Dear Ed:
Good analysis Ed and a productive line of thinking to keep developing. I
await more thoughts in this direction.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: November 10, 1998 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: The Soviet system: who was screwing whom?
>Saul Silverman's posting about "capitalism as is" and "capitalism as it can
>be" got me thinking about "government as is" and "government as it can be".
>I would suggest that there is only one kind of capitalism - the kind that
>is. It is self-serving, highly rational, exploitative, and, where
permitted,
>brutal. Its concerns are to cut costs, maximize returns, and grow. Whether
>it exists in a democratic or totalitarian setting does not matter. It is
>what it is, essentially a growing machine, and it behaves as it does
whether
>it operates in an individualistic environment or a collectivist one.
>
>The extent to which the machine is under control varies greatly from
country
>to country. What this depends on is not so much on whether a society is
>democratic or authoritarian, but more on the extent to which a government
>has bought into the ethics, values and methods of capitalism. On the one
>hand, in running the machine, in being the sole capitalist, the Soviet
>government bought into capitalism entirely, and in emulating the machine,
in
>using its methods, Nazi Germany totally embraced capitalism's ethics and
>values. On the other, western democracies, aided and abetted by unions and
>other popular movements, have acted as a powerful counter force to capital.
>
>I have wondered recently if democracies have not begun to let our guard
>down. Democratic governments have begun to feel somewhat cornered. Capital
>is now capable of rapid international movement. Wealth can now be
relocated
>in ways that government cannot control. Governments cannot agree on what
>should be allowed and what they might attempt to regulate -- witness the
>fate of the MAI. They view capital as both scarce and as globally
available,
>and, almost like beggars with their hands out, compete with each other for
>benefits which foreign investment can bring.
>
>But what I have found even more disturbing is that freely-elected,
>democratic governments have bought into many of the ethics and values of
>capitalism. Capitalism leads and government follows. Government perceives
>itself to have become business, intent on continuing to provide only those
>services which cannot be sloughed off to the private sector, and operating
>those as cheaply as possible. The "bottom line" has become a major
>preoccupation. Providing services of high quality has been displaced by
>providing services at the lowest possible cost. Those who cannot make it in
>the economy are cast aside much like those who are being "terminated" in a
>downsizing corporation.
>
>I have suggested that this is a dangerous confusion of roles in previous
>postings. It represents a serious, perhaps fatal, erosion of countervailing
>power. It raises the disturbing possibility that even liberal democracies
>may soon become little more than giant corporations.
>
>Ed Weick
>
>
