Keith,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Michael Gurstein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 11:49 PM
Subject: The balderdash thread
> Hi Michael,
>
> At 14:55 10/07/01 -0700, you wrote:
> (MG)
Utter bunk!
I think the argument might rather be that they are being scrutinized more
(actually I doubt even that unless you count for something the timid
fino-porno peeking under the market skirts of CNBC and the like ) because
they are less truly accountable--they are bigger, have more hacks and flacks
maintaining deniable perimeters, are smarter at managing
media/academic/politico reality, and more utterly unaccountable because we
now have a new religion where morality and greed have not simply become
compatible they are actually screwing noisily and messily in whatever public
happens to be left over from the retreat from the public good that passes
for the modern polis.
> Despite what you've written above, it is a fact of modern life that the
> corporation is investigated, exposed and pressured as never before. They
> are certainly becoming more democratically accountable in a wider rather
> than a narrower (vote-on-a-ballot paper every few years) sense.
>
You my friend are making the rather more elemental mistake of forgetting
that before we were "consumers" and I mean in an ontological rather than a
temporal sense we were participants/beneficiaries/trust fund babies of the
public good--culture, education, decent health care, public order--in short
everything that makes civilized life possible and for which we are either
stewards or barbarians (at least Ian Angell doesn't call a spade a
turnip)....
> On the contrary, you are making the mistake of categorising people as one
> thing or the other. I am not mixing up "consumers/stakeholders" with
> "citizens". Modern life has already done that. Each of us is a voter, a
> consumer, a shareholder, a capitalist, a wage-slave, a (potential)
> pensioner, an investor, a speculator, and so on. The fact that citizens
are
> voting less than ever before (about 50% in our recent General election*)
> means that he regards his "democratic rights" (in the narrow sense) as
less
> important than his other roles.
>
So? My dog has fleas and my teenage daughter made a rude remark to me the
other day... I guess I could have put the one down and found what the market
of the other one was, but better judgement and the non-market ties of
loyalty and love kept me from doing so.
> *The turnout was less than any other election in the UK for a century. The
> % turnout in the Election after WWI was less but only because 1� million
> soldiers (out of a much smaller electorate) were not allowed to vote.
>
> Keith H
MG
>
