Another Manic Monday
You just have to start with the Not-So-Super Committee, whose failure to compromise sent Congress' approval ratings to 0.001% for the first time ever. Not even their families will admit to knowing them. One might think the Tea Party would be rallying around this symbolic drowning of government in the bathtub but they remain eerily quiet. ( hint: all but the village idiot now recognize democracy isn't corrupted by government bureaucracy but by Corporate ownership. Obama isn't a socialist , he is a pawn) The Markets are reacting poorly and Max Baucus was charged a cleaning fee when he returned his cape. I personally think it is admirable both sides stuck to their guns ( I am that .001) and the ideology is now front and center instead of obscured. The choice is failed social democracy or failed laissez faire. That's not a real choice.
The demonstrations in Tahrir Square put Hillary and Barack in another awkward fix. It seems to be the excess democracy they don't like and cotton futures are down along with tourism. The Egyptian military is Wisconsin's Scott Walker, free marketeers who don't like unions and could exploit their coalition with religious fundamentalists.
The Spanish Socialist Party lost big in yesterday's elections, in part because they aren't socialists. Like the Chinese Communist party selling real-estate. The German left party Die Link has a coherent anti-capitalist platform but these others are like New Labour or SPD and deserve to lose. And while we are discussing Europe and Markets reacting poorly, it looks like Moody's is on the verge of down-grading France. Neither country is famous for embracing austerity measures.
Everyone wants Occupy to come up with "concrete actions" and pragmatic demands. I am going to go with theatrical, symbolic actions and demanding the impossible. Full employment and National wages and pensions for all. Just to get us started. A democratic economy with fossil free production. Anything I am missing? The point right now is to break the collective imagination out of it's Matrix-like cocoon and force people to choose a pill. That's a Real choice.
posted by troutsky @ 10:33 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
What came first, the pill/choice, or the breaking out of the cocoon?
The dream inside the matrix IS the socialist impossible. Uncontrollable, unmanageable Laissez-faire economics IS "the reality."
Now, try and stay off the drugs, Col. Troutman.
....and try learn the premises that underlie your ideology... I like to call them your "unknown knowns" (see last sentence in link). ;)
Now what the hell did Baucus and Kerry support? We'll never know what those paladins of democracy were up to.
55 billion in defense cuts? Syrian spec-ops are going to be night dropping in Butte, trout.
Baucus and Kerry support raising taxes on the "rich". Of course the more Democrats get what they want, the more the bar gets lowered as to just what comprises the "rich".
Succinct and necessary. See if anyone bites....
Speedy: We can assume then you wish to do away with child labor laws? Environmental regulation? Prohibitions against slavery?
Try to learn the premises which underlie your ideology. Global capitalism is a total, hegemonic system regardless of how "free" or regulated the markets happen to be that month. The cocoon is immersion into that totality.
We disagree on whether you are free when you are working for someone.
Speedy: We can assume then you wish to do away with child labor laws? Environmental regulation? Prohibitions against slavery?
No, but why not? Doing away with environmental regulation is how China manages to kick our *ss in manufacturing. Doing away with child labor laws is how Vietnam kicks our *ss in manufacturing. Doing away with slavery prohibitions is how many countries like India and Pakistan kick our *ss in manufacturing.
If you want to do away with all these "evils". You've got to stop trading with other countries, entirely. Else there will always be child labor, pollution and slavery... because those are the prices that other societies are willing to pay to gain evan a small "economic edge/ advantage" in a laissez-faire system.
We all need our little "competitive edges" in a "global economy". You could try making the imperialist wet dream come true and take over the world and then make international law the sine qua non. Good luck with that. Mono-culturalism doesn't work very well in a multi-environmental world.
The Paradise of the Bachelors is built atop the Tartarus of the Maids (Melville).
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Convincing the bride to simply "dream bigger" isn't going to help the bachelors....
...it just sets more of them to "turning the crank".
I totally agree Speedy, we have a convergence.
We disagree on whether you are free when you are working for someone.
You should be more focused upon whether or not you can be "free" and yet be in "debt" to someone. So long as you are in debt to No one, you are free. But get in debt, and you sell your freedom to your "employer" until the debt is repaid and you've accumulated enough "debt from others" (money) to tell your employer to "shove it"!
But what is socialism, but a system of mutual indebtedness, in which each of us individually is forever placed in a position of debtor serving the greater social need.
I don't want to be in debt to you, troutsky. I don't want ANYTHING to do with you other than what I chose to deal with you on my own terms. Only in THAT manner, can I ever truly be "free".
As Hesiod admonished in his "Works and Days"
Attend thou with eye and ear, and make judgements straight with righteousness. And I, Perses, would tell of true things.
So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due. But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.
Perses, lay up these things in your heart, and do not let that Strife who delights in mischief hold your heart back from work, while you peep and peer and listen to the wrangles of the court-house. Little concern has he with quarrels and courts who has not a year's victuals laid up betimes, even that which the earth bears, Demeter's grain. When you have got plenty of that, you can raise disputes and strive to get another's goods. But you shall have no second chance to deal so again: nay, let us settle our dispute here with true judgement which is of Zeus and is perfect. For we had already divided our inheritance, but you seized the greater share and carried it off, greatly swelling the glory of our bribe-swallowing lords who love to judge such a cause as this. Fools! They know not how much more the half is than the whole, nor what great advantage there is in mallow and asphodel.
Happy Thanksgiving, folks.
Happy Thanksgiving Troutsky, Ducky and the rest of America's Occupiers. ;)
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