The Reagan Revolution (or shall we say Reagan Republican pyramid scheme) works to Hunt's advantage. This fence thing is an easy way to illustation of how it works.
The End of America's Genius?
It’s said that the genius of the American system as created by the founders is that it can survive incompetent, venal or malign office holders...
The Gaming Culture
In a system in perpetual surplus the way you get ahead is not by creating more surplus – it's by diverting the surplus to your friends, family, supporters and yourself (usually through them). It’s the old question – make the pie bigger, or make your slice bigger? The answer for many years now has been to make your slice bigger. Government officials, appointees and elected representatives run government to give money and power to private interests. They then leave government to work for the private interests and then sometimes come back to government.
These people, and there is an entire large class of them, aren’t working to make America as a whole richer or more powerful. They are working to make their benefactors richer and more powerful...
And they serve the one who pays them most – best.
In large part this is because the consequences of failure aren’t obvious. I’ve long said that China has been playing a very bad hand very well, while the US has been playing a very good hand extraordinarily badly. In China not only, despite all the corruption, are there fewer special interests (yes, I know what I’m saying and yes I stand by it) but failure can’t be tolerated. They’re too close to the edge.
Entire provinces are on the edge of famine. Entire provinces are under martial law. There is no room for incompetents – if you want to enrich your friends and family, that’s fine, but you’d better be sure you make the society and economy as a whole work – or else. You have to be able to play the political game but you also have to be able to actually do your ostensible job.
In the US that hasn’t been true for a long time. A politician only has to be able to play the game, not do his or her ostensible job. Most legislators don’t read the legislation they’re voting up or down except to ensure that their little piece favouring their donor base is in there. Most judges have their assistants write most of their decisions. Most executives don’t even review the budgets they submit for ratification except to be sure the pork they ordered to appease their paymasters is in.
As a result you have omnibus bills that are nothing but one piece of business ostensibly for the public good, with hundreds of tacked on bills serving someone’s interest –but not the public's.
That’s simply the way business is done. It’s government for those who can loot it, by those who have been bought by those who can afford them.
And for a long time it sort of worked...
No system is of such genius that it can survive both incompetence and outright looting. The problem is, that not content to merely loot today’s surplus, the looting has continued into tomorrow’s surplus. Borrowing against the future prosperity of America because today’s is not sufficient is the name of the game.
No society that is not led well over long periods can prosper. The US appears to be in the last frenzy of looting of Empire. The end days are nigh, the looting has extended to eating the seed corn and twenty years from now, seed corn gone, Americans will find that America is not unique and that the sun does set on every great nation.
As usual they will have been destroyed from within by the home grown rats, fat upon the grain of their fellow citizens.
Ian Welsh February 19, 2008
agonist.org/ian_welsh/20080218/the_end_of_americas_genius#new
I hope John Edwards is making some headway with talking some sense into our two remaining Centralist candidates.
They need to choose who they will serve...the American worker or the people who are destroying Anerican equity/assets. We can only continue creating a surplus if the profits are not allowed to be syphoned off by the parasites.
The survival of our republic and American middle class way of life depends on the integrity of one or both of these people...or lack of it.
