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It's been about two weeks since the Republican Party's terrorist threats against our US economy. Had the Democratic Party and President Obama failed to agree with these terrorist threats, our US Government would have reneged on some part of its debts. Alone, reneging on the US debt ceiling would have brought some parts of the US Government to a halt.
From perspectives around the world, the US Government's budget became a hostage to the Republican Party. We are lead to understand by Republican rhetoric that they were prepared to watch the US Government and our economy wither rather than agree to lifting our deficit ceiling, a common occurrence over the last 70 times it came up for bilateral approval. In fact, the debt ceiling exists as a socially constructed limit, not an economic fire wall. What the Republicans plan to do in four or eight years when they want to raise the deficit ceiling, and they will, remains to be discovered.
Try this on for size. Would we have stood by and watched the Communist Party do the same thing as the Republicans, given the opportunity? Would we call this economic terrorism anything less than terrorism against the United States? I don't see how. My patriotism aches to see the US Government freed from Republican Party terrorism.
What's Happening
Here's what's happening. Our economy has problems as all capitalist societies have problems from time to time. At times one area of our economy grows while another shrinks. It happens that our capitalist system currently fails to grow fast enough for everyone to have a job, for everyone to earn "good money" to continue buying stuff. Slow down or suspend the flow of capital and a crisis of capitalism follows. Daily life ends as we know it. It's simple.
Besides the above, we have known for decades that the US economy as well as other advanced technological societies have overwhelmed Earth's supply of raw materials. Population pressures, unequal distribution of goods, services, and political power mean an end to business as usual. For example, the idea that labor unions must exist to protect the rights of labor has a fine moral sound to it. The facts remain, though, not everyone will or can continue to consume as in the past, with or without labor unions.
Labor unions' political goals within a sustainable economic framework makes sense, but little sense in the framework of an ever-growing, capitalist mode of production and reproduction. Likewise with finance capital. Continuing to shovel finance capital into corrupted nations for the benefit of extracting their limited mineral wealth makes little sense. Besides, forcing third-world nations to accept and then repay finance capital makes absolutely no sense. It's time people began to realize that the masses of third-world people have little or no choice in these matters. Corrupt political followers of foreign finance capitalists lead these nations and their people to bankruptcy through totalitarian, authoritarian means. It's not fair to impose empire-like demands upon them.
How we go about waking up the demopublicans to these realities remains a mystery. Their puppeteers hold the strings to mass media, the sources of information, the sources of capitals' production and reproduction.
Capitalism's Promise
Crime Scene Cleanup Capitalism covers the promise and failure of capitalism's free enterprise goals. Because of cronyism in local government and our federal government, we head directly toward crony capitalism. Crime scene cleanup's crony companies and government employees have helped cause this spiral into government control over our very lives, even death cleanup. Although their number remain small compared to the number of all government employees, a small percentage casts a powerful model for corruption and selfishness. When we look at the moral aspects of capitalism, we find that laissez-faire capitalism has no chance of survival in this environment. In fact, laissez-faire capitalism could never exist in our United States. Once it began to show its development, monopolies would squash it. More so, government would intervene. Without government intervention, we would revolutionary conditions.
Germany's extreme right-wing movement to Hitler's National Socialism remains a great case for what follows from these revolutionary conditions. A modern, industrialized country finds itself moving to extremes. To the right, corporate chiefs find habitat. To the extreme left, corporate chiefs become part of the government or nothing. In the end, as Roosevelt's liberal New Deal worked out, in part, our federal government stepped into a failing capitalist economy to fine-tune it, to save it from itself.
More on these ideas appears at crime scene cleanup capitalism. Crme scene cleanup capitalism has a marginal relationship to my ongoing project at my crime scene cleanup book.
No, laissez-faire capitalism remains a myth, at best.
Our Golden Age of capitalism poured billions of dollars into the pockets of railroad barons and other industrialists. Today, corporate holdings once under the control of our government land had more value than we can imagine. Much of this treasure came from individual farmers, ranchers, and other land holders. Tea Party types easily forget that today's infrastructure grew from the wealth and labor of a cooperative, economic effort, not laissez-faire capitalism. What of the labor torn from the backs of Chinese laborers? We all benefit from these criminal deeds, not to forget the free labor dominated to our future by black slaves. So we often forget that the price paid by others helped today's millionaires and billionaires; for without these infrastructure give aways, we would live in a different land, perhaps a more humane and ecologically sustainable world.
Capitalism has never had a philosophical base as other ideological systems have developed. Although, some would say that capitalism's philosophical base began with modernism and industrialism. If one were to read Ann Rand, they would find her writings try to create such an "objectivity" philosophy. As a "radical for capitalism," she, like today's Coke Brothers and Tea Party members hope to destroy government programs for the poor, elderly, disabled, and homeless. Basically, their goal is to dismember the New Deal and return us to the Gold Age of American history, the age of millionaire dynasties.
No political, economic system in history ever created so much wealth as capitalism. Revolutionary, this form of structuring human relationships rips human relationships at the micro (family) level while ensuring mega-wars from above and below, through collectivization of human relationships. Fortunes continue to grow from wars as crony collectives grow at the micro- macro levels of governments and corporations.
Altruism
Altruism, or selflessness, means having a concern for the welfare of others. We might say that "altruism" begins in family relationships and then carries on into social relationships outside of the family's influence. Once learned, a behavior reflecting altruism may have some emotional, psychological role in human survival. Where one and more contribute to the health, welfare, and safety of a group, their altruism becomes a form of synergy, helping others achieve more greatly than without altruistic behavior by others. A soldier falling on a hand grenade to protect his peers serves as a common example; of course, the greatest example in history is the figure of Jesus Christ upon the cross in self-sacrifice so that others mind learn from his selflessness. Ten years ago today, September 11, 2011, altruism ruled with compassion as hundreds of New York's police officers and fire fighters died doing their duty. Hundreds of New Yorker's helped to rescue others at risk of dieath and injury. Altruism has a place among us, whatever its source.
In the eyes of our current Republican Party, revolutionary, ultra right-wing radicals, altruism leads to liberalism's welfare state. They see wealth as a selfish product, owing its existence to individual effort, invention, and greed. Where government steps in to monitor class conflict, especially between ruling capitalists' corporations, a tribal social product in law, its socially created wealth remains tribal, its profits individual. We also see this same class conflict at its sharpest as the revolutionary right-wing completes total dismantling of United States unions. In fact, today's unions account for about 8 percent of the working population, and much of this "unionized" population has employment in one government camp or another, which is to say, they exist as "semi-unionized," not truly unions in the sense of the industrial working class's unions (RIP). The canard, "unions cause inflation," continues as before.
Wherever we find a "tribal promise" of collectives, groups with a common purpose, tribalism echoes in their ranks. Churches with their altruism spark tribalism from their origins and development. Their symbolism testifies to a tribal commitment. On a weekly basis many American reconfirm their tribal leanings by swearing allegiance to Yewaa's tribe, as do Jews and Moslems. Man as creator of wealth and progress remains outside their liturgy.
"Mankind is not an entity, an organism, or a coral bush. The entity involved in production and trade is man. --nof of the loose aggregate known as a "community"--that any science of the humanities has to begin." Ann Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 17
To "the extent that he acts irrationally, he acts as his own destroyer," to the extent that man acts with his "ratioinal nature--of the connection between his survival and his use of reason--is the concept of individual rights." (Rand p. 18)
"So why are we paying taxes for welfare mothers, cripples, publilc schools, and churches on tax-free land?", asks the revolutionary Republican Party? Prom their greedy perspective, this question makes a lot of sense. They have a secure place in the world. If not, they play out the useful fool's role for their party.
Conside that from their perspective, railroad barons should never have received land grants. Our government's role in the consturction of roads should never have occurred. Imagine that President Eisenhower's massive highway construction project should not exist as a government enterrise. Any of these projects, if they were ever to exist, would exist as private ventures without government help.
Our society's infrastrusture would reflect one enormous linkage of toll boths from roads to bridges, to toilets to hospitals. Money would no longer exist, only toll-booth coupons printed by a conglomerate of individualized, "certified," printing companies.
Thus, balanced budgets become an individual problem, not a government's problem.
Eddie Evans - August 15, 2011
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