This post by Matt Yglesias gets at why I think that our Galtian overlords will ultimately destroy us, the planet, and themselves if left unchecked: they’d all rather jump off a cliff in unison than support even the mildest forms of tax increase and regulation.
This brings to mind the phenomenon that’s sort of the obverse of union decline—the extraordinary level of solidarity manifested by the corporate executive class in the United States of America. There are plenty of individual firms that benefit from this or that public sector spending stream, but essentially all business organizations are solidly united in opposition to essentially all possible ways to enhance government revenue. On financial reform, it’s not merely that the big banks opposed the Dodd-Frank bill, but there was absolutely no counter-lobbying from firms in the non-financial economy in favor of it. And that’s not to say that Dodd-Frank was the greatest thing since sliced brad, but there were no proposals coming out of corporate America for any financial regulatory overhaul of any kind. Yet clearly something went badly awry in 2007-2008. But the business class united behind TARP, then united to oppose any regulatory reforms, and is now united against any return to pre-Bush levels of taxation on rich people.
We’re so accustomed to this kind of thing that we take it for granted, but I don’t think it’s obvious ex ante that business lobbying should be such a simultaneously solidaristic and nihilistic venture. Presumably most American firms would, in fact, benefit from the existence of a sensible and sustainable financial regulatory scheme. But there’s no lobbying activity whatsoever dedicated to creating it.
We are ruled by a sociopathic cult.
Linnaeus
Read (or re-read) The Power Elite. C. Wright Mills nailed this 50 years ago, and he wasn’t even the first.
KG
If we put it on pay-per-view, we could probably pay off the national debt.
Merkin
Sliced Brad? Is that another Saw sequel?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
This is true. I wish I had an answer, beyond getting our asses out and being heard. The WI protests have raised some awareness, and people in OH are beginning to see who Gov. Napoleon Heartland(TM) actually is (a man barely elected with a plurality who acts as if he’d been swept in by a landslide, among other fine fascist traits).
TenguPhule
Is it time for the storm of blood on Wall Street to begin yet?
Marc McKenzie
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
“I wish I had an answer, beyond getting our asses out and being heard.”
This. So very, very true.
Better to do this, to go out and vote, than to sit and bitch and pound out cynical messages on blogs.
But that’s just me.
joeyess
Someone finally said it.
LGRooney
If only they could see further than tomorrow from the insides of their bowels. The problem, and this gets to your sociopath comment, is they want it all now and see no potential repercussion against themselves in the future assuming money will insulate them. The sad part about that reasoning is that the money may very well insulate them because they up stakes and leave the country a/o if the country falls apart around them because of their actions they are even better off, relatively speaking, than those they screwed today and they’re comfortable in the knowledge their sociopathic avarice is perfectly legal… even extra-legal given the state of today’s courts.
Violet
@TenguPhule:
It’s past time. Not sure it ever will, though.
Villago Delenda Est
That’s about the size of it.
These assholes are perfectly happy destroying themselves it it means destroying everyone else.
It’s why I’m only half joking about tumbrels. It may come down to that if we’re to survive as a species. The culling of the Ferengi shitstains may be an absolute necessity to avoid extinction.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I noticed business was conspicuously absent from the health care reform debate yet every time there is a talk show around here discussing challenges for the business community, the number one issue was the cost of health care. Maybe this is addressed when they’re playing golf with each other on Friday afternoons after the liquid lunch.
joeyess
I know there’s not much Cole can do about it, but I really wish I didn’t have to look at that Rand Paul ad that extolls us to “Sign the Right to Work Petition that Obama Fears.”
Marmot
@Marc McKenzie: Hey, it’s not either-or! Heck, we can get our asses out to vote, etc. while writing cynical blog messages!
matryoshka
What would happen if we all decided that money had no value and that we would not do any work that did not have an outcome or product that advanced the best interests of the majority of people? Would the world change? Because the only way not to go down with these sociopaths is to unplug from their script. Right now, we believe we are hostage to it.
Southern Beale
the extraordinary level of solidarity manifested by the corporate executive class in the United States of America.>/i>
Not sure I agree with that. I’m thinking of all those utilities that left the US Chamber of Commerce over climate change, similar things like that.
joeyess
Nice trick if you can pull this off and continue to pay your internet bill.
kdaug
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well-phrased.
Socia1ist, or sociopath. Pick one.
Social Outcast
It is odd that consumer goods companies never seem bothered by the shrinking middle class or concentration of wealth in the top few percent. Henry Ford was no liberal, but even he recognized that you can’t sell expensive shit to people with no money. The soap and breakfast cereal consumption of the Koch brothers and the wealthy elite isn’t going to be enough to keep Proctor and Gamble or Kellog in business. I suppose the problem is that CEOs are all short-term managers who need only worry about the impact of new quarter’s profit on their share price.
Barb (formerly Gex)
Worse yet, a lot of people who share the majority skin color, gender, and religion are willing to join the Galtians in solidarity. It would be one thing to have to take them on. But to have to take on half the working population before we can get to them is getting us nowhere.
RSR
>>We are ruled by a sociopathic cult.
And we keep trying to accommodate/reason with/bargain with them:
PSEA Urges Teachers To Consider Pay Freeze
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/03/16/psea-urges-teachers-to-consider-pay-freeze/
TheMightyTrowel
An anthropologist I greatly respect links all of this back to the invention of debt. He’s got a BIG ASS book coming out later this year, but for the 5000 word summary paper (freely available) go here.
The conclusion/money shot (ha ha ha): “For much of human history, systems of virtual money were designed and regulated to ensure that nothing like capitalism could ever emerge to begin with – at least not as it appears in its present form, with most of the world’s population placed in a condition that would in many other periods of history be considered tantamount to slavery. The second point is to underline the absolutely crucial role of violence in defining the very terms by which we imagine both “society” and “markets” – in fact, many of our most elementary ideas of freedom. A world less entirely pervaded by violence would rapidly begin to develop other institutions. Finally, thinking about debt outside the twin intellectual straitjackets of state and market opens up exciting possibilities. For instance, we can ask: in a society in which that foundation of violence had finally been yanked away, what exactly would free men and women owe each other? What sort of promises and commitments should they make to each other?”
Jark
Neat little trick by Yggles, pretending he’s not a member of that sociopathic cult. This is the guy who just tried to economize Japan’s burgeoning disaster zone.
Dan
I choose socialism over sociopathy!
Chad N Freude
The Scientologists are in charge now?
goblue72
The oligarchs don’t need a functioning middle class in order to remain oligarchs. See – Russia. See – Saudi Arabia. Even in countries with functional democracies but wide income equality, the wealthy seem perfectly happy to let the rest of their country live in squalor while they hide out in their walled compounds, even if it means running the risk of the occasional kidnapping. See – Brazil.
This is the argument that we have to just let things get worse until “the people” finally react is nihilism dresed up in a firebagging dress. It CAN get a lot worse without resulting in the oligarches being overthrown. If anything, allowing such obscene concentrations of wealth (and thus power) just makes it easier for a small group of wealthy elites to control the institution of government.
danimal
I’m still hopeful that the unity of this sociopathic cult (a spot-on description) will fray in the coming months and years.
We’re doomed if it doesn’t.
cs
@Social Outcast:
The Galtian Hivemind has an answer for you: we’ll make more money killing the American middle class (hence – lower wages) and building up the Chinese & Indian middle classes, where it takes much less money. They think they’ll create massive consumer markets there to offset the destruction dealt here.
And they may be right. And since there’s a lot less regulation in those overseas markets, not only do they pay less in wages, but they’ll have less expense in other areas as well. If it’s cheaper to paint toys in lead or use antifreeze as filler in toothpaste, they can do it and get away with it.
I have no idea what will happen when the middle class in those countries start to expect the same level of income, services, and protections granted in the US / EU. I would imagine they’ll be abandoned by the elites at that point, but I’m not sure where those elites would go next.
KG
@matryoshka: who decides what is in the best interests of the majority? how are people compensated for their work? how do we decide what is a fair exchange of goods and/or services? since the first civilizations, we have had something like money because it is the easiest way to address these questions.
LGRooney
@TheMightyTrowel: In other words, “No banks, Know Freedom?”
matryoshka
So you’ve answered my question. The world would indeed change because we’d get up off our Internets and do something.
Yep.
Georgia Pig
It’s not really a cult in the normal sense, and using terms like “cult” or “sociopath” risks undermining the credibility of the critique. Like I told a friend recently, these guys are more like Soviet apparatchiks. Most of them are mediocre, but the one thing they do know is that, if you stick to the narrative of the social class, you’re unlikely to suffer if you fail. The social matrix will protect you, particularly at the top. You stick with the Party ideology or risk being socially ostracized, even if the long range effects are devastating to your own organization.
One of the urban myths of corporate behavior is that the management is acting only in the interests of “the shareholders.” Well, which shareholders are we talking about? The guy doing a buy and hold for ten years? Or the guy making a momentum microtrade at Goldman? Or the corporate management that holds a load of stock? In a lot of cases, the management is simply acting in interest of the social norms defined by the management class, because that is the safe thing to do. External long term shareholders can’t do much to you, and the guys at Goldman don’t really care what the company does. Your fellow managers, however, can torpedo your career.
While there are undoubtedly sociopaths in corporate management –this system gives them almost free rein — it’s more that it’s a sociopathic system. It breeds de facto sociopaths from people who might behave differently in another context.
TheMightyTrowel
@LGRooney: More or less – Graeber is a well known anarchist – but it’s a lot more historically embedded than that. I’m really looking forward to the full book.
matryoshka
@KG: I posed the question, but I think it would be a larger project to answer. As for what benefits people, we could be pretty basic about it. What provides food, shelter, a sense of belonging (think Maslow)? What is that worth to us? Is it worth our time, our energy, our resources, our health?
Actually, money as we know it today (credit-based economy) is pretty new–about the 1700s, the first corporations came into being. Do you trust an entity that answers to no one, has no morals/ethics, seeks only growth and profit (like a cancer) and is immortal to answer these questions for you? That’s who’s doing it now.
KG
@LGRooney: I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I think, rather than TARP, we’d have been better off just giving everyone $200,000 tax free to pay off debt, be it mortgage, student loans, consumer, or otherwise. Hell, even if we let everyone keep the balance, we’d probably still be better off. Call it the great reset.
geg6
@Linnaeus:
THIS.
I was gonna post just this thing and you got there first.
BR
The one most powerful countermeasure I think we can take against these guys is relocalization.
Fighting them politically can help, but they have the upper hand in elections, and they have the Supreme Court too.
Relocalizing – buying only local products/food/services from small local businesses – takes money out of their pockets. Getting out of the fossil fuel economy is another similar step.
And they can’t do much about it unless they want to fight a million little turf wars in a million little towns.
matryoshka
@Georgia Pig: Good points, all.
LGRooney
@danimal: The fastest way to make that happen is to not be able or simply refuse to pay your debts to the banks. Of course, this would mean a major short-term loss in economic activity as people are unable to use credit to buy shit they don’t need so banking and retail and collections agencies would be out many, many jobs. But, once the dust settled, people would be better off.
IOW, Economic Reset!
It’s a nice dream, in any event. The biggest problem with it is trying to get so many people working in concert because it requires everyone working together to make it effective. Without that, collections, law enforcement, a/o employers will come down on those refusing to pay their indenture and quickly stifle any uprising.
So, I will continue to toil away, promising my kid “Someday”, hoping my wife can find a job soon, so we can break the cycle ourselves.
srv
I think this is on topic, when you consider the title and nihilism – Netflix is going to start producing their own content, and they’ve picked a drama series starring Kevin Spacey. It’s a re-imagined BBC House of Cards, which is one of my favorite political dramas evah.
F’ing awesome.
BTW, the Beeb’s version is instant-watch on Netflix.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
So Galt’s Gulch is actually located on Saipan? Wow. I learn something new here every day.
LGRooney
@KG: You found the same word I did! Mazel tov! And, I have argued that very thing for a long time now.
geg6
@Marmot:
Yup. I can multitask. I vote, I volunteer for elections, I march in any march I can find, AND I post cynical messages on blogs.
I’m quite the talent.
Sentient Puddle
@matryoshka:
Eh, dubious. It just sounds like you’re proposing a reverse-Galt, where the non-overlord population opts out of society instead. Something that ultimately sounds just as silly and impossible as the Randoid’s fantasies.
But hey, give it a try and report back to us how well it works.
Svensker
@goblue72:
Can you come over by me and beat this into my husband’s head? He’s convinced that if only we elect Palin/Bachman Overdrive, then things will got to shit quickly and the huddled masses will rise up and declare the Sockalist STates of America and the survivors will live happily ever after. He’s mad at me for not believing this is a good plan.
sal
Well, can we give this a try then?
Linnaeus
@geg6:
Sorry to pre-empt you, but I’m glad that my comment was on the same wavelength as someone else’s thoughts.
Even Mills doesn’t fully capture the mood of the power elite that we see today (and its faux-populist support), but he can be forgiven for that given the time in which he wrote.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Chad N Freude:
Different flavor of sociopaths.
atlliberal
@joeyess: Yes, but if you click on it, don’t they have to pay John? Seems like a good payback for having to look at it. Be careful though, I once clicked on one (for the same reason) that got me on some weird right wing email list.
KG
@matryoshka: yes, credit-based economics is relatively new… but banking goes back at least to the middle ages, that’s how the Knights Templar built their empire. But again, who is to decide the next big thing (think personal computers or high speed internet or cars or ipods or whatever) is in the best interest of the majority?
I don’t disagree with you that publicly traded corporations are a very big problem… and perhaps that’s where we need to look. Non-publicly traded corporations do actually answer to someone. But I don’t see how eliminating money makes things better. I honestly think it would make things worse.
Linnaeus
@BR:
We can “relocalize” politically, too. There’s a lot that goes on at the city, county, and state level of governance that can be changed into a more progressive direction.
Culture of Truth
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
soshopathz haz flvr
matryoshka
@Sentient Puddle: But hey, give it a try and report back to us how well it works.
OK, Sentient, what’s the correct question then?
LGRooney
@BR: That’s a nice start and it is the way America used to be, i.e., when it worked. Now, all the Galtian overlords are born on third thinking they hit a triple and when they scream that anyone not as successful as they are is just lazy and needs to get out and start their own business has already assured that the people can’t do that very thing.
The big businesses have swallowed up our spending and there is little room now for upstarts (I am sure if anyone has paid attention they have heard me bitch about this before here) or start ups. They are suffocated in price wars, political favoritism (e.g., zoning laws), and infrastructure advantages or, if they manage to make it past that, they are bought out and subsumed into the national business borg with a quick and easy paycheck to Galt’s Gooch.
atlliberal
Not really, as long as it’s poor people,not them, who have to pay the tax, they don’t mind tax increases at all. How else are they going to keep their subsidies if nobody pays taxes?
matryoshka
@KG: I guess I wasn’t so concerned with eliminating money as eliminating our belief in it as the lifeblood of our society.
srv
Drat! House of Cards isn’t instant-watch anymore.
gnomedad
@joeyess:
Libertarian demi-god Milton Friedman opposed right-to-work laws.
/ broken record
ericblair
@Svensker:
“Nach Hitler, Uns!” (After Hitler, Us; motto of the German Communist Party, who had a hard time of it when the plan didn’t work out so well.)
There, I said it. Godwin wins again.
Godwin’s Meta-law: As any online discussion grows longer, the probability of Godwin being mentioned in an online discussion where Hitler or Nazis is mentioned approaches 1.
Stillwater
Every so often I get a chance to mention this, so apropos this post:
Dr. Squid
For all the banksters and th3e other Galtian overlords that want to jump off the cliff if they have a sad because they have to follow a rule?
Jump. You’re replaceable.
matryoshka
@KG: As far as what’s in the best interest of many, I’d say that would have to be answered by the people surveying their options. I see us moving away from a technology-based world, obviously, but I’m hardly a nihilist. I just think things are ch-ch-changing in ways that defy all the old answers and questions.
Some people here find that annoying, apparently.
RalfW
“We are ruled by a sociopathic cult.”
Indeedy.
Just today I learned that since gas prices may rise to $4 or more, this is the perfect time for Minnesota to refuse to even apply for any of the several billion dollars of federal rail funds being abandoned by Florida and Wisconsin.
Because of course the working class do not look for public alternatives to their cars when gas becomes unfordable. No, they just find ways to break into their neighbors homes to steal gas money.
Then the police can come in and arrest the burglar for robbery, and probably the homeowner for failing to subscribe to ADT security. Problem of pesky blue-collar schlubs, fixt!
We are fast becoming as mad as the end-state Soviet Union was.
Sentient Puddle
@matryoshka:
What do you get if you multiply six by nine?
wengler
@ericblair:
East Germany did exist, but I see your point.
Not to go all Godwin, but I really wouldn’t want to be a Muslim person in this country at this point. The rightwing was able to foment a nationwide hate-fest against Islam over absolutely nothing. If there is another terrorist attack conducted by anyone that can be vaguely described as Muslim, I wouldn’t be surprised if mosques were on fire and many hundreds killed.
After all, the dumbest people in this country have the most guns.
Chris
@Georgia Pig:
A whole bunch of really good points. I’ve made the analogy between movement conservatives and Soviet communists myself in the past. Good point that it’s not because you believe in the propaganda, but because it’s the end of your status if you go on record believing anything else.
ericblair
@LGRooney:
One underappreciated accomplishment of our lords and betters is their success in turning a lot of small business owners into useful idiots for them. Small business interests don’t line up well at all with big business interests at best and are at odds at worst, but convince every guy running a local coffee shop that he’s a year away from being the next Starbucks and he’ll support any BS tax break for multibillion-dollar multinational corporations.
The small business owner has a lot more in common with Joe Sixpack when he’s getting screwed by the banks, than with the multinational corporation that likely owns the bank.
Brachiator
Yep. I just saw yesterday that a couple of states were flirting with the idea of getting rid of state income taxes altogether. And this morning, I see this in my tax law email bin:
If you reduce taxes, you gotta reduce government and services. Of course, the fantasy is that government is unnecessary, even cops and judges and police. Throw in zero tax and prosperity will rain down like manna from heaven.
These people are crazy. But they intend to take it to the max.
Stefan
Even in countries with functional democracies but wide income equality, the wealthy seem perfectly happy to let the rest of their country live in squalor while they hide out in their walled compounds, even if it means running the risk of the occasional kidnapping. See – Brazil.
Just a note here, there’s less income inequality in Brazil than in the US. Between the two, it’s the US that has a wider gap between the rich and the poor.
matryoshka
@Sentient Puddle: That’s what I thought. It’s much more fun to sit around and be a smartass than to struggle toward anything meaningful.
Stefan
Do you trust an entity that answers to no one, has no morals/ethics, seeks only growth and profit (like a cancer) and is immortal to answer these questions for you?
This reminds me, I owe my ex-girlfriend a call…
fasteddie9318
@Brachiator: Amazing. Let’s just say that if they eliminate state income taxes where I live, our tax savings are going toward the purchase of and training in firearms. And I’m decidedly not a gun person.
Alex
We are ruled by a sociopathic cult.
Thank you for saying it.
I’ve been telling everyone that the rightwing has long ceased being a merely political party. It is now a full blown cult. You can’t debate cultists. You can only ignore or work around them.
BR
@Linnaeus:
Agreed.
We need to get on every school board, every city council, etc. and change the agenda locally.
Chris
@wengler:
And what’s most insane is that the hate-fest burst out into full-blown insanity not after 9/11, but last summer – at a time when Muslims in the Middle East are abandoning al-Qaeda in droves. It’s the perfect time for moderates to step into the gap and for the U.S. to engage them, but that’s going to be difficult as long as half the country furiously denies that there’s any such thing as a Muslim moderate or one that we can trust.
And yes, I’d be close to terrified if I was an American Muslim right now. A full decade of in most cases screaming themselves hoarse denouncing 9/11 and proclaiming their patriotism, and all of a sudden the “backlash” comes out of nowhere. I’d be getting really worried as well.
fasteddie9318
@matryoshka: The idea that your refusal to provide labor is going to influence the behavior of a class of people who are doing everything in their considerable power to make your labor completely irrelevant doesn’t seem all that realistic.
matryoshka
BTW, Sentient, I never said diddly about opting out of society. What I am thinking about actually requires a more immediate engagement in it.
I haven’t read any Rand crap, and I will leave it to you to do so. I am very interested in our common future, if there’s going to be one.
Stefan
Can you come over by me and beat this into my husband’s head? He’s convinced that if only we elect Palin/Bachman Overdrive, then things will got to shit quickly and the huddled masses will rise up and declare the Sockalist STates of America and the survivors will live happily ever after. He’s mad at me for not believing this is a good plan.
You should tell your husband that things can stay bad for quite a long time, far beyond his ability to outlive them and long enough for permanent and irreversible damage to happen. The Communists ruled Russia for 70 years. Franco was in power in Spain for over 35. Castro’s been in for over 40. Pinochet held on for 17 or 25 years, depending how you count. Mubarak was in for 30 years, and Qaddafi for 40.
The fact is, if things go to shit, there’s no guarantee at all that they’ll turn around quickly.
Stefan
Godwin’s Meta-law: As any online discussion grows longer, the probability of Godwin being mentioned in an online discussion where Hitler or Nazis is mentioned approaches 1.
You know, Godwin’s Law really shouldn’t apply to any discussion of politics, particularly right-wing politics.
Sentient Puddle
@matryoshka:
@matryoshka:
Close enough.
There’s plenty to unpack, but I’m mainly looking at the money part. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just arbitrarily decide it has no value.
And as for how it relates to Rand, well, Galt went “on strike.”
RalfW
It’s kind of a small thing if only the BJers do it, but one thing that can help is moving as much banking activity to community banks as possible.
Community banks have as part of their mission investing in the local economy. Not hedge-funding their way to short-term profits.
I haven’t made the switch yet, but after I move in a few weeks, it’s a high priority.
There are also local Chambers that have publicly broken with the out of control US Chamber. Local Chambers need support to step up the differentiating, the distancing, and the holding the US Chamber to account for their extreme anti-public, anti-community activities.
All naive, liberal palaver on my part, I’m sure. But so is my just blathering on and on here…
matryoshka
@fasteddie9318: Even if we little peons did not provide labor to the ruling class? What if I decided to stop making advertisements and put myself to work in my neighborhood trading goods and services? What if we provided labor to each other in our communities? I know, it’s dripping in DFH sentiment and would be wrought with problems (unlike anything else in the world), but I grew up in a rural area and couldn’t help but notice the Amish building each other’s houses without bringing on a collapse of the world economy.
We may be forced into this scale of economy if we can’t even tolerate considering it as a possibility because we are so enamored of our techno toys and all it takes to sustain them. We may eventually have to live much closer to the ground, not because of any apocalypse, but just because what we’re doing isn’t sustainable.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ericblair:
To be fair, they had some help from the Dems in doing that. FDR’s New Deal had significant support from big businesses which needed labor peace to make their economies of scale work properly and they enjoyed the benefits of govt spending on biddable contracts, contracts which smaller businesses had difficulty winning. As a result animus against the New Deal was particularly strong in the small-medium sized business sector. See for example the early chapters of Rick Perlstein’s book Before the Storm.
Of course that is ancient history so far as the economics of today’s small business is concerned, but once formed cultural attitudes like that tend to last long and die hard.
D. Aristophanes
Matt Y is right and I saw it first hand at an Intel analyst meeting in the spring of 2009. The background is that Intel had just suffered its worst two fiscal quarters in decades as a result of the Wall Street crash and global recession. An Intel SVP was detailing the chip maker’s product road map and talking up stimulus spending on IT in China while sort of dancing around the relative paucity of same in the US.
I used the opportunity of the Q&A to ask him, essentially, whether as a maker of actual physical products it really rankled Intel to see the global economy brought down by a financial sector that had, first, stolen away some of the best and brightest from fields like computing and engineering, and second, used those brains to come up with exotic financial instruments (not to mention accelerated regulatory capture) that rather than actually creating something, merely sliced, diced and leveraged real wealth in increasingly unsustainable ways to make a few people very, very rich while heaping massive risk and eventually an economic meltdown upon the real producers in the economy.
The room went quiet (there must have been a hundred or so analysts and reporters present) and the exec sort of stammered out a reply to the effect that he wasn’t going to bash finance, that it wouldn’t be ‘helpful’ to do so and finally, that he didn’t believe the scenario was really how I had described it anyway.
I caught him one-on-one in the hallway after the preso and reiterated my point, but he held his ground — though he did express some understanding of why I might feel as I did.
I was struck when Eliot Spitzer said essentially the same thing a couple years later in ‘Inside Job’ — saying that non-Wall Street business (and he singled out several tech companies including Intel) ought to mightily pissed off at the shenanigans the bankers were up to while they were out actually making real things for people to buy and use.
But they won’t be. Probably partly because of the bizarre solidarity that Yglesias describes — but also because so much of big corps’ business is tied up in financial activities that are similar to or directly tied to Wall Street. And also out of fear — the big banks are more powerful than ever, let’s not forget, despite all the TBTF talk going around what seems like a lifetime ago, when real financial reform seemed like it actually could happen.
joeyess
@matryoshka: agreed
cleek
mmm. sliced brad.
matryoshka
@ Sentient Puddle
I encourage you to question your most basic assumptions. Money is the most faith-based thing going. A lot of people feared it had no value around Oct. 1929, amirite?
RalfW
@Social Outcast:
Doesn’t matter. The Chinese middle class is now larger than the US middle class. And theirs is growing like mad. As is India’s.
P&G, Kellog, they all plan to sell their cheap crap to the exploding global middle class, and who cares about 100,000 million fat, stupid Americans?
The P&G and Kellog execs will dash to their favorite golf and ski resorts on their NetJets, and just ignore the ugly, boring new poor of America.
(Someone pissed in my Cheerios(r) but good today, huh)
Stooleo
Lloyd Blankfein’s severed head, impaled on the horn of that big bronze bull, would be a great start.
Ruckus
We are ruled by a sociopathic cult.
Just another tiny, unheard voice here but, no kidding.
Tsulagi
Sociopathic maybe, but not cult. The kind of thinking and action you’re railing against in this post and your previous is pretty much mainstream in most second and third-world countries. We’ve seen the light.
Fuck the baby Jesus. What we need now for good old-time religion to get the masses on board are bedtime stories of three wise teabaggers following starlit paths to worship at the feet of unregulated baby conglomerates. And they saw they were good.
matryoshka
@RalfW:
But we’ll still have our money! Right? And our Blackberrys also too?
Ruckus
@ericblair:
Not all small business owners fall under the spell of big business. Most of my fellow small business owners that I know just want to do whatever they do in their area and have a reasonable life. We are as or more stymied by big business as anyone else. And some of us have to live on the front lines, dealing directly with for example, banks, because we have to accept those hated credit cards. We see the screwing first hand. We pay for you to use those cards. And even when you don’t use them, we pay. So prices are raised through out all businesses to make up for those charges. You would be amazed at how many people have no idea who pays for those extras from that premium benefits card in your wallet. You do BTW, even if you don’t have one.
fasteddie9318
@matryoshka: Wait; are you positing a return to subsistence existence and barter as a lifestyle we will have no choice but to adopt, or as a way to say “fuck you” to the Koch Brothers of the world?
If the former, I could see that out of some necessity, but if the latter, I wouldn’t expect the Kochs to notice or particularly care, because they’ll continue getting rich creating and then bleeding dry middle classes in China, India, then let’s say Africa. And no, sorry, most people are not going to voluntarily beggar themselves to send a message to elites who won’t hear it while those elites go on living out their wildest plutocratic dreams. Things will come to violence before that happens.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@cs:
I have no idea what will happen when the middle class in those countries start to expect the same level of income, services, and protections granted in the US / EU. I would imagine they’ll be abandoned by the elites at that point, but I’m not sure where those elites would go next
By the time those new middle-classes grow big enough to be “cumbersome” to the loaf-wards, the costs of automation may very well have gotten low enough to replace “workers” entirely.
Assuming that there’s energy to run the machines, that is.
Chris
@Svensker:
Remind your husband that the same Great Depression that finally brought about the New Deal and all those good things over here in America, also brought about fascism in Germany. These things are hit or miss as far as actually improving things is concerned.
matryoshka
@fasteddie9318: I’m not positing anything. I just wondered how much our assumptions about what’s possible are limited by our not being able to address what we are willing to do without right now. I’m not terribly concerned with sending the Koch Bros. a message because I agree that they don’t care; we are invisible to their kind. That being the case, I am wondering just how we’re going to wean ourselves off the illusion that someday we, too, can become rich like them if only we keep showing our willingness and eagerness to work for them. We still have to find ways to survive, though, and those ways may resemble pre-Industrial barter systems more than Masters of the Universe pyramid schemes.
Ruckus
@RalfW:
Someone pointed out in an earlier thread that if the worlds population is 7 billion then the richest 10% is 700 million. That’s still a lot of cornflakes and toilet paper. And if the middle class makes up the next 30%, that’s over 2 billion people. That’s a fuck lot of cornflakes and toilet paper. With world wide trading and shipping there is no problem supplying that almost 3 billion market. Who gives a shit about the other 4 billion, many/most of whom are not customers now?
Mark S.
@D. Aristophanes:
I’ve wondered the same thing in the context of health care: do companies really like shoveling billions of dollars into our Rube Goldberg health care system? But like Jack Tapper, they seem reluctant to criticize their sister organization healthcare conglomerates.
johnsmith1882
Our Galtian overlords will ultimately destroy us, the planet, and themselves. Period. The tipping point is past. The critical period for taking action on the environment, the last ten years, has come and gone. Nothing was done. Nothing will be done anytime soon. Enjoy the ride, and have a nice day.
Suffern ACE
@Ruckus: But the “middle class” is nowhere near 30% of the global population on any given measure. At most the “10%” that you include in the world rich encompasses almost the entire middle class.
Villago Delenda Est
Godwin’s law was basically obsoleted the instant five treasonous shitbags installed a deserting coward in the Oval Office 11 years ago.
Surly Duff
This is not difficult:
– The rich have money to lobby for positions that will make them richer.
– The poor only have their voices to lobby for positions that will help them be marginally less poor.
– Voices do not pay for election campaigns.
Davis X. Machina
@Stefan: There’s got to be a political equivalent of “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”, but I haven’t worked out an equally snappy formulation for it yet.
matryoshka
@johnsmith1882: Prolly so, John, but my heart is still beating and I’m still drawing breath, so I’m inclined to do something, even if it’s just offering to trade this here tomato I grew for those nails you have over there. Or foraging for food. Or taking potshots at Galtians.
D. Mason
Whitewash.
Ruckus
@Suffern ACE:
I was being generous. It’s a personal problem that I’m working on.
Even so at middle class of 10%, along with the rich, that totals almost a billion and a half customers willing to pay well for the privilege of eating breakfast and wiping their asses. The Kochsuckers are not going out of business any time soon. Or giving a shit about anyone else anytime soon either.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Ruckus:
Our domestic Galtian overlords here in the US might want to consult a little history to see what happened to their Edwardian era English counterparts as competing firms arose in Germany and the US, and then consider what might happen if the growing Chinese and Indian middle classes turn out to be better economic nationalists (than Americans have been lately) and become focused on purchasing their own domestic brands under the ownership of their very own local Galtian elites.
Because ultimately even David Koch can be replaced by somebody who speaks English as a second or third language.
The Moar You Know
@RalfW: I did that. Deliberately. Had my mortgage with them for three years, and two months ago, they turn around and sell it to some mega-bank in Michigan.
There is no point.
Short Bus Bully
How long will it take for someone to set themselves on fire (a la Tunisia) in desperate protest to get the ball rolling?
johnsmith1882
@matryoshka:
Same here. Foraging for food, and bartering these here nails for that there tomato is what we will do. And slug it out in the streets. Not you and I, but you and I vs. them.
That’s what I meant by enjoy the ride. Enjoy the life you’re living now, because at some point, likely during our lifetimes, it won’t be so enjoyable. Unless fighting to keep your clean water supply is something you enjoy. Then, you’ll be having plenty of fun.
Dennis SGMM
Do these predatory people and institutions actually believe that the predation will end when the American middle class is destroyed? “They won’t come after people like me,” has been the swan song of whole sectors of our economy. Once their great work on the middle class is done the ones at the top will start going after the ones lower down the food chain. The people who are going along now will soon find themselves fucked by the fuckers they so recently cheered on.
Ruckus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This is absolutely true, they can be replaced. And if I remember my history it is never quick and easy nor usually without bloodshed.
ETA I would add that anyone with an ego big enough to believe the world belongs to them and enough money to buy large chunks of it probably thinks that they can not be defeated by the peasants and that is what makes it pretty hard and bloody to convince them otherwise.
mds
@BR:
Alternatively, they could keep winning state gubernatorial and legislative elections, then vote themselves the power to dissolve any dissident little towns as legal entities, fire their elected local officials, and seize their assets. The governor of Michigan is getting that power, for example. Or, as we see from the latest push for federal “right-to-work” legislation, they could give themselves the power to crush a million little towns en masse, all without missing a beat in shrieking about how goddamn holy the Tenth Amendment is.
johnsmith1882
@Dennis SGMM:
That’s not how they think. They think, “He’s got a pension, and I don’t. Fuck him, take away his pension.” They think, “She’s receiving benefits from the government, and I’m not. Fuck her, take away her benefits.” And they think no farther than that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Dennis SGMM:
That the Revolution always eats its own children is a lesson that people just stubbornly refuse to listen to. The Great Anti-Proletarian Cultural Revolution here in the US will be no exception. Plus ca change.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@johnsmith1882:
I remember back in the days before the USSR fell there was an anti-Communist joke I came across mocking their destructive leveling instinct which ran something like this: “Once upon a time there was a Russian peasant who was so poor he did not have even a single cow. His neighbor Ivan was a kulak – he owned one cow. One day the poor peasant was out digging by hand in the fields when he came across a sealed bottle. He unsealed the bottle but to his dismay no vodka came out. Instead a strange white mist poured out of the bottle and materialized into a tall bronzed Genie towering over the terrified peasant. The Genie told the poor peasant, ‘as a reward for releasing me from the prison I have been trapped inside for 1000 years I will now grant you one wish. You may have anything that you wish for’. The poor peasant thought for a minute and then said: ‘I wish Ivan’s cow was dead! Then he will be poor like me.’”
Ha! Ha! That’s so funny. Good thing nobody here in the US is like that.
uptown
Yep, businesses are always moaning about the lack of educated workers, but never seem to think they should put any money into the kitty.
James E Powell
Yep, businesses are always moaning about
the lack of educated workerseverything they want the government to do for them, but never seem to think they should put any money into the kitty.Fixed.
johnsmith1882
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Ha, yeah, good thing. The thing about the Russian psyche that has always fascinated me is it’s bleakness. “This sucks, and it will continue to suck, always.” It seems that so many in this country have adopted a similar mindset. DougJ names it in the title of this post: nihilism.
You nail it in your last post, as well. The race to the bottom will be cheer-led by those who will be destroyed.
Comrade Luke
“ex ante”?
God, what a douche.
Lukeness
As James Galbraith said in “The Predator State”, starting in the 1970s, the financial industry essential took over all other industries. Manufacturing companies started to be run by MBAs instead of engineers or people with expertise in actually building stuff. They don’t care about their companies… and the never did.
Chris
@johnsmith1882:
As long as they’re being thoughtless drones who can’t go any further than that, whatever happened to looking at a robber baron and going “he’s got more money than me: fuck him, take away his money?”
matryoshka
@johnsmith1882: “Enjoy the life you’re living now, because at some point, likely during our lifetimes, it won’t be so enjoyable.”
I agree. However, it’s a position that won’t make you popular with the kewl kids, especially if you try to engage people around you in conversation about how we might live in that world. I suppose it’s human nature to whack at the fly that’s in your face instead of stepping out of the way of the train that’s coming at you.
Barry
@Chris: “As long as they’re being thoughtless drones who can’t go any further than that, whatever happened to looking at a robber baron and going “he’s got more money than me: fuck him, take away his money?” ”
Kiss up, kick down. America is a very, very class-ridden society; many people will resent anything that a person perceived to be of a lower class has.
goblue72
@Davis X. Machina: The rich can keep their bootheels on our throats for longer than we can hold our breath.
goblue72
What we need is suicide bombers to send to the shareholder meetings of Fortune 500 companies. Or to the next Aspen Institute or Davos Conference.
Ruckus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Another thing. We rant about history repeating itself but what if it actually doesn’t? Do you think the Kochsuckers don’t have a pretty good idea about how much oil is in the ground or how many trees it takes to make tp? These are not stupid people, although they are evil. If they know approx how soon we run out of oil and they know the rest of the rich know what is keeping them from working with the rest of the rich to control resources? Getting as much as they can now, knowing that when the brown hits the whirllies they will have control and you and I will have nothing. That is different than history. We are at some point going to run out of the stuff that makes our lifestyle possible if we don’t get better at not using it up. These guys know this as well as you and me. Probably better because they own/control a lot of what is left. And they know very well how fast we are using it.
alwhite
Nikita Khrushchev is reported to have said, “When the last capitalist is hung he will sell us the rope to do it.”
While he may have missed on the executioner I think he had a firm grasp of the end for the masters of the universe.
Chris
@Ruckus:
Methinks you nailed it.
And it really explains the behavior on Wall Street & co beautifully. Some people point at the self-destructive tendencies of “greed is good” and ask incredulously “how can they do this? Don’t they realize it’s going to destroy capitalism?” But the capitalists aren’t in it for capitalism, they’re in it for themselves. They get rich, and after them, the flood. See “golden parachute” for the solution to worst-case scenarios.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@wengler: It ain’t so fun being gay in this climate either. Every two years the base proves they can change laws or constitutions to bully us.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Chris: I’m wondering if Mr.Svensker might be white? Because it’s a hell of a lot easier to not worry about the shit that could go down if you can pass as a “real” American.
@Mark S.: They very much enjoyed the labor immobility health care benefits created and how desperate workers were for any job with benefits.
Ruckus
@Barb (formerly Gex):
He may not feel the need to worry about it but at some point it won’t really matter what color or sexual orientation or whatever. The only distinction will be do you have money or not.
Everything else is used to make people fight among themselves instead of seeing expensive heads on pikes or in the basket on the side of the guillotine.