Daniel writes:
What about a mostly free market domestically, but limited economic internationalism (since I think globalism is a sovereignty stealing scam), a basic income (partly as a way to say “that’s it, you get nothing else. Spend it wisely” so as to avoid entitlement culture and single motherhood subsidizing), good immigration based on a points system?
And utilities and infrastructure done by the gov.
I have no problem with most of this other than the anti-single mother stuff and the “mostly free market” stuff which I dealt with other posts.
The rest of it is not bad at all.
Economic nationalism is going to be very hard to do. Both parties in the US and every major party in every large country on Earth is down with this IMF, World Bank, TPP, NAFTA, WTO free trade agreement scams. Even the “liberal” or “Leftist” Democratic Party is on board with all this stuff. If you look at Europe, apparently most social democratic parties in Europe are down with the globalism thing too. The globalist madness seems to have captured the elites of much of the world from Right to Left and it is going to be very hard to build any opposition to them. This is mostly because most governments in the world supporting globalism are controlled by the corporations of that nation. We have made some progress in Latin America with the Bolivarian system and with the BRICs plan of Russia, but it is an uphill battle.
How do we promote a project that both the Republican and Democratic Parties are determined to implement. How do we oppose it when much of the rest of the world is drinking the globalist crack. It is a depressing project.
Infrastructure and utilities run by the state would be a good thing. I think infrastructure is still run by the state here, but there seems to be a determined bipartisan project led by the Republicans do defund infrastructure spending at every level. Why do the Republicans want the country to fall apart. I don’t know. Why doesn’t someone ask them?
Utilities run by the state is a great idea, but just recently we had electricity degregulated in a number of states. It was a disaster at least in California, but the deregulators don’t admit it, and they have stated that they are determined to keep pushing this until they get it through. Privatization of water has not yet succeeded in the US, though this is a corporate goal. We deregulated the phone and cable companies with the Communications Act in the Clinton Era, but what is bizarre is that the vote was somethign like 450-14. Yes that is correct. The vast majority of liberal Democrats voted for that scam. And here we are, 20 years later, with the ruins of communications degregulation lying all around us for anyone to see, and hardly anyone has turned against it. Neither party wants to re-regulate the phone or cable companies.
The cable companies obviously need regulating as they are a classic example of an unregulated monopoly. You see anyone even suggesting that we should regulate the cable monopolies? The phone companies are formally still regulated, but the truth is that it is pretty much a hands-off approach now and they get to abuse any way they see fit. The phone companies are for all intents and purposes unregulated monopolies in the US. The cable and phone companies run the Internet, and the Internet is not regulated at all. Instead it is run by tow of the most evil industries in the US, the unregulated phone and cable companies. There are efforts now to put in some basic regulations (to treat the Internet as part of the regulated public airwaves which clearly it is) but they are having a very tough time. The terrifying battle over Net Neutrality shows just how badly the pro-people forces have lost control of the narrative.
The cell phone companies are also using the public airwaves, at it is obvious that they need to be regulated too whether they are monopolies or not. They are actually not monopolies, but the industry is extremeely stupid and wasteful (for example, each company built its own cell towers instead of having one set of public towers used by all of them), and while the companies are not yet monopolies, there is not much competition. The cellphone companies are operating on the model of Let’s all collude to screw the customers! This is actually the case for a number of industries. All of the “competitors” in the industry agree that they are going to screw the consumers as much as possible to rake in maximum profits. One would think that a pro-consumer company would rise from the muck but it doesn’t seem to happen. This is a clear case of market failure and it is more common than you think. We are now seeing the beginnings of some real pro-consumer competition with these cellphone rats, but it’s been slow going.
So as you can see, we are having a hard time holding onto regulating the utilities that we do regulate and there is a constant danger of looming deregulation. New monopolies were deregulated and there are no plans in sight to re-regulate them. Existing regulated companies are poorly regulated and given largely free reign to abuse society as much as possible. The possibility of regulating new utilities such as the Internet have run up against tsunami-like corporate lobbying and overcoming these colossal efforts seems daunting.
As you can see, having the state run or at least regulate (For Chrissakes!) utilities is a great idea, but it is running into all sorts of problems, probably the worst of which is that both parties and a huge sector of the population including all the corporate media are hooked on the Deregulation Crack. The deregulation narrative has penetrated deeply into ordinary society such it has nearly become a national Zeitgeist.
