Lafayette—Either you haven’t done the reading, or you haven’t or can’t or won’t take it in.

WORD GAMES

Anar: But capitalists rightly fear one another.

Huh? Not so … birds of a feather flock together. I.e., we are all capitalists.

The word “capital” has some very interesting and highly varied definitions:
*Capitalism (WikiP) = An economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.
*Capital (dictionary) = the wealth, whether in money or property, owned or employed in business by an individual, firm, corporation, etc.
*Capital (WikiP) = In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. Capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process. Capital is distinct from land in that capital must itself be produced by human labor before it can be a factor of production.
*Capitalize (dictionary) = to issue stock as a dividend, thereby capitalizing retained earnings, or as settlement of an unpaid arrearage of preferred dividends. Or to employ expenditures as business assets in the books of accounting instead of treating them as expense.

SO?

Given the above definitions, in some measure, we are all capitalists. As workers we are employed along with capital in the production of goods/services. In exchange for money that we possess/keep as capital investing it in either equities or savings accounts or business ventures to obtain a return.  Capital is also the accumulation of money assets of an individual.

As self-employed we use capital to generate income and therefore are capitalists. And when employed by a company, we do the same since our income originates from the use of capital.

HOWEVER

There is a special class of individuals, however, who accumulate large amounts of capital and a better term applied to them is “rentier”. (Many will be comfortable with this word - Marx first coined it for usage).

A rentier is someone who lives off capital accumulation and its returns from realty rents, interest or dividends or sale of equity shares in a business.

Of course, were taxation of revenue and capital gains higher, then there would probably be not fewer rentiers but certainly less capital for them to live off.

And if that tax revenue was spent on Social Justice, we’d all be better off with such goodies as a Health Care Public Option and Least-expensive Tertiary Education (just to name a few).

MY POINT?

The fact remains that, since money was invented as a medium of exchange, mankind has always been “capitalist”.  Deprecation of the word is baseless since we demean ourselves. But it is still commonly misused.

By those who cannot use a better word to demonstrate what they really mean by Income Disparity generated by the fact that too much capital remains in the hands of too few people (aka the Rentier Class).

It’s not hard for members of the bourgeoisie to keep their stuff under capitalism (properly administered).  That’s the point of class ownership of the means or production—stocks and bonds and so on.  Coca-Cola can wipe out Pepsi but most of the lords of Pepsi will have prudently acquired a few Coca-Cola shares just in case.  They’re not going to be executed or sold into slavery along with all of their relatives.  If we add to liberal capitalism the Bismarckian Welfare state, then even the working class gets paid off—at least enough to keep them from rebelling most of the time.

This arrangement is not without important problems, but it certainly has more political and economic space in it than feudalism.

Anarcissie wrote: But capitalists rightly fear one another.  Otherwise they would all subscribe to some absolute dictator or other and we would not observe any form of liberalism, the market, private property, and so forth.  (There is no guarantee under an absolute dictator that one will get to keep one’s power, status and stuff.)

I’m not sure I follow—the heads of land-wealth corporations feared one another too. That was all that kept them—when it did, which seems to have been seldom—from declaring war on one another.

The methods of warfare are different today, but the people and the basic nature of the system and the prize it offers—ownership of everything—aren’t.

Back then economic warfare amounted to burning one’s enemy’s crops and peasant villages; today it’s espionage, false advertising, luring away key employees, price-cutting, and the occasional discreet murder. 

But the people doing it, their goals, and the systems aren’t different.  Just the methods. 

Some corporate-feudal boss today whose kingdom comes second in the turf wars isn’t going to keep his “power, status, and stuff” either. 

He’ll almost certainly keep his life, unless he strokes out from the stress, and he’ll still have the money he stashed in Switzerland.  And since there’s a certain amount of self-interested mutual protection among the top layer of the psychopathocracy today (cf. the “poor Pinochet, he’s suffered enough” screed from war-criminals Albright in the US and Straw in the UK) he might get another corporate kingdom to run.  But the old one with all his perqs will be gone, taken over or obliterated by the winner, exactly as would have happened in the 14th c.

But capitalists rightly fear one another.  Otherwise they would all subscribe to some absolute dictator or other and we would not observe any form of liberalism, the market, private property, and so forth.  (There is no guarantee under an absolute dictator that one will get to keep one’s power, status and stuff.)

Anarcissie wrote: capitalists in the more advanced states generally have…dominated their communities as a class through the ownership and control of the means of production, rather than through the direct force, terror and superstition of feudalism and classical slavery. 

That’s how it worked then, too:  the King/CEO owned the land, which in a non-tech culture was the means of production for just about everybody. Everyone else had to rent from the king, directly or via a chain of vavasours, whether in coin, service, or both.

The craft guilds didn’t derive their living directly from the land, but what they controlled applied to only a fraction of the population.  While the guilds might well have the freehold of their guildhall, only the wealthier members didn’t have to fee some baron or bishop for the use of the land their shop sat on.

Although “executive managers”, as we might call the feudal capos and underbosses who ruled their fractions of the corporation/kingdom when wealth was measured in land, were sometimes brutal and terroristic, that wasn’t generally the case.

If you look at the historical record, the common people felt a real allegiance to the Crown, and believed that the King and Queen really cared about them (doesn’t Obama really care about us?), and that even if Baron Slime or Bishop Arschloch were monsters, it would all be made right in the end, or sooner if the King got wind of it.  The bit in the Robin Hood canon where Richard comes back and sorts Prince John and his henchcreatures is an accurate reflection of what people, against all reason, genuinely believed.

Most of the corporate middle- and upper-management of that time made up their own laws, but they didn’t differ greatly from one to another, and within their ethos treated their serfs reasonably well.  They had to.  People could run off in the dead of night, cooks could put noxious things into the food, guards could be a little too slow if an attack came, and priests (who were protected by Rome) could excommunicate a baron who was too awful.  Treating people well paid off.  It paid off in terms of fewer runaways, higher productivity, less sickness, and all the other results we see today too.

Reversions to feudal methods like fascism and military dictatorship have universally come to ruin, a fact which even the least observant of capitalists can hardly be unaware of.

I agree.  Yet we never have any shortage of would-be dictators, do we.  And wealthy people are nearly always pathologically greedy.  The old Jack Benny routine about “I’m thinking, I’m thinking” was funny precisely because it was so accurate. 

As Galbraith noted, “people of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than give up any material part of their advantage”.

——-I already stated the essential identity of their nature:  that one person, call
him king, CEO, or whatever title you like, can in theory legitimately gain absolute
power over everything, thus putting every living creature at his mercy, too.——-

that’s nothin g at all like establishing identity between the two, it’s merely positing
an instance where they may overlap…...and it’s a damned far-fetched one.

Historically, though, capitalists in the more advanced states generally have been associated with liberalism and have dominated their communities as a class through the ownership and control of the means of production, rather than through the direct force, terror and superstition of feudalism and classical slavery.  Reversions to feudal methods like fascism and military dictatorship have universally come to ruin, a fact which even the least observant of capitalists can hardly be unaware of.

Anarcissie wrote It seems kind of tedious to explain the differences between capitalism and feudalism at this point.  Maybe I’m just lazy.  Of course you could complain that the words are ill-defined.

You might be lazy, but from your response I think it’s more that your understanding of the words is ill-defined.  You apparently think differences in garnish are differences in essence.

I already stated the essential identity of their nature:  that one person, call him king, CEO, or whatever title you like, can in theory legitimately gain absolute power over everything, thus putting every living creature at his mercy, too. 

As is unfolding before our very eyes right now, there is no limit to the hegemony of any Capitalist except his de facto ability to enforce his will.

A single individual can, in theory, buy and exercise power over absolutely everything in the world.  That there are currently practical limitations that prevent it doesn’t say anything worth saying: practical limits are constantly being overcome. 

After the Black Death wiped out half of Britain’s working class, the survivors got uppity and started demanding more money and better working conditions.  The ruling class wasn’t having any of that, so Parliament passed the Statute Of Labourers. It’s pretty repulsive:  it virtually enslaved every member of the working class.  They had to take the first job offered unless already employed, could not quit the job without permission, and had to accept the same wages that had applied when the workload was only half as great.

Luckily, the Statute proved very hard to enforce.  That’s because recordkeeping technology was a quill pen and a sheet of parchment or handmade paper.  So people could walk away, change their name, and virtually disappear.

Imagine how easily such a statute could be enforced today, with satellites, retinal scans, DNA, and microchip tracking.

Today, of course, the Statute is virtual and self-enforcing.  People are lucky to have jobs that pay enough to live on, and need enforces the doing of two jobs for one job’s pay. 

Will it get even worse for us?  When people like you fail to understand even the basics, I suspect it quite likely will.  Do please inform yourself.

You are so right Lafayette, the “menu” was said with tongue-in-cheek,
it’s a real killer) but I didn’t know how to graphically write it.  It is a
fare that people here line up for miles and miles that would stretch to
Mars and back if measured on a daily basis for a week, and that is
hyperbole as well.  The good old “all” American fast food meal is
health-horrible and I can’t say when I last had a hamburger, as I don’t
eat beef…much and never in as a hamburer.  But that isn’t important,
not even the fact that French Fries are not French!

Shhhh…an aside from fun facts: French fries are Belgian: Historians state
that potatoes were being fried by at least 1680 in the Meuse Valley of
Belgium. Locals would eat small fried fish with their meals, but when the
river was frozen over, they cut potatoes lengthwise and fried them in oil
to use as a substitute.  So why are they called French Fries?  (Called
Pommes Frites in France!)

There appears to be two main lines of thought on this one. The first is
that ‘French frying’ is the name given to the way in which it was
prepared, so regardless of it being potatoes or anything else, if it is
lightly fried in oil as such it can be referred to as “French” fried. (Light
olive oil would be the best, probably.)

The second is that of a Belgian legend which claims that when British
and/or American soldiers arrived in Belgium during World War I, upon
tasting the fries they referred to them as ‘French’, as the official language
of the Belgian Army at that time was indeed French.”

The point of my meal vignette was to illustrate the fact that to get the
meal to me (any meal, even a tarte flambée which looks like a pizza!) to
my table, the effort takes an unending number of other existential facts,
a never ending story, which was when I realized it was staggering, well
momentarily staggering!  G’day!

She: You know, the good old American menu.

Next time you “have a look at it”, think of its contents in terms of nutritional value and chemical additives. And cry ...

The beef alone is full of fast-growth hormones the effects of which long-term may be detrimental. Do we really think that beef is range-beef? Think again ... and consider this article here.

Hormonal beef is only the tip of the iceberg. Shall we discuss next pesticide residues in vegetables and cereals ... ?

Btw, the hormonal beef controversy is one that separates the US from a great many countries. The “beef” (pun intended) between France and the US regards the fact that France does not permit US beef to be sold in France for health reasons.

Silly buggers those Frenchies, right ... ?

It seems kind of tedious to explain the differences between capitalism and feudalism at this point.  Maybe I’m just lazy.  Of course you could complain that the words are ill-defined. 

It is true there were different spaces in feudalism.  You could, for instance, run away and live in the woods like the witches or Robin Hood.  You might be hunted down like a wild animal, but there were a lot of woods.  In most jurisdictions, I think if you formed a commune or cooperative not blessed by the local count and the Church, you’d simply be slaughtered.

Today, at least for awhile, we can get away with communes and cooperatives.

Mairead——Capitalism is feudalism:  one person can in theory come to own all
sources of wealth and livelihood, with everyone else dependent on him (usually a
him) for their very lives.—-

that’s very poor attempt at calling two very different things one and the same…...

it’s valueless confusion.

Anarcissie wrote: Actually, capitalism does have political spaces in it, far more than feudalism or classical slavery, and those spaces can be used to maneuver toward post-capitalist relations and arrangements.

Capitalism is feudalism:  one person can in theory come to own all sources of wealth and livelihood, with everyone else dependent on him (usually a him) for their very lives. 

What’s changed is the surface appearance, and the location of the “political spaces”. 

Intuitively, I don’t think there’s a lot to choose between Capitalism and other feudal formats, but I’d be happy to read your argument to the contrary if you have one to make.

heterochromatic, March 29 at 7:41 pm:

‘Lee—that’s a dumb statement. the Supreme Court justices aren’t beholden to much of anyone. they’re pretty much free to decide as they think proper.’

Actually, they aren’t human.  They don’t even know any humans.  They live above the clouds, and consider each case as a pure legal abstraction, without any distractions of prejudice, affection, or interest.

Mairead, April 1 at 2:13 pm:

‘... We get rid of serfdom and chattel slavery?  They create Capitalism and the requirement that everyone work for one of them or starve in the streets:  slavery by another name, yet we think we’re free.  (“Niemand ist mehr Sklave….”)

Don’t want to be their slave?  Too bad—for most of us there are no other choices. ...’

Actually, capitalism does have political spaces in it, far more than feudalism or classical slavery, and those spaces can be used to maneuver toward post-capitalist relations and arrangements.  One should not be so pessimistic as to miss opportunities.

Lafayette wrote: “We’ve come full circle, back to where we were thousands of years ago.”

Saddeningly, we haven’t. 

We can argue about what date to put on the historical marker—was it when the first psychopath declared himself entitled to special treatment from the other members of the tribe, or when the last bit of common land was enclosed and declared to be the private property of some other psychopath—but the reality is that we’ve gradually been losing basic ground for much of our history, nothing circular about it. 

We stop up one rathole and the psychopaths gnaw another one.  They take a foot and we push them back 11 inches.  We’ve hardly ever been able to push them back the whole 12, and the moment we take a breather, they’ve grabbed more.

And they get more subtle and skillful at thinking up new ways to keep us enslaved to them.

We get rid of serfdom and chattel slavery?  They create Capitalism and the requirement that everyone work for one of them or starve in the streets:  slavery by another name, yet we think we’re free.  (“Niemand ist mehr Sklave….”)

Don’t want to be their slave?  Too bad—for most of us there are no other choices. 

It’s no longer possible to “runne away unto ye Indyans” as the indentured slave-laborer “colonists” at Jamestown did.  The “Indyans” themselves no longer have so much as a pot to widdle in or a window to throw it out of.  The psychopaths have stolen their land and enslaved them, too.

Want to open a tiny business and work for yourself, in The American Way?  Sure—just as soon as you can come up with the cash to pay for the licences, the inspections, the bonds, the startup costs and the “special fees”.  Don’t have the cash?  Too bad.  And if you can somehow come up with enough cash then you’d better hope that you’re not competing with the mayor’s nephew or someone else with connections and the ability to buy laws.

Back in 1916 Carl Sandburg wrote that until we remember the lessons of the past and band together in solidarity, we haven’t a hope.  And he was right.

The Commerce Clause has been stretched beyond recognition for well over a half-century now:  it’s about time the Court reined it in, and this seems an excellent bill with which to do that (not that earlier interpretations may be likely to be reversed, since the Court usually doesn’t like to do that).

By contrast, while the current broad interpretation of the General Welfare Clause remains controversial that controversy has existed as long as our country has (the Washington and first Adams administrations interpreted it broadly, then it got interpreted more narrowly, and AFAIK the Supreme Court didn’t actually weigh in on the matter until about 1920, when it first interpreted it narrowly and then broadened its interpretation under pressure from Roosevelt and the Great Depression in the mid-1930s).

Basing the individual mandate on the Commerce Clause was ridiculous and deserves to be overturned.  Basing a single-payer system on the General Welfare Clause has already occurred in the case of Medicare, and all we need to do is extend Medicare to cover everyone (or at least give them the option to buy into it) to get a much better, more efficient health-care system within Constitutional bounds.

That actually could have been done two years ago.  After the severely crippled ACA passed it was immediately followed by a reconciliation package that ‘fixed’ some of its deficiencies, and to those fixes could have been added a filibuster-proof mechanism (reconciliation bills can’t be filibustered) extending Medicare that only 50 Senate votes (plus Biden’s to break a tie) would have been required to pass (the House had already passed a version of the ‘public option’ and thus likely could - had the leadership supported this - have passed such a reconciliation bill, and more than 50 Democratic Senators were already on record as supporting a ‘public option’ which Dick Durbin promised to whip for vigorously if it came to him from the House).

However, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid made certain that no such reconciliation measure reached the floor in either house of Congress - likely because in mid-summer the previous year Obama had quietly traded away any real ‘public option’ in a back-room deal with the industry.

Discussions of the Commerce and General Welfare clauses can be found by Googling them (they often tend to be heated and biased, but Wikipedia manages to strike a reasonable balance).  If you’d like some substantiation of my assertions in the last two paragraphs above see http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/five_hypocrites_and_one_bad_plan_20120329/#474753

Postscript:  And all those highway cafes, retreading shops, thermos
bottle manufacturers, CB’s, cellphones, the list is endless, etc., etc.,
and etc.

I once invented a game, which much to my chagrin I later found out
others had invented it too, when I was having lunch at some not so
fast food restaurant upon being served the lunch I had ordered. Look-
ing at the plate, it started to dawn on my the far-reaching conditions
it took for that plate to get to my table!  It was phenomenal and even
today I am still adding people and technology that it took just to serve
me a cheeseburger, fries, coffee with skim milk, and a piece of apple
pie.  You know, the good old American menu.  It was to be a kind of
departure from the usual very healthy lunch as I was feeling kind of
decadent but once that list got started about what it took for me to
give in to my tendency to be decadent, I found it was staggering.

Lafayette, March 31 at 7:45 am - Now we have those fleets of
18-wheelers!  Which is a class unto itself!  Think of the quality of
roads and bridges that must be built and maintained just to keep
commerce truckin’.

FULL CIRCLE

<i><She: Marked inequalities originated around 5,000 years ago./i>

Once we transited from a nomadic to a sedentary existence and then discovered labor-specialization, we started to develop surpluses in the produce. Some will call those surpluses “profits”, because anything beyond what you can eat in an Agricultural Society is just that - it’s profit.

Now, surplus agricultural produce you can resell, but 2 or 3 thousand years ago there was damn little transport so markets were highly contained geographically.

Real profits came from the “protection racket”. Lords would tax farmers as a payment for “protection” from hungry, marauding bands. And as the Lords became an hereditary aristocracy of “landed gentry”, most profits went to the rich aristocrats.

Who did nothing but live off their rents as a “rentier class”.

Fast forward, 2/3000 years. What is the difference today, The One-Percenters get their wealth how? By doing nothing, milking their cash-cow investments - i.e., they are a “rentier class”.

We’ve come full circle, back to where we were thousands of years ago. (Well, maybe the peons are somewhat better off today ...)

Mal—- i probably have spent as much time gathering info and cogitating as
most.

while I’m not more than superficially wounded by your designation in lieu of a
reasoned response, I would hope that you would review and answer my
concerns.

If your position is as well thought out and solid as you appear to believe, doing
so should not provide much difficulty for you.

I suggest that perhaps it might prove thornier than you care to contemplate.

either way, it’s still hard to see how your “elders” are anything other than
authority figures performing the same tasks that any authority figure does….
and that there’s no valid basis for defining deviance as psychopathy…...

or trollishness.

Lee Oates____ I would suggest that they less openly reek of corruption now than in
past years.

being appointed to the Supreme Court offers freedom to follow conscience to
anybody who wants that freedom.

!——what’s an “elder” and what’s a “psychopath”  all you’re discussing is authority managing dissent and crim2

3——that’s a bunch of poor reasoning again… there’s no reason to conclude shit about the past on the basis of a small sample of small-group cultures of
today.

You sound like someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time in either observation or thought.

You claim not to know the definition of such a common term as “elder”, you claim to be unaware that the creatures in government serve themselves while ignoring both their duty to us and our rights, and you imply that you’re ignorant of how science works. 

I suppose that level of ignorance is possible—we saw something like it in Bush the Lesser—but individuals like that have no interest in places like this.  Which suggests that your “ignorance” is actually trolling.  I don’t feed trolls.

heterochromatic:  Time will tell. Don’t be so unwilling to accept reality.  The institutions of government are not those that existed in the time of FDR.  Now they are openly reeking of corruption.

diman wrote - “What is it with you Americans? It is like some nervous tick that you can get rid of, referring to you founding fathers every god damn minute. What is so exceptional and outstanding about slave-owning Indian hating white bourgeois class that wanted a piece of their own action on American continent?”

So they should be disqualified from any discussion involving reason? History has a treasure trove of lessons we seem to keep forgetting. And as the saying goes to forget it is an invitation to repeat it. Republicans seem to think returning to the good old days of 25% unemployment, bread lines, soup kitchens and too many poor to count is just what the doctor ordered.

While we try to reason ourselves out of this mess they created they would just as soon let the country burn. It is laughable to hear them say they love this Country when we all know they have no ability to love anything. They lust for money and power. They respect wealth as long as it was gained at the expense of others. Mainly the working class.

The founders may have been what you described and more but many learned from the past and tried not to repeat those mistakes. They warned us in their writings that future generations would have to figure out how to keep the experiment moving forward.

Many on the right felt that was too much work and instead sold their souls for short term gratification. The proof is in the results.

LOOK AT THE MESSES THEY CREATED!!!!

Lee—that’s a dumb statement. the Supreme Court justices aren’t beholden to
much of anyone. they’re pretty much free to decide as they think proper.

The majority of the Supreme Court is firmly in the pockets of the right-wing rich, bought and paid for.  They are about to kill Obamacare and set the groundwork for the final destruction of the US. They will set back the social development of the whole country by 50 years leading to a rise in poverty, the disappearance of the middle-class, and civil disorder.

mal

!——what’s an “elder” and what’s a “psychopath”  all you’re discussing is
authority managing dissent and crim2

2——- you simply postulate that government is run for the exclusive benefit of
the governors and as quick as 1,+1 ==11 conclude that such proves
psychopathy.

that’s what is known as .....not real solid reasoning.

3——that’s a bunch of poor reasoning again… there’s no reason to conclude
shit about the past on the basis of a small sample of small-group cultures of
today.

they offer some possibilities, they are not conclusive particularly as the
structures and practices observable today are not invariable.

By heterochromatic, March 29 at 12:55 pm Link to this comment

no, we can not use technology to return to living in small groups anytime soon.

Perhaps you should read for understanding rather than ammunition?  I’m talking about using technology to manage psychopathy the same way it was managed when small-group elders managed it by hand.

no, our governments are not composed of reptilian psychopaths.

And the reason they run government for their own benefit rather than ours is…? 

That’s the key characteristic of a psychopath:  they have as little concern as a reptile for anyone but themselves.  That characterises most federal politicians quite well.  If you disagree, offer some evidence rather than an empty assertion.

and no, there is not much evidence as to how decisions were arrived at 12,000
years ago.

Don’t know anything about anthropology either, huh?

There is no reason to believe that the small-group cultures of today, all of which operate on principles of egalitarian reciprocity, are different to the small-group cultures of the past.

And in point of fact, by looking at cultures of various sizes, we can see clear patterns of change that reflect the differences in population.  They go from the !Kung people of the Kalihari, who have nothing resembling a permanent power gradient (“we are each a chief, the chief over ourselves!”), to nation-states in which the reptiles at the top, like Obama, live lives of the utmost pomp and luxury while the humans at the bottom starve in the streets.

Shenonymous raises vitally important questions:
  ” ...perhaps it is safe to say that it
is an innate animation and if so it only needs awakened to human consciousness on a world scale to reintroduce it as a life-worthy way to work in collectives.  Asking us to “not f’ck it up” is perhaps too idealistic from a culture that lost its primitive conditioning to liberal altrusim.  We
have to find ways to wholesale indoctrinate masses of people.  It will take an investment and people willing to invest time and money.  Who will volunteer to so organize?”
  My contention is that “self-correction” is an innate ability of humans that only becomes apparent in times of urgent need. As a current sign of the emergence of that ability, we can see the recent worldwide attempts at mass uprising for more and better civil and economic rights—all of them unprecedented attempts to bring about enormous changes for the benefit of deprived people, and that with the least amount of violence possible.
  Innately, people everywhere welcome these uprisings, except for the elites previously in power.
I also believe (though there is no solid proof) that the elites are in the weaker position and will ultimately be forced to cede power and allow, if not aid, the very changes they at first resist.
  My beliefs are based on the belief that action is more powerful than reaction, and that the ultimate power of life is to persist over death, although end results are unpredictable. Far more people, when dire situations arise, decide to be helpful than to be destructive—and they revolt against destruction in both traditional and creative and surprising new ways.
  I feel that nurturing is more powerful than destroying, that people feel that instinctively, and that most of them act accordingly.

Mairead—- that was a pretty good hash .

no, we can not use technology to return to living in small groups anytime soon.

no, our governments are not composed of reptilian psychopaths.

and no, there is not much evidence as to how decisions were arrived at 12,000
years ago.

“Before 12,000 years ago, people were basically egalitarian. They lived in what might be called societies of equals… Everyone participated in group decisions, and outside the family there were no dominators… Marked inequalities originated around 5,000 years ago.”

This is true, and was due to the fact that people originally lived in groups small enough that the inevitable few psychopaths could be culled by the elders before they could become adults and gain power.

Once the groups became too big, and the elders could no longer weed out the psychopaths, they were able to reach adulthood and the smarter ones, driven by the will to power, took control of the tribes as their chiefs and/or priests and ran them for their own benefit.

The idea of killing those who prey on us sounds strange and even unbelievable to us, but that’s exactly what people had to do. Small-group societies don’t have prisons or psychiatric hospitals, and individuals who can’t or won’t behave usually can’t be banished, either.  So killing them is the last resort.

From a Scientific American article on psychopathy:
In a 1976 study anthropologist Jane M. Murphy, then at Harvard University, found that an isolated group of Yupik-speaking Inuits near the Bering Strait had a term (kunlangeta) they used to describe “a man who … repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and … takes sexual advantage of many women—someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always being brought to the elders for punishment.” When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”

We look at the ones in government who lie to us and betray us over and over again and we just can’t make sense out of it.  But if we see them for what they are—reptiles in human form, who secretly regard us as lunch—things start to fall into place.  Of course they’re not going to pass Medicare For All—that would benefit us and we’re prey.  Doing anything for the benefit of prey is crazy, from their point of view.  They are the only ones who matter, not us.

Our laws and social rules were set up by and for the benefit of such reptilian psychopaths.  Which is why the laws and rules quite often make no sense to us.  But I’m convinced that we could use technology to go back to small-group, egalitarian life.  We wouldn’t need to kill the psychopaths nowadays.  We could lock them up instead, possibly on their own island somewhere, letting them make of their lives what they can without letting them prey on the rest of us.

All it would take is our communal decision not to be prey any more.

Notice how the President can go to war
without a Congressional Declaration of War,
can spy on Americans without due process,
can imprison and assassinate Americans without due process,
and our Supreme Court looks the other way.

I’m against Obamacare because it shovels taxpayer dollars to the Big Corporations under our predatory capitalist system.

But I sure like my Medicare—and I stay with the original, traditional version because I hate the for-profit medical insurance companies.

Regressing to the Stone Age as far as social organization goes might
not be such a bad idea, As University of Southern California archaeologist
Christopher Boehm wrote in his 1999 book Hierarchy in the Forest:
“Before 12,000 years ago, people were basically egalitarian. They lived in
what might be called societies of equals… Everyone participated in group
decisions, and outside the family there were no dominators… Marked
inequalities originated around 5,000 years ago.”

The article at gives lots of references that led up to when social
inequalities took root in cultures.

The rise of inequality seems to parallel when people moved into
city/states about 6,000 years ago,
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_stearns_wcap_4/18/4646/1189432.cw/index.html

If humans have had that much history of inequality inter and intra social
structures, it will not be an easy thing to weed out.  Since it seems the
egalitarian impulse was there originally, perhaps it is safe to say that it
is an innate animation and if so it only needs awakened to human
consciousness on a world scale to reintroduce it as a life-worthy way to
work in collectives.  Asking us to “not f’ck it up” is perhaps too idealistic
from a culture that lost its primitive conditioning to liberal altrusim.  We
have to find ways to wholesale indoctrinate masses of people.  It will take
an investment and people willing to invest time and money.  Who will
volunteer to so organize?

Things aren’t always what they seem. I lived in L A when Ron Reagan was gov. I had no health care insurance.  There was a clinic down the road that provided free care to the brown, black, and indigenous whites that lived in the neighborhood. They provided minor surgery and drugs gratis and even got my wife into LA county hospital to have our twins. I received bills from the hospital but never payed them , no money. I’m sure the same thing happens all over the US at least in the underclasses.  I think this form of disorganized health care is what is really happening in the U.S.

MrFreeze wrote:
What we have here is an inability to actually think for ourselves….which is exactly where the elites want most Americans: living in “stupid-land.”

Though you’re right, I’d suggest that the problem is more complicated:

—Too many self-described Liberals are of the species reviled by Phil Ochs in his “Love Me, I’m A Liberal”.  They’re comfortable, and see nothing much wrong with the system except when “their team” isn’t nominally in charge. Something is good or bad depending only on who’s doing it, not on what’s being done or to whom.

—As you note, we in the lib-left part of the spectrum are very reluctant to think for ourselves, especially if it will get us into social trouble.  This is particularly true of libs.

—Only people who are quite radical, politically, seem willing to actually do anything.  Libs and even most leftists want “the government” to fix things, which is lunacy given that (a) we are supposed to be the ultimate government power and (b) “the government” are the ones cooperating with the owner class to screw us to the wall.

We need to re-think our priorities if we want to live.

I really don’t know if the Supreme Court has the cajones to really pull the plug on the ACA.  They have already had two years of blowback on the Citizen’s United decision, and Justice Kennedy may decide, for political reasons, NOT to go with the extremists (Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts) on the Commerce Clause “invalidating” the ACA.  Kennedy’s political reason, of course, would be the backlash against the Court that would result if he sides with the extremists, with the left and many in the middle screaming “Medicare for All” and supporting a wounded Obama.  We shall see….

diman - THANK YOU…...........whew…I’m glad someone finally spoke the truth: who gives a rat’s ass what “the founding fathers” thought about most of our issues today.

Dinman, the problem with us Americans is that most have never really “studied” American history (best case scenario) nor do they ever take a civics or government class in school (worst case scenario). They have received their whole constitutional education by listening to talk-show radio, watching Fox News or simply don’t care….Despite this fact, they all seem to be constitutional law experts ESPECIALLY when interpreting the nuances of taxes, guns and vaginas…They are, in short, a bunch of uneducated idiots.

Trying to ponder what the founding fathers thought of “health care” is an absurd exercise. It’s like trying to ask if Euripides was a “feminist” playwright. Health care didn’t exist in the 1700’s and feminism didn’t exist in ancient Greece. What we have here is an inability to actually think for ourselves….which is exactly where the elites want most Americans: living in “stupid-land.”

Big B wrote on March 28 at 4:31 pm

many states (like here in PA) require all auto owners to carry insurance. Contractors are required to have liability insurance.

And does Pa require that everyone own a car?  Or work as a contractor?  No, of course not.  Which is why your analogy is completely flawed.  In both your example cases, there are at least several alternatives.  I’ll list 2:  travel by bike; work for wages. 

In the case of Obamacare (which should properly be called “Obamacareless” for reasons I’m sure will occur to you) the only alternatives are to pay anyway (and be guaranteed to get nothing in return for our money) or move out of the country.

Only by the most “creative” reading of the Constitution can government be deemed to have the power to compel us to support a private-profit corporation.  If we allow them to do that to us, we’re cooked, because there’ll be no end to additional demands.  The end of that road is a return to outright serfdom.

Medicare+dental+pharm+vision for all.  It’s the only way to be sure.

What is it with you Americans? It is like some nervous tick that you can get rid of, referring to you founding fathers every god damn minute. What is so exceptional and outstanding about slave-owning Indian hating white bourgeois class that wanted a piece of their own action on American continent?

When will people understand that the object of the right is to crash the whole thing. Even some on the left have given in and are Dems in name only. Washington is so corrupt it is like a festering sore that we ‘the people’ need to cut out or slow its spread to the next generations.
As the founding fathers basically said, the key is holding on to our democracy. With Republicans we have fascism and with the current Democrats we have apathy. Take your pick, either is not a place we should want to be.

A FATEFUL DECISION

True enough, what BB says about the ebbs and tides of Supreme Court rulings. Any change in SC-sentiment takes a decade to work its way through the Judicial System. But once encrusted (from the top and down through the lower courts) it can wreak either Great Harm or do Great Good.

These past two Supreme Courts have shown a penchant for the former, that is, doing damage.

It’s time to change that bent. And change can happen if Obama gets reelected and one of the Five Troglogdyte-Right judges resigns. If not, this Supreme Court will continue to reign supreme over our destiny.

One more Obama nomination to the SC and the tide changes in the favor of progressive interpretation of the Constitution - as not a dead document but one that lives and is therefore amenable to wider interpretations that correspond better to the Brave New World we have now entered.

Only a few times in history have Americans been faced with such an important choice. But their decision at polls in November will determine our collective fate for the next decade.

Let’s not f*ck it up ..

WE’VE MOVED ON

To act, the federal government is required, at least in theory, to tether its action to a grant of constitutional power.

And what did our Founding Fathers who wrote the constitution think of Health Care?

They did not consider the matter as relevant. For them any such notion of Social Services was not even thinkable - since the primary relevance of the time was to establish a Constitutional Government that would prevent a monarchy.

We are some 275 years later. We’ve moved on to a very different world that we live in. So must the Constitution and so must its interpretation.

Depending upon the Bible or the Constitution to interpret the rules by which we live is simply no longer either plausible or possible.

We must advance to an egalitarian society ... or we will most certainly regress to the stone-age.

donkey23—- the judiciary in iran is appointed by the head of state, a guy named
Khamenei…..so, if you can grasp this, iran dictator controls the judiciary….and
therefore….

it’s NOT a judicial dictatorship.

I would go on to explain that you’re even a dumber donkey to call the US a judicial
dictatorship, but I think I’ve stretched you to capacity already.

the US has the same gov’t as Iran. a judicial dictatorship. there is not balance of power here

Mairead, March 28 at 2:05 pm:

‘... The reality is that there is nothing in the Constitution or in precedent that can allow government to compel us to support a private-profit corporation. ...

However, if you look at Wickard v. Filburn and Gonzales v. Raich you can see that the Court has been generally happy to go along with almost unlimited extensions of the Commerce Clause, to include practices which have nothing real to do with interstate commerce.  Those favoring Mr. O’s mandates have been relying on this habit.  However, it is said that the justices can read the election returns like anybody else, and they may suddenly decide, with whatever changes of the wind they have perceived, that they can be strict constructionists after all.  It is a time of emotional conflict for the Right: on the one hand, they have a program which puts a gun to the heads of the many and compels them to do business of a very disadvantageous sort with the few; on the other hand, they have a chance to scuttle Mr. O’s ‘legacy’ and possibly discredit him before the election somehow.  Which will win, greed or power?  Only time will tell.

Big B—- those insurance requirements are conditioned on applying for and
receiving a state license for one thing or another. they are not general
requirements for all citizens.

Mairead

many states (like here in PA) require all auto owners to carry insurance. Contractors are required to have liability insurance. If they didn’t, our courts would be even more clogged with lawsuites because you give people no other recourse if you are hit by an uninsured driver or injured by a faulty product or workmanship.

Oh, that’s right, we should have no laws or regulations. Dog eat dog, that’s the way to go.

We need to ask ourselves, do we want to live in a nation run by the weathiest individuals and corporations, or by we the people? Well, its been run by the corporations and the wealthy for quite a while, hows that working out for the majority?

As Robert Reicht pointed out, the mandate killing might lead to a sensible
medicaid endowment.

Ana==again, there was no way to immediately uproot the
insurance companies….they had to be bought off in the
short term…..sucks, like so much of life.

The health care debate ultimately leads to the question of who’s health is to be cared for; the citizens of this nation or the for-profit medical and insurance industries.

Blum is a lawyer and a former judge???  Now *that* is frightening!  Except for the “former” part.  Normally we find it unacceptable for judges and lawyers not to understand the law, as Blum clearly doesn’t.  So it’s good that he’s no longer a judge.

The reality is that there is nothing in the Constitution or in precedent that can allow government to compel us to support a private-profit corporation. 

The reason being, if government can compel us to buy insurance, why can’t it compel us to prop up the automobile industry by buying a new car every year? 

Or the airline industry by buying at least one round-trip ticket across country each year? 

Of course the government might then let the airline and auto dealership treat us the way med insurance companies treat us, and deny us the right to *use* the ticket or *drive* the car we’d been forced to buy.

They probably wouldn’t though, because even hard-of-thinking liberals like Blum might be able to recognise scams like that.

Broccoli for all!!!  When I cant pay just spread my costs on to all the other
food shoppers.  Scalia is my hero!

“I always wanted a public option from the beginning but I accepted that
“Obamacare” was a compromise and a starting point—just as Social Security “

BrooklynDame’s comment above shows me how easily we can be “duped!”

No, the public option itself was the “compromise” to “Single Payer”!

Obama pulled a double reverse and trick some liberals into excepting and not cheering for a Heritage Foundation idea just as he did with the “Pay Roll Tax Holiday” (another Heritage Foundation idea). Are we really that thick?

Ironically, the more ambitious Single Payer would be entirely Constitutional.

Constitutional problems arise only because of the Democratic Party leadership’s determination to protect the medical insurance industry at all costs.

I always wanted a public option from the beginning but I accepted that
“Obamacare” was a compromise and a starting point—just as Social Security
began as a system designed solely for widows and orphans and was tweaked
over time. Scrapping the entire ACA is useless and, frankly, the SCOTUS, given
their propensity for supporting big business (as insurance companies are)
should be quite happy with the fact that big insurance will benefit while this is
worked out.

Now let’s wait for the crowd to start screaming “Go home, socialist!” in
5….4…3…
http://borderlessnewsandviews.com/2012/03/government-health-care-at-its-
finest/

http://borderlessnewsandviews.com/2011/11/what-will-be-our-healthcare-
legacy/

I think most of us are in agreement about this particular health care debate. The ACA was seriously flawed (probably intentionally…although I’m not a conspiracy theorist…just a cynic) from the start. I think it’s instructive to think about what Justice Kennedy said yesterday:

“the reason [the individual mandate] is concerning is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act. In the law of torts, our tradition, our law has been that you don’t have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. The blind man is walking in front of a car and you do not have a duty to stop him, absent some relation between you. And there is some severe moral criticisms of that rule, but that’s generally the rule.”

I believe that when a member of the SCOTUS can make a statement like that (and I’m sure the rest were thinking the same thing) we are certainly not living in 1968 as laceration stated below. We may as well return to a pre-WWI state of affairs: every man/woman/child for himself. Don’t you all have a sense that something in the fabric of our society has been stained by the religion of capitalism-above-all-else. Mandate or not, Kennedy’s words leave me cold…..

I, too, favor the public option/single payer alternative. Maybe invalidating
Obamacare will finally lay the groundwork for this.

Each day, is another day of for profit butchery. With nearly 500,000 deaths of Americans
each year, each day is a revelation of drugs that have been approved even though the
manufacturer knowingly submitted fraudulent data. So many chronically ill people, in this
country who will never get better, simply because the medicine they receive does
nothing but keep them sick and strung out for profit.  Well documented evidence of
thousands upon thousands of deaths from medical procedures that should never be
allowed in this country.  While at the same time there is every effort to suppress,
cheaper cures and alternative medical treatments that work, to protect the profit, of the
giant health care corporations. Since the passage of this bill, those insurance company
profits have soared with records profits, and record bonuses to the executives that run
them. They have responded to those profits by cutting payments to those that service the
infrastructure, forcing many thousands out of work.

Amid the ongoing disaster, that is our health care system, comes health care reform,
that acts to protect the profits and legitimize the system, that results in the deaths of
many millions of men, women and children, while at the same time guaranteeing the
profits of those that benefit monetarily from those deaths and ill health. Real health
reform, means the end of the insurance company monopoly exemption. Then end of law
suit caps. Then end of health care reform. Then end of corporate control of America.

Without health care reform the health system would have collapsed on its own. Health
care reform was designed to prop up the system, for the ensurers, nothing more. Sure it
tossed a few crumbs to the people by eliminating, pre existing condition clauses, and
extending the age of eligibility for dependents.  But what does it matter when the
treatment they get, doesn’t make them well?

no, don’t leave politics out of healthcare. don’t leave politics out of
anything the TWENTY PERCENT is doing.
the reason that the ONE PERCENT [and 19% which vigorously supports it]
is the main reason why it always has it its way.
if the ONE PERCENT can prevent establishment of such an enorm value
as healthcare for all, how can it be prevented from waging wars,
exploitation, torture, curtailment of freedoms, etc.

It’s not 1968 anymore.  This is old stick in the mud thinking. That Progressive ideals will somehow prevail in the body politic and be enacted is ridiculous.  The takeover of the State is complete, it is now a corporate state.  As if there is going to be a solution there. $447 billion in taxpayer money turned over to the private health insurance industry and 1000’s of pages of stealth legislation is not an acceptable accommodation.  The best we can hope for that the Govt’s own contradictions hasten its irrelevance.  We need to start trusting more local, homegrown solutions and make them happen.  For instance check out what is happening in Vermont with healthcare.

good response Mr. freeze. The article is bogus , forcing people to by private for profit insurance is not progress its coercion. The profit motive must be stripped out of any government service program for it to remain cheap and accessible. American Health care is the most expensive on Earth and the least effective, and the reason for that is pure greed.

A few things:

1) I think this essay really cuts to the heart of our “moral” problem with health care in this country: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_court_dispatches/2012/03/supreme_court_and_obamacare_why_the_conservatives_are_skeptical_of_the_affordable_care_act_.html

The comment thread is still rolling along on that article. It’s worth a read.

2) Everyone should read T.R. Reid’s “The Healing of America” for a good overview of worldwide health care systems. At least it’s a good starting “text” that would help people clear their heads about how health care systems work in other countries.

3) I have always thought that a single-payer system should have been enacted. As always, when conservatives (the wealthy elite) get their hands on anything, they figure out a way to enrich their friends and screw everyone else. The fact that the Heritage Foundation was for the mandate clearly meant that the insurance companies, doctors, etc. would be putting money in their pockets at the expense of everyone else. It’s ironic that I actually want something “intended” to help people to fail. What’s going on in the court right now should never have happened.

4) I think I have an idea that might change the minds of many health care providers once this BS is all over with the current plan:

Reform the bankruptcy laws so that medical debt can be separated out as its own bankruptcy filing. Make it so that one’s medical debt can be eliminated and charged-off directly to the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, etc.. who have become nothing but “revenue generators.” Make it so that a person’s regular credit rating would be “unharmed” and that the medical debt can be called something else. Call it a “there’s-no-free-lunch-if-someone-goes-to-the-hospital-without-insurance-the-cost-will-be-charged-back-to-everyone-else-bankruptcy. Why not, that’s what people do today: they file bankruptcy which ruins their entire financial world. Since everyone seems happy with letting “the poor and uninsured” use the hospital emergency rooms as the safety net, then let’s figure out a way to protect those who can’t protect themselves against an incredibly unjust system.

I totally agree with David below; The “individual Mandate” like the “pay roll tax holiday” were both dreamed up in the basement of the Heritage Foundation!

I still thing that Obamacare (I here it is ok to call it that now) should be scraped and a push for Single Payer or a robust Public Option should be the goal of the left.

QUOTE, Bill Blum:

“Supporters of the mandate say it is vital to offset the cost to insurers of some of the act’s protections by forcing people who might otherwise not pay for or need health insurance to buy into the system.”
______________

For the corporate party’s (D) dedicated “progressives” healthcare is all about corporate commerce — how to find some way to force healthy individuals to materially support a sick system made sicker by “progressive” legislation mandating greater profits for private insurance corporation denials of healthcare.

If Democrats were any part of the Solution, then America would already have Single-Payer universal healthcare for all — everybody in, nobody out — providing better care for all at less expense, with no private insurance company intervening between doctors and patients; no religious institution required to provide contraception; and no workers shackled to their employers by a healthcare “benefit.”

Whenever there’s an opportunity for people to achieve real progress, the corporate party’s Democrats Move them On in the wrong direction. Democrats have the numbers to do good, but they are dedicated to getting every evil done well.

Jill Stein for President:

http://www.jillstein.org

Voter Consent Wastes Dissent:

http://chenangogreens.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=498&Itemid=1