Look: I am eager to learn stuff I don't know--which requires actively courting and posting smart disagreement.

But as you will understand, I don't like to post things that mischaracterize and are aimed to mislead.

-- Brad Delong

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Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Is it Time to Turn Communist?

What can we do, and how can we find a way to balance the unbridled power of Multinational Corporations, when the people don't have a voice?

Here is one man with a voice, doin' what he can.




I seldom post music on any day other than Sunday - but this is kinda special, doncha think?

Via Huffington Post

H/T to The Lovely Wife.

Update:  But, wait there's more . . .

"Think, People!"



Jesus - this had me in tears.

.

3 comments:

BadTux said...

Communist? No. Socialist? I think we need a little socialism. The problem being that we've gotten *too* efficient at making "stuff", and can now make far more "stuff" than it takes people to make and distribute and sell this "stuff" (or, for that matter, than we can actually consume). We're too damned efficient, in other words. Adding in some inefficiencies to the economy, as socialism typically does, seems to me the only way to get anything that resembles a fair and free society rather than feudalism.

Which makes me a heretic, I suppose. But note that I do *not* recommend doing away with capitalism -- it's too good at making "stuff" and the only solution we have to the "intermediaries problem" for making complex items like laptop computers (just as an example) -- but, rather, simply regulating it for the common good and doing some shifting around of the wealth for the common good. Which makes me a rabid Communist as far as the teabaggers go, but so it goes.

- Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin

Jazzbumpa said...

The Commie comment was purely rhetorical, playing off Drew Landry pointing out that the lady next to him was ready to turn communist.

I'm all for capitalism myself - rather like Keynes, actually. But capitalism, on its own, does not lead to a free and just society.

For that, we need some gummint. And, of course, a population who are not a bunch of ass hats.

Which is why WASF,
JzB

BadTux said...

Capitalism does not work sans government because power grows from the barrel of a gun, and in capitalism without government, he who has the most money can buy the most guns and thus rules. The notion of everybody in a society getting together and pooling their money so that society as a whole is the party with the most guns and can thus regulate the rich to keep them from running roughshod over everybody else is the only way for freedom to exist as anything other than a theoretical concept. Otherwise what you have is feudalism -- a few filthy rich warlords who control everything necessary for life, and the rest of us, well, serfs.

This isn't Communist theory. This is what has been actually observed in failed states such as Somalia in this reality, as vs. the fictional reality where Libertopians live where unicorns are real and cotton candy grows on trees. Chairman Mao may have had a different situation altogether in mind when he said "power grows from the barrel of a gun", and was in general an asshole, but even an asshole can occasionally stumble across Truth-with-a-capital-T.

- Badtux the Power Penguin