Les Schaffer just sent me a link to an article by Chomsky that contains the following:
Public attitudes are a little hard to judge. There are a lot of polls, and they have what look like varying results, depending on exactly how you interpret the questions and the answers. But a very substantial part of the population, maybe a big majority, is inclined to dismiss this as just kind of a liberal hoax. What's particularly interesting is the role of the corporate sector, which pretty much runs the country and the political system. They're very explicit. The big business lobbies, like the Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, and others, have been very clear and explicit. A couple of years ago they said they are going to carry out -- they since have been carrying out -- a major publicity campaign to convince people that it's not real, that it's a liberal hoax. Judging by polls, that's had an effect. It's particularly interesting to take a look at the people who are running these campaigns, say, the CEOs of big corporations. They know as well as you and I do that it's very real and that the threats are very dire, and that they're threatening the lives of their grandchildren. In fact, they're threatening what they own, they own the world, and they're threatening its survival. Which seems irrational, and it is, from a certain perspective. But from another perspective it's highly rational. They're acting within the structure of the institutions of which they are a part. They are functioning within something like market systems -- not quite, but partially -- market systems. To the extent that you participate in a market system, you disregard necessarily what economists call "externalities," the effect of a transaction upon others. So, for example, if one of you sells me a car, we may try to make a good deal for ourselves, but we don't take into account in that transaction the effect of the transaction on others. Of course, there is an effect. It may feel like a small effect, but if it multiplies over a lot of people, it's a huge effect: pollution, congestion, wasting time in traffic jams, all sorts of things. Those you don't take into account -- necessarily. That's part of the market system. full: http://chomsky.info/talks/20100930.htm As you might recall, I have pondered long and hard the question of why the bourgeoisie is "threatening the lives of their grandchildren." I think I understand Chomsky's argument but it still does not satisfy me. We do know that the bourgeoisie has been able to transcend externalities in the past. Theodore Roosevelt's ambitious conservation program was evidence of that (so much so that Lenin sought to emulate it in the USSR), as was the creation of a public school system that was second to none in the world. Something else is going on that I can't quite put my finger on, but it has something to do with the decline of America as an industrial power. Investments in infrastructure and education are usually connected with a belief that your own country has a future as an economic power. Just look at China's investment in green technology. Perhaps the "shortsightedness" of the American bourgeoisie reflects a sense that it has no future as a hegemon? _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
