My last post, “Know Thine Enemy,” may have upset some who consider it offensive to characterize Michele Bachmann as anti-American. Charles Lindberg, after his historic solo flight across the Atlantic, visited Germany, returned pro-Nazi, yet never considered himself anything but a patriot. Pre-WW2 German-American Bundists portrayed themselves as super patriots despite direct links to an outlaw Nazi government.
Michele Bachmann and her followers, also Grover Norquist and those who sign his anti-tax pledge deem themselves patriotic Americans. That is their right, as it is mine to look at their statements and demands, and make a different judgement.
***
The Entrepreneurial Imperative
The urge to create art or an enterprise lies within. In rigid command economies, entrepreneurs turn to black markets and barter In free economies, the ultimate entrepreneurs are inventors and experimental artists who produce products for which there is no demand and create markets where none exist.
Americans would feel suffocated in a country without both democracy and capitalism. Yet we know capitalism can exist without democracy. In the most brutal tyrannies, business owners serve tyrants in return for advantage and wealth. And we are experiencing a very aggressive kind of capitalism from China.
Free societies need to serve the entrepreneurial imperative yet not allow it to run amok. Repression leads to black markets and crime. When Prohibition was enacted, capitalism took a virulent form: organized crime. When Prohibition was repealed, it could not repeal organized crime which plagues us still.
Yet under-regulation, oddly enough, leads to something similar—the Enron effect, where an enterprise turns outlaw—the PG&E malignancy, where an enterprise poisons both the body physical and body politic, or the toxic asset bank debacle that kicked off the Bush/Cheney Depression. Keeping a balance between over and under regulation is far harder than walking a tightrope,
Some politicians today call for a return to freedoms lost when the U.S. grew from a nation of independent farmers to a complex technological society straining at the limits of its resources. Longing for simpler days of yore is tempting, yet presents deadly dangers. More on Days of Yore tomorrow.
***
A web site named www.Spectacle.org begins, “Democracy is the process by
which we get ourselves organized to perform capitalism.” It seems to state that the
basic reason for democracy is to make capitalism possible. For the whole essay,
check http://www.spectacle.org/496/demo.html
Michele Bachmann and her followers, also Grover Norquist and those who sign his anti-tax pledge deem themselves patriotic Americans. That is their right, as it is mine to look at their statements and demands, and make a different judgement.
***
The Entrepreneurial Imperative
The urge to create art or an enterprise lies within. In rigid command economies, entrepreneurs turn to black markets and barter In free economies, the ultimate entrepreneurs are inventors and experimental artists who produce products for which there is no demand and create markets where none exist.
Americans would feel suffocated in a country without both democracy and capitalism. Yet we know capitalism can exist without democracy. In the most brutal tyrannies, business owners serve tyrants in return for advantage and wealth. And we are experiencing a very aggressive kind of capitalism from China.
Free societies need to serve the entrepreneurial imperative yet not allow it to run amok. Repression leads to black markets and crime. When Prohibition was enacted, capitalism took a virulent form: organized crime. When Prohibition was repealed, it could not repeal organized crime which plagues us still.
Yet under-regulation, oddly enough, leads to something similar—the Enron effect, where an enterprise turns outlaw—the PG&E malignancy, where an enterprise poisons both the body physical and body politic, or the toxic asset bank debacle that kicked off the Bush/Cheney Depression. Keeping a balance between over and under regulation is far harder than walking a tightrope,
Some politicians today call for a return to freedoms lost when the U.S. grew from a nation of independent farmers to a complex technological society straining at the limits of its resources. Longing for simpler days of yore is tempting, yet presents deadly dangers. More on Days of Yore tomorrow.
***
A web site named www.Spectacle.org begins, “Democracy is the process by
which we get ourselves organized to perform capitalism.” It seems to state that the
basic reason for democracy is to make capitalism possible. For the whole essay,
check http://www.spectacle.org/496/demo.html
RSS Feed