I love facebook. It has allowed me to reconnect with people I haven't seen in forty years. Absolutely wonderful.
Except when they start posting hate propaganda like we're not real Americans if we don't sign up to keep the foreigners out of our country.
Wait a minute. Five hundred years ago some freeloaders showed up on the beach, pitched tents and started looking for gold. When they got hungry and couldn't support themselves they turned to the local government and its citizens to feed them and help them survive the winters.
Who were these bums? We call them the pilgrims and the founding fathers of our nation. We celebrate their welfare dinner every year at thanksgiving.
So yeah, the uncontrolled migration of people is hard on our society. The working poor are always a better target for the anger of the disenfranchised than the greedy bankers who are manipulating us, but shouldn't we act like Real Americans and share our bounty with the less fortunate, using the Wampanoag's generosity as our guide?
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Friday, November 27, 2009
Economic History
What is historically good for us is not historically good for all.
Consider the Native Americans for example. The Europeans came to their country (I'm thinking this the day after our traditional feast celebrating the saviour of the early immigrants by the native population) and proceeded to teach a wealthy and successful people that they were worthless and impoverished. A lesson that the descendants of these peoples, those allowed to live, are still struggling against.
The native Americans had a successful economy based on husbandry, craft, trade, communal living and political strength derived from their ability to make war as they needed to. The Europeans brought fruits of technology that the AmerIndians had lived without and took what they couldn't trade for.
This decade's debacle in trying to Americanize Iraq is another example of why we shouldnot interfere with the economic and political lives of others.
Economics is based on the confluence of a society's morality and its material needs. History shows us that economic policy will naturally tend to support those who are best able to influence the laws governing economic activity. In general this is done to the advantage of the few over the good of the many.
The Constitution appears to be written with the fundamental idea that American economic policy should support the welfare of the people of the United States. In fact the only people well supported by the economics of the last fifty years are the amoral corporations. With no obligation other than to show growing profitability (which is ludicrous in itself) these companies have moved a majority of our production to other countries. How does this benefit the US?
The reality is that since we no longer produce, we no longer increase our personal wealth through our own labor. Wealth instead is produced by others, like the chinese workers in their sweatshops. If we own the means to import and distribute we can transfer their wealth to our own accounts, otherwise we rely on the redistribution of wealth from those who have it to ourselves.
That doesn't imply socialism but is the nature of a service based economy. Without a means of production we are servants of the ones who do have such a means.
Consider the Native Americans for example. The Europeans came to their country (I'm thinking this the day after our traditional feast celebrating the saviour of the early immigrants by the native population) and proceeded to teach a wealthy and successful people that they were worthless and impoverished. A lesson that the descendants of these peoples, those allowed to live, are still struggling against.
The native Americans had a successful economy based on husbandry, craft, trade, communal living and political strength derived from their ability to make war as they needed to. The Europeans brought fruits of technology that the AmerIndians had lived without and took what they couldn't trade for.
This decade's debacle in trying to Americanize Iraq is another example of why we shouldnot interfere with the economic and political lives of others.
Economics is based on the confluence of a society's morality and its material needs. History shows us that economic policy will naturally tend to support those who are best able to influence the laws governing economic activity. In general this is done to the advantage of the few over the good of the many.
The Constitution appears to be written with the fundamental idea that American economic policy should support the welfare of the people of the United States. In fact the only people well supported by the economics of the last fifty years are the amoral corporations. With no obligation other than to show growing profitability (which is ludicrous in itself) these companies have moved a majority of our production to other countries. How does this benefit the US?
The reality is that since we no longer produce, we no longer increase our personal wealth through our own labor. Wealth instead is produced by others, like the chinese workers in their sweatshops. If we own the means to import and distribute we can transfer their wealth to our own accounts, otherwise we rely on the redistribution of wealth from those who have it to ourselves.
That doesn't imply socialism but is the nature of a service based economy. Without a means of production we are servants of the ones who do have such a means.
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