More Ayn
As Pagan points out, I am selecting these for demonstration purposes but hey, either the body of your work holds up or it doesn't. There is a tremendous resurgence in the popularity of Rands writing and I think it needs to be examined.
Question: "...why shouldn't we give up a measure of freedom to enable the government to protect us against pollution?"
Ayn Rand answers: "To give up some freedom because of allegations about pollution is to give up your freedom of judgement,your freedom of production,your freedom to control your life...Even if the ecologists had some knowledge- which is singularly, eloquently absent- it is still up to them to convince you..."
This was written in 1970 and is a "singular, eloquent" example of how Objectivism is less a system of thought than a program for corporate dominance. It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to criticize her error about the threat of pollution. What is much more disturbing is the totalitarian impulse which leads her to create an antagonistic order called "ecologists" who demand to "control your life".She and Himmler discovered the same potent techniques.
More Ayn on pollution: "Industries should not avoid pollution or save endangered species, however, at the price of massive unemployment and the destruction of an industry."
"If it were proved that nuclear testing is a danger, then such testing would be prohibited ,or more likely ,moved."
"..I do not believe those stories about nuclear fallout, because they all come from leftist sympathizers of Soviet Russia."
A real prophet old Ayn, no wonder they still seek her wisdom.
posted by troutsky @ 9:36 PM
35 comments
35 Comments:
I disagree with Ayn's belief that industry should not be regulated, pollution being just one example. The question becomes, what degree of regulation should there be, and how best to enforce it.
I think it is best enforced at the local level, though there should be a degree of federal government oversight to avoid corruption in the form of bribery to corrupt state and local officials.
The problem is, regulation becomes an industry in and of itself, and the more intrusive and oppressive it becomes, the worse for everybody. It affects all in a negative way, much more than just the company's bottom line. It affects the workers, it affects the local economies, all in a mostly negative way, including the taxpayer who has to pay the tab for enforcement of a plethora of regulations the majority of which are ill-advised and unnecessary.
All that being said, pollution is an interstate issue. Air and water pollution that originates in Kentucky isn't going to turn back at the Ohio state line out of respect for state borders. Some degree of reasonable regulation and enforcement becomes imperative.
@Pagan
From his comment on the previous post:
Nor is there any reason to jump to the conclusion that the wealthy and the not-wealthy are natural enemies. Admittedly there are times when there are conflicts...
Okay, not 'naturally' enemies, but often enough to make it seem quite a general phenomenon.
Regarding pollution, Rand's comments indicate the fundamentally religious nature of her thought. Thou shalt not regulate...what? Corporations. Money-making individuals. (Of course, the corporation IS a legal individual, but as to why, well, that's a contingent historical matter.)
But really, why NOT regulate. As long as it's done democratically. We always regulate, traffic, hazmat...etiquette is a lax form of regulation. It is not intrinsically bad.
Pagan seems to agree with this last point, but says,
The problem is, regulation becomes an industry in and of itself...
Well, as an engineer with a lot of experience in the water pollution control business, I can say that I agree COMPLETELY. Yes, I frequently refer to myself as a worker in the 'regulatory-industrial-complex.'
Nevertheless, this characterization
It affects the workers, it affects the local economies, all in a mostly negative way, including the taxpayer who has to pay the tab for enforcement of a plethora of regulations the majority of which are ill-advised and unnecessary.
is TOTALLY without foundation. Yes, regulatory agencies (in the environmental field) are often dumb, blundering, and wasteful, and there are many cases of rules that are so counter-productive and blockheaded that it can make you scream.
And the alternative? Laissez faire? Sorry, we tried that. China tried it for the last thirty years. The USSR tried it. It leaves a really BIG MESS!
So, yes, let's have some degree of reasonable regulation and enforcement.
After all, the 'reasonable' IS the 'rational', so even Rand would agree...
I disagree with Ayn's belief that industry should not be regulated, pollution being just one example. The question becomes, what degree of regulation should there be, and how best to enforce it.
------------------------
And what we absolutely know is that without fail, the market is a terrible agent of regulation. At this point, for the right to say that markets are reliably self regulating is like the left saying Stalin was just a swell guy.
Can states do the regulation? Probably not in most industries. Take the right wing talking point about health insurance and the desire of the insurers to have open competition and write policies across state lines.
Sounds good but what these leeches want to do is incorporate in the state with the most lax regulation and scam the suckers.
You are going to have to move in pretty mysterious ways to demonstrate that deregulation commencing with the Raygun era has been a positive.
I think the right has an out. Identify the current system as state capitalism. Call a thing by ts name and admit that Dem or Rep is simply a ridiculous distinction.
In a way we may be after the same goals.
Heard an interesting news story ths morning. Bill Clinton (D - Robert Rubin's cabana boy) is very sorry that the trade policies he implemented have been so harmful abroad. He cited Haiti which was growing sufficient rice to feed itself as late as the mid-80's when subsidized American rice tarted creeping in. Now they have to import rice with their scarce hard currency and are left with no possibility of development, just debt and the IMF. State capitalism.
We have become a destructive force as a nation, especially since the reign of Saint Ronnie Raygun. The right needs to come clean and admit the results of their little von Mises utopian failure and start cutting their losses.
See this about Ayn Rand firefighters.
Blogger ate up my last comment, but I'll sum it up this way. Unnecessary regulations put brakes on economic growth in ways that affect everyone, from workers to the overall economy. When you have stagnant economic growth, then you have less employment, and those who keep their jobs have less money to spend beyond their most basic needs. Or, if they do have more to spend, they still tend to spend less of it. Regulations by their nature contribute to this, so while some of them are certainly necessary, the less of them the better.
On top of that, unnecessary regulations require a larger amount of taxation. At a certain stage, higher taxes benefit no one, including those dependent on government services. All that extra tax money is merely going to fund regulatory enforcement, and again, of regulations that are largely unnecessary and unwarranted.
@Pagan:
Regulations...some of them are certainly necessary, the less of them the better.
Okay, I'm sure we all can agree on this. Let's not have UNnecessary regulations. Now, the hard part. Which ones are necessary?
BTW, I am firmly against too much of anything.
Seems like a classic, "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
We are imperfect and our institutions are imperfect so there are going to be some bad regulations. Surely though, Pagan, after what we have seen in the financial sector you can't miss the wisdom of keeping an eye on these guys. Heck, everyone from Adam Smith on warned of unregulated capitalism until folks started smoking that Ayn Rand crap.
@Ducky:
...everyone from Adam Smith on warned of unregulated capitalism...
Well, I don't know. I think the smoking got started pretty early on, way before Anney Randy.
As for Adam Smith, when I heard Ed Meese quoting him in days of yore, I decided to go and read him. Boy, nothing like the original sources! Clearly, most of those who invoke his name have not ventured past the John Birch condensed version.
Interesting article on Krugman and Keynesianism.
"Keynesians have a somewhat different theory, but mostly they address a different point. For them, "creative destruction" may provoke a social movement challenging capitalism itself and demanding fundamental social change."
If that's true, we should have some challenges coming soon.
-----------------
@Lichanos --- Yeah, I may have been guilty of hyperbole but as you note Adam Smith would be a revelation to the right if they read Wealth of Nations.
@Renegade
When I saw this post about the firemen, I thought it was a spoof! Wow, some folks really DO live by their principles, thank heavens!
Happy birthday, Joe Hill !
you folks are all high on the wrong shit... how can you possibly defend industrial civ? This is not a political problem, reg or no reg... it is a problem of POV... it is an issue of using the wrong lenses!!
Then what shall we do, Kultur? Save ourselves?
Can the changes be made quickly enough? Even if they can't why not try?
@Ducky:
I think that what Kultur is saying is - maybe to mark John Lennon's death 30 years ago yesterday -"You better change your mind instead..."
Oops. I meant to mark his birth 70 years ago!!
"Seems like a classic, "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
"We are imperfect and our institutions are imperfect so there are going to be some bad regulations. Surely though, Pagan, after what we have seen in the financial sector you can't miss the wisdom of keeping an eye on these guys. Heck, everyone from Adam Smith on warned of unregulated capitalism until folks started smoking that Ayn Rand crap."
That's all the more reason why we need to keep government in check. I don't believe in no government, but I damn sure believe in limited government. Limited, yet strong and efficient, with a very clearly defined set of goals and powers that it should never step beyond.
In other words, to quote Lennon-"Power To The People".
Cos "one thing you can't hide-is when you're crippled inside".
And if anything will cripple the people, inside AND outside-the economy, the world, etc, it's a big, intrusive, overreaching government bloated with bureaucracy.
If there's anything that's a perfect example of "the perfect being the enemy of the good", its a bunch of nanny-state bureaucrats trying to run everything from top to bottom.
And Ducky's point about human imperfection only proves that point.
Why give a relative handful of imperfect humans bureaucratic control over the masses? Its a recipe for disaster.
Pagan, you assume that governments are ineffective. On the contrary, they have state capitalism pretty well perfected.
Government is exercising power. Now you can take the Tea Party line and say that it is just exercising it in a random undirected fashion, exercising it in favor of an oligarchy, exercising it for the benefit of the populace ... take your pick. I think you'll find the general opinion is that in America or China or Irag or Colombia, wherever, it's exercised for the benefit of a corporate oligarchy.
Now, how to we redirect the purpose of governance? Allow the pipe dream of the perfect market formed by billions of individual acquisitive appetites to have free range without limit? That's a pretty fine recipe for war and resource depletion but not what we are looking for.
When you state that government should have a restricted and tightly defined range of power I'll agree but when you say "strong" no,no. You tip your hand that you want to whack the inconvenient people if they ask for their share and it interferes with your obtaining a larger screen plasma TV.
So I'm back where I began. I want a government integrated with an economy that is:
1. Sustainable
2. Better distribution capability
The problem I find with most Baggers is that they don't seem to have well defined goals beyond accumulating as much as they desire. The "limited government" meme is just code for not paying taxes and leaving it all to the "invisible hand" which we know is very prone to enormous corruption.
Alas the most insane Marxist in the universe KKKultur says read my Mazzola manifesto. Turn back the clock and you can lead super violent lives. Of course for political criminals like Kapo Ren they are more violent in style and practice than your New Guinea tribesman. Also the tribesman typically have a purpose to their violence unlike developmentally disabled Trotstkyites
like Kapo Ren.
Just burn your possessions and move
to Siberia. KKKultur went to Siberia because his appearance in a loin cloth on his manifesto would be an aesthetic impediment to manifesto sales.
Join KKKultur and you too can live out your Tarzan fantasies. Krolic of the Jungle will be the sequel to George of the Jungle.
What a one note loooooon
No Ducky, when I say "strong" I just mean it should have the power to do those things that have been relegated for it to do, nothing sinister about it. Maybe a better word than strong would be "efficient". But I guess you could make that sound sinister as well, like for example, making the trains run on time. That's not where I'm at.
I'm not an adherent of libertarian philosophy. It's all airy fairy stuff to me. The genius of the constitution is that it was composed by brilliant men, mostly renaissance types, men of power and influence who wanted to keep their wealth and influence and build on it. They went about it in a way they thought would gain them the support of the people in accomplishing their goals.
They didn't really have any far-ranging vision for a brave new world far flung into the future-in my opinion. They just wanted to create something that would work, using basic common sense principles, in a practical manner.
Self-interest is not always selfish. There are ways of balancing it with a greater common good in a way that they are not in conflict, or when they are, it can be resolved.
It is no more ideological than a business or marriage contract. It is more a matter of practical convenience. The federal government is given limited powers over certain areas while at the same time recognizing the limited sovereignty of the former colonies, which were now states. At the same time, an amendment process was embedded to sweeten the pot, thus enabling such one time necessary compromise agreements, such as recognition of the rights of slave-owners, to be amended at the most opportune time.
Not when there was just enough agreement to form a simple majority, but when such ideas had evolved sufficiently that the feeling behind them was more than a mere transitory whim of the moment.
That's the genius of the constitution. It's practical common sense wedded to self-interest. They knew that a central government which was given too much power would be a destructive force, at least in the long-term, but they knew there needed to be a limited central government with clearly defined powers in order for there to be consistency and order, or the system would just become weak and ineffective and eventually be dissolved, or supplanted by something possibly as bad or worse than what they had just overcome.
Unfortunately, people have been deluded and fooled into thinking that government is the answer to everything that is wrong, when in reality, more often than not, it is the origin of most of our problems. But of course, that is nothing but politicians and their enablers promoting their own self-interests, which are the interests of their powers, and the bureaucrats who support them.
Well,Pagan, we have a saying. About your Libertarian leanings, "If it quacks like a duck ... ".
What I don't ever understand about, let's call them Federalists with Randian tendencies, is they're complete inability to realize they are also advocating for utopia.
They worship a Utopian idea of the "free market" (LMAO) and resort to silliness like stating that the left thinks government is the answer to "everything".
As for the "genius" of the founders and the Constitution. Well, you can just as easily make the case that they were under the sway of the John Locke enlightenment property fetish. Did they solve the problem of who gains power and how that power is administered? I think not.
Did they solve the economic problem of reasonable distribution of wealth? Since they were forming a government and not an economic system, no.
Sustainability? Again, no?
Freedom of speech? Rupert Murdoch thinks so but we have it in name only. The noise machine can pump out the cliches. Like the man said about freedom, "Talking about it and doing it are different things". Americans are terrific talkers.
@Pagan:
Unfortunately, people have been deluded and fooled into thinking that government is the answer to everything that is wrong...
I hear this a lot! What does it mean?
What people have been deluded into thinking that government is the answer to everything? Is that why "liberal" is now a smear word?
Why has the Republican Party done so well? Or are you saying that the Rep and the Dem all agree that government is the solution? So you are a Tea Partyer?
This is just sloganeering passing as argument for 'Federalism.'
WHAT is wrong? THAT is the question. Then you can decide if government is the solution.
Obesity in children? Well, public health agencies clearly have a role to play in education. Should we let corporations market their swill in elementary school? Is that interfering with their rights?? Outlaw soda? I don't think so...Prevent people from using food stamps for it? Okay, why not? We don't let people buy tobacco with them. So, government is part of the solution.
How about the fact that 1% of the population controls about 5O% or more of the wealth? Is THAT a problem? If you don't think so, government obviously has no role in the non-solution. If you do, then it does. Unless you think the answer is that everyone should just work harder.
I can't say I've ever met anyone who thought the government was the solution to everything that's wrong. That's just a campaign line for people who don't like what it does.
All I can say is that when it comes to a choice, people that favor liberal policies almost always, without fail, vote for politicians who promise to use the power of government to enact social and economic change. And without fail, liberal politicians almost always, without fail, try to increase government involvement in ever-increasing areas of people's lives.
That might be your cup of tea, frankly its not mine. I said earlier that I believe in limited government, but I don't believe in no government.
I'll amend that. If it came down to a choice between too much government and absolutely no government, I would pick the latter, easily and with no hesitation. I would like to think it doesn't have to come to that.
Not only is limited government more conducive to freedom, its actually more efficient in that it helps maintain the kinds of conditions that are more conducive to growing economies, which with just a little oversight can lead to a greater proportionate share of the nation's wealth, with a minimum involvement of confiscatory taxes or property theft, if any at all.
I had an ancestor who left a small little hardscrabble farm in Kentucky in the 1890's and went to California. In a few years, he owned a twenty-plus acre farm, with an orange grove.
He would play hell doing that today, unless he had some kind of acting or singing talent, in California or anywhere else. Why? This was back in the bad old days of the so-called "robber barons". I don't know about anybody else, but I sure as hell wish he had left me that California land, I bet it would be worth a small mint today.
Government erects barriers and hindrances all the while claiming its looking out for the "little guy" in doing so. Yeah, it loves that "little guy" so much its going to make damn sure it takes care of you and keeps you a "little guy". Then of course you're supposed to feel grateful that they care enough to "help" you kick the nicotine habit, and makes sure your kid doesn't have a Twinkie at school.
Give me a break. If you want to be ruled by an heir to King George III, just say so. You can always immigrate to Britain, the last I heard his descendants are still the titular rulers. We kicked their asses out of here, and frankly I don't want them back, in any form.
Taxes and regulations in all areas of life, ever increasing bureaucracy, more and more laws to rule everything from what you eat to what you do for a past time, gas taxes, sin taxes, this tax that tax, everywhere a tax tax. And for what? How exactly has this improved life for anybody other than politicians and bureaucrats, and a few special interest hustlers?
It hasn't done crap for anybody beyond that, and never will.
No capitalist country that ever accomplished anything, ever, without a strong state sector. Infrastructure in America was built by high taxes and protective laws. Free enterprise did nothing to start the space program. China's development was based on socialist built infrastructure. Israel was built by Labor Zionism.
In terms of capitalism, both Keynesians and monetarists are right. Keynesianism doesn't speak to inflation, while monetarists are stuck when interest rates fall as low as possible.
The ultimate libertarianism, is the masses controlling government, military etc; rotating bureaucratic jobs, nobody a bureaucrat because everyone is, no salary for a politician above the average worker they represent. No standing military or police, arm citizens.
@Pagan
[Government] loves that "little guy" so much its going to make damn sure it takes care of you and keeps you a "little guy"...
I'm sure you'll get little argument on this from the radicals reading this blog. Their point, and it's a good one, is that the government has been totally captured by the 'robber barons' and serves their interests.
What amuses me no end is that people of your ideological stripe seem to think that less government will help the little guy. In fact, it will help the barons grind him into dust as it pleases them. In a 'liberal' capitalist state, the government is the only thing that can resist the power of the huge monied interests. The radicals think it's futile, the more liberal think some good can come of it.
Then there are the advocates of 'federalism' and 'limited government' who are quite happy to be royally screwed just as long as their taxes don't go up. More often than not, those with such opinions are already in the top 10% of the income distribution curve - no, I don't mean you're a rich fat cat. Take a look at the income curve, and you'll see how little you need to make to still be better off than 90% of the poor slobs struggling to get by.
And without fail, liberal politicians almost always, without fail, try to increase government involvement in ever-increasing areas of people's lives.
Almost always, or without fail? Which is it? Nevermind. It's like saying that fishermen without fail try to catch fish. The liberal political ideology is that the involvement of the state can benefit the majority of the people. Dispute it if you can, disagree if you must, but don't say it's bad because it does what it says it will do.
Taxes and regulations in all areas of life, ever increasing bureaucracy, more and more laws...
Love this stuff. So oppressed are we! When I read this sort of sloganeering I think of this quotation from a favorite book of mine - since you brought up your ancestor, let's get really historical!
The higher one rose towards liberty, the more the area of action was covered by law...The knight did not obey fewer laws than the ordinary freeman, but very many more; the freeman was not less restricted than the serf, but he was restricted in a different, more rational way. Law was not the enemy of freedom; on the contrary, the outline of liberty was traced by the bewildering variety of law which was slowly evolved during [the] period...The most highly privileged communities were those with most laws.
Get it? Laws, per se are not the destroyer of liberty, as you seem to assume. I don't even know of what you think your liberty consists.
Really, aside from traffic regulations - those are okay, aren't they? - I really don't find laws very irksome day to day.
[quote is from The Making of the Middle Ages by J.B. Bury - read it here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1yAuAPxIOL0C&lpg=PA61&ots=ZfEqUnuySk&dq=bury%20%22making%20of%20the%20middle%20ages%22&pg=PA108#v=onepage&q=laws&f=false
So, Trotsky was a Federalist. Who woulda thunk it? Ren, you're a real comedian. Sure, there's some areas of common ground, but it falls apart pretty quickly without property rights, and without clearly defined limits on government, and without clearly defined rights of citizens both as groups and as individuals.
Your way leads to one of two things-Mobocracy or Stalinism, in most cases probably Stalinism or something similar. There are a lot of reasons it turns out that way, not the least of which is careerism among bureaucrats. While you're busy implementing plans to build socialism and to guide the evolution of socialist man over a period of two or three centuries, Bureaucratic Man raises his ugly revolutionary head and makes sure his place in the scheme of things is secure. And by the time a few decades (let alone a couple of centuries) passes by, nobody cares anymore.
And I love how Ducky tries to put me on the defensive by insisting that I'm a Libertarian
And I love how Ducky insinuates I'm really a Libertarian, I'm just trying to deny it, or maybe candy-coat it.
("Psssst, hey little girl, can I show you my constitution".)
I don't deny I have some Libertarian leanings, I'm just not an ideologue or a fanatic about it.
The real truth is I just want to limit government growth but at the same time make it efficient. I want spending cuts across the board, including military spending. Do we really need to spend billions of dollars on outmoded weapons systems? Is it really necessary for the US to have hundreds of military bases all over the world?
I'm kind of mad at Christine O'Donnell for stealing one of my ideas. Why not have the government pay for medical care of veterans, but do so by letting them go to their own local doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, as opposed to making them make trips sometimes involving hundreds of miles round trip to some ill-staffed and poorly run VA where more often than not they have to spend a whole day navigating a bureaucratic maze going from first one place to another.
That would be a good example of government acting efficiently, and would save tons of money.
@Pagan:
...as opposed to making them make trips sometimes involving hundreds of miles round trip to some ill-staffed and poorly run VA...
The VA hospitals used to be uniformly of very high quality before their resources were cut.
Degrade the service, then argue that the services are worthless. That's usually the strategy of the limited government politicians.
You, Pagan, may be more logical and reasonable, but you should really look under the hood at these arguments you use. They have a long history, a political history. Were not doing an academic exercise here.
Everyone wants government to be efficient and small as practical...that is, practical in meeting their goals. What are your goals? What is the proper end of government?
Lichanos-
You might have something of a point, but at the same time, no matter how well run, staffed, and efficient a VA Hospital might be, there's no way humanly possible to make them work as well as the plan I outlined. The fatal flaw in your argument is the simple fact that, as you stated, to make VA Hospitals work better requires more funding. Back to Square One.
Put yourself in a veterans place. Suppose you had to make regular visits to a VA Hospital, and this typically involved a weekly or monthly round trip of fifty, sixty, one hundred miles, or even more. Wouldn't you find it preferable to instead go to your own local physician, hospital, pharmacy, etc?
Bear in mind I don't advocate shutting all VA Hospitals. Keep some for the more profound or extreme cases, of course, but as a general rule, VA Hospitals by their nature are a waste of resources, and time.
Wow, you guys really took that ball and ran with it. ( I didn't contribute cause I was off fishing. Again, says my wife)
I wish I could publish that exchange as a great example of rational debate, the kind wholly lacking in Congress or in the general political culture. I don't think "academic" is a pejorative in this case ,Ducky. Society needs an academic re-learning on what political-economy means and how to find your position in that matrix. And then be able to articulate it.
I believe Ducky's point about State-Capitalism vs Liberal Democratic Capitalism is the one that is the crux. The more you dig at this one the more our current condition (and it's contradictions) becomes clearer.
I realize that Kultur sees no escape along this route, that industrial civilization is itself the contradiction. My only answer is that democracy provides the only possible solution in terms of deciding what "industrial" will mean.
Pagans point about bureaucracy is also key. The transition period to a new model is so often thwarted by this tendency.
Lichanos sees things in terms of watersheds, a very valuable perspective when speaking of property rights and sustainability. Rivers don't recognize boundaries. As far as regulation, how could we find a better example than Hungary where a river of toxic sludge just wiped out several towns.
I'm glad you reminded me of that, which is a perfect example of why sensible regulations are necessary. I would point out of course that Europe as a general rule is the most taxed and regulated place on the face of the planet. Regulations without oversight is a toothless tiger, which is why they are expensive, and which is why too many of them, and unnecessary ones, are a drain on the overall economy, and this would be true no matter what kind of economic system you labored under.
There were obviously supposed to be regulatory safeguards to prevent this, which is why the sludge was kept behind a retaining wall to start out with. It just got too easy, and too profitable, to ignore them for far too long. If there were active supervisors to keep an eye on things, it stands as an easy assumption to make that somebody got paid to look the other way. Happens far too often, which is why there needs to be oversight.
In the case of the US, this would be a common occurrence without federal oversight, while with nothing but federal control it would turn into a boondoggle, with laid off employees and longer work hours making up the expense of adherence to constant bureaucratic and mostly unnecessary and even nonsensical rules and regulations, many of which would be political posturing to environmentalist groups, or labor unions, or in the case of the other extreme, lax regulations that benefit the businesses and no one else.
The irony is, everybody cuts their own throats while their cutting each others. Employers, unions, bureaucrats, politicians, all seem to be involved in a conspiracy to worsen matters and of course the public pays the bills in the form of higher prices, and taxes.
@Pagan:
The irony is, everybody cuts their own throats while their cutting each others. ... of course the public pays the bills in the form of higher prices, and taxes.
Who or what is 'the public.' Everyone not in a union, not a bureaucrat, not an employer, etc? Are you actually implying that employers are NOT part of the public? That sounds almost radical.
Yeah, everyone is part of the public, and nobody is. We're all really the same, right?
There is power in society, and politics is about who has it, how they get and hold it, and what they do with it.
Let's assume that retaining wall failed because of a bribe...are you assuming that the payoff to some inspectors is equal or similar to the profits garnered by the owners of the factory, improved by not having to pay for 'stupid' protections? Just as water flows one way, downhill, so do the effects of power - from those who have it onto those who do not.
Pagan, something may be beneficial to the economy but the quality of life may be lacking.
Now, a guy go through a divorce while undergoing cancer treatment and living next to a toxic waste cleanup site is great for the economy. I don't know if it represents a good quality of life.
What I think we have on this thread is a challenge. Kultur threw down. Is there anyway to make industrial capitalism anything but a mug's game? That's the question we have to come together to answer.
Must Kapital be radically reformed and tamed? Yes, I've come to think so. I agree with Gramsci and feel we have to attack it through the culture but your mileage may vary.
Or we can be like, you know who, and go hyperbolic calling Obama, of all people, a communist and living with blinders on.
Too bad Rand Paul doesn't live in that laissez-faire paradise outside Budapest.
Ducky: The monetarist and the Keynesian approach, are dialectically related. Neither can solve this capitalist crisis.
There can be a recovery, but under capitalism, no return to any period of good times.
Yes, I accept that, ren. Keynesianism vs. monetarism is a dilemma.
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