View Single Post
Old 03-14-2008, 05:08 AM   #22 (permalink)
roachboy
 
roachboy's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
there was a time when i would have actually typed a long response to this kind of thread. i have learned since.

is the american economic system superior to what? in the endless circle-jerk of conservative ideology, the superlative is not relational. the most excellent ne plus ultra....and in that tiny and shrinking little world, the question is a tautology. and that is why it is of no interest to engage the dwindling population of that tiny tiny intellectual world.

there are a number of structural features of american captialism which are HUGE problems:

1. the entire war economy model that was a significant element of the american economy under fordism and which became the center of it under the uncoherence that was the reagan period--ideological expression: neoliberalism.

2. the inability to face the fact that the fordist period is over and that another possibility exists within "globalization" than america-uber-alles: neoliberalism in its domestic variant resulted in a jingoist denial of reality for a very long time--no planning, no foresight, no action, no nothing.

3. firms are not rational economic actors. hell, even hayek and von mises knew this--everyone knows this except apparently neoliberals.
well, look at the banking crises and now you know.
look at the evanporation of the american manufacturing sector and maybe you'll being thinking "firms may act rationally in the pursuit of profits, but they kinda fuck over everyone else in the process"..but hey, the SERVICE SECTOR takes care of the excess human beings produced by this particular transformation--and in typical reagan-period slight of hand, that percentage not taken care of by macdonalds or retail or by adventures in iraq, you dont count.

4. the appalling neglect of public education. already a weapon of class warfare because its funding is tied to local property taxes, so never great to begin with, public education has been subjected to 30 years of politically motivated attack from the jingo right because of the fact that teachers are unionized on the one hand--and because for conservatives, it is ok that the futures of the childen of the affluent are structurally different from the futures of the lives of the less affluent. this is obscene.

5. the barbaric health care system.

6. what the american system has made itself into outside the united states.

7. the fact that 1 in 10 african-american males is in prison. this is self-evidently an index of class warfare conservative-style: act like it doesn't exist, do nothing to change anything about it, neglect infrastructre, choke off opportunity, criminalize informal economies, blame the victims of this reactionary mode of class warfare, round em up, put em in camps. go usa.

thing is that we could make this a different kind of system.
but neoliberalism has to go--contemporary jingoist conservatism has to finish its collapse. the period they defend is over. the politics of retro-denial in significant measure explain why we're in this fiasco. the politics of the right are responsible for this: this is the world the right has made.

given how conservatives like to talk about "personal responsibility" you'd think they'd suck it up and acknowledge---well, this didnt work out so well and we're all in this together so maybe try something else....
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite
roachboy is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360