It’s time for Congress to get their ACT TOGETHER before we do lose our Freedoms!
I’m a 69 yr old with a high school education. January 6th 2021 was obviously as close as we have come to losing our Democracy! I watched the Jan 6 Select Committee’s final hearing on December 19th. What worries me is that our members of Congress are working against each other
Instead of working together for the American people. Common sense tells me that the division in our country is the result of the partisan division in Congress!
A hi light that was aired during the hearing was that members of the Republican Party ignored subpoenas to appear in front of the Select Committee. In January 2023 the Republicans take over House. They say when they do they will be investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop, impeaching President Biden etc…. How do you think this will affect the American people when they send out subpoenas to Democrats, in a Tit for Tat, that most likely will be ignored!
That sends a message loud and clear to the American people that the Rule Of Law only pertains to the less fortunate!
Good points, Mr. Olson. But it seems to me to be a feedback loop. Our politicians also reflect the values of the voters that put them in office. And then we have "the media", which makes its money these days by sensationalizing the rank behavior of the big three named in Robert Reich's astute column. Until average folks stop providing support to these bad actors by using Twitter and buying MAGA hats and other junk online, for example, nothing will change.
Good points. I want to reference what you said about "only" having a high school education. Your ability to state your opinions so coherently suggest you are a reader, and well informed. If more of the country were such we would have more ethical people in congress and that monster never would have been elected.
Problem is UNETHICAL people or groups (corporations, lobbyists, PACs, Dark Money, Shell Companies, oligarchs) are literally purchasing the politicians with their bribes, I mean "campaign contributions". Remember was the infamous Boss Tweed said, "I do NOT care who the people vote for as long as I can pick the nominees." Look at the people, criminals and shady types, that Trump was able to seat in his Cabinet (ex: Mnuchin, Acosta, Zinke, DeVos, etc.). There is something VERY WRONG when people of selfish intent can be appointed on party line votes to such a position and be able to create so much HARM to the American people. These "puppets" (politicians) have demonstrated they do NOT care about the majority (not wealthy) people whom they are supposed to represent. The primarily two (?) party system in this country is VERY BROKEN. The reason I question the two-party system is they both lavish monetary gifts on corporations (got to "payback" my contribution) through VERY light to no REGULATION (Ex: Healthcare Insurance, Pharmaceutical corporations, and oil corporations) without ANY downside for environmental damage they cause. Even if found guilty, the penalty is so paltry that their criminal behavior is NOT stopped. As there are light or no severe penalties for knowingly breaking the law, the next person in line goes further with their corruption because the personal financial gain is worth it to them, even if caught. Where is the ACCOUNTABILITY? Perhaps the penalties were enough to stop the bad behavior when they were written, but just as the Federal Minimum Wage, have these fines been annually raised to consider for inflation?
Jim, you hit the nail on the head. We have laws, thousands of them, but if we continue to NOT enforce them we, the people get what we deserve. All of us need to email our Representative in the House and both Senators and demand that current law be funded and enforced. Mandates, without money to enforce are useless sops.
Fay, LeMoine Surlamont, Jim Temedes. IMHO our politicians MAINLY reflect the values of the DONORS that put them in office. Voters often get a wolf in sheep's clothing. Voters mostly support a candidate for visceral reasons. Love. Hate. Fear. What they get are unethical shills for big money.
As through this world you travel you meet some funny men, some rob you with a sixgun, some with a fountain pen.
Woodrow winslo is right. Too many foxes (OR WOLVES) in charge.
Hi, Keith, I like your remarks, and share the concern of us who lived through the 1960s in our youth, about the current schisms in Congress. I want to say, however, that I don't agree that it started in Congress. Fifteen years ago, I heard it bubbling up one day when I dropped into my local GOP headquarters, just to hear them out, to be fair. I couldn't believe there was so much difference between what they were saying, and what I was familiar with, as the common narrative. All partisans used to agree on at least a few fundamental realities, no matter what. This garbage started being dumped by us the people, in our own local communities. I went to church and spoke up about how we all needed to start talking to our neighbors more often, so we could get the essential common narrative back to what it was, even in 1968! This makes it all that much more depressing. We still must try to find common ground at every opportunity. (This is why I can look up to Liz Cheney, and I just don't care about her voting record at this moment in time!)
Hey my dad never graduated from high school well actually the Gov. of his home state gave him and a him and a few others their high school diploma because they were drafted before they could finish and he was an expert witness on construction matters for the fed. gov. on occasion. What we have today is what my dad called educated dummies. Keith you were taught somewhere how to think just like learning to fish. You can think on your own and don't need a college degree to do that nor should you. Oh, I graduated from a prestigious west coast university with honors and never used my degree for any work I have done was a fun party.
I say let them waste their constituents money on 130,000+ investigations! If it uncovers fraud: good! We can root it out and lock up criminals. If it fails: Good! It will have hopefully opened up enough eyes that the _rumplican party can FINALLY rest in peace! (Or pieces.)
The most obscure but also most pertinent comment in Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" is (paraphrased) that left to its own devices, a capitalist system will degenerate into cartels and monopolies. The value of capitalism comes not from the profit motive alone but from a free market, a market free of corruption, mainly fraud and collusion, not one free of policing as Republicans wrongly portend. Bernie missed the target with democratic socialism. What we lack is democratic capitalism, because in a democracy, the consumer majority would control the marketplace banning criminality and anti-competitive consolidations of industry. We were that under FDR, but starting with Reagan, Republicans, with the cooperation of foolish Democrats like Clinton, have torn down those protections. The corporatocracy, led by Charles Koch and a team of billionaires, have staged a successful coup and captured the courts, mainly by first corrupting enough of Congress focusing on the Senate. The captured court then cemented their power by blessing perverse interpretations of the Constitution and voiding righteous laws. (The Trump coup provided effective distraction from the coup that captured SCOTUS adding the worst of the worst. We lost most of our democracy before January 6 but still haven't realized it.) Too few candidates can win without subjugating themselves to the money people, so we now have a government of, by and for the corporations suborning growing monopolies, the goal Peter Theil openly called for. In conclusion, if we had a working democracy, the capitalists would be reigned in rendering their sociopathic greed irrelevant. Capitalism without democracy isn't real capitalism because it devolves into oligarchy, or socialism by proxy under government sanctioned monopolies and cartels. The Republicans are the real socialists! Trump, Bankman-Fried and Muk are symptoms, not the cause. OUR message should be a return to 'democratic capitalism' from today's oligarchy, cartel capitalism, or what I'd call proxy socialism by corrupt government sanctioned cartels. We cannot win this battle while a captured SCOTUS rewrites the Constitution to put "democracy in chains" as author Nancy MacLean explained it. The root of this evil is the capture of the courts and Congress by the money cartel. The voices of dark money now out shouts the voices of the people. Greasing the skids of our downfall is the pervasive civic ignorance of the voting public that makes them gullible to vote against their own interests, which is something we could address more effectively.
Too many States have excluded Civics from public school curriculum. DeSantis has absolutely banned any kind of critical or analytical thinking in public schools, with the help of some of the "fundamentalist" religions, for whom ignorance is bliss. A good place to start reform in the blue states at least, would be reinstating Civics, Analytical thinking and critical thinking. We need to impeach those justices (at all Federal levels) who ignore or "revise" (meaning pervert) the Constitution to fit their prejudices. It can be done, it just takes dogged courage and perseverance.
Excellent comment indeed. Contrary to "American businessmen clutching the rosary of Adam Smith," as my economics prof at Columbia Business School memorably put it 60 years ago, Smith was a canny Scot and foresaw all the problems of the incipient rise of capitalism. With the rise of specialization, what happens to the yeoman, the generalist, who can see beyond the efficiency of a nail factory? And several chapters deal with areas that the "free market" cannot handle - like infrastructure, etc. which is the role of government.
For three books that throw much light on our present predicament, go to (1) Kurt Andersen's "Evil Geniuses" which traces the GOP's fall into corporate authoritarianism to Reagan and also to the influence of economist (Nobel prize winner, no less) Milton Friedman, whose "profit is not the best thing, it's the only thing" philosophy led to the abandonment of stakeholders for stockholders and the wholesale closing of manufacturing and other businesses that weren't profitable "enough" - regardless of the consequences to local communities, employment, etc. Thus the hollowing of America's working and middle classes.
(2) David Gelles's "The Man Who Broke Capitalism" is about Jack Welsh, hailed as the CEO of the Century, whose slash and burn in the name of quarterly profit increases (often bogus!) led - with his eager followers - to more community disruptions, wholesale firings, hundreds of corporate purchases and mergers, all of which ultimately led to disasters, bankruptcies and CEO firings, though the latter emerged with multimillion golden parachutes, while the hapless employees went on the dole. Though Welsh died in 2020, his influence is still here: just a few weeks ago Musk fired 50+% of Twitter's work force, followed by Zuckerberg dropping 13,000 or so from Meta, and then Bezos, not to be left out of the club, dropped a five digit bundle of Amazon employees. Over 40,000 jobs killed in a flash and of course, always before the end of year holidays. No Santa for you, kid. Sorry! (But of course all this is the Democrats' fault!!)
(3) I recommend Fiona Hill's quite different analysis/memoir "There's Nothing For You Here" which reflects on her growing up in North East England in a community gutted by Margaret Thatcher's wholesale closings of much of Britain's manufacturing capacity, dooming these communities of long standing manufacturing industries which supported all the community businesses, schools, etc. She made it to University, studied Russian, spent a year in Moscow and then went on to a Harvard PhD, a career in the Brookings Institution, and became senior Russian adviser to three presidents, including Trump. Seeing what was going on there at the foreign policy level, she testified against Trump at his impeachment hearing and was immediately canned. Her book compares and contrast three societies - UK, US and Russia - and finds many many parallels including why we all seem to have graduated to populists and populisms. Focusing on the foreign policy activities of T and his advisors, she presents in frightening detail how he was played for a complete sucker by Putin, Erdogan, Orban and other autocratic leaders. They understood that he only had two mantras: If you say nice things about me, you're my friend. If I think you're against me and say negative things about my, you're my enemy and I will destroy you. Content?? What content?
This is too long a comment I know. But I feel it is important for everyone who cares to read those books, which I consider among the most important guides to what has happened and why and where we are now. The question then is: what are WE going to do about this?
re 'Milton Friedman' = a long time client of mine (I was landscape gardener for the family for over 20 years), whose late patriarch was a retired exec of Merrill Lynch. However they did good by me, a story related by the matriarch was that a grandson impersonated and extoled Milton F. at 'career day' at his high school and dressed like him. That told me that this perpetuation of - capitalistic influences - can be 'heredity' becoming dynastic (?).
I've also noticed the 'not profitable enough' in the 'fact' that nowhere near enough of the worlds waste is actually recycled = got to be an 'acceptable' profit margin ~ And a trend of
big corpora of buying up 'distressed' businesses, then instead of backing them up, go about the gutting of those businesses to - back up their own - failures ~ ~ ~
Dennis, I couldn't agree more. I particularly like your words "The Republicans are the real socialists," or as I phrase it "The billionaires are the new Welfare Queens." I also agree that it was a massive mistake for Bernie to call himself a socialist. Socialism is a bad word in America, don't use it. Or, turn it around to focus on Republicans. There will be no democratic capitalism until this argument has been absorbed by the MAGA cartel.
Worse: Malthusian theory ventured that the human population grows more rapidly than the food supply until famines, war or disease reduces the population. He believed that the human population has risen over the past three centuries.
Communism would be great if human greed could be kept out of the equation. Capitalism is based on greed. Capitalism would work wonderfully if greed could be controlled, but as you see, controlling human greed is not a simple matter. The world and America of today is hung up on our RIGHTs. This situation with Covid has shown some ugly characteristics that many of our fellow Americans have. Time will tell what forces will prevail.
Communism, real communism, does not work in large societies. Real communism has worked in very, very small hippy communes, and possibly in the Israeli kibbutz's of the 1960's. Where a group of people decided to live together sharing the work and resources for the common good. Communism does not now, and never has existed in any country on Planet Earth. Those countries that claim to be communist are, in fact, dictatorships. They work as authoritarianism has always worked for the good of the ruler and his buddies, to the detriment of the working class, They may call each other comrades, friends, brothers, but in truth they are a more rigidly class society than even Great Britain. Capitalism as Adam Smith described is a good way of sharing wealth IF and only IF it is carefully regulated and controlled, As Adam Smith explained GREED is a common barrier to good healthy relationships in any group of people. Under FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower we saw Capitalism at its best. But as greed crept up regulated capitalism went up in a mushroom cloud. From 1980 on, as ordinary Americans. sated with "things", ignored the greed and made themselves 'feel better' by belittling, shaming, and harming any one else in our society that didn't conform to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant "norm" they had set up to assure themselves of their superiority. (Like any human being is 'superior' to any other human being)
Clinton went along enthusiastically with the repeal of Glass-Steagall and other banking "reforms" that have been mostly destructive beyond facilitating the bank failures of 2007/8.
“Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk are the monsters of American capitalism — as much products of this public-be-damned era as they are contributors to it. For them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthless. Principles are for sissies.” Wow, fantastic framing of a very harsh reality. Great article sir.
The most frequently studied treatment type for gambling disorder is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This type of treatment attempts to change the thoughts and behaviors that are fundamental to maintaining a pattern of behavior (e.g., gambling disorder).
Remeber that phrase from the 90's>.... "You need to change your paradym" ?? It's a serious issue our society ! This was used to impose thought control over our population and is to, my interpretation, brain wasing, self imposed.This machination is often used to try to coax "others " to adopt an altered behavior or to get them to become more compliant. Fundamentally this "Con" has been employed to manuver the thoughts and behaviors of those who lack critical thinking skills. Looks an awful lot like our repuglikanz of these past decades. Just food for thought. Ruminate at your own peril ! ! !
We are in trouble as a country and as a world. It’s avarice, for sure, as Robert states. It’s beyond that to the love of money, obsession and illness with and about it. CBT won’t even begin to heal this. What about the rest of the world? Oligarchs in Russia, China, India, etc.
I once played a game of Monopoly with a young niece who chose herself as the banker, used bank money (rather than her own ) to buy real estate, did pass "go", and, apparently, never needed to use the "get out of jail free" card ( in spite of my saying "you're cheating". ! ) So , yes, I like the gaming mentality you cited. No ethics or morals involved!
The three you mentioned are not the only minsters of American capitalism. Add on Charles Koch, the Mercer family, the Sackler family, and Rupert Murdock. I am sure there are others as well. These people are the robber barons of today. The amounts of money these people have amassed make the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, J.Paul Gettys, Andrew Carnegie, and Andrew Mellon, etc. look like nobodies.
"Presumably Adam Smith would have bemoaned the growing inequalities, corruption, and cynicism spawned by modern capitalism and three of its prime exemplars — Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk."
I think it's no coincidence that all of this current BS has come about in an era of low taxation, just like the Gilded Age of robber barons a century ago. Presciently, Smith argued for progressive taxation as the principal guardrail of his system. Those earning more would have to pay not just more in taxes, but a higher percentage of their income. This would serve three purposes. First, it would redistribute wealth into projects we would call infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, schools and canals - projects which the wealthy would not have much interest in. Second, it would prevent anyone becoming so wealthy that they would have the power to buy government and distort the market in their favor. Third, it would put money in the pockets of ordinary people, so they could buy the products being manufactured by the wealthy. So, everybody wins.
It is no coincidence that people do well in eras of high taxation, and the MAGA hats are put on in eras of low taxation.
I appreciate your comment concerning Smith and his background as an early proponent of socialism. His mentor at University of Glasgow was of course Francis Hutcheson, not to be confused with Hutchinson, who is know as one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment, daresay the first "woke" movement in recorded history. I am very proud of my Glasgow working class family history. Both my parents were born there and many ancestors buried there.
Regarding your previous comment on Bernie's use of the term "socialism". Most conservatives diss socialists with visions of "communists" and "collectivists". While there is nothing wrong with either of those if that's your thing, socialism is a much more pervasive word that would include many of precepts of "conservative" thinking. I think we need not compromise with "ignorance". I fully support the term of Democratic Socialism capitalized or not), as the political and economic theory I can best support.
Hi Thomas, and thank you for your post. I also have Glaswegian ancestry, although not related to Francis Hutcheson. Born and grew up in London and got a front row seat to socialism, i.e., a system where the government takes over key industries and runs them. It was a disaster. The UK gained the moniker "Sick Man of Europe," referring to the economy, and the whole shebang ended up by being run by the unions.
If you want to call Smith's system socialism, there's some logic to that, but, for whatever reason, socialism is a bad word in the US. I prefer the term "social democrat." That said, I followed 538 during 2016, and in hypothetical matchups between Hillary and Trump, it was about even for many months. In hypothetical matchups between Bernie and Trump, however, Bernie consistently trounced Trump 70 to 30.....then the DNC sandbagged him, and the rest is history.
Smith was an extraordinary genius who outlined a brilliant economic system, foresaw mass production, and even Elon Musk. The unfortunate notion, which many Americans seem to share, is that capitalism is a cruel but necessary system where robber barons should be free to pursue their self-interests without taxation, or any other form of regulation, is almost the opposite of what Smith had in mind.
Modern capitalism is based on a myth, probably best articulated by Julian Simon, that there is a capacity for unlimited growth on planet earth. Even 8, 10 or 15 billion people can fit here. Another mind is another resource, not a sign of an over-loaded planet. Accumulations of wealth are simple anomalies that will get sorted out through time if government does not interfere. Well, they are not anomalies, they are reinforcing feedback loops that will destroy the system if the energy put into them is not turned off, like the feedback loop of a badly placed mic at a rock concert. Trump, Bankman-Fried and Musk are simply mics that our political system has not turned off in time.
How do we stop this? One simple way, rejected by every modern Republican (and many Democrats) is reinstatement of the high graduated income tax, where deductions are not allowed above a certain income level. If we went back to the Roosevelt era, thinking that the climate crisis is equivalent to WWII, and funded our response with a 95% tax on anything above say $2,000,000 a year (and perhaps 50% above $200,000 but allowing deductions to 2 million) then we could fund a global response to the climate crisis, which also involves a lot of social justice actions. Of course, we would also have to deal with the other reinforcing feedback loop of military spending (an energy drain, and gift to billionaires) which seems even harder than responding to the climate crisis. Any way you look at this we are in deep poo-poo. (We could compost that and use it for fertilizer, but that is another story.)
I have long believed we need a World War II type of response to our climate crisis. Many are so imbued with a capitalist mentality of monetary profit and loss they are incapable of understanding a government acting for other considerations. I try and tell them about World War II but they don't get it.They got religion.they can only conceive of climate Solutions being based solely on profit motive
The modern equivalent of "go west young man" is space exploration. We had a space race, but it was killed, mainly by the military industrial/energy industries. People like Musk have space in mind....
But to what purpose ? ? ? Simply exploration ? To satisfy the ?? of what IS - out there ?
I think M & Bezos' space exploration co's are more for, yes exploration, but mainly for
finding out just what resources are out there that CAN BE EXPLOITED by them, for them, and monopolized by them exemplified artisticly by James Cameron's Avatar franchise. And in this process, they decline to actually help solve this worlds problems
(and actually exacerbate them), basically - giving up on planet earth and reaching out
to the stars = way more profit over cost, no matter what the cost in - pain and suffering - i.e. Musk's turmoil at Twitter (which I do NOT use - or Meta - I 'saw' the writing on those walls --- )
Money corrupts. Big money corrupts bigly. Look at our neighbors south of the border. Why do narcos escape from jail? Why do respected and trusted military officers and prosecutors end up in the pockets of the narcos? Indeed, why do presidents and governors protect these same narcos? Money. Money always wins. And in America, because the "movement conservatives" have broken down the guardrails, money wins here. The rich have the tax game rigged against us, and the capitalists spit on the rules. We are still in a life or death battle over our democracy, with a Supreme Court that uses Dred Scott as its inspiration. Confederates rise like weeds in Texas and Florida, and one of our political parties has entirely lost its principles as well as its mind.
You make a good point. Perhaps I should have used FIFA and the International Olympics mafia as better examples of the corruptibility of big money. It’s everywhere, though, with or without the threat of retaliatory violence.
The Constitution provides guardrails to keep our government on the road to a more perfect union, where our elected representatives serve the interests and reflect the will of We the People.
The 27 amendments provide additional guardrails not found in the original Constitution. These additional guardrails address hazards to democracy that became apparent as our nation evolved since the days of the horse and buggy. Imagine what our country would be like in the absence of these additional guardrails.
- Slavery would still be legal.
- Women would not be eligible to vote.
- Poll taxes would prevent the poor from voting.
- Young servicemen and women would not be eligible to vote in state and local elections.
All but one of the 27 amendments use “shall” rather than “may” to indicate that they are mandatory, not optional. The 10th Amendment is the only one that does not use “shall,” but its language unequivocally limits the powers of the federal government to those granted to it by the Constitution.
We now find ourselves in need of a new guardrail to ensure that our political leaders do not prioritize the interests of large corporations and billionaires over the interests of We the People. We need a Constitutional amendment that requires Congress and the states to enact meaningful campaign finance reform to ensure political equality, and prevents incorporated entities from invoking the Constitutional rights of real people to avoid compliance with democratically enacted laws. An amendment that merely allows such reforms without requiring them would not prevent self-serving special interests bent on maximizing profits from driving our country (and our planet) into the ditch.
Paul Lauenstein
Sharon, MA
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
― Frederick Douglass
“I do not want to do away with corporations. I want them to make our cars, not our laws.”
- Doris “Granny D” Haddock, who walked across America to support the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The Supreme Court nullified the BCRA shortly before she died.
The examples are really three incantations of something terribly wrong. The "red thread" running through the three examples is a lack of empathy or compassion for others.
Two of the individuals have clearly demonstrated in their own right a lack of caring for others. I am reminded in some ways of my first professional job involved reviewing death penalty inmate cases. Many defendants were psychopaths and seeing what such a lack of caring for others can do was truly terrifying to a 20-something fresh out of school. Add billions of wealth and access to instruments of power and destruction to the mix and the results can be horrific. When all guard rails are gone, something like the Ukrainian situation happens.
I suspect that the third example is different and may involve players in the background using a younger person's fascination with a new technology as a way to bypass natural inhibitions. The very concerning part of this is that the same players are buying and selling politicians and trying to run auctions rather than elections.
Getting past these situations will take, at a minimum, a wide-spread commitment to "shared propensity." Bernie's new book "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism" has some messages worth considering. And, although always to take in context, China's Common Prosperity Policy has some lessons as well.
Something that has always confused me is 'buying and selling of politicians'. It is a given that some politicians are always on the take. But, why on earth are the voters so gullible they eat up glossy lies and empty promises?
It's a classic spy game: Part 1 find someone vulnerable; Part 2 run the echo chamber.
Currently there are allegations swirling about the newly elected rep from NY-CD3, George Santos. Apparently his income went from $50k per year to over $1 million in a short period of time. He then loaned his campaign $700k. Santos had a scant record in politics and was largely unsuccessful in business. That's a classic case for what is rumored to be Russian money to come in and "help out."
We had a similar game happen with Bobert in CO-CD3. Her husband "suddenly" received very lucrative contracts for oil field consulting. Prior to that Bobert was not even able to pay the employment taxes of her servers in her restaurant.
Both candidates were benefited from heavy repetitive advertising in their districts. The echo chamber relies on our weakness that if something is familiar from repetition, we think it is true. Josef Goebbels understand the echo chamber well. You can also see it on the slick but non-stop programming on Russia 1 and Russia 24.
Thank you Dr. Gilbert for your reply. By vulnerable I assume you mean gullible, but what has happened to thinking? I know repetition convinces some people of the 'truth', but it is still stupid not to check into it yourself.
Fay - People SHOULD form independent opinions and judgments. When we teach critical thinking to students both in K-12 and college, we try to equip them with skills. It takes practice not just memorization of concepts.
By and large, however, we do not teach emotional management in schools but some are K-12 districts are introducting Social and Emotional Lerning (SEL). SEL teaches emotional management and it works. Societies such as Finland and Denmark have done this for about 20 years and what a difference. Of course, SEL is a new target of the MAGA folks. It has three letters just like CRT.
Unless you learn to manage your though processes you will be a likely victim of the echo chamber. What the Fox, Russia 1, and Russia 24 echo chambers (all essentially the same model) seek to accomplish is to short circuit thoughtful reasoning and consideration. The tools are the same--highly emotional content with rapid repetition of visual, audio, and verbal triggers.
This process they use triggers the chemical reactions in what Dan Goleman has called the "amygdala hijack" (flight or fight response). This reaction shuts down what we may call thoughtful responses.
These chemicals such as cortisol in the brain take about 6 seconds to clear before we can do what we call "clear thinking." The slick and repetitive echo chambers of these models avoid the clearing by keeping the repetition of content well within 6 seconds, often at 3 to 4 second intervals.
The video at the Elipse following 45's speech was a frightening use of this process. It was a masterpiece worthy of Josef Goebbels.
Dr. Gilbert, thank you! I used to drive a 45 minute commute and on occasion I would tune in Rush Limbaugh, just to see what he was pushing at the moment and to at least try to understand what some of my friends and relatives saw in him. I've done the same in recent years in viewing Tucker Carlkson on Fox. I was reminded on those occasions of a certain fascination I felt in watching old video of Adolf Hitler (though I don't speak German) addressing the assembled masses; something I came to think of as 'the cadence" consisting of rhythmic pauses and voice inflection variations. But you've taken my crude assessment to a new level by introduycing me to this technique of using "rapid repetition of visual, audio, and verbal triggers" and its effect on brain chemistry. I wil certainly be looking into this at a much deeper level and would be grateful for any referances on the topic you might provide that might assist the layman. (Again, thank you. This is why many of us hang out in dubious places like this ;-)
Wow! Thank you for this explanation, I only took two Psychology classes in college, I wish I had the time to take more. I did teach for 18 years, but chemistry physics and astronomy were my main subjects, so I haven't heard of Social and Emotional Management before, but what a great idea. Goebbels was certainly a master of propaganda. His legacy lives on in the American fascism movement, I wish mainstream media would spend some time explaining exactly what fascism means. Their adulation or fear of the trumpster seems to render them mute. Perhaps Inequality Media could put out a clip on the internet.
Empathy and compassion mean that we need to override the negative defaults. When the goal is power and winning at all costs, the negative is leveraged whenever possible for personal goals.
Let's add Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Larry Ellison (off the top of my head, there certainly are more rich tech geeks) to the list. Personally, Musk became even more of a pariah to me once he unleashed his "venom" on TWITTER making him, in my mind, as dangerous as Zuckerberg. I'm not a participant in the social media craze - but, i've pictured the rise in the militia movement and the threat to our democratic republic from right wing neo-Nazi groups as parallel to the evolution of Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media outlets. We saw in the 2022 election these people (Musk, Theil, Ellison, Zuckerberg) support "republicans" clearly knowing they stood for the "Big Lie." Musk is showing signs of being a QAnon nut job and, both Musk and Zuckerberg, are opening the platforms they control back up to those spewing mis/disinformation. Trump will soon be back on Facebook and, likely TWITTER once his own social media adventure goes "belly up." We often read/hear about "Russian oligarchs" - I think it's time to begin identifying the America oligarchs and deciding as a nation how much wealth they have to accrue before regulations aimed at the "common good" are instituted.
I like to see a full list of Bankman Fried’s contributions. It was stolen money much from thousands of small investors. It must be returned to their rightful owners otherwise the recipients are no better than Bankman Fried and we live in a Mafia state.
Excellent analysis! There needs to be accountability for anyone who breaks the law, especially in the upper reaches of government & the corporate world. Once corruption is accepted in a country, it gets worse very fast, & is very hard to get rid of.
The IRS should have been auditing trump and for decades NYC and NY state should have been investigating the Orange Monster. He is still with us in part because of their no action.
The brilliant satirist Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker captures so much of what grates at the mind and soul using satire and humor in ways that get at the subjects with perfect clarity. Here are some of his most recent headlines that are pertinent to Robert Reich’s also brilliant commentary:
(Re Bankman-Fried and cryptocurrency):
Satire from The Borowitz Report
World Shocked That Man Running Business Based On Imaginary Money Might Be Fraud
“Of all of the firms offering big returns on made-up money, this one seemed the most solid,” a resident of London said.
By Andy Borowitz
Satire from The Borowitz Report
Trump Calls for Termination of Constitution Except Fifth Amendment
“I haven’t read the Constitution, but, from what I’ve been told, most of it is a waste of paper, quite frankly.”
The nature of greed is that it has no bounds, it is insatiable, it will never stop of itself. The pitfalls of unbridled capitalism, whereby it, like any other aspect of society that is not “regulated“ by commonsense laws for the protection, good, and benefit of all, are absolutely the same as democracy’s archenemies, communism and authoritarianism, the society loses. In any political system, the powerful who have inordinately enriched themselves enough to dictate governance, and not pay taxes to boot, will not stop until havoc is created in such measure that everyone loses in the end by social unrest, wars, depressions, etc, because another nature of greed is that it is infinitely misguided and shortsighted. What are we to do with the lobbies of the wealthy and the corporations that keep us from creating protective regulation and the enactment of just laws? There was a glimmer of hope just this week in looking at Trump’s tax return. We were hearing right and left that’s what the wealthy do, that they do not pay their taxes, and therefore that it’s the lower economic classes subsidizing them. Is it possible that once and for all the cat is truly out of the bag for the masses at large to see from Trump’s returns that the wealthiest evade paying taxes, and that the IRS, for whatever reason, corruption or understaffing, is NOT doing its job. WHAT??!!! Is this for real?! THIS, in the United States of America? How great would we be if it were otherwise? Yeah, let’s make America GREAT again, I mean GREATER at last! Why on earth are the Republicans so against regulations, education, medical care, social safety nets, etc, etc. Is it because it takes more taxes to take care of those, besides no constraints to their greed, the topic at hand? I know, naive question. Thing is, when you think on it, not all Republicans are wealthy. What are the rather unenlightened religious extremists and garden-variety racists thinking of? It’s like what they did with Covid, politicizing Science, they are in much greater proportion the ones dying of it now. Do they really think the Republican wealthy care in the least little bit for them, except for their vote?! OK, sorry, that’s a lot of topics. Thank you Mr. Reich, you really know how to pose a question, ALL the questions that mean anything at all.
I don't know. Bulls make money Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.
Trump personally is a net loser....and the shit is about to hit the fan. Bankruptcy will not save him. 17 felony counts against his organization. Exposure for maybe billions.
Winners are people who sold Tesla short when Twitter went long. People who shorted FTX and most other crypto currencies.
I am glad you mentioned Adam Smith's lessees known work. I with those who wear Adam Smith neckties would actually read what he wrote rather than select quotes.
Bob, you worked for a President who signed legislation to end Glass Steagle which regulated markets, which was a crowning legislation of the New Deal. I am sorry if I misspelled the second name, but let' give responsibility to those who acted.
Capitalism is completely incompatible with democracy. Virtually every problem our nation and the world faces has been brought on by Capitalism, an economic system whose very basis is the abandonment of the common good in the relentless pursuit of individual profit no matter the harm to others, the environment, or what remains of our democracy. Time to cast aside this failed system!
Amen to that, Norm. There are ways to do this, like invalidating all current assets and restructuring the economy along rational lines, like returning money to what it was meant to be: a medium for trade. Issue it and cancel it on a periodic basis so it may not be amassed into individual hands and used as a self-expanding commodity for speculation and fortune-building.
The human-made mechanism of profit runs against the laws of natural science, which telll us that in a closed system such as we reside in, input and output must be inbalance, with a slight amount lost in entropy. Yet we use this artificial mechanism to manage the earth's resources. Somewhere, something has to give. Human profit at the expense of the planet is unsustainable.
Congressional Wake-up Call
It’s time for Congress to get their ACT TOGETHER before we do lose our Freedoms!
I’m a 69 yr old with a high school education. January 6th 2021 was obviously as close as we have come to losing our Democracy! I watched the Jan 6 Select Committee’s final hearing on December 19th. What worries me is that our members of Congress are working against each other
Instead of working together for the American people. Common sense tells me that the division in our country is the result of the partisan division in Congress!
A hi light that was aired during the hearing was that members of the Republican Party ignored subpoenas to appear in front of the Select Committee. In January 2023 the Republicans take over House. They say when they do they will be investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop, impeaching President Biden etc…. How do you think this will affect the American people when they send out subpoenas to Democrats, in a Tit for Tat, that most likely will be ignored!
That sends a message loud and clear to the American people that the Rule Of Law only pertains to the less fortunate!
Good points, Mr. Olson. But it seems to me to be a feedback loop. Our politicians also reflect the values of the voters that put them in office. And then we have "the media", which makes its money these days by sensationalizing the rank behavior of the big three named in Robert Reich's astute column. Until average folks stop providing support to these bad actors by using Twitter and buying MAGA hats and other junk online, for example, nothing will change.
Good points. I want to reference what you said about "only" having a high school education. Your ability to state your opinions so coherently suggest you are a reader, and well informed. If more of the country were such we would have more ethical people in congress and that monster never would have been elected.
Problem is UNETHICAL people or groups (corporations, lobbyists, PACs, Dark Money, Shell Companies, oligarchs) are literally purchasing the politicians with their bribes, I mean "campaign contributions". Remember was the infamous Boss Tweed said, "I do NOT care who the people vote for as long as I can pick the nominees." Look at the people, criminals and shady types, that Trump was able to seat in his Cabinet (ex: Mnuchin, Acosta, Zinke, DeVos, etc.). There is something VERY WRONG when people of selfish intent can be appointed on party line votes to such a position and be able to create so much HARM to the American people. These "puppets" (politicians) have demonstrated they do NOT care about the majority (not wealthy) people whom they are supposed to represent. The primarily two (?) party system in this country is VERY BROKEN. The reason I question the two-party system is they both lavish monetary gifts on corporations (got to "payback" my contribution) through VERY light to no REGULATION (Ex: Healthcare Insurance, Pharmaceutical corporations, and oil corporations) without ANY downside for environmental damage they cause. Even if found guilty, the penalty is so paltry that their criminal behavior is NOT stopped. As there are light or no severe penalties for knowingly breaking the law, the next person in line goes further with their corruption because the personal financial gain is worth it to them, even if caught. Where is the ACCOUNTABILITY? Perhaps the penalties were enough to stop the bad behavior when they were written, but just as the Federal Minimum Wage, have these fines been annually raised to consider for inflation?
Jim, you hit the nail on the head. We have laws, thousands of them, but if we continue to NOT enforce them we, the people get what we deserve. All of us need to email our Representative in the House and both Senators and demand that current law be funded and enforced. Mandates, without money to enforce are useless sops.
Fay, LeMoine Surlamont, Jim Temedes. IMHO our politicians MAINLY reflect the values of the DONORS that put them in office. Voters often get a wolf in sheep's clothing. Voters mostly support a candidate for visceral reasons. Love. Hate. Fear. What they get are unethical shills for big money.
As through this world you travel you meet some funny men, some rob you with a sixgun, some with a fountain pen.
Woodrow winslo is right. Too many foxes (OR WOLVES) in charge.
Just another way of saying, "You get what you pay for."
No. THEY get what they pay for.
Amen
Ditto with wealthy tax cheats who already pay relatively low taxes because the get big breaks denied the less affluent.
Hi, Keith, I like your remarks, and share the concern of us who lived through the 1960s in our youth, about the current schisms in Congress. I want to say, however, that I don't agree that it started in Congress. Fifteen years ago, I heard it bubbling up one day when I dropped into my local GOP headquarters, just to hear them out, to be fair. I couldn't believe there was so much difference between what they were saying, and what I was familiar with, as the common narrative. All partisans used to agree on at least a few fundamental realities, no matter what. This garbage started being dumped by us the people, in our own local communities. I went to church and spoke up about how we all needed to start talking to our neighbors more often, so we could get the essential common narrative back to what it was, even in 1968! This makes it all that much more depressing. We still must try to find common ground at every opportunity. (This is why I can look up to Liz Cheney, and I just don't care about her voting record at this moment in time!)
Hey my dad never graduated from high school well actually the Gov. of his home state gave him and a him and a few others their high school diploma because they were drafted before they could finish and he was an expert witness on construction matters for the fed. gov. on occasion. What we have today is what my dad called educated dummies. Keith you were taught somewhere how to think just like learning to fish. You can think on your own and don't need a college degree to do that nor should you. Oh, I graduated from a prestigious west coast university with honors and never used my degree for any work I have done was a fun party.
I just heard a comment on Sinema that seems more appropriate in characterizing >these< guys, as well as their lesser-known capitalist "peers:"
To them, the US citizenry are mere peasants who believe they're living in a democracy.
I say let them waste their constituents money on 130,000+ investigations! If it uncovers fraud: good! We can root it out and lock up criminals. If it fails: Good! It will have hopefully opened up enough eyes that the _rumplican party can FINALLY rest in peace! (Or pieces.)
The most obscure but also most pertinent comment in Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" is (paraphrased) that left to its own devices, a capitalist system will degenerate into cartels and monopolies. The value of capitalism comes not from the profit motive alone but from a free market, a market free of corruption, mainly fraud and collusion, not one free of policing as Republicans wrongly portend. Bernie missed the target with democratic socialism. What we lack is democratic capitalism, because in a democracy, the consumer majority would control the marketplace banning criminality and anti-competitive consolidations of industry. We were that under FDR, but starting with Reagan, Republicans, with the cooperation of foolish Democrats like Clinton, have torn down those protections. The corporatocracy, led by Charles Koch and a team of billionaires, have staged a successful coup and captured the courts, mainly by first corrupting enough of Congress focusing on the Senate. The captured court then cemented their power by blessing perverse interpretations of the Constitution and voiding righteous laws. (The Trump coup provided effective distraction from the coup that captured SCOTUS adding the worst of the worst. We lost most of our democracy before January 6 but still haven't realized it.) Too few candidates can win without subjugating themselves to the money people, so we now have a government of, by and for the corporations suborning growing monopolies, the goal Peter Theil openly called for. In conclusion, if we had a working democracy, the capitalists would be reigned in rendering their sociopathic greed irrelevant. Capitalism without democracy isn't real capitalism because it devolves into oligarchy, or socialism by proxy under government sanctioned monopolies and cartels. The Republicans are the real socialists! Trump, Bankman-Fried and Muk are symptoms, not the cause. OUR message should be a return to 'democratic capitalism' from today's oligarchy, cartel capitalism, or what I'd call proxy socialism by corrupt government sanctioned cartels. We cannot win this battle while a captured SCOTUS rewrites the Constitution to put "democracy in chains" as author Nancy MacLean explained it. The root of this evil is the capture of the courts and Congress by the money cartel. The voices of dark money now out shouts the voices of the people. Greasing the skids of our downfall is the pervasive civic ignorance of the voting public that makes them gullible to vote against their own interests, which is something we could address more effectively.
Too many States have excluded Civics from public school curriculum. DeSantis has absolutely banned any kind of critical or analytical thinking in public schools, with the help of some of the "fundamentalist" religions, for whom ignorance is bliss. A good place to start reform in the blue states at least, would be reinstating Civics, Analytical thinking and critical thinking. We need to impeach those justices (at all Federal levels) who ignore or "revise" (meaning pervert) the Constitution to fit their prejudices. It can be done, it just takes dogged courage and perseverance.
Terrific, if depressing, comment. I always add Citizens United as one of the major tools in their destruction of 'democratic capitalism'.
Excellent comment indeed. Contrary to "American businessmen clutching the rosary of Adam Smith," as my economics prof at Columbia Business School memorably put it 60 years ago, Smith was a canny Scot and foresaw all the problems of the incipient rise of capitalism. With the rise of specialization, what happens to the yeoman, the generalist, who can see beyond the efficiency of a nail factory? And several chapters deal with areas that the "free market" cannot handle - like infrastructure, etc. which is the role of government.
For three books that throw much light on our present predicament, go to (1) Kurt Andersen's "Evil Geniuses" which traces the GOP's fall into corporate authoritarianism to Reagan and also to the influence of economist (Nobel prize winner, no less) Milton Friedman, whose "profit is not the best thing, it's the only thing" philosophy led to the abandonment of stakeholders for stockholders and the wholesale closing of manufacturing and other businesses that weren't profitable "enough" - regardless of the consequences to local communities, employment, etc. Thus the hollowing of America's working and middle classes.
(2) David Gelles's "The Man Who Broke Capitalism" is about Jack Welsh, hailed as the CEO of the Century, whose slash and burn in the name of quarterly profit increases (often bogus!) led - with his eager followers - to more community disruptions, wholesale firings, hundreds of corporate purchases and mergers, all of which ultimately led to disasters, bankruptcies and CEO firings, though the latter emerged with multimillion golden parachutes, while the hapless employees went on the dole. Though Welsh died in 2020, his influence is still here: just a few weeks ago Musk fired 50+% of Twitter's work force, followed by Zuckerberg dropping 13,000 or so from Meta, and then Bezos, not to be left out of the club, dropped a five digit bundle of Amazon employees. Over 40,000 jobs killed in a flash and of course, always before the end of year holidays. No Santa for you, kid. Sorry! (But of course all this is the Democrats' fault!!)
(3) I recommend Fiona Hill's quite different analysis/memoir "There's Nothing For You Here" which reflects on her growing up in North East England in a community gutted by Margaret Thatcher's wholesale closings of much of Britain's manufacturing capacity, dooming these communities of long standing manufacturing industries which supported all the community businesses, schools, etc. She made it to University, studied Russian, spent a year in Moscow and then went on to a Harvard PhD, a career in the Brookings Institution, and became senior Russian adviser to three presidents, including Trump. Seeing what was going on there at the foreign policy level, she testified against Trump at his impeachment hearing and was immediately canned. Her book compares and contrast three societies - UK, US and Russia - and finds many many parallels including why we all seem to have graduated to populists and populisms. Focusing on the foreign policy activities of T and his advisors, she presents in frightening detail how he was played for a complete sucker by Putin, Erdogan, Orban and other autocratic leaders. They understood that he only had two mantras: If you say nice things about me, you're my friend. If I think you're against me and say negative things about my, you're my enemy and I will destroy you. Content?? What content?
This is too long a comment I know. But I feel it is important for everyone who cares to read those books, which I consider among the most important guides to what has happened and why and where we are now. The question then is: what are WE going to do about this?
I'm encouraged to see this kind of understanding emerging from this discussion by people who are mainly in their prime.
re 'Milton Friedman' = a long time client of mine (I was landscape gardener for the family for over 20 years), whose late patriarch was a retired exec of Merrill Lynch. However they did good by me, a story related by the matriarch was that a grandson impersonated and extoled Milton F. at 'career day' at his high school and dressed like him. That told me that this perpetuation of - capitalistic influences - can be 'heredity' becoming dynastic (?).
I've also noticed the 'not profitable enough' in the 'fact' that nowhere near enough of the worlds waste is actually recycled = got to be an 'acceptable' profit margin ~ And a trend of
big corpora of buying up 'distressed' businesses, then instead of backing them up, go about the gutting of those businesses to - back up their own - failures ~ ~ ~
"can't win for losing:"
Excellent comment!
Dennis, I couldn't agree more. I particularly like your words "The Republicans are the real socialists," or as I phrase it "The billionaires are the new Welfare Queens." I also agree that it was a massive mistake for Bernie to call himself a socialist. Socialism is a bad word in America, don't use it. Or, turn it around to focus on Republicans. There will be no democratic capitalism until this argument has been absorbed by the MAGA cartel.
Well spoken!
Worse: Malthusian theory ventured that the human population grows more rapidly than the food supply until famines, war or disease reduces the population. He believed that the human population has risen over the past three centuries.
Communism would be great if human greed could be kept out of the equation. Capitalism is based on greed. Capitalism would work wonderfully if greed could be controlled, but as you see, controlling human greed is not a simple matter. The world and America of today is hung up on our RIGHTs. This situation with Covid has shown some ugly characteristics that many of our fellow Americans have. Time will tell what forces will prevail.
Communism, real communism, does not work in large societies. Real communism has worked in very, very small hippy communes, and possibly in the Israeli kibbutz's of the 1960's. Where a group of people decided to live together sharing the work and resources for the common good. Communism does not now, and never has existed in any country on Planet Earth. Those countries that claim to be communist are, in fact, dictatorships. They work as authoritarianism has always worked for the good of the ruler and his buddies, to the detriment of the working class, They may call each other comrades, friends, brothers, but in truth they are a more rigidly class society than even Great Britain. Capitalism as Adam Smith described is a good way of sharing wealth IF and only IF it is carefully regulated and controlled, As Adam Smith explained GREED is a common barrier to good healthy relationships in any group of people. Under FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower we saw Capitalism at its best. But as greed crept up regulated capitalism went up in a mushroom cloud. From 1980 on, as ordinary Americans. sated with "things", ignored the greed and made themselves 'feel better' by belittling, shaming, and harming any one else in our society that didn't conform to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant "norm" they had set up to assure themselves of their superiority. (Like any human being is 'superior' to any other human being)
I have no disagreement with your opinion and observation.
What did Clinton do that helped in this mayhem?
Clinton went along enthusiastically with the repeal of Glass-Steagall and other banking "reforms" that have been mostly destructive beyond facilitating the bank failures of 2007/8.
Ok, I wasn’t aware then like I am now. I hope it’s not to late?
“Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk are the monsters of American capitalism — as much products of this public-be-damned era as they are contributors to it. For them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthless. Principles are for sissies.” Wow, fantastic framing of a very harsh reality. Great article sir.
Monsters: This stuff is taught at business schools.
For most people "investing" is actually "speculation" and a form of gambling. IMHO children's games like Risk and Monopoly teach the skills needed to take advantage of others. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/game-theory-in-business-explained
Most of these people know that there are risks, like taxes and even criminal penalties, but these are factored into the game. I'm also pretty sure that most are addicted to the excitement, similar to sports and gambling. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/compulsive-gambling/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20355184
The most frequently studied treatment type for gambling disorder is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This type of treatment attempts to change the thoughts and behaviors that are fundamental to maintaining a pattern of behavior (e.g., gambling disorder).
Remeber that phrase from the 90's>.... "You need to change your paradym" ?? It's a serious issue our society ! This was used to impose thought control over our population and is to, my interpretation, brain wasing, self imposed.This machination is often used to try to coax "others " to adopt an altered behavior or to get them to become more compliant. Fundamentally this "Con" has been employed to manuver the thoughts and behaviors of those who lack critical thinking skills. Looks an awful lot like our repuglikanz of these past decades. Just food for thought. Ruminate at your own peril ! ! !
We are in trouble as a country and as a world. It’s avarice, for sure, as Robert states. It’s beyond that to the love of money, obsession and illness with and about it. CBT won’t even begin to heal this. What about the rest of the world? Oligarchs in Russia, China, India, etc.
IDK.
I once played a game of Monopoly with a young niece who chose herself as the banker, used bank money (rather than her own ) to buy real estate, did pass "go", and, apparently, never needed to use the "get out of jail free" card ( in spite of my saying "you're cheating". ! ) So , yes, I like the gaming mentality you cited. No ethics or morals involved!
The three you mentioned are not the only minsters of American capitalism. Add on Charles Koch, the Mercer family, the Sackler family, and Rupert Murdock. I am sure there are others as well. These people are the robber barons of today. The amounts of money these people have amassed make the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, J.Paul Gettys, Andrew Carnegie, and Andrew Mellon, etc. look like nobodies.
Christian Borges ; Another term for “Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk besides Monsters is mobsters, or criminals. Monsters INC.
#TaxTheRich thats my comment. The system is corrupt, not just these three.
I quite agree.
"Presumably Adam Smith would have bemoaned the growing inequalities, corruption, and cynicism spawned by modern capitalism and three of its prime exemplars — Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk."
I think it's no coincidence that all of this current BS has come about in an era of low taxation, just like the Gilded Age of robber barons a century ago. Presciently, Smith argued for progressive taxation as the principal guardrail of his system. Those earning more would have to pay not just more in taxes, but a higher percentage of their income. This would serve three purposes. First, it would redistribute wealth into projects we would call infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, schools and canals - projects which the wealthy would not have much interest in. Second, it would prevent anyone becoming so wealthy that they would have the power to buy government and distort the market in their favor. Third, it would put money in the pockets of ordinary people, so they could buy the products being manufactured by the wealthy. So, everybody wins.
It is no coincidence that people do well in eras of high taxation, and the MAGA hats are put on in eras of low taxation.
Tax...The...Rich.
I appreciate your comment concerning Smith and his background as an early proponent of socialism. His mentor at University of Glasgow was of course Francis Hutcheson, not to be confused with Hutchinson, who is know as one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment, daresay the first "woke" movement in recorded history. I am very proud of my Glasgow working class family history. Both my parents were born there and many ancestors buried there.
Regarding your previous comment on Bernie's use of the term "socialism". Most conservatives diss socialists with visions of "communists" and "collectivists". While there is nothing wrong with either of those if that's your thing, socialism is a much more pervasive word that would include many of precepts of "conservative" thinking. I think we need not compromise with "ignorance". I fully support the term of Democratic Socialism capitalized or not), as the political and economic theory I can best support.
Hi Thomas, and thank you for your post. I also have Glaswegian ancestry, although not related to Francis Hutcheson. Born and grew up in London and got a front row seat to socialism, i.e., a system where the government takes over key industries and runs them. It was a disaster. The UK gained the moniker "Sick Man of Europe," referring to the economy, and the whole shebang ended up by being run by the unions.
If you want to call Smith's system socialism, there's some logic to that, but, for whatever reason, socialism is a bad word in the US. I prefer the term "social democrat." That said, I followed 538 during 2016, and in hypothetical matchups between Hillary and Trump, it was about even for many months. In hypothetical matchups between Bernie and Trump, however, Bernie consistently trounced Trump 70 to 30.....then the DNC sandbagged him, and the rest is history.
Smith was an extraordinary genius who outlined a brilliant economic system, foresaw mass production, and even Elon Musk. The unfortunate notion, which many Americans seem to share, is that capitalism is a cruel but necessary system where robber barons should be free to pursue their self-interests without taxation, or any other form of regulation, is almost the opposite of what Smith had in mind.
Modern capitalism is based on a myth, probably best articulated by Julian Simon, that there is a capacity for unlimited growth on planet earth. Even 8, 10 or 15 billion people can fit here. Another mind is another resource, not a sign of an over-loaded planet. Accumulations of wealth are simple anomalies that will get sorted out through time if government does not interfere. Well, they are not anomalies, they are reinforcing feedback loops that will destroy the system if the energy put into them is not turned off, like the feedback loop of a badly placed mic at a rock concert. Trump, Bankman-Fried and Musk are simply mics that our political system has not turned off in time.
How do we stop this? One simple way, rejected by every modern Republican (and many Democrats) is reinstatement of the high graduated income tax, where deductions are not allowed above a certain income level. If we went back to the Roosevelt era, thinking that the climate crisis is equivalent to WWII, and funded our response with a 95% tax on anything above say $2,000,000 a year (and perhaps 50% above $200,000 but allowing deductions to 2 million) then we could fund a global response to the climate crisis, which also involves a lot of social justice actions. Of course, we would also have to deal with the other reinforcing feedback loop of military spending (an energy drain, and gift to billionaires) which seems even harder than responding to the climate crisis. Any way you look at this we are in deep poo-poo. (We could compost that and use it for fertilizer, but that is another story.)
I have long believed we need a World War II type of response to our climate crisis. Many are so imbued with a capitalist mentality of monetary profit and loss they are incapable of understanding a government acting for other considerations. I try and tell them about World War II but they don't get it.They got religion.they can only conceive of climate Solutions being based solely on profit motive
The modern equivalent of "go west young man" is space exploration. We had a space race, but it was killed, mainly by the military industrial/energy industries. People like Musk have space in mind....
But to what purpose ? ? ? Simply exploration ? To satisfy the ?? of what IS - out there ?
I think M & Bezos' space exploration co's are more for, yes exploration, but mainly for
finding out just what resources are out there that CAN BE EXPLOITED by them, for them, and monopolized by them exemplified artisticly by James Cameron's Avatar franchise. And in this process, they decline to actually help solve this worlds problems
(and actually exacerbate them), basically - giving up on planet earth and reaching out
to the stars = way more profit over cost, no matter what the cost in - pain and suffering - i.e. Musk's turmoil at Twitter (which I do NOT use - or Meta - I 'saw' the writing on those walls --- )
Money corrupts. Big money corrupts bigly. Look at our neighbors south of the border. Why do narcos escape from jail? Why do respected and trusted military officers and prosecutors end up in the pockets of the narcos? Indeed, why do presidents and governors protect these same narcos? Money. Money always wins. And in America, because the "movement conservatives" have broken down the guardrails, money wins here. The rich have the tax game rigged against us, and the capitalists spit on the rules. We are still in a life or death battle over our democracy, with a Supreme Court that uses Dred Scott as its inspiration. Confederates rise like weeds in Texas and Florida, and one of our political parties has entirely lost its principles as well as its mind.
with the 'narcos' south of the border, you have to add in the extreme threat of personal violence
to politicians OR anyone else who confronts them and their activities - so - no wonder the - limiters - cave ~
You make a good point. Perhaps I should have used FIFA and the International Olympics mafia as better examples of the corruptibility of big money. It’s everywhere, though, with or without the threat of retaliatory violence.
INDEED !
Both political parties have lost their moral compass--not just one.
Oh please. One of them missed the turnoff to the Walmart. The other one wound up next to the penguins.
Love this mental picture > More Humor is is the balm for the threat of fear and hopless ruminations.
Guardrails for the road to a more perfect union
The Constitution provides guardrails to keep our government on the road to a more perfect union, where our elected representatives serve the interests and reflect the will of We the People.
The 27 amendments provide additional guardrails not found in the original Constitution. These additional guardrails address hazards to democracy that became apparent as our nation evolved since the days of the horse and buggy. Imagine what our country would be like in the absence of these additional guardrails.
- Slavery would still be legal.
- Women would not be eligible to vote.
- Poll taxes would prevent the poor from voting.
- Young servicemen and women would not be eligible to vote in state and local elections.
All but one of the 27 amendments use “shall” rather than “may” to indicate that they are mandatory, not optional. The 10th Amendment is the only one that does not use “shall,” but its language unequivocally limits the powers of the federal government to those granted to it by the Constitution.
We now find ourselves in need of a new guardrail to ensure that our political leaders do not prioritize the interests of large corporations and billionaires over the interests of We the People. We need a Constitutional amendment that requires Congress and the states to enact meaningful campaign finance reform to ensure political equality, and prevents incorporated entities from invoking the Constitutional rights of real people to avoid compliance with democratically enacted laws. An amendment that merely allows such reforms without requiring them would not prevent self-serving special interests bent on maximizing profits from driving our country (and our planet) into the ditch.
Paul Lauenstein
Sharon, MA
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
― Frederick Douglass
“I do not want to do away with corporations. I want them to make our cars, not our laws.”
- Doris “Granny D” Haddock, who walked across America to support the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The Supreme Court nullified the BCRA shortly before she died.
My son co-founded American Promise, a non-profit devoted to the passage of a 28th Amendment to overturn Citizens United and reform campaign finance.
The examples are really three incantations of something terribly wrong. The "red thread" running through the three examples is a lack of empathy or compassion for others.
Two of the individuals have clearly demonstrated in their own right a lack of caring for others. I am reminded in some ways of my first professional job involved reviewing death penalty inmate cases. Many defendants were psychopaths and seeing what such a lack of caring for others can do was truly terrifying to a 20-something fresh out of school. Add billions of wealth and access to instruments of power and destruction to the mix and the results can be horrific. When all guard rails are gone, something like the Ukrainian situation happens.
I suspect that the third example is different and may involve players in the background using a younger person's fascination with a new technology as a way to bypass natural inhibitions. The very concerning part of this is that the same players are buying and selling politicians and trying to run auctions rather than elections.
Getting past these situations will take, at a minimum, a wide-spread commitment to "shared propensity." Bernie's new book "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism" has some messages worth considering. And, although always to take in context, China's Common Prosperity Policy has some lessons as well.
Something that has always confused me is 'buying and selling of politicians'. It is a given that some politicians are always on the take. But, why on earth are the voters so gullible they eat up glossy lies and empty promises?
It's a classic spy game: Part 1 find someone vulnerable; Part 2 run the echo chamber.
Currently there are allegations swirling about the newly elected rep from NY-CD3, George Santos. Apparently his income went from $50k per year to over $1 million in a short period of time. He then loaned his campaign $700k. Santos had a scant record in politics and was largely unsuccessful in business. That's a classic case for what is rumored to be Russian money to come in and "help out."
We had a similar game happen with Bobert in CO-CD3. Her husband "suddenly" received very lucrative contracts for oil field consulting. Prior to that Bobert was not even able to pay the employment taxes of her servers in her restaurant.
Both candidates were benefited from heavy repetitive advertising in their districts. The echo chamber relies on our weakness that if something is familiar from repetition, we think it is true. Josef Goebbels understand the echo chamber well. You can also see it on the slick but non-stop programming on Russia 1 and Russia 24.
Thank you Dr. Gilbert for your reply. By vulnerable I assume you mean gullible, but what has happened to thinking? I know repetition convinces some people of the 'truth', but it is still stupid not to check into it yourself.
Fay - People SHOULD form independent opinions and judgments. When we teach critical thinking to students both in K-12 and college, we try to equip them with skills. It takes practice not just memorization of concepts.
By and large, however, we do not teach emotional management in schools but some are K-12 districts are introducting Social and Emotional Lerning (SEL). SEL teaches emotional management and it works. Societies such as Finland and Denmark have done this for about 20 years and what a difference. Of course, SEL is a new target of the MAGA folks. It has three letters just like CRT.
Unless you learn to manage your though processes you will be a likely victim of the echo chamber. What the Fox, Russia 1, and Russia 24 echo chambers (all essentially the same model) seek to accomplish is to short circuit thoughtful reasoning and consideration. The tools are the same--highly emotional content with rapid repetition of visual, audio, and verbal triggers.
This process they use triggers the chemical reactions in what Dan Goleman has called the "amygdala hijack" (flight or fight response). This reaction shuts down what we may call thoughtful responses.
These chemicals such as cortisol in the brain take about 6 seconds to clear before we can do what we call "clear thinking." The slick and repetitive echo chambers of these models avoid the clearing by keeping the repetition of content well within 6 seconds, often at 3 to 4 second intervals.
The video at the Elipse following 45's speech was a frightening use of this process. It was a masterpiece worthy of Josef Goebbels.
Dr. Gilbert, thank you! I used to drive a 45 minute commute and on occasion I would tune in Rush Limbaugh, just to see what he was pushing at the moment and to at least try to understand what some of my friends and relatives saw in him. I've done the same in recent years in viewing Tucker Carlkson on Fox. I was reminded on those occasions of a certain fascination I felt in watching old video of Adolf Hitler (though I don't speak German) addressing the assembled masses; something I came to think of as 'the cadence" consisting of rhythmic pauses and voice inflection variations. But you've taken my crude assessment to a new level by introduycing me to this technique of using "rapid repetition of visual, audio, and verbal triggers" and its effect on brain chemistry. I wil certainly be looking into this at a much deeper level and would be grateful for any referances on the topic you might provide that might assist the layman. (Again, thank you. This is why many of us hang out in dubious places like this ;-)
Wow! Thank you for this explanation, I only took two Psychology classes in college, I wish I had the time to take more. I did teach for 18 years, but chemistry physics and astronomy were my main subjects, so I haven't heard of Social and Emotional Management before, but what a great idea. Goebbels was certainly a master of propaganda. His legacy lives on in the American fascism movement, I wish mainstream media would spend some time explaining exactly what fascism means. Their adulation or fear of the trumpster seems to render them mute. Perhaps Inequality Media could put out a clip on the internet.
Many think it's organic, genetic. Function of the amygdala.
Nice explanations in Dan Goleman's book Focus. He uses the term amygdala hyjack. Another term is default mode network.
The problem of negative overtaking positive is magnified by social media. A MIT study found that negative news travels 6x faster than positive news. https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308
Empathy and compassion mean that we need to override the negative defaults. When the goal is power and winning at all costs, the negative is leveraged whenever possible for personal goals.
Love your answer! LOL
Let's add Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Larry Ellison (off the top of my head, there certainly are more rich tech geeks) to the list. Personally, Musk became even more of a pariah to me once he unleashed his "venom" on TWITTER making him, in my mind, as dangerous as Zuckerberg. I'm not a participant in the social media craze - but, i've pictured the rise in the militia movement and the threat to our democratic republic from right wing neo-Nazi groups as parallel to the evolution of Facebook, Twitter, and the other social media outlets. We saw in the 2022 election these people (Musk, Theil, Ellison, Zuckerberg) support "republicans" clearly knowing they stood for the "Big Lie." Musk is showing signs of being a QAnon nut job and, both Musk and Zuckerberg, are opening the platforms they control back up to those spewing mis/disinformation. Trump will soon be back on Facebook and, likely TWITTER once his own social media adventure goes "belly up." We often read/hear about "Russian oligarchs" - I think it's time to begin identifying the America oligarchs and deciding as a nation how much wealth they have to accrue before regulations aimed at the "common good" are instituted.
I like to see a full list of Bankman Fried’s contributions. It was stolen money much from thousands of small investors. It must be returned to their rightful owners otherwise the recipients are no better than Bankman Fried and we live in a Mafia state.
Stanford’s contribution to modern America: C. Rice, E. Holmes and Bankman Fried. Quite a trifecta.
Add to your list of three the Sackler gang who made billions selling a poisonous drug that has killed thousands.
Excellent analysis! There needs to be accountability for anyone who breaks the law, especially in the upper reaches of government & the corporate world. Once corruption is accepted in a country, it gets worse very fast, & is very hard to get rid of.
The IRS should have been auditing trump and for decades NYC and NY state should have been investigating the Orange Monster. He is still with us in part because of their no action.
The brilliant satirist Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker captures so much of what grates at the mind and soul using satire and humor in ways that get at the subjects with perfect clarity. Here are some of his most recent headlines that are pertinent to Robert Reich’s also brilliant commentary:
(Re Bankman-Fried and cryptocurrency):
Satire from The Borowitz Report
World Shocked That Man Running Business Based On Imaginary Money Might Be Fraud
“Of all of the firms offering big returns on made-up money, this one seemed the most solid,” a resident of London said.
By Andy Borowitz
Satire from The Borowitz Report
Trump Calls for Termination of Constitution Except Fifth Amendment
“I haven’t read the Constitution, but, from what I’ve been told, most of it is a waste of paper, quite frankly.”
By Andy Borowitz
The nature of greed is that it has no bounds, it is insatiable, it will never stop of itself. The pitfalls of unbridled capitalism, whereby it, like any other aspect of society that is not “regulated“ by commonsense laws for the protection, good, and benefit of all, are absolutely the same as democracy’s archenemies, communism and authoritarianism, the society loses. In any political system, the powerful who have inordinately enriched themselves enough to dictate governance, and not pay taxes to boot, will not stop until havoc is created in such measure that everyone loses in the end by social unrest, wars, depressions, etc, because another nature of greed is that it is infinitely misguided and shortsighted. What are we to do with the lobbies of the wealthy and the corporations that keep us from creating protective regulation and the enactment of just laws? There was a glimmer of hope just this week in looking at Trump’s tax return. We were hearing right and left that’s what the wealthy do, that they do not pay their taxes, and therefore that it’s the lower economic classes subsidizing them. Is it possible that once and for all the cat is truly out of the bag for the masses at large to see from Trump’s returns that the wealthiest evade paying taxes, and that the IRS, for whatever reason, corruption or understaffing, is NOT doing its job. WHAT??!!! Is this for real?! THIS, in the United States of America? How great would we be if it were otherwise? Yeah, let’s make America GREAT again, I mean GREATER at last! Why on earth are the Republicans so against regulations, education, medical care, social safety nets, etc, etc. Is it because it takes more taxes to take care of those, besides no constraints to their greed, the topic at hand? I know, naive question. Thing is, when you think on it, not all Republicans are wealthy. What are the rather unenlightened religious extremists and garden-variety racists thinking of? It’s like what they did with Covid, politicizing Science, they are in much greater proportion the ones dying of it now. Do they really think the Republican wealthy care in the least little bit for them, except for their vote?! OK, sorry, that’s a lot of topics. Thank you Mr. Reich, you really know how to pose a question, ALL the questions that mean anything at all.
Nice Rant !! I Like it!!
I don't know. Bulls make money Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.
Trump personally is a net loser....and the shit is about to hit the fan. Bankruptcy will not save him. 17 felony counts against his organization. Exposure for maybe billions.
Winners are people who sold Tesla short when Twitter went long. People who shorted FTX and most other crypto currencies.
----------------here's a meme going around-------------------------------
Elon Musk is trying to buy the conversation.
Peter Thiel is trying to buy a dictatorship.
Jeff Bezos is trying to buy the marketplace.
Zuckerberg is trying to buy our minds.
Taxing the rich isn't just about helping the poor. it's about stopping them from owning everything.
you could expand the list with
Bankman- Fried is trying to buy the money.
Charles Koch is trying to buy justice
Funfacts !! I Like it !!
I am glad you mentioned Adam Smith's lessees known work. I with those who wear Adam Smith neckties would actually read what he wrote rather than select quotes.
Bob, you worked for a President who signed legislation to end Glass Steagle which regulated markets, which was a crowning legislation of the New Deal. I am sorry if I misspelled the second name, but let' give responsibility to those who acted.
Capitalism is completely incompatible with democracy. Virtually every problem our nation and the world faces has been brought on by Capitalism, an economic system whose very basis is the abandonment of the common good in the relentless pursuit of individual profit no matter the harm to others, the environment, or what remains of our democracy. Time to cast aside this failed system!
Amen to that, Norm. There are ways to do this, like invalidating all current assets and restructuring the economy along rational lines, like returning money to what it was meant to be: a medium for trade. Issue it and cancel it on a periodic basis so it may not be amassed into individual hands and used as a self-expanding commodity for speculation and fortune-building.
The human-made mechanism of profit runs against the laws of natural science, which telll us that in a closed system such as we reside in, input and output must be inbalance, with a slight amount lost in entropy. Yet we use this artificial mechanism to manage the earth's resources. Somewhere, something has to give. Human profit at the expense of the planet is unsustainable.
Highly regulated Capitalism can work. But we have the stripped it down to the Greedy basics with no guard rails.