So then in this line of reasoning, there has to be some greater meaning to life. Can you tell us what it is? We can value the 'whole human' in a truly capitalistic society as well, Mel. also, your spelling and grammar has been uncharacteristically poor today, Mel. Have you been indulging in happy hour?
No and No. government is the reason why are public schools are in such a sorry state. and why should we go to universal health care. this is a personal issue, not a governmental one.
When learning how to troubleshoot electronics, I was taught that sometimes the best way to find the problem (or solution in this case) is to find out what isn't the problem. Obviously your question is rhetorical, but what Mel was suggesting wasn't so much about finding an answer as it was about pruning off what doesn't work. Reducing the value of a society to its ability to consume is something that doesn't work, and needs pruning. Now, I agree with you here, except for your loose definition of "truly capitalist". In fact, I'll posit that in order to acheive a more democratic society we need more capitalism, rather than less. More small businesses, more urban shopping districts, more avenues for more citizens to become their own bosses... What we have now is a (very) loosely managed system of oligopoly, duopoly and monopoly, depending on the industry. Eventually this system will collapse. Anyone have a set of pruning shears?
You can't think, on your own, of a greater meaning to your life than to be the best consumer you can be? I mean, I would guess that you can't think of a greater purpose to MY life than to fit neatly and solely into the cog that turns this thing over for interlocking elites, but you can't think of one for yourself...for your family? Instructive.
Free-market fundmentalism undermines the possibility of democracy becasue a democracy is predicated on both a vital public life and the cultural importance of taking the time for citizens to engage in the necessary exchange that comes with a vital public life. When the market construct (not really "free," or the "free-est," as you offer...I'd submit that the free-est market is one where I have what I can TAKE...I don't think that we want that...the point is notions of the market orbit around our conceptions of freedom, among many other things...I do agree with you that more small businesses is usually good, but only if the natural size of business is acknowledged and respected...and the natural size of business is that for which a human being can be personally accountable. Can't manage all the doings of your business? Then it's too big, imv; that's the idea behind corporate-o-craptic efforts; do what we want, with no liability, with the corp. possessed of all the rights of a human being, and none of the responsiblities, none of the duty to look other humans in the eye, face to face, asn tell them that they are ********ing htem, with no grease, and no kiss...madness) produces corporate elites to which political elites are beholden, corporate media to which sensibilities of "news" are beholden (and not even a Fairness Doctrine to offer "equal time" on these various one-way information implantation technologies...what do I mean by 'one way?' You've had images implanted into your brain, permanently, when you watch television...the effect is less/different with radio, but the idea is the same...now, becauseyou ostensibly have CHOICE, right, make a decision, NOW, to forget those Tacoma-struck-by-a-meteor fantasies, those Coca-Cola-equals-fun illusions...you cannot. And you will not. Every single thing you ever see in front of a screen is part of you forever. Jerry Mander's book on this captures my wariness of television as a tech that limits imagination, implants irremovable images, and provides the illusion of experience while actually playing a role in removing us further from authentic experience..., but I digress...), and public life wanes. There's no doubt for me, because I'm a historian - I'm a guy that actually uses my history degree in the ways i was intended, lol - that you can trace, for example, the diminishment of the town hall/quorumed form of local governance, and the ascendancy of the township manager form, to the beleif that "being American" meant being wit hthe fam in fron t of the television, and NOT being down at the town hall and a part of government. You can walk from Library to library in New England, which held on, as a region, to that form of government the longest, as research the historical moments where citizen engagement whithered away without a whimper. Now, it wa never the most inclusive, most vital public life we could think about - especially in a supposed democracy - but it was a pathway to such governance. We don't even know, for the most part, that we miss it. Just like we don't know what it means to be a citizen. We talk about voting as if it is democracy. ******** all that. SAddam had voting. Even the very notion of "free and fiar" voting/elections must be couched in a reliance in, and relative mastery of, the various INSTITUTIONS of democratic principle. Voting, in a nation with a vital public life, is not mystery; it's the occasional end-result of the daily practice of engaging as many of those institutional appendages, local-to-global, as is suitable that day, that week, that month, that period. We don't have time for our own democracy. We don't TEACH time for, or the primacy of, citizen responsibilities, ony of rights. Not of what we have to DO everday, but what we GET. Which falls right in line with the current, consumer-ist, sensibility. Hell, Eugene O'Neill - of the ICeman Cometh - was talking about this, even then, about how Americans suffer from this notion that somehow they can possess their souls by means of possessing commodities...he asked (I paraphrase, and quote Dr. West's quote of him at that), 'don’t they recognize that they’ll end up a nation and an empire who has the capacity to conquer the world, but has completely lost its soul?' MLK, askign the same questions...'Saving the Soul of America,' was undoubtedly the theme, the heart, of the work of the SCLC, and of the Freedom Movement as it located around King's intents... Now, Matt and I can go back and forth on who ses what, but the evidence is clear in my view: if you don't have the time, don't know, and can't wrestle with your government's misadventures in - let's just take the past 60 years - China, from 1945-49, if you can't talk about what we did in Italy in 1947 and 1948, even if it's to DEFNED such act,s if you on't have any grasp at all of our international behaviour in Greece from 1947 to 1949, in the Philippines from 1945 to 1953, in South Korea from 1945 to 1953 (where, as my best man and one groomsman will tell you, if an AMerican citizen might care to know, we helkped SUPPRESS popular progressive - as I define it, MAtt, but popular and legally on their way, is the point - forces in favor of conservative Japanese collaborators in the subjugation of Koreans, and who the people stood fast against, which of course led to the militarized and brutal regimes in SK through the late 80s-early 90s...WE played a central role in that...this is not debatable, in terms of some weak "You don't see" argument..we DID these things), if you live unaware of we what DID, to Iran, during the Mossadegh government, our ROLE in Guatemala from 1953 to the present day, the choices made in our name in terms of Indonesia, Chile, Vietnam, Congo/Zaire, the DR, Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador...we could, quite literally, go on and on, Smedley Butler style...but Butler was a two-time MOH winner, and I'm not, so we'll stop. But if you have know citizen knowledge of these things, how they came about, how they transpired, the discernable reasons WHY they transpired, noone would submit that you are operating with BETTER information with which to evaluate the current misadventure in Iraq; no, we would all submit that you lack the historical context and typified reasoning for such misadventure, regardles ofwhether or not you'd USE such information to stand for, or agains,t such acts abroad... Same thing applies domestically; if you don't know what it TOOK to GET certain rights, how do you value them...? How do you know how to retain them? How do you effectively become..them? I don't think that folks were shot by rapacious business brownshirts for the right to earn a truly lviing wage in the labor struggle soi that I - we - could piss away those rights in "at-will contract" **************** WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THE COSTS HAVE BEEN. It was 1919 when T.S. Eliot made clear in his essay his POV on the subject: that tradition cannot be something inherited; that access to tradition only comes with fervent labor...you must WORK, HARD, to gain access to traditions, particularly ones that cut against the grain of power in any particular moment... How do we maximize and vitalize public life? WE are human, and there are only 24 hours in the day. SOmething else has to give, for America to continue to become that narrowing of the gap betwen ideation and implementation, and for AMericans to move from just being operators of what they perceive to be a ready-built nation, to what they have to be if democracy is to survive: continuous nation builders.
It's not; but it's interesting that you infuse my post with your sensibility on the issue. I asked if, given what bolded in my post, and the questions he asked, if he cannot figure out a higher purpose to his own life than to be the very best consumer he can be. My post was quite simple, and a clear response to his post. It may be infused with other assumptions for you, but that's a dialogue you can only have with yourself.
Precisely. Free-market fundamentalism eventually turns into a group of trusts that control various industries. And yes, when those trusts are given personhood status by the state, they become very powerful "people" indeed, resulting in a decidedly un-democratic society. Perhaps by using the term "more capitalism" my post became misleading. However, I take some issue with the notion that large corporations, by virtue of their being large and incorporated, are necessarily bad. A marketplace run outside of a zero-sum paradigm (zero-sum to include all market forces, not just inter-competitor) can produce spectacular results, regardless of the size of the corporations involved. Quite unfortunately for all concerned, this remains an abstract theory. [result] Like I needed to depress myself further after the Rose Bowl [/result]
I am not here to be a consumer, though I am indeed a consumer. I work to make a lasting impression on society, to leave behind me a legacy worthy of remembrance. I have no desire to be one of the hundreds of millions whose names are forgotten within two generations. For my name to be in the conscious of the public, that is my purpose. Though I have no wife/children of my own, with regards to my family members, it is for them to decide what they want and pursue it.
The market will meet that demand for urban shopping if it is a profitable pursuit. the small businesses in this country have flourished in the past 10 years (see the .com revolution, most of which were companies with less than 100 employees//the small cap stocks have done extremely well the last few years as those companies are flourishing). As for avenues to become their own bosses (and i'm not talking about the mom & pop restaurants, the hipster who opens a clothing botique as those people will always have access to capital in order to become their own bosses), only education will give us that. And that is a value that must be instilled through family/community support, not 'No Child Left Behind'. What we have now is a heavily regulated capitalistic structure. The reason we have an oil 'oligopoly' is that government regulation has forced the companies to grow so large to effectively overcome the barriers to entry set forth by the regulators. Outside of that, I can't see a single industry that has a strong barrier to entry in this country (I guess the auto industry has a high barrier, but only due to the large capital needs and the fact that there are already numerous large and established competitors). Software is full of small outfits. Small telecom services firms are popping up like wild fire. Biotech/pharma spawn countless companies. Nano-tech shops are budding everywhere. Alternative energy companies are starting to show up en masse. The only barrier to entry in this list is education. You must have one (whether it be a BA, MS, or technical school) in order to survive in the industries that will be new drivers for growth in the future.
Oh, you seek to be remembered by society, and not to be forgotten, and for your "name to be in the conscious of the public," that's your purpose? Understood. Interesting. And, in the end analysis, seriously illuminating.
Libertarians want to privatize the schools and the roads and even the police and fire department. That's the only way they'll accomplish their twisted and ill-concieved dream of no taxes at all. I said it before and I'll say it again, Libertarians should be rounded up and burned at the stake like the witches they are.
before you come back to this thread, have something to say. you added nothing to the topic. but here is a thought for you: so you can honestly say that the government has done a good job with America's public schools, on average? I think it was Chicago/Illinois that has privatized some of their roads, and quite honestly, they are pretty smooth. the police and fire department fall under 'protection of citizens', and is covered by the government. this is where the libertarians go awry.
You talk about the importance of education, yet you think that should be left presumably to those with enough money to *afford* it?
you already pay a hefty portion of money in taxes. if you were allowed to keep that, you'd be able to afford the privatized schools, with no problem whatsoever. and if they are privatized, I guarantee that they would be able to rein in costs, as opposed to the current situation where costs are rising at two and three times the rate of inflation within academe (at least public universities, individual school systems I would assume to be mightily similar).
To each their own Mel. I'm glad we (at least I) can say we respect the others' goals and accept them as such.
I'm sure you realize that this does not take into account that if you have more kids you don't pay more in taxes. Nor does it consider people so poor they pay no income tax.
Listen here you ***********. The reason why the schools are failing is because of the neo-con's war against the government over the last 2 to 3 decades. They have been steadily cutting funding for schools and people like you who bitch and moan about the school system sucks but then don't want to pony up the extra tax money it takes to raise cash for the school system. It's people like you who are making things worse and who should be the first people set on fire while hung from their nuts off the Brooklyn Bridge.
There will be schools that cater to crowds with less money to spend. Not all will cost $27,000/yr. There would be those that cater to the crowd needing $4,000/yr schooling. Most of America's private universities (as well as some private elementary and secondary schools) receive the majority of their funding through alumni giving. This charitable giving for which America is known will be able to flourish as more people will have more to give, allowing for scholarships to those of need. Topped off by the fact that some of organizations running the schools will be able to grant scholarships.
Dave, I can see how this connection is made. I'm trying to see this from your point of view so that we can discuss this with all thoughts/ideas on the table.
I swear to God, I just want to choke the living ******* out of bastard Libertarians like you. You continue to erode government and society's responsibility to educate youth and provide services, opting to privatize everything and treat it like it's a ********ing market out there. It's people like you who are killing this country.