Taro,
Re: that I eventually in my naivité came to agree with you that (American) capitalism is a cancer and more than that, what would you suggest as our alternative to improve the world?
It is abundantly clear to most of the world beyond America's shores that this nation has gone feral. What was anathema and a war crime in 1945 is today's foreign policy, (i.e naked military aggression masked as preemptive strike authority).
It is clear that the CEO class in this nation is hell-bent on destroying the middle class and is engaged in a vicious race to the bottom, forcing American labor to compete against unpaid Chinese prison labor.
It is clear that oursourcing will eventually destroy this economy.
It is clear that the malignant addiction to foreign oil has led to an equally malevolent addition to war. With the concommitant execesses of war profiteering which President Dwight Eisenhower so belatedly, albeit wisely, warned us against in 1961.
It is clear that the 20 campaign by corporate interests to destroy the sensible and benevolent regulation regime in this nation has resulted in greatly weakened protection of the American People from the rapacious greed and avarice of the CEO class.
It is clear that currently the malevolent Bush Administration is hell-bent on turning back the clock on a century of progress in creating the climate of social safety nets, assistance with education, worker rights and reasonable tort protections that have prevented the worst of the excesses of Robber Baron capitalism from despoiling our environment and ruining our middle class.
So what is to be done?
The changes to be made are not that hard to envision. An end to American addition to foreign oil and war would be a sensible first place to start. Take the profit out of war, and it would stop tomorrow. Replace the very people who enable our war economy with sensible Americans in power who would make sure that bribery professionals like Halliburton, Bechtel, Custer-Battles, etc. cannot make a profit, and their activities would cease to destroy Amrerica's reputation across the planet.
Instituting sane C.A.F.E. standards for our vehicle fleet and repealing insane subsidies like the $100 K tax write-off for Hummer purchases would make American look a lot less gluttonous across the planet.
Rationalizing health care, instituting a basic single payer system to protect those at the bottom of society would be a genius move. America spends at least 50% more of its GDP on health care than any other OECD nation and we are the only nation without universal health care. Surely this is grotesquely inefficient capitalism at its worst.
And finally, this is really simple. We must demand a return to the old fashioned values of honesty, integrity and generational responsibility among our elites if we are to survive as a decent nation. The alternative is to continue down the path toward an unequal and unhealthy fascism, with all the implications that the militarization of a fearful police state involves. |
