historycircus

Today I listened to G.W. Bush, our president defect, speak about how "economic growth" should be the goal, how "free markets" and "free people" were key to fostering that growth, and how people shouldn't question the "principles of the Capitalist system." It was an NPR piece that mentioned that the G-20, or whatever bllsht the PTP want to call wrangling the top seven brink-of-the-industrial-plateau nations and hangers on. Anyway, it sounds to me like he is still full of garbage. He is truly a clueless maniac - even the PTB see it.

Do they think we are fools? "Growth," for instance, is a loaded concept. There was a time in our histories in which the concept of economic "growth" defied natural law. Exchange, feudalism, Mercantilism - all systems were connected enough to the natural cycles of the planet (barring feudalism's and Mercantilism's aspirations to the contrary) to know that growth, of populations and riches, for the express goal of expansion in and of itself, was impossible. eXchangers were happy to eXist - they recognized their condition as a gift from higher powers, and while not above the emotional whims that take men to war and move them to peace, their eXistance was recognized as balance. Feudals were slaves who enjoyed moments of freedom, but recognized their own slavery as a condition of balance at the time. Mercantilists were war hawks that believed that whatever tactics increased their own piece of the limited pie were justified, but they did believe pie size (i.e., global resources) limited - expansion was impossible. Lucky for them Christobal de Colombo (or Colon) made that argument moot. The pie suddenly got way bigger than they could concieve. Thus, the European settlers of the Americas murdered and raped their way acrossssssssss the landscape, believing that "growth" was now a natural principle. It is no surprise that Adam Smith could make his argument so well in a day and age when maps of the entire globe remained undrawn (at least to the mainstream). Colonialism had allowed economists to disregard Mercantilist theory as "archaic," and the earlier exchange economy was virtually unknown by them - and given their feeling of superiority over the past, they would have dismissed it anyway. Colonialism gave birth to the economics of "growth," which is the fundamental building block of Capitalist theory.

But now we have the maps. Even with the addition of planets that can be mined for their resources, we know that our society as is cannot grow and maintain the balance necessary to ensure the continuation of the species.

Is there something redeeming in the Capitalist system that I have missed? Can we move forward as a species adhering to the market system? I do not think we can. We must figure out how to get along on this mud-ball with finite resources. I think that is where we are going - headed toward making such decisions, not as ethnicities or nations, but as a species.

For the die hard Capitalists, let me ask this: what happens when someone wins? If Capitalism is dependent upon competition, what happens if someone wins? Do you know who controls 80% of the textbook trade in the United States? Google it, make the connections, and you will be horrified who the CEO turns out to be. Eventually, someone wins the race, and unless there is a system in place to make sure the winner gives up his crown for the next race, we are in trouble. I think our economic system in the United States is about to undergo the same trials that our political system once did.