Back a few short centuries ago, if you didn't like someone you could accuse them of being a witch. This would result in, among other abuses,
a) Instant arrest. b) Torture until confession. c) Death upon confession. d) Death upon claim of innocence.
In fact, it was common practice for the accusers and torturers and especially the church to split up the accused's estate.
Back a few short decades ago, in the USA, if you didn't like someone you could accuse them of being a communist. This would, among other abuses, often result in,
a) Swift arrest. b) Interrogation and humiliation. c) Blacklisting upon confession. d) Blacklisting upon insistance of innocence.
Often, the only way to clear your own name was to finger other friends and associates as being communists.
Now we have this new legistlation being considered in the UK. It has much in common with the travesties above. With this proposed law, one of the dangers is that if someone doesn't like you, they will simply have to send you encrypted email, then cry encrypter! This will result in, among other things,
1) Sudden search, seizure, and probable arrest. 2) Interrogation and humiliation. 3) Jail sentence upon confession. 4) Jail sentence upon claim of innocence.
This will happen regularly by jilted lovers, angry employees, school children, and the police. It is no trouble at all to put files on someone's computer. It will be especially easy for the police, who if they decide not to take the encrypted email route, will instead be able to waltz in your home, shove you out of the way, and directly plant any files they want anywhere on your system. When you are asked for your decryption key, well, gosh, officer, I don't have one.
The burden of proof should NEVER have to reside with the accused.
Just like that, because you pissed off the wrong guy, you get two years.
Trust him with my life? Thats an absurd notion. I would no more trust Mr. Blair with my life than I would any other stranger. You never know what a man is capable of doing when he is up against the wall. Would Mr. Blair dive in front of me to stop a bullet? Would Mr. Blair jump into a knifefight to save me if I was losing? Would Mr. Blair give me his kidney if I needed it? Now what if nobody was around to boost his approval rating?
I don't know the guy at ALL. Maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. I hope he is the kind of guy who would, I really do. Nevertheless, I don't know a thing about him personally, and like all strangers, I do NOT trust him with my life.
OK, lets put it this way. I fault anyone who, for the sake of money or power, simple laziness or any other reason, will organize, underwrite, enact or turn a blind eye to murder, rape, and destruction. Capitalism has a tendency to collect wealth in hands of those who are tragically short on scruples and integrity. This is a bad thing, as it leads to the above abuses.
Its difficult to totally cover up slaughter, Tim. Its not like this came to me in a dream. Jeez man, I'm not insane. I just keep my eyes and ears open, and look around no matter what the truth leads me to, no matter how ugly or frightening it is. This is both.
The fact that you doubt this proves my point after a fashion... the constant corporate trickle of propaganda has not prepared most people emotionally to handle it when they hear that all is not what it seems. See, not only are you not aware of the abuses of power, not only are you reluctant to believe it, but you are also reluctant to find out for yourself. Should you be bold, you will look it up anyway. Like I said, you can follow the trail right from the bodies to the soldiers, to the generals, to the advisors, to the weapons, to the money. It is right there for you to find out, if you have the willpower to fight your gut instinct telling you, "no way, this guy is full of it." Open your eyes. Look it up. The net is a great source for information. Most of it is crap, but you find some real gems. You can find lots of information here, right at your fingertips, and the gov't can't do much about that. Its scary shit and its right under your nose, but you are reluctant to look. This is okay. You have been brainwashed your entire life with a soft, friendly cloth. Only when you find out who holds the cloth, you see its not so friendly.
Push through your reluctance and look it up. El Salvador. Chile. East Timor. Be patient and follow links and take notes, soon a picture will form. It all heads right back home, and its just the tip of the iceberg. Observe where the money and the guns come from. That much is relatively easy to trace. Whats harder is to spot who tells who what to do... that is the part that usually requires one read between the lines, because that is precisely what the CIA and other spook organizations keep secret. But the lines are there to read.
Again I say, look it up. Don't take me at my word, don't believe me blindly, don't let me persuade you without you verifying my claims. That you doubt me is good, because it shows that you are not completely credulous. These are extraordinary claims and they should cause you to wonder. But I don't pull these claims out of my hat, Tim. If you perchance dare to look it up, I mean spend some real time doing research, you will begin to wonder if I am right. Then, not long after, you will see it.
This is trivial, but the Declaration of Indepence was written by lawyers.
This is true. I suppose I spoke harshly and overgeneralize. I respect and admire the work of many lawyers, not the least of which is our founding fathers. But I think there are more than just a few bad apples out there nowadays. The problem is systemic. Its the current system in which they feed that is the corrupting force here. I honestly don't believe that our country today is what the founding lawyers had in mind. In the long run, I think the majority of the lawyers churned out will end up serving a darker purpose than truth and justice.
Haha very funny.:) Sarcasm, my favorite form of humor. I find it highly irregular how you don't really address any of my major points, but choose this one and this one only to vent your supreme wit upon. Imagine, me fooling you into thinking I'm a superhuman without even trying, I'm really that uber. Well, sarcasm aside, I am not a superhuman and we both know it. I merely have spent a lot of time learning about the subject of mass media, marketing, and manipulation. But since I got your goat and now he's eating my grass, let me address your point. You make a good one.
I can't deny that we have made major advances in civil freedoms. In fact I don't want to deny it. I'm glad for it. It goes to show you what people can do when they put their minds to it. All of your examples were major advancements in the cause of freedom and truth. I am suggesting that we are now in the midst of another, more subtle and consistent type of oppression. That's what makes it so dangerous. Its difficult to spot. I like to think that one day in the middle future, we will be able to add to your noble list this fact: "Freed all of humanity from the effects of corporate lies and propaganda." This isn't a problem for any particular class. Not the blacks, not the indians, not women or hippies or children. Its a problem for everyone
I happily exclaim that civil advances have been made. Your implication that I don't see this is unfoudned. I am claiming that even though our culture in some ways is becoming more fair and homogenous, in others we are having the sense knocked right out of our skulls. I'm sure the corporations love it: a homogenous demographic is easier to sell to and ultimately dominate.
Look closer if you dare. With apparent increased freedom for America's oppressed subcultures, our choices are being limited in other, more subtle ways. Through the clever, continuous, calculated use of commercial propaganda, our choices are being subliminally hardcoded directly onto our psychological BIOS from birth. Not by the secret police, not by the KGB, but by the corporations and the marketing firms they employ. Its insidious in the true sense of the word. I actually made this point up above a post or two, but didn't stress the point strong enough for some to see it, I guess.
The CIA is bad, man. They are big and powerful and well armed, and they keep secrets from the very people they purport to protect. They cannot be trusted to have humanity's best interests first and foremost in their minds. What does the tether of accountability mean to ambitious men who answer to nobody? Corporations are bad, man. They've proven not to have humanity's best interests first and foremost at the boardmeetings and at the factory. Both of these organizations will underwrite and organize and enact murder, rape, and destruction. Look into it, man. If there is any evil in this world, its highly concentrated at the top of these organizations.
You are right. The posts I've made aren't chock full of facts and figures and statistics. Its mostly opinion. You seem to imply that they are full of lies and misinformation. That they are not. I dare you to do the research if you doubt me. I leave leave lies and misinformation to the tobacco corporations and the governments and their respective lackies. Yet I am sure you did not mean this as a mean spirited implication, so I wont hold it against you.
Where are all your facts and figures?
Now, on the subject of police states, while we aren't exactly living in Communist Russia, our freedoms are being chipped away bit by bit, slowly so that we hardly take notice except over the long term. No, its not a police state, but we're on the way. The bulk of America's closet Hitlers and Mussolinis these days work for the CIA and other agencies not beholden to the people. They set up and oversee thier police states in third world countries out from under the public's nose. Far away places such as El Salvador and Chile and East Timor, and they are not obliged to share any information with us. That fact alone doesn't make them suspect? I wont count the bodies for you. Look it up. Follow the trail of advisors and weapons and money and it leads right back to this country every time. And don't for a minute think that Nike, Levi, and the Gap aren't right beside the generals and spooks, whispering in their ears, ensuring that cheap labor exists for them, unimpeded by something as expensive as "the ideals of freedom".
I interpret this to mean either the closet dictators get it out of their system elsewhere, or its simply practice for when its time to set up the police state over here. Likely, it will end up being both. Either way, we as a people have an obligation to recognize it and stop it.
No, its not a police state. Hopefully we will never get there, but the future is looking more and more controlled every time I look at the structure upon which it is built. What is that structure? It is tough to describe, but we see its effects all around us. We see a part of it when we look at the so-called mandated menu. But thats just a euphemism. It merely means that we are not free birds living in a land of sunshine and tailwinds like some would have us believe. The corporate-government keeps us stuffed to the throat with cheap food and placidly entertained with silly brain-dead sit coms and computer games. We do not live in a world of freedom, we live in a world designed to make us placid slaves. You doubt this now, but think on it.
Who, if they were given a choice at birth, would ponder it and say "I want to dedicate my life to increasing the market share of the Coca-Cola Corporation." Not me. Probably not you. Probably not anyone you know. Yet this is what most of us end up doing. Why? Because the corporations inflict pro-conformist propaganda upon us from day one. Look at television these days. For that matter, look anywhere designed by the hand of corporate man. Everything you see promotes the corporate, pro-consumption lifestyle. Drink this, be like us, we are sexy and cool and you can be too. Yes, Tim Behrendsen, we might have choices, but the last thing the corporations and the government are going to do is promote anything but the status quo and those new things that fill their pockets with more money. They are doing everything in their considerable economic power to hide our empowering choices from us. What's left is the mandated menu. What's left is what they want us to see in order to remain good worker bees.
The gold standard, ah yes, now I remember. I don't know what the fuss is about really, I haven't heard all sides of the argument so as to make up my own mind. Off the top of my head, I'd say that "gold" isn't the prime medium of exchange anymore and not worth basing a modern economy on. Perhaps information takes that role now. I admit that I am not versed in the specifics so I take no sides yet.
Lastly, you ask what would it take to make me happy? Hell, man, I don't know. How about aliens coming down to Earth and giving us something else to fret about besides each other. We are but rats in a closed box, and breeding. I'd like someone or something to come by and open up that box. That would make me happy.
I can't speak for everyone here, but I'm new to slashdot. So far, the wheat/chaff ratio is better than anywhere else I've seen.
I'm all about choice and freedom. If you believe thats what we have today, I should like to get my glasses tinted the same shade of rose. Just because we begin each ball game by singing about "the land of the free and the home of the brave" doesn't make it so. The real trick has been to make the general populace believe that's what we have. Pulling that one over on us was quite a coup. Yes, we have choices, as long as they are the ones printed for us by the corporations and federally approved. Theres quite a difference between "freedom of choice" and "freedom from choice". I'm all about choice. I just don't like this mandated menu.
And for the record, I never claimed to believe in a mom and pop utopia. Capitalism in its purest form sounds to me like it would work, much the same as many other ideologies. Unfortunately, we've got this pesky things called human nature to contend with, contaminating most well meaning social endeavors.
As for a golden era, I don't know when America as a country was ever in one. A case could be made, I think, that the last Golden Era was the few years leading up to and including the drafting of the Declaration of Independance and the subsequent Revolutionary War. After that, the lawyers got ahold of it, and most of 'em who couldn't hack the courtroom became politicians.
As for a Golden Era on a world wide scale, I suppose it was just before Homo Sapiens evolved. We've pretty much raped this place.
BTW, what is a gold standard? You mean an ideal? If that's what a gold standard is, sure I long for it. Don't you?
In my experience, it is a word used by people who see that so-called free market capitalism regularly produces results which seem unsound, but are unwilling to question whether capitalism itself provides incentives toward sub-optimal outcomes.
You know, Roger, you may be right. Given human nature, I am not sure that the so-called "corporatism" is anything but the inevitable result of "capitalism."
Nope, not a drama major. Having met a few actors, I think I prefer mathematician and philosophers. Besides, I'm out of school a long time ago, sonny.
And capitalism among other things such as being an economic system relying on trade requires that honest information be shared. You said so yourself with the word "regulation". Its a shame that the bulk of the "regulators" are all in the corporations pocket.
Sure, corporatism is a new word. But is it nonsense? I am not so sure. Obviously the system we have nowadays strays far from the so-ideal of so-called "free" trade. I'm don't think capitalism is a good word to describe it anymore.
And water tastes a whole helluva lot better than coke, but that's a matter of opinion and I leave you to yours.
"corporatism was different than capitalism, but I just don't see how?...
I hadn't heard the term "corporatism" before this, but I assume that the author is commenting on the difference between theory and practice. In theory, capitalism is a good plan, imbued with justice and honesty. Among other things, capitalism suggests fair competition. It suggests a level playing field. Its suggests that the best product win. Its a good idea in theory. Capitalism is a process based on the noble process of sharing honest information.
Now, corporatism totally distorts the ideal of capitalism. It doesn't share information, it manipulates. What is the distorter? Money and power, of course. The best product does NOT usually win. Consider that more Coca-cola gets drank in America than water, and I can't think of a better all around product than water. Why is this so? Marketing. There's not much money to be made slinging a healthy product that falls from the sky. So we are told to "Do the Dew", or that "Its the real thing." Most of us follow blindly along. There are countless examples of this. Windows v. Linux. Petroleum v. Solar. RIAA v. Napster. "Corporatism" is based on manipulation, not information.
"Corporatism" throws out of capitalisms rules of fairplay and honesty and self-restraint. "Corporatism" is capitalism's evil twin. Its the subtle difference between "May the best man win" and "Every man for himself" played out to its bitter end. Today, this subtle difference is amplified to a global level and is very, very dangerous. "Corporatism" either knows not, or cares not, of the consequences of unchecked, unprincipled growth.
Sigh. Anyway, good luck Napster. You can beat those bastards.
Sure, there is a bit of a cultural waveform visible in America. Loosely following along in Millman's trend we had emancipation in the 1860's. Earlier than that and I don't know my obscure history of people's rights history to say. I suppose you can go back as far as the War of Independance and call it the main event, the initial splash, the cultural upheaval big bang.
But like its physical analog of a rock dropped in a stream, this cultural pattern unfortunately also has a trend of getting weaker with time. The cultural wave trend exists wholly within the context of the initial splash. The power of the waves must weaken otherwise every 30 or 40 years we'd have another War of Independance.
Its running down, slowly. Even if this perceived pattern is real, it will eventually smooth out to near imperceptable levels. I feel we are almost there as we speak. What exactly did the 60 give us? Miniskirts and Happy Faces and Bob Dylan? Perhaps the best thing we gained out of the sixties is a general awareness of the abuses of power, or perhaps we knew it all along. What concrete changes were made back then? And what about now? Grassroots organizations today, although numerous and determined, accomplish small things on small scales. Why? Because as we have grown, so have the powers that be. We have more resources and yet so do they. Rest assured that any change we enact is more than negated in some other area outside our influence or off the radar. Short of another revolution, this wave pattern tha began with the American Revolution is almost imperceptable.
Now we must also consider this: there is nowhere else to run to. Back in the heyday of English Colonialism, the early settlers found it relatively easy to populate and organize the North American continent and eventually seperate from the mother country. But the disenfranchised today have no such luxury. The global population is too great and the landmass too limited to support any major exodus. And we wont stop breeding. There exists nowhere on Earth today that can be to us what North America was to the settlers back then. So we are left with the waning cultural wave patterns, visible today in the same way that the the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang is visible with a sensitive telescope.
As a people, we have nowhere else to go and nothing new to see. At this point, the human race is almost like a bunch of rats in a covered box, and breeding. We feed on ourselves. All this brou ha ha about the market and a global currency is just another new rat for us to turn to for answers, but in the end its just another rat. Bruce Stering can predict what he wants about the market. I predict that if we don't find a way get off this planet, and soon, we will become rats in a box on a sinking ship.
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a) Instant arrest.
b) Torture until confession.
c) Death upon confession.
d) Death upon claim of innocence.
In fact, it was common practice for the accusers and torturers and especially the church to split up the accused's estate.
Back a few short decades ago, in the USA, if you didn't like someone you could accuse them of being a communist. This would, among other abuses, often result in,
a) Swift arrest.
b) Interrogation and humiliation.
c) Blacklisting upon confession.
d) Blacklisting upon insistance of innocence.
Often, the only way to clear your own name was to finger other friends and associates as being communists.
Now we have this new legistlation being considered in the UK. It has much in common with the travesties above. With this proposed law, one of the dangers is that if someone doesn't like you, they will simply have to send you encrypted email, then cry encrypter! This will result in, among other things,
1) Sudden search, seizure, and probable arrest.
2) Interrogation and humiliation.
3) Jail sentence upon confession.
4) Jail sentence upon claim of innocence.
This will happen regularly by jilted lovers, angry employees, school children, and the police. It is no trouble at all to put files on someone's computer. It will be especially easy for the police, who if they decide not to take the encrypted email route, will instead be able to waltz in your home, shove you out of the way, and directly plant any files they want anywhere on your system. When you are asked for your decryption key, well, gosh, officer, I don't have one.
The burden of proof should NEVER have to reside with the accused.
Just like that, because you pissed off the wrong guy, you get two years.
You will if this insane law gets passed, that is.
She's an encrypter! Burn her!
Trust him with my life? Thats an absurd notion. I would no more trust Mr. Blair with my life than I would any other stranger. You never know what a man is capable of doing when he is up against the wall. Would Mr. Blair dive in front of me to stop a bullet? Would Mr. Blair jump into a knifefight to save me if I was losing? Would Mr. Blair give me his kidney if I needed it? Now what if nobody was around to boost his approval rating?
I don't know the guy at ALL. Maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. I hope he is the kind of guy who would, I really do. Nevertheless, I don't know a thing about him personally, and like all strangers, I do NOT trust him with my life.
OK, lets put it this way. I fault anyone who, for the sake of money or power, simple laziness or any other reason, will organize, underwrite, enact or turn a blind eye to murder, rape, and destruction. Capitalism has a tendency to collect wealth in hands of those who are tragically short on scruples and integrity. This is a bad thing, as it leads to the above abuses.
The fact that you doubt this proves my point after a fashion... the constant corporate trickle of propaganda has not prepared most people emotionally to handle it when they hear that all is not what it seems. See, not only are you not aware of the abuses of power, not only are you reluctant to believe it, but you are also reluctant to find out for yourself. Should you be bold, you will look it up anyway. Like I said, you can follow the trail right from the bodies to the soldiers, to the generals, to the advisors, to the weapons, to the money. It is right there for you to find out, if you have the willpower to fight your gut instinct telling you, "no way, this guy is full of it." Open your eyes. Look it up. The net is a great source for information. Most of it is crap, but you find some real gems. You can find lots of information here, right at your fingertips, and the gov't can't do much about that. Its scary shit and its right under your nose, but you are reluctant to look. This is okay. You have been brainwashed your entire life with a soft, friendly cloth. Only when you find out who holds the cloth, you see its not so friendly.
Push through your reluctance and look it up. El Salvador. Chile. East Timor. Be patient and follow links and take notes, soon a picture will form. It all heads right back home, and its just the tip of the iceberg. Observe where the money and the guns come from. That much is relatively easy to trace. Whats harder is to spot who tells who what to do... that is the part that usually requires one read between the lines, because that is precisely what the CIA and other spook organizations keep secret. But the lines are there to read.
Again I say, look it up. Don't take me at my word, don't believe me blindly, don't let me persuade you without you verifying my claims. That you doubt me is good, because it shows that you are not completely credulous. These are extraordinary claims and they should cause you to wonder. But I don't pull these claims out of my hat, Tim. If you perchance dare to look it up, I mean spend some real time doing research, you will begin to wonder if I am right. Then, not long after, you will see it.
How the hell did we get on this subject anyway? :)
This is true. I suppose I spoke harshly and overgeneralize. I respect and admire the work of many lawyers, not the least of which is our founding fathers. But I think there are more than just a few bad apples out there nowadays. The problem is systemic. Its the current system in which they feed that is the corrupting force here. I honestly don't believe that our country today is what the founding lawyers had in mind. In the long run, I think the majority of the lawyers churned out will end up serving a darker purpose than truth and justice.
I can't deny that we have made major advances in civil freedoms. In fact I don't want to deny it. I'm glad for it. It goes to show you what people can do when they put their minds to it. All of your examples were major advancements in the cause of freedom and truth. I am suggesting that we are now in the midst of another, more subtle and consistent type of oppression. That's what makes it so dangerous. Its difficult to spot. I like to think that one day in the middle future, we will be able to add to your noble list this fact: "Freed all of humanity from the effects of corporate lies and propaganda." This isn't a problem for any particular class. Not the blacks, not the indians, not women or hippies or children. Its a problem for everyone
I happily exclaim that civil advances have been made. Your implication that I don't see this is unfoudned. I am claiming that even though our culture in some ways is becoming more fair and homogenous, in others we are having the sense knocked right out of our skulls. I'm sure the corporations love it: a homogenous demographic is easier to sell to and ultimately dominate.
Look closer if you dare. With apparent increased freedom for America's oppressed subcultures, our choices are being limited in other, more subtle ways. Through the clever, continuous, calculated use of commercial propaganda, our choices are being subliminally hardcoded directly onto our psychological BIOS from birth. Not by the secret police, not by the KGB, but by the corporations and the marketing firms they employ. Its insidious in the true sense of the word. I actually made this point up above a post or two, but didn't stress the point strong enough for some to see it, I guess.
The CIA is bad, man. They are big and powerful and well armed, and they keep secrets from the very people they purport to protect. They cannot be trusted to have humanity's best interests first and foremost in their minds. What does the tether of accountability mean to ambitious men who answer to nobody? Corporations are bad, man. They've proven not to have humanity's best interests first and foremost at the boardmeetings and at the factory. Both of these organizations will underwrite and organize and enact murder, rape, and destruction. Look into it, man. If there is any evil in this world, its highly concentrated at the top of these organizations.
Where are all your facts and figures?
Now, on the subject of police states, while we aren't exactly living in Communist Russia, our freedoms are being chipped away bit by bit, slowly so that we hardly take notice except over the long term. No, its not a police state, but we're on the way. The bulk of America's closet Hitlers and Mussolinis these days work for the CIA and other agencies not beholden to the people. They set up and oversee thier police states in third world countries out from under the public's nose. Far away places such as El Salvador and Chile and East Timor, and they are not obliged to share any information with us. That fact alone doesn't make them suspect? I wont count the bodies for you. Look it up. Follow the trail of advisors and weapons and money and it leads right back to this country every time. And don't for a minute think that Nike, Levi, and the Gap aren't right beside the generals and spooks, whispering in their ears, ensuring that cheap labor exists for them, unimpeded by something as expensive as "the ideals of freedom".
I interpret this to mean either the closet dictators get it out of their system elsewhere, or its simply practice for when its time to set up the police state over here. Likely, it will end up being both. Either way, we as a people have an obligation to recognize it and stop it.
No, its not a police state. Hopefully we will never get there, but the future is looking more and more controlled every time I look at the structure upon which it is built. What is that structure? It is tough to describe, but we see its effects all around us. We see a part of it when we look at the so-called mandated menu. But thats just a euphemism. It merely means that we are not free birds living in a land of sunshine and tailwinds like some would have us believe. The corporate-government keeps us stuffed to the throat with cheap food and placidly entertained with silly brain-dead sit coms and computer games. We do not live in a world of freedom, we live in a world designed to make us placid slaves. You doubt this now, but think on it.
Who, if they were given a choice at birth, would ponder it and say "I want to dedicate my life to increasing the market share of the Coca-Cola Corporation." Not me. Probably not you. Probably not anyone you know. Yet this is what most of us end up doing. Why? Because the corporations inflict pro-conformist propaganda upon us from day one. Look at television these days. For that matter, look anywhere designed by the hand of corporate man. Everything you see promotes the corporate, pro-consumption lifestyle. Drink this, be like us, we are sexy and cool and you can be too. Yes, Tim Behrendsen, we might have choices, but the last thing the corporations and the government are going to do is promote anything but the status quo and those new things that fill their pockets with more money. They are doing everything in their considerable economic power to hide our empowering choices from us. What's left is the mandated menu. What's left is what they want us to see in order to remain good worker bees.
The gold standard, ah yes, now I remember. I don't know what the fuss is about really, I haven't heard all sides of the argument so as to make up my own mind. Off the top of my head, I'd say that "gold" isn't the prime medium of exchange anymore and not worth basing a modern economy on. Perhaps information takes that role now. I admit that I am not versed in the specifics so I take no sides yet.
Lastly, you ask what would it take to make me happy? Hell, man, I don't know. How about aliens coming down to Earth and giving us something else to fret about besides each other. We are but rats in a closed box, and breeding. I'd like someone or something to come by and open up that box. That would make me happy.
I'm all about choice and freedom. If you believe thats what we have today, I should like to get my glasses tinted the same shade of rose. Just because we begin each ball game by singing about "the land of the free and the home of the brave" doesn't make it so. The real trick has been to make the general populace believe that's what we have. Pulling that one over on us was quite a coup. Yes, we have choices, as long as they are the ones printed for us by the corporations and federally approved. Theres quite a difference between "freedom of choice" and "freedom from choice". I'm all about choice. I just don't like this mandated menu.
And for the record, I never claimed to believe in a mom and pop utopia. Capitalism in its purest form sounds to me like it would work, much the same as many other ideologies. Unfortunately, we've got this pesky things called human nature to contend with, contaminating most well meaning social endeavors.
As for a golden era, I don't know when America as a country was ever in one. A case could be made, I think, that the last Golden Era was the few years leading up to and including the drafting of the Declaration of Independance and the subsequent Revolutionary War. After that, the lawyers got ahold of it, and most of 'em who couldn't hack the courtroom became politicians.
As for a Golden Era on a world wide scale, I suppose it was just before Homo Sapiens evolved. We've pretty much raped this place.
BTW, what is a gold standard? You mean an ideal? If that's what a gold standard is, sure I long for it. Don't you?
You know, Roger, you may be right. Given human nature, I am not sure that the so-called "corporatism" is anything but the inevitable result of "capitalism."
And capitalism among other things such as being an economic system relying on trade requires that honest information be shared. You said so yourself with the word "regulation". Its a shame that the bulk of the "regulators" are all in the corporations pocket.
Sure, corporatism is a new word. But is it nonsense? I am not so sure. Obviously the system we have nowadays strays far from the so-ideal of so-called "free" trade. I'm don't think capitalism is a good word to describe it anymore.
And water tastes a whole helluva lot better than coke, but that's a matter of opinion and I leave you to yours.
I hadn't heard the term "corporatism" before this, but I assume that the author is commenting on the difference between theory and practice. In theory, capitalism is a good plan, imbued with justice and honesty. Among other things, capitalism suggests fair competition. It suggests a level playing field. Its suggests that the best product win. Its a good idea in theory. Capitalism is a process based on the noble process of sharing honest information.
Now, corporatism totally distorts the ideal of capitalism. It doesn't share information, it manipulates. What is the distorter? Money and power, of course. The best product does NOT usually win. Consider that more Coca-cola gets drank in America than water, and I can't think of a better all around product than water. Why is this so? Marketing. There's not much money to be made slinging a healthy product that falls from the sky. So we are told to "Do the Dew", or that "Its the real thing." Most of us follow blindly along. There are countless examples of this. Windows v. Linux. Petroleum v. Solar. RIAA v. Napster. "Corporatism" is based on manipulation, not information.
"Corporatism" throws out of capitalisms rules of fairplay and honesty and self-restraint. "Corporatism" is capitalism's evil twin. Its the subtle difference between "May the best man win" and "Every man for himself" played out to its bitter end. Today, this subtle difference is amplified to a global level and is very, very dangerous. "Corporatism" either knows not, or cares not, of the consequences of unchecked, unprincipled growth.
Sigh. Anyway, good luck Napster. You can beat those bastards.
But like its physical analog of a rock dropped in a stream, this cultural pattern unfortunately also has a trend of getting weaker with time. The cultural wave trend exists wholly within the context of the initial splash. The power of the waves must weaken otherwise every 30 or 40 years we'd have another War of Independance.
Its running down, slowly. Even if this perceived pattern is real, it will eventually smooth out to near imperceptable levels. I feel we are almost there as we speak. What exactly did the 60 give us? Miniskirts and Happy Faces and Bob Dylan? Perhaps the best thing we gained out of the sixties is a general awareness of the abuses of power, or perhaps we knew it all along. What concrete changes were made back then? And what about now? Grassroots organizations today, although numerous and determined, accomplish small things on small scales. Why? Because as we have grown, so have the powers that be. We have more resources and yet so do they. Rest assured that any change we enact is more than negated in some other area outside our influence or off the radar. Short of another revolution, this wave pattern tha began with the American Revolution is almost imperceptable.
Now we must also consider this: there is nowhere else to run to. Back in the heyday of English Colonialism, the early settlers found it relatively easy to populate and organize the North American continent and eventually seperate from the mother country. But the disenfranchised today have no such luxury. The global population is too great and the landmass too limited to support any major exodus. And we wont stop breeding. There exists nowhere on Earth today that can be to us what North America was to the settlers back then. So we are left with the waning cultural wave patterns, visible today in the same way that the the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang is visible with a sensitive telescope.
As a people, we have nowhere else to go and nothing new to see. At this point, the human race is almost like a bunch of rats in a covered box, and breeding. We feed on ourselves. All this brou ha ha about the market and a global currency is just another new rat for us to turn to for answers, but in the end its just another rat. Bruce Stering can predict what he wants about the market. I predict that if we don't find a way get off this planet, and soon, we will become rats in a box on a sinking ship.