democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
What he meant by that was the inevitability I explained above. The Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson are exhibits A,B and C. The alphabet isn't long enough to tag all of them.
BTW, something I meant to mention in a previous comment and somehow left out. The problem with making capitalism or free-market orthodoxy the organizing principle of society in a democracy is that they are unthinking, unfeeling mechanisms. Those mechanisms neither know or care about good and bad, right or wrong, what is civilized and humane, and what is barbaric and evil. They're mechanisms that are what they are and do what they do.
Part of what both do is auger toward ever greater efficiency and ever greater profit making. That can be a blessing or curse. It can be more efficient toward profit making, at least in the short run, to enslave people and force them to work in the harshest conditions, with minimal nourishment and no recreation, until they die. Then, burn the bodies and bring in more slaves.
What keeps the greediest business types from resorting to slave labor operations? The law. The government. The decent, civilized people who won't tolerate that kind of thing.
Free market capitalism is like a steam engine with no regulator and no safety valve. It's dangerous. It has to be corraled, tamed and watched closely at all times. Because when it's not, many innocent people always get hurt. It's never a matter of if, only of how soon and how badly. As a history major, H.R., you should know that.
SWA,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I couldn't have stated it better than you just did.
SWA,
ReplyDeleteYes, it's good to see that some humans "get it." I've long said that there's no such thing as a perfect human system and that even the ones that work pretty well tend to serve themselves more than the people who should benefit. Our heartless healthcare access system, for instance, if left to its own devices, keeps itself "healthy" but doesn't much concern itself with the wellbeing of sick, desperate individuals: those losers just need to be thinned out of the herd, apparently. And so on down the line. As you suggest, one must IMPORT the necessary ethics from outside into the system; they are not immanent in the system itself.
Besides, so much that humans do has nothing to do with rationality. Ernest Becker's theory about "the denial of death" seems to me on target as a description of much that we call human culture and institutions: they develop as shields against thinking about mortality, instead putting humanity on a symbol-fueled hero-quest. Might not some of our shiny systems such as Kapitalismus be such a shield? We treat the so-called free market like a perpetual motion machine for happiness and social continuity, but the truth is that it's nothing of the sort. Its limitations must be tended to, its lacks supplied.
SWA and Dino,
ReplyDeleteI'm in awe of you both.
SW, typo. Further it is not so much I see it as to big. I see it as ineffective and somewhat intrusive.
ReplyDeleteCapt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteThat's very kind of you, thanks. Your posts are molto eccelente, too!