Thursday, November 12, 2009
Wealth, Power, and Government
Absent an effective countervailing force, power and wealth will attract one another into an increasingly tight, inwardly spiraling orbit, resulting eventually in the black hole of concentrated wealth and monopoly power. Government which fails to act as that countervailing force—instead becoming a mere agent of wealth and power—violates its raison d’être, and is worse than no government at all.
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ReplyDeleteMichael, promoting the interests of Big Business has become the raison d’être of US government. One might hope that even the most ardent defenders of laissez-faire capitalism might have noticed in the last year that what's good for GM (or Goldman Sachs or Monsanto or Exxon) is not necessarily good for America. In many cases, what's good for the perceived self-interest of corporate executives isn't even good for the corporation.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever noticed how difficult it is for Americans--en masse or individually--to discern disjuncture between cherished myth and rhetoric and actual data-backed reality?
It is so bizarre watching this play out. The forces of persuasion are not even using sophisticated tools. A large portion of our fellow citizens for all intents and purposes belong to a cult. They get their news and commentary from Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh and his legion of wanna-be’s, and are coached by them to trust nobody else. So these people absolutely never read the foreign press, and increasingly don’t read other domestic news sources. Once isolated, the thought leaders use trigger words (e.g. ‘Death Tax’, ‘Partial-birth abortion’, ‘Death panels’) to plant and reinforce a handful of wedge issues in their minds – reinforcing their followers’ separation from what should be mainstream society. Once the separation is complete, these people are putty in their hands.
ReplyDeleteIt’s really sad to see an old friend so twisted by this that he has convinced himself that through his blog, he is one of the puppeteers, rather than just another puppet.