August 29, 2010 09:48 PM UTC

When in the course of human events?

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• by: JO

I will spare others the need to roll out the tired cliche: “Democratic capitalism is a flawed system…but it’s the best system yet invented,” or somesuch. At what point do we concede: our society is not coping with a whole set of problems that require urgent attention–economic stagnation, inability to provide useful employment to all who are ready, willing, and able to fill a useful job, inability to address the entwined mega-problems of reliance on carbon energy + global warming, rapid concentration of ever-greater proportion of national wealth in the hands of about 1-2% of the population, failure to deliver basic services, notably health but also effective education, to a growing proportion of the population at the bottom… the list goes on.

We are entirely used to repeating the mantra: America the Great, based on outdated facts, as if America in the 21st century were essentially the same as America in the 1950s or 1960s. This weekend we were treated to the spectacle of several thousand people gathered in the national capital to embrace the notion that embracing an unseen deity is the answer to our problems. Some who weren’t in Washington embraced the opposite view: adherence to irrational fact-free solutions lies at the heart of our problems, as if going to mass would have prevented Chinese companies from purchasing, dismantling, and transporting steel production plants from northeast Ohio to southeast China four decades ago!

Today, as in the past, there are two views from competing high-altitude platforms: one says that whatever blips in the statistical charts, America is still the richest, most successful society, that we need to make minor adjustments will staying the course that has carried us so far so well.

The other says that just as the feudal society of pre-1789 France (remember Louis XIV, to say nothing of XVI?) gave way to the industrial revolution, so we in America have reached a point where the old ways have broken down irretrievably. Unless and until we acknowledge that breakdown, and open our minds to some serious fixes, rather than clinging to the belief that the solutions of our forefathers will continue to serve us indefinitely, there is nothing on the horizon suggesting particularly brighter days ahead. Au contraire!

Some nominations for ideas to discard and possible replacements:

–The federal system of 50 “sovereign” states needs to be replaced by a centralized government of one person/one vote, i.e. equal representation in a single-chamber parliamentary-style legislature of about 1,500 members from districts with roughly equal populations.

–“States” be redrawn to serve as administrative districts of the central government, number, size, shape TBD.

–The government be given as priorities management of an economy that (a) addresses the needs of all men, women, and children for secure lives, including guaranteed housing, food, education, health care; (b) regulates private economic activity to protect to natural resources.

–Private property is given no voice in government. Rights, such as speech/press, etc., are guaranteed to individuals, not to artificial bodies (corporations, associations).

–Where feasible, direct democracy via the Internet replace representative democracy, especially in local application of government functions and in administration of corporations, where workers are given at least equal voice to shareholders in strategic decisions (layoffs based on company performance vs. individual performance, discontinuation of enterprises, major investments, geographical location of plants, etc.).