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| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
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The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.
Today conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation, instant runoff, and publicly funded campaigns. They continue to create barriers to voting, be it through overly severe registration requirements, voter roll purges, inadequate polling accommodations, and electronic voting machines that consistently “malfunction” to the benefit of the more conservative candidates.
A debate on the subject of Network (World Wide Web) voting has yet to be conducted (or heard by me) where user freindly (cost free), open source, and crime free (encoded) results are public access, public policed, and public enforced realities.
Here is an example of how powerful that subject, that issue, and that reality is:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=assassination+politics&aq=0s&oq=assasination+politic
The way that works, as a power, is illustrated by current realities known as selling short, selling long, and something called "put options". People move their individual powers toward a collective power, a fund or store of value, and then that collective power is spent on something. The point of attraction, the reasoning for individuals to move their power to that one location, is adjustable, call it a tax, call it an investment, call it a stock, bond, purchase, ticket, call the impetus whatever you want, each individual wants something, and when each individual wants some future event to happen, something bad for other people, that collective power finances that future event, that future event may not happen, yet, but that future event, powered by millions, is more likely to happen, when millions power the actions that may make that future event happen. Who would bet against a future event that is desired by millions who put their money where their mouths are?
About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state--with its police, militia, courts, and laws—was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags.
A prosperous, politically literate populace with high expectations about its standard of living and a keen sense of entitlement, pushing for continually better social conditions, is not the plutocracy’s notion of an ideal workforce and a properly pliant polity. Corporate investors prefer poor populations. The poorer you are, the harder you will work—for less. The poorer you are, the less equipped you are to defend yourself against the abuses of wealth.
There is a third function of the capitalist state seldom mentioned. It consists of preventing the capitalist system from devouring itself. Consider the core contradiction Karl Marx pointed to: the tendency toward overproduction and market crisis. An economy dedicated to speedups and wage cuts, to making workers produce more and more for less and less, is always in danger of a crash. To maximize profits, wages must be kept down. But someone has to buy the goods and services being produced. For that, wages must be kept up. There is a chronic tendency—as we are seeing today—toward overproduction of private sector goods and services and underconsumption of necessities by the working populace.
Here is where Joe's Law must be contrasted against the above "knowledge".
Power (unlike any other consumable) produced into a state of oversupply reduces the price of power while purchasing power increases (wages effectively go up for everyone) because power reduces the cost of production.
I think, and you may question this please, that the Capitalist Class (whomever they are) know the facts concerning power production (Joe's Law), and that is why competition in the production of power must be defeated by that class of people who call (falsely) themselves capitalists - they are monopolists (see Howe - Confessions of a Monopolist).
Capitalism doesn't devour itself; lies (falsehood) and violence are monopoly powers, powers that devour all other powers including lies and violence. Might does not make right, might devours might, leaving one power left - one last mighty person who defeats everyone else - it is the definition of insanity.
Capitalism is the practice of pricing sales based upon a scarcity index, or "that which the market demands", or whatever price the buyer is willing to pay. That practice, that capitalistic practice, is harmless without lies and violence because any buyer can find a seller who offers a higher value sale at a lower cost, even the buyer can make the thing sold him or herself, if possible. When capitalist set about destroying the competition, with lies and violence, then capitalism becomes un-capitalism or super-capitalism, or whatever word is employed to accurately identify a pricing scheme (or practice) that encourages people to destroy competition, by deceit and violence.
My words are new words, you won't read these words anywhere else, that does not make these observations, these reports, any less accurate, these observations and reports, by me, are merely un-popular - for some reason, or for no reason at all.
The criminal class, or the legal crimnial class, profits from conflict between peaceful capitalists fighitng peaceful socialists, that criminal legal class sells the ammo, and collects the taxes used to make the ammo. How good is that deal? That criminal legal class makes their victims work harder to buy the stuff used to enslave them, to torture them, and to kill them.
This is not old news.
Listen here:
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/commonsense/text.html
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!