Listening to rerun of Greenspan and "creative destruction"

[cornermouse]

something which doesn't happen to touch his life or presumably the lives of his children, obsolescence, and school for the rest of your life (sounds like an eternal education loan to me, so which is better falling behind via lack of education or falling behind due to a lifetime of debt from school, home, car, credit cards, etc) and thinking...talk about looking like an evil little gnome...

[Skidmore]

1. Did you ever get the impression that the nation's economy

was just an interesting academic exercise to Greenspan? When I hear him speak, he never appears to make a connection between those decisions and anyone's lives. It is all numbers and units and widgets to him.

[sweetheart]

2. It is simply legitimized theft

.
<snip>
.
reform: the modification or replacement of an existing
economic or political system, so as to create new corporate
investment opportunities -- it is not required that the new
system perform effectively, only that it deliver corporate
profits.

A system is in need of "reform" whenever corporate investors think of a
new angle to make new profits. Obvious failures of the "reform"
process, such as unemployment and poverty, are never the fault of
"reform", but of incomplete implementation. Belief in "reform" is like
religious faith: no amount of counter-evidence can phase the True
Believer.

"Reform" is like clear-cutting. A forest is an ecosystem, with
wildlife, streams, underbrush, etc. Careful forestry can harvest timber
without destroying the ecosystem -- but clear-cutting destroys all at
once. An existing political/economic arrangement is also an eco-system:
it is the subtle fabric that weaves the society together and enables its
functioning. "Reform" -- as we see in the Soviet breakup/selloff/ripoff
-- can destroy the existing framework all at once, and replace it with
one that doesn't fit, that would take years or decades to take root and
begin producing, and will be owned by someone else at the end of the
day.

_Genuine_ reform would take into account the existing conditions, and if
a change is needed, would make incremental changes over time, evolving a
working system toward sounder functioning. Most significant, it would
reflect local customs and preferences -- it would not seek to impose a
cookie-cutter standard paradigm upon all cultures and traditions."
.
.
<snip>

http://www.cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/ND/mar96NWODoublespeak.shtml

[xchrom]

3. corporatism is the new political paradigm.

and thinking about politicas has to focus on this.

democracy is gone -- the republic is gone -- this country is a corporate entity in the political universe.

very little of the immediate post ww2 political world exists today -- and we need to adjust all our thinking to take it in.

[sweetheart]

4. returning to the world of competing empires

before 1945, there was a different system of empires, where each
competing nation state had its own empire fringe, an after 1945, there
was a collective empire, one where the "g7" managed the fringe for
their collective pilliage, exporting the "slave" end of corporate
feudal slavery to the inner cities where people can't excape, where
they are trapped on the bottom of a wealth paradigm.

but bush has torn up the collective empire, and we're back before
world war 1, in geopolitical bias, now again with competeing influence
nation states and emerging empire powers, all of which are massively
more powerful than any world nation was in 1945 in terms of weaponry
and capability to wage blitzkrieg.

THe functioning of an empire requires financial dominance AND
military dominance. The military dominance, has been entirely drawn
i to question by the iraq debacle. THe whole world realizes now that
the US really is a weak nation after all, having no heart to fight
a serious war involving real losses. The iron has grown soft since
world war 2, and the "friends" generation doesn't want to fight and
die for a false empire.

Bush has torn up the multilateral contract, and now we're back to
competing global interests, no wholistic thinking, and no ability
to operate like a collective as long as divisive corrupt war
criminals are in power.

The US is, no matter the deployment, on an isolationist pinge, given
to the shrinking army and the reality that a country with a
shrinknig army cannot maintain an empire against serious challenge.

The corporate facade will crack like glass, if this military charade
really does erupt in to a more hot fight on an empire fringe.