An ecologist studies the relationships between living organisms. But first he must understand the organism itself. To do this he studies its behavior patterns so that, among other things, he can determine whether those behaviors are good, bad or indifferent for his own species. Capitalism, I suggest, is in and of itself just one more of those wild beasts whose behavior patterns need to be identified and made widely known so that a democratic society can develop appropriate responses to its natural behaviors.
An initial observation will reveal that capitalism has no inherent restraints. It is a cannibal devouring its own kind as readily as other prey. It will consume resources with no regard for anything but its own appetite. Another initial observation will be that said appetite is insatiable. It will, left to its own devices, literally eat itself out of house and home. It is especially aggressive when civilization seeks to defend itself by fencing this wild beast in. It will, as Grover Norquist infamously said, drown an infant government in its bathtub.
Our ecologist of capitalism will discover additional behaviors of this wild thing. Number one perhaps is that it will seek to turn everything it captures into a profit making market and it is tenacious in this pursuit. It never stops from satiation. The occasion for this column was a recent report on how banks, having exhausted much of their traditional sources of profit are now turning to Baby Boomers and other senior citizens for the money they have squirreled away for the exigencies of old age. They are looking for ways to pry this money, which they regard as a disposable resource, loose for investment in more risky instruments than a savings account or a certificate of deposit.
It is important to understand the dimensions of this insatiability. It is the major source of the increasing triviality and shallowness of this society. In its search for markets capitalism will turn the most pressing needs of society, e.g. crime prevention, into a reality show so media corporations and advertisers can make money. It will make a video game out of the mass killing of warfare for the same purpose. In this process it will create distorting images of everything from people to history in order to more easily turn the individual's emotions into a key to unlock his purse. A Disney version of history comes to mind or Hollywood's battle of the Alamo. By this process it creates an empire of illusion, to use Chris Hedges' words, in which the emotional content of illusion trumps truth. It will change everything from clothing fashions to automobile fashions as frequently as consumers will part with their money and deliberately weaken both by planned obsolescence in order to preserve a market. It will stimulate envy and greed in order to create or enhance a market. Finally, it views government as its prime competitor and will do whatever it can to either control or destroy it, much as it would any other capitalist competitor. All these things, and vastly more, this wild beast will do if left to its own natural behaviors. It is so very obvious that this beast must be assiduously controlled lest it destroy our planet and us.
Capitalism, like any wild carnivore, has one virtue. It has energy. Human beings have a natural predilection for entropy. As a species that learned to grow things, we found the sowing of crops preferable to the risks of the hunt. We preferred to stay in one place rather than roam the unknown in search of prey. The vibrant self interest released by capitalism provides energy not unlike that which war generates and perhaps for the same basic reason. Energy, like fire, can be destructive or, if suitably controlled, can produce very useful products and services. We cannot allow ourselves to be dazzled by its occasional displays. We must be continuously cognizant of the danger it poses. We must not, as we advise small children, play with fire.
Until we as a nation begin to treat capitalism as science treats a natural organism, we will forever be its victims. Put conversely, as long as we regard capitalism ideologically, we will be its victims. A number of so-called "mixed economies" such as those of Scandinavia and much of Western Europe have, since World War II, understood this necessity. They have taken large steps to insure that capitalism serves society.
In the long run we know this planet cannot tolerate a human economy of compound growth. In the shorter term we know that capitalism's insatiable appetite will greatly, probably violently, exacerbate the competition for decreasing resources. In the immediate world we see it grossly corrupting democracies, fomenting wars and destroying the democratic process. We know we will have to develop a much better economic process if humanity is to survive.
It is high time this nation realized that the ideological approach to politics, social thinking, and most especially our economy is massively counter productive. These social functions must be based on the study of and well-being of humanity. To get people to understand this should be a major focus of the progressive agenda.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Greed is more than a personal fault.
Your mother, no doubt, impressed upon you that greed was bad and, not always to your liking, that sharing was good. What happened on the way to becoming an adult where, obviously, greed is rewarded and sharing is at best, propaganda as in President H. W. Bush's "thousand points of light" surrogate for tax supported public assistance? I suggest the difference is between the small world of the family and neighbors and a world of money cut loose from the ties of the world in which humans matter most.
Greed, as a social phenomenon, has become increasingly acceptable. We have had, for example, the clichés "Greed is good" and "He who dies with the most toys wins" bandied about. Why this metamorphosis? I suspect it is a consequence of maintaining a "free market" capitalist economy. When you have saturated a market based on need, as technology has with increasing efficiency done, it is imperative that some substitute for need be found lest an economy begin to collapse for want of markets. Rapidly moving from a market of need to a market of greed is a feature of a modern affluent society.
It is not hard to see this process in action in our society. Manufacturing used to be the major segment of this country's economy. It is now finance, otherwise known as debt. In my youth the bellwether of economic activity was the price of steel. It is now consumer confidence. This is due substantially to the uncontrolled, indeed encouraged, migration of jobs to places with cheap labor, a process Karl Marx delineated over a hundred years ago. As a result, we now have a consumer economy not a production economy. Either consume or go bust!
A consumer based market offers several advantages to business. A need-based market is relatively narrow, limited by what is required to maintain basic human requirements, which do not change that much. The only way to substantially expand this market is to breed more humans. A consumer based economy driven by human desire rather than need, is, obviously, as large and variable as the human imagination and greed can make it. This being the case those profiting from markets greatly value greed and will do what they can to make it culturally acceptable. Hence the need to create a constant greed stimulus using, for example, the feeling of inferiority if one does not keep up with the Joneses. Thus greed has become an economic imperative, modifying our culture in ways destructive of society and the environment. These ways may often be subtle but none the less effective. For example, it would be interesting to know how massively the values of this society have been trivialized by the culture of constant novelty this process has created.
Greed is thus a major factor in the economy that has been developed in this country. As such, greed has become destructive of our society by focusing more resources on the frivolous at the expense of the necessary; on the desires of the few in preference to the needs of the many. This syndrome, I might point out, was the immediate cause of the French Revolution.
The need to constantly develop and promote markets is, in my judgment, a root cause of our massive over consumption. It is relatively easy to see how rampant consumerism eventuates in a cultural acceptance of greed. This market-driven, hyper-consumerism has led to the enculturation of greed. We have an economic system whose masters would make greedheads of us all. In my judgment, the problem of acculturated greed indicates that we do not yet understand the perils of affluence. "Shop 'till you drop" is more ominous than one might think.
Bob Newhard
Greed, as a social phenomenon, has become increasingly acceptable. We have had, for example, the clichés "Greed is good" and "He who dies with the most toys wins" bandied about. Why this metamorphosis? I suspect it is a consequence of maintaining a "free market" capitalist economy. When you have saturated a market based on need, as technology has with increasing efficiency done, it is imperative that some substitute for need be found lest an economy begin to collapse for want of markets. Rapidly moving from a market of need to a market of greed is a feature of a modern affluent society.
It is not hard to see this process in action in our society. Manufacturing used to be the major segment of this country's economy. It is now finance, otherwise known as debt. In my youth the bellwether of economic activity was the price of steel. It is now consumer confidence. This is due substantially to the uncontrolled, indeed encouraged, migration of jobs to places with cheap labor, a process Karl Marx delineated over a hundred years ago. As a result, we now have a consumer economy not a production economy. Either consume or go bust!
A consumer based market offers several advantages to business. A need-based market is relatively narrow, limited by what is required to maintain basic human requirements, which do not change that much. The only way to substantially expand this market is to breed more humans. A consumer based economy driven by human desire rather than need, is, obviously, as large and variable as the human imagination and greed can make it. This being the case those profiting from markets greatly value greed and will do what they can to make it culturally acceptable. Hence the need to create a constant greed stimulus using, for example, the feeling of inferiority if one does not keep up with the Joneses. Thus greed has become an economic imperative, modifying our culture in ways destructive of society and the environment. These ways may often be subtle but none the less effective. For example, it would be interesting to know how massively the values of this society have been trivialized by the culture of constant novelty this process has created.
Greed is thus a major factor in the economy that has been developed in this country. As such, greed has become destructive of our society by focusing more resources on the frivolous at the expense of the necessary; on the desires of the few in preference to the needs of the many. This syndrome, I might point out, was the immediate cause of the French Revolution.
The need to constantly develop and promote markets is, in my judgment, a root cause of our massive over consumption. It is relatively easy to see how rampant consumerism eventuates in a cultural acceptance of greed. This market-driven, hyper-consumerism has led to the enculturation of greed. We have an economic system whose masters would make greedheads of us all. In my judgment, the problem of acculturated greed indicates that we do not yet understand the perils of affluence. "Shop 'till you drop" is more ominous than one might think.
Bob Newhard
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Why We Have Had and Why We are Doomed to Endless War
For those who may think that the military does not set national policy I submit as evidence to the contrary the endless war we have had and can expect to have.
It all began with the military's determination to eliminate the kind of citizen opposition to war that the Vietnam escapade produced. The solution was to convert a citizen draft army to a volunteer-based army. The military believed, rightly it seems, that the only substantial reason for the mass objection to the Vietnam War lay in all young men being eligible for military service. (Why the resistance to the draft was so vigorous in this war but not World War II apparently was not asked.)This, obviously, included the children of the middle and wealthy classes. The concern for the casualties, both American and Vietnamese, was distinctly secondary to that of keeping one's child out of harms way. The military believes that people will never permit a return to the draft and the endangerment of their children as long as we have a paid military to do the job.
With the removal of the only major restraint on the military, it follows from the above observation that there will be no end of war until there is a return to the draft or our economy collapses entirely from the economic burden of endless war. The likelihood of people voting to restore the draft is next to nil. Therefore endless war. We have got to the place where war is no longer an instrument of policy, but policy is an instrument for the pursuit of successful war. Military domination of the government budget, and, hence, military priorities will continue to be the national priorities. In short, the United States military has finessed the country into endless war and the populace is continually diverted from understanding this by a barrage of ingenuous sentiment about troop heroism and sacrifice by our corporate media. It is doubtful that even President Eisenhower in his farewell warning about the military-industrial complex could have seen how far this duopoly of destruction would go.
Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in his article The Founders’Wisdom, published in the Armed Forces Journal gives a quite detailed account of what we have lost and what we can expect by abandoning the draft. The article, which I highly recommend, can be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/02/4384885/. Colonel Yingling, for example, points out that the decision to go to war is much easier to reach with our volunteer army. There is greatly diminished opposition because people, especially the middle and upper classes, no longer need fear that their children might have to go. Congress was freed from the intense citizen pressure of concerned parents and their children and has surrendered its Constitutionally mandated responsibility to declare war. Thus, immediately after 9/11 G. W. Bush could declare "This is war." The media did not point out that only Congress, not the President, can declare war. Bush may not have even known this. However, the voluntary military has obviously cut the executive branch of government loose from the oversight of Congress, which our Constitution-based separation of powers was intended to prevent. Without the draft, citizen opposition is not felt by Congress and Congress is free to regard the interests of the defense contractors who contributed to their campaigns. Thus the absence of a draft leads to a corruption of government and a fundamental abrogation of the Constitution.
It has been argued that the Founders did not envision the need for an immediate response to a threat to the nation. Yingling points out that the Founders drew a distinction between the Amy and the Navy. They viewed the Army as a small corps of regulars to be complemented by male civilians in time of need. This way their great fear of the threat a standing army posed to citizen freedom and well being could be avoided. The navy, on the other hand, was viewed as a continuously full-complemented armed service because of the continuing need to protect commerce and, not so incidentally, because it was stationed at sea and hence not among the citizens and their civilian affairs. The distinction between the two services was so significant that they are treated in separate articles of the Constitution. Today we see one manifestation of their concern, in the ease with which military practice and technology flow to Homeland Security and thence to local police. SWAT teams are versions of military assault teams turned loose in a civilian, often neighborhood, context.
Col. Yingling asserts that there probably is no more fundamental constraint on executive power in the Constitution's scheme of checks and balances, than the restriction of habeas corpus. The Constitution declares “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Yet, under the sway of the military we have cooked up devices such as imprisoning American citizens without trial on so-called foreign soil, as if the Founders had to spell out for children that habeus corpus applied to the treatment of American citizens by the American government no matter where that treatment is applied. In brief, we have gimmicked our way around our own constitution.
To sum up, the military has been empowered to defeat our basic American rights, to ruin our economy, to gain political sway over our legislature, and to insinuate itself into the everyday fabric of our society. As an example, our own local Californian now has a weekly military supplement, as though it was as common as the sports or business section. All this has been accomplished with the willing cooperation of our corporate-controlled all-pervasive media. Until the public realizes the extent to which this nation is controlled by its military and appreciates the immense threat to our democracy that it represents, we will not even see the beginning of a return to the fundamental values of a democratic society. The enormity of such a sea change in our national ethos is elaborated on by John Feffer in his article Gorbachev of the Pentagon?, which can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/gorbachev-of-the-pentagon_b_742180.html. Feffer compares the task of bringing the Americana military under control (he like Chalmers Johnson uses the term "dismantling,") to that of Gorbachev's successful effort to break up the Soviet Union. He describes the unique talents and knowledge that Gorbachev' brought to this monumental task and why it will take someone of his caliber to break the hold of the American military. More than one civilization has collapsed under the burden of its military. May we recover our founding concern for democracy before it is too late.
Bob Newhard
P.S. A rebuttal to Yingling's article by Curtis L. Gilroy, titled Defending the all-volunteer force, may be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/04/4537015
Yingling's response to his critics, titled The All-Volunteer Force: The Debate, may be found at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/07/the-allvolunteer-force-the-deb/
It all began with the military's determination to eliminate the kind of citizen opposition to war that the Vietnam escapade produced. The solution was to convert a citizen draft army to a volunteer-based army. The military believed, rightly it seems, that the only substantial reason for the mass objection to the Vietnam War lay in all young men being eligible for military service. (Why the resistance to the draft was so vigorous in this war but not World War II apparently was not asked.)This, obviously, included the children of the middle and wealthy classes. The concern for the casualties, both American and Vietnamese, was distinctly secondary to that of keeping one's child out of harms way. The military believes that people will never permit a return to the draft and the endangerment of their children as long as we have a paid military to do the job.
With the removal of the only major restraint on the military, it follows from the above observation that there will be no end of war until there is a return to the draft or our economy collapses entirely from the economic burden of endless war. The likelihood of people voting to restore the draft is next to nil. Therefore endless war. We have got to the place where war is no longer an instrument of policy, but policy is an instrument for the pursuit of successful war. Military domination of the government budget, and, hence, military priorities will continue to be the national priorities. In short, the United States military has finessed the country into endless war and the populace is continually diverted from understanding this by a barrage of ingenuous sentiment about troop heroism and sacrifice by our corporate media. It is doubtful that even President Eisenhower in his farewell warning about the military-industrial complex could have seen how far this duopoly of destruction would go.
Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in his article The Founders’Wisdom, published in the Armed Forces Journal gives a quite detailed account of what we have lost and what we can expect by abandoning the draft. The article, which I highly recommend, can be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/02/4384885/. Colonel Yingling, for example, points out that the decision to go to war is much easier to reach with our volunteer army. There is greatly diminished opposition because people, especially the middle and upper classes, no longer need fear that their children might have to go. Congress was freed from the intense citizen pressure of concerned parents and their children and has surrendered its Constitutionally mandated responsibility to declare war. Thus, immediately after 9/11 G. W. Bush could declare "This is war." The media did not point out that only Congress, not the President, can declare war. Bush may not have even known this. However, the voluntary military has obviously cut the executive branch of government loose from the oversight of Congress, which our Constitution-based separation of powers was intended to prevent. Without the draft, citizen opposition is not felt by Congress and Congress is free to regard the interests of the defense contractors who contributed to their campaigns. Thus the absence of a draft leads to a corruption of government and a fundamental abrogation of the Constitution.
It has been argued that the Founders did not envision the need for an immediate response to a threat to the nation. Yingling points out that the Founders drew a distinction between the Amy and the Navy. They viewed the Army as a small corps of regulars to be complemented by male civilians in time of need. This way their great fear of the threat a standing army posed to citizen freedom and well being could be avoided. The navy, on the other hand, was viewed as a continuously full-complemented armed service because of the continuing need to protect commerce and, not so incidentally, because it was stationed at sea and hence not among the citizens and their civilian affairs. The distinction between the two services was so significant that they are treated in separate articles of the Constitution. Today we see one manifestation of their concern, in the ease with which military practice and technology flow to Homeland Security and thence to local police. SWAT teams are versions of military assault teams turned loose in a civilian, often neighborhood, context.
Col. Yingling asserts that there probably is no more fundamental constraint on executive power in the Constitution's scheme of checks and balances, than the restriction of habeas corpus. The Constitution declares “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Yet, under the sway of the military we have cooked up devices such as imprisoning American citizens without trial on so-called foreign soil, as if the Founders had to spell out for children that habeus corpus applied to the treatment of American citizens by the American government no matter where that treatment is applied. In brief, we have gimmicked our way around our own constitution.
To sum up, the military has been empowered to defeat our basic American rights, to ruin our economy, to gain political sway over our legislature, and to insinuate itself into the everyday fabric of our society. As an example, our own local Californian now has a weekly military supplement, as though it was as common as the sports or business section. All this has been accomplished with the willing cooperation of our corporate-controlled all-pervasive media. Until the public realizes the extent to which this nation is controlled by its military and appreciates the immense threat to our democracy that it represents, we will not even see the beginning of a return to the fundamental values of a democratic society. The enormity of such a sea change in our national ethos is elaborated on by John Feffer in his article Gorbachev of the Pentagon?, which can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/gorbachev-of-the-pentagon_b_742180.html. Feffer compares the task of bringing the Americana military under control (he like Chalmers Johnson uses the term "dismantling,") to that of Gorbachev's successful effort to break up the Soviet Union. He describes the unique talents and knowledge that Gorbachev' brought to this monumental task and why it will take someone of his caliber to break the hold of the American military. More than one civilization has collapsed under the burden of its military. May we recover our founding concern for democracy before it is too late.
Bob Newhard
P.S. A rebuttal to Yingling's article by Curtis L. Gilroy, titled Defending the all-volunteer force, may be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/04/4537015
Yingling's response to his critics, titled The All-Volunteer Force: The Debate, may be found at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/07/the-allvolunteer-force-the-deb/
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