Is Kapitalism Immoral, Komrad?

This is a fascinating and complex question posed by the NY Times blog Deal Journal and answered by conservative blogger and UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge in his blog posting of the same name.  Bainbridge's answer is, of course, "Heck no!"

The article on Deal Journal cites this article by Stefan Theil which asserts that in many European educational systems, capitalism is taught to be considered a failure and uses this viewpoint as the basis for explaining current polls of European Union citizens who largely do not favor traditional Western Capitalism and therefore are American Hating Pinko Commie Scum (AHPCS).

After reviewing both Bainbridge's and Theil's articles, I must say: You guys sure do answer like rich people.  Capitalism has been working in our hemisphere for well over 200 years - for rich people.  The poor, on the other hand, have for a bulk of that time been enslaved, unable to vote, indentured and sorely undereducated and underserved in a wide variety of "public" services.

While capitalism itself isn't immoral, it inevitably leads to the immorality of capitalists.  Seeing that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law, it's also true that ignorance of the abuses of human beings is no excuse for supporting the abuse of human beings.

The truth is, that for capitalism to work there must be desire or need.  This is the lifeblood of any capitalistic system; if people didn't want or need dollars, they wouldn't go to work - simple as that.  In order for there to be desire or need, there must be a LACK of that which is to be desired and/or needed - in our case: Dollars.  Now that we have that settled, the next thing to keep in mind is that in order for that thing (dollars, again) to have any value whatsoever there has to be a limited supply of them - if dollars grew on trees, they wouldn't be worth anything (how much are acorns going for these days?), same thing goes for equal distribution: if everyone had the same amount of dollars, no one would care about transferring them.  Remembering that we need people to need dollars, and there can only be so many of them, that means that some people must have plenty and some people must have not enough.  Capitalism relies on this imbalance to keep going, and in our system, not having enough money also means not having enough healthcare, not having enough housing and not having enough food.

As if it weren't enough that we live in a system that requires some to live in poverty.  This system also relies on heated competition.  While I'm sure a load of people assert that healthy competition is a great thing, we have allowed it to nearly erase cooperation.  Admittedly, this serves us in some ways, and it screws us in others:  We may have many different companies and organization working to find a cure for cancer, but the climate of competition prevents them from openly sharing their data during trials. I think it's also fair to say that the 10 year old boy who made your GAP jeans in a sweatshop so that GAP and it's suppliers can maintain a healthy profit margin has an entirely different perspective on competition.  Or should we ask all of the American citizens who lost their jobs when factories moved across borders thanks to NAFTA?  Or should we have to ask all of the people who pay too much for insurance and medical services because we've allowed and encouraged private firms to profit from other peoples suffering and illness?

These things don't happen alongside capitalism, they happen because of capitalism and it's a system that necessitates immorality. So no, capitalism itself isn't immoral.  Much in the same way that a handgun isn't immoral, one still has to something of questionable morality to get any practical use out of it.

Whatever you do, don't say "BOMB"

It's taken me nearly until the last minute to discover a topic that has had the right blend of absurdity, asininity and annoyance for my tastes. Thankfully, there is this from the Washington Post.

As it is widely known, the White House and the Pentagon have been monitoring emails, text messages and telephone calls that are entering or leaving the country under the suspicious Protect America Act (PAA). This becomes a very serious issue because it is very possible that the person on the US end of the transmission could, in fact, be a US Citizen with all the rights and good stuff that have been guaranteed by that pesky Constitution and its silly Bill of Rights.

Did I mention that all of this monitoring is down without any warrants? Just so we're clear: The United States Federal Government is monitoring the communications of US Citizens without constitutionally required warrants. This issue is disconcerting on a number of levels, paramount is the possibility for guilt by association. If one person on US Soil receives a call from overseas do his friends, family and business associates become fair game as well?

The ACLU, in another valiant attempt to preserve and protect the rights of the American Individual took their case to the US Supreme Court to prove that the actions of the White House are unconstitutional and therefore illegal. The Supreme Court decided, in a vote of 8-1, to stick their collective fingers in their ears and shout "LA LALA LALA LALA LA LA" and then refused to hear the case.

The Supreme Court's refusal is on the grounds that no individual can prove that they have been monitored. This is because, while the White House openly brags about wiretapping, they refuse to divulge the names of anyone that has been monitored for "National Security Reasons." Citing the aforementioned PAA.

Ignoring all of the potential political, industrial and financial abuses that one could slip under the PAA radar, the Bush Administration is now trying to extend the Protect America Act indefinitely while also expanding it to protect telecom companies from litigation for violating the rights of US Citizens.

What could possibly go wrong?

My New Favorite Part of the Statesman

Doing this assignment I stumbled upon the Austin American-Statesman's Secrecy Files where they report the growing trend in the US Government toward closing off the public from the real dealings of the US Government.

In the Secrecy Files, there is a cool story about President Bush's attempts to cripple a new law that would strengthen the already enacted Freedom of Information Act.

With this, it would appear that Senators John Cornyn(R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy(D-Vermont) drafted a piece of legislation titled the OPEN Government Act (OPEN is an acronym for Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National [Government]). This piece of legislation would create a new government agency titled the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) who would be responsible for resolving disputes between people exercising their rights under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the agencies who resist their lawful requirements through an individual known as the FOIA Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman is crucially important because this office would assume the resolution responsibilities currently resting at the Department of Justice who is also responsible for representing the agencies in the disputes. This action and this position would clear up a huge and messy conflict of interest and would actually be in the best interest of the citizenry, if you can imagine that.

As one should expect, President Bush line item vetoed the ombudsman position relegating this duty back to the Department of Justice and ensuring that the people who represent the non-compliant agencies are effectively the same folks who decide whether or not they have to comply with the law.

Oh, and for the record: Senators Cornyn and Leahy scored some not-so-blatantly-corrupt points today. Way to go guys!

Speaking of the House

Thanks to my favorite ridiculous news aggregator, Fark.com, I happened upon this lovely article over at Variety.

It is fair to say that the events that unfolded last night during the Super Tuesday event will almost certainly affect the next few years of our lives, our economy, our children, our soldiers, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and if the crap really hits the fan the people of Iran. Despite the huge importance of this, the Nielsen ratings report that we'd frankly rather watch Hugh Laurie portray the hobbling, pain-killer-addicted House and regular Americans who've been deceived by their friends and families to believe they have talent on American Idol.

In total, Fox had 25.5 million viewers during the primary whereas ABC, CBS and NBC (who chose to carry the election) were only able to maintain the attention of 18.6 million viewers between them (5.3m, 6.1m, 7.2m respectively).

This is particularly relevant to recent class discussions regarding the disturbing levels of ignorance to public matters displayed in our citizenry .

You can't make this stuff up!

This post isn't for any grades, but more for the shared amusement of the Professor and the Class. Whilst poking around looking for good stuff to read and share I came across the CIA's Website for Kids. Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried, and it's too awesome for words! Enjoy the games session, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't include the "subvert the democratically elected foreign government" board game.

Illegal FBI Wiretapping Takes a Blow / First Post

I could be hokey and post an entry explaining who I am and what I'm going to post in this blog but I think I'm going to skip that and jump right into the bloggin'.

No Kidding. Many of the wiretaps that the FBI has been maintaining to monitor US Citizens have been cut off not because of a much needed injunction by the Supreme Court and most certainly not because of any fear of public outrage but instead because the FBI forgot to pay their phone bill.

Of course, they're blaming a rogue agent who pocketed $25k from the budget, but I reckon the US Government has at least enough free cash laying around to cover the equivalent of one teachers salary, or 1/22 the cost of a cruise missile (source).

Of course, this was not widely reported in the US, we have to look to the Brits to tell us about this sort of thing: Read the story here.