Book Review: Occupy World Street 284
jsuda writes "For those billions of people for whom the current political-economic system doesn't work–the Occupy Wall Street people, the Tea Partiers, the 99%-ers and have-nots, the middle and lower classes, and the rest of the unwashed masses, Occupy World Street is a starburst of enlightenment and a practical vision of hope for a new and advanced society." Read on for jsuda's review
The book is subtitled appropriately "A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Order." It functions in a substantial way as the missing "content" for the Occupy Wall Street movement people who know that global capitalism and its political elite are screwing the middle and lower classes and the world environment but don't know exactly how they are doing it and how to change things. The book provides an unusually lucid analysis of the American political-economic system which should make clear to the Tea Partiers what their real targets of rage should be (it's not merely the Democrats nor the federal government.) Nearly everyone else who wants a "big picture" comprehensive analysis of the global economic system will be educated by this book.| Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform | |
| author | Ross Jackson |
| pages | 336 |
| publisher | Chelsea Green Publishing |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | jsuda |
| ISBN | 1603583882 |
| summary | shows how a handful of small nations could take on a leadership role; create new alliances, new governance, and new global institutions; and, in cooperation with grassroots activists, pave the way for other nations to follow suit. |
The author, Ross Jackson, identifies who and what is responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and many other problems in society. Most prominent are a seriously-flawed "neo-liberal economic philosophy" and the political-elite class which sponsors that philosophy for self-interested reasons at the expense of the rest of us. Jackson makes clear that economic philosophical theory is not value free and is class politics in disguise. But way more importantly than the mere class versus class struggle, the neo-liberal economic philosophy has created severe energy and environmental problems which are almost certain to lead soon to major economic and political disruptions affecting the entire globe.
The author's main perspective is as an environmentalist; he utilizes a systems approach of an overarching environmental model where the global environment is a closed, finite system and the economic, political, and other topics are subsystems of the whole. The book explains (in six parts and 17 chapters) how and why our existing economic model is failing and will create environmental, economic, and political chaos unless it is replaced soon with an economic model emphasizing "sustainability" and "development" versus simple "unlimited growth." Jackson explains in the second half of the book what we can do about it, hopefully before it's too late for future generations to have a chance for civilized life.
I have never heard before of Mr.Jackson, but he is bound to be (or at least should be) hailed as a top-notch public intellectual. He is a brilliant analyst of global economics, politics, and environmental matters; and a clever synthesist of the relevant economics, politics, philosophy, environmental science, psychology, sociology, history, physics, and biology, which apply to his examination.
He has an unusually broad and diverse background as a global currency trader, executive of a nonprofit environmental organization, software designer and businessman, and degrees in engineering physics, industrial management, and operations research. This may explain, in part, his ability to see major categories of human life with such a wide lens while also being able to analyze the subcategories and the factual data.
Part One explains the scientific and economic reasons why the neo-liberal approach of unending growth is unsustainable and a lie. It is a lie because it implies, at least, that everyone has a chance ultimately to achieve the high level of consumption of the successful capitalists and that the high consumption gravy train will go on forever. He uses biological, environmental, and mathematical data to show that the neo-liberal assumption of infinite natural capital has already resulted in net deficits of global energy resources, and that the world (and the neo-liberal economic system) will end frightfully unless we reduce population, give up the idea of "more of everything is better," redesign and downsize our economies, use less fossil energies, and emphasize sustainability.
The next two parts explain the politics and human factors which drive the irrational economic policies. He goes into good detail about historical economic theory from the mercantile period, to the classical free trade period, to our existing neo-liberal period. He clearly explains how and why the 2008 financial crisis occurred and why it is likely to repeat itself, and how the current debt crisis in Europe (and elsewhere) happened and why the European Union is not equipped even now to successfully deal with it. Any effort to address it (using the existing neo-liberal strategies) will be temporary and the crises will deepen.
His discussions on the neo-liberal insistence on a deregulated economic environment, free flow of global capital, and the use of exotic financial instruments and transactions, especially naked short sales, are the clearest I've read about how these elements de-stabilized the global economy. They will continue to do so as long as those who (very lucratively) benefit from them (the political elite) insist upon them regardless of the consequences to hapless small nations and their economies, small businesses, and people like you and me. He thoroughly and lucidly explains how this political-economic philosophy destroys real democracy, including in America. What we have, he says, is a corporatocracy which dominates much of political and social life through the forces of wealth and ideology.
Mr. Jackson is also a political-economic visionary of the highest order as shown in the second half of the book by his "break away" strategy where he sets out his alternative environmentalist paradigm. It is a new worldview emphasizing the finite reality of our natural resources, especially energy ones, and how we should alter much of what we do to comply with that reality. He argues for a new set of social values harmonious with a holistic sense of people and nature being part of one "system." The values of that system include smallness, localization, quality versus quantity, interrelationships, and long-term perspectives.
These values are organized into a moderately sophisticated set of new global political and economic institutions modeled much like the European Union but emphasizing environmental issues and designed to satisfy long-term environmental needs. This process will also lead to enhancing of true human values in the political sphere, especially in more effective democracies.
The "breaking away" strategy starts with small nation states building a new economic paradigm based upon the environmental perspective, rejecting the flawed and elitist global institutions we have now (the WTO, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund), and even developing new currency systems. The nation states will be supported by a grassroots activist movement which will create local eco-communities and more self-reliant economies while lobbying existing political powers to get on board with the new paradigm. The measurements of success will not be GNP or GDP but the broader-based measures of social happiness and human rights. (Take the case of the nation of Bhutan which measures its activity by a standard called "Gross National Happiness Index.")
The parts of the book explaining the roles of the neo-liberal economic philosophy and the political elite are solidly presented and not really new. The program of change he proposes, however, is new and intellectually sound. Being intellectually sound, however, is not sufficient to affect change. There is a gap, it seems, between the ideas and what is necessary to activate people at the grassroots level. Relatively few people in reality will even read this book. The ideas need to be connected to "street-level" understandings, perhaps tied to basic human values of respect and dignity. The roadmap proposed here, Mr. Jackson acknowledges, needs much more development.
You can purchase Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting aside the obvious problem of going up against the incredible, almost god-like, power of the huge megacorporations that own almost every major government in the world, there is an even bigger problem that you're going to face with your "sustainability" message (especially in the U.S.):
Your first message to the masses is going to be "You have to make real sacrifices."
You won't even get the final "s" in sacrifices out before they tar and feather you and run you out of town on a rail. This is a country where a dollar-per-gallon increase in gas prices almost starts a riot, where "keeping up with the Joneses" is considered a birthright, where not one single President or politician has asked *any* American to sacrifice *anything* in over 40 years. No politician here has EVER won on a message of "I'm going to make things materially worse for you" irrespective of whether or not he adds "But things will be better in the long-term for your grandchildren."
They only way your revolution will ever happen will be by force (force of economic collapse or force or arms, but certainly not by popular vote). No one is going to vote for the guy who is asking them to give up their new car, their big house, their HDTV. You can't guilt someone into making REAL HARD material sacrifices.
Social movements in the U.S. do occasionally succeed in getting minor sacrifices out of the public, but the MAJOR ones that this would require? Good luck with that.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree with your sentiment, what a movement needs is a main figure who will "make real sacrifices". People are not stupid and will no go out on a limb if they feel they are going to be out there alone. If you get at least one person who feels strongly enough about something to actually go it alone, others will and do follow suit.
It really follows a bell curve, you get the people who feel strongly about it first. When you have enough of them, you get people who agree with you and feel the time is right now that more people are being active, after the peak you get the people who don't really care but will go with the crowd and at the far end the people who probably disagreed but won't go against the crowd.
The fuel is there, there just needs to be enough "spark" to get critical mass.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Interesting)
The movement needs more than a leader. It needs a point. By the time the Occupiers were finished, you had everybody from homeless advocates (and homeless) to raving Marxists, neither of which represent in any way the alleged 99%. At least the Tea Partiers had a tangible set of principles and goals. Being reactionary Libertarian, I despise much of what the Tea Party stands for, but there was at least some sense that there was a direction beyond "we're just against those guys".
Political movements that cannot solidify a single set of goals die out. It's not the leaders alone that do it. The problem with the Occupiers is the same as the peace movement of the 1970s. At the core, one of the founding principles is that everyone has their own idea of where the movement should go. There's a core kind of philosophical anarchism which means that no one is ever really going to become a leader, and if they did, they'd just end up fracturing the movement if they ever did anything faintly leader-like.
Beyond that, revolutions are dangerous things. Smashing existing economic, political and social structures rarely actually ends with something stronger. The American Revolution is an exception, rather than a rule. I much prefer the more evolutionary approach that lead to democracy in Britain, from the Glorious Revolution to the greater and lesser reform acts of the 19th to the 20th century. No burning down buildings or taking emperors and their families out into the woods and gunning them down.
The last thing you want is fanatics. The Tea Party almost brought the US debt into discredit for the first time in the history of the United States through some sort of mad desire to remain ideologically pure. No thanks, don't want that kind of revolution.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Insightful)
The last thing you want is fanatics. The Tea Party almost brought the US debt into discredit for the first time in the history of the United States [...]
Almost? Our credit rating dropped. I'm not sure you can use a more cogent term than "discredit".
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One word: default.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Informative)
It should be pointed out that the people who downgraded US debt are the same who rated those subprime securitized bonds AAA.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Insightful)
They had their 'points' clearly outlined [nycga.net] in their 'Declaration of the Occupation of NYC', which they submitted to the city of NY at the start of the protests. Aside from ignorance, the reason these points went unreported was because they challenge power (i.e. money), and for many people in the MSM, it is not convenient or even permissible in many cases to challenge power. The Tea Party, on the other hand, was in direct support of power (the answer to debt is austerity, the result of austerity is the rich get richer) and so their idiotic points were repeated far and wide.
That said, as with all movements, when it became popular you had anarchists, communists and just about every left-wing (and some other) special interest group under the sun involved confusing matters. The same thing happened to the tea party when racists, gun fanatics, birthers, tenthers and morans with misspelled signs used the tea party as their platform, because that's where they could get on TV.
Beyond that, revolutions are dangerous things.
Occupy was not a 'revolution.' The 'core' occupiers and the movement in large never suggested taking down the gov't. But what they did was enormously successful in that they brought unprecedented attention to the corruptive influence of Wall Street on gov't. In a democracy the best you can do is get people talking about facts, and hope the raised level of consciousness will ultlimately give politicians the courage to do the right things.
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By the time the Occupiers were finished, you had everybody from homeless advocates (and homeless) to raving Marxists, neither of which represent in any way the alleged 99%. At least the Tea Partiers had a tangible set of principles and goals.
Your bias is showing.
Being reactionary Libertarian
Ahh, well at least you're honest.
I thought the Tea Party sounded like a great idea. Then they built an 'official' website. The website showed *nothing* but a more extreme version of the Republican platform. (socially regressive to the extreme, typical small government platitudes for the proles who buy that shit, etc). I don't get how so many people like you can rag on OWS and praise the Tea Party in the same breath.
--Jeremy
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Interesting)
The Tea Party almost brought the US debt into discredit for the first time in the history of the United States through some sort of mad desire to remain ideologically pure. No thanks, don't want that kind of revolution.
Yeah I mean it couldn't have ANYTHING to do with Obama's failed economic plan of Keynesian economics of blow lots of money without any plan at all right? I mean how the hell do you blow ~$4 trillion in under 3 years alone except by being an idiot? That you blame the tea party simply says you're wallowing in what you're being told instead of understanding the metrics and economics of what Obama and his panel of idiots pulled.
That plan: Throw money at it. Tell me, does throwing money at something ever work? And does cutting 1% to 'save' yourself while in debt up through your asshole work either? Of course it doesn't. At best the US needed to take direct spending cuts, at worst they needed to properly prioritize, the entire government bureaucracy is top heavy and start gutting. Want to know how I can say this? Because we had someone here in Ontario by the name of Bob Rae(now Liberal leader) who did exactly the same thing that Obama is doing. It ended with our rating cut here, and it should only be another 20 years or so before the province pays off his debt. And he only doubled it.
Enjoy your taste of socialism. Because that's all it was.
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principles like rage over a black president and goals like finding the birth certificate?
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You have as much credibility as the people calling the Occupy folks a bunch of homeless hobos while ignoring their call for financial equity.
Similarly, you are ignoring the Tea Partiers' main demand for fiscal restraint while focusing on something which didn't even figure in those protests (other than one guy with a stupid sign).
A main figure, a leader! A Spark! (Score:2)
Ghandi, Jesus, Buddha etc.
Eh. Wait... That didn't work. I know. Lets try it again and see if it works this time!
No what it needs is for people to understand the truth rather than the fantasy being sold to them by the mainstream media and start acting in their own self interest. Understand exactly how things really work and why the vested interests want them that way.
That will only happen as the shit hits the fan btw.
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The truth is that politicians on any side don't (and never have) work for you. They work for the people who pay them. They are pimps who sell their constituents favours.
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Re:A main figure, a leader! A Spark! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ghandi, Jesus, Buddha etc. Eh. Wait... That didn't work.
All three of those made fairly large changes in the world around them. Please define "That didn't work."
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While I agree with your sentiment, what a movement needs is a main figure who will "make real sacrifices".
It almost sounds like Warren Buffett could fill this requirement: he complains that his taxes are lower than his secretary's, and dares the government to do something about it -- in other words, he's saying "please help me (and others like me who aren't as willing) to sacrifice."
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His willingness to pay voluntarily will neither have a tangible result (he's too poor to put a meaningful dent in the US budget), nor change policy. His unwillingness to pay voluntarily might help to change policy.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, that I had mod points. However, one note:
It will never come close to starting a riot. All it will do is make a lot of talking heads on TV talk about gas prices more, some people will drive a bit less, one guy will start taking the bus, three guys will each buy a bike but only one will ever use it, and everyone will post to Facebook about how much gas prices suck.
The only thing that will make Americans in general riot these days is if their sports team of choice does... something. Win, lose, disband, it doesn't seem to matter, it all leads to civil unrest. (I really don't understand this, either.)
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that will make Americans in general riot these days is if their sports team of choice does... something. Win, lose, disband, it doesn't seem to matter, it all leads to civil unrest. (I really don't understand this, either.)
It's "tribal thinking". The good news? The participants also don't understand this, either.
No riots. Dancing with the stars is on! (Score:2)
http://xkcd.com/1007/ [xkcd.com]
Sustainable is already boring.
Infinite debt and economic collapse for the win!
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Sounds like you and the author are standing on a pile of 100 million people murdered by various tyrants looking to build a better society and shouting, "Let's try again!"
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Clearly the answer is to increase the scale. One billion corpses or bust!
I really wish I could say that the above is satire and no one really thinks that way, but I've met people who do, and now I think I need some rum.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary said nothing about sacrifices. It does say:
"The "breaking away" strategy starts with small nation states building a new economic paradigm based upon the environmental perspective, rejecting the flawed and elitist global institutions we have now (the WTO, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund), and even developing new currency systems. The nation states will be supported by a grassroots activist movement which will create local eco-communities and more self-reliant economies while lobbying existing political powers to get on board with the new paradigm. The measurements of success will not be GNP or GDP but the broader-based measures of social happiness and human rights. (Take the case of the nation of Bhutan which measures its activity by a standard called "Gross National Happiness Index.")"
It looks like it is proposing a system based on strengthening local economies and freeing them from the tyranny of corporations while at the same time causing less damage to the environment. If you measure happiness by how much petrol you burn or how much cheap shit from China slave labor you consume, then I guess you might consider this a sacrifice. Many other people measure their happiness by health, security, family and friends as well as having adequate food and shelter. I believe this is what the book is proposing, not sacrifices.
I disagree: framing austerity (Score:2)
There is truth to what you say, yet I think it's a question of framing, not of whether there are actual sacrifices.
Many people support austerity, even though it means significant sacrifices for the majority (even as it is twinned with tax cuts for the few). You might argue this is because people do not perceive themselves as beneficiaries of government spending (see: Alaska), or because they have an aspirational view of themselves living the American dream and benefiting from tax cuts, because they belie
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What sacrifices? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a lot of the masses, which have already lost quite a bit, are starting to ask, "When are the controllers going to start sacrificing as much as we have?"
You said, "...not one single President or politician has asked *any* American to sacrifice *anything* in over 40 years." Obama suggested that the tax rates for the top earners go back to the place where they were ten years ago, and he was branded a job-killer and capitalism-hater. Maybe it's not the masses that are your problem here.
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Just ignore the economic/political message (whether you agree or not), but take the sacrifice part of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkEtArDFNYA#t=0m26s [youtube.com]
Asking Americans to make sacrifices is ludicrious...
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..and that's the problem: 'social' movements never offer anything as a solution.. they just demand sacrifice. here in america we have that on the left and 'lower taxes for the wealthy' on the right.. it's a shitty, non sequitur choice.
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Because joblessness at 4 year lows,
Amazingly, jobness is also at a 4 year low (number of people who have jobs). Amazing what statistics you can come up with when you leave off people who have run out of unemployment insurance.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Informative)
Amazingly, jobness is also at a 4 year low (number of people who have jobs)
Is it fuck. Number of people who have jobs has been rising for at least a year.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm [bls.gov]
Amazing what statistics you can come up with when
Amazing what statistics you can come up with when you talk out of your ass. And I mean you.
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I liked how you took one small 3 word segment of that, declared the poster thought obama was the messiah, and ignored the rest.
Yes, democrats are the ones with the messiah complex.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Informative)
I would suggest, based on your grammatical skills, that the problem lies not with the market but with you.
I lost my job in the recession. I make over 150% of what I was making in 2009.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Interesting)
I lost my job in the recession, too. I make 86% of what I was making in 2009.
I suck. Although, I will hazard a guess that you're the exception and I'm the rule.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Insightful)
I get it. The economy is bad because of Obama, except that it's improving, despite Obama.
Something's faulty with your logic, mate.
Here's my theory. Economics is too big and too complicated to be able to pin the blame or the credit on politicians. At best, their policies take years to begin to alter the system in any appreciable way. Politicians will, of course, claim credit for the good things that show up during their term(s) and will deny responsibility for the bad things that appear, and the opponents of said politicians will, inversely, claim the good things had nothing to do with the politician in question or possibly happened despite said politician's unbelievable and never before seen incompetence, and the bad things, well, those are obviously the politician's fault, again due to said politician's unbelievable incompetence.
It's sort of like a conspiracy theory, but you don't have to wear tin foil hats or be a paranoid schizophrenic to play. Mind you, do have to have another mental disorder; blinding partisanship.
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Economics is too big and too complicated to be able to pin the blame or the credit on politicians.
But wait, it's really simple: Y = C + I + G + (X â' M)
Paul Krugman says so.
Y'know what. If politicians take the credit as their egos insist they do, they get to take the blame too.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Informative)
And now you're getting jobs and economic stability and mandated health care. The US is still a little uneven, but Christ man, look across the pond, where Europe can't even begin to right the boat. Besides, considering how health care continues to eat more US GDP than even the most socialized industrialized nation, you would think it might actually be an improvement.
This is what I mean by extreme partisanship. It fogs the mind, prevents someone from viewing a policy on its merits. It simply becomes "fuck that, I want this", even if the "this" is probably impossible, whereas the "that" is at least something can be done.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Insightful)
And now you're getting jobs and economic stability and mandated health care.
Weird. Last I looked 'unemployment' was going down, but so was the number of Americans with jobs.
As for 'economic stability', you'll get that when you stop increasing the national debt by more than a trillion dollars a year.
The funny part is that Obama will probably win the election anyway because the best the Republicans can find to oppose him is Bob Dole #2.
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Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Informative)
Weird. Last I looked 'unemployment' was going down, but so was the number of Americans with jobs.
Well either you're imagining it, or it's somewhat more than a year ago that you looked. Because the number of people in employment has been consistently rising for at least the last year.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm [bls.gov]
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Interesting)
Healthcare... WTF? Who was asking for that? We wanted jobs and economic stability not government mandated health care.
Polls, at the time, showed 80% of respondents saying "yes" to "do we need healthcare reform?" So, in response to your question, EVERYBODY is who the fuck was asking for it.
As for the jobs? That was the whole point of the stimulus bill -- you know, the one that passed in like the first month he was in office? Oh, but that's right -- the stimulus bill was nothing but government waste. He had to do something else to create jobs that didn't involve spending money, such as go beg CEOs and other job creators to hire more gardeners for their personal estates.
There are lots of legitimate gripes about Obama. Yours? They're bullshit.
--Jeremy
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Insightful)
Polls, at the time, showed 80% of respondents saying "yes" to "do we need healthcare reform?" So, in response to your question, EVERYBODY is who the fuck was asking for it.
1. They were asking for 'healthcare reform', not mandatory insurance.
2. Just becasue people think they need something, that doesn't mean it's a priority. I'm guessing that if you asked them to list the most important things Obama should be doing, mandatory health insurance with free condom cover wouldn't have been anywhere on the list.
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Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Informative)
Just to add: mandatory insurance allowed additional people to be insured that weren't before. That is something on a lot of people's list at the time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States#Polling_results_pre-2008 [wikipedia.org]
pre-2008 polls say:
95% said that it is a serious problem that many Americans do not have health insurance
64% said that the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans
60% would pay higher taxes to do so.
But only 43% said that it would be fair for the government in Washington to require all Americans to participate in a national health care plan funded by taxpayers, compared to 48% who said it would be unfair.
That last one is worded differently from what happened, so actually doesn't disprove my point. If they worded it, "require Americans who can afford cheaper insurance from private companies to purchase it", then the numbers would have been more favorable.
> free condom cover
I'm guessing you meant women's contraception. Big difference, although both save this country a lot of money and stress.
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1. They were asking for 'healthcare reform', not mandatory insurance.
And they'd have got more healthcare reform had the Republican's not blocked as much as they could.
The idea that people don't want to have healthcare cover is stupid. The idea that they want a choice whether they have healthcare cover or not is retarded. If people get ill, they want to be treated. No matter whether they can afford the treatment they need at that moment. The fact that the richest country in the world hasn't had universal healthcare for so long is a scandal.
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Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent point. Problem is that it's damn hard to start a small business. Licenses, taxes, regulations make it really hard.
I'm not a right-wing supply sider - I'm a pretty liberal software engineer who tried to start a board and care home for the elderly with his RN wife, and got govsmacked into poverty for it. We could hardly keep up with how many regulatory agencies we had to report to, let alone know all their regs, and all the legislation they were nominally based on.
I went out of business six years ago, and the state is still after me for paperwork.
I'm cool with the government investigating and prosecuting crimes, but their regulations are often not really about protecting people. We got fined once for not having a chair in an unoccupied bedroom.
The regulatory compliance regime favors large corporations and under-the-table operations. Try doing something useful and playing by the rules and you're likely to lose your shirt.
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This. Exactly.
In the U.S., one party wants more of this Big Government. The other wants more of Big Corp. Both want you to slave away ('sprint' in Agile terms) for Big Labor or Big Corp. Neither is interested in Independent You, because there's no money or power in that for them.
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I'm of 2 minds on this.
First, you're half right. The Americans who whine don't appreciate how good we still have it in the US. We expect too much of ourselves. Just have to have the big house and not just one big car but at least 2, can't have the neighbors thinking a family is poor, oh no! The people struggling to maintain this unrealistic image of wealth often trap themselves, and then they're stuck in an underwater home and can't move where there are jobs should they lose them. Stupid? Irresponsi
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I think you meant to say (Score:2)
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Just WOW. Political discourse is officially dead. The economy tanks in Bush's second term and it's somehow Clinton's fault, and it starts recovering under Obama and it's NOT his doing. (And I say STARTS recovering, so far it's only really good for the 1%). The big bank bailout somehow IS Obama's fault even though it was done during the Bush administration, etc etc.
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And mustn't forget the troop withdrawal from Iraq. Happened under Obama, but planned and scheduled under Bush, and Bush gets the credit...
Oh, wait, didn't happen that way did it? It WAS planned and scheduled under Bush, but Obama got the credit....
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Interesting)
Both GWB's and Obama's economic advisers had a historical model; the Hoover administration, which chose to keep its head above the economic crisis during its early stages at a point when intervention might have at least stabilized the economy (despite what people the, crash of 1929 didn't lead to a decade-long down, it lead to high volatility, which is in many ways much worse, and it was that that lead to the Depression). By targeted bail outs to prevent a complete freeze up of the movement of global credit, both GWB and Obama prevented a nightmare scenario. Yes, it sucks that some really incompetent bastards got saved from their own wickedness and idiocy, but history will show, I think, that as bad as the 2008 collapse was, it was the actions of the outgoing and incoming American administrations which prevented it from becoming another Depression.
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uh, no. The economy didn't crash until Sept/Oct '08. Also the second stimulus, in Obama's own words, was supposed to keep the joblessness rate below 8%. That was 3+ years ago.
if you're referring to the Arab spring Obama didn't really do anything. Sure once the UN said it was ok he bombed Libya for a day or 2 then refueled French planes to do it for us (that a big WTF??). And now what do we have? The Muslim Brotherhood controls half of the Mid-East, whi
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Incidentally, he (and the Senate) also have not passed a budget in this time that he's been keeping unemployment right at 8.3% (15.1% depending on the numbers you use).
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Just help me figure out what is actually useful.
Cut regulation, cut spending, cut taxes.
Obvious and simple, but politically impossible.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with the other two, but which "regulation" are you cutting?
Financial regulation? We've seen that effective controls on what corporations can do is a "good thing." Gas prices went up, in part, due to unbridled speculation on the part of Goldman-Sachs, et al, who were given letters saying, "Fuck regulation - do what you want." GS loved it - the rest of us, not so much.
Environmental regulation? We can't trust Ford to dispose of leftover paint safely - it's now in peoples' yards in some parts of New Jersey because Ford had it dumped in abandoned mines - and do you really want Monsanto and Dow running free and naked over the environment?
Key word is effective regulation. No regulation is a license for companies to fuck us over to make a buck.
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Whatever happened to "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?"
It was answered. [wikipedia.org]
OWS: Obama Wasn't reSponsible (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the book go into the fact that OWS was a smokescreen to blame private corporations for the results of government misregulation for the aid of the Obama re-election campaign?
Re:OWS: Obama Wasn't reSponsible (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. I'm sure the author goes on and on about the evil banks and corporations, without acknowledging the fact that they would never have had the power to do so much evil in the first place if the government hadn't given it to them. The notion of an entity that's "too big to fail" is the farthest thing imaginable from a capitalistic perspective... yet look who gets blamed.
Regardless of the question you're asking, more gatekeepers and middlemen are not the answer. That applies to governments as well as corporations.
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Be that as it may, I have to agree that "corporatism", or greedy corporations in league with government, is indeed about the farthest thing from capitalism that exists.
"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power" --Benito Mussolini
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." --Theodore Roosevelt
It should be obvious that this "first task" has yet to be completed.
It grieves me when blame for these problems
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You must have lost the TCP packet from the review that contained the following text:
The author, Ross Jackson, identifies who and what is responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and many other problems in society. Most prominent are a seriously-flawed "neo-liberal economic philosophy" and the political-elite class which sponsors that philosophy for self-interested reasons at the expense of the rest of us.
By 'political-elite class', I'm guessing he's referring to politicians/officials in the Obama/Bush administrations and congress that allowed what happened to happen. I don't think there's any mistake on the part of the left or the occupy movement about the gov't's complicity in all this, and the author is certainly aware.
Regardless of the question you're asking, more gatekeepers and middlemen are not the answer. That applies to governments as well as corporations.
This book might help you think more deeply about this statement.
Re:OWS: Obama Wasn't reSponsible (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:OWS: Obama Wasn't reSponsible (Score:5, Informative)
Does the book go into the fact that OWS was a smokescreen to blame private corporations for the results of government misregulation for the aid of the Obama re-election campaign?
If you honestly believe the de-regulation of private business (that subsequently led to multiple economic implosions) has only been going on as long as Obama has been president, you haven't been paying attention. [rollingstone.com]
Oil will run out, but energy will not (Score:3, Interesting)
We will not run out of energy until the Sun expands and swallows the Earth. Oil will run out, but by then, long before then, solar, wind, and geothermal will replace it. We don't have to go back to the stone age. Population will level off as new population's are educated. All governments need to do is get out of the way and just regulate the commons, to avoid tragedy :-P
Review Bias? (Score:2, Interesting)
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It reads more like Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars. Just as boring and neo-Marxist, by the looks of it.
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It was so one-sided there seemed to be no point actually reading it through; I wouldn't learn whether the book was worth reading or not. All I took away was "this book is popular with people with limited critical thinking skills", which is hardly the best advertizement.
This could become a WSJ best seller (Score:3)
because the powers that be combine appeal of lasissez-faire capitalism with the fear of losing what little status quo remains to pit us all against each other through the tactics of divide and conquer
as elrous0 says above -there will have to be some painful changes and some ugly battles before things will improve for most people on earth an most of us are not yet willing to make them -and I'm afraid I am probably among them. Maybe your children will see enough of what has been lost and can rise up before it is too late...
-I'm just sayin'
Wow-I am on the wrong website (Score:3, Insightful)
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I was looking for stuff that matters. Not this socialist dribble that seems to be dominating the "news for nerds."
Aw, hell, that ain't socialist - THIS [constitution.org] is socialist!
There is no form of government more dedicated to socialism that a constitutional republic... Well, I guess a constitutional republic with democratically elected leaders, maybe, but who's crazy enough to do that??
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Aw, hell, that ain't socialist - THIS [constitution.org] is socialist!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Please list all the "socialist [slashdot.org]" parts of the Constitution and explain how they are socialist.
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If you want to be an economic nerd you only have to read this book. It's long but a great logical explanation of economics with no BS.
mises.org/books/mespm.pdf
Re: Deregulation (Score:4, Insightful)
The US deregulated? When? Government spending and all the laws and statutes in the Federal Register has been always growing and never stops. The rate of growth might change, but it always grows.
I take major issue with this notion that some how the US a free market. It would be more correct to call it mercantilism or proto-fascism.
Fact is, there isn't anything remotely resembling a free market in the US. It's mixed economy. To say it's deregulated is to forget all the agencies that cover it, whether it be employment, food, drugs, stockmarkets, currency, transportation, utilities, or healthcare.
Compiled quickly with a short search, here is a short list:
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac)
Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
Federal Housing Finance Agency
Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae)
US Dept of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Import Export Bank
US Dept of Treasury, and it's dozen of so sub-offices
US Department of Commerce
Federal Reserve System
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC)
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
Employment and Training Administration (ETA)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
US Dept of Energy (DOE)
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
US Department of Labor (DOL)
Farm Credit Administration (FCA)
US Dept of Transportation (DOT)
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC)
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EREN)
Federal Highway Administration (FHA)
Federal Maritime Commission (FMC)
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Transportation Security Administraion (TSA)
And this doesn't included other, multiple layers of city, county, and state laws, codes, and regulations.
There is ***NOTHING*** that isn't regulated in the US.
Look, I agree with the sentiments of the OWS crowd. There's some straight scum bags out there. But wouldn't it make sense, if you create a massive apparatus, you're also creating a new power center---A power center that these scumbags can use to their own ends against everyone else? A larger regulatory state requires smart, honest people to run it. If you look at something like military contractors at the DOD or large Wall Street banks at Treasury or the Fed, you see back door scam deals left and right. And just because you elect the right guy in office once, there's no guarantee that the next guy in charge will be just as nice.
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Matt Taibbi's blog [rollingstone.com] is a good place to start.
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Re: Deregulation (Score:4)
You cannot seriously consider Rolling Stone a source of anything more than dopehead diatribes.
Matt Taibbi. Your argument is invalid.
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What about the 98.6%? (Score:2, Redundant)
What about the 98.6%? We aren't billionaires. We aren't communists. We just want common sense. We're not radical. We're well-balanced, healthy centrists. The only options being presented are all burning with a deathbed fever of corporate fascism or hard-left radicalism that will leave us dying in a sweat-soaked poltical deathbed.
"not sufficient to affect change" (Score:2)
"Being intellectually sound, however, is not sufficient to affect change"
Can we have the argument about affect and effect here? I would have used 'effect change' here, unless OP means that change, in some way, is to be altered.
Also, there an enormous issue about how invested we all are in the existing system, with jobs and housing provided by it. That makes it very costly to change - but it's quite costly to stay paying a mortgage which supports the lifestyles of the people who sold created and sold CDOs an
I Never Saw... (Score:2)
So many Anonymous Cowards.
O.K. I'll knock an oddball out into left field.I'll even stick my name to it.
We have scientists telling us we aren't smart enough for democracy in yesterdays story.
We hate everything about our governments and circumstances is pretty global.
REVOLT! Just everywhere! Start over. Let natural selection take the best of us forward. We're overpopulated, polluted and full of ignorant, corrupt, irritating people and hassles. Let's just pick a day and fight it out with the power worldwide an
Well, that settles it... not chance in hell (Score:4, Interesting)
emphasizing "sustainability" and "development" versus simple "unlimited growth."
You know? I've been saying that for close to 10 years... that there is something mathematically wrong with using "growth" as a metric of success. But at a company I once worked for, we read "From good to great" and listened to our C-level executives came back from business conventions saying things like "if you're not growing, then you're dying." The logical failure in these ideas were all too plain for me to see.
There's a whole lot of crazy and stupid in our society from the very top to the very bottom. People think drugs are a good idea for helping them to feel better at all levels, for example. But it's pretty much everywhere you look where conventional wisdom which our grandfathers lived under successfully after surviving the great depression is being cast aside for "new ideas" which are just short-sightednees and greed in shiny wrapping paper. It's like saying "hey! eat all the candy you want! you're going to feel great and be happy! It's all that matters in life!" Forget about getting diabetes, getting your feet cut off and bieng unable to take care of your children because of your new disability.
Only one thing will cause a turn-around. Things will have to get bad on a global scale and pretty much apocalyptic before things can even come close to turning around. The ruiners of the world are still in charge and will not stop to think that they are dooming themselves as much as the rest of us even though they won't feel it until a much larger amount of us will have died from it and their first symptoms will be "unable to get enough servants to do their work for them."
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You know? I've been saying that for close to 10 years... that there is something mathematically wrong with using "growth" as a metric of success. But at a company I once worked for, we read "From good to great" and listened to our C-level executives came back from business conventions saying things like "if you're not growing, then you're dying." The logical failure in these ideas were all too plain for me to see.
THIS. If nothing else this is an aspect of the economy that needs to be addressed. Perpetual growth is unsustainable and the only thing driving it is the stock market. Fix this problem to stop the economy from over-revving itself to death and go from there.
jesus CHRIST (Score:4, Insightful)
Today I am ashamed to be part of Slashdot.
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I opened these comments to read insightful posts refuting and supporting the arguments in the book with logic and evidence. I found 100 posts of partisan political bickering without a shred of useful content. Today I am ashamed to be part of Slashdot.
Did you read the summary first? I came here looking to see where the slashdot zeitgeist went with this one. I have noticed that on topics like this they tend to be skewed either very much towards expanding government power or towards reducing it. This one seems to actually fall somewhere in the middle. although in this case it appears that that is because the author of the book review (and possibly of the book as well) has managed to support the parts from either side that the sides on slashdot, for the mos
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http://i.imgur.com/VJrE5.jpg [imgur.com]
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sheesh dont you people get it? i doubt some of you will never get it, not now, not ever, you'll more than likely die of old age as clueless as you were when you were born
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I agree, a protest in wall street was probably a good idea.
I disagree that a "protest" in every major city of every country on the planet is a good idea. I also wouldn't be complaining if they didnt set up tents and they packed up their shit every night and went home. The local governments wouldn't have been so pissed off either, so court orders and police wouldn't be used to evict them.
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which is why Washington hated the Tea Party (Score:5, Interesting)
both the RNC and DNC hated it, oh the RNC liked it for the fact it helped them win control of the House but they resented the fact that those people didn't have the decency to go away. When the RNC tried to gain control, either directly or through sycophants they kept getting rebuffed.
That is why I found the OWS so distressing. It was a fake protest, one that the politicians could control. Nothing made this more obvious than having "unions" suddenly appear to add their voice; you notice how fast these same people vanished? When the real down and out people showed up they were scorned (the homeless and such). The OWS was needed when the previous "Tea Party" counter protests organized by unions; complete with bus loads paid for by the same; came to Washington but only trashed the place and didn't put up real numbers, nor did they have any lasting group - it all faded away as any generated for the moment organization does.
Washington and their press sycophants are desperate to shut down or vilify any true protest to the status quo. Wall Street toes the line because they love their money and Washington politicians love the same.
The Democrats need a true grass roots organization similar to the Tea Party to spring up. The problem is again, how can they tell when it truly from the grass roots and not manufactured. The key to knowing will be how those in power react to it and how the press reacts.
Simple rule : If the politicians and press both lap it up then its probably not real.
Re:Very different groups lumped together in summar (Score:4, Insightful)
They both started out as protest movements against the banker bailouts, so I'd say it's entirely appropriate to be linking them together. That and I'd come across the same core group of people at both functions. Yes, their solutions are quite different. But it's the Tea Party/OWS/Arab Spring vs our crooked establishment and the apathy of their neighbors (at least in the early days before each movement fell apart). I'm sure we'll see another similar movement with a whole new name by 2013.
Re:Poor countries are poor for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean to imply that I support high taxes carte blanche... I don't. However, I do have to point out that there are countries with high taxes and yet high standards of living, peace and very good levels of procedural justice. Countries like Sweden, Finland, and Denmark come to mind.
I think this idea that government is inherently evil and can't do anything productive is rather sad. Perhaps it's true in the US, which would be more of a commentary on the flaws of American democracy than on government in general, but there are countries where governments are, by American standards, very interventionists and yet there are high levels of happiness among the nation's population, along with a high standard of living and high levels of individual freedom.
This rigid debate about the evils of tax increases in the US reminds me of what we went through here in Saskatchewan in the mid-1990s. The economy here was terrible. We were in debt up to our eyeballs as a province and international banks were telling us that we were not far from being in a position where acquiring loans to finance future debt was going to be a difficult proposition. Our credit rating had been downgraded significantly. The government of the day severely reduced spending and significantly increased taxes. Roads got neglected, schools got overcrowded, and in general, it really sucked to be here for awhile. But do you know what happened? The provincial debt got significantly reduced. That permitted a gradual reduction of taxes. That allowed the economy to improve - slowly at first, very quickly later - and now we are one of the two strongest provinces in Canada economically, with very reasonable levels of debt a fraction of what it once was, and with a real hope of being retired completely in a few years.
Fix the US political system so that political actors act for the benefit of the nation and its citizens instead of special interest groups, and think with a mind toward the future. This petty bickering and inflexibility are not only increasingly making the US a laughingstock in the international scene, they are seriously damaging the US's ability to have a strong economy. Yes, that may mean a few years of significantly higher taxes, but the dividends in the long run would be huge.
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Because of course the Scandinavian countries are well known for the intense levels of poverty due to their high taxes.
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The US can't unilaterally increase oil prices unless it military destroys oil production capacity, which seems a little self-defeating. The only way it could act, practically speaking, is to increase taxes on fossil fuels. That money wouldn't go to the oil industry - it would go wherever government wanted it to go; research into better energy sources, road construction, income tax reductions, whatever Americans decide is most important.
As for laws, you're right and I have no easy solution for this. The l
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What would you prefer, something that had a hint of the Koch brothers? Maybe a dash of Rupert Murdoch for taste?
Re:yeah (Score:4, Interesting)