Society Driven or Market driven?

[malaise]

That is the debate which should be taking place in clear terms.

[chknltl]

1. Society driven

It'd be nice if 'society driven' as opposed to 'market driven' applied to American politics too.....not sure what one might call it though....maybe democracy. (btw that is the very essence of the discussion I have with right wingers in my very red neighborhood and strangely enough, they prefer a government of by and for us as well!)

[malaise]

2. Yes that is the essence of democracy

as defined by the Greeks way back when. Sadly 'liberal democracy' is really democracy for the property owners which these days mean the corporations and banks.

[chknltl]

3. There's more of us than them.

Lotsa citizens....banks n corporations, not so much. Furthermore, Bank of America is unable to sign a ballot in most states.

malaise: I suspect that you know that you have asked the key question of this election, arguably imo, the most important question facing the citizenry of our planet. it is 6:30am here, way past my bedtime. Hopefully I can celebrate my 10,000 post further discussing this topic with you...after I've gotten some sleep.

[malaise]

4. Well they use debt

to silence most people

[Zorra]

5. +1 nt

[malaise]

8. Wonderful - happy 10,000th

[chknltl]

13. Your question deserves my 10,000th post

Sorry for the delay but I wanted to think about this one a bit-this topic is one that is important to me. I am not one of DU's deepest thinkers nor am I one of her political wonks.... I am over 60 so like most folks my age I do have my strong opinions, here is mine.

In discussions with my conservative friends, it becomes apparent that we share a deeply held feeling that the American citizenry should be the ones in charge of our government. They all agree that currently this is not the situation. When asked, they quickly admit that the politicians they vote into power do anything but the bidding of the citizenry.

As we here at DU see it, Republican politicians and many of our own Democratic politicians represent the major corporations that lobby them ($$) to do their bidding. Obviously if that politician admitted that it served the corporitists first and the citizenry last, that politician would find itself looking for a new career. This tells me that most of the citizenry prefer to elect politicians that represent their needs moreso than the needs of the market. There is even a California proposal to force their politicians to wear patches showing off which corporations they must represent, a proposal I suspect won't get much traction among those politicians.

For me there is something deeper, something from a specific perspective that I would discuss here: equality. Of course equality gets much discussion, especially recently but it doesn't seem to get much discussion from the viewpoint of our democracy. I believe that my input into our democracy is 100% 'equal' to any other citizen's vote. Religion, race, gender, financial status and even imo criminal status should not alter that equal input into our government. I don't always get agreement on this notion from those I say this to but so far, nobody has told me that having the 'best government money can buy' was a better idea!

Having that 'best government money can buy' undermines our democracy. It translates into those with the most money having a stronger voice into our government than I do-we are not equal! Let me be clear, my issue with economic inequality is not one of the economic distribution itself, that is a whole different topic, my issue of inequality here is in the citizenry having an unequal input into our democracy depending on their monetary worth. It would not surprise me to learn that most citizens of our country agree, they treasure their notion/paradigm of equality into our democracy every bit as much as I do.

I listened to the democratic debates last night with Todd and Maddow moderating. BTW I thought those two did quite well, far better than expected. Here was the most important item I took away from that debate: One candidate told me that it was ok for politicians to take money from 'the market' saying that as long as that money could not be proven to purchase influence then that was ok. I challenge our fellow DUers reading this: if a Republican politician said that would you be ok with it? Would you be Ok if our current Speaker of The House made the exact same assertion?

Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Military Industrial Complex, well fill in the blank from the corporate world, they march to We The Peoples drums, anything less is not a democracy and we citizens will fight for our democracy! That's what this fight-this 'revolution' is about!

Thank you malaise for letting me post my 10,000th post on this topic. With our democracy, there is little our society or We The People can't do given enough time. Without that democracy, there is very little society can do for itself while being controlled by the market.
I'll choose the people thank you.

[malaise]

14. Excellent post

Should be an OP

Thing is if you privatize our schools, our communities, our parks, our highways, etc. where is the society??? And that's the problem with neo-liberal economics. It is all market-driven for the greedy. Flint is the perfect example but there are many others.

[1939]

20. What about Flint was "market driven"?

No one was trying to privatize.

[malaise]

21. Social good services are being run like businesses

That is the essence of neo-liberalism.

There is no bottom line when it comes to public health or education.

[1939]

22. Well, there is

Do we spend this scarce public money on a new high school or on a new water plant? That is the kind of tradeoff in cost effectiveness that local government make every day.

Here was the problem in Flint and it might well have occurred even without an emergency manager.

Detroit Water and Sewer District (DWSD) is run by the city of Detroit, yet it provides water and sewer services for much of southeast Michigan (including Flint). DWSD has two problems. First, it has become a bloated "jobs program" for the city. Second, the city doesn't have the political will to turn off the water for those not paying their bills resulting in people that can pay not paying either. To fund their massive bureaucracy, DWSD relies on raising the rates for those "evil, rich suburbanites" to make ends meet. Flint isn't "rich" and the poverty rates are similar to Detroit.

Flint saw a way out of DWSD by joining a group of government entities tapping Lake Huron for their own water. Unfortunately, that would take a couple of years. DWSD wanted an arm and a leg for a short term deal and the decision was made to use the Flint River as an interim solution. They calculated that they could make the water safe for drinking (and the water was probably safe to drink at the water plant). Unfortunately, the decision was made not understanding the condition of the water mains, the taps to the houses, and the house interior plumbing.

What was done was supposedly for the public good and to make water more affordable for the poor in Flint. The road to Hell is often paved with good intentions. Once problems were found, the bureaucrats and the politicians did what they always do when there is a problem, they duck and run and start a coverup.

[raouldukelives]

19. Well said.

We are all blessed with the free will to assume (or not) a mantle of ownership of the very corporations bleeding our country and our world dry. It is no secret what they are doing. Heck, thanks to Citizens United, they are more than our equals. They are more human than human. Wasn't by accident. Takes a lot of grabbing hands to take so much in so little time.

Thanks to those hands, corporations are now people. The most right wing, anti-progressive, racist, misogynistic, war mongering, climate denying and straight up greedy people one could ever hope to know. The fact that so many are aware of this, and still rally around them, says far more about themselves and how seriously they take the ideal of democracy for all than any platitudes they could conjure up.

We live under the most honest representation, the most progressive change, they will allow. They have chose the side of Wall St, and that is fine, it is a free country, all I ask is they at least be honest with others and oneself when it comes to self-affixed labels. One cannot simultaneously fund the war against democracy and at the same time be counted as an opponent to that war. No more than one could frack the earth and be known as an environmentalist, own slaves and be counted as an abolitionist or run dog fights and be member of PETA.

[Nye Bevan]

6. Depends what you're talking about.

Buying electronics online should be market driven.

Health care should be society driven.

[malaise]

7. Buying electronics on line is not government policy

so you know what I and many others are talking about

[hunter]

17. Well, not always. If electronics in its production or disposal poisons the environment...

... or is made by slaves or wage slaves or prisoners, or is dangerous when used as intended, or even if it simply doesn't perform as advertised, then society does need to interfere.

Governments controlled by giant corporations are quick to ban the sale of counterfeit electronics, electronics that violates patents, trademarks, and other "intellectual property," but they are not so quick to act against products that are damaging to human society or the natural environment.

Fake cell phones don't make it past customs. Cell phones made by slaves and wage slaves, containing materials mined and refined in very environmentally destructive ways... etc., well, those are easily traded, no problem, it's a free market.

The dystopian lake filled by the world's tech lust

Hidden in an unknown corner of Inner Mongolia is a toxic, nightmarish lake created by our thirst for smartphones, consumer gadgets and green tech, discovers Tim Maughan.



By Tim Maughan
2 April 2015

From where I'm standing, the city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Between it and me, stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge.

Dozens of pipes line the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake. The smell of sulphur and the roar of the pipes invades my senses. It feels like hell on Earth.

-more-

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth

Markets should be society driven and very well regulated. Otherwise the quickly run amok.

[HereSince1628]

9. Doesn't it depend on how we see the balance in the purpose of government?

During the revolutions of the enlightenment, it was argued that people allow governments to be erected because its a full time job to coordinate and implement protection of society from the misbehavior of other people (inside and outside/foreign and domestic) and to improve the -common- good.

We see that very language in the Declaration of Independence which was the formal argument used to justify revolution and establishment of new government.

Early on that language may or may not have been much better balanced toward social issues. From time to time, as in the period of anti-trust of Teddie Roosevelt's time, government returns to social forces.

Since the start of the cold war, pressure has been exerted toward the business of business being the business of government...which can be said to be the promotion of market forces largely because that opposed our "socialist enemy" Although the rationale was more that the pursuit of happiness mentioned in The Declaration is really about the advancement of individual and collective wealth.

Seems to me the best of times in the last century seem were associated with an awareness of the need for mixed economies and mixed interests of government, which focused on protecting people from excesses and abuse of power and wealth.

There are circumstances where the incentive of market profits encourages risk taking and development of new goods and services, and there are also circumstances where market profits are nothing more than the greedy and/or exploitative application of monopolistic control and inability of consumers to refuse essential purchases.

[malaise]

10. So like many of us you support Democratic Socialism with a mixed economy

I agree with you 100% re the best of times.

The sad truth is that this entire neo-liberal project sprung up with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Likewise many of the civil and political rights for women, African Americans and other minorities emerged after the Russian Revolution and the Cold War respectively.

Were those changes a facade to show that we (the West) were better than them and now we can tear off the mask and build our own walls?

[HereSince1628]

11. I think the neoliberal project is many centuries old.

The excesses of "The Golden Age" are not really unlike current corporate excesses.

The excesses of the colonial period and the period of slavery are not unlike the excesses being pushed by neoliberals today.

It's all the same old game of making money and using money to shield the wealthy and to provide the wealthy control over the rules/laws that would otherwise hold them accountable for their abuses.

The game is rigged, it's always been rigged.

[malaise]

12. I agree but that was the original project which was exposed by the likes of Dickens,

the Christian socialists and Marx and others. Roosevelt gave them a serious hit after the Depression. Friedman, Hayek et al wanted the good old days and borrowed from them and Reagan and Thatcher facilitated the new version of the old game making associated with the rigged game.

Chile was the experiment - later Jamaica, Guyana, Eastern Europe and now it's almost everywhere.

[hifiguy]

16. When, at some future date, a definitive history of this era is written,

one of the truly big questions will be "Who caused more needless, pointless human suffering in that age? Hitler? Stalin? Mao?"

The answer seems blindingly obvious - Milton Friedman. And it's not even close.

[hifiguy]

15. The market must exist solely to serve society

and NOT the other way around. Go Bernie!

[malaise]

18. Precisely

or we are doomed