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Responding to you always makes me feel like I'm talking to a second-grader, but as long as you stick to these fantastic assumptions and pre-packaged stereotypes, I'll keep telling you why basic reality doesn't conform to your simplistic, free-market sloganeering. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mitch Berg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > What worries me is not so much the specious distinction between Democracy > and Capitalism - neither can exist without the other, and they're both > toast without *the rule of law* and *respect for private property*. There is a very real and fundamentally categorical distinction between Democracy & Capitalism. Beyond the basic dictionary distinction, I submit to you that capitalism has existed all over the world within forms of government other than democracy. I would also remind you that democracy is far from an abolute descriptor and that many governments far more democratic than our arcane electoral college sysem exist quite happily and successfully under economic systems you would loudly categorize as socialist and/or communist. > No, what bothers me most is this notion that "democracy" is "a bunch of > people who do nothing but agitate about whatever issues are fashionable > making signs and picketing a store" - or to get at what Paul said, > "deciding what's best for the rest of us". It is highly fashionable for the right wing to stand on blatantly stereotypical generizations like this to form a dubious basis for the cruel conclusion that the human desire to earn a living wage by their own effort that's adequate to support a family is somehow a trendy fad. > That leaves aside, of course, the > paternalistic notion that "we" (and by "we" I mean a bunch of Volvo-driving > perpetual indignants and government employees from St. Paul) should decide > that all those foreigners would be better off working their rice paddies > than making shoes for Nike. For that matter, it's interesting that the > people who are most indignant about "sweatshops" are even MORE indignant > about the notion of exporting American democracy and the concomitant > GENUINE rule of law and free market to the countries whose laws and > (usually) dictatorships thrive on the wretched status quo. No, you don't mean "we". What you mean is that your hatred of the pre-packaged stereotype of "liberals" won't let you see that the workers who are oppressed by WalMart do not drive Volvos if they drive at all. If you can't participate in an open discussion without having your vision clouded by these incessant, hateful stereotypes, it's easy to see why your internal understanding of any issue is equally misguided. > Pollution? That's the thing that eludes most Greens; worrying about the > environment is ONLY possible in societies that have enough economic growth > to generate enough wealth that enough people have enough leisure time to > think about things like environments. No, environmental concern is not a luxury--like automatic dishwashers--made possible by the great capitalist miracle. What the capitalist miracle does make possible is industrial pollution on a scale great enough to turn Lake Erie into a flammable, colloidal suspension. Flaming waterways will raise environmental concern among busy, corporate parents much more readily than peeing upstream will cause alarm among comparatively laid back agriculturalists with all winter to worry about it. Environmental concerns are directly caused by unbridled, free-marketeer, amorality in which corporations are required by the fiduciary duty to their stockholders to make pollution decisions on the myopic basis of whether it costs less to clean up pollution or whether it's more cost-effective to continue polluting unabated and pay the fines. When governmental penalties for pollution begin to approach the actual cost of cleaning up after themselves, industrial polluters simply start strumming the chords of mindless deregulation and watch with delight as ideological dupes like you dance to their hate-radio rhetoric. A free market today will not, of itself, provide your grandchildren with clean air and water tomorrow--not without regulation. In this respect the utopian conception of a self-regulating free market does not hold water--not clean water, at any rate. > Does WalMart offer sub"standard" wages? Compared to what? Tell you what - > if you want to fix that, join me in going to WalMart and taking the workers > aside and asking if they'd mind us teaching them how to fix cars or build > houses or process mortgage loans or program .NET applications. What sort > of responses do you think we'll get? Seriously - why are these people > there, if it's so bad? They occupy WalMart jobs, as I've explained to you several times, because there are never enough jobs to go around in this economy and the Federal government has made it its executive responsibility to *make sure it stays that way* as a matter of highest conservative economic policy. When the Federal government provides all the services of a Pinkerton police force to corporate entities, paid for by workers' taxes, the form of government you have is known as State Capitalism which is a far cry from a democracy (you remember those forms of government where counting the votes actually matters). So much for the rhetorical fantasy of Democracy & Capitalism going hand-in-hand. Guy Western the West Side p.s. of course, for the purpose of remaining on-topic, all these things are only true of the WalMart that threatens to intrude in ST. PAUL, and no other. _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/ _____________________________________________ For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract
