Say you want a revolution?

Lately, one can't help but notice the word revolution enter the lexicon. On message boards, youtube videos and statements to the press I keep hearing this country might be headed for a revolution. And, as an anarchist, as much as I oppose our current corrupt murderous system, an amry of gun-stockpiling conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, angry white men all, is more frightening than anything we're likely (fingers crossed) to see from the Obama administration.

The Ghetto in our Hearts

(part 2)

As the Gilded Age winded down, the great business empires were continually frustrtated by their failure to achieve either monopoly or industry cartels. US Steel, Standard Oil and their ilk were enormously wealthy, but unceasing competition were starting to contract profits of these unwieldy behemoths. And they did what every good businessman in trouble does: ask the government for help. And although there was much dis-agreement between business leaders, regulators and the Presidents, the major continuity remained clear: to cartelize each industry to provide "stability". Competition is war, after all, and war is Hell.

A good example is Teddy Roosevelt's Pure Food and Drug Laws. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair had created a furor for clean food laws. No one seemed to notice that this wasn't the point of the novel, nor (as Sinclair points out in the novels) was the industry opposed to it. The Meat Trust couldn't sell their disgusting products in foregin markets, they had been entirely blocked, and The Jungle was giving them a ton of bad PR. So the Bull-Moose himself stepped in. With the new FDA seal of approval, foregin markets allowed American meat in again, and the public's disgust began to subside. Was there in any improvment in the quality of the meat? In some cases, marginal improvements, more often than not though the regulators worked at the discretion of the Meat Trust.

And so it goes. When Populist outrage (justifiably) grew against the "Money Trust", the handful of super banks running the economy, when recessions followed recession without sight in end, business people began writing proposals to "stabilize" the banking industry. Legislation first drafted by Chambers of Commerce would end up getting proposed in Congress. And that's where the Federal Reserve came from. And so it goes, again and again. The public is outraged, as they usually should be, but any attempt at "reform" is drafted and supervised by the very people who are being "reformed", conforming to very narrow lines of thought, and although concessions to the public are usually made, the winners are always the same.

The Ghetto in our Hearts

Discussions of the American economy are so rife with mis-charectorization and outright falsehoods, a person needs a sword to cut through all the cobwebs. Or, short of a sword, a book.

Two such books are The Triumph of Conservatism and Regulating the Poor. Both books deal with two areas of the American economy most commonly mis-understood: regulation and welfare.

Triumph of Conservatism by Gabriel Kolko is a revionist look at the "Progressive Era", the period at the tail end of the Gilded Age whereupon the modern regulatory apparatus was born. The book traces the Roosevelt administration and the two subsequent presidencies, Taft and Wilson.

The common myth of regulation has two sides, either the government is filled with naive do gooder liberals who attempt to fiddle with economy, to the detriment of everyone involved, out of either a misguided and quixotic quest for equality, a hatred for the wealthy, or perhaps a deep seated love of Karl Marx; or, the government is simply trying to mitigate the excesses of the market place. Both these views are completely false. They contain a fundamental mis-understanding, a beleif that Big Business and Big Government are opposed. A cursory understanding of history shows the relationship to not be one of either antagonism or even parasitism, but of a symbiosis. Big Business and Big Government feed off and support each other to rob cheat and steal from the rest of the country.

(end of part 1)

The Strange Death of American Freedom?

There seems to be a popular meme floating around, both right and left, in the mainstream of political discourse. Something to the effect of: America has fallen from it's lofty perch. America's founding was a great and noble, but the government has fallen into corruption since then. The wisdom of the Founding Father's has left us. Our freedoms are being taken away.

And yet, any objective look at history shows that America is exponentially more free now then when it was founded. The Founding Father's spoke of self determination and freedom. And founded a country with a massive slave based feudalism. They talked of "taxation without representation", and yet the only people who were represented were wealthy white landowners. And while striking a blow against Imperialism, they wiped out the Native Americans. The slaves are free, the franchise is universal and domestic populations are no longer being ethnically cleansed. America is more free than it ever has been. Which isn't to give any credit to the government, nor to deny they are trying to take our freedoms away.

The supposed act that represented America's long fall into slavery is debated, some say the creation of the Federal Reserve, some the New Deal. And yet the hidden assumption seems to be that the freedom of blacks, the poor, women or Indians doesn't matter. The only freedom to be concerned with is Middle class white America.

We need to recognize that the Founding Father's weren't saints, that America's founding wasn't special, and that society is slowly improving. We just need to find out how to help it along, and stop the occasional reactionary back slides.

P.S. to Thoughts on Healthcare

In addition to the below information, I think it is also likely that Americans would be more overall healthy without the continuous government interference in the market. One of the largest ongoing welfare programs is the Farm Subsidy program, where the government pays huge sums of money for people (and multi-million dollar international companies) to grow enormous quantities of inedible corn. This corn is either used as animal feed, leading to corn fed beef, which has a higher fat content than grass fed beef, and highly processed food pumped full of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both of these are cheaper than they would otherwise be due to their reliance on a subsidized crop. It's damn near impossible to not eat High Fructose Corn Syrup and it's prevalence coincides with a drop in price, and thus rise in consumption, of highly processed pseudo-food.

Without all of this, it's safe to assume that people would be healthier and require less health care overall.

Musings on Health Care

The Pharmaceutical industry is often a target of populist scorn, but rarely is it mentioned in mainstream conversation that one of their main sources of power is a government created monopoly: a patent. With the elimination of the patent system the cost of all patented products would decrease dramatically as competition exploded. Medicine would become cheaper, health care costs would go down.

It sounds absurd (to some) to say it aloud, but our government has taken direct action, through regulation, to increase doctor's pay by creating an artificial shortage of providers. Largely done at the behest of the AMA, these regulations, if removed, would allow qualified professionals from other countries to practice in the US, as well as more people being able to become doctors. The number of providers would go up, the cost of health care would go down.

Under the current tax code, under an apparent attempt to stave off socialism (boo! hiss!), employers are given tax incentives to offer health care to the employees. This ties people to their employer for health insurance. Health insurance is then a commodity where the person who actually uses it is not involved in the choosing of the finer details. An agreement is reached between the employer and a health insurance carrier, and the employee is given some options, A B or C, for example. Removal of these incentives would give more consumer choice for health insurance, and the decreased cost of health care would decrease entry cost into health insurance, leading to more companies. All of this together would lead to a more de-centralized health care industry, as well as a more equitable one.

It goes without saying this is a very complex topic, and these are simply some brief thoughts on the matter.

Legacy

John Ostrander, the writer who brought us the best work ever done on the Spectre, is currently offering an ongoing series in the Star Wars universe, set over a hundred years after the film and thus taking place long after all other stories. What an intriguing concept. Upon reading, one must struggle mightily to keep down the disappointment, as the plot is mostly rehashes of previous stories.

A Sith Lord takes over the Galaxy and is hunthing down the Jedi! Wow, what an original plot twist. An alliance of Rebel fighters, striking from secret bases, fights against the new Imperial power. Hmmm....that seems familiar, too. There are strong points, a frontlines view of an Imperial civil war, the story of the new Sith Lord and the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong among others...but overall it seems like such a waste. This could have been an oppurtinity to create something entirely original and so far Ostrander doesn't seem to have even tried.