I sent along some final thoughts to the editor of the business magazine for the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia, Molly Curso. Here they are.
Final Thoughts
First, I would like to qualify my previous answer to question #2. I said markets were necessary for the middle class. I would add that free markets are best. The trouble that the United States has faced in large part since the seventies is that: 1) corporations compromise free markets and 2) there is a misinformation network to convince us that corporations thrive in free markets.
There are three main requirements free markets: voluntary, private and informed. Misinformation from corporate sponsored think tanks has grown into a billion dollar a year industry. These think tanks, along with corporate media, emphasize the first requirement; selectively interpret and apply the second; and outright interfere with the third with a Buyer Beware advocacy. Equating corporations with free markets tends to place us in a Catch-22 situation. We seek to “bolster” free markets by nurturing corporations, with the overall impact that we are farther away from free markets than we were. This opens the door for perhaps an unintended consequence of the misinformation campaign: opponents of corporate misdeeds become opponents of free markets.
I’m willing to bet that this misinformation within our country spills over to affect countries such as Georgia, precisely because corporations are involved. You mention that Georgia has been divorced from a history of shopkeepers and merchants. Perhaps Georgia is divorced as well from realizing these are the true expression of free markets, and not government licensed, protected and subsidized corporations.
I could go into this more when we chat.
Ironically, too few people with strong desires to change the world for the good are attracted to decentralization. After all, more effective action can take place through centralization. If you are one of the “good guys,” then why not make your life easier through centralization.
History has shown that even the most magnificent of empires collapse partly because of internal problems. Of particular note is that empires not conquered by other empires eventually collapse into a decentralized default, such as the “Dark Ages.” Yet the decentralized “Dark Ages” featured longer life spans for ordinary folk than occurred in the western empires that immediately preceded or followed. Merchants and shopkeepers did alright for themselves. County fairs were first established during the “Dark Ages.” There were significant inventions to make agricultural life easier, such as the water wheel and plow. Life was mainly “Dark” from a centralized perspective.
The Scientific Revolution provided a remedy to one problem inherent to decentralization, a means of aggregating, distributing and prioritizing decentralized ideas and discoveries for the common good. Our democracy of federation was constructed to accomplish this same objective. Federation was our greatest contribution to the science of governance, not democracy, laws or even grand documents.
We have become more national and less federated for centuries now. We have trended towards greater protections of intellectual property rights and tying up patent rights as sacred free market icons. Lost in this false association is that the right not to be imitated, a natural human drive, can only be achieved by centralized government. The basic research shared at universities is being replaced with applied research with protected benefits for corporations. Bankruptcies get tougher for small businesses, bail outs get larger for corporations. I’m not recommending a return to the “Dark Ages,” but some type of scientific/federated/decentralized rebirth seems to be in order.
Tags: Middle Class Culture, Middle Class Economics, Middle Class Politics, Misinformation
