What about this Post-capitalism?

There are a many constructive ideas floating around in the world today.

Some are commendable, others not so much. If people propose plans for making the world a better place, then let’s hear them. Let’s consider those plans.

In our present big picture, the hot-button point of contention seems to revolve around the fate of free-market capitalism, in an age of diminishing planetary tolerance.  Is capitalism as we know it an appropriate framework for just and equitable economic development in our present, allegedly climate-changing world?

Are free-market institutions still appropriate for our collective life in the postmodern 21st-century?

Can free-market capitalism even be retained in our planetary future? Or will it be overpowered by some new 21st-century tamed-down socialism?

Generating from some academic and technocratic quarters, we find revisions of the old Marxian ideology, along with assurances that the world has certainly learned hard lessons through the disastrous failure of 20th-century communist experiments.

At  https://www.socialeurope.eu/postcaptalism-unbearable-unrealism , Paul Mason writes:

    “Moving to postcapitalism does not entail eradicating market forces overnight or accepting the command-planning methods of Soviet economics. The aim is to design a controlled transition in which market forces cease to operate as the primary allocator of goods and services on the planet, in which the state shrinks and the debt mountains are dismantled.”

and

   “In the past 15 years we have built a highly dysfunctional system, which is unsustainable on all traditional assumptions. It is a system of permanent single monopolies, with massive rent-seeking and financial exploitation, the creation of low-wage, low-skilled jobs designed to keep people inside the system of credit and data extraction, and massive asymmetries of power and information between corporations and consumers.”

Now, as a centrist conservative American, I read those above words and they somehow ring true. There is a sense in which I feel there is maybe some realistic MainStreet experience  missing there, but I see that Mr. Mason raises valid points, which are worthy of our consideration.

On the other side of the debate, Jordan B. Peterson has a different take on our world problems and how to solve, or at least address, them.

At  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXgZAdaMtS8&t=35s,      he says:

     “If you’re tilting toward the left, and you’re temperamentally inclined that way—and half the population is—then you have an ethical problem on your hands, which is . . . how do you segregate yourself from the radical policies of the 20th century? “

and

“. . . two things exist in a very uneasy (leftist) coalition in the West—there’s care for the poor, and hatred for the successful.  Those two things are not the same at all . . . and it looks to me that one of the things that really happened when the communist doctrines were brought into play , and also by the way we did the multi-national experiment.  It doesn’t matter where you put these policies into play . . . the same bloody outcome occurred. Didn’t matter whether it was Russia, or China, Cambodia or Vietnam—pick a random African country—or Cuba or Venezuela, for that matter. . . it was an unmitigated catastrophe. That has to be dealt with.  The intellectual left in the West has been absolutely appalling in their silence on the communist catastrophe.”           

Dr. Peterson, the speaker of these words just above, is a Canadian professor of Psychology at University of Toronto.

Down here Stateside, we have a sizable number of Americans who agree with his assessment. That supportive group includes the this blogger.

Back in 1989, freedom-cultivating citizens, such as I, thought we heard the ringing resonance of a Liberty bell when the Soviet Union fell apart and the Berlin Wall came down. We were patting ourselves on the back after those historic events, especially because Kennedy had gone to Berlin in 1963 and spoke:

    “There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. . . Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in . . .”

And then later, Reagan went over there and said:

    “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Well, the Germans did tear down that damn wall, and the subjects of Soviet domination throughout that terrible empire wasted no time in tearing down—not only a wall— but much more. . . the Soviet Union itself.

Like Humpty-Dumpty it was.

So the question remained: Would they, could they, tear down all that Marxist communist ideology that had built that wall under threat of gulag imprisonment? Could they expose and dismantle the Statist oppression that had built all the gulag walls? and the Stalin statues, and the tanks and the nukes, etcetera etcetera.

That would take a long time, and it has taken a long time. But in some ways, that early 20th-century tide of Marxist oppresso-utopian wishful thinking is seeping back as a kind of theoretical, kinder, gentler socialism.

So the question becomes: is there any part of the Dr. Jekyll Marxian collectivist ideology that is workable and fair? and, as for the Mr. Hyde alter ego: Is there any part of that disgraced Soviet that would creep back as fierce totalitarian servitude?

On the other side of 21st-century civilization, at the same time, and as long as we’re at relative peace in a cooperative globalist attitude, another question arises: What parts of FreeMarket Capitalism are still workable?

Advocates of our free-market democratic republic must admit, for instance, that yes, Virginia, Freedom and free-market capitalism does have its problems. It always has, although those troubles do not necessarily disqualify the free market as a model for economic well-being.

The weak spot in our capitalist framework was exposed in 2008-9, when our financially engineered wall street perpetual profit, speculative machine flew apart, and sent all of us free-marketeers high-tailing it for the exits.

Statistics reveal that since that disruptive correction in the fall of ’08, a stubborn stagnation has taken hold of our economy. Even though the Fed cranks out statistics to reinforce the notion that we have recovered . . .we have not recovered.

You call this a recovery?

No way!. I grew up in the ’50’s; I know what a real recovery looks like, and I worked my way through the ’90’s.I know what a truly busy, productive economy feels like.  And whatever we got now—this ain’t no real recovery.

  This is stagnation.

The Feds got all their numbers trying to convince us that all is well, but the truth is: So many folks are not making enough money to prosper. They’re just gettin’ by. Meanwhile so many speak of a widening inequality gap, and although I don’t really see the world in those “class warfare” terms, I suppose that, in some sense, yes Virginia, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

But then, hey, hasn’t that always been true? We shall see.

 At any rate, let's not get all commie-bent out of shape about it. Just keep busy. Find something helpful to do. As Jordan says, responsibility gives life meaning. You can start by cleaning your room, and thereby making the world a little bit better place.

Glass half-Full

Where to now, Homo Developus?

Everybody knows that a few years ago we had a big economic breakdown. There were many reasons to explain what happened in 2008.
Let’s step back in time a little and consider what has taken place on our Industrialized Earth.
During the 1800’s and 1900’s our developed nations undertook a vast, worldwide surge of industrial development, which was accompanied by a universal expansion of business and corporate prosperity. This hyper-expansive phase of human development required very large-scale extractions of natural resources, which were then transformed into mega-stocks of consumer goods.
An abundance of consumer goods brought forth an abundance of consumers.
Consuming.
Consuming the goods, consuming the planet.
The end of the 20th century brought a vast slowdown. It happened in the fall of 2008, and regardless of what the bullish analysts and stimulus-chasers declare, we are still mired in that big slowdown of ’08.
And will continue to be. This is going to morph into a vast leveling out. The industrial age is over. Our planet will not tolerate another 200-year extraction expansion.
Now we have entered into the Age of Sustainable Technology and Appropriate Industry.
And herein a question arises.
Who will run the world?
Is there a cartel of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Edison and JPMorgan-types out there who will forge a new system to transform the old Industrial Infrastructure into the new Sustainable Society?
As the next surge—the post-industrial phase— is being initiated by a new breed of Industrialist . . . the Gates, the Jobs, the Bezos and Buffets . . . the industrialized Civilization stumbles into a new Electronified Zone.
A digitized twilight zone, as it were.
In the wake of the great ’08 Slowdown, we encounter a host of questions that define the logistical problem of where to go from here.
During the Investment Segment’s breakdown of ’08, a lot of very complicated financial engineering became unwound.
One financial analyst, John M. Mason, recently offered an explanation that includes this analysis of what happened in the financial world during the decline of our industrializing phase:

But, in the developed world, the presence of lots and lots of liquidity means very little in the way of corporate capital investment. The environment of credit inflation, built up over the last fifty years of so, has created a culture of financial engineering in the business community and, consequently, corporations act differently now than they did when most of the current economic models were constructed. Government stimulus gets built into greater risk taking, greater financial leverage, and financial investment, like stock buybacks.

(https://seekingalpha.com/article/4233178-supply-side-world-europe-well-united-states?ifp=0&app=1.)
So it seems to me that the financial guys—the wallstreet wheelers and dealers, etc—having running out of real new industrial infrastructure to invest in, turned to MBS schemes and CDO games in order to keep their game going. Instead of their oversized financial whirligig running on old Industrial Growth stimulants, they rigged it to run on the fumes thereof.
Now in a post-industrial age, we find ourselves as a species, Homo Developus, scratching our heads and wondering where do we go from here?
It just so happens that, in the wake of the Great Industrial Expansion of Planet Earth, there emerges a vast bureaucracy of Smart People—number crunchers, economic theorizers, technocrats, academics, programmers, bureaucrats, not to mention the mysterious ghosts of AI —who propose to reconstruct the detritus of the industrial age into a systemic quasi-social Union that will make sure everybody is taken care of.
And so I’m wondering, what’s the best way to administrate such a civilization?
What’s the best system for governing a federation of post-industrial nations?
What’s the the most effective strategy for managing a cushy, highly-developed Society?
What’s the most humane political structure to assure income and health for all citizens?
Should Europeans, for instance, appoint multiple layers of bureaucracy to enforce labor laws so that every person has a guaranteed income?
Should the State take control of business so that everybody gets a minimal piece of the pie?
And these philosophical, or sociological questions arise:
What motivation compels some individuals to seek opportunity and then develop that opportunity into abundance and prosperity?
What drives the go-getters to excel in economic pursuits? What motivates them to acquire work, money, property, resources, and then manipulate those assets into an overflow of wealth?
What incentive impels them to take care of themselves and their families?
On the other hand, what compels some other people to, instead, take charge of bureaucratic agencies in order to administrate a Society that assures everyone a minimum of economic assistance?
What drives some analytical people to write laws and devise policies for systematically managing governmental bureaus to assure that everyone is taken care of?
Who is in charge here?
Who is going to run the world?
Will it be the go-getters, the pioneers, movers and shakers, developers, entrepreneurs, rule-breakers, industrialists, business mavens?
Or will it be the wonks who manage the world—the academics, the specialists, bureaucrats, rule-makers, policy-crafters, the tweakers of governmental largesse?


Consider Esther Lynch’s observations:

The ETUC has watched the rise in precarious working conditions in Europe—platform working, zero-hours contracts, bogus self-employment and so on—with deep concern. Research in the UK found that young people on zero-hours contracts, for example, were far more likely to report mental and physical health problems than their counterparts in stable jobs. A study by the University of Limerick in Ireland warned that people on non-guaranteed hours could become ‘trapped in a cycle of poverty which strengthens employers’ control’, generating a fear of being penalised if they raised grievances about working conditions. In response, the Irish government has taken steps to prohibit the use of zero-hours contracts, unless the employer can show a genuine business need. Guaranteeing transparent and predictable working conditions would have wide-ranging benefits, in terms of workers’ health, work-life balance and employee retention.

  (https://www.socialeurope.eu/tackling-insecure-work-in-europe)
What does the peaceful development of Civilization require? Management by one, or the other, of these two types? Or Both/and?
Is Civilization founded upon a principle of every man/woman for hmrself?
Or will it settle into BigBrotherSister administering a vast Guarantee for All?
Or something in between.
Keep your eyes open to watch what develops.
Smoke

The Rights of Humankind

Twelve score and one year ago Thomas Jefferson submitted an innovative set of political principles to a congress of delegates from thirteen American colonies. The gathered assembly, known as Continental Congress, debated the contents and the merits of Jefferson's proposal. The document began with these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness--that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

The world has changed a lot since those words were adopted as the philosophical basis of a new experiment in civil government. Here are just a few of the ways our world has changed since those revolutionary days:

~ Our fledgling national legislature, known at that time as the "Continental" Congress, is now called the Congress of the United States.

~ We Americans now associate the world "Continental" with Europe.

~ On the "Continent" of Europe, citizen-groups are now struggling to form a workable political basis for a European Union.

~~ Whereas, In the year 1776, when our American Continental Congress adopted a plan for a United States of America, we had a nominal consensus for the basis of our Union; and That consensus was based, rhetorically, upon "certain unalienable Rights, . . . Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; which Rights that had been "endowed" by a "Creator,"

~~ In the year 2000, the European Parliament adopted a Charter of Fundamental Rights of European Union, by which the peoples of Europe are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values. . . indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity. . . based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law.

We see, therefore, that the American Union was initiated during an historical period in which faith in a Creator God was still, at least rhetorically, allowed to be a basis for political consensus.

The European Union, however, is coalescing in a post-modern, humanistic age in which their unity can only be expressed in terms of human agreements and motivations, stated above as common values.

As we Americans ultimately divided ourselves into two primary political identities, Democrats and Republicans, with one side being generally associated with progressivism programs while the other is based in conservatism,

We notice that in Europe, in what is now a churning crucible of 21st-century economic constraints, the divisions seem to be congealing toward two uniquely Euro polarities. On the Right side, we find the Austerians, whose values are based on fiscal responsibility and the austerity that is thought to be necessary for maintaining economic and political stability. On the Left side, we find the Socialists, whose values are based on equality that is assured and managed by the State, which should produce solidarity among the people.

As Thomas Jefferson had proposed a declaration based ostensibly on the zeitgeist of the so-called Age of Enlightenment, so has a spokesman stepped forth, in our age, to propose for the Europeans a document that aspires to manifest the zeitgeist of this (perhaps) Age of Equality.

Toward that end, Mr. Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of the Greek Syriza party, has proposed a five-point plan by which the Europeans would collectively assure the rights of persons as they are understood in this, the 21st-century.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/2017/01/new-deal-save-europe/

Stated simplistically, those rights are:

~ a collective investment in green/sustainable technology

~ an employment guarantee for every citizen

~ an anti-poverty fund

~ a universal basic dividend (income)

~ an immediate anti-eviction protection.


So we see, now, that in the 200+ years since the inception of American Democratic-Republicanism, the zeitgeist that was then seen as inevitable has changed. In the so-called Age of Enlightenment (c.1776) we were demanding a Government that would Protect our Unalienable Rights, defined broadly as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.

The modern zeitgeist, however, as it appears to be evolving in the Europe of Our Age, is demanding: a Government to Protect our Basic Life Necessities.

Instead of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, citizens of the World now appear to be demanding Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Equality.

And that's the way it is, 2017. We shall see how this develops as the 21st-century unfolds.

Smoke

The American Deal

Way back in time, hundred year ago, we was movin' out across the broad prairie of mid-America, slappin' them horse teams so' they would pull them wagon out across the grasslands and the badlands, and then blastin' our way 'cross the Rockies and Sierras all the way to Pacific and the promised land of California.

And it was a helluva time gettin' through all that but we managed to do it, with more than a few tragedies and atrocities along the way, but what can you say, history is full of 'em: travesties.

Troubles, wherever men go-- travesties, trials and tribulations. That's just the way it is in this world. If there's a way around it, we haven't found it yet.

But there has been progress too, if you wanna call it that. Mankind on the upswing, everybody get'n more of whatever there is to get in this life, collectin' more stuff, more goods, services, and sure 'nuff more money.

Movin' along toward the greatest flea market in history, is kinda what we were doing.

Taming the land, transforming the planet into our own usages, improving, or so we thought, on God's original versions.

After that great westward expansion transference/transgression, had been goin' on for a good while, and a bad while now that you mention it, we Americans found ourselves high up on a bluff overlooking history itself. At Just about that time, them Europeans had a heap of trouble that they'd been brewin' over there and they dragged us into it on account of we had become by that time quite vigorous, grasping the reins of manifest destiny and ridin' along, as so it seemed, on the cusp of history, seein' as how we had been raised up on our daddy's Britannic colonizing, mercantiling knee.

Then long about 1914, them Europeans dragged us into their big fatally entreched mess over there and we went and fought the first Big War, fought them high and mighty Germans that first time and when we got done with it and got back over here the world was a different place.

I mean the world was a different place, no doubt about it.

For one thing, everybody in the civilized world was so glad to have a little peace in 1920, we just went hog wild.

Everybody got out there a-workin', roarin' '20s zeitgeist, scrapin' crops out o' the ground, building great machines, skyscrapers. Edison had electrified us; Bell had sounded the bells of modern communication; Ford had tinkered us into a vast new world of mass production with a horseless carriage in every garage and a chicken in every pot and and we were skippin' right along like a cricket in the embers.

'Til '29, when the big crash came along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39RKRelTMWk

Some folks said that Mr. Hoover, great man that he was, was nevertheless clueless, and so the nation turned to Mr. Roosevelt for new answers. FDR, young cousin of Teddy Roosevelt who had been the father, so to speak, of American progressivism-- cousin Franklin D., Governor of New York, took the bull by the horns and somehow managed to breed it into a donkey.

So from Teddy's bullmoose progressivism there arose, through 1930's-style unemployed populist cluelessness, Americanized Democratic Socialism; with a little help from FDR's genteel patriarchal largesse, the New Deal saved Capitalism, or so it is said among the theoreticians and the ivory tower legions who followed, and are still following, in Roosevelt's wake.

Well, by 'n by, between Lyndon Johnson's grand Texas-size vision for a Great Society, Clinton's good-ole-boy nod to residual crony capitalism, and then the 21st-century-metamorphosing, rose-colored proletarian worldview as seen through Obama's rainbow glasses, and now the upswell of Bernie's refurbished wealth redistribution wizardry-- we've turned this corner into a rising tide of flat-out Democratic Socialism.

It will be, quite likely, soon inundating the tidal basin inside the beltway as in 2017 we slog into the mucky backwaters of full-blown Americanized Socialism, dammed up on the other side of the slough by that other guy whose oversimplified version of the nation and the world seems to want to land us in a brave new world of American National Socialism.

And who knows which way this thing will go; only time and the slowly softening sedentary, dependent American electorate can tell.

Looking back on it all, today, my 65th birthday, having lived through Nov22'63, April4'68, 9/11, yesterday's disruptions wherever they may be, and everything in between, I find myself identifying with all the old folks whose weary outmoded facial expressions bespoke disdain, while I traipsed errantly along life's way. Here's to all them ole folks who I thought were a little out of it, one brick shy of a load, peculiar, decrepit and clueless. Now, I can relate.

How I wish America could be back at real work again, like we were back in the day.

We've pushed through vastly extracted frontiers that yielded to massive infrastructure networks punctuated with skyscraping towers of steel and concrete. Now we're lapsing into solid-state, navel-gazing nano-fantasies, living vicariously through celebrities in our pharma cubicles.

Maybe there's a new frontier in there somewhere but I'm having a hard time seeing it.

But hey! let me conclude this rant with a hat-tip to the man--he happens to be a Canadian--who best eulogized the essence of that once-and-future great North American work zeitgeist, which seems to be disappearing into the dustbowl of history, because it looks like there's nowhere left to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjoU1Qkeizs

Well, maybe there is, somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38bHXC8drHc

Glass half-Full

Oh, Elizabeth!

Oh, Elizabeth!
Every straight-suit conservative cultivates this fantasy
of her,
this indomitable lady whose brazen eloquence bankers yearn to
conquer,
so they can
render
her wild-eyed policy pronouncements impotent to
usher
in breaking-news neo-new deal doses of rolling socialist
thunder 
and boundless bureaucratic, sycophantic, stultatory regulatory
blunder.
But with unbridled, yeah I say unto thee unfathomable,
bluster
she sails forth as some queenly masthead of Democratic
wonder,
flinging seaspray aside, sluicing salty flashes of populist
thunder.
She reigns as Regulator extraordinaire, tossing all semblances of mediocre laissez-faire
asunder
while, with squeaky clean midwestern vesture she thrusts bankerly reserves
under 
the bus, for us huddled masses of underemployed, chronically annoyed, lean and
hunger-
burdened occupiers yearning to be free, so we can be
a tower
of turbulent ferment that even now doth foment in yon seething streets, with fleeting beats,  this very
hour.  
You hear
it? This eloquent Liz hath spoke! and now she doth poke her legatory finger in the
air, 
being now a
senator.
While wily regulators and owlish pundulators still yet yearn to 
shower her
with love, yet she doth sally forth with that sensational senatorial
paramour
of old. She doth provoke us from her lofty tower
of power. Yeah, she doth it at this very
hour.

Glass Chimera

The Swan Song of J. Al DasCapital

For some it's a good thing; for others a bad,
to be like the capitalist, or provoke socialist rad.
Back in the day, Rockefeller and Carnegie forged the enterprise deal;
JPMorgan and Ford cranked up capitalist zeal.
But then in '29 the machine broke down; all hell broke loose.
It was a train wreck for sure, from engine to caboose.
Smart as he was, Hoover was thought clueless in '32,
so they brought in Roosevelt to set up a new deal crew.
The gov from New York saved us, so they say,
with a big shot of socialism, making work for payday.

Now these days, since the meltdown of '08,
we've the same situation, but reverse, on our plate:
Big Spender Barack's in the driver's seat; he's catchin' the flack,
while Money-movin' Mitt says its time to get back
to those good ole days when investors and innovators were calling the shots,
before all these Keynesian Krugmanites got the hots
for quantitative easing, and stimulus, and priming the pump;
'cause they give us a ride, but we don't get over the hump.

Now out here on Main Street where the grassroots grow,
in the shops and garages where the mom and pops know,
we whip up the long tails; we push pins in the bubbles;
we wink at the black swans and laugh at the troubles.
Class warfare's just a phrase in some socialist goad,
inequality just a pothole, a mere bump in the road.
No flash-tradin' froth, no credit default fizz,
we just work with what can be, and we deal with what is.
If the day ever comes when the gov regulates us beyond reason,
or corporations have all the wealth tied up for the season,
we'll just stick out our necks and we'll sing our swan song,
cuz life in the free market goes on and goes on.

Glass half-Full

I am the 50%

Our hard times polarize us, but I am the 50%.
Pat and I deplaned this afternoon at Sea-Tac airport, caught the rail to downtown Seattle. We ascended the stairs from Westlake Station up to street level, and walked, as chance would have it, into Occupy Seattle. Imagine that. I saw a crowd of people there and heard some speeches.

America used to be a young democratic republic, starting 235 years ago when those upstart colonials convened in Philadelphia and cut the tether that George III had used to keep us bound in unrepresented taxation.
But now we are aging, becoming every day more and more like our European forebears, taking upon ourselves those classic ideological divisions of left and right. With hard times upon us, its not really about democrats and republicans any more. Its about socialists and libertarians, and everything in between. Just let me say: I am the 50%(ile).

Being a baby boomer, happenstancing today upon the Occupy crowd at Seattle, I caught a whiff of, and recognized, the old 60s counterculture zeitgeist. I remember it from back in college days, but of course it is different now. The spirit of anti-war anti-establishment discontent is the same, but the issues are different; the costumes are different. Whereas we were flower children back in the day, all about peace and love, these days the mood is edgy and punky, and definitely socialist. A little more threatening, or maybe thats because I'm older, and more comfortable, and Christian.

The first speaker was actually a rather pleasant surprise. A young fellow named Michael started out his message speaking of Moses and delivering his people from slavery in Egypt. I can relate. I do not want want to diminish the passionately eloquent appeal about very real economic issues that he made to the hundreds of mostly young occupiers gathered there. He was encouraging the people to get involved with the movement.

But what this old guy (me) appreciated at the end of Michael's speech was his exhortation to keep it peaceful. I appreciated that, although Michael said much more about what's happening now than just work in the system and be non-violent.

Not all the speakers were as peacefully oriented.

I am, btw, a person whose worldview is defined by the original non-violent resister, Jesus. Athough Y'shu haMeshciach was much more than that, since he was also the redeemer of all mankind, or the redeemer of, all those mankind who are inclined to receive his redemptive, resurrected grace.

Anyway, once the Occupy rally got cranked up, and they got the microphone going, I'm just old-fashioned enough to appreciate speakers who can be heard and have something to say, which is better than the un-amplified call and response drill that I had earlier seen on the news of Occupy Wherever a few days ago.
Bottom line about the speakers: We are definitely dealing with a brave new paradigm here, of socialism vs. conservatism in America. And so I say it again: I am the (of) the 50th percentile. I'll walk the middle road as long as I can, even though after every speaker a young very attractive Latina got on the mic, and she would lead, exuberatly, the crowd, in chants about the gathered ones being the "99%.

In spite of the anti-establishment mood, one young man encouraged the gathered protesters to work toward passage of a new Glass-Steagall Act in Congress. I was impressed with the constructivity of that. I think the basic message there is let the bankers and the wall street crowd eat their own losses, instead of hitting up the taxpayers for the bill, based on the "too big to fail" bluster. Yeah, right. I never did appreciate that midnight deal that Hank Paulsen talked the Congress into bailing out the banks back in '08. I would think even some Tea Partiers out there would find common ground on that.
In a way, I guess that's what got this whole thing going, that bank bailout in '08. Its what the Republicans call crony capitalism, as opposed to true capitalism, which is what mom and pop used to do on main street, not wall street, back in the day, before Disney co-opted Main Street as a theme park in Orlando and Anaheim.

Next, and olf guy, Joe, older than me, went up to the mic and spoke of his dad and mom raising him in the socialist movement in New York City back in the 30s. This fellow had later gone on to a career in the movies. He worked with Ronald Reagan in the movies, in the movie Hellcats of the Navy. He spoke glowingly of Reagan , and how friendly and charismatic Reagan was (surprise! at Occupy Seattle) but said that Reagan had changed and gone over to the other side, to follow "the money" instead of his heart.
Joe also spoke about F.D. Roosevelt--who has taken on a kind of sainthood in this retro-new-deal environment in which we are now finding ourselves. According to Joe, Franklin sent his wife Eleanor out to scope out the country, shortly after he was elected. She went all over the country and talked to a lot of folks, came back and, according to Joe, reported to her husband FDR that the communists would be taking on a bunch of support among workers during those hard times if something wasn't done to relieve the desperation and unemployment and poverty that was so rampant during that time, the "Great" Depression. And that's where the New Deal came from.

Sounds familiar doesn't it. Our present President is in the same predicament, and that's why this whole Occupy thing is going down now.
And I'm thinking of John Lennon, the working class hero who's dead, but really it reminds me of Ringo, in his post-Beatle role. He did a commercial in which he told some young lady "this is not your father's Oldsmobile."
This is not your father's politics either. This is something new and different. America, get ready. The times they are a polarizin'. And I'm just praying there's no Kent State thing that's gonna happen.
These Occupiers may the 99%, and the Republicans may be the 1%.
As for me and my house, we are the 50%ile, and proud of it. As we southerners used to say: Well, shut my mouth.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Corporatist yin with Statist yang

The great American experiment with liberty and free enterprise has outgrown this world's capacity to sustain it.
Its glorious inception had been nurtured in a virgin-land seedbed of 18-century humanist enlightenment. Yoked, ever so curiously, with a steadfast puritan work ethic, this has become our quasi-mythical heritage of creative capitalism.
Industrious yankee microcapitalism coupled with burgeoning agricultural productivity produced a bold, energetic continent-wide economic expansion. The magnitude and speed of its development was unprecedented in the history of the world.

But that diligent capitalist impulse has since devolved into a bloated postcapital opulence. Now, our overfed mega-corporate superstructure, based on safety in numbers and risk-dispersal through immensity, is divesting itself of its historically free-enterprising creative base.
It has become what I call the Corporatist economic system. And yes, it is degenerating into a sort of decline these days, though not irraparably so. All human institutions in the history of the world must endure this devolution and must eventually devise strategies for renewal. This includes the institution with which I most strongly identify, the church. The church's long-term strategy for renewal is ultimately Resurrection, but that is another matter entirely.
Back on the worldly horizon of 21st-century development, we see Corporatism as yin to the yang of Statism.
For the sake of clarity, I'll offer two oversimplified definitions of these two.

Statism is an attempt by an educated elite to govern from the bottom up, with rhetorical emphasis on equal opportunity and income redistribution. In its benevolent expressions, statism is socialism and democratic politics. In its malevolent form it degenerates to Stalinism.
Corporatism is management of society from the top down by a wealthy elite, in which their corporations control what the people buy and sell. Its benevolent manifestation was turn-of-the-20th-century expansionist capitalism and republican politics. Its malevolent degeneration would reduce it militaristic fascism.

Statism operates, in theory anyway, on trickle-up economics. Corporatism is, of course, a trickle-down thing. In their long-term effects, the two are shown historically to be not much different, with the net result being in both cases society-wide procurement of security at the expense of liberty.

In the Statist model, zealous idealism coupled with politics is generally the source of heirarchical advancement; in the Corporatist scheme, money fortified with politics is the source of wealth.
In 20th-century terms these polarized operating principles have played out as Soviet-Chinese communism and European-American capitalism.

The communist model originally envisaged by Marx, Lenin, Mao and others degenerated into Stalinist gulags and Maoist perpetually-revolutionary humiliation. The capitalist model is presently devolving into what we see today-- counterproductive overdependence on a usurious financial sector, and the disappearance of unregulated business. The system enslaves what was historically an innovative spirit to market-neutralized mediocrity, rendering enterprise impotent to do what really needs to be done. This is one reason why Evergreen, the solar panel company from Massechusetts, has been constrained to move its manufacturing to China.


Speaking of China, their Statist model now evolves on the detritus of that old heavy-handed communism. It idealizes, in an exploitative way, the common man's laborious role in the Great State. Party policies and funds are doled out through government/party agencies, from the bottom up, sometimes now (since Deng's reforms) through state-owned enterprises.

In the USA, this statist strategy takes shape through democratic politics in make-work projects for infrastructure, welfare, and entitlements. Bureacrurats rule, or they think they do anyway.

The American-European Corporatist structure, of which the statist impulse is just a part, has metastasized upon on a residue of the old robber-baron capitalism. It mythologizes the entrepreneur and executive functions of the Great Company. Money is ostensibly distributed by banks through boards of directors. Employees make the wheels of finance and industry turn, even if those machinations are increasingly cumbersome, inefficient, overpaid, and predictably redundant.
During this pos-industrial environmnet in which we live, the Chinese model is in exuberant ascendancy. A State Party subsidizes and controls pseudo-enterprises. Although touting an official rhetoric of equality for all people, the channels of power are strung along a technocratic elite whose basis of power is politics and rule-keeping. The system is a potent communist-capitalist hybrid, a la the Hegelian dialectic synthesis. Its mega-capacity to accumulate resources propels the People's Republic toward dominance in the world economy.


The American wealth machine, rusty from age and greedy entropy, is a government hamstrung by Corporatists. The corporations control congressional pursestrings, funding and regulating a hyped-up stock market for self-absorbed investors. The lackey government generates pseudo-corporate structures, like Fannie and Freddie, so that smart, over-educated nitpicking technocrats have something to administrate. The system is a hybrid that is different the Chinese one, insofar as the myth of wealth creation through raw free enterprise is the rhetorical basis for advancement. It enables a financially-adept elite to perpetuate control by wealthy folks. That's a myth different from the eglitarian myth that facilitates Statist creeping.

Between the constrictive powers of these two economic superstructures--the Chinese Statist one and American Corpartist one, all possibilities for classic, creative free enterprise are diminishing.
If independent business is to survive on planet earth, we must get back to small-scale, local market-based, risk-taking businesses that originate from the grassroots up. This is where the developing nations have an advantage, because their microcapitalism is raw, undiluted by statist rules and capitalist hype. Real people solving real problems in their own communities is where its at.
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Land, food, minerals, and value-adding labor are ultimately the only sources for true wealth. Beyond that its all systematic hype convoluted by human vanity and exploitive power-grubbing.

Glass Chimera