Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

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?

If democracy is to work, it would take a clear majority with a common vision empowering a bunch of politicians who fear going against said vision lest they be voted out of power. The Unraveling world view featured "The government isn't the solution, it is the problem," and "Trickle down economics." So long as a near majority still buys into these unraveling values, the unraveling continues.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

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?

In the 2020s reform will be unstoppable. Much will be done, but much will be left undone, as the 1T will quickly take hold again. Still, some reforms will continue, and expand again in the 2T.

We will see that the latest revolutions in society and politics build on the previous ones; they don't destroy the previous one and return to the one before. That is merely to go backward. We need to see that socialism and the New Deal were essential reforms that must be built upon, not destroyed in order to return to the 18th century.

I quite agree with Butler's post, of course.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

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?

Because other co-operatives in other countries have done better. The aforementioned Mondragon is the seventh-largest entity in the Spanish economic sector, for example. The difference is that Spain has taken incremental steps towards my vision; co-operatives there are exempt from corporate income taxes, where they are not in the United States.

... 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.

I don't aim to eliminate copyrights and patents, but to liberalize their availability. I don't have time at the moment to address this in full, but I will in a post in the near future.

Originally Posted by Einzige

Because other co-operatives in other countries have done better. The aforementioned Mondragon is the seventh-largest entity in the Spanish economic sector, for example. The difference is that Spain has taken incremental steps towards my vision; co-operatives there are exempt from corporate income taxes, where they are not in the United States.

Let's be brutally honest: Spain is not the US, and the Basque region of Spain isn't even Spain. There is a lot of social and even Catholic forces at work to make this viable there, that do not and never will apply here. Let's call that sad, but it's reality.

Originally Posted by Einzige ...

I don't aim to eliminate copyrights and patents, but to liberalize their availability. I don't have time at the moment to address this in full, but I will in a post in the near future.

This is a hot topic in the TPP negotiations, too. Joseph Stiglitz has taken the most reasoned position I've read on this to date: in essence, allow protection to encourage innovation, but limit it to prevent rent seeking. Personally, I have a hard time granting bloodless, brainlees entities intellectual property rights at all. The presense of an intellect should be a prime requirement. Patents and copyrights are issued o human beings for a reason. We should mandate that they can be rented by corporations, but never owned by them.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Let's be brutally honest: Spain is not the US, and the Basque region of Spain isn't even Spain. There is a lot of social and even Catholic forces at work to make this viable there, that do not and never will apply here. Let's call that sad, but it's reality.

Hence the necessity of taking a libertarian rhetorical tact on this issue. Trust me, I've thought this through; I know very well the long and storied history of Catholic distributivist social teaching and its influence on the Spanish co-operative movement, as well as the influence of anarchist and syndicalist movements dating to their Civil War. These have created the pro-co-operative tax environment that prevails in Spain, and do not exist here.

You cannot appeal to selectively removing taxes on co-operatives on those bases. But you can do so, ironically enough, on libertarian rhetorical grounds. Hence, 'left-libertarianism'. All it requires is redirecting the anti-tax energies of the libertarian movement (at least the True Believers and not its corporate co-opters and/or capitalist-fixated Randians) away from corporate income tax cuts for business and towards co-operatives.

This is a hot topic in the TPP negotiations, too. Joseph Stiglitz has taken the most reasoned position I've read on this to date: in essence, allow protection to encourage innovation, but limit it to prevent rent seeking. Personally, I have a hard time granting bloodless, brainlees entities intellectual property rights at all. The presense of an intellect should be a prime requirement. Patents and copyrights are issued o human beings for a reason. We should mandate that they can be rented by corporations, but never owned by them.

I can agree with this. The techno-optimist in me simply wants to extend this one step further and make them available for a pittance to private individuals, at least the sort of printable blueprints used by desktop manufacturing equipment.

Ever been to Barcelona? Can you say insular?

Originally Posted by Bad Dog

Ever been to Barcelona? Can you say insular?

Non sequitor much?*



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*a rhetorical question.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Non sequitor much?*



---
*a rhetorical question.

I like the comic strip.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

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?

When did Joe Manchin ever say that it takes a village - or his ideal running mate, Mary Landrieu?

More seriously, if you want a pure free market in health care, how about a constitutional amendment doing to private health insurance what the Eighteenth Amendment did to alcohol? That way, those who can afford health care, pay for it, although not exorbitantly or clandestinely (as in $600 Tylenols for a hospital patient getting a headache); and for those who can't, there will be charity hospitals just like there were in the 1920s (the last "normal" decade before the dawn of employer-provided health insurance). And doesn't this render the dilemma posed by "pre-existing conditions" completely inoperative? This was Ross Perot's basic message on health care in 1992 (although he did not go so far as to call for a constitutional amendment banning private health insurance, as I am doing here).

And how about also abolishing all tax credits and deductions for having children - a lower birth rate being an obviously worthwhile goal (and if FICA is not reduced for having children, then why should the income tax be reduced either)? The truly massive amounts of money that would be saved by doing so can be used in part to close the deficit, and in part to enact a true across-the-board cut in rates - that means, for example, the 39.6% bracket goes to 35.6%, and the 10% bracket, to 6%; and if progressives have enough of a majority to pass it, the top tax rate(s) can be raised first, then the across-the-board rate cut applied when the child tax breaks are abolished later. But that of course means progressives would have to start shutting up about things like guns and marriages - like the NAACP etc. mysteriously shut up about desegregating the military when FDR declared a "limited national emergency" (Translation: The draft coming back is matter of when, not if) on September 8, 1939 (it was upgraded to an "unlimited national emergency" on May 27, 1941 - more than six months before Pearl Harbor). Even the Communist Party clammed up about it (albeit not until Operation Barbarossa got under way).

The conservative "revolution" was only the flawed and reactionary response to the largely flawed sixties revolution. The true revolution is yet to come; only restorationism is capable of tackling the challenges of the crisis. This would entail the expansion of the military to at least 20 million troops and the establishment of at least 5 million internal security troops. The building up of the nuke arsenal to about 60,000 nukes and the conventional war armory to 1.5 million tanks and armored vehicles will also proceed apace. Restorationist objectives such as the vassalization of latin america and the general pacification of the middle east will also take place. The spiritual, cultural and economic reforms that I've mentioned in numerous earlier posts should be implemented and carried out. Only then would a durable civic order be entrenched in america and our nation would be well on its way to achieving its destiny as a renowned superpower like the hellenistic and roman empires were ,or like the catholic hegemony of the middle ages and renaissance periods, or like the han, tang, song, and ming dynasties were in their times.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

Restorationist objectives such as the vassalization of latin america and the general pacification of the middle east will also take place.

Gnarly. How does AFRICOM fit into this most righteous scheme of world domination?

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

When did Joe Manchin ever say that it takes a village - or his ideal running mate, Mary Landrieu?

More seriously, if you want a pure free market in health care, how about a constitutional amendment doing to private health insurance what the Eighteenth Amendment did to alcohol? That way, those who can afford health care, pay for it, although not exorbitantly or clandestinely (as in $600 Tylenols for a hospital patient getting a headache); and for those who can't, there will be charity hospitals just like there were in the 1920s (the last "normal" decade before the dawn of employer-provided health insurance).

Back in the 1920s, they didn't have open heart surgery or chemotheraphy. Without insurance, how would anyone who isn't a zillionnaire pay for those?

Originally Posted by Anc' Mariner

Gnarly. How does AFRICOM fit into this most righteous scheme of world domination?

Badly. It's a marker for over-reach.