A gentleman I have long enjoyed reading, Bill Bonner, just wrote an excellent article that gets to the heart of what another influence of mine, Kurt Richebächer called "Degenerate Capitalism". It is easy to agree with Greenspan now that he is no longer obfuscating for the Federal Reserve.
From Bonner's Shock Praise For Greenspan:
"The 'greed' that preoccupies Occupy Wall Street demonstrators is not a feature of capitalism, Greenspan points out. It's a feature of human nature. He might have pointed out that socialists are just as greedy as capitalists. They are just more corrupt. Rather than get their gains by honest deception, they get it by brute force — by using the police power of government to take it from others."
The point I would make is that it is not capitalism against socialism, it is corruption within a capitalist system against a system that is itself, corrupt and morally bankrupt. I would also say that socialism is more inherently honest than the "honest deception" employed in a failing capitalist structure. It is honest in its brutality toward productive people, unlike the insidious nature of the grift and thievery that has gone on 'legally' within our heretofore capitalist system.
The problem is that in a late stage, hubris addled capitalist construct we see people - presided over by none other than the likes of Greenspan - living in opulence (Million dollar gold waste baskets?) at the expense of others.
I think the question is, can capitalism be fixed or must it end in a socialist reckoning and redistribution as punishment for its own excesses?
http://www.biiwii.blogspot.com
http://www.biiwii.com
From Bonner's Shock Praise For Greenspan:
"The 'greed' that preoccupies Occupy Wall Street demonstrators is not a feature of capitalism, Greenspan points out. It's a feature of human nature. He might have pointed out that socialists are just as greedy as capitalists. They are just more corrupt. Rather than get their gains by honest deception, they get it by brute force — by using the police power of government to take it from others."
The point I would make is that it is not capitalism against socialism, it is corruption within a capitalist system against a system that is itself, corrupt and morally bankrupt. I would also say that socialism is more inherently honest than the "honest deception" employed in a failing capitalist structure. It is honest in its brutality toward productive people, unlike the insidious nature of the grift and thievery that has gone on 'legally' within our heretofore capitalist system.
The problem is that in a late stage, hubris addled capitalist construct we see people - presided over by none other than the likes of Greenspan - living in opulence (Million dollar gold waste baskets?) at the expense of others.
I think the question is, can capitalism be fixed or must it end in a socialist reckoning and redistribution as punishment for its own excesses?
http://www.biiwii.blogspot.com
http://www.biiwii.com
Depends what you call "Socialism". Most Americans seem to ignorantly use the term to refer to social safety nets, public health policies, environmental protection - anything that results in a world that's not "red in tooth and claw". I.e., anything that gets in the way of corporate hegemony.
ReplyDeleteThe true "Socialist" states are/were Cuba and the old USSR. Sweden isn't "socialist", Holland isn't "socialist" - those are "social democratic" states. "Social" as in "we institute the same Christian support policies that you'd see in any country that really cared about kindness and charity". In fact over there it's usually the Christian parties that institute "socialist" policies.
My own interpretation is that capitalist excess doesn't result in a "socialist" backlash - more likely, it results in a "terrorist" backlash. Eg., in the 70s you had Baader-Meinhof in Germany, Red Brigade in Italy, all sorts like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground and SLA in the US. These organizations will always flourish with large popular support, whenever it becomes obvious to the general population that the existing ethical structure that was supposed to define their country is no longer being adhered to by the ruling class.
In such a situation "socialism" (the USSR kind) is only one of many possible alternative politico-ethical systems that people gravitate to when they realize their nation's founding morals have been abandoned by the elite.
You can just as easily have a Christian backlash, for example - though not in the US, I think, since they seem to have no idea down there what Christianity is actually about. But a lot of the Latin American countries, for example, saw Catholic priests working directly for redistributive policies in the face of a fascist elite.