CommonDreams: Our Biggest Problem Is Bigness

[marmar]

Published on Friday, December 5, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Our Biggest Problem Is Bigness
by Burt Cohen


Far too much of America's energy is being drained today in frenzied attempts to prop up bigness. The housing crisis, the financial meltdown, the teetering of the Big Three automakers. Exalted captains of industry are reduced to stumbling titans groveling for the common folk to save them. The unifying theme is turn-of-the-last century, laissez-faire, supra-governmental corporate bigness.

Too many decisions affecting us all are made by too few people. The centralized banking and financial behemoth has remained untethered and unresponsive. They've made easily avoidable, dumb decisions and they want us, we the people, to bail them out. Anyone surprised there is massive, bipartisan angry resistance?

Why are the 50 states so controlled by the very few immensely wealthy and powerful who live by the slogan, ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you?

We must face the fact that these concentrated, centralized corporate institutions have been granted too much power over us. The new administration has a responsibility to do far more than just tweak.

The visionary Leopold Kohr (in The Breakdown of Nations) got it right over 50 years ago: the problem is bigness ­ concentrated, centralized power, answerable to no one. Today we see a federal government that has far too often willingly, happily in fact, yielded to the power of bigness, at the expense of the legitimate rights and powers of individuals, families, regions, our liberties and our communities. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/05-7

[The2ndWheel]

1. "The missed opportunities for America becoming a world leader in new energy are legion."

Wouldn't "America" being a "world leader" be bigness?

"The oil companies stand firmly in the way of the tremendous new opportunities for new energy solutions. Successfully addressing global warming, creating perhaps millions of new jobs, restructuring and reinventing a new, far stronger, truly sustainable American economy."

Again, isn't an "American economy" bigness?

"No question, with prudent government investments in research and development, decentralized, region-appropriate solutions will certainly create a brighter tomorrow."

Why would a centralized government invest massive amounts of money into decentralizing the solutions? How would it? It would be undercutting its own power and ability to do so.

I agree with the general idea of the article though. Then again, smallness has its own issues. That's why we don't get to escape physical reality, no matter what we do.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. If "bigness" = "greed", then I agree.