Or will they get things stable again and then be lured back into the old free market way driven by greed, with the arrogant pretence that they won't make the same mistakes again? Ad astra per aspera
Having said that, I think we are on the cusp of a new regulatory regime that will last until we all of us are in our graves.
Just like the last regulatory regime persisted until the Great Depression passed out of living memory. The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
You have to be willing to accept that nationalization rather than being verboten may be the answer. You have to recognize that markets are not self-regulating, they require state intervention in order to ensure that they don't destroy the means by which societies provide for their material needs. It means accepting the proposition that the concentration of wealth is detrimental to the economic health of societies, and arguing for income redistribution as a means to attack wealth inequality in the long term. It means recognizing that decision making rules that constitute the electorate as a function of ((individual * wealth) +(individual * wealth)) rather than individual + individual are fundamentally flawed and in contradiction to democratic principles.
This is a tall order. I really doubt that either of the current US presidential candidates can pull it off. Historical sequence matters, and the consequences of sequencing are drastic.
Consider the Great Depression in the United States and the 1928 election.
Al Smith vs Herbert Hoover. The parallels are striking. Al Smith was a "historic" candidate, the first Catholic who might become president of the United States. Herbert Hoover was a "moderate" Republican often at odds with his own party. Both believed that the use of popular government as a means to battle the excesses of big business was nothing less than communism.
Smith would later become a bitter rival of FDR, supporting an attempted military coup attempt against him in the 1930s and the presidential candidacies of Republican candidates in 1936 and 1940.
Now consider a counterfactual. What if Smith had won in 1928? The ability of the party of the center left to move to the left evaporates. The inability to move left within the existing party system means no Democratic New Deal, reform must occur outside of the system rather than within it. Social liberalism must yield to one of two worlds: 1) Social Democracy, 2) Fascism.
Social Democracy arising from outside of the system means that conservative reactionaries are able to attack policies promoted by the working class to protect themselves as communist revolution against the "natural" order. If in opposition action by the Left is crushed following the example of the Asturian revolt of 1934 in Spain. If in power, the presence of party originating from outside of the system leads economic elites to conservative revolution to restore the order they prefer, i.e. conservative military uprising. Civil war. Death, destruction, etc.
All this because there was no way to make the needed change in the system, requiring a change of the system.
If Obama wins this election and is "Smith-like", the change of the system must occur, because change in the system has been excluded as a possibility.
As for the possibility of reactionary revolution in America, consider that this possibility is more plausible now than it was at any time in the 1930s. Because in the 1930s, military power was the preserve of the state. When the coup leaders approached Gen. Smedley Butler, he turned the tables on them.
If latter day coupsters approach Blackwater's Erik Prince, will we be so lucky?
Sleep on that one, if you can. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Even if not, methinks you should diarise it on Booman at least. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I guarantee you that posting this on Kos would get me banned.
They don't get it. They never will, until it happens. And the biggest problem is that they all think that the current system is sustainable. Ecologically and socially. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Daily Kos is not a republican web page is it?
<confused> Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
In short I'm suggesting that in the long term it may be more preferable that McCain win than that Obama and his followers get their victory. That is what would get me banned from Daily Kos.
Because Kos is political site, not a policy site. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Other than that ... beware of the people who save capitalism for itself.
Well, if we manage to fend off a depression
That's a big if. The current system is against the wall. And even if it manages to come back (which we'll know by Monday), the point that it is fucked up has been made abundantly clear to even the most vested insider:
U.S. Stocks Gyrate After Global Selloff - NYTimes.com
"This is atrocious," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's. "People are scared. Nobody believes what is coming out of the mouths of politicians, chief executives."
Consequently, I think the chances for a New Deal moment are higher than I've ever seen them in my adult lifetime. The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman
Let's make a note to revisit these pages in the archive 1 year from now. The overall differences (assuming we can even communicate in this fashion) will be striking, my prediction. Now where's the fun in that! - Megatron
As a protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than law. When the memory of the 1929 disaster faded, law and regulation no longer sufficed. For protecting people from the cupidity of others and their own, history is highly utilitarian. It sustains memory and memory serves the same purpose as the SEC and, on the record, is far more effective
"oh, we saw you had a good time with your comments about AngloSaxon capitaism, but you're hit as badly as we are (hehe, your banks are just as stupid as ours), or even worse (remember, your labor markets are not flexible, so you'll suffer more), and your moment of fun is officially over" In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
If anything it's the system which is doomed. We will get nowhere until Wall St becomes Main St's poodle, and not vice versa, and all of the metrics, news stories, economic theories and debate circle around that.
Non-participatory economies always seem to end in disaster. Cranking up the bubble machine for another round, even one delayed by a few more decades, will not solve the problem.
