Steve's Blog

One Party State

Tue, 05 May 2009 14:35:59 GMT

With the defection of Arlen Specter the media pundits, particularly on the right, have been bemoaning the decline of democracy supposedly brought about by having the Democratic Party in control of both the Congress and the White House at the same time. They urge the expansion of the Republican Party in order to head off what they call a one party state.

Those of us who have worked in Green Party politics can tell you from experience that the USA has been a one party state for decades and perhaps more than a century. A German economist was recently quoted as saying that never, since the time of Abraham Lincoln, have the elites in America allowed anyone to get their hands on the levers of power unless they were totally in the debt of the rich and powerful. That’s just as true of Obama today as it was of previous presidents. The Plutocracy Party is the only party that runs candidates for high office in the US, either under the Democratic label or under the Republican. Party labels are just flags of convenience, with different rhetoric and promises attached, whatever will sell best, none of which are taken seriously by the backers or implemented.

But at the local level there is still a very vibrant democratic process. There are many parties like the Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, Independents, and so on, that have been active for years, well organized, and with articulate and thoughtful ideas and programs. Candidates for these parties have been repeatedly elected to local offices, city councils, school boards, utility districts, etc. The key seems to be that these smaller parties can function only at the level where media access and money are not critical to their success. Above that level the crushing weight of the plutocracy is brought to bear, and unapproved candidates and ideas simply disappear.

What we have in America is a two-tiered governmental system, with many competing parties and ideologies at the local level and a much more restricted pseudo-democracy at the top, with a single ideology controlled by the Plutocracy Party. That party is the party of the dinosaurs and is rapidly destroying the host that supports it, unable to free itself from its need to control all aspects of American life and incapable of allowing the innovation that is required for survival today.

Freeing ourselves from the domination of the Plutocracy Party is the key to restoring real democracy and finding our way out of the mess that we’re in. There are two priorities that we must address. First, we must reform our electoral process to break the stranglehold that the plutocracy has on it. We know how to do that and the techniques are already in use at the local level. It requires public campaign financing, ranked choice voting, and proportional representation, to bring a much wider group of candidates into the democratic process and allow real debate among them, without forcing them to depend on the wealthy for campaign patronage.

Second, we must regain control of the media as a public utility. The enormous cost of campaigns today is very much a function of the vast sums that the media conglomerates require in order to publicize a candidate’s ideas and programs. Debate on these ideas is fundamental to the survival of our nation, and must be made into a public good that is supported by public funds. We need today to debate deeply about the future of our grandchildren, and consider every option that can be articulated. Ideas should not need millions of dollars or the approval of multinational corporations to be considered.

Those are the two goals that we need to achieve in order to make democracy work for us again. Until they are achieved we can expect the Plutocracy Party to lead us ever deeper into the hole that they have dug for us and for themselves.

More ...

Protectionism

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:29:36 GMT

It is fashionable in these trying times to worry a lot about protectionism. Economists issue dire warnings that hard times must not lead us to clamp down on “free trade”, because inhibiting the free flow of goods will lead to local scarcity and higher prices for everyone, thus exacerbating the current economic malaise. But I wonder if these ideas have been thoroughly thought through in the light of the new economic order that we are trying to build.

To my mind, well managed protectionism is starting to make a lot of sense. One of the biggest ecological problems that we face is the endless flow of goods around the world. Current economic models call for raising lettuce in Chile or somewhere, then shipping it clear to California and undercutting the local farmers with cheap produce. But this model costs a huge amount in resources (see Economic Sense, my previous post), which for arcane economic reasons are severely underpriced in terms of the damage that they do to the planet. The costs of all this movement may be cheap in dollars, but in carbon, pollution, economic injustice, human rights and the rest, the costs are unacceptably high.

It’s hard to change this cost structure in the short run, but one of the best ways to interfere with this ecological disaster is to erect trade barriers that prevent the unnecessary shipment of goods and the damage that it does. The more that we can force economic activity into a more locally based model, the more we can reduce the impact on our planet and at the same time build local economic capacity that is proof against the vagaries of international currency trading and mega-corporate price fixing. The fastest way to do that is to wall these effects out through trade barriers.

Of course, when you do that, prices go up. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, despite what our economic gurus say. We need to stop consuming so much stuff anyway, and higher prices are the best way to make that happen. And of course, while prices do go up, wages do too. The people making the local stuff are getting paid for it, unlike now, so there may be some real benefits to higher prices, including higher demand and a more stable job force. Profits are retained and spent locally, rather than being shipped off to Wall Street.

We have a mini-model of that whole process here on Vashon Island. We already have our own local form of protectionism in place. It’s called the Washington State Ferries. The fact that we are an island only reachable by ferry makes us in many ways an economic island as well, and provides living experience of the effects of trade barriers. Local businesses are able to operate more freely and effectively because the cost and inconvenience of operating on the island keeps much of the competition away. But of course the prices are higher because of the trade barrier, and sometimes businesses take advantage of the lack of competition to provide poor service or overcharge. Options are more limited, and businesses here have a hard time competing outside the island as well. And social services are less available, so local resources are much relied up on in place of them. The benefits and drawbacks of the Vashon system are food for daily discussion and debate among islanders.

When the average food item in our supermarkets has traveled 1500 miles before we purchase it, it might make a lot of sense to look again at the issue of protectionism. With the end of our carbon-based economy, our future is almost certainly going to feature a much less mobile set of goods and services, and building local capacity will have to be a priority for some years to come.

More ...

Economic Sense

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:24:09 GMT

When I was a young man, life was a bit simpler. There was a thing called Common Sense. People thought that things either made sense or they didn’t make sense, and easily described them in that way. Nowadays it’s a bit more complicated, and one of the most interesting additions to that vocabulary is “economic sense”. Recent events have caused me to reflect a lot on the notion of economic sense, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is essentially an oxymoron.

People usually say that something makes “economic sense” when they mean that it doesn’t make sense any other way, and is in fact irrational and ridiculous, but because of our arcane and bizarre set of economic rules, somebody can make a ton of money doing it anyway. Take, for example, off-shoring. It makes “economic sense” to make a computer chip in Los Angeles, ship it across the Pacific Ocean to China, have somebody stick the chip into a board, and then ship that board back across the Pacific to be sold again in Los Angeles.

But of course, such a process makes no real sense at all. The young lady sticking the chip on the board in China has no more skill than someone in Los Angeles would have, and in terms of resources expended it is ridiculous to ship that part to China in order to have some simple operation done. The added shipping and handling, the fuel used, the carbon pollution, the bookkeeping and currency transfers, the customs and import/export, the time required – all of these are far in excess of what is needed to accomplish the task. It is only because our system of valuing labor and materials is so out of whack with reality that this kind of silliness has become accepted as making “economic sense”.

Examples abound. It makes economic sense to make a $500,000 loan to a family with five kids making $35,000 a year. It makes economic sense to destroy our farmland and turn it into subdivisions. It makes economic sense to bring to extinction thousands of species, exhaust our water supplies, fish out our oceans, remove mountaintops and dump millions of tons of toxins into our rivers and streams, or poison our food supplies with chemicals. It makes economic sense to exploit and starve people in poor countries while extracting their nation’s resources at pennies on the dollar to be consumed somewhere else. There is no action so insane, incompetent, malevolent or self-destructive that someone somewhere cannot make money doing it.

The fact is that economics, far from being any kind of science, has become a bizarre and insane cult bent on the destruction of the planet and everyone on it. But we all seem to be drinking the Kool-Aid. People shrug their shoulders at the irrationality of it all, but just assume that if it makes economic sense people are going to do it. We imagine ourselves to be rational actors motivated by “self-interest”, and we are trained to do anything that makes us a bit more money or reduces costs, whether or not it destroys everything we hold dear in the long run. What can you do, we say. If it’s cheaper, people are going to buy it, no matter where it came from or what had to be done to make it.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Economic Sense is a mindset, and more and more a mindset at odds with our own survival. Today our need is much more for Common Sense, an alternative mindset that sometimes seems to be headed for extinction.

More ...

Steves Rant

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:36:21 GMT

More ...

Testing One Two Three Four

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:11:25 GMT

Test Text

More ...