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This is quite a good explanation of our current economic situation that Professor Wolfe gave a few years ago at MIT. Going along with his appearance on Bill Moyers just this last week.
I know that there were a few people that were not entirely happy with his appearance on the Moyers program and thought that he had at leas pull some punches in his answers and explanations. One has to bare in mind the audience he was trying to reach, however. Just as here.
All of whom have been indoctrinated from the very first on the superiority of the American capitalistic system. And all of whom would have turned a deaf ear at the very least or chased him off the stage if he had not chosen his words carefully. Much the same as if one were to try to convince a group of Islamists or communist party members in the old Soviet Union of the faults of their system of beliefs.
He gives a very good history of how we got here.
Of how up until the 1970s we had a history of increasing worker income in terms of real buying power.
The failure of Hoover and Roosevelt both to stem the depression of the 1930s and that WWII was how we got out of it.
That with the rest of the world in shambles after WWII, business here had it made. But Europe and Japan got rebuilt, American business threw in the towel since they could no compete.
How computers diminished the need for workers and increased immigration and women and minorities in the work force helped for stagnate wages.
How this stagnation in wages couple with increase worker productivity increased profits and how these profits were used to lend money to workers to offset the real wages lost.
This leading to bubbles and collapses and workers become more stressed and household debt has gone through the roof.
And that this current situation will not end of get any better and that re-regulation will not work. As there will always be a motivation to remove it
And that a fundamental change in the system is necessary, not just here but in the world wide economy and that it’s happening now. Though most are unaware.
The whole presentation is quite good and worth the 60 min it takes to watch.
72 Comments
Here is a youtube link with a Q&A.
> re-regulation will not work.
> As there will always be a motivation to remove it
Excuse me, but regulation will work. The idea that it should not be applied because aholes want to repeal it is simple poppycock, sir. What’s next, not arresting, trying, convicting and jailing criminals because they will always want to be free to break the law? I think we can profitably ignore the ideas of this sheepdip in Wolfe’s clothing.
Correction…it will always be removed by corporate america. Removed and/or circumvented….period. It always has and always will be.
Unless you are planning a totalitarian government and enforce them any regulation will be removed.
Thanks for posting the video.
The work of Richard Wolff is incredibly important. It is virtually impossible to have a healthy understanding of our country without knowledge of Marx’s critique of capitalism. Professor Wolff makes the material accessible and enjoyable.
You are very welcome. Here is another from last Oct.
http://vimeo.com/51164281#
I assume that you’d read antipanglossian’s post and comment thread then? If so, or if you would, do you have any answers to the questions that people asked?
So many who make a good case for jettisoning a capitalist economy never describe either what comes next, or *how* something better comes next. I’m fuzzy about imagining a massive change barring revolution, but I can have heart that a more mixed economy is brewing behind the scenes, and the positive results will scale up, and Americans will take notice.
The Mondragon Cooperatives are always used as a success story, and Dr. Wolff uses them as well, but I do wonder if spotlighting some of the worker-owned businesses, public banks, etc. might not serve to convince others in a more concrete fashion.
I liked the ‘Flogging a Dead Horse’ piece I linked over there, but then, as I said, I’ve also liked some of the author’s critic Pham Binh’s articles as well. Just learning, see?
always thought Marx’s identification of groups and problem were accurate but his solutions were rubbish. Conservatives always want to pretend there are no problems unless they are theirs
I find the correction equally silly. The affairs of people and their governments are not mathematical constants. Nor are they set in stone. These are not rational reasons to do away with regulations or laws, nor for doing away with the consequence of jail time when criminals attack. Also too, a simple legislative “nay” vote is not totalitarianism. Let me pontificate this for you with my loudest most important all-seeing bigmouth pundit Voice of The Future: “Not all regulations and laws will be removed.” There. Go ahead and try to prove me wrong or Wolfie right.
I get the impression you are not hearing what Professor Wolfe is saying. He is saying doing away with boards of directors and stock holders hand having a completely democratic corporation.
But then this would drive a control freak totally and completely up the wall.
And if the shoe fits…whear it.
I find it amazingly incomprehensible that here and now with what we have. With a president that sucks up to Wall Street – that you could even think that this is not true.
A government that wants – on both sides – to eliminate all regulations ?
What cave have you been living in the last 50 years ?
Wolfe’s point is that regulations are not sufficient to deal with the problem as long as you leave in place a system that rewards folks lavishly for figuring out how to subvert and eliminate regulations. It is worthwhile to hear out Wolfe’s full argument.
Here is an example. http://www.arizmendibakery.org/
I thought I’d asked some reasonable questions, asked for your vision/s, gave a link, etc., but you just say I should ‘whear the shoe if it fits’, and by extension call me a control freak?
Well done, cmaukonen.
I agree with Wolfe’s summery and solution. Simply because I myself have been involved in similar enterprises and found them to be infinitely preferable to a capitalistic system we have now.
Not surprisingly they have been in the arts.
Democracy at Work.
http://www.democracyatwork.info/
wendydavis has a good point. You come to the point of saying “we have to have systemic change” and then there is a little wave of the wand when the question is what kind of systemic change is needed. Yes, eliminating boards of directors and stock holders and creating a democratic organization of economic production is a necessary condition. But how do you get from here to there? What is a vision for how that unfolds? That’s not control-freakery. That’s asking for a vision that demonstrates the possibility of creating something that is a genuine solution to post-capitalism. And some assurance that it has the potential for not being worse; we have seen that too.
Here are two immediate issues that arise out of the elimination of boards of directors and stockholders. First, everyone who participates in the collective activity could be construed as acting on behalf of the whole group, which puts the group subject to liability for the actions of one person. Unless you are not going to have courts that can judge liability for damages…You see how this slowly unwinds a lot of things we just assume are continuous in a society.
The second is that with the elimination of stockholders, what is the mechanism by which you obtain sufficient resources to start or continue production? Are you forgoing large-scale projects because of the difficulty of assembling resources?
The other thing about a vision is that it has to include some assumptions about the role of government in any changed system. And the scale of operations, and thus, of government.
Worker self-directed enterprises assume immediate formation within the scope of current national laws. That is one vision. What are the mechanisms in WSDEs that check the tendency of concentration of power? (One need only look at how Stephen Wolf took United Airlines from an employee-owned enterprise to a private corporation to see why this is an issue.)
A few more examples Re here the Evergreen Cooperatives
If you listened to link I posted at #5 he gives some examples. As far as liability goes, this part has been dealt with already in other such arrangements. And I believe incorporation deals with it. But it would have to be set up and decided by those involved of course.
The performing arts are set up mostly this way. Especially theatre companies.
There would need to be a system put into place to encourage and help finance the formation like there already is for small businesses. Italy has such a system. In fact they have a law that says if one is out of work one has a choice. Either take their workers compensation each month or take a lump sum of what they would get provided the find a number of others in the same situation and agree to set up a WSDE together.
Or find enough people to pool their funds to do it.
None of this will happen overnight and will begin small. But then it nearly always begins small.
Fairchild semiconductor – the people who invented the way to make integrated circuits and other things – began with a dozen engineers who had had it with their employers.
If you got to the site http://www.democracyatwork.info/ it has links to info and help on it.
I not a lawyer…not do I play on on TV.
Oh United Airlines went bankrupt. So you would need to have something set up in place to deal with that contingency.
I used to fly United and it was very nice at that time.
Bankruptcies can be rigged to change ownership. Guess who made out like a bandit after reorganization?
Yep they surely can and I don’t have to guess.
But that is not the biggest problem. The legalities and such can be overcome. What will be more difficult to overcome is the brainwashing and indoctrination the general public has been forced fed of all the capitalistic bull shit and utter crapola so they would be open minded enough to listen to these kinds of proposals.
Laws are a hell of a lot easier to change than attitudes.
Incorporation does deal with limited liability, especially with all the esoteric forms (LLP, LLC,…) that exist in most states. But boards of directors serve the legal function of being those who can act for the corporation as long as they act together. A democratic corporation implies that all of the people working act as the board of directors. Group dynamics are such that power emerges informally from large groups in order to make more convenient decision-making unless there are specific and understood patterns of operation that offset that tendency.
I appreciate the links you put up. That’s the direction that this discussion needs to move IMO. Ordinary people divert their consumption expenditures into new forms of production that collectively become an emerging alternative. Starting slow is not sufficient given the number of people unemployed, underemployed, and going through motions. People need the opportunity to do real and socially useful work. Otherwise they go bonkers.
I’m not sure that that is true anymore unless you own a legislature.
Which is precisely why we need to direct the vast majority of our energies in this direction. Rather than to try and repair a system that is not repairable.
I also like Wolfe’s take down of classical socialism as it leaves in place the architecture of the corporation and merely replaces one group of self serving corrupt idiots with another set.
Sure they are. Civil rights made racist behavior illegal but the bigotry remained.
It’s the laws part that has gotten difficult within the past decade.
Oh and whoever tried to embed the vemo video, the author did not want it embedded here which is why I did not do it in the first place.
I can understand why and if I were in his place would likely make the same decision.
ON EDIT:
If you don’t my diary(s) then just delete it. Please don’t try to fix them.
I already have a bad attitude. Try not to make it any worse.
True that. But then I don’t see it as any more difficult than the anti war movement of the 1960s. Which was horribly unpopular with the public at large, let alone the government.
This is a great thread with some real thoughtful comments. Unfortunately, I am just too tired after work to review all of the links and make an intelligent contribution tonight.
Recommended for most of the comments. You shine tonight, cmaukonen and TarheelDem.
Wolff’s point is as follows:
The problem is that the only reason these regulations got created in the first place is because the existence of the Soviet Union was then a brand-new warning to the malefactors of great wealth: “Better give in a little bit or the workers in your country will do to you what we recently did to our boyars.” Once the New Deal was passed, the titans of industry — half of whom never accepted it and went so far as to plan a coup against Roosevelt that failed mainly because of Smedley Butler’s vigilance — started to work not only on repealing it, but on taking away the power of the labor unions as well as the unions’ allies in the Socialist and Communist parties.
Now, eight decades later, the forces that pushed FDR to push Big Business for the New Deal — and remember, FDR was for most of his political life a deficit hawk and whose 1937 reversion to that state, spurred by Henry Morgenthau, all but totally undid the good work of the previous four years — no longer exist. The vulture capitalists are back in charge in Russia, and in China. The Socialist and Communist parties are moribund, having been given a death-wound during the 1950s Red Scare. The unions they had helped create are themselves much weakened from what they were.
Without these entities to help us, what can be done to pressure Big Business to willingly accept restraints on its own behavior? The only thing Wolff sees as having a chance of working is a total change of the system, of who gets to distribute the fruits of our labor. Of course, it can be argued that if Big Business won’t accept regulations, they really won’t accept efforts to overthrow capitalism — and I myself subscribe to that viewpoint. But Professor Wolff is of the “might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb” side of things: If the business community is going to resist even relatively mild, incremental change for the better, why not go whole hog and reinvent everything? It’s not as if scaling back our demands ever placated them anyway.
True.
Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.
And we ain’t talkin’ pitchforks and torches here folks.
This is untrue. I can remember coming to this country in the ’50′s and unions were alive and thriving – something my mother was somewhat alarmed about. Corporations have only had dominance occasionally, and were taken down by good governance – it’s all in the way you look at things, which end of the telescope.
I could equally say that good governance hasalways won out in the end – we are far from being at the end of this malarkey yet. There will perhaps be an end, ponzi style, and while it may harm us very much, it will also take down the powerful to a level where they can be dealt with. Such corruption is not ultimately sustainable in the system we already have.
This isn’t to say Richard Wolff doesn’t have some great ideas, especially the gradual restructuring he proposes, which to my mind will soften the fall – but the more I hear of his historical analysis, the more I fear it has been crafted to fit his argument and not the other way around.
Unions…like everything else…including government can be bought. The last 30 years should have taught you this.
What I find curious is how many people justify the continued existence of a system they have said they truly hate and find abusive and unjust.
And fight any attempt to change and/or replace it.
The last time I experienced this was in a therapy group listening to people justify why they cannot leave an abusive relationship with a late stage alcoholic.
It boggles the mind.
Though I certainly agree with professor Wolfe’s analysis and his solutions to capitalism’s major short falls.
And I do love his presentations and his whit.
However the response I get even from those on the so called left and their desire to hang on to the present economic system with little change – which nearly exceeds that of an abuse spouse in an alcoholic relationship – is not to be believed.
I fear there fore that he may be pissing into the wind.
So I do believe this will be the last comment I will make ion this diary.
Wolff is generally better — ie: stronger — when presenting to an academic audience than he is when his audience is more general. Phoenix Woman’s summary of his main points is pretty spot on, but you really wouldn’t know it from his carefully couched statements and positions as he expressed them to Moyers.
One of my favorite public lectures by Wolff was the one he did in Mill Valley in January of 2012, sponsored by Occupy Marin. Marin County is perhaps the wealthiest county per capita in California, yet Wolff doesn’t appear to be aware of this (of course, he probably is, but chooses to ignore it.)
He presents an exhaustive exploration of The Problem. The answer is found in cooperative, democratic solutions. And that is what’s happening, still on the margins and fringes of society, but it is happening. Simultaneously, the more or less totalitarian and predatory corporate revolution is going on apparently without any hindrance. Except for the hindrance of those who speak out — and act — against it.
Wolff’s talk this time is more than an hour and a half.
http://youtu.be/t6tGIxFw3Uk
It’s not boggling at all, you old Finn. It’s fear of the unknown. They agree that capitalism does Bad Things. But get rid of it, and what replaces it? Nobody really knows.
That’s what they are afraid of. And that’s why capitalism will continue to dominate until enough people can tolerate it no more and are willing to roll the dice, with their lives and the lives of their children as stakes.
That is a most inconvenient truth. Al Gore doesn’t even come close to uttering it.
All right one more.
Sure nobody knows. You figure it out. Wolfe gave plenty of good suggestions.
Does everyone need answers given to them on a silver platter ? A test with a crib sheet ?
Geeze louise.
It may be down to the fact that you cut off conversation for those of us looking for more thoughtful conversation and answers.
And the man’s name is spelled ‘Wolff’.
I stand corrected.
I am also very bad at arguing. My least favorite thing to do.
I don’t. I’m willing to roll the dice. That’s why I can see those who aren’t so willing as easily as I do.
I’ve been driven so far as to remember this conversation with my dad when I was a teenager:
Me: Daddy, what’s the best form of government?
Dad: Benevolent dictatorship.
Me: So why don’t we have a benevolent dictatorship?
Dad: Because when the benevolent dictator dies, how do you make sure an equally benevolent dictator will replace him?
Me: ?????
I haven’t gotten past the ????? part. That’s scary. The Roman Empire managed for about a century. Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius. Pax Romana and all that.
Then Commodus came along and screwed everything up. For fanciful tales of this particular historical episode, watch “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” with Sophia Loren, or “Gladiator,” with Russell Crowe.
I’m desperate enough to roll the dice on a Cromwell or a Napoleon or a Lenin. Democracy in America will not survive for at least a generation when all is said and done. That is another inconvenient truth that most people on FDL are not willing to face. Or most Americans.
It doesn’t matter. This system does not WORK! It will go down.
I don’t think it can happen peacefully and democratically. Most Americans are just too stupid or ignorant or lazy to make it so. But they’re not so stupid and ignorant and lazy to let this corporatist shit continue forever.
But our ruling oligarchy IS so over-confident that they will blunder right into the above. Sooner or later, they’ll piss off the military. And then they’re done.
The only question is what will follow.
The other day (week, I dunno) that the Buddha had said something to the effect that in a discussion about an idea, as soon as you get angry, it’s become about you, not the idea.
I’ve been trying to keep that in mind, not always succeeding, but I do know being on the receiving end of that anger or name-calling causes me to vacate a discussion. As I remember it, antipanglossian didn’t get so much pushback.
There is a difference between the vision that predicts what will follow and the vision that invents what will follow.
What we know about financial crises and their real and painful aftermaths is that the new system always rearranges supply chains of goods and services in such a way that a new chain of financial relationships is created that can bypass the hoarders who caused the financial crisis.
And what we know about chains of financial relationship is that they have to do with two things: price system–determining the quantities and prices of the goods in the supply chain; transferring payment for factors until after payment for finished goods and completed services arrives.
Both of those insights are from within a capitalist system. But a supply chain is the steps by which goods and services go from those who can produce them to those who need them. That can be carried forward into a new system.
Here’s the question? Is there a way to eliminate the financial chain of relationships and still be able to (1) sense resource and factor constraints, (2) determine the quantities and qualities needed by those who use the products and services, (3) avoid having to account for future or past transactions. For money functions primarily as an information system. But in our current economy, even in its most virtual form it is still commodified, hoarded, and used to grow itself without bound
What financial panics do is provide opportunities in the form of unused factors of labor, materials, locations, equipment, skills, and coordinating talent. Revolutions occur when you start putting them directly to use with a totally different logic. That is what Wolff is arguing as a strategy. Worker self-directed enterprises go part way down that road but are still subject to the current system in relations with customers and suppliers that are management-dominated enterprises. And they still need operating capital, which ties them into the financial system even if their immediate financial source is a credit union.
“As I remember it, antipanglossian didn’t get so much pushback.”
True. So what, Wendy? Cmaukonen’s ancestors’ battle cry was Haakaa Paale!, or something like that. The closest English translation is “Hack them down!” With axes, to boot.
I know this because I read a lot, and I’ve met the poster in the flesh. If you ever did, you’d probably like him as I do. And vice-versa, more than likely.
The thing is, living as you do in southwestern Colorado, where I’ve been(and it’s a beautiful place, if I say so myself), you definitely benefit some from the current economic system. You have investments, yes? Or retirement, yes? You don’t want to lose that, yes?
That’s perfectly understandable. Cmaukonen is no different in that regard and, for that matter, if the house of cards stays propped up for another decade or so, neither do I.
I’m just not sure that it WILL last that long. In fact, I highly doubt it. Sucks for me, sucks for you, sucks for cmaukonen.
I’m a Buddhist, well, sort of. But who is really angry here? Cmaukonen, myself, my wife, her and my kids, and you, have every right to be angry at the situation we find ourselves in and those who caused it.
Cmaukonen is not one of those who caused it. I know, because I have met him in person. Take my word for it: your anger at him is misplaced. And vice-versa as well. You are more allies than enemies.
And, lo and behold, I didn’t even call anyone a white trash redneck or a lying sack of shit. Mark from Ireland, Kelly Canfield, take note: the Barbarian can be more civil than y’all when he tries.
Aim your rhetorical guns elsewhere where they are more deserved, Wendy. You, too, you old Finn. You’re shooting at others who mostly agree with youse(couldn’t resist the Jerseyism, even if I did grow up in Texas).
Peace. While we can.
Damn. That’s good. I’m not so sure about the “operating capital” part because it has the C-word in it, though.
Guess I’d better read the links before I open my big fingers on the keyboard. But I don’t have time. Must go to bed. Work and salary awaits.
Thanks, TD. TD. Touchdown. Well, that’s not a bad thing…
Well I do apologize to all. I am not in a good mood as I have just gotten over a bad case of gastroenteritis. And now get to pay Cleveland Clinic through the nose for them to tell me not to eat stuff that makes me sick.
No lie…that is exactly what the ER doc at Marymount said.
Yes. “Geez, Louise puleeze, answers on a silver platter.”
Watching the Egyptian spring, the first thing that sprang into my mind was “what will come next”? I was rooting for them and hoping there was a game plan in place already with buy in from most to create a democratic form of government and keep the Americans and others from subverting that. Fast forward a couple of spring, and “Yes, Louise, puleeze, answers on a silver platter.”
You’d eliminate a lot of “What could possibly go wrong?” if a viable, agreed upon plan was in place to start.
There is a difference between the vision that predicts what will follow and the vision that invents what will follow…
*heh* On a Macro level, much of what you mention, Tarheel, is being played out by the BRICs, NAM, and/or, SCO…! Buckle up, folks…!
Let’s see, Barbarian. The ‘so what’ about antipanglossian’s thread (and I admit I didn’t go back later on) was exactly that cmaukonen’s frustration got so extreme that he’d announced that he’d be vacating his own thread. His responses before that indicated to me that while he was hosting a thread about Wolff’s beliefs and perhaps Marxist economics in general, he wasn’t willing to explain how we might get *there* from here, which question I’d asked, and even provided a couple links he might read as on topic.
I read at a number of different socialist websites, and even the occasional anarcho-syndicalist ones, but I never see a fuller vision of that. Since I write about the Indigenous, labor unions, war, GMOs, the failure to rein in capitalist greed and regulatory capture, I’ve been increasingly interested in reading about alternatives for quite some time. Knowing that cmaukonen was acquainted with socialism, and seemed to indicate that he may have read antipanglossian’s post and comment stream, I reckoned he might just be willing to expand on some considerations some of us had there.
What you just did in your comment was to indicate that metaphorically weaponized answers and attitudes was fine, since that’s who you and he are by blood. While that may be true, my larger point was that as he (and you by extension) were being de facto ambassadors for Wolff’s ideas, being surly wasn’t helpful to folks who might be persuadable given rational answers. As with Bill Purdue, whose diaries I really like, the swords (axes) came out early, and were never put back into their scabbards.
As to your imagined characterizations of my financial worth, you are tripping. We have no portfolio, no pension retirement funds save for Hefty bags and a shopping trolley. I’m 62, the old man is 65, and none of these plans will likely aid us quickly enough to matter, but they might to our kids and grandkids.
Luckily, THD gave us enough food for thought concerning what considerations are important for building toward increased socialism in our mixed economy, and I’m grateful to him.
As to our becoming friends, that shouldn’t matter to whether or not we can converse rationally, he is clear about loathing humanity, so I sorta doubt it. Camukonen painted most, all, ?, of us as staying with our abusive spouses, you claim Americans are too lazy and stupid to make any shifts out of fear. On the other hand, most are sincerely uniformed due to corporate control of the news, but may be soon led to asking more questions as they intuit things are very wrong in the USA, and becoming more awakened and receptive to plans that provide healthy jobs and dispersal of profits directly.
Sorry you’ve got the grisly-guts, cmaukonen.
The “operating capital” part is the part that worker self-directed enterprises doesn’t deal with because they are forced to operate as islands within a capitalist sea. Finding an alternative way of delivering supply chain information such that hoarding is prevented is another necessary task. And then some worker self-directed enterprises face the task of collectively making decisions to hoard in order to handle risks, like bad harvests or bad weather.
Oh, yes, the current trends are that China becomes the next capitalist hegemon. China experts will tell you that China tends to be less pushy about internal reforms as long as it gets its tribute. And the BRICS are creating alternative supply chains to those of the past 40 years because American and European consumers no longer provide a flush market. Africa becomes the resource area of exploitation under any hegemony for mining and it seems so will North America regardless of who is the hegemon.
Middle East and North Africa are in a decade or so turmoil under current trends. Like Southeast Asia in the 1960s-1970s and Latin America in the 1970s-2000s.
Then superimpose the consequences of global climate change on those trends. And the question of whether the US empire will go gently into that dark night and, yes, CTuttle, fasten your seat belts it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.
That’s what I see unfolding unless we globally and collectively have some transformative changes. That’s the inventive vision part that old coots like me have to struggle through their cynicism and despair to see. What I have been trying to brainstorm in my comments is a requirements analysis of what that transformative vision has to deal with.
We’re glad you’re brainstorming it, Your Cootness.
Re: supply chains and hoarding for future crises, imagine a commodities market done right, lol. But case in point, I watched a TRRN video of a recent mass rally against GMOs in Mexico City, appealing to President Nieto to undo his (assumedly Bt corn) and allow the big three companies to sell their transgenic seeds in Mexico.
Just one of the issues that was mentioned along the way was how difficult it is for the peasant farmers to get their heirloom maize to market, which a whole ‘nother thought about employee owned factories. Who do you have to deal with to bring in raw materials, and how do you sell what you make? The axiom among agriculturalists has always been that you need to have buyers in place before you even plant your crop.
The prime weakness of capitalism is its vulnerability to organized crime.
Happens over and over and over.
Communism went south with its “New Class” in the 1960s and 1970s and only got worse from there.
But capitalism brings its “efficiencies” to bear for all manner of players. No limits.
You want to know another cooperative business ? I’m sure you have seen Florida’s Natural OJ in the stores.
Big cooperative in Fl. has it’s plant in Umatilla Florida on Fl. RT 19.
This TRNN post on worker-owned businesses speaks to some of the issues, but toward the end Sam Gindin speaks to the fact that they have their limitations and pressures to compete in a capitalist society, and will until they’re part of a transformed economy and large political movement. Gar is good, but Leo Gerard’s remarks are strange, given what his union’s been about…or not been about, under his leadership.
But he certainly sees a major shift being possible as workers realize how far the current system isn’t working for them.
Peace in our time!! Yet we cannot go to Munich like Neville Chamberlin …
HSBC proves you right!
Those are exactly the sorts of issues that cannot be dismissed with the “and the magic of the revolution happens” wave of a wand. It doesn’t help to be an ag co-op if you are stuck having to deal with a Monsanto distributor. And not just because you are locked into GMOs. It’s been the problem with hybrid seeds for a century now.
When you have a system that forces people out of the formal economy, they create their own informal economy some of which is beyond the formal legal structures. Illegal operations have higher risks and sometimes higher rewards. The capitalist class is interested only in those with higher rewards and manageable risk. Thus too-big-to-fail banks will not sell illegal drugs themselves, but they will launder drug money for the usual fees and interest rates.
And then you have the less profitable and more risky “legitimate” businesses like pawn shops that also operate as fences or pizzarias that also deal drugs out of the back.
Indeed, as you say, cmaukonen, everyone can be bought, and cooperatives, while a very good thing also, are liable to similar problems. A system is a system. It’s the people involved who need checks and balances, and it can go along swimmingly for a while, then develops unforeseen problems because of the worms in the woodwork. That’s why I tend to think any system needs reworking and repair from time to time, just a fact of nature.
I’ve been intrigued by the manner in which even a religion adapts to the land and people in which it comes to dwell. Something about our system is innately American, having to do not only with history but land and people. It’s obviously way out of tune at present and needs maybe a new set of strings, but the instrument underneath all of this is worth salvage.
It’s the people in power that are all of those things, not the system.
The example you give here, wendy, is one of the reasons I am cast adrift by Prof. Wolff’s long argument that no adjudication is necessary because corporations are simply doing what they should be doing in order to be corporations. Won’t cooperatives have also the same temptations? There is real wrongdoing in this, people are being harmed, and I cannot see that as being ‘okay, we just move on to something else.’ He really did his best in the interview to persuade us to that.
In California, people are coming to grips with local governments having been sucked dry by the banks under the LIBOR ‘cooperative’. Is that justice? If we don’t have just dealings, any cooperative is, in my way of thinking, liable to prosecution. The point is, whatever ‘togetherness’ we envision, it has to be subject to operative laws for the sake of society in general to have any positive outcome.
I am learning a lot from this post and thread, thank you. Gastroenteritis is actually potentially serious. I am glad to hear you say you have gotten over it, sorry to hear of the expense and a bit surprised they did not give you IV fluid in the ER.
Apparently I was not sick enough at the time. They did do blood work etc. and that turned out pretty normal. At least for me.
But I know what you are saying. Was in hospital when I was young with a kid in the next bed that was there because of dehydration caused by Gastroenteritis when he was camping.
Wow, well, I guess some of my reaction comes from your mention of the Cleveland Clinic and your sort of, let-down. The Cleveland Clinic was extremely well known and respected when I worked in the industry side…it was the Go-To place for anyone with a heart problem and I’ll just bet, let me check, yup, here it is, sill ranked #1 in the country:
Very well known for the heart stuff. I guess maybe they’re not quite as excited about things south of the chest bothering folks, LOL! They likely see some of the sickest patients in the United States, so anyway, I am glad you are all right, sounds like you did the right thing.
Well it was the ER at Marymount Hospital which is one of Cleveland Clinic’s hospitals up here. About 3 blocks from me. Nearest EMT is 5 blocks.
All the Hospitals in this area are either part of or affiliated with Cleveland Clinic or University Hospitals.
The is also Cleveland Metro Health which has one Hospital and a number of satellite clinics.
All are supposed to be good.
Yes, they can and they do. One need only look at the history of some of the large agricultural cooperatives, like Sunkist, or some of the Dairymen’s cooperatives. To cite an example from NC, the Midland cooperative was brought to court for price-fixing the price of milk for school lunches.
My point is that the new system will — and should — have regulations, laws, punishment, etc., even though some people will try to break or manipulate them. To argue otherwise is impractical and foolish in my opinion. So bring on the new system already. If I don’t think it’s fair I’ll complain and be willing to try yet another system.
Part of the discussion at Over Easy from tejanarusa @172.
An economist who’s involved in the worker-owned business movement recently explained to me that, in the real world, how businesses are organized is more important than how markets are organized.