My letter to David Brooks regarding his article on Populists

[rainy]

In regards to David Brooks’ “Populist myths on income equality” he definitely is not aware of the deeper realms of capitalism and globalization. He must not be aware of the operations of the WTO, the World Bank and IMF. As a primer I recommend he read “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” by Greg Palast.

Capitalism, un-checked is a monster. It will eat itself eventually under its own pathology. Remember the turn on the century, before unions, when laborers were lined up at the gates to get a job. If injured on the job the company just threw the bumb out and hired the next guy at the gate. This is what an un-regulated market looks like. Read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

We have corporations like Coca Cola going to other countries, stealing their natural resources such as labor and large quantities of water. In return to the people of the country they leave a huge slush of toxic sludge for the people to live, eat and breathe in. The countries, in some instances, are harsh on their people and use violent punishment if they try to do anything about Coco Cola’s abuse. Coca Cola, just looks the other way.

My point is that without regulations we would have way more asthmatics and toxically sick people running around. It’s bad enough already. When you have to listen to the weather man to know if it is save to go outside you know you are in trouble and that you are headed down a sick path of corporatism that will make us even sicker.

Our rate of growth is unsustainable. When you rate a country’s success by its production you are doomed to deal with huge waste. What happens to all that stuff in Wal Mart when it can’t be sold? Land-fill sound familiar. If all the other countries came up to our level of production and consumption the earth would cease to exist. Look, when our waterways die, we die. It is that simple. But in the name of free market we allow our world to be ruined and our children to be sickened and ourselves to be slaves to consumerism. Such good little consumers we are, but, at what cost to the poor and the earth.

Corporations steal the natural resources from the poor and get rich off it and give nothing back to the real owners of the earth’s treasures.

A better world is possible. We need to give the visionaries a chance, the true progressives and populists. These visionaries are always looking out for the people. The Free Market is always looking out for Wall Street corporatists who make profit it’s bottom line no matter what happens to the earth and the people.

“People of the next century will gaze back in ghastly awe upon our time. A time of waste and abandon on a scale so vast it knocked the human enterprise out of whack for a thousand years.” Adbusters Magazine. 2005

[MikeNearMcChord]

1. People like David Brooks live

in another dimension, he ignores the reality of towns in America devestated by factories closing, of people who took the advice of getting more education, finding out that some guy in Bangalore can do it cheaper, thus leaving the poor schmoe with a crap job and mounting debt, the family who plays by the rules and for their effort, gets their pay cut or if they retire, pension sh**canned while the CEO's pay goes through the roof. David Brooks and Thomas Friedman are like the writings of David Duke, or Max Boot, not worth the effort to read.

[MrPrax]

2. You can read Brook's 'great thoughts'

here if you don't want to subscribe to NYTimes and give Dave clicks...

MyNotes blog -- it looks like the whole column. Maybe Rainy can confirm it.

You know the big problem with keeping a column under subscription for so long -- Sept 7th -- is that criticism of the column is NOT subscribed, and so the critics basically get to have their versions and opinions out front FIRST, while the original languishes behind already out-moded internet revenue models -- so much for that Capitalist meritocracy equality stuff, hey Dave.

Bravo out to Rainy -- good attack. Capitalism does have a problem explaining away inefficiencies like waste outside of it's model -- like the idea that supply/distribution is controlled/manipulated not for demand/need, but to maintain price/profit margin. If there is waste and hungry people left in the market at the end of the day -- fuck'em and go die...a capitalist market can work just as well with 100 people's demand as it does with a thousand or a billion people's demand. Same model, same effect,,,only diff is scale of economy.

(on edit -- fixed link)