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They say that only the good die young. In the short time he lived, it was given to Aaron Swartz to define the principal problem facing public life in the United States of America:
If it was conventional wisdom that a bunch of unelected bankers looking out for rich people were the reason everyone was out of work, politicians would be forced to explain to angry voters why we had this crazy system and might actually consider doing something about it. The late Aaron Swartz
This post is entitled, “democracy in an age of ‘unhappy capitalism’”. What do I mean by that, and what, if anything, does “happy capitalism” mean?
To explain how it works, here is a graph straight from the great vampire squid itself:
As you can see in the squid’s graph between 1960 and 1990, wages were up, while at the same time America’s corporations were making good money: I call that “happy capitalism”, because most of the working citizenry were reasonably content and investors were too.
After 1990 (neatly coinciding with the collapse of the USSR?) the relationship wages/profit becomes erratic and in the last two years corporate profits have shot up and wages have fallen dramatically.
What does this mean?
It means that you can make a lot of money without paying even skilled people very much. People are no longer used to make you rich, only to serve you in low paying jobs once you are rich. Most of the jobs being created now are low-paying service jobs.
That could be a problem because in a democracy “unused” and underpaid people can still vote and if they understood the mechanisms impoverishing them, this could cause problems for the “users” because as Aaron Swartz said, “politicians would be forced to explain to angry voters why we had this crazy system and might actually consider doing something about it“.
“Unhappy capitalism” then, is when articulate, educated, middle class people like Aaron Swartz, begin to question the system. In this way the “conventional wisdom” that Swartz talks about is created: in a national “conversation” of a great number of articulate, educated voters. Topic of the day: something has gone wrong, let’s all get together and fix it.
Making that conversation difficult, hopefully impossible, is a major objective of the users facing the formerly used.
Signal and noise
Über forecaster, Nate Silver’s success in predicting everything from baseball games to presidential elections is based on his methodical ability to separate the significant datum known as the “signal”, from the masses of meaningless, confusing, data known as “noise”. If we take the rising of profits and the lowering of wages as the signal, then the way to distract attention from that signal and prevent a calm and intelligent conversation about the problem leading to practical, actionable solutions, is to create increasing quantities of noise that drowns out the signal.
The strategy couldn’t be simpler: the money is out to activate, empower, monetize and mobilize every paranoiac, son of the wild jackass, that they can flush from America’s ample underbrush. Here is a tiny sample of what is crawling out of the woodwork, taken at random from Matt Drudge’s zoo:
GROUP TO BUILD ARMED NEIGHBORHOOD FORTRESS…
Charlie Daniels: ‘They Want Your Guns… Don’t Just Wait And See’…
Armed vigilante groups policing Mexican towns…
Surveillance Drones to be Launched in Orlando Skies…
RADIO WAVES:
Hannity: States could leave union if feds continue ‘radicalized, abusive’ pattern…
Levin: ‘I Can Barely Contain My Fury At What Is Going On’…
Michael Savage: ‘Nationalist’ third party to challenge Republicans.
The United States of America is a very complex country with many diverging interests and points of view; never has serene, constructive, result-oriented dialog been more necessary and probably since the Civil War itself has it been so conspicuously missing. Until this is changed the country is drifting toward disaster. More than going off a cliff, it is like going over a waterfall. This is something that must be addressed…. immediately.
When you organize your day’s activities, you might make a “to do” list and put the items in order of importance. It seems obvious to me that keeping the serious and serene political conversation audible above the insane noise produced and paid for by the extreme right, for the express purpose of paralyzing the political system, should be the primary objective of every sensible, politically aware person, whatever their location on the political spectrum from moderate conservative to the left. There are many problems to be solved and it isn’t getting done.
Therefore, if America’s domestic “primary contradiction”, number one on the national “to do list”, is cleaning corporate money from the channels of America’s national “conversation” thereby making it possible to identify and solve the real problems that the American people are facing, then all elements who are willing to engage in that conversation, looking for actionable solutions, from centrist and moderates to the hard left should put away their difference for the time being and concentrate on reversing the “Citizen’s United” verdict and supporting strict campaign finance reform, upending gerrymandering and ending voter suppression.
Once all that calm has been achieved, the merits of each faction’s case can be assayed and allowed to stand or fall on its own merits in a free and civilized environment and we could reasonably hope, again quoting Swartz, that “politicians would be forced to explain to angry voters why we had this crazy system and might actually consider doing something about it.”
Cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com
34 Comments
Nope.
Surveillance Drones to be Launched in Orlando Skies: ACLU
Happy capitalism. Loony Tunes.
It would be great to legalize all drugs so that commentors were, if not in the same ballpark, at least in the same country.
And to those who scoff at the idea that BerBanke’s money printing is just another ploy to make the rich richer, there it is.
Capitalism does not work, neither does any system to date. Greed will subvert the highest ideals. I suspect the human race is doomed to extinction. So much for dreaming of new dawns.
Those drugs the author is on aren’t legal in Spain either.
Nonsense.
You believe our fraudsters once operated from the highest ideals? You should be ashamed of yourself.
No i believe others had created systems in the mind of high ideals. The founders of the United states constitution were flawed, but it was high falutin in it’s time. Greed is like mold-it always comes back.
” The rains in Spain, apparently, washed all your brains, down the frickin’ drains. ” By God, I think he’s got it. Meanwhile, back at the ranch: yes, the election process should be the first place to start cleaning up this mess. That, and Americans understanding it’s not about left or right philosophies. It about rich vs. poor, fair and open elections, majority rule, minority rights and real community. Among other things, like universal healthcare ( with a mental health component ) and equal educational opportunities, etc. Going back to square one, however, is a daunting, maybe impossible task, given the atmospherics in Washington, D.C.
Ah, but those fraudsters were greedy too. And they couldn’t abolish slavery, even though some knew they should.
But if you say I am not being pragmatic, are you not subverting your own highest ideals?
All “systems” are not created equal. Capitalism is not the best. Greed is not the mankinds’ original sin, it’s the capitalist’s condemnation.
Care to rephrase?
Going back to square one is not impossible because of “atmospherics”.
The rot is everywhere.
Attribute what you will to what i said. I believe my position was clear,your supposition of fact as to original sin leaves much to be referenced.
I have to prove it to you?
Nothing more need be said you have proved enough.
You are being evasive.
Congress should be proposing that wages should be raised 75 cents a year for the next 4 years and then indexed for inflation. That would put the hourly wage at $10.25 by 2017 and give the captains of industry to decide whether they want to compete or die.
It’s only a myth that captains go down with the ship.
The people who make thew laws, the people who interpret the laws and the ones who enforce the laws are also the same ones who are in charge of how the elections will be run and who gets to vote.
So good luck with that.
Wrong. There is no such thing as a sensible person to the right of Chris Hedges. They’re class enemies, and they want to destroy you. Treat them accordingly.
If you are going to talk the talk, you should learn to walk the walk. I suggest you read Mao Tse Tung’s, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”
For another analysis of Mao’s view of priorities, I suggest you read this quotation from Professor Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore), writing about the errors of American foreign policy in the Financial Times:
So using this strategic model; all those of whatever persuasion who want to clean corporate money from the political discourse should now be considered “the people” and all such groups should work together to solve this “primary contradiction”.
Like I said if you want to walk the walk, don’t get caught in what both Mao and Lenin called “left wing infantilism”
Very good.
Since 1970 US productivity has doubled while wages have fallen by 7%.
Is this the natural outcome of four decades of capitalism or was this wealth transfer a result of central planning?
Caterpillar Tractor Co. makes record profits in 2012 and … demands wage cuts:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/07/cate-j26.html
The wealth extractors would probably be delighted if we would all
rather than continuing to organize around the issues of economic justice, civil liberties, the environment, the loss of the commons, and war that are devastating for the rest of us, our society, and our planet.
Then if we get as far as being a real inconvenience to their ability to buy elections, what do you think they would do next?
The ever increasing concentration and disparity of wealth and income enables the corruption of the electoral process, not the other way around.
David, at the college I went to in eons past, we were trained to examine texts, and not so much the persons writing them – I strongly recommend this to everyone, because in becoming antagonistic towards some personalities (not naming any names and this is not addressed to you personally but in general) we may miss ideas that have been carefully considered and organized, not to send us over the cliff but to point to truths we may be overlooking.
I found your explanation readable and logical, so thank you for that. There are just two points on which I have questions. One, you mention in passing that the abrupt decline of the Soviet Union happened at the same time as things started going wrong with capitalism. A lot of us can remember this as being the Reagan-Gorbachov era, when so many happily supposed that capitalism, therefore, was ‘winning’ the cold war. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that ‘coincidence.’
Mine lead me to the second question about concentrating our efforts on one major problem, the Citizens United reversal. I can see this should be done, but as you describe (I think accurately) that the decay since (and including – my interpolation) Reagan has come about by piling on and piling on, and it did begin back then when we had no Citizens United, wouldn’t it seem there might be another root cause, other than that one to which we should apply pressure?
And indeed, that root cause, I would submit, is the one we already do apply pressure to, right on this forum, and we really really should keep doing that.
Reagan was called ‘the teflon president.’ All of a sudden, in his terms of office, the press lay down and rolled over to be scratched. Now, we are the press, we the people.
We have to keep on keeping on. Because without the Constitutionally protected Fourth Estate, we are doomed.
Thank you for mentioning Aaron. He really walked the walk.
Recommended.
Well said. Nor is the decay attributable only to the ‘Right’, though I take David’s point that using wealth as power is or used to be a more comfortable fit for conservatives. Not any longer. We need to be very clear, as you point out, and Occupy demonstrated, that this particular rising tide lifts all boats in the political system right now. And it is pretty impossible to hold back a rising tide, as we saw with Hurricane Sandy.
We need a tide of our own, maybe a river flowing down from the mountains.
Nothing will work because “they” create a new reality everyday, and that is what the “dum dums” believe.
What they create isn’t reality, so it can’t last.
As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish
As wax melts from before the fire.
I have this crackpot theory that our system depended on the existence of USSR to stay in balance, that when it ceased to exist we were destabilized. The fear of the communist movement was a stimulus to reform since the 19th century. You might even think that our Civil Rights struggle might not have been so successful if the US wasn’t getting such a propaganda bloody nose from segregation. Our challenge is to rebalance.
I don’t think it’s such a crack pot idea. Not only did the USSR provide a counter balance and one could also say an intimidational factor.
It also was the reason for the continued financial stimulus via continued government spending on military contracts. A sanctioned monetary aid as it were to corporate America and a justification for the higher tax rates. The elites paying to remain that way in the face of some possible communist take over.
After the falling of the USSR, Reagan and congress began closing military bases – mainly airforce – and SAC and the contracts that supported them. Of course the dems and repugs will not admit this, but it is true. It was right after this that the Orlando Naval Training Center also got closed. (Used to live there)
But even before that things were on the way downward with the corporate raiders like Romney shedding them. And to an extent self shredding by some corporations.
But it all came together at this time.
Truman and Eisenhower both knew that it was war and military spending that was keeping the economy afloat and dragged the US out of the depression. This was a large part of the reason behind the cold war.
Seaton monkeying around with Mao? Mao:
Of the contradictions among the proletariat, Mao says:
Of course capitalists conned the dum-dums. After that, they play the not so dum-dum against the them.
Now, where does Seaton fit if he believes Citizens United is the primary contradiction?
I wonder if you could visit my recent post for a minute? I have a favor to ask of you.
Capitalists are averse to central planning not their own. That is what you were heading, yes?
Was that a ‘no, thank you’, then?
Pardon me; I dinnae realize you’d been there. Silliness is in my DNA.
Short of storming the Winter Palace, any democratic change needs first to clear the corporate money from the conversation, without that we have simply cacophony. Corporate money contaminating US politics corresponds to Mao’s Japanese invaders.