Alpe d'Huez said:
...He sees the government as a hindrance, and corruption within it so engrossing that the solution stretches to a very limited government that offers very little in the way of employment.
Who's right? Who's wrong? You tell me.
The problem with our government, and therefore
our democracy, is that the political class that makes it up on both sides of the political spectrum has its function reduced to pretty much the exclusive role of satisfying an agenda that has in large part, if not entirely, been dictated to it by financial bankers, industry chiefs and the military.
There is thus a colossal financial apparatus in command which simply needs to be first dismantled and then annihilated, I've thought, if there's to be any chance of arriving at a political process that even resembles one with a modicum of principle and decency. We must dismantle the power and coercive forces of the business machine, Alpe, and then annihilate them to have any hope of reform. That's the truth. For if we don't first take them apart and then extinguish them, we're forever doomed to the actual political process that has sanctified the rule of the mighty, which the government cynically refers to as the nation's
leadership and the consequent chaos that this has produced. Not the cheap and misguided reforms the plutocracy and their cronies the politicians are endlessly pontificating about. No these won't do, Alpe, which they then hypocritically pass off to the masses as
social progress when they are in fact taking us straight back to the Dark Ages, but a real and earth-shattering change of course, of ideology and worldview. Instead the so-called reforms that they propose are driving the country straight toward a new form of totalitarianism.
I'm not sure how this is to be done, or even if it
can be done, only that it must be to save the nation, and hence the state, from total enslavement to the business machine and the special interests of the financial apparatus, I've thought.
Mild measures won't do, however, as I have said. We need radical and even
revolutionary ones if there is any chance to bring about all the necessary changes. The first thing I'd do is make all forms of private campaign financing illegal and treat them as subversive measures against the state and the unfettered democratic process. Politicians from each party, moreover, and not merely the two right-wing ones that have been forced upon us for lack of alternatives, which have thus monopolized and strangled the political discussion, are to be given the exact same amount of funds from a common pool as stipulated by federal law and provided by the tax payers, with which to run their campaigns. Tickets that are also to be restricted to an access of media exposure that is no greater in duration than any rival's: all in the interests of equality, competition and pluralism.
I would then reform Wall Street by breaking up the financial banks that have simply gotten too large and eliminate so called market makers who are forced to buy stocks by law and then speculate upon the future dividends they receive by working the system, on the grounds of a conflict of interests in terms of market regulations such practice obviously promotes. I would order that all forms of excessively risk taking financial capitalism like hedge funds and the rest be made against the rules of fair-play and so be declared anathema. I would not allow private pensions to be gambled away in such high risk investment strategies or people's mortgages to be amassed within toxic portfolios. I would not allow market forces to speculate on currency exchange rates and therefore state sovereign debt, with heavy fines and imprisonment for those that do, which basically amounts to playing with in the spirit of competition between nations the future lives and pensions of hundreds of millions for profit and to weaken a rival's economy. I would encourage foreign governments to do likewise in taking corrective measures to change the face of financial capitalism, to thus promote more collaboration and camaraderie between states in the spirit of collectivism instead of the intensive competition which reigns over today's markets that's placed us on the path of eternal conflict and eventually possible destruction. If Wall Street and the world's financial markets can't be entirely eliminated, then a new guiding principle needs to become at the basis of their economic culture.
This is a political process I can live with, not one in which the corporate universe and its profit driven interests replaces the sovereign state as having any significant role in the evolution of globalization. I would, of course, eliminate all sovereign debt of the underdeveloped nations and export this new model of economic cooperation throughout the globe. I would then stop using economic support, or the lack there of in the form of harsh sanctions, merely for political leverage and as a coercive measure to impose economic liberalism around the globe. In short I'd stop looking at the world and the societies that make it up exclusively in terms of potential markets to be exploited and developed, and begin to have some damn humanity. It therefore goes without saying that all foreign aid must be exclusively made in the form of humanitarian relief and assistance and must never be used as a deceitfully camouflaged military spending, as in the case of one infamous example that doesn't even bear thinking about, let alone mentioning.
I would then pull the military out of all of its bellicose campaigns and even from its foreign bases for strategic peace keeping and reduce it to the bare minimum for deterrence and defense, only after, however, we have assisted morally all those who struggle against the oppressive regimes we have either openly backed or looked the other way in the name of
realpolitik. If the military can't entirely be done away with, then at least it will not be used to back an appalling imperialism. Perhaps then the world might have a chance at being provided with a badly needed objectivity when looking at the problems of international relationships and analyzing global conflict, which it has always lacked throughout history. Now that we have eliminated the mastodon costs of running the military complex, which would significantly contribute to bringing down the insanely gigantic public debt, the tax code will need to be totally revised, with a much heavier burden placed upon the wealthiest class. The conservative idea that providing fiscal relief to the rich creates jobs and allows the crumbs from the table of the rich to fall more copiously down upon the poor is a perverse and propagandistic mistaken metaphor of zealous ideologues which recent history has proven to be completely illusory and false. As has been demonstrated by the ever widening gap since Reaganomics between the haves and the have-nots which, among other consequences like rampant privatization and resultant cuts in government funded social programs, has sparked the social unrest and acts of street violence and vandalism we recently witnessed in London. The increased revenues coming in from the rich would then happily contribute to financing thos social programs that many people of society rely upon just to get by. These measures, in addition to the Wall Street reforms, should also offset the trade deficit with diminishing consumer demands at home, while making it much more congenial to buy Made in the USA abroad.
These would naturally only be the initial steps, Alpe, which haven't even begun to take into consideration all the other problems that need to be corrected,
corrected underlined; like the insurance industries and therefore healthcare and other aspects of the insurance business which would also need
rigorous reform, or the business of litigation that has removed all concept of personal responsibility and accountability and that's turning the country into a sue-crazy society to the great benefit of those who practice the so called legal profession. Public education will, of course, need to be made the greatest priority of domestic policy, which is an investment in the nation's youth and thus the future civility and well-being of the democracy. I would then combat all forms of religious fundamentalism and stigmatize them as anti-democratic, anti-scientific, anti-secular, which therefore have no political role and in establishing public policies under a constitutional framework that makes a basic democratic principle of a separation between church and state.
Finally I have already stressed the need for 'happy downsizing'. We all need to learn to live with less and embrace our own mortality, to stop cynically treating the world and our fellow man as merely instrumental resources, both natural and human, to be used up and exploited at will to satisfy men's every material appetite, or at least the strong among them over the weak. Thus the folly of eternal economic growth at the markets will have to be fundamentally rethought and reassessed. All of this means that we must willingly give up the empire to ensure more stability at home, while having any hope of promoting a more ethical world abroad. This is what is meant by leadership and leading by example, and not the spurious kind of administrating regime currently practiced in which the madness of global competition among states that's fanatically promoted means that everything is bargained for and everyone gets defrauded.
While I realize these measures may not be workable in the real world, because they aren't compatible with
homo rapiens, they seem to me nonetheless to be the only rational and principled ones to prevent a more rapid extinction and are thus worth noting.
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