[Skybird]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

The political elite are a lot more dangerous than the wealthy elite, especially when they are wealthy elite themselves.

Plutocracy. I name it that time and again.

In all the West, societies are run on spendings that are beyond what they can afford, but probably nowheere else this trend is as exessive as in the US. Also, in no other Western countries, private persons cared so little for saving money and put it aside, which is said to tend against zero for the avergae consumer in the US and is one of the causes for the crash of the mortgage market. And inside Wetsern socieities, distribution patterns of the wealth that gets created by the nation'S economy, are questionable, as are the spendings of the state himself, too. All this is not unique for america, it is trends you see in all the West (and the industrialised Asian nations as well, and in South america). but man of these symptoms I see nowhere practices as exessively as in the US.

Therefore it seems not america is the problem allowing these things to happen, but the system itself. America is just the most obvious symptom.

For the immidiate future, I have some suggestion for a major cure:

1. decision makers and managers must be held legally liable for their performqance, and they must compensate with their private property if they do damage. It cannot be that they raise their income even when a company is declining, and get payed for another full year after they got fired by being talked out of the position, and risk nothing when failing and doing damage. Managers should lead by example setting, and they should be as responsible as the single worker is held respnisble. But when Joe Average messes up some minor thing, he opften is at risk to loose his job, but when a boss fails, he gets complimented out (if that), and even gets a golden handshake. That is obscene.

2. Hedge fonds and comparable constuctions must be forbiddden.

3. Financial investement fonds of any kind must be regulated in that way that it is being made impossible that they just may do so to financially cripple a healthy victim, then leave it behind and take the cream with them. This is major criminal behavior in my book, and qualifies as fraud, and it also qualifies for something one could call "treachery against the nation and the public good." It is practicing like the Mafia, and economists and bankers doing so must be considered gangsters.

4. The economic goal of unlimited growth must be replaced with a less psychopathologic goal, that is dynamic stability (there are always microfluctuations), sustainability, and a working balance of "taking not more than one gives back, or naturally gets replaced". Assumed unlimited growth of property prices was what created the mortage crisis, and the same assumptions makes nations spend more than what they can afford, and being badly prepared, usually, for times of economic stagnation. Nowhere in the world you'll find something, anything, that always points upwards and moves upward only, that simply is a megalomaniac hallucination.

5. Goods and items that a country can produce in comparable quality itself, should not be traded around the world. Trade should focus on exchnage of products and items that the receiver does not have or cannot produce himself. Just common sense, I would say. - Trading military equipment, military technology and weapons of warfare must be banned and forbidden. Violation of this law must be deterred by implementing death sentence.

6. As little state regulation as possible, but as much as is needed to guard public good against economy's egoism. That makes a strict separation between politics and economcs vital and inevitable. the people is not there to serve the interest of the economy, but the economy is there to fulfill the needs of the people. Of course, we do not have that separation, indeed what we have is a weave or a sleaze that can't be disentangled anymore - consider that to be one major reason for the problems we have. Having a public mandate and being member of a board of directors do not work well together, it creates a conflict of interests. That includes the time before and after holding public offices. Which means that a family engaged in economics should be banned from working in politics. - The suicidal ammount of lobbyism we have today, also needs to be killed. Lobbyism may be fine for the ordeirng company, but when it is lobbying against public interest, it becomes a crime against public good.

7. We must understand that the public good and the natural environment puts limit's to individual freedoms. That includes the freedom to have the free maximum choice. Being able not to choose between 300 different car models, but just between 30, is okay and no crime against humanity or a crusade against freedom.

8. Technical improvements with one item category that a company invented, and that are for the public good and the ecological advantage as well, must become obligatory for rivalling companies within a given time frame. In Japan, the hightech business already has implemented that as a rule, and it serves them damn well and raises their general technological standard. After that, wanting to choose the inferior option comopares to do damage to the public good. Eliminating the freedom to choose for that damage is aceptable and a limitation of personal freedom that must not be made big fuss of. Personal freedom ends where one starts to damage the freedom or legitimate interests of others.

And here I start to stray off, so.... eject....

My general suggestion is that both the environmental and the market issues cannot be solved by just pressing a button here or fixing a loose thing there. We need to realise that we are in need of such an ammount of simultaneous, mutually depending fixings that we can talk of a more or less replacement of the system itself. A market model that bases on egoism, just gives you that: general egoism everywhere. Ain't that a logical consequence!?

And unregulated liberal market? Well, the current crisis w ehave - is the direct, logcail result of just that philosophy. It simply does not work as intended. It is as unreasonable as a philosphy of a state-run economy with five-year plans. the latter shows it'S deficits relatively fast. The first takes more time, but does as much damage as well. Both must be considered to be of equal destructiveness, but unfolding on different time scales.

I do not expect my suggestions to happen. And that's why I see grim future prospects ahead for the coming generations, even even for the current ones. The future in reality will see the fusion of companies and their taking over of power from politics, politics as a separate class and process simply dissappearing in them. We already are in the process of such a transformation, with the EU and the US leading the way, but you see that layout in principle in the Japanese economy and it'S interaction with the party system after WWII as well. Nationality will be replaced by corporation membership, so to speak. future corporations will be few, and will be of a size we still do not dare to think off - and right we are to fear them, since their power will be beyond any countercontrol, and without any democratic or other political legitimation. Science Fiction holds some drafts of such futures that very well may become a reality. And most of such drafts show no pleasant realities at all.