Comments on: Counting Down on America’s Self Destruct Sequence

By: Ian Welsh

Ian Welsh — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:10:30 +0000

No oil drilling or exploration should be subsidized. Current prices are high enough that subsidies are not needed. Money should definitely go into alternate energy.

By: ekunin

ekunin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:11:31 +0000

C. Northcote Parkinson, the English observer of bureaucracies, noted that the larger the appropriation, the less it was discussed. My experience on a Board of Finance bears this out. A ten thousand dollar appropriation for a bulldozer shed at the dump took three years and countless minutes of discussion to pass while fifty million sewer appropriations passed in no time. People, generally, are insecure, unwilling to act on their beliefs when they run counter to experts. That is because we have no way to get feedback from each other. We are still in this alone, when we need to be in it together.

Now that smacks of socialism or worse because there remains a great psychological need to “make it”. We need meaning. That usually involves beating someone at something or other. We must understand the nature of the disease before we can begin to discuss a cure.

By: ChePasa

ChePasa — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:53:38 +0000

They did great by all of this. At worst they’re multi-millionares. Millions of Americans will lose their houses and live on the street. Thousands, tens of thousands will die because of this. We’re looking at the real possibility of a Great Depression and a huge decline in real living standards for the population, something not seen in the US in almost 70 years. But people like Greenspan whose ideologically driven malign incompetence and refusal to do their fucking jobs properly created this problem will be just fine. — Ian Welsh

True enough, but why should it be? Why should we just sit back and take it?
That seems to be what the experts — all of them — are saying: we’re in the process of collapsing the economy, there’s nothing we can do about it, Depression on a level not seen in generations looms, there will be immense suffering by ordinary folks, and people who made out like bandits — or were bandits — during the Good Times will be fine. In fact, they may come out of the coming Depression better off than they started.

What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s a picture of passivity by the Consumer/Masses while they are hurled willy-nilly into poverty — and do nothing about it except complain now and then, “whine” as Phil Gramm would say. Those who made their pile will continue to profit (if they’re smart and aggressive) because the people who are being impoverished will do nothing.

Maybe it will take an aristo like FDR to convince the hapless masses that they are not powerless, and they don’t have to let the bandits get away with it. But right now, there is no such voice, not anywhere.

All we hear is, “Depression is certain, there’s nothing you can do, take it passively, what’s the point in fighting? Those who got rich will stay rich, everyone else: Tough luck, suckers!”

By: SouthernDragon

SouthernDragon — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:36:45 +0000

There is no concept of collective good within capitalism. The health and welfare of workers is strictly to ensure a population fit enough to fight wars.

By: ekunin

ekunin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:05:19 +0000

In capitalism there’s an inherent conflict between individual interest and collective good. You see it in the insurance industry which supposedly socializes risk while individualizing profit. The same is true of the financial sector. Individuals who got wealthy don’t care about the “system” or the people they looted to get to where they are. Same is true about agribusiness who will fight to continue using chemical fertilizers and pesticides although they damage the planet. These guys don’t acknowledge they live on the planet also. Perhaps they feel the planet will hold together until they shuttle off this mortal coil. That is the extent of their vision.

We need new ways to interact and influence events. FDL’s new possibilities, though I haven’t seen them, apparently move in this direction and not a moment too soon.

By: nonplussed

nonplussed — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:52:32 +0000

Concur.

By: SouthernDragon

SouthernDragon — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:50:57 +0000

Seriously EPU’d here but a most excellent post, Ian. Clean up a couple words here and there for the fainting Nellies and this is worthy of a spot on the editorial page of the WSJ, Barron’s, or any number of newspapers.

By: mookieblaylock

mookieblaylock — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:08:00 +0000

we didn’t stand a chance with no media. At least there would have been some resistance 20 or 30 years ago , now most people won’t even know what happened until it’s it’s too late.

By: IntelVet

IntelVet — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:33:16 +0000

What would be your thoughts on killing taxpayer subsidized drilling and take the money to build solar farms in the desert, sort of harvest the now wasted energy in the desert, using and retiring the present dirty infrastructure until an energy bridge can be built to provide during night hours?

By: SanderO

SanderO — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:17:05 +0000

Come on you can say it… capitalism is the new word for slavery or neo feudalism.

Workers are exploited, taxed and pay for the creation of the wealth of the property class. It’s that simple.

The MIC is a vast structure to suck wealth from the people and pass it to the few who own these corporations.

The financial sector which now drives the US economy creates nothing but is a scheme to scam money off as transaction fees. We hardly create anything of value in this country anymore except “intellectual property”
and that too is in the firm grasp of the propoerty class and corporations.