Originally Posted by stilltim

How do you know. Do you know any personally?

I do. They're more moderate than you might expect. But, like a lot of groups, the ones you tend to hear are the loudmouth extremists rather than the population as a whole.

Almost 32 years on the edges of the Bible Belt, yeah, I know a few people in the religious right. My parents, my wife's parents, and some other Catholics we know have definitely moderated in the last 10 years since all their kids are secular atheists now, but it's my experience that Baptists are either moving away from the church or doubling down on radicalism. Obviously, that isn't representative of all the "religious right," but those two denominations make up a big chunk of the church's political game.

Originally Posted by Einzige

Not that this is a good thing. The old northeastern Rockefeller Republicans were responsible for, among other abominations, the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the direct inspiration for Nixon's original "War on Drugs" and the legal package most directly responsible for the criminalization of black manhood.

It's very true that the old liberal Republican wing of the GOP - the "actually existing Republicans", as it were - have been absorbed into the Democratic coalition. This is, in terms of social policy, a very bad thing. In addition to these drug laws, it's probably the reason the Democrats pushed such asinine authoritarian policies as school uniforms and the V-Chip in the 1990s.

I lived in NYS when Nelson Rockefeller was the governor. Yes, the entire family are prudes ... but mostly outward looking. Intra-family hanky-panky was considered in a similar manner to practices in Victorian England: a private matter.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

dark blue Same-sex marriage
blue Unions granting rights similar to marriage
light blue Legislation granting limited/enumerated rights
gray Same-sex marriages performed elsewhere recognized
light gray No specific prohibition or recognition of same-sex marriages or unions in state law
light red State statute bans same-sex marriage
red State constitution bans same-sex marriage
dark red State constitution bans same-sex marriage and some or all other kinds of same-sex unions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-se...-state_listing



It's as clear a red-blue divide as there is on any issue, except perhaps the environment and global warming; the same divide is seen. I assume you read through my posts on the Connecticut the best state thread? I mean, what excuse could anyone here have for not knowing this?

It is worth noting that in the following states:


Arizona
Colorado
Michigan
Nevada
Ohio
Oregon
Virginia
Wisconsin

recent polling shows that a majority of voters support same-sex marriage. State legislatures may be behind the times, but the shift has been swift. A majority is necessary for change in laws.

In these states:

Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Montana
Ohio
Pennsylvania

a plurality short of 50% is in favor of same-sex marriage.

The shifts have all been toward acceptance of same-sex marriage.

It is of course hazardous to predict a trend by extrapolation, and of course right-wing Republicans need something to divert poor white people from their misfortune by playing up bigotry. Likewise, state legislatures must switch from majority-R to majority-D in the states in which Republicans still have majorities. The only difference between a Texas Republican and a Michigan Republican is usually an accent.

Originally Posted by Einzige

Not that this is a good thing. The old northeastern Rockefeller Republicans were responsible for, among other abominations, the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the direct inspiration for Nixon's original "War on Drugs" and the legal package most directly responsible for the criminalization of black manhood.

Not all of the mistakes of the Awakening Era were in favor of "peace, love, and dope". The War on Drugs became in effect the War on Addicts.

(I like what the British do -- their National Health System supplies addicts the drugs that they need for maintenance while encouraging them to kick the habit. Anyone who believes that imprisonment makes drug offenders 'clean' is a fool. Prison does a very poor job of teaching offenders how to make rational calculations of pain and pleasure, which should hardly surprise us. Few other institutions, including schools and churches, teach such rational calculations well).

It's very true that the old liberal Republican wing of the GOP - the "actually existing Republicans", as it were - have been absorbed into the Democratic coalition. This is, in terms of social policy, a very bad thing. In addition to these drug laws, it's probably the reason the Democrats pushed such asinine authoritarian policies as school uniforms and the V-Chip in the 1990s.

The Democratic Party became a generally-conservative party with a left wing and the Republican Party became intensely right-wing as it lost whatever its moderates it had.

The good news is that if we have Barack Obama as the new standard of conservatism and something more 'socialistic' as the usual alternative, then America will have solved most of its political pathologies. The bad news is that the authoritarian Republican Party must fade into oblivion, and it shows no sign of do doing.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Here is a map showing who rich people donate to:



http://themonkeycage.org/2012/05/27/...he-super-rich/

Wealthy donors support GOP candidates in 2012 election


it’s good to read Martin Gilens’ excellent work showing convincingly that where rich people and poor people disagree on policy, the federal government pretty much always sides with the rich people. Gilens (a professor of politics at Princeton) has a new book out called Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America.
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2...contributions/

Gilens notes that on many issues, there’s not a whole lot of difference between what poor, rich, and middle-class people think. But on some issues there are some serious differences, particularly on tax, regulatory, and trade issues. Gilens writes:

"Greater representational equality would have a substantial effect on several important economic policies. We would have a higher minimum wage, more generous unemployment benefits, stricter corporate regulation (on the oil and gas industries in particular), and a more progressive tax regime. "

In essence, what the rich want enacted they get, and others are out of luck unless the rich have some split. Our economic order essentially represents wealth far better than it represents the people.

A corollary: the nastier the agenda of the rich is, and the more unified the rich are, the more certain it will be that government will serve the rich and only the rich. Thus if Shylock, Scrooge, and Simon Legree are in accord on imposing mass suffering to enhance profits, life will get nasty and there will be little that people can do about it except perhaps become accomplices, resort to "pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die" rationales, emigrate, go underground, or commit suicide. So what if people elect politicians who seek the opposite? Those politicians will face barrages of Orwellian smears from well-funded campaigns for what the rich want. Just look at how quickly the super-rich turned against Barack Obama.Once the super-rich get their majorities in place their loyal stooges will rearrange things so that the pols who challenged the dominance of the Master Class never face a meaningful challenge.

A precedent exists for such in America: the conservative reaction to Reconstruction. The old planter elite was never dispossessed, and it regained absolute power in the American South for almost ninety years. The former Confederacy became a political cesspool and an economic nightmare for all but the few -- but the planters still got to live much like they did when the plantations had literal slaves. The agrarian elite of the South made sure that industry did not come to the South until the 1920s, and then only the lowest-paying industry (textiles, and that concentrated heavily in mountainous areas that had few large plantations).

Shylock, Scrooge, and Simon Legree are very much in concord these days. The rest of us may be out of luck.

Actually, New Mexico devolves the question of same-sex marriage to the individual counties - eight of which (including Santa Fe County) do in fact grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Thinking about this yesterday, I think a lot of the difference between Libertarians and Conservatives might be in these two slogans. A Libertarian might say "No God, No Master.", whereas a Conservative (particularly Neo-cons) might say "One Nation-Under God". These are two completely opposite visions of a nation.

The current alliance between the two could be in that they are both against what they see as a government out of control. However as Conservatives might be in favor of responsible government (IE big and power military), Libertarians seem to be in favor of little to no government and possibly the elimination of American nationalism in favor of small sovereign holds.

Liberals could also come together with Libertarians on matters of civil liberties. If they feel that a religious and or conservative power is too restrictive or over bearing, they could ally on those issues.

That's what I see anyway.

You're more right than you know, Ghost Echo.

Murray Rothbard, the guy I quoted in my OP ended his career as a hack for Pat Buchanan, but he explored some pretty interesting political avenues in the 1960s and 1970s, including throwing in his lot with the New Left:

For years now, Leonard Liggio and I had been looking for a "left," for an antiwar movement, with which we could ally ourselves. Then suddenly, as if by magic, the New Left emerged in American life, particularly in two great events: the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM) of the fall of 1964, which inaugurated the campus movement of the 1960s; and the March on Washington of April 17, 1965, organized by the Students for a Democratic Society to protest the dramatic escalation of our war in Vietnam in February.The SDS march inaugurated the great anti–Vietnam War movement, which undoubtedly constituted the deepest and most widespread opposition in the midst of war since the conflict with Mexico in the 1840s. The opposition during World War I was strong, but isolated and brutally suppressed by the government; the isolationist movement of World War II collapsed completely as soon as we entered the war; and the Korean War never generated a powerful mass opposition. But here at last was an exciting, massive opposition to the war proceeding during the war itself!

Another point that cheered Leonard and myself was that here at last was not a namby-pamby "peace" group like SANE, which always carefully balanced its criticism of the United States and of Russia, and which also took pains to exclude "undesirables" from antiwar activity; here was a truly antiwar movement which zeroed in on the evils of American war making; and here was a movement that excluded no one, that baited neither reds nor rightists, that welcomed all Americans willing to join in struggle against the immoral and aggressive war that we were waging in Vietnam. Here at last was an antiwar Left that we could be happy about!

It is true that SDS, the unquestioned leader of this new antiwar movement, had been born in unfortunate circumstances; for it was originally and was then still officially the student arm of the social democratic League for Industrial Democracy, an old-line socialist and red-baiting organization that represented the worst of Old Left liberalism. But SDS was clearly in the process of breaking with its parentage. Not only was it militant on the war, but it was also no longer doctrinaire socialist — a pleasant change indeed from the Old Left. On the contrary, its ideology was vague enough to encompass even "right-wing libertarians." In fact, there was a good deal of instinctive libertarian sentiment in that early SDS which was to intensify for the next several years. There was a new hunger for individual freedom, for self-development, and a new concern about bureaucracy and technocratic statism that boded well for SDS's future.

Before he reverted to the 'libertarian mean' in the 1980s (read: lame, intellectually unjustifiable fusionism), Rothbard helped to pioneer the libertarian/New Left alliance that directly lead to the creation of the Libertarian Party (which was originally very much a 'left-winged' Party, exemplified by 1980 nominee Ed Clark's - slightly erroneous - claim that libertarianism is "low-tax liberalism").

I, on the other hand, am a somewhat more doctrinaire left-libertarian: if I oppose State regulation of business, I favor relaxing State laws where such relaxation would benefit the working-class.

Originally Posted by Ghost Echo

Liberals could also come together with Libertarians on matters of civil liberties. If they feel that a religious and or conservative power is too restrictive or over bearing, they could ally on those issues.

That's what I see anyway.

This would be great but the Republicans have succeeded in winning the support of libertarians based on fiscal issues. How can liberals succeed in getting libertarians over on their side on civil liberties issues? Will they listen?

There are points of contact between economic leftism (stripped of hierarchical, what's-good-for-General-Motors-is-good-for-me New Dealism/"business progressivism") and economic libertarianism (stripped of the capitalist apologia that has filtered into it for the better part of a century). Libertarians and leftists can agree, for example, that the current intellectual property regime, reliant as it is on the State for enforcement, stifles innovation. Both can also agree on the regressiveness of the payroll tax, and on the merits of untaxed worker's co-operatives. All that remains is to package these concepts together in a way that appeals to a broad electorate.

And even now, well into the 4T, people like me are still left out in the cold.

No wonder so many of us have such mixed feelings about global warming.

I actually sympathize with you to an extent, '58. I know what it is to subscribe to a political view that is underrepresented in the public sphere: there's as little popular call (at present) for my radical decentralism as there is for your economic nationalism/socially conservative collectivism. In a healthy political society these views would be understood as internally coherent philosophies just as worthy of consideration as the mainstream right-conservative/left-liberal paradigm.

... permit me a moment to explain why I am more opposed to populism of your culturally collectivist/economically Statist flavour than I am to milquetoast conservatism. Primarily it is because I am in the curious position of being a quite fanatically anti-New-Deal leftist. Our 'welfare State' in America, such as it is, was designed by the Brain Trust to prop up the corporate power structure in the Depression - to wit, to save hierarchically-organized industries from themselves. That, after all, is why FDR acquired the sobriquet "the man who saved capitalism". And what has pro-business Statism, "capitalism with a human face", bequeathed us these eight decades hence? An ossified society, as stratified financially as ever, with a Left so-called reduced to preserving the gains of the 1930s (with token advances towards basically conservative positions, e.g. a slightly more open definition of marriage). It has left us woefully unprepared for the pressing issues of tomorrow: desktop manufacturing, the

(con't) the decentralization of the means of communication and the emergence of issues of privacy associated with it, and social concerns like police militarization and the prison-probation complex. I see no solutions for these phenomena in your politics, rooted as they are in the very top-down corporatist structures that have helped to make them problems in the first. At least market conservatives allow for some form of intra-system competition, rigged as it is. A conservative New Deal revival would deny even this.

Einzige,

I've not really heard you before ... what you just said fascinates me. Do you have a short reading list that captures your idea?

Probably the two best general left-libertarian resources on the Internet for a practical look at the perspective are the blogs Alliance of the Libertarian Left and the Reddit Libertarian Left source. The former has the pesky 'A' work (as in circle-'a'narchy), but you shouldn't let that get in the way of your appraisal of the actual meat of the philosophy.

For anti-New-Deal leftism more broadly, a look at the 1934 longshoreman's strike might be instructive to demonstrate how F. Roosevelt was actually quite antipathetic towards Labour. More broadly, this article on the Mutualist, titled ""Liberal Corporatism, Regulatory Cartelization, and the Permanent Warfare State", begins with analyzing Austrian (right-wing libertarian) objections to the New Deal, but departs from them to critique the New Deal from the Left. Gabriel Kolko, a left-winged historian, analyzed the New Deal from a roughly similar perspective in this Counterpunch article, the New Deal Illusion.

The Daily Beast has a similar criticism from a similar perspective of Ronald Reagan.

For a more philosophical basis - i.e. books - I'd suggest The Ego And Its Own (Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum​, 1844) by Max Stirner, from which I take my username.

Originally Posted by Einzige

... permit me a moment to explain why I am more opposed to populism of your culturally collectivist/economically Statist flavour than I am to milquetoast conservatism. Primarily it is because I am in the curious position of being a quite fanatically anti-New-Deal leftist. Our 'welfare State' in America, such as it is, was designed by the Brain Trust to prop up the corporate power structure in the Depression - to wit, to save hierarchically-organized industries from themselves. That, after all, is why FDR acquired the sobriquet "the man who saved capitalism". And what has pro-business Statism, "capitalism with a human face", bequeathed us these eight decades hence? An ossified society, as stratified financially as ever, with a Left so-called reduced to preserving the gains of the 1930s (with token advances towards basically conservative positions, e.g. a slightly more open definition of marriage). It has left us woefully unprepared for the pressing issues of tomorrow: desktop manufacturing, the

But shouldn't capitalism be saved?

Yes, it is the worst economic system that has ever been devised - except, that is, for all the others! But the corporate beneficiaries of the new "pro-business statism" would be very different; that the renewable-energy industry will be at the very top of the new hierarchy is a not-at-all-reckless prediction.

And look at how the New Dealers used the Southern racists during the Depression, then cavalierly threw them under the bus the soon as their new economic order was firmly and irreversibly in place (Truman desegregated the military in the late '40s - and from the racist/segregationist perspective, it was all downhill from there). The same scenario can easily be envisioned for same-sex marriage (but probably not gun rights).

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

But shouldn't capitalism be saved?

Yes, it is the worst economic system that has ever been devised - except, that is, for all the others!

And look at how the New Dealers used the Southern racists during the Depression, then cavalierly threw them under the bus the soon as their new economic order was firmly and irreversibly in place (Truman desegregated the military in the late '40s - and from the racist/segregationist perspective, it was all downhill from there). The same scenario can easily be envisioned for same-sex marriage (but probably not gun rights).

The progressive push for bottom up economics, the idea that if the working classes are doing OK, the elites won't be having difficulties, should not be linked too tightly with the progressive push for human rights and equality. For the most part, progressives will be nudging both, but it is a matter of which problem -- economics or equality -- is foremost, which set of problems can be attacked given the values, economics and politics of the time.

Right now economics seems to be the dominant problem, but even now the homosexual equality issue draws sympathy from a lot of progressives.

And yes, from the point of view of at least one progressive, inequality by race, gender and sexual preference ought to be attacked whenever the electorate can be pulled together to push for it.

I believe capitalism a valuable tool. The Cold War is as good an illustration as any. The western competitive economy did better than the autocratic planned economies. My spin is that economics dominated and planned by any elite group, be it soviet elites, our modern 1%, or Hitler's hypothetical secret cabal of jews, will be centered for the benefit of the elite rather than the benefit of the many, the benefit of the nation over all. Economies dominated by, controlled or planned by elites are also beset by corruption and inefficiency.

I also have a perhaps unusual perspective that taxes, dividends and excessive executive salaries equally take money out of the working economy. Businesses cannot reinvest, cannot boost worker salaries, cannot route money back into fellow main street businesses because money is being taken out of the immediate control of main street. It matters little if the money is being redirected to Washington or to Wall Street, it is gone regardless. The organizations responsible for production are being raped from both ends, by two sets of masters.

To me it is obvious that neither the fully planned economy nor the pure laissez faire economy have worked or can work. Either approach leaves some elite faction or another in control of the means of production. History suggests the elite faction will work in its own apparent short term interest, ignore the long term, crash and burn.

I have some sympathy with the conservative desire to reduce taxes, but the bleeding of money out of the working economy should be slowed to both Washington and Wall Street.

As there are more voters on Main Street than in Washington and Wall Street, this ought to be in theory possible. The question is how to frame the problem in a clear enough way to unite the electorate. It might be as simple as regulating (or taxing to death) what percentage of a company's funds can be siphoned off into the 1% as dividends, executive salaries and the like. It might not be that simple, but that's as decent a place to start shining the spotlight as any.

Keep the money in the real economy.

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

But shouldn't capitalism be saved?

It isn't a question of anything "saving" capitalism. Marx was essentially correct in his historical analysis of economic systems; each prevailing mode of production produces eventually its own usurpation.

The only aspect he was wrong about - and this owing more to his enthusiasm to get things over with, as it were - was the issue of volition: subterranean processes do not translate into conscious revolution. Billions of human beings existed for sixteen centuries in peonage, an economic system preceding, but otherwise quite the opposite of, capitalism, and without which capitalism would not exist (it has not always existed, modern attempts to read it back into the misty past be damned). And it required the actions of billions of bodies to create the conditions out of which its successor mode of social organization arose.

Morality, or value-judgments of "better" and "worse", simply do not factor into the historical question at all. Things happen largely independently of individuals.

Yes, it is the worst economic system that has ever been devised - except, that is, for all the others!

Not only is this incredibly trite (tell me, do you always get your political views from the weathered bumper stickers on the backs of rusting SUVs?), it isn't even true.

Capitalism is better at creating wealth than its feudal predecessor, for instance, better by far: the mobility of labour tends to do that. But it is much poorer at distributing wealth; the serf in most Western European kingdoms and vassalships was moderately more the equal of the Lord who directly provided his land and shelter than his industrial worker descendant is to the factory owner for whom he works.

Capitalism is "the best" system at generating wealth in a certain way, but even earlier systems - again, the peonage of the Middle Ages - was superior in providing for social stability and ensuring the continuance of work. It's all, completely, a question of priorities.

I do not pretend that capitalism is going anywhere in my lifetime, or the lifetime of my children, or of their children, or of theirs, or of theirs. I estimate that feudalism existed as the predominant mode of production from the establishment of the Roman latifundia in the late Imperial period until the creation of the first factories employing wage-salaried labour in Great Britain's early Industrial Revolution - a period of roughly twenty saecula. I do not know whether capitalism will last as long or longer. I would expect it will not be around quite as long, as the accelerated pace of technological innovation under capitalism has already produced technologies that have the potential to undermine it.

But the corporate beneficiaries of the new "pro-business statism" would be very different; that the renewable-energy industry will be at the very top of the new hierarchy is a not-at-all-reckless prediction.

I, quite frankly, do not at all care about renewable energy in anything approaching the timeframe of a single saecula.

And look at how the New Dealers used the Southern racists during the Depression, then cavalierly threw them under the bus the soon as their new economic order was firmly and irreversibly in place (Truman desegregated the military in the late '40s - and from the racist/segregationist perspective, it was all downhill from there). The same scenario can easily be envisioned for same-sex marriage (but probably not gun rights).

You want history to repeat: and yet it never does. Employing a New Deal strategy today would be utterly futile - its enemies have had eighty years to analyze the New Deal, pick it apart, and see how it could have been thwarted. They would beat you quite effortlessly, and it wouldn't take a political genius to reckon how.

This point I cannot emphasize enough:

Originally Posted by B Butler

I believe capitalism a valuable tool. The Cold War is as good an illustration as any. The western competitive economy did better than the autocratic planned economies. My spin is that economics dominated and planned by any elite group, be it soviet elites, our modern 1%, or Hitler's hypothetical secret cabal of jews, will be centered for the benefit of the elite rather than the benefit of the many, the benefit of the nation over all. Economies dominated by, controlled or planned by elites are also beset by corruption and inefficiency.

The alternative to hierarchical capitalism is not - is not - a planned economy. It is, at least at this moment in history, a genuinely free market.

Such a market would look very different indeed from the system of subsidized, regulatory-capturing capitalism we have had since the end of the Cold War, which rewards economic stratification in the name of growth. It would encourage instead competition, not only intra-system but also inter-system, though the mass establishment of untaxed worker's co-operatives (ala Mondragon in Spain, proof-positive that the co-operative model is competitive on economies of scale). Far from requiring a bureaucracy to distribute goods, it would encourage desktop manufacturing and industrial personalization through tax incentives for individuals who purchase such technology for the purpose of making themselves self-sufficient. And it would abolish those government regulations which exist for the ostensible purpose of "protecting the public from business" but for the actual purpose of protecting business from competition.

Once again, my prescription for medicating our economy:

1. The promotion of voluntary worker's collectives through the elimination of corporate and payroll taxes on those who work in them

2. The abolition of sales taxes on personalized manufacturing equipment such as three-dimensional printers.

3. The repeal of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act so as to allow for the mass distribution of the currently-patented blueprints needed to operate those printers.

4. The elimination of all regulatory bodies which have been captured by industry.

A path broadly similar to this, and only similar to this, is the only possible away for society to advance. And it will be through libertarian, decentralist rhetoric that it will be accomplished.

Originally Posted by Einzige

... I do not pretend that capitalism is going anywhere in my lifetime, or the lifetime of my children, or of their children, or of theirs, or of theirs. I estimate that feudalism existed as the predominant mode of production from the establishment of the Roman latifundia in the late Imperial period until the creation of the first factories employing wage-salaried labour in Great Britain's early Industrial Revolution - a period of roughly twenty saecula. I do not know whether capitalism will last as long or longer. I would expect it will not be around quite as long, as the accelerated pace of technological innovation under capitalism has already produced technologies that have the potential to undermine it...

I think you confuse the concept of capitalism (aggregating investments to fund an enterprise) with industrialization (aggregating assets to promote production). The later had to wait until technology made mass productIon possible, but capitalism only had to wait for the emergence of the business class.

Feudalism had always lacked an outlet for the non-landed gentry, and the church was not an adequate alternative. For that matter, neither was war. Once the Black Plague arrived and reduced the population of Europe dramatically, the serfs finally had market value, and decoupled from their former masters. The old Feudal estates ceased being the economic engines they once were, and trade became a more viable alternative to working the land. But trade needed to be funded up front, so informal bourses began, first in Florence and later throughout costal Europe.

That's the beginning of captialism - in the 1500s.

Originally Posted by Einzige

This point I cannot emphasize enough: The alternative to hierarchical capitalism is not - is not - a planned economy. It is, at least at this moment in history, a genuinely free market.

Such a market would look very different indeed from the system of subsidized, regulatory-capturing capitalism we have had since the end of the Cold War, which rewards economic stratification in the name of growth. It would encourage instead competition, not only intra-system but also inter-system, though the mass establishment of untaxed worker's co-operatives (ala Mondragon in Spain, proof-positive that the co-operative model is competitive on economies of scale). Far from requiring a bureaucracy to distribute goods, it would encourage desktop manufacturing and industrial personalization through tax incentives for individuals who purchase such technology for the purpose of making themselves self-sufficient. And it would abolish those government regulations which exist for the ostensible purpose of "protecting the public from business" but for the actual purpose of protecting business from competition.

Once again, my prescription for medicating our economy:

1. The promotion of voluntary worker's collectives through the elimination of corporate and payroll taxes on those who work in them

2. The abolition of sales taxes on personalized manufacturing equipment such as three-dimensional printers.

3. The repeal of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act so as to allow for the mass distribution of the currently-patented blueprints needed to operate those printers.

4. The elimination of all regulatory bodies which have been captured by industry.

A path broadly similar to this, and only similar to this, is the only possible away for society to advance. And it will be through libertarian, decentralist rhetoric that it will be accomplished.

Frankly, I don't see it ... as desirable as it would be. We've had workers cooperatives in the past, but none witohstood the test of time. Take one that still exists in name: Amana. The industrial part is now a division of Whirlpool, but the rest was and still is a fully functional cooperative.

In it's industrial heyday, it was a leader in refrigeration and microwave cooking. Yet the cooperative couldn't manage the industrial outgrowth, so it was sold and is now just another piece of corporate America. If this incrediblity successful group couldn't manage it, why expect a more average group to do better?

... and on copyrights and patents: eliminating them as a source of income will eliminate them entirely. I can agree that corporations should be restricted in ownership and use of both, but the creative people resonsible for innovative ideas need to be compensated for what is often a long, hard and expensive process creating them in the first place. Only Saint Francis works for free.

Originally Posted by Einzige

... permit me a moment to explain why I am more opposed to populism of your culturally collectivist/economically Statist flavour than I am to milquetoast conservatism. Primarily it is because I am in the curious position of being a quite fanatically anti-New-Deal leftist. Our 'welfare State' in America, such as it is, was designed by the Brain Trust to prop up the corporate power structure in the Depression - to wit, to save hierarchically-organized industries from themselves. That, after all, is why FDR acquired the sobriquet "the man who saved capitalism". And what has pro-business Statism, "capitalism with a human face", bequeathed us these eight decades hence? An ossified society, as stratified financially as ever, with a Left so-called reduced to preserving the gains of the 1930s (with token advances towards basically conservative positions, e.g. a slightly more open definition of marriage). It has left us woefully unprepared for the pressing issues of tomorrow: desktop manufacturing, the decentralization of the means of communication and the emergence of issues of privacy associated with it, and social concerns like police militarization and the prison-probation complex. I see no solutions for these phenomena in your politics, rooted as they are in the very top-down corporatist structures that have helped to make them problems in the first. At least market conservatives allow for some form of intra-system competition, rigged as it is. A conservative New Deal revival would deny even this.

Yours is a more interesting point of view than usual. I think FDR was the man who saved capitalism, more or less. I don't disagree with saving capitalism; regulated capitalism was probably better than communism or permanent depression. I don't object to the welfare state; I think in a large society it's needed. Even if we become more decentralized, which might be a good thing, I want to feel that people can take care of each other; that our society doesn't leave people in poverty. Charity works to a point, but state welfare is more fair, and it puts a floor underneath suffering that charity does not. Without government protection, regulation and investment, the rich and powerful have carte blanche to rule over us and keep us down; and they do. Liberal government protects market competition; a restored New Deal that includes monopoly busting would do this. Decentralization can only come with government help; otherwise the greedy have a clear and easy path to corporate monopoly. I don't see another workable path to the direction we both agree on. Worker ownership/coops are a good and workable idea, and are part of the solution, but as far as I can see, they don't guarantee that enterprising capitalists won't be able to put them out of business with their ruthless methods.

I don't think welfare itself ossified society; there's no causal connection there. Corporate capitalism does I agree have an "ossifying" effect on society, and yes, FDR "saved" it. On the other hand, from FDR's programs until the 1980s, the middle class expanded, whereas it did not exist before in any real sense. That allowed counter-cultures to bloom in the 1960s, which de-ossified society for a while in ways that were on balance wonderful.

I'm not sure of the corporate connection, or severity, of the problems you cite. A strong liberal trend can counteract concerns about privacy and militarization, even if corporations continue. I expect that they will continue, but the people DO need to rein them in with regulations and charter requirements, and develop alternative economies. The principle concern I have with corporate capitalism IS the harm to Nature and the climate from its favored fuels, and this harm does need to be reversed immediately.

Originally Posted by Einzige

You want history to repeat: and yet it never does. Employing a New Deal strategy today would be utterly futile - its enemies have had eighty years to analyze the New Deal, pick it apart, and see how it could have been thwarted. They would beat you quite effortlessly, and it wouldn't take a political genius to reckon how.

Reaganism is a 3T mindset, and it will be over soon.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Yours is a more interesting point of view than usual. I think FDR was the man who saved capitalism, more or less. I don't disagree with saving capitalism; regulated capitalism was probably better than communism or permanent depression. I don't object to the welfare state; I think in a large society it's needed. Even if we become more decentralized, which might be a good thing, I want to feel that people can take care of each other; that our society doesn't leave people in poverty. Charity works to a point, but state welfare is more fair, and it puts a floor underneath suffering that charity does not. Without government protection, regulation and investment, the rich and powerful have carte blanche to rule over us and keep us down; and they do. Liberal government protects market competition; a restored New Deal that includes monopoly busting would do this. Decentralization can only come with government help; otherwise the greedy have a clear and easy path to corporate monopoly. I don't see another workable path to the direction we both agree on. Worker ownership/coops are a good and workable idea, and are part of the solution, but as far as I can see, they don't guarantee that enterprising capitalists won't be able to put them out of business with their ruthless methods.

I don't think welfare itself ossified society; there's no causal connection there. Corporate capitalism does I agree have an "ossifying" effect on society, and yes, FDR "saved" it. On the other hand, from FDR's programs until the 1980s, the middle class expanded, whereas it did not exist before in any real sense. That allowed counter-cultures to bloom in the 1960s, which de-ossified society for a while in ways that were on balance wonderful.

I'm not sure of the corporate connection, or severity, of the problems you cite. A strong liberal trend can counteract concerns about privacy and militarization, even if corporations continue. I expect that they will continue, but the people DO need to rein them in with regulations and charter requirements, and develop alternative economies. The principle concern I have with corporate capitalism IS the harm to Nature and the climate from its favored fuels, and this harm does need to be reversed immediately.

This is a very nice idea to say the least. Unfortunately, as we have learned from the Obama experience, government today is all about business--Big Business--as global economic developments are afoot. Eric, you said yourself in a recent post that the corporations are WAY too powerful for much reform to take hold, and that's why Obama wasn't able to accomplish nearly all that he set out to do. To quote one who many think may be our next president, it is obvious that "it takes a village" to really get much done, and it will take a gigantic village to speak out in order to make any dent in the excessive corporate power we are dealing with today. Do you really see any way out of this?