Change the Economy, Change Politics

I somewhat criticized Gar Alperovitz in my last post when I wrote, "I would have hoped that Mr. Alperovitz would have explained the evolutionary aspects of this shift in ownership." Given my critique I think I should explicitly lay out my thoughts.

Basically, my thoughts are that everything is interconnected. That may seem like a, "Well, duh, tell me something I don't know," type of statement, but, apparently, it does need to be stated. But everything is connected, in more ways than I can even express. Without rambling on about everything, I will just stick to the big three that I would like to highlight today: culture, economics, and politics.

Given a type of culture, certain types of economies would logically, and realistically, follow. Given certain economies, certain types of politics would logically, and realistically, follow.

In the United States our society, as a whole, suffers from a style of cognitive dissonance. Americans will say they value independence, yet the vast majority are almost completely dependent on the government or a corporation. Think about it, Americans puff up their chests and say they are so independent, yet they go to work everyday when told to and then go home when allowed to.

Or, Americans worship of the military, or a football team -- a worship of a role where the individuals do as they are told … And even which football team they are loyal to, i.e. the team that is nearest and that everybody else around them cheers for, basically, Americans have no independent preferences, no independent wills, they are apparently the people most susceptible to peer pressure on earth, they are completely servile.

OK, enough on the American culture of servility. But given a certain culture, a certain style of economics would follow. In this case, we have a somewhat capitalistic system, meaning a small sliver of the nation owns the factories and the offices and the vast majority then file into those factories and offices everyday and create continuous profits for the sliver of the nation that are the owners of those factories and those offices.

This suits the servile Americans quite well; though they may occasionally grumble about that reality, there is little reason to think they actually want it otherwise.

So, a small sliver of the nation owns the factories and the offices and that small sliver thus reaps the profits from the workers who staff those factories and offices. Then, given the style of politics in America, where the politicians have been allowed to craft the laws which regulate themselves, they have crafted the laws to funnel money to themselves through 'political donations' from the wealthy. They then use those political donations to saturate the media with messages to the servile populace to then vote for them again.

And this system also seems to be working out fairly well. Again, there are small groups that grumble, but the entire system is plain for all to see and the vast majority seem to be satisfied with this system.

So, I should title this piece, "Change the Culture, Change the Economy, Change Politics," but that is lengthy and clumsy and isn't as catchy as the current title. ;-) So that is why I leave it as it is.

So that is my too long explanation of why I am so fixated on worker ownership. Independence! Freedom! Those are my goals, that is the path that I try to steer Americans towards.

While a co-operative, or a worker owned factory, may resemble dreaded socialism to many Americans, holding the reins to steer your own destiny appears much closer to freedom, to me, than filing in to an office everyday, when told to, to create a profit for an owner you don't even know, and who may not even live in this nation…

My final point being, money controls politics, and money accrues to the owners of the businesses, therefor, continuing to work for a business in which a person has no ownership interest abdicates political power.