garth

I was just reading an article about the difference between market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704380504575530332139071998.html

We’ll Call Your Bluff,  Beelzebub   empirePie   November 1st, 2010

Buddy Beelzebub blowing bubbles
shorts on your troubles
while flies circle in the tub
buzzing Lordy .. What’s the rub?
for we’re ready to alight:
“guano, guano, is everywhere in sight”

Buddy Blankfein bubbling gold
puts Puts on what’s not been sold
while shorts circle in the sub prime
buzzing Lordy .. What’s the frequency?
for we’re ready to clean up; Is it:
“time to dump?,  time to dump?”

Buddy Bernanke measuring easing
primes the press, the fiat of less
while lucre flies to a safer nest
not straw but BRIC
chanting: “where is the missing K k k?
Call up the barons and the Bilderbergs
this BIS is fizzing ... it’s moving to the hive
It’s time for START and fright;
Don’t call uncle, call big Ben”

Buddy Hank signing thank yous
orders in the double down
pork captured in the chicken
tasty with a cheesy melt,  risky like ‘On the Brink’ &
complains of sleepless nights not in the buff;
but wakes to cries of: “We’ll call your bluff”

“We’ll call your bluff”

Really rich people are all over the television : news anchors and
pundits,athletes,politicians,actors,celebrities,and
musicians,Television viewers
( disclosure-I don*t watch or have a television.)
must like or want to emulate the rich people they watch
5 hours a day on the T.V.Our country is brainwashed to want
to be rich. It is an addiction yet one never discussed on television.
The people on television have managed for 60 years to avoid ever talking about
money in a concrete way. Television is not going to let anyone on their
propaganda machine to remind us how unequal and unfair the distribution of
wealth is in the United States.

Fat Freddy,

Please clarify.  What is free about the free market in today’s world? 

It seems more like a free lunch for the ones who control the strings of business.  The old saying was there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.  In the government-business nexus they’ve developed the self-licking ice cream cone.  They set the law in motion and the beneficiaries sit back, light up a Cuban and slowly swirl the snifter as they bring it to their lips.  And they call that work!  In a warmer, sunny clime, mind you.

I recently met two of the ‘new’ entrpreneurs.  They are bright and energetic and most of all personable family men.  However, in the new technology era, they employ no one on a regular basis.  One sub-contracts; the other hires temporary employees on a contractual basis. 

With technology advancements and out-sourcing, they have no need to hire.  They are doing well for themselves in week-to-week, month-to-month basis in a niche-business environment.

A Republican jerk running for Congress in Ohio is running on his experience of starting a pharmaceutical-software company in his basement.  He says it now employs 400.

Why doesn’t some investigative reporter follow up this claim. Or are these young “newsmen” flummoxed by it all?

I am glad that you brought up apathy as an alternative description of what ails us.  Got me to ‘thimking.’

I think that anger plays a part.  Anger, at first blush, is like an analgesic.  Get really angry and the pains of psoriasis, rheumatism, gout even cancer miraculously disappear for the moment.

I had a manager once who used to fire himself up to get angry before he arrived at work.  He felt most effective, and he could forget about his wife and three kids at home, and his huge mortgage with its balloon payment.  Needless to say he didn’t sing, ‘Zippety-doo-dah’ on the way to work.

In the end, Anger, like apathy, like stupidity robs us.  It robs us of our humanity.  The manager lost his house and then his wife and three kids in that order.  He now lives alone.

To the Wall Street ‘Bad Money’ People, I’d add: Like the saying from the movie, ‘Love is never having to say you’re sorry’, I’d counter with ‘Justice is never having to say I forgive’.

rancone

Again, the Constitution is a union of the states, not individuals. What part of that don’t you understand?

The Declaration of Independence was just that. A declaration to the King that we won’t take any of his shit, anymore. It was, in effect, a Declaration of War, not law. Most of what is in the DofI was pure Lockean philosophy, practically word-for-word. Jefferson and Franklin could have been sued for plagiarism, by today’s standards. Not that I am opposed to John Locke, but he, as a philosopher, was not perfect. No philosophy is perfect. Free markets are not perfect, either.

Géza Éder

Let me ask you a simple question. How much were you paying for a coast-to-coast telephone call before the deregulation of the telecommunications industry, and how much after? IIRC, Sprint and MCI were about 10 cents a minute, all day, everyday. AT&T was somewhere around 50 cents a minute, off peak. Who “created” AT&T (Ma Bell)? The government. AT&T was a government sponsored monopoly. Is that what you want? More government monopolies? Sure, it’s easy to unionize a government sponsored monopoly, isn’t it?

Same for the charity model; how’s that work in a Katrina or megaquake senario?

So, how did that work out? Not so good. Neither the initial response, nor the follow through has worked very well. However, I would not be opposed to government providing a backstop, like I said earlier. The fact that charitable organizations alone could not handle such large disasters is partly because governemnt has a near monopoly on it. Besides, wasn’t the Red Cross in New Orleans before the government?

Money is another unnatural creation of man which doesn’t behave like other commodities and rot if you stuff it in your mattress, or safe.  Ever hear of demurrage? It means putting an expiration date on currency like you do on milk, etc.  It prevents hording, forcing it to circulate.

Yes. Absolutely, yes. I’ve been trying to explain that, it is our monetary system which is at the heart of our “Capitalist” problems. Money is suppose to be a “store of value”. I could go on for hours about the problems of our currency system. Our currency is based on debt. Every dollar that comes into existence, is the result of somebody’s debt. So, that dollar in your pocket is nothing more than a claim on somebody’s debt, somewhere. It is not based on a real, tangible asset. It is fake. It is “make-believe”. It is fraudulent. Which is why there is so much fraud in our system that nobody wants to do anything about. Fractional reserve lending is also fraudulent. For every dollar that you deposit, 90 cents can be lent out. That results in up to 10 dollars being created for every dollar; out of thin air, of course. This practice is the result of government intervention. Every bank in this country is technically insolvent, and could not exist in a free market with their current policies. Any reforms must start with the money supply, and the banking system.

Sure, Capitalism must always expand. So would any other system just for the fact that the population keeps increasing. With a commodity based currency (honest money), the economy would be limited in its ability to expand, and the money that is available would always go where it is most needed, not into high risk, questionable investments like RMBSs and CDOs. Money would also hold its value much more. As I have said, monetary inflation benefits the rich at the expense of the poor and Middle Class. G Edward Griffin has extensively studied this phenomenon, even though he is a member of the John Birch Society, he has exposed the current “Capitalist” system for what it really is; fraud. Fix the money, fix the banks, and real free markets will emerge. A free market system can only exist with “honest” money, and “sound” banking.

There are two, potentially serious flaws in our system. If a significant portion of our population pays off their debt, or, a significant part of our population defaults on their debt, our system will collapse. Our economy is dependent on debt. We are slaves to our “collective” debt (both public and private).

To address the article.

Stupidity is not the problem. Apathy is the problem.

The Tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare, as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

- Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu,
Spirit of the Laws

The free market, as *any other system of regulation* (in the engineering sense), works only within certain parameters (and only until these parameters are independent from conscious control from the system’s participants).  A free market is not a naturally occuring thing.  It’s something you have to create and maintain, using a lot of energy, in the forms of rules bounding it (like, for example, anti-trust rules etc). If these rules and limitations are missing, there can be no “free market”, as it quickly distorts and destroys itself.  Saying that all limitations and rules have to go for this free market thing to work is simply stupid.

Wrong. Very simply put, you couldn’t be more wrong.

Free markets are the effect, not the cause of a free society. When people are not allowed to freely exchange goods and services, then they are not a free people. Now, having said that, there must be a “referee”. There will always be disputes and non-compliance with private contracts. The question is, do we wish to handle these disputes on a case by case basis, or do we wish to enact very broad rules and regulations that place limitations on everybody? I never said that “all limitations and rules have to go for this free market thing to work”. Please do not misrepresent my position. Thank you.

Simply put: “free markets” haven’t ever existed as a “natural” thing

Yes, you are correct. The common, and easiest solution to a problem is “let the government fix it”. But the government is comprised of the very same greedy and selfish individuals that run “big business” and “big labor unions”. Their “solutions”, although well intentioned, almost always create more harm than good. The more problems that “we” “allow” the government to fix, the more collectivist we become, and the closer we get to a totalitarian society. The first thing that you must realize is, government is not “the people”. Unless we had a government that was comprised of Ghandis and Mother Theresas, it will never function for the “good of the people”.

People can collectively come together to solve problems, without being collectivist. I’m not saying it’s easy. In fact, it is very difficult. But that is the only way we can maintain a free society. It doesn’t help that people are inherently lazy, greedy, and selfish, but so are the people in government. Like I said, freedom requires individual responsibility.

They’re just a human creation not a natural force or law of nature. If you believe free markets are anything more than this, you’re basically a religious believer in them.

Government is a human creation. If you believe in government, you’re basically a religious believer in it.

“Our problem is the stupidity, stupid —and solving that will take far more than an election.”
==========================================
I agree that stupidity is a big factor in the American problem; however being stupid and thinking that you are the smartest God’s gift to humanity is a factor that compounds the problem.

To “stupidity” one might add arrogance, greed and lack of public discipline and accountability and the worship of all that glitters, despite of the fact that all that glitters is not gold.

And to all that I will add the false religion of worshiping the so-called “founding fathers” and a worn-out, out-dated “constitution.”

The whole system needs a revolutionary overhaul from the bottom up!

No matter what ones opinion, the bottom line in the current crisis is the inability of the American people to produce human moral political leadership with the vision and courage to openly confront the graft and corruption destroying the Nation and implement the needed change.

  Many who argue here illustrate that the problem of consenus in the discussion of American finance, government and social policy is the inability of average Americans to understand and agree on the core reason and consequence of legal/political cause and effect and its place in the living history we now experience. But, concepts of government, business/labor, education and social systems are paradigms that are only as good as the persons implementing them. I experience your often informed/linked comments and insights as good food for body, mind and soul. Still, (tell me if I’m wrong) when has reason and moral principal ever had the least influence in dealing with political criminals?

  This inability of America to define, accept and foment unified action for the progressive change that would bring it into league with other modern nations is the major astonishment of the World. I remind you that our forefathers had a tremendous grasp on their personal sense of human reason and moral/financial reality. Transgress it and you were invited to bring a friend and a set of pistols to any place or time of your choosing. Right or wrong, the gentlemen took the fate of their families, lives and themselves seriously.

    Most of what we discuss here is symptomatology. FAT FRED is correct when he asks we understand that the solution is in personal responsibility. LAFAYETTE is correct that it isn’t a conspiracy. The greed and corruption are right in your face. Your country is in the hands of criminals. It’s not something else. Discuss the details all you want but we all know what the reality is. Either allow media lunatics and Rovian frankencreatures to define reality and dismantle your sanity and future before your eyes or stop giving idiots the benefit of the doubt. “No more Mr. Nice Guy—”. The stakes are just to high.

  Boehner and his thugs (if/when) intend to control the next two years with fear and lies. They don’t give a damn about Social Security but they intend to use it as a bludgeon to keep the fractures bleeding, hysteria rampant and put President Obama on ice. I say we snap a crick in Obamas back and start the fight now for 2012 with demand for major Campaign Finance Reform. If he won’t do it, we’ll find someone who will. If Boehner gets loud, lets go to D.C. What have we to lose if we don’t?

  Everything.

Having lived in Puerto Rico, where credit card opulence is very obvious although the island is broke, I can say with certainty that people there don’t care if their flat screen tv’s, new cars, partying and restaurant tabs are on high interest loans.  Living for today and not worrying about tomorrow is the rule that gave it the distinction of being the happiest country in the world.  How stupid is that?

Nice play on Carville’s advice to Clinton’s campaign.  We were used to hearing the KISS rule, Keep it Simple Stupid.  Now we are like Stupids Gone Wild.

Two recent statements, one by George Will and the other, a slip of the tongue by Connie Schultz, the wife of Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and columnist for the Cleaveland Plain Dealer, caught my attention.

Mr. Will said that in this election cycle $ 4.2 Billion will be spent.  He brushed that number away as being insignificant, really.  To put it in perspective, he adds that Proctor & Gamble spends that in one year on advertising, and that amount is spent by Americans per year on yogurt.

Wellllllllll.  Why does George Will think P & G spends that kind of money on advertising? 

I’ll tell him why.  Advertising works!  Glitzy ads make people feel and think that they need to buy this product.  Or in the political sense, they make people think the sky is falling in.

And the yogurt.  Say, “Activia” to song.  Dannon.  All the rest.  That’s how they boost their sales.  Cute little ad pitches.  I remember in the early 60s when yogurt was being introduced to the American market.  It was just plain old yogurt.  Now with markieting schemes, it’s practicall everything except yogurt.
——-

Connie Schultz on C-SPAN today, slipped and said that “TARP, and Health insurance and Medicare reform and Social Security reform bills were not perfect but they .......”  I think she caught her slip a little too late.  As far as the public knows, there are no Medicare and Social Security “reform” bills.  Does Ms. Schultz, with access to the pillow talk of her husband Sherrod Brown of the great state of Ohio, know something different?

The Deficit Panel co-chaired by Crazy Al Simpson of WY, Cheney’s home state, and E. Toilet Bowles of NC are going to release their report in December.  The “Lame Duck” or the “Limp Dick” congress will be in session then.  Let’s see how limp their dickies are when they unveil the bill to “reform” Social Security and Medicare.  Get ready!

Those two bills have already been written.  That’s what Schultz’s slip of the tongue meant. And she knows about ‘em.

They’ll say it’s a compromise.  Compromise now means do whatever the right-wing Republicans say.

Ezra Klein can’t understand why a congressperson would take the money and then take such stands so as to risk his or her re-election.

I can answer his ponderable.  It’s the oligarchs and plutocrats who’ve taken over.  Congress can retire rich.  Not a bad alternative for a life poorly spent.

So let us return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. 

The wonderful thing about living in the future is that you can pick and choose what elements of the past to bring forward. In the case of the future America should the Tea Party Republican win, it will will adopt elements of the brown shirts of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the economy of the Gilded Age of American circa 1890.

And advertising will make it all possible. 

Democracy will be a dance done in Congress shown on tv and talked about in the papers.

We get their shaft.

1. Powerful and Conti…nuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

“It’s the Stupidity, Stupid” is a nice play on Carville’s advice to Clinton’s campaign.  We were used to hearing the KISS rule, Keep it Simple Stupid.  Now we are like Stupids Gone Wild.

Two recent statements, one by George Will and the other, a slip of the tongue by Connie Schultz, the wife of Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and columnist for the Cleaveland Plain Dealer, caught my attention.

Mr. Will said that in this election cycle $ 4.2 Billion will be spent.  He brushed that number away as being insignificant, really.  To put it in perspective, he adds that Proctor & Gamble spends that in one year on advertising, and that amount is spent by Americans per year on yogurt.

Wellllllllll.  Why does George Will think P & G spends that kind of money on advertising? 

I’ll tell him why.  Advertising works!  Glitzy ads make people feel and think that they need to buy this product.  Or in the political sense, they make people think the sky is falling in.

And the yogurt.  Say, “Activia” to song.  Dannon.  All the rest.  That’s how they boost their sales.  Cute little ad pitches.  I remember in the early 60s when yogurt was being introduced to the American market.  It was just plain old yogurt.  Now with markieting schemes, it’s practicall everything except yogurt.
——-

Connie Schultz on C-SPAN today, slipped and said that “TARP, and Health insurance and Medicare reform and Social Security reform bills were not perfect but they .......”  I think she caught her slip a little too late.  As far as the public knows, there are no Medicare and Social Security “reform” bills.  Does Ms. Schultz, with access to the pillow talk of her husband Sherrod Brown of the great state of Ohio, know something different?

The Deficit Panel co-chaired by Crazy Al Simpson of WY, Cheney’s home state, and E. Toilet Bowles of NC are going to release their report in December.  The “Lame Duck” or the “Limp Dick” congress will be in session then.  Let’s see how limp their dickies are when they unveil the bill to “reform” Social Security and Medicare.  Get ready!

Those two bills have already been written.  That’s what Schultz’s slip of the tongue meant. And she knows about ‘em.

They’ll say it’s a compromise.  Compromise now means do whatever the right-wing Republicans say.

Ezra Klein can’t understand why a congressperson would take the money and then take such stands so as to risk his or her re-election.

I can answer his ponderable.  It’s the oligarchs and plutocrats who’ve taken over.  Congress can retire rich.  Not a bad alternative for a life poorly spent.

So let us return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. 

The wonderful thing about living in the future is that you can pick and choose what elements of the past to bring forward. In the case of the future America should the Tea Party Republican win, it will will adopt elements of the brown shirts of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the economy of the Gilded Age of American circa 1890.

And advertising will make it all possible. 

Democracy will be a dance done in Congress shown on tv and talked about in the papers.

We get their shaft.

Fat Freddy
Sorry, meant 19th Century, and the Industrial revolution did create the middle class it’s true, but that was then and this is now.  It also devastated the native indians, huge tracts of land, rivers, lakes etc.  Placer mining being the poster child along with the near extinction of buffalo, and leave us not neglect it’s legacy of global warming, pollution etc.

The difference between theory and practice strikes me as the crux of the Free-Market debate.  Great theory; unworkable in practice.  Same for the charity model; how’s that work in a Katrina or megaquake senario? It doesn’t.  Money is another unnatural creation of man which doesn’t behave like other commodities and rot if you stuff it in your mattress, or safe.  Ever hear of demurrage? It means putting an expiration date on currency like you do on milk, etc.  It prevents hording, forcing it to circulate. Have you read any of Mike Hudson’s stuff?
http://michael-hudson/2010/07/from-marx-to-goldman-sachs-the-fiction-of-fictitious-capital1/

Capitalism, with it’s endless growth requirements, is also quite un-natural.  We need steady-state economic systems.  Currently the financial sector is disproportionately large, while the manufacturing sector has fallen into near ruin, but it’s all that’s keeping the economy afloat, along with the wars. Government’s mission to my mind (and yours), is to defend our liberties, but keeping a short leash on corporations, banks and insurance Co’s is essential to that.  Ban lobbyists, revolving door job swaps and any money from business in Government.
They should have put that in the Constitution also! So much for my theories; doubt they’ll see practice, but love to see ‘em tried out at least.  Maybe when civilization rises from the ashes of our imminent decline, presuming survivors who aren’t as stupid.
Hopefully they’ll also control population growth, which is the root of many of our troubles. Don’t care and won’t be here to see it, except the crash, which I’m expecting shortly!  Good luck, and hope you have charitable neighbors!!

MINDLESS IS AS MINDLESSNESS DOES

Pat: They made a pact that it was going to be run “their” way: enforced by thugs; Gov and businesses working unitedly; city, county, state and Fed exactly as it is today.

Yet again more mindless conspiracy theory to add to the chaff on this forum.

Will you go elsewhere with this mindless nonsense? Go!

Conspiracies are the damnedest things. If you ever tried to mount one you’d understand their complexity—and why they fall apart so easily. What is suggested above is puerile fantasy of a warped mind that sees conspiracy in every nook and cranny.

HAS BIG-MONEY CHANGED AMERICAN POLITICS?

Is BigMoney changing American politics? Zat is ze kwestion (as we say in French).

The answer is controversial. Many (like me) think that there is a very large contingent of very stupid Americans who believe the Replicant mudslinging thrown at them by the media, particularly on TV and that it does indeed sway votes. Many think the money is just thrown down the drain, because Americans are intuitively more intelligent than we “sophisticate progressives” think.

If the the latter above is true, then great chunks of moulah are being wasted, particularly since the Supremes opened the floodgates of secret donation giving. Some estimates put it at more than 200 megabucks. (Think of all the Public Option HC that money could have bought had it been recuperated by increased taxation ...)

Regardless, let’s not forget that a great many ruling are made not by the national Supremes but by the state Supremes. In the middle of the controversy comes this reporting from FactCheck.org, worth reading here.

mdgr:  You write:  “The only salutary news, after all, is that America is headed for its own self-destruction. Our job as voters, I should think, is to facilitate that in whatever way we can.”

Destruction is never “salutary.”
Self-destruction is suicidal.
And after “the Samson Option,” then what?

“I should think,” is right!

Suggestion:  Free yourself from your Vichy/Berlin syndrome and think of all the good stuff that’s worth saving and all the good young people and children who deserve to not be crushed when the temple falls.

In this comment you sound like some kind of an avenging angel, and I wonder why you don’t consider other less destructive possibilities?

“We have the ability to change the government. We cannot change private businesses without stomping on their rights, and in effect, our own rights.”

“We can, however, “force” banks to operate honestly by eliminating the institutions and means that facilitate their ability to operate dishonestly. “

Utterly, completely wrong.  The entire idea that there is a single, super simple (or rather, primitive) system, basically without explicit checks and rules, that “works well”, and does what’s “good for everyone”, is the same stupidity as what’s behind every single ideology based system.  Things are not this simple, and noone who believes in anything this primitive should be allowed to have any power.

The free market, as *any other system of regulation* (in the engineering sense), works only within certain parameters (and only until these parameters are independent from conscious control from the system’s participants).  A free market is not a naturally occuring thing.  It’s something you have to create and maintain, using a lot of energy, in the forms of rules bounding it (like, for example, anti-trust rules etc). If these rules and limitations are missing, there can be no “free market”, as it quickly distorts and destroys itself.  Saying that all limitations and rules have to go for this free market thing to work is simply stupid.

As economic development using free markets allows (or rather, leads to) concentration of power, it is almost inevitable that this power will try to change the boundaries.  That’s a completely natural thing - power just wants more power.  If you allow this power to influence the boundaries governing “free markets”, in the form of political or military power, its goal will be to add distortions and exceptions to free market rules.  In addition to this, if you allow this power to accumulate through generations or through merging of business entities, this will in itself distort the free market. 

Simply put: “free markets” haven’t ever existed as a “natural” thing - they are not something that would occur naturally, but at best they’re a human creation that needs continuous spending of force (in the form of creating and enforcing laws and rules) to function.  If you leave it alone, the resulting concentration of power will always lead to its destruction.  If you use them well, they can be a good *social tool* for the regulation of some aspects of the economy. 

They’re just a human creation not a natural force or law of nature. If you believe free markets are anything more than this, you’re basically a religious believer in them.

FALSE GODS

GE … while the free market religion is a belief in a mechanism that solves all problems.

But it turns out to be a False God. In key market areas, there is no “freely competitive market”. There is oligopoly.

That is, in its hell-bent rush towards market concentration these past three decades, the US has reduced competition, leading to market limitation – aka Market Oligopolies.  Meaning, too few Suppliers to meet an increasing Demand (from a population size that grows larger each year naturally). Which produces juicy profits.

Two examples are Telecoms and Health Care.

TELECOMS

The former was supposedly “deregulated” by the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996 has left us fractured version of the Ma Bell monopoly (i.e., Baby Bells). There has been not much competition, except now with the advent of Internet Telephony – but even that was foreseen by incumbent telephony operators who were given enough time to assure that they were the sole suppliers of DSL services (which permit Internet telephony, including video-phones).

The consequence has been that the Baby Bells were able to “cherry-pick” their markets. This means they went after the easiest markets,  the urbanites and the suburbanites – whilst the rural communities were left to wait. Why pay the marginal cost of installing DSLAMs (DSL Access Modules) for so (comparatively) few people? The marginal revenue that resulted was considered simply not worth it.

What is the difference therefore between “free enterprise” American-style and the European version? Very simple. The European incumbent operators who were privatized were sold the telephony network (the fiber-optic and copper lines into the homes that belonged to government) but they were obliged, by the regulators, to serve the entire national geography in DSL interconnect. That is, anyone who had previously a telephone service was required to have access to large bandwidth Internet services.

Moreso, they had to allow any and all other operators wishing to provide DSL serves to connect to the network.

So, instead of creating a “competitive market”, telecom deregulation in the US created Supplier-dominated oligopolies. And, as a result, the US has some of the highest DSL-service charges in the world.

HEALTH CARE

Rather than yet another boring explanation, here follows the national depth-of-competition map of health care insurance companies – which shows graphically how non-competitive HC insurance is in America today. For the infographic, go here.

CONSEQUENCE - Free Market Dogma

We’ve been had. Real bad. And because of a simplistic bit of dogma that insists “free markets” are competitive. They can be, but only if regulated to be so. Meaning no market concentration allowed and if they must be allowed, as with telecoms, then prices are strictly regulated (as it once was with MaBell).

To avoid price gouging in Europe, a National Health Service mandates service prices of HC practitioners (doctors, specialists, hospitals and pharmaceuticals). And the result is a total Health Care cost that is, per capita, half that of the US—for the same level of competence.

I absolutely agree that this system has nothing to do with free markets, which are
basically the same type of utopia as communism.  The difference is that communism is a
belief in the basic morality of human beings, while the free market religion is a belief in a
mechanism that solves all problems.

to Fat Freddy
Even the Declaration of Independence is a collectivist action. “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed,...” Governments exist that is collective actions of individuals ban together to create functioning societies. These individuals pledge themselves and their wealth (read taxes) to the Government for the greater good.

To conflate “the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) guarantee the protection of individual,and unalienable rights (the Declaration of Independence) as a defense that the Constitution is not about the common ( read collective) good is just throwing a little bit of everything at the argument in the hope that it sounds good. It is not an argument of merit.

All Governments are about a collected action to create a sustainable society. The disagreement may be on the nature of what the collective actions should be and in what spheres of life the collected actions should be limited.

That the collective action must first collect taxes for the necessity of Government is a given. National defense is a given. National Education is a give. National care of the less fortunate is a given. The regulation of trade is a given. The regulation of individual actions by individuals that do not go beyond the individual should not be regulated such as the prohibition of alcohol, the prohibition drugs, the prohibition of medical procedures (read abortion) etc.

Fat
Your logic is convoluted and unclear.
If the parent is the government - then there is no doubt that the child was spoiled rottne.
But the child is a capitalist one - engaged in the pig-rout of profiteering greed. That is what is significant - the child has hurt itself because its ‘freedom’ (read free market) was not properly curtailed.

American capitalism is and always has been an
abomination because a system that strives to
concentrate wealth into the hands of the few is
unnatural and corrupt.

Our system today has proven itself to be nothing more than a disgustingly perverse imitation of the
European 14th century model where the royals owned
everything (including you). Then they claimed “divine right” to their status much as the wealthy today claim it in the name of property
rights.

It is sickening that there is any traction
whatsoever for this argument within the working
classes. But what can anyone expect when all the
existing institutions are mandated to promote,
maintain and enforce the status quo?

Today’s American conservatives are criminals and
should be jailed for their crimes against
humanity, not worshiped as examples of Calvinistic virtue. America’s self-proclaimed liberals are
equally disgusting and should be treated as pariahs because they are weak, fearful and unable to frame a message to begin a meaningful insurgency against the financial class. In fact in my opinion these liberals are the moral equivalent of the WWII Vichy French NAZI collaborators.

Embrace your inner anarchy, socialism or communism
and proclaim it from the rooftops. Shout down those thugs that continue to wrongly associate socialist philosophy with something foreign and evil. Americans were at the forefront of socialist movements beginning in the mid 19th century and running through almost to WWII.

As long as the language is controlled by our enemies how can we bring an argument explaining what anarchy, socialism and communism really are to the people? And why these systems are more democratic and egalitarian than anything we have experienced before.

It was only cleaver and thoughtful preemptive moves by the financial class in collaboration with government that prevented a socialist society from developing and flowering right here. They feigned defeat and parceled out very limited concessions to workers and unions in order to blunt a potentially successful challenge to their power.

It worked mostly and Americans returned to a somnolent state while allowing those pulling the levers of power to very slowly begin unwinding and erasing the gains of the working class.

So long as Americans buy the “don’t believe your
lying eyes” peddled by the institutions of
power concerning the sanctity of property rights (how Old Testament
is that?), our freedoms, and our economic opportunities, we will never see an egalitarian society take root here.

In light of the latest actions from our corporatist SCOTUS, all legal recourse left us against the artificial super-personhood of corporations has been erased.

Hopefully, we’ve had the scales fall from our eyes over the past decade or so. Seeing rightly that we are no longer a nation of laws based on blind justice. Our nation/society has been exposed ase a true kleptocracy that no longer feels any reason to hide its activities.

Now that money equals speech, those of us
without any sizable amount of it have been
effectively silenced in the public arena. And since we are legally prevented from knowing who is funding the groups we despise, we can’t even bring what pathetic power we have to bear against the offenders by voting with our pocketbooks.

The war has been waged largely in secret and with
much disinformation being shoved our way, but the
results are in. We lost!

Wakeup people. The end of our society has arrived and we are all now “de facto” serfs.

A society which permits some individuals have 7 homes, 2 yachts, 32 luxury automobiles, enough cash to buy a small country and others are literally begging for coins at freeway off ramps is no longer legitimately sustainable.

Ironically, we have become what those post WWII
Soviet propaganda films showed America to be. A
nation of mass inequality run by criminals.

RayLan

If a child asks for chocolate cake for breakfast, and the parent gives it to the child, who do you blame, the parent, or the child?

We have the ability to change the government. We cannot change private businesses without stomping on their rights, and in effect, our own rights. We cannot restrict the rights of banks, and businesses without restricting our own rights of private property and voluntary, private contract.

We can, however, “force” banks to operate honestly by eliminating the institutions and means that facilitate their ability to operate dishonestly. If we allow solvency requirements to dictate bank actions the need for most regulations would disappear. There were no Bank Panics or runs on banks before the National Bank Act or the enactment of fiat currency. The National Bank Act and legal tender laws were created to fund the Civil War. Now, you can say the Civil War was a “good war” (like WWII), but the facts remain. It destroyed our free banking system, never to return. The fact is, government has been manipulating the banking system in order to wage wars. Even the Revolutionary War was funded with “Continentals”, which eventually crashed. At the end, they were only worth 1% of their original value. Will we ever learn the lessons of government manipulations of the free market, or are we destined to keep repeating them?

Anyway, what other alternative is there? Complete control of the exchange of goods and services?

truedigger3

This is a good example of the wrong and cold hearted thinking that is stemming from the Libertarian Frame of Mind.

I resent that comment. Libertarians are not “cold-hearted”. We want the same things, to provide for the poor, we just disagree on the ways to accomplish it. Americans are the most giving, and charitable people in the World. No American, that I know of, wishes to see people suffer needlessly, not even libertarians.

I know there is a collusion between government and a manifest capitalist society - so what does that prove? De-regulation has accelerated in last thirty or so years to bring us to this point.
So what if government is a willing accomplice? It’s still a movement towards run away capitalism - That’s what you don’t get. It’s the private sector, the National Debt that busted - not the public sector which tried to bail it out.

Charity is preferable than government in temporary situations that require immediate help and attention, but why force senior people, the disabled and widowed or abondaned women with children to be charity cases for years with its accompanied possibel indignities and uncertainties.

I think you have it backwards. The government should be there to provide a backstop. The government created Welfare system is a trap. It is a “one-size-fits-all” system that creates a dependency on government. Look at all of the restrictions placed on Welfare recipients. Granted, many of those restrictions are there to prevent abuses of the system, but in the process of implementing these restrictions, the government is preventing people from ever leaving the system. People on Welfare can not work, or save money. People must go from complete dependency, to absolutely no dependency. There’s no “in between”. People are prevented from working a part-time minimum wage job to gain experience to eventually get a higher paying job that they can actually live off of. On the other hand, private charities have the flexibility to address individual needs, and allow a “middle ground” of benefits. Under the government program, every individual is entitled to the exact same benefits regardless of what the individual needs of the recipient are.

We (you and I) are also dependent on the government in the current Welfare system. We depend on the government to provide for the poor and underprivileged. Government programs alleviate our responsibility to directly provide for these people.

And don’t forget we live in multi race and multi ethnicities society with its biases, stereo types and possible latent hostilities etc etc which will interfere with delivering equitable help from private organizations.

While I agree with the first part of that statement, which is unfortunate, but will always exist, I do not agree with your conclusion. In fact, by making charity purely voluntary, it will actually eliminate the biases of average citizens. It is the current system of force that creates misgivings, resentments, and even anger. If the system is purely voluntary, no one can effectively complain. Our system is based on the immorality of theft. Taxation is theft. You can try to justify it however you like, but the fact remains that the government is taking people’s money, through the use of force.

The fact of the matter is, the poor and underprivileged are not currently being taken care of effectively. The reason is, there is no opportunity or incentive for these people to leave the system. However well intentioned, our current system creates, and reinforces poverty.
The reason is, it’s foundation is based on theft. I do not know how a truly voluntary system would work, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is, our current system does not work, and it is predicated on immoral behavior; the aggression of theft and coercion. Recipients are also the victim of government coercion, because they are restricted of what they can, and can not do while receiving benefits. Welfare robs people of their individual freedom and dignity.

If you would like an example, look at blood. Can you imagine if the government tried to force people to give blood? Thankfully, for the Red Cross, that will not happen. If there is a shortage, for whatever reason, people flock, in droves, to donate, to help their fellow Man. Imagine that!

Synman,

Didn’t we do free-markets in the early 1900’s; J.P Morgan et al?  All we got was monopolies and Pinkerton men shooting strikers.

We did free markets in the early - mid 1800s. Ever hear of the Industrial Revolution? The free market is responsible for lifting more people out of poverty than any other system ever created. Of course, there were problems and abuses. The problems were mostly due to the lack of government performing its most basic functions, which are the protection of life, liberty and property, and the prohibition of fraud, robbery, trespass and misrepresentation. You do not need “big government” to provide these very basic protections.

“For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth. ... Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before.”

People from Europe flocked to this country for the opportunity to earn a decent living for themselves, and their families, and people continue to come here from all over the World, just for the opportunity. Some achieve it, some do not, but all have the opportunity. No where else in the World is that possible, and it’s all the result of the free enterprise system.

RayLan

You don’t get it. The collusion was implemented in 1913, with the Federal Reserve Act, and the creation of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) in the Banking Act of 1933. The situation was exacerbated even further, with the removal of any real restraints, when Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 (Nixon Shock).

You keep citing that “deregulation” is responsible for the banks actions. I submit to you, that it is impossible to effectively regulate the banks at all, under these conditions.

The “deregulation” you speak of merely set the stage for a bubble to be formed in the mortgage industry. I also submit to you, that with all of the cheap, easy money being poured into the banks for the past 10-15 years, that had a bubble not formed in the mortgage industry, it would have formed somewhere else in the economy, and been just as devastating. Whether you look to the Austrian economists, like Mises and Hayek, or the neo-Keynesians, like Hyman Minsky, they will both reveal the same thing. Too much cheap money creates bubbles. What part of that do you challenge? Get your head out of the Socialist toilet, and look at the entire system, for what it is; collusion between government and private bankers.

rancone

The Constitution was written to form a union of the colonies (states). It is not collectivist, for the most part, because the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) guarantee the protection of individual, unalienable rights.

The difference between people collectively joining together to pursue common interests, and collectivism, is collectivism requires, or demands the sacrifice of individuals, and individual freedoms for the good of the group. In effect, the rights of the group outweigh the rights of the individual. This is not the case of the Constitution. In fact, it is the opposite.

There will always be conflicts of rights between individuals and groups, and individuals and other individuals, and groups and other groups. That’s why we have courts. Collectivism will always give precedent to the group.

After reading comments here and elsewhere I am more struck by the limitations of language than anything else, although stupidity and ignorance just make it worse.  Rampant misuse of socialism,facism,liberal, free-markets etc. without much attempt to define ‘em
is exasperating.  I’d love to know how it’s possible
to invoke free-markets and regulation in the same sentence, since they are mutually exclusiive I would think, by definition!  Didn’t we do free-markets in the early 1900’s; J.P Morgan et al?  All we got was monopolies and Pinkerton men shooting strikers.

Small government might sound good, but then you get Salmonell, E. coli, BSE in your food, anti-freeze in your cough medicine, quack doctors and dentists, no Social Security or Unemployment, Insurance Co’s that don’t pay off, Banks that go bust and your SOL, etc!
The only way to slap down big corporations is with big government.  Sadly the gov is in bed with the Corporations who’ve bought much of it, and most people don’t seem to mind; that’s STUPID!

Our march towards idiocracy and facism is complete, or soon will be, and I frankly don’t give a damn anymore as I’ve spent 60 yrs watching “Bozosapiens” run this country and planet into the ground. It’s embarassing to be a member of a race of morons, and I do occaisionally wonder if the Third Reich would have bred a race of “Ubermenches” or just a bunch of blond, blue-eyed worker-bees?  At least they would not have been stupid.  Zeig Heil and see ya in Hell

MUST DO BETTER

aac: The 1st graders of 1973 would be in their 40s now, many having been educated to about the level of 7th graders of another time.

Not really. See the evolution of SAT scores (1972 to 2008) in the US here.

Even if the SAT scores indicate a fairly constant evolution of intellectual capacity in the US, on an international level, the comparative scores are dismal for the US. See the PISA scores historically for the most recent period (2000 to 2006) here.

The US is nowhere near the top in any of the three tested categories. And countries that throw much less money at secondary schooling do better than us.

We’ve got a lot to learn ... about schooling performance.

POST SCRIPTUM

But, of course, the Replicants are going to solve that problem too after the mid-term elections, aren’t they. After all, they invented the “Education President” - and we’ve all seen what wonderous improvements in education he brought to America during his administration.

Yeah, right ... back into the abyss of ignorance.

One of the first shots fired in the “Republican Revolution” was Prop 13 in California, the “taxpayers’ revolt” of about 1973. which gutted the educational budget, sending California in 30 years from first in the nation in education to among the last. A difficult task since all the other states subsequently jumped in to the race to the bottom. After all, kids don’t vote.
The 1st graders of 1973 would be in their 40s now, many having been educated to about the level of 7th graders of another time. The perfect population for the propaganda blizzard and political upheaval we are undergoing in this decade.
Coincidence? Maybe.

@FatFreddy
All the additional causes you cite - government/corporate collusion was implemented by letting loose Wall Street practices which securitized toxic sub-primes which include Freddie amd Fannie= It’s all a failure of regulation. Reagan allowed Wall Street so much free reign that it was eventually possible to invent exotic instruments like derivates that nobody realized where bets against their own investors assets. Your ire at the suggestion itself strongly suggests you are still under the spell of the impossible dream of capitalist euphoria.

>Republicans, “baggers”, or whatever you call them would never again see an electoral victory if we had an educated rather than indoctrinated society.

Neither would the Democrats.

Moreover, true progressives would summon the courage to resign from that party rather than hiding under the lobby-inflated coat tails of the DNC.

And yes, that includes such luminaries as Feingold, Franken and Kucinich who, after all is said and done, still continue to try and save Dracula’s soul.

Our population is still fed the lie that Vichy is better than Berlin, that the “lesser of two evils” is a goodness, and that the sky will fall (never mind Obama’s magic veto) if we act according to our principles.

But David Sirota is right. The real issue is our unlimited stupidity.

The only salutary news, after all, is that America is headed for its own self-destruction.

Our job as voters, I should think, is to facilitate that in whatever way we can.

Republicans, “baggers”, or whatever you call them would never again see an electoral victory if we had an educated rather than indoctrinated society. While the right rails against the liberal bias of the academic world it thinks nothing of dragging preschool children to myopic, bible-thumping brain washings every Sunday until the little darlings become “OF THE BODY” and learn to hate differences and celebrate conformity, and authority, especially when said authority is white, male, and wealthy. In the world of Humanity I’m afraid that the “average” American is becoming a VERY alien species of unknown potential for catastrophic harm!

Re: By Fat Freddy, October29 at 1:51 pm

Far Freddy wrote:
“It is the responsibility of individuals to take care of the poor and underprivileged, not the government. The most successful charitable organizations were created by individuals..”
______________________________________________

This is a good example of the wrong and cold hearted thinking that is stemming from the Libertarian Frame of Mind.
Charity is preferable than government in temporary situations that require immediate help and attention, but why force senior people, the disabled and widowed or abondaned women with children to be charity cases for years with its accompanied possibel indignities and uncertainties.
The right way is to have a national governmental system that provides for their needs and thus preserving their dignities and sparing them the uncertainties of the “whimsical good hearts”.
And don’t forget we live in multi race and multi ethnicities society with its biases, stereo types and possible latent hostilities etc etc which will interfere with delivering equitable help from private organizations.

Re: By Fat Freddy, October 29 at 12:38 pm

Fat Freddy wrote:
“The liberal knee-jerk reaction is, more regulation. What good will more regulation do, if the existing regulations are not enforced?
____________________________________________________

Fat Freddy,

You are partially right, however, the repeal of Glass-Steagal was important step in setting the stage for the current debacle.
Also, Wall St. fought tooth and nail to prevent any regulation of the Hedge Fund transactions to make the transactions transpartent and recorded in a national registry to know who is doing what and if there is any shenanigans going on.
Finally, there was no regulation for preventing anyone from insuring and collecting insurance on a transaction that he IS NOT party to it which are called “Credit Default Swaps”.
Many banks and investment houses in Wall St. bought these CDS knowing due to inside information or future shenanigans that there will defaults on the insured transactions and that they will collect the inusurance. Goldman Sacks and others did that and caused the demise of AIG and Leehman Brothers and collected their money, anyway, from the government bail-out.
There has to be integrity, but regulations and their enforcement are essential too.

I find it amusing that someone arguing against the problem being stupidity thinks we are in a free market system, or that some would actually take us there.

Free Marketers for Federal Subsidies

Free Marketers for Socialized Risk

Free Marketers for Trusts

Class warfare? I think there’s some truth to that and it’s mostly LOW CLASS.. sorry for the pun.

Here’s something interesting; according to the recent Harper’s Index.. average Government jobs now pay way more than average Private sector jobs.. I don’t recall the exact numbers, something like 45% more.. Wowzers!

So in the context of the rich against the rest of us po folks aren’t we most all at least a little bit oppressed by government? The Tea Party people are nuts (kindest thing I can say)!.. but don’t we all share at least a little exasperation with government? Government using our taxes to enrich itself? .. grow itself? While our own incomes shrink?

If you begin to also accept the reality that government is increasingly non-responsive and ineffective.. heck, we are all oppressed and overtaxed.. maybe the Party animals have a point!

Adios!

C.Curtis.Dillon:

Loved your BMW story. It underscores the point that Ariana Huffington has made that we are becoming a third-world country and it offers no real argument against that much-desired inevitability. That’s because—and I’m glad you agreed with my earlier points along these lines elsewhere in this thread—that there is no such argument to be made.

We live somewhere between Rome and the Third Reich on the metaphoric scale, and if I were a citizen of either empire—especially if I were destined for the Coliseum or about to be recruited as slave labor—I would very much wish the demise of the state. I certainly wouldn’t be trying to save it.

A lot of people—including David Sirota, but it was actually his most salient point—often miss the forest through the trees. They get lost in the convoluted finer-points but fail to see the “gestalt” right in front of their nose. 

The bad news is that as a country, America is not just brutish but eminently stupid. The good news is that the wheels are coming off and, because of its stupidity and arrogance, it is going over the cliff.

Why should I care about at this juncture about “lesser and greater evils” given the fact that the only political parties on the ballot are Vichy or Berlin?

If I had my druthers, I would choose to give this empire that calls itself America the tools with which it could destroy itself—hopefully very soon, and without a lot of collateral destruction to the rest of the planet, to make an ugly pun.

The latter probably couldn’t be avoided, but America’s decline into that of a third world country is something I would not lift a finger to try and stop.

Liberals would—as defined by Chris Hedges and as exemplified by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama—but I have no truck with them.

Good article by D. Sirota who says “this means that the current crisis is deeper than we imagine.” Some of us agree with that and also believe it is a multi-dimensional crisis, although it is generally seen as a temporary money crisis only.  So it becomes something similar to the case of the abused wife who is dependent on the abusive husband and can’t consider any possibility of change. Her life and her children’s lives may be wrecked but the fear of change takes over. She also starts believing her spouse is not that bad after all, and that the crisis is not that deep and others are worse off.  Values suffer and priorities get mixed up. I had a relative like that.  She complained but she complied, took refuge in religion, and her children became very damaged adults.

The problem is conflating the corporate-socialist regime we live under as free-market Capitalism. It is not!

From direct subsidies to corporations, to government (your $$$ and mine) supported communication, energy and transportation infrastructure, to government-granted monopolies in the form of intellectual “property,” to regulatory barriers against small-scale competition, and in countless other ways, there is NOTHING “free-market” about our economic system.

The “free-market” mythology is useful to both the statist left and right. The statist left can hold it up as a bogeyman to scare the sheep into further empowering the parasitical technocratic/bureaucratic class and the corporate elite right can hold it up both as a justification for their ill-gained wealth and as a beacon of hope (albeit bogus) to their benighted serfs.

Both are running their own con game—complicit with the other.

Check out the alternatives:

http://all-left.net/

http://c4ss.org/

http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com/

http://mises.org/

Me thinks Fat Freddy does not get the Constitution. The Constitution is a collectivist (and secular) document. It was meant to join together collectively to : “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, 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, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” This joining together took away both State and individual rights.

Fat Freddy, the individualist, I use as a stand in for all who advance the stupid notion that the Constitution is about individualism. This is the “stupid” as used in this article, as in uneducated and goes well beyond the apparent woes of the current election. 

In 1789 The US adopted a new and different way to Govern itself. The Constitution and the Federal concept of uniform laws, a collectivist action agreed to by the ratification of the Constitution is what was implemented. It should be noted that the Constitution did not exist in 1776 or during the period period when the United States was governed by the Article of Confederation. Only when we collectively adopted the uniformity of man made laws (and significantly and deliberately secular) did the USofA begin to progress to the nation it is today. Do we have more progression to do - Yes. Continued Amendments to the Constitution; continued Supreme Court decisions for privacy rights; and continued enactment of regulatory powers over business, the mercantile class, by Congress will all be necessary to progress this country. Individualism in any form or pretense, the supremacy of the strong or the avaricious, is not the form of Government we have or want.

Those who claim that the systematic breakdown of market regulation over the
last 40 years was not pushed by free-market fundamentalists remind me of
those Christians apologists who claim that the torture and death of thousands
of alleged witches were not carried out by “True Christians ™”.

While it might be unfair to lump all brands of free marketers together, it is
equally disingenuous to invoke the not-a-true-christian argument in an
attempt to dodge the thrust of Sirotta’s piece.

Don’t the ideological cant distract us from the simple fact that the last three
decades have seen the greatest redistribution of wealth in American history.
And unfortunately that redistribution was from the have-less to the have-
mores. Whatever label you choose, it is evident, from Greenspan’s public
embrace of Objectivism to the repeal of Glass-Steagle, that much of this
redistribution was made possible by a lifting of regulation, making markets
nominally more free.

Like that old game show says: may the real redistributionists please stand up.

Thank you David,

It seems to me, that a free and fair society
considers the illusion of independence/individuality
as a state of mind\being, that can be adopted by its’
citizenry, because of the tangible realities a free
and fair society naturally musters, administers. But,
this desired state of independence and/or
individuality must not be taken seriously, as should
the creation & management of the systemics\policies
of a free and fair society that can give its’
citizenry such options of personal perspective and
behavior.

However, a citizenry that takes the illusion of
independence/individuality so seriously as to
practice perpetually, attempts to reify such
illusions, well, they never grow up, evolve, pursue
enlightenment, etc….

This is a citizenry which does not at all take
serious, the systemics and policies of their society,
as a path to progress and maturity,, justice, etc….
This massively delusive posture creates and manages a
society’s systemics and polices in such a way that
they are in fact considered, treated, believed to be,
practiced, as an illusion.

And like any illusion, that is known to be so, can be
ignored on a whim, since it was just smoke and
mirrors after all,, and conversely the limitation of
the individual and the fantasy of independence are
actually not so,, and are always enough,  concrete,
and the real deal. 

We got the illusion in front of the horse, and the
horse is an ideal that only pulls when taken
seriously, and certainly only when it is
tasked/burdened with hauling mature\enlightened
abstractions.

I wish I could say that a free and fair society’s
systemics and polices should be taken seriously,
because with enough time, it not need be the case,,,
but if I did that, it would wreck havoc with this
infantile state of affairs, foster even more
deliberate and willful ignorance, since it would be
giving too much information too fast,,, so I won’t.

Rhuen Phreed
11 Marlborough Street, #22
Boston, MA 02116

Disrespect. It’s standard operating procedure these days. If their fellow citizen doesn’t “think” just like these arrogant blowhards do, they’re “stupid” or “Baggers” or “pukes”. Uneducated, backwoods toothless wastes of DNA.

These are the same people that ram legislation down other peoples wallets and then get all huffy when the legislation they were told was going to cause problems, causes problems.

They are, as stated below, Authority freaks. Nicely done, Anarcissie

Few of these snots paid more than a half an hour of attention to what Hussein was talking about when he was running and they can’t believe others haven’t fallen for the smiling jug eared bush copy.

I can’t wait to see the smirks wiped off a few smug faces tuesday night. What goes around…

There is a bit of consolation in knowing that if these jerks have kids, those kids and their grandchildren are going to be paying back the dollars these sloths are borrowing. It’ll be kinda like a prison where you get to work 6 days a week. They can get lots of authority in a prison.

Mardy, October 29 at 12:30 pm:

Why are so many, like Fat Freddy, who make comments on
Truthdig so far off the wall, so educated far beyond
their intelligences….

Facts are best refuted by presenting other facts, not by generically insulting the learning and intelligence of those one disagrees with.

I take it from Sirota’s title and from remarks like this one that the authority model for those who call themselves progressives is still school.  In school, those who don’t go along with authority are said to be ignorant and unintelligent.  By contrast, rightists prefer the authority models of the military and religion; for them, those who don’t go along with authority are supposed to be weak, dishonorable, or evil.  One spirit moves them all, however: the command that the others submit.  Authority is supreme, and there can be no respect for or even curiosity about competing opinions.

Tobysgirl, October 29 at 12:33 pm:

Everyone is supposed to be “100% responsible for his own life,” huh? The Nazis held this idea…

They did not.  They held that human beings naturally cohered into tribes; for them, the Volk was paramount, as directed and exemplified by the Führer or leader and organized into a totalitarian society.  You can’t get much further away from personal responsibility for one’s life, which is probably why it was so popular in its day.

In New England, we farmed out the aged and other dependent folks to the lowest bidder, who often fed them as little as possible.

Who is “we”? “We the People”? The government? It is the responsibility of individuals to take care of the poor and underprivileged, not the government. The most successful charitable organizations were created by individuals, not the government. The reason many of these groups can not provide for all of the underprivileged, is because they must compete with government charity. However, “government charity” is a contradiction. There is no “charity” from government. Charity is voluntary contribution. Government is coerced contribution, which is why it will ultimately fail.

What proves that free market capitalism doesn’t work is that it has been allowed to run amok for the last thirty or so years - more and more de-regulation- and look what happened.

No it hasn’t. Everything that has happened has been by design, manipulation, and control. Just because a few people spew the words of free market capitalism, and take a very few of those principles, and haphazardly implement them, does not mean we have free market capitalism, nor does it prove its failure. What is a failure, is crony capitalism. You can not pick and choose which free market principles you wish to implement, then say we have free market capitalism. The fact is, nobody in government really believes in free markets, or have ever allowed them to flourish properly. The “failures of capitalism”, are the direct result of government interference.

Facts:

Fiat, debt based currency is fraudulent.

Fractional reserve lending is fraudulent.

The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent institution.

These things are the foundation of our current finance and economic systems and have in place since at least, in part, since 1971, and 1913. When a system is built on fraud, that is created and endorsed by the government, the only logical result, is more fraud. Fraud is not a function of the free market. Eliminate the fraud at the foundation, then we can begin to talk about free markets. But no one wants to do that. We just point fingers, and avoid the underlying problems, because those “underlying problems” directly benefit the few, at the expense of everybody else.

Capitalism is not the problem. The fraudulent manipulation of it, is the problem.

Mardy

Ahh yes. The old collectivist argument. Individuals must be forced to sacrifice for the good of the group. That’s all well and good, until they force you to sacrifice something you are not willing to give.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n4E2tAQBVE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej5L3aJMlPA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3YxvySQqkk

I can assure you, I am not a Tea Partier or a Republican. Therein lies your problem.

Labels.

If you feel you must place a label on me, I prefer individualist, anarchist, minarchist, anarcho-capitalist. My beliefs are based on the non-aggression axiom. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats represent individualism. They are both statist collectivists.

” How is it that the fact most
Americans are ignorant of the fine details of government economic facts
indicates that the free market system is faulty?”

Your comprehension of the argument of this article is faulty. What proves that free market capitalism doesn’t work is that it has been allowed to run amok for the last thirty or so years - more and more de-regulation- and look what happened.

RayLan

The de-regulation of Wall Street that began with Reagan is the direct cause

Wrong. “Deregulation” was a contributing factor, as was Fannie and Freddie, but not the cause. Collusion was the cause. The collusion between the banking cartel and the government. Artificially generated low interest rates, for an extended period of time, and widespread fraud were the direct causes of the economic problems. Debt based money, instead of asset based money, allows the government, and the banking cartel to manipulate the economy to their own ends. That is not free market capitalism, it is crony-capitalism.

The ultimate regulator here is the Federal Reserve. They control the money. They tell the Treasury how much money to print. Who owns the Federal Reserve? It is not the government. It is the private bankers that own the Federal Reserve. How can you, or anybody else, expect an institution that is owned by the banks, to regulate the system? Most people believe that the Federal Reserve is a government institution. There lies the problem.

Nobody is calling for complete deregulation. It is a primary function of the government to protect people from fraud, robbery, trespass, and misrepresentation. There is no question that there was fraud in the mortgage industry. So who is in prison? Who is bankrupt? Nobody, thanks to government intervention. The liberal knee-jerk reaction is, more regulation. What good will more regulation do, if the existing regulations are not enforced?

If there was any justice in the financial industry, the insolvent banks would have been seized by the government, and their assets sold off to the highest bidders, punishing the shareholders of the failed banks. Once the banks are seized, the books of the banks would be open for scrutiny, and a case of fraud could by built against the upper management, if one exists.

That’s how real capitalism and real enforcement is supposed to work. You got a problem with that?

Everyone is supposed to be “100% responsible for his own life,” huh? The Nazis held this idea and busily murdered the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, the disabled, without much of a peep. In New England, we farmed out the aged and other dependent folks to the lowest bidder, who often fed them as little as possible.

This mindset is so vicious and stupid that it speaks volumes about what is wrong with our nation and our world. Never, in a successful human society (which I doubt has ever existed in so-called civilization), have people expected each individual to be fully responsible for his or her own well-being. We are social animals, or evolved to be so, and as Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Does my left hand refuse help to my right hand?”

And don’t scream about all those capable people getting rich on welfare. I think every person who thinks this needs to live on welfare for, let’s say, a year or so, with no other income, and see how they like it.

These comments prove the very thesis of Sirota’s piece.

Why are so many, like Fat Freddy, who make comments on
Truthdig so far off the wall, so educated far beyond
their intelligences, so in favor of the perfect and so
much an enemy of the good or even the better-than-the-
alternative?  I’m beginning to think it’s because
they’re really tea party members in disguise.  When the
Repugs take over, thus moving us from the frying pan
into the fire, we can thank people like Fat Freddy.

I wonder about David’s basis for the article. How is it that the fact most
Americans are ignorant of the fine details of government economic facts
indicates that the free market system is faulty? That is an evidence-less,
irrational, conclusion.

It needs to be discerned that free enterprise, where each person is free to
choose her entire lifestyle, including whether to be self-employed or employed,
is totally different from corporate capitalism; where corporations are allowed to
be perceived (media wise and legally) as entities, as opposed to the truth that
they are just names; and almost all corporations are run from a greedy and
irresponsible perspective.

I’m 63 years old, and have been self-employed for over 30 years. I have never
been incorporated, and always attempted to offer quality products for a fair
price. As do many many business owners.

The main problem with our system, as I see it, is that the status quo has bought
the idea the government is supposed to take care of all problems; totally
ignoring that no government in the history of the human race has ever
effectively taken care of a single problem. Governments have a purpose: to
provide a legal structure, and and an administrative structure (provide essential
services private companies won’t: post office, air traffic control, a military,
police, libraries, primary and secondary education for all, etc.). But they are
inherently incompetent at solving people’s problems, such as a lack of health
care, or difficulty finding a mortgage; and should stay out of such businesses.

Out of the Daddy and Mommy state, which is in essence liberalism, there is
such huge spending that though much graft and corruption major corporations
are given an extremely unfair business advantage.

Let’s get the government out of solving problems, eliminate the idea of
corporations (including a reversal of the 1800’s Supreme Court ruling that
corporations have the same rights as people), eliminate every military base
overseas (plus change the Defense Department name back to the War
Department, which was its name up until wwii), and restore the former view
that each person is 100% responsible for his own life. And I believe our country
will move back to being a place where it was a pleasure to live.

Actually stupidity has been an especially American characteristic for a long time - at least viewed from the outside. This gift to be simple extends to many topics besides the economy. What is disturbing is what works - what kind of ads and warped ignorant arguments convince a number of US citizens. The most salient is that the global economic failure was due to government spending when in fact the TARP and bail outs followed the economic tailspin rather than the other way around. The de-regulation of Wall Street that began with Reagan is the direct cause - so only in this way did the government cause the downturn. The lesson that should be learned by those with a functioning brain is that unregulated ‘free’ enterprise doesn’t work -

Stupidity. Ah yes. The stupidity of free market fundamentalism, right? Wrong. Sirota really has no clue as to how the free market is supposed to function. Please David, get a clue. Go back to college and take a few Finance courses. And for Christ’s sake, read Palyi.

http://mises.org/books/inflation_primer_palyi.pdf

Then, spend some time at zerohedge, where the real capitalists are. You might see that it is they who are screaming the loudest for the heads of Goldman Sachs, et al, only with logically reasoned, and well informed arguments, not emotionally appealing fluff, like this.

DS: As Wall Street executives make bank off bailouts, as millions of Americans see paychecks slashed and as our economic Darwinism sends more wealth up the income ladder—it’s surprising that appeals to capitalist piggery carry more electoral agency than ever.

“make bank off bailouts”, “more electoral agency”? And these are just two examples.

C’mon David—you can write better English than this!

C-minus.

mdgr:

Absolutely right, unfortunately.  I always liken America to a huge oil tanker.  It is plowing straight ahead, at full speed, when suddenly someone sees a massive iceberg in the water (not unlike the Titanic scenario by the way).  The captain commands that the ship turn to avoid the collision but, because it was too expensive, an adequate rudder (our politicians) was never installed.  So, as the crew and captain look on in horror, the ship plows inexorable toward disaster, unable to turn or stop.  A collision is inevitable.  Unfortunately, the tanker is full of crude which will foul the water for years to come but at least this vile symbol of a system gone terribly wrong will sink to the bottom, never to be seen or experienced again.  The only sad part in the story, the part that makes me furious, is the captain is rescued at the last minute while the crew, us, are left to sink along with the ship.  The rich (our captain) are saved after pushing the ship to go ever faster and driving the crew to work ever harder only to stand by and watch the whole thing destroyed.  But they aren’t worried as the whole mess is insured by Lloyds of London so they’ll get all their money back.  Only the crew and their families will suffer but that’s an acceptable outcome because the rich still got their money.  In the end, only the rich matter.

On a lighter note, I just found out BMW is building a new factory in America to build their SUVs.  They made that choice after it was discovered they could pay their American workers $15/hour, half what is paid in Germany/Austria.  They have no lack of applicants.  The title of the story ... “Germany’s cheap labor market”.  Thank you American Chamber of Commerce!

Please indulge me. This posting, while lengthy, actually does point back to some points that David Sirota has made. But first, a digression—and one that is not without relevance.

Paul Krugman, with whom I often agree, also supported “that Clinton woman” in 2008. I certainly didn’t agree with that, and tonight I see he has just published his latest column in the NY Times stating that if Berlin (the R’s) does well in upcoming election, we should assuredly “be afraid, very afraid.”

Presumably Mr. Krugman continues to prefer Vichy (the D’s) over Berlin (the R’s). Which is to say that Mr. Krugman, like most liberals, is telling us once again to vote the lesser of two evils.

Mr. Sirota, however, has put his finger on a much more salient issue. We are, after all, a nation of morons. Everyone on both sides of the aisle seems to assume the Yanks are somehow entitled to survive, even if they’ve revealed themselves as fat, dumb, perfidious and narcissistic to a fault.

The real question that Mr. Krugman and Mr. Sirota never ask, however, is this:

What’s wrong with America’s going the way of the dinosaur? What’s wrong with our knowingly unleashing such invidious cycles in the body politic of this country that its infrastructure is depleted and its military is wasted? What’s wrong with adopting a voting strategy designed to destroy America’s economic and military hegemony, rather than trying to preserve it?

To Mr. Krugman, I would say that David Sirota is at least partly right. If the principle of “survival of the fittest” means anything, ours is a country that that one should not try to save, but rather euthanize.

While Arianna Huffington has taken up the cause of preventing America’s slide into becoming a third-world nation, I would grease that slide with lard.

The law of the moment applies not just to America, however.

It’s universal, and here I find myself in agreement with Mr. Krugman’s melodramatic closing statement. We ALL should be afraid. Very afraid, indeed.

But not of that silly thing called the lesser of two evils. Not at this late stage. There are three little words that we need to be afraid of.

Can you guess what they are?

Hubris. . .

Nemesis. . .

SPLAT. . .

This is the new normal, I fear. With the death of humanities, arts and civics
education in the public schools comes ignorance and lack of critical thinking. Add
to that the fact that the majority of Americans are just fine with an education
system that produces tools and you’ve got a recipe for teabaggery. There will
always be those who seek out truth and understanding, but those numbers
dwindle with each generation.

People have to want to change and most Americans just want things to return to
easy again. Informed citizen is a dirty word that equates to geek, or worse,
socialist.