A new world struggling from the rubble of the old

[mqbush]

People invented business as a useful tool for the benefit of society. They invented clay pottery, metals, writing, the wheel, and business, for everyone’s good.

And uncounted busy hands used knives to cut intricate designs for art or communication, to cut potatoes for stews, to drain an abscess, while some few used knives to disembowel a neighbor. This misuse of what was supposed to be a tool used for good did not result in the banning of knives, nor did it compel a cultural institutionalization of disembowelment. No, we learned from the shocking lesson to be on guard for harmful misuses of this generally beneficial tool.

So too, when businesses start tearing up their social contracts, transforming themselves from useful cells in the social body into cancer cells, short-sightedly aggrandizing all to themselves though this kills the body, this should neither ban all business nor compel any remaining healthy cells to adopt the ethics of the cancer cell.

Eighty years ago we did learn that business can turn against society, become an amoral, asocial, self-serving monster. We did learn to put safeguards into place. What we did not learn, until now, is the steadfast determination of greed, its ability to turn people against society, its cleverness in associating selfishness with patriotism (chauvinism, really) after having made such “patriotism” the “stay out of jail, pass Go, collect $200” card that must be displayed on demand.

Now, bowing to a flag and bowing to a corporation is the same thing, idolatry. It erects a hierarchy that puts humans at the bottom and abstractions at the top. The high priests of these idols assert that worship of them promotes freedom. They believe that because when they can see the necks of supplicants beneath their feet they can see who’s the slave and who’s free. That’s what freedom means to them. It’s the pathology of hierarchy. It explains the violent extremism of their fear of humanism, any serious consideration of the Golden Rule, anything remotely socialist: they could become mere equals to other people instead of lords of the manor, and that would be intolerable to them.

There will always be those who cannot feel free, equal, unless they are standing atop others. And there will always be those who find impoverishment at the hands of others, disembowelment at the hands of others, a bit too much to ask for the sake of the diseased egos of the few. And so labor unions are necessary. Conscientious regulation of business is necessary. Legal muscle to enforce the letter of the Golden Rule even if its spirit can’t be legislated, is necessary. Power to the people again, and again, because those cancer cells keep popping up, and one of the constructive uses of knives is to cut out cancers. This must be done to make us healthy again.

[JFN1]

1. Part of Hitler's rise to power

was made possible by big businesses owners (including scumbags like Prescott Bush). The threat has always been with us, as long as profit has been the main driving force behind business. So this is not an entirely new concept; sadly, it has raised its head again in our time.

If we ever hope to reign in the potential for business to do harm to the body social (I love your metaphor, BTW), we will have to institute a maximum standard. Just as we have established social nets to keep people from falling too low, we need social nets to keep people from rising too far, to a place where they and/or their business can do actual harm to the rest of us.

In short - we need a maximum wage.

[kerrywins]

2. Government Intervention leads to Corporate Welfare

government starts to interfere, and what ends up happening is we have a perverted form of freedom, this predatory capitalism.

[soothsayer]

3. this time we are letting corps rob us blind via gov't intervention, starting with

how treasury helped manage the hostile takeover of bear stearns---NOT an appropriate role, nor a legal one). Now we are just lying down and letting the gov appoint a-holes from these crooked financial firms say HEY WE NEED TRILLIONS OF YOUR DOLLARS AND WE ARE TAKING THEM, SEE YA and we are saying, Ok, that sounds good.

[kerrywins]

6. exactlty

and they do it through counterfeiting, not taxation....so most people don't even realize they've been robbed.

[Odin2005]

4. It's a cyclic thing. Every 80 years the institutional structure crumbles from a generation of...

...neglect and out-right pillaging, forcing society to create a new social contract and new institutions to go with it. And with every crisis the generational profile is the same, an elder generation of principled idealists that gained notoriety for their idealism and radicalism in their youth (The Boomers), a generation in mid-life composed of pragmatists wanting to get things done (Generation X), and a collectivistic and rational young adult generation willing to follow the elder idealists off a cliff (Millennials). There were 3 previous times in American history this was so, 1. The Great Depression and WW2, 2. The Civil War, and 3. The American Revolution. That time has returned, thus the constant references to Lincoln and FDR.

[tama]

5. This time it's different

Capitalism as we know it, which started around 1820, is now coming to end because the era of cheap oil (which replaced coal which replaced wood) is coming to end. The system dependent in unlimited growth has been in overshoot - based on nothing but building a debt bubble - since beginning of 80's when Wiley E. Coyote run off the cliff and is now looking down.

[Odin2005]

7. At the begining of every such crisis there are people that say it's the end of the world.

in 1932 many were convinced that Liberal Democracy and free enterprise were finished and that the world would be overtaken by totalitarianism. These days too shall pass.

[tama]

8. So what?

That does not prove anything nor say anything about current crisis. That is just blah blah.

[Odin2005]

9. The point is people are saying "this time it's different" every time.

It's part of the zeitgeist of the period. And the cynics and pessimists were wrong all the time. You can't say "this time it's different" until after the fact, not before.

[tama]

10. Sure I can say

when that assesment is based on in-depth systemic analysis, based on available facts and deductions from them according to most basic and simple logic. Sure I can say so because I have the critical skill to listen critically to those wiser and/or better informed than me in their areas of expertize.

But those who say "it's just same'o-same'o" without anything else to say, without rudimentary logical skill except the usual analogical fallacy: cause the boy called wolf couple times and the wolf didn't came, the wolf will never come.

[Odin2005]

11. Link for you:

Sorry Collapsitarians, Doomers and Dystopians a Full Collapse Will Not Happen