Thursday, September 22, 2005

your thoughts people

http://www.thomhartmann.com/radicalmiddle.shtml
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1 comment:

alan said...

Yo! Michael T.! I'd like to expand on a comment made about the "Radical Middle."

"The Radical Middle always believed in the idea of a commons - the things that we all own collectively...."

Talk of the Commons is definitely what separates the men from the boys in discussion of matters political. It's the difference between relevance and irrelevance. Isn't it interesting that these days the old right and old left have more in common with each other than they do with what passes for "right" and "left" these days?

In fact, isn't it remarkable that the old right is in fact increasingly damned for being "leftist"? Why? Because the old right values not only property but the commons as well. The new right values only that which can be reduced to a commodity and spot-traded on an exchange someplace.

To listen to the new right Limbaughites of the world, you'd never suspect that the old right had a critique of presently-existing capitalism. While valuing free enterprise and the right to property the old Lockean right was savagely critical of the type of corporate capitalism that was built upon wrenching common cooperatively-held lands from the common people through enclosure.

In addition to the enclosure of land, there are other examples of commons, belonging to all people as a cultural inheritance, being taken forcefully and plundered for private fun and profit at the expense of the rest of humanity.

Our monetary system for example. The creation of credit (money) depends of the presense of a collaterol which is mostly dependent on having been inherited from generation to generation in one form or another. This is because with few exceptions money is generated through origination of loans and then canceled once loans are paid, thus withdrawing money from circulation. The wealth used to collateralize loans could alternatively be drawn upon to monetize a sufficient portion of our wealth as to fully liquidate the costs of production in a free enterprise economy. Clearly we do not have this. Our banking system is designed to liquidate loans, not costs and not prices. We fill the gaps created in purchasing power by our present banking system with credit cards and government budget deficits.

Friday, September 23, 2005 at 7:51:00 AM CDT

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