Finance reform, or a snappy return to greed-is-good?
After this recession is over
Predictions vary but many say our economy will be well on the road to recovery in 2 to 3 years. In fact some are saying things will look much cheerier in 2009.
Then we’ll see a rapid return to the old ways.
Obama will install a few fixes into the economy, and sensible regulations will be hammered onto the financial markets – a few new laws.
Take a breath.
A few new credit cards arrive in your mailbox; suddenly a new crop of businessmen are talking razor slick, and prices begin to creep up again.
Then begins a new national scramble for stuff.
Your broker calls you on the phone chattering about miracle recoveries. New armies of salesmen with 12-foot smiles will be pushing holdings, stocks, shiny investments. – And more of those two-story SUVs.
And this recession will be like a squall of very bad weather that slows the traffic down terribly. (Collapsing banks are like, bad weather.) – But no change in traffic direction.
Eventually the weather passes. Amazing wreckage to be seen, yes. More clearing. But eventually, the old scenery is plain as day again.
Moving again.
And no change in the nation’s final destination: more.
Back to shopping as the center of life.
Listen. Three years is not enough to change the scenery, not the towering corporate landscape. Not the precipitous differences between rich and poor. Not the thick roots of Social Darwinism ever-budding through the dark soil we stand on.
The sooner the recovery, the shorter will be our memory for this debacle. (Anybody remember the Savings and Loans collapses, twenty years ago?)
A snappy return to greed.
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Keeping the pilot light on
Since the late 1970s and Ronald Reagan’s inauguration we’ve seen supply side economics, deregulation, an explosive growth of free markets, the sapping of union power.
The Left’s objective is still vague. Liberalism gets its spirit from equality and collective action. That spirit is all but broken, witness the precipitous inequalities in America, witness the virtual disappearance from our language of terms like “the common good,” witness unions at their all-time low memberships, witness the Supreme Court retreating from enforcement of anti-trust laws.
During the Bush administration, the Left’s tolerance melted into passivity. Energetic leftists of the 1960s, once in the media spotlight, grew wealthy and cautious.
Not just that. Any spirit on the left was also broken down into fractions. Watch a peace march, a good place to find leftists, and you saw a sea of different banners, for as many different causes. All of them good. But there was no center.
Ten years ago, the left reached crisis point.
It’s the money. The left needs to find something else besides wealth.
Today, everybody in America sleeps safe under a star, the idea that one day, they will be rich.
Americans navigate their whole lives by that star. So commercialism dominates everything – and it has saturated even the left. Commercialism everywhere. Look around – commercials even dominate left-wing blogs.
And in Congress, too. Too often, Democrats sit quietly, waiting for the lobbyists to call.
Sold out.
This President is new. But which way to turn?
No fallen flag to grab up. Well, what have Democrats been doing?
In Congress, the first order of business is the economic collapse – undoing the money mess created by the previous administration. Rebuilding our infrastructure. Rebuilding our schools. – But all of those have the tone of cleaning up somebody’s old wreckage. Fixing health care. Job by necessary job. But that is not ‘forward.’
It looks like there is no unified ‘forward.’
The heart of the matter is that there is no new ideology.
Of course there’s leftist commentators. Talk show liberals who churn the air like windmills.
But no coherent new theory, to unify.
Except here.
Only on this blog can you read whether exploitation is ethical. Only here can you read about the contradiction between the American workplace – undemocratic and authoritarian – and the surrounding democracy. Read why social inequality is a killer (there’s new scientific evidence). About the long shadow of materialism. On widening corruption. Here the zero-sum concept is explained. Read how, in the long run, exorbitant greed may threaten democracy itself. A brief summary of opposing Right and Left philosophies here and here.
Opinion is power.
But every year for the last 30 years, debate has faded; the left almost became mute. Liberals have avoided theory confrontations. Not in Congress, not at beer parties.
Every time that happened, the left’s light dimmed.
Left ideology. This blog is where we keep the pilot light on.
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How the Right dominates
People are fascinated by conflict.
The Right wing is energetically shoving blame for the national economy onto the Left. One of the right’s bullies, Bill O’Reilly, deals out his thrashings on t.v.
Bill O’Reilly runs an ostentatious tyranny. It is the source of the public’s fascination with the Right. In this particular episode, Barney Frank is put through the meat grinder.
The Left considers itself too nice for this bruiser style. The Left simply doesn’t have head-crushers like Limbaugh and O’Reilly. There is no Fox News on the left, and right-wing radio shows vastly outnumber left-wing. The Left thinks that being morally good should be enough to prevail.
Like all good theater, this domination is a performance. Watch the body language, and deconstruct how O’Reilly crafts drama with his arm-flinging in this YouTube.
Surviving a reactionary
One look at this man and you know you’re dead: here.
Civil war looming within the Democratic party?
The Democratic party has lost its soul. Here’s why.
If our children are being raised on Ayn Rand, we’re in trouble
- here’s why.
Poll: foreign war
Left Blog
There’s a picture of Sarah Palin at the end of this posting. The posting itself reads as if she had written it!
What is greed? Am I greedy if I want to have electricity to power my house? Other countries in the world don’t have it, so why should we? Is it greedy to want a new TV? That I paid for with money I earned rightly from my hard work? What exactly is greed to you? People should want things that make their life better, and they should be able to spend their money (the money they earned) on whatever it is they want. Is it greedy to buy a boat? What is your ideal?
Looks like someone struck a nerve in Mr./Ms. Anonymous.
There’s alot here, but I’m not sure I understand. Certainly Anonymous is on to something here.
That there are no ethical problems with freedom of choice. that is sure.
But I’ll go beyond that and address the question that is really being begged. What is the cause of the current economic collapse? Is it greed? No! thats to broad.
But then again. It might be right on. I think it is greed. Its the greed of banks, when they lend out other people’s money. This is known as the fractional reserve banking system. and it has the unfortunate effect of lowering interest rates, increasing the money supply, and creating an unsustainable boom. And finally this boom, or bubble comes to an end. and we are in, well, what we are in now.
And that is what has caused our problems. That along with the Federal Reserve.