Originally posted by: bamacre
Originally posted by: Vic
Originally posted by: bamacre
Originally posted by: Craig234
The problem is, by the time the public was given this choice, and being told the wonderful benefits, it'd probably mean there was some very powerful backing for it that was *not* in the public interest. That's how a lot of things get passed - some sort of compelling 'you have to or else' campaign. Occassionally, they're accurate; often, they're manipulative.
Now you know how our three central banks have come into existence.
I find it amusing that Craig has only just recently become aware of this kind of govt manipulation.
Hehe, well in his defense, that may not be the case.
I could wear out my v, i, c, t, s, d, a, n and o keys typing 'vic is an idiot'. I stopped bothering, and asked him to not read or respond to my posts - the first person I did that with here - but predictably he did not stop butting in where unwanted. Thanks for the correct response to him.
But I imagine throughout the history of civilization, the wealthy have always wanted first to control the money. The rest then comes easy.
Actually, it's simply an issue of power, and currency follows from that.
One of the notable things in the middle ages, though, was how the tail began to wag the dog when the powerful followed an ideology that was quite idealistic, and placed money low on the scale as something basically dirty and unworthy of the elites to deal with, and the merchant class went from one the lowest, to one that increasingly gained power as the rulers had to finance wars and such. It was a remarkable imbalance in the distribution of power for quite a while, now of course abandoned.
Though we still have some remnants of the inconsistencies in our attitudes about money, where it's often seen as 'dirty' to give it excessive weight. Look how our public policy discussions break down whenever the topic of 'putting a price on life' arises over an issue - our answer is always 'you can't', and we have to sort of find mealy mouthed ways to talk about policies which do just that. When it comes up that that does happen - take the Ford calculations on the 'cost optimization' on safety design where it was cheaper to have s small number of people killed than to improve the design - the public reacted with outrage, so the moral is, 'don't talk about it'.
This somewhat confused attitude about money to this day leads to some bizarre or unhelpful approaches to issues. Look at our political system - for obvious reasons, we don't view 'pursuit of money' as a legitimate motive for elected officials as we do in the private sector, but look how easily the corrupt can put on sheep's clothes and hide among the actual 'public servants', and how our system has fallen victim to terrible corruption of donations to campaigns (under the propaganda defense of 'free speech').
A correlated oddity in our culture is how the masses are so repulsed by issues that benefit their interests, while they fight hard for the rights of the wealthy.
(This of course makes them vulnerable to scams such as 'we'll cut your taxes - but not tell you you get $20 while others get a larger share and millions - not to mention that we'll increase the debt for everyone's children mostly to benefit the rich now. We really should send them a thank you card for the trillions.)
I think it's largely a combination of ignorance about how wealth functions, and the effectiveness of propaganda to use people's good intetions against them.
In much the same way an abusive spouse can get their partner to blame themself and feel guilty, wealthy interests' propaganda can get the masses to feel shame about pursuing policies good for them. Yet another analogy to illustrate this - one of the evil, brilliant periods in the tobacco history was when, as the public was finally beginning to protect itself, the companies used PR firms to propagandize that it was about 'freedom' - freedom of choice to use the products, freedom of speech to advertise them. Many good people who like freedom were fooled and forgot why they should opposed tobacco, using their 'love of freedom' to turn them into defenders of a deadly industry.
I should probably try to say something coherent following all the meandering, so I'll rieterate that the bottom line is simply whether any plan is designed with the motive of serving the public interest, or the interests of some small powerful group, mainly 'the wealthy'. Typically, it's a combination, where under the cover of some legitimate benefit, the system is stacked for the benefit of that group - and some compelling need to agree to it is created (or used).
So whenever I see crisis that leads the public and government to rush through new things, I have concern whether it's some interest getting in changes that would normally be clearly a bad idea (e.g., 'The Patriot Act'). In the current situation, my concern that the big banks might find ways to use the crisis to get their interests met even more in the changes made was supported by a guest last Friday night on Bill Moyers' Journal, who said that he saw the trend now towards 'creating changes that align government with the biggest financial institutions and force the system to support them, creating a big threat to democracy.'
He makes the usual ineffective call for 'people to rise up and oppose these changes'. His comments are worth hearing - if you want to, you can here:
Link to interview with author William Greider.
(After all, you partly paid for the interview and broadcast on PBS, which here does continue to serve the public. You don't see this info on many channels.)
The bottom line is, are changes being driven by people who are representing the public interest, or other interests.
The concentration of wealth is a sort of vicious cycle where the more it's concentrated, the better the beneficiaries can concentrate it more.
People take for granted the gains of the middle class, rather than seeing them as the aberration brought about by specific policies that they are.
Just as forgetting why we had new deal regulations and repealing them helped allow the current crisis, the same applies to other pro-middle class reforms that the wealthy interests have wanted to repeal ever since they were passed, but unable to. Charismatic 'change agents' who serve them, such as Reagan and W, get people to go along with the repeals - and the predictable results.
At a time when the financial industry is so politically powerful, caution is in order to ensure any big systemic changes are good changes.
The linked video above should create some concern.
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