Let me quote the ever acerbic IOZ to bring this point home:
At every instance of cooperation and collusion between our governing factions, the Donk concludes that someone--Obama, Emmanuel, Schumer, whomever--"got punk'd," whereas whenever some minor congresscreature raises a lonely voice against, say, the perpetual sacrifice of virgins to the death-god Molech, that is supposed to represent the true form and nature of the Democratic party. Obviously this is essentially backward. The actual apparatus of government isn't "polarized" at all. War and big business are shared endeavors. The expansion of the surveillance state, the destruction of privacy, the erosion of individual human autonomy, the destruction of the rights of the accused, the essentially superlegal status of police and military forces, and the project to create a population of placid, uninformed instruction-followers via a carefully designed program of national mediocrity are all joint endeavors.
But, well, uh, I mean, I guess there are still plenty of schmoes who can't figure out that the good cop and the bad cop are on the same fucking team.
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Is this a disagreement, or just an acknowledgement that Big Business, Big Government, and Big Education are all one team opposed to the disruptive little guy/entrepreneur?
I think it depends on which big businesses you are talking about. JP Morgan and the government are on the same team. Microsoft and the government much less so. Microsoft has now learned to donate money to the government to keep the feds off its back, but I wouldn't describe it as being on the same team.
I also do think there is the red government-blue government divide. So you could three it as three-way divide: the people, the blue government (cathedral, harvard, teachers unions, state department, democrats, perhaps JP Morgan) and the red government (Department of Defense, Exxon-Mobil, Haliburton, Republicans, Evangelicals).
Sometimes the Red Government and Blue Government get along. Right now their policy is pretty close. Obama's policy towards the financial crisis or the war in Iraq has barely diverged at all from Bush's.
But sometimes they are not on the same side, and we see "polarization" and massive internal conflict.
The expansion of the surveillance state, the destruction of privacy, the erosion of individual human autonomy, the destruction of the rights of the accused, the essentially superlegal status of police and military forces, and the project to create a population of placid, uninformed instruction-followers via a carefully designed program of national mediocrity are all joint endeavors.
I don't think this is an accurate way to frame events at all. I don't think any of the program is consciously, centrally planned. I mean, if there is some conscious plan to turn the residents of the country into placid instruction followers they sure as hell are not doing a very good job with West Baltimore. Or the public schools for that matter. Schools have an incredible mix of mind-numbing repetition, progressive quackery, and Lord of the Flies like savagery. Schools were not designed by the corporations and they do not behave as if they were designed by corporations.
My model of government is that there are thousands of different factions. Each faction has selected leaders who honestly believe that bettering their faction will better the world (or at least "earn their faction the share fair"). But in practice, bettering the faction will simply allocate more pie to that faction, at the expense of making the pie smaller over all. These factions often have contradictory and chaotic results, but the overall result is just a decaying, red giant state. There is no force that restrain the factions and thus preserve the growth of the overall pie, so you have a thousand factions each passing legislation to clog up people's lives and slow growth.
Mr. Lonely, Welcome. Stick around, join the conversation if you like...though we prefer comments that relate to the material on the blog.
Devin,
Ok...We're not far from the same page here. Older companies are effectively independent subsidiaries of USGCorp.
And I'm ok with your red-blue government divide, but AFAIK, most of the time there's a tug-o-war between red and blue over who gets to screw the little guy next...but there is no party in government that has interests similar to those of the people (autonomy, individual wealth?)
As to IOZ...yeah, he overstates the case. It's not a conspiracy, but damned if it doesn't look like one a lot. Never attribute to malice, and all that.
I think we're in a similar place in explanation of factional government with 1 further caveat.
You say: But in practice, bettering the faction will simply allocate more pie to that faction, at the expense of making the pie smaller over all.
My only change would be ... making the pie smaller overall AND increasing the sphere of control of the government. It's the infinite ratchet...and not by malice.
Aretae,
The formalist position isn't as simple as "media, university and government are on the same team."
Democratic governments do not like to make their own decisions, as they could then be held responsible for the decisions. (The key point is that this is a function of democracy).
Therefore, whenever possible, democratic government searches for someone to tell it what to do. This is where university enters into the picture. "Science" can reveal what government should do.
Corporations work with the democratic government in the same way. Corporations have "knowledge and experience" which they impart to government so that government will know what to do. Democratic government needs to know what to do and can use corporations - older, established ones as Devin suggests - to guide their actions.
Formalists - at least I - don't disagree that democratic governments and big businesses work together. I also believe this practice - as currently practiced - is not good at all.
The critical point is that this working together is a function of democratic decision making. Democratic governments don't want to make decisions. A process by which government can make decisions allows elected politicians to pawn-off responsibility for bad decisions. The same process also allows politicians to do their jobs, namely to spend their time on TV and raising money.
You can criticize corporations all you want, but you're missing the root of the problem - the root of the problem is democracy.
I agree with Foseti.
Most bills are written by cathedral or corporate lobbyists, and this is seen as perfectly normal. Politicians are primarily actors. They delegate the law making to those who know the issue best (the particular interest group or corporation). The corporation of course frames the bill in terms of "freedom" and "growth", but of course the results will be quite different.
If Obama had Winterspeak and Moldbug as economic advisors he could craft an economic plan that would a) be far more popular than his current actions and b) actually solve the problem.
But instead his advisors are cathedral priests and the corrupt bankers who got us into the mess. Thus the problems continue.
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