RE: HOPING THE BIG PICTURE COMES BACK INTO FOCUS- SOME WHINNING AND THEN

-----Original Message-----
>Behalf Of RANDALL BURTON

>OK, ENOUGH WHINING... WHAT ABOUT SOLUTIONS?
[snip]
>FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO INTEND TO SHOOT DOWN THE
>IDEA FOR BEING IMPRACTICAL OR

I am shooting down your idea because you do not understand the nature of the
problem. In essence, our survival problem is a "political" problem -- not a
shortage of knowledge.

MEANS OF CONTROL

In 1997, the Chinese lobbyist Johnny Chung observed: "I see the White House
is like a subway - you have to put in coins to open the gates."  Millions of
Americans have made the same observation: American politics is based on
money.  Why is American politics based on money?  The surprising answer
is because the Founding Fathers intended it that way!  The "market
economy" was conceived as an antidote for the "peasant rebellions"
of the past -- as a "means of control" to create universal values and peace.

The modern "market economy" is essentially money-based politics --
one dollar, one vote.  Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) was the first
to call for rational "interest" (calculation) instead of irrational
"passion" (e.g., love, hate or honesty) in public policy.  Machiavelli's
ideas were institutionalized when America's Founding Fathers explicitly
designed a government to be run by competing moneyed interests:

   "In 1884, one of the wealthiest men of his time, Henry B. Payne,
    wanted to become the next United States senator from Ohio.
    Payne's son Oliver, the treasurer of Standard Oil, did his best to
    help. Just before the election for Ohio's seat, son Oliver sat at a
    desk in a Columbus hotel with a stack of bills in front of him,
    paying for the votes of the state legislators, who then elected
    U.S. senators."

I discuss a hypothetical, sustainable society in a newsletter I wrote at the
beginning of the year.  See THE FOULEST OF THEM ALL at
http://dieoff.com/page168.htm

However, in the months since I wrote that piece, I have come to believe that
no other "means of control" could work.  I believe that Capitalism (defined
as the unlimited conversion of natural systems into commodities) is so
successful at pacifying the peasants because it dovetails so neatly with
their hunter-gatherer genetics.  Of course, this also means we are committed
to the ancient scenario of crash and die off.

Jay
-----------------------
"Peasant rebellions were not exceptional events. They erupted so frequently
in the course of these four centuries that they may be said to have been as
common in this agrarian society as factory strikes would be in the
industrial world. In southwestern France alone, some 450 rebellions occurred
between 1590 and 1715. No region of Western Europe was exempted from this
pattern of chronic violence. The fear of sedition was always present in the
minds of those who ruled. It was a corrective, a salutary fear -- since only
the threat of insurrection could act as a check against unlimited
exactions."  p 80, AFTER THE BLACK DEATH, George Huppert; Indiana Univ. Pr.,
1998.