lizbethrose wrote:The people of the US have lost the ability to speak as a democracy; our II Amendment rights have been abrogated by the corporate voice of the market; our voice has been lost in the cacophony created by the money counters. I think this is true of all ‘democratic’ forms of government in the world today. The people we elect to legislate no longer represent us; our capitalist economy dictates to us.
Is this the whole Big Business paying off politicians issue again?
No, gib, it isn’t the ‘whole big business paying off politicians issue, again.’ Political bribery of one sort or another has always been around and will continue to be around. Nor is it that corporations have the money that is listened to in politics. It’s deeper and more complex than that.
lizbethrose wrote:While I understand the situation, I wonder if it's a problem that can be solved. On the other hand, I believe we all should work for the future. Right now, we're products of our near history. Obviously, we can't change that. But can we change future history? In other words, can we learn from our history and do what we can to get rid of ideas that no longer work as they once may have or as they were intended?
Now here’s an interesting dilemma. The left want government to have a hand in how the market and people’s lives are run. The right want the government’s hands out. But what kind of position is it that says the people and the market should have their hands in the government (other than by means of running for office, that is)? That almost makes the right seem like the neutral middle ground. Big Businesses influencing politics by paying off politicians, especially to establish regulations in the market that benefit those businesses, certainly doesn’t sound like the government and the people/market minding their own respective businesses. You could almost say this is where the right and the left come full circle–it’s where the freedom that the right wants for the market and for businesses is it’s own undoing: with that freedom, along with the attitude that the government belongs to the people, businesses attempt to manipulate and use politics to their own advantage, thereby injecting regulations and ultimately coming around back to leftist policies.
Right and left are labels that originated in France during the French Revolution to signify where people sat in the assembly. Those who were loyal to the monarchy sat on the right and those loyal to the revolution sat on the left. It’s only been recently that political ideologies have been described as either right or left. I prefer not using labels, and I’ve tried not to in this thread.
Now this is especially interesting because it really does bring your question to the fore: “I wonder if it’s a problem that can be solved?” I suspect the right would say that as this is not the proper function of the government–implementing more regulations in the market at the behest of businesses–we ought not to allow this to happen, and I think they would be right. But an “ought” is not the same as a “how”. The question is how to prevent it. It’s not impossible that government should, of its own initiative, pull out of the market–look at Reagan–but when money is involved, human beings (and politicians are still human) are weak. It would take some principled politician to smell the money being waved under his nose by some wealthy corporation and say “Nope! It’s not my business to be changing my policies in return for a bribe.” ← Here’s the dilemma. You can strike down laws, introduce stimulus packages, declare war–a whole slew of ways to make things happen–but how do you make a politician scrupulous? How do you keep a market free of regulations without imposing regulations on Big Businesses prohibiting them from influencing politics?
Looking at regulations, right now it seems that everyone writes regulations. There was an article quoted in another thread, for example, that mentioned the Police Chiefs from around the country getting together to write the rules concerning the use of body cams by police forces to present to the Justice Department. Sugar producers got together to block the stevia plant from being used as a sweetener, even though it’s about 200 times sweeter than cane and/or beet sugar and has zero calories. Now, the chemical in stevia that produces sweetness is synthesized in labs and has been introduced as ‘pure’ stevia to be used as a sugar substitute. Of course, sugar substitutes have a bad name, so fewer and fewer people will use them. President Clinton lifted regulations from banks and lending institutions, and look what happened. (Sorry, that’s 3 examples of 3 slightly different things, but they tie together.)
It isn’t so much that politicians are unscrupulous, it’s that, for politicians, ethics and morality often get in the way of expediency. The same is true of business people. This is Capitalism. The goal of Capitalism is to make money. In order to make money, you have to have both a manufacturing base and a consumer base, right? They can both be the same–the manufacturer is the consumer and vice versa. Only now, the US is no longer an industrial country, it’s a service country. Consumers are no longer the manufacturers. The market has to expand in order to continue making money; that’s where trade becomes important. This is also one area where the Federal Government is involved with the market; the government makes the trade regulations.
lizbethrose wrote:Farm subsidies are an example. Billions are spent every year in farm subsidies, yet this is a Depression Era program. Not only that, but farming has been taken over, in great part, by agricorps. Corporations get 'corporate welfare' in the form of actual local, state, and federal subsidies as well as tax breaks, which, I believe, also began in the 1930's. Finance and defense are industries 'too big to fail.'
Right, so incentive programs to keep the agricultural industry afloat (so we can all eat) are easy to implement, but they rarely ever get withdrawn when they are no longer needed, do they?
First off, I used farm subsidies as an example and not as a suggestion for cutting down the size of the Federal Government–although I’ve thought of it ever since I read Catch 22. Maj. Major M. Major’s father made his money during the Great Depression by not growing wheat on his wheat farm. The novel takes place during WWII, but farm subsidies still go on. Why? I think it’s because now, instead of small, rural farms there are large corporate farms and there’s no one to lobby for the small farmer. But that isn’t the only ‘problem.’ The agricorps are allied with the chemical corporations which are allied with the food processors which are allied with the grocery stores–and so on and so on. (Throw the advertisers in there somewhere, too.) So it’s more complicated than what a simple answer would solve.
The US is also a nation of faddists. This is purposely done to us through the market. One of the current fads now is the gluten-free fad, although very few people know why or even what gluten is. Yet gluten is a commonly used additive in processed foods; it’s used as a thickening agent, among other things. So called Greek yogurt is becoming a fast growing fad. Greek yogurt is different from regular yogurt because it’s strained 3 times instead of just twice, so there’s less whey in Greek yogurt. Would the normal yogurt eater know this let alone demand it from the yogurt producers? I don’t think so. Staying with food, we eat more processed food than ever before. The chemicals used in the processing aren’t necessarily approved by the FDA; few of them are. One additive everyone is aware of is sugar, but not everyone is aware of how many different kinds of sugars are used in processed food. You can’t rely on labeling, either, unless you’re an organic chemist.
I went up to a relative at a family party a couple of weeks ago. He’s an engineer, middle-aged, with 3 grown kids. I told him he was wearing his jeans a bit low and he smiled and said that was all that was being made, now. And he’s correct. Our clothing is what the manufacturers produce. You’d be out of luck if you were in love with, for example, wing-tipped shoes. There aren’t any on the market. Women’s clothing and foot wear is even worse.
Why has this all come about? Basically, because our nation is a capitalist nation. Our capitalist economy is all we know; producers have to maintain the consumer base in order to survive. What else is there? Remember, we can’t go back.
Enjoy!
Liz