Politics for Joe
3 July 2011
Hubert O’Hearn
for: Lake Superior News
Brothers in Arms
Have you ever known brothers who don’t get along? Or, to put it less mildly, have you ever known brothers who positively hate one another? They put on a good enough public show of solidarity at family weddings, funerals and to read the Christmas cards sent from one address to another one would think that the two were united from the cradle to the grave in love and solidarity. Oh, they’re united to the grave all right - but each prays that the other is dropped into the hole first. The survivor (and yes I’ve actually heard this with my own ears) then wants nothing more out of life than to send a pleasantly arcing stream of golden, beer-fueled piss onto the deceased’s headstone.
So much for familial love as a natural state. The lesson is that just because two beings happen to emerge from the same womb, do not make the false assumption that their goals, their ethics, and their raison d’etre are necessarily the same. Pleasant when it happens; not shocking when it doesn’t.
All that leads to a discussion of Democracy and Capitalism. (What?) Don’t interrupt, just read on. The other night, as a bank of thunderstorms and threatened tornados came ripping up the coast of Lake Superior towards Thunder Bay, I kept my mind off the possibility of Wizard of Oz outcomes by playing what I call Word Tennis on a friend’s Facebook wall. Word Tennis is the snappy give-and-take on an issue, hopefully delivered with brevity, a degree of intelligence and - when the volleys are precision-centered on the racquet - wit.
The ball that we were whacking back and forth was the Tea Party movement in the U.S.. My friend, who is as compassionate and perceptive a person as I have ever known, was in righteous anger against the Palins, Bachmanns, Kochs and Pauls along with their deregulating, program-cutting brethren. Money for Big Oil? Certainly! Health care for your old Granny? Sorry, we’re out of stock at the moment.
I made two points. The first was that I could see much the same thing clouding over the border into Canada as our polite and friendly politics become more polarized. This was met with sympathy and shared benevolence by my tennis partner. The second was that the Tea Partiers deserved both a hearing and a calm discussion of the issues. They deserve both because at root they are correct in their basic perception - the system, to use a small word encompassing a vast shelf of issues, is broken.
That didn’t go over quite so well. Back over the net came a barrage of serves worthy of Boris Becker in his Teutonic prime. I believe the first words were, ‘Are you serious!?’ Well yes actually, I was being serious.
I just took a quick look at something called the U.S. National Debt Clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/) and the whizzing numbers there show a U.S. National Debt of $14.5 trillion, or nearly $130,000 per taxpayer, $46,000 per citizen. We’ll take a cheque thanks, but only if it’s certified.
The Canadian numbers only seem small in comparison when viewed at Canada’s National Debt Clock (http://www.debtclock.ca/). The total national debt sits or squats at around $560 billion, with the individual share rounding out to $16,400 - about the cost of a modest car or a snappy fishing boat and motor. So as a nation, Canada is no more in hock than its citizens. The U.S. on the other hand has spent like a university student who just got a credit card in the mail.
There’s a lot more to Tea Party anger than just the national debt. There is a psychological observation that people become lost in large numbers. If I asked you how many bricks there are in the Empire State Building, what would you guess? 100,000? 500,000? A million? The answer is actually 10 million, but that’s just bar stool trivia. Of more consequence is how the trillions of deficit bricks come crashing down around us.
The Tea Partiers, and red meat Conservatives in Canada, view government as - in Ibsen’s terms - An Enemy of the People. The nation and most of the world went through a white knuckle crisis in 2008 when the financial industry waved frantically and screamed, ‘We’re drowning!’ Out went the life rafts in the form of aid and emergency loans, up went the debt and the thankful industries...took the life rafts to Hawaii on vacation and whispered back over their shoulders, ‘Thanks sucker!’ There were lots of dubious practitioners involved in the creation of the bonds and loans that led to the crisis (a subject for another day) but according to a consumer trust study I looked at the other week, the least trusted corporation in the United States is the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is expected to pay its executives with $15.3 billion in salary and bonuses this year, 2011.
And you wonder why people get angry? It’s like the villagers were all rounded up to attack Frankenstein and when they returned home, there was Frankenstein rummaging around in the kitchen, eating all the good stuff.
There’s much, much more to the anger than that. This is however a column and not a University reading list. So let’s get to the heart of the matter.
Democracy and Capitalism don’t get along. They are the brothers I had in mind when we began this discussion. (What?) Now I’ve told you before and I’m not telling you again - don’t interrupt. I’ll make this as understandable as I can for you.
3 July 2011
Hubert O’Hearn
for: Lake Superior News
Brothers in Arms
Have you ever known brothers who don’t get along? Or, to put it less mildly, have you ever known brothers who positively hate one another? They put on a good enough public show of solidarity at family weddings, funerals and to read the Christmas cards sent from one address to another one would think that the two were united from the cradle to the grave in love and solidarity. Oh, they’re united to the grave all right - but each prays that the other is dropped into the hole first. The survivor (and yes I’ve actually heard this with my own ears) then wants nothing more out of life than to send a pleasantly arcing stream of golden, beer-fueled piss onto the deceased’s headstone.
So much for familial love as a natural state. The lesson is that just because two beings happen to emerge from the same womb, do not make the false assumption that their goals, their ethics, and their raison d’etre are necessarily the same. Pleasant when it happens; not shocking when it doesn’t.
All that leads to a discussion of Democracy and Capitalism. (What?) Don’t interrupt, just read on. The other night, as a bank of thunderstorms and threatened tornados came ripping up the coast of Lake Superior towards Thunder Bay, I kept my mind off the possibility of Wizard of Oz outcomes by playing what I call Word Tennis on a friend’s Facebook wall. Word Tennis is the snappy give-and-take on an issue, hopefully delivered with brevity, a degree of intelligence and - when the volleys are precision-centered on the racquet - wit.
The ball that we were whacking back and forth was the Tea Party movement in the U.S.. My friend, who is as compassionate and perceptive a person as I have ever known, was in righteous anger against the Palins, Bachmanns, Kochs and Pauls along with their deregulating, program-cutting brethren. Money for Big Oil? Certainly! Health care for your old Granny? Sorry, we’re out of stock at the moment.
I made two points. The first was that I could see much the same thing clouding over the border into Canada as our polite and friendly politics become more polarized. This was met with sympathy and shared benevolence by my tennis partner. The second was that the Tea Partiers deserved both a hearing and a calm discussion of the issues. They deserve both because at root they are correct in their basic perception - the system, to use a small word encompassing a vast shelf of issues, is broken.
That didn’t go over quite so well. Back over the net came a barrage of serves worthy of Boris Becker in his Teutonic prime. I believe the first words were, ‘Are you serious!?’ Well yes actually, I was being serious.
I just took a quick look at something called the U.S. National Debt Clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/) and the whizzing numbers there show a U.S. National Debt of $14.5 trillion, or nearly $130,000 per taxpayer, $46,000 per citizen. We’ll take a cheque thanks, but only if it’s certified.
The Canadian numbers only seem small in comparison when viewed at Canada’s National Debt Clock (http://www.debtclock.ca/). The total national debt sits or squats at around $560 billion, with the individual share rounding out to $16,400 - about the cost of a modest car or a snappy fishing boat and motor. So as a nation, Canada is no more in hock than its citizens. The U.S. on the other hand has spent like a university student who just got a credit card in the mail.
There’s a lot more to Tea Party anger than just the national debt. There is a psychological observation that people become lost in large numbers. If I asked you how many bricks there are in the Empire State Building, what would you guess? 100,000? 500,000? A million? The answer is actually 10 million, but that’s just bar stool trivia. Of more consequence is how the trillions of deficit bricks come crashing down around us.
The Tea Partiers, and red meat Conservatives in Canada, view government as - in Ibsen’s terms - An Enemy of the People. The nation and most of the world went through a white knuckle crisis in 2008 when the financial industry waved frantically and screamed, ‘We’re drowning!’ Out went the life rafts in the form of aid and emergency loans, up went the debt and the thankful industries...took the life rafts to Hawaii on vacation and whispered back over their shoulders, ‘Thanks sucker!’ There were lots of dubious practitioners involved in the creation of the bonds and loans that led to the crisis (a subject for another day) but according to a consumer trust study I looked at the other week, the least trusted corporation in the United States is the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is expected to pay its executives with $15.3 billion in salary and bonuses this year, 2011.
And you wonder why people get angry? It’s like the villagers were all rounded up to attack Frankenstein and when they returned home, there was Frankenstein rummaging around in the kitchen, eating all the good stuff.
There’s much, much more to the anger than that. This is however a column and not a University reading list. So let’s get to the heart of the matter.
Democracy and Capitalism don’t get along. They are the brothers I had in mind when we began this discussion. (What?) Now I’ve told you before and I’m not telling you again - don’t interrupt. I’ll make this as understandable as I can for you.
 |
| Suitable visual metaphor |
We tend to link Capitalism and Democracy as closely as Siamese twins. Intuitively, I suspect this is for two reasons. First, we in the West spent virtually the entire second half on the 20th Century arming ourselves against an invasion from the Soviet Union. As the USSR was neither capitalistic nor democratic (despite a beautifully-written constitution; well worth the read) and ‘we’ were both, therefore there must be an inevitable linkage. Before moving on, I want to note in passing that ‘we’ also played a lot of golf and checked our daily horoscopes while ‘they’ didn’t. Commonalities do not necessarily imply a linkage.
Second, modern Democratic government - both Parliamentary and Republican forms - sprung up at about the same time as modern Capitalism. We could yak about the exact origin points endlessly without ever reaching a definitive answer, reminiscent of the late George Carlin’s line about once upon a time there were six people on Earth. Two is a controversial number, but we can all agree that at some point there were six. For argument’s sake though, I’m going to place the starting line of modern Capitalism in a coffee shop in London in 1689 where Lloyd’s of London was formed. And yes, it was over coffee, not tea. Insuring merchants against loss did ta very important thing: one, it made finance a profession and out of that sprang banks, loans, bonds and all the other goodies which allowed for investment and profit for people who didn’t actually sail the ships or off-load the goods. Hence, Capitalism now had Capitalists - people who worked quite literally for the accumulation of money.
So I'm placing the birth of Capitalism first. As to Democracy, well yes there was Switzerland but who really cares about Switzerland except the Swiss and fans of Heidi? I’d more likely say that modern Democracy is properly launched with the French and American revolutions of the late 18th century. Each influenced the other and both were robustly exported and imitated. One could make an argument for Magna Carta and the later Corn Laws and I’d more or less shrug and concede because the precise moment is like the number of bricks in the Empire State Building - more trivial than consequential.
What is consequential is that Capitalism and Democracy were not simultaneous but sequential. Their unity, I think (as did Karl Marx) emerges from the fact that Capitalism had spawned all these Capitalists - the bourgeoisie if the word doesn’t cause a violent itchy skin rash to bloom on the reader’s skin. The Capitalists wanted their piece of the action. If the nation was going to be a-marching off to war and expecting the Capitalists to help pay for it through taxation, then the Capitalists wanted their say. Given the lack of job openings for King, Democracy seemed the next best thing.
Note: I said the next best thing.
Aye, there’s the rub - for one can’t write at length about anything without throwing in at least one Shakespearean allusion. Capitalists would merrily endorse monarchy or dictatorship as the finest form of government provided one of the Capitalists could be in charge. Problem is, there are lots of Capitalists, but dictator is a singular noun.
The problem Capitalism and Democracy have with one another is that they move in exact opposite directions. Democracy, ever since the Athenians hit on a pretty nifty idea, involves the diffusion of power. The more power is spread among the many, the less likely it is that an individual or conspiratorial oligarchy could become corrupt and take the nation straight to hell in a handcart. Capitalism, on the other hand, because it requires excess profit to distribute among shareholders and those financial professionals slurping java in London (or in Java) seeks to concentrate power. There’s only so much money to go around, so the more competitors I eliminate the more I get to give to My Team.
And this is why the brothers don’t get along. Brother Democracy looks at Brother Capitalism as a greedy pig who wants it all for himself. Brother Capitalism looks at Brother Democracy as a lazy layabout who’s forever coming by for a handout.
The modern problem, as I head to an all too brief conclusion, is that Capitalism has out-grown the nation itself. The nation and its democracy are an annoyance that just gets in the way of increased concentration of money and power. But the nation is still useful to Capitalism as a source of short-term funds, paying for research through its universities and subsidizing its activities through i.e. handouts to Big Oil to suck out the last drops of fossil fuels.
This is what the Tea Partiers and other Conservatives are right about. The system, the nation, the government is being sucked dry. What is ultimately evil is how the Capitalists (yes I’m taking sides here) have bought and packaged the discontent. Instead of arguments to rein in and regulate the Capitalist economy, the finger is instead being pointed in the exact opposite direction - at poor old Democracy. ‘See! There’s your problem! They spend too much and are making it impossible for us to operate and make your life better!’
And unless Democracy manages to get its shambling self together in a hurry...well, we’ll deal with the consequences another day. Assuming we have one.
Be seeing you.
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