I know this is actually a few days belated, as Japan and the Federal budget have largely pushed the Wisconsin issue out of everyone's sight in the media, but that only serves to underscore another "I told you so" message. Simply put, I'm tired of those protests being represented as some sort of civil rights march that is comparable to the 1960s, Tahrir Square, or even the union marches of the Gilded Age. Such comparisons are silly and inaccurate, and it has nothing to do with my stance on the issue itself, this post is about the media coverage and people's ignorant responses to it.
Grassroots As A Sequoia, and Almost As New
Like it or not, government employee unions are a gargantuan network of national political lobbies. Yes the various corporate lobbies put together are bigger and contribute more money to political campaigns, although it is just plain stupid to assume all corporate campaign money goes to the Republicans. The media doesn't even have the balls to make such a ridiculous assertion, it just says "the corporations contribute way more!" and lets the ignorant reader add "to the Republicans, of course!" for himself. Now, I'm not making the claim that the unions are good or bad, just that they are an established political force; not some oppressed, newly formed grassroots movement. They are also not fighting FOR a legislation that will level the playing field, assist the interests they represent, or change the way politics is done in this country; they are protesting in an attempt to STOP legislation that weakens them and threatens their financial base. This is not comparable to the unions of the 1890s or the 1960s civil rights marches or Tahrir Square for the simple reason that those forces fought for the introduction of new, novel, unprecedented reform that had not been seen before them.
With that in mind, supporters of the protests should recognize just how unsuccessful the track record is of protests AGAINST a change in this country's history. The most prominent example are the protests in the South AGAINST the implementation of public school integration after the Brown vs Board of Education ruling in 1964. It is tempting but also silly to compare those protests to extremist minorities like the Westboro Baptist Church. Anti-integration was a massive movement, with 10,000s of protesters representing 100s of interlocked organizations in various cities and states that were well-established and funded. They organized demonstrations, picketed in front of schools and even blocked the entrances in some cases, and so forth. Yet the Federal Government insisted that a Supreme Court ruling had more political weight than 10,000s of people with placards and loudspeakers, and eventually dispatched both the military and the FBI to enforce the ruling in specifically resistant locations and break up vigilante organizations trying to sabotage it. The grand majority of the arguments I've seen in favor of the protests and the state legislators fleeing the legislature has been along the lines of them being "righteous" and "powerful" by virtue of involving 10,000s of people, and the politicians who ignored them "defying the will of the people" for the same reason. Quite simply, folks, I call bullshit. By that logic, the anti-integration protests were "righteous" and "should have succeeded".
In my personal opinion, the Wisconsin protests are comparable to neither civil rights marches nor the anti-integration protests, as both of those were clashes between broad coalitions seeking to implement or obstruct widespread socio-political reform. The Wisconsin protests, no matter how much the union bosses attempt to appeal to a broader base by claiming to "stand for the middle class" and be "fighting a corporatist agenda", are a laughable attempt to block a rather narrowly aimed economic reform against themselves.
Regardless Of Your Cause, Don't Point 50,000 Guns If You're Only Willing To Pull 50 Triggers
We've hopefully established that the unions are more counter-revolutionary than revolutionary, and regardless of which side the reader agrees with, the government being on the side of those demanding change tends to deliver that change, whereas the reverse is not necessarily true. Now let's examine why "righteousness," perceived or real, makes very little difference, and the impact of numbers is overstated and confounded in other factors. There are a number of lesser known protests in recent history representing causes far less despicable than opposition to integration that are actually far more comparable to the Wisconsin protests in terms of number and inclination, and they share very poor prognoses. Two that come to my mind in recent years in CA are the gay rights protests in front of the Mormon Church in Los Angeles the day after Prop 8 passed, and the wave of protests that takes place each time the state government announces a new series of budget cuts to public education, whether it is higher education or K-12. Not one such funding cut has yet failed to be signed into law, and Prop 8 is still in effect. The gay rights lobbies are still in the process of challenging Prop 8 in the Federal judicial system, but both sides of the issue said they would do so if the initiative didn't go their way long before the vote; it is kind of silly to attribute this to a half-materialized one-day protest. As for numbers, 50,000 protesters may seem intimidating, but for a State like Wisconsin it is actually quite negligible as a voting bloc, and the politicians they oppose simply don't care to appease them as the grand majority of them are the opposition's base, and would never vote for who they are protesting anyway. More importantly than even that, it is well known that these protests are professionally organized, with a variety of incentives, free transportation, and other rewards doled out by the massive organizing lobbies to boost their numbers and look like they have broad support. Not that people turning out in response to organization and incentives isn't still meaningful protest, but it is quite different from people taking to the streets in random discontent, and such protesters are far less likely to take their activism to the level of being hurt or arrested for the cause, as was clearly demonstrated in Wisconsin. Eugene Debs, Martin Luther King, and the January 25th Youth did not win by loading buses of people and parading them in front of the government buildings with a police escort provided by the same government they are calling oppressive. All 3 of these movements, and to some extent the anti-integration movement mentioned above, were really not "protests" but forms of civil disobedience. These were activists who intentionally engaged in acts forbidden by laws that they found to be unfair and repressive, in a concerted effort to provoke the government to forcefully stop such peaceful rebellion as a woman refusing to leave her bus seat. The violent repression then aggravated an otherwise complacent general population that agreed with the activists, leading to a public outpouring of non-compliance in proportions the government did not have resources to stand up to. The anti-integration protests attempted some of these tactics, but they simply could not muster the popular support required to succeed as the general public was fed up with the racist hypocrisy of segregation and saw them as deserving of being gassed, clubbed, and arrested.
The lesson to learn here is that in a country like the US where protests are common, considered a reasonable means of expression, and not fired upon, they very rarely accomplish anything; especially when they are opposition protests to a proposed change. Whether or not the Wisconsin union protesters would have been viewed as deserving or as activist victims if the protests had escalated to violent clashes with police is a difficult call to make, but it is a moot point as despite claiming 50,000 protesters, they simply lacked the will to go from protest to active non-compliance. Yes, a few people did get arrested and roughed up by police for refusing to leave the Capitol, but not remotely enough for anyone to care to praise either side and raise the ante to escalation and widespread non-compliance. Quite simply, the unions proved themselves to be nothing more than a band of toddlers throwing a fit because their father Scott Walker refused to give them ice cream before dinner, and when he said "OK, then go to bed hungry", they sat down at the table and put on their bibs, demonstrating their grudge with only an upset facial expression that makes adults laugh. Rebellion of the well-fed fails specifically because it is unwarranted by virtue of the rebels not having a NEED to succeed. Eugene Debs would NOT be proud.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The Pence Amendment: A[nother] Lesson For Progressives
"Basing public policy around the moral values you'd LIKE people to have is like basing your daily commute to work on the fact that you'd LIKE to be able to fly; it's an entertaining little fantasy, but good luck explaining to your boss that you 'couldn't have accounted' for gravity."
I have many friends who openly and proudly identify themselves as "Progressives", among them to some extent my good friend and the co-host of our new Webcast "Edge of Chaos", Joe Ryan. In recent weeks, with the onslaught of policy proposals that threaten and limit abortions from the far right both in the Federal and various State legislatures, I have seen many of these people respond with outrage and ridicule, calling this "theocracy," "mysogyny," and an "attack on women's rights" or "reproductive rights". While I agree with Progressives that abortion should be legal and accessible (for reasons I may address in a later post that are completely unrelated to this ideological banter), my response to their outrage is usually "I told you so". These policies, specifically the Pence Amendment, are the direct and inevitable result of the well-intentioned naivete of decades of Progressive policies that have given the government the power to meddle in such affairs, and what's worse, they are only the latest of multiple manifestations of this effect. Yet Progressives continue to place their faith in government and blame its opponents for all of society's problems. In order to understand what I'm saying rather than dismissing it as crazy or extreme, the reader will need significant background before the discussion of modern events.
In This Post:
What is Progressivism?
Progressivism's History and Scorecard
The Pence Amendment and Progressive Stubborness
What is Progressivism?
For those entirely politically uninclined or simply unclear on this topic, let me briefly explain the meaning of this word. Progressivism is broadly defined as the political belief - whether theoretical or ideological - that government involvement in the economy and social policy is necessary to ensure the greatest possible progress of society. Progressivism does not necessarily entail belief in a state-run or socialist economy. In the modern US, the political affiliation is typically associated with the far but not militant left; it endorses a nationalised rather than independent central bank, greater regulations and higher taxation of the rich and environmentally costly industry, government investments in education, health care, and clean energy - although these can remain privately run, "positive discrimination" policies such as affirmative action and laws that protect or even mandate union membership, and social policies that restrict expression deemed dangerous and offensive such as television violence and hate speech. This list is by far non-exhaustive, but should make the profile of a typical modern-day Progressive clear. However, Progressivism can span party lines and economic inclinations. The first openly Progressive US President - Teddy Roosevelt - was a Republican, and many of Richard Nixon's policies can also be labeled Progressive with relatve ease. Similarly, supply-side economic policy - government subsidies and protection of the largest and most powerful private industries - can be defined broadly as Progressive, seeing as nearly every politician that engages in such policies claims to do so because the failure of these industries would bring excessive costs to average citizens, whereas their success creates a common good for everyone to share. Even some socially conservative policies - such as vice prohibition - can fit the Progressive label, as the government imposes a restriction on personal choice that is claimed to bring greater benefit to society as a whole.
I find that I agree with modern Progressives on the grand majority of what they hope to accomplish. But then, I would say their goals are shared by most political ideologies with the exception of stalwart social conservatives. Who would argue with a quality education for every child, adequate food/shelter/necessities for every American, a clean environment, secure and humane working conditions, equality for minorities of all types, and (with the exception of some social conservatives) freedoms of expression, reproductive choice, and various forms of affiliation including religion? My problem with Progressives - even limited to the modern definition - is their methodology for accomplishing any of these goals, a methodology that despite its predominantly humane intentions has a long and profound history of blatant disregard for the nature of both the individual human mind and human society as a whole. What's worse, each time this disregard brings about the opposite of what Progressivism intended to achieve, Progressives have an extremely difficult time taking responsibility, instead blaming "meddlers" and "saboteurs" that destroyed their rosey vision. Do I sound extreme and outrageous?
Well, let's examine Progressivism's History and its "Scorecard" of "successful policies".
Origins:
Progressivism originated in the late 1800s as a movement of proponents of greater government involvement in the regulation of society. Its adherents had little else in common, but their primary membership classes were, contrary to popular belief, relatively socially conservative and fairly open about the goals of achieving personal economic gains. Labor unions were a primary force in the early Progressive movement, but the unions of the Gilded Age were composed primarily of the descendents of white minority immigrant groups from the early 19th century such as Italians and Irish. These groups spoke fluent English as they were second or third generation Americans, were well-organized and empowered by their religious and social communities, and held relatively privileged positions in industrial labor as skilled tradesmen of various sorts. They sought empowerment through government involvement that would level the playing field against their corporate bosses of WASP descent, but simultaneously these organizations tended to be radically hostile to newer immigrants such as Eastern Europeans in the East and Asians in the West, as well as African-Americans. The reason for this hostility is easily understood - skilled laborers sought organized rebellion to break the plutocracy of the corporate aristocrats, but the waves of migrating cheaper labor (including freed African-Americans from the South) provided the latter with an alternative; and the unfamiliar customs, languages, and religions of these groups made them difficult to incorporate into union structure.
Women's rights groups - originating in various women's organizations during the Civil War - were another force within the progressive movement; and following women's suffrage, their policy agendas sought from government were vice restrictions, regulations on labor safety and child labor, and in some cases public education. The wives and mothers of industrial workers, women were the primary victims of the vice abuse engaged in by their overworked and stressed male loved ones. Their labor agenda was not based solely in a concern for the well-being of their children, but a push to eliminate another form of alternative labor for unionized workers to force corporations to provide better pay and benefits for grown men. These organizations were primarily composed of white women who stood by the unions in their hostility toward minorities, and a colossal driving force behind the move to segregate the emerging public education machine and other public services. Advocates for the urban poor were perhaps the most humane and tolerant of the original Progressives, but even their almshouses and poorhouses often relied on strict religious foundations intended to instill morals that would "cure" poverty, and some of these were very welcoming of ethnic and religious minorities while others blatantly rejected them as morally hopeless or undeserving of help in light of needy white Americans that they perceived as first in line. Riding on the shoulders of these organizations were many remnants of Confederacy apologist groups such as the Know Nothing Movement that mobilized the formers hostility toward minorities toward ideological agendas of outright racism and white supremacy, which I have addressed in greater detail in my earlier post on collective responsibility.
Before Progressivism was any sort of mainstream idea, the influence of these combined groups brought about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and a variety of Jim Crow laws including the judicial upholding of Separate but Equal. The precedent was set to give the government a DUTY of deciding who gets to benefit from the American Dream long before many of the minorities decided against had any viable representation in said government.
1900-1920 "The Progressive Era":
Teddy Roosevelt's administration pioneered the establishment of a patchwork of regulatory agencies comprised of hired, qualified, professional bureaucrats intended to enforce employer-employee agreements and establish basic government-funded public works such as roads and bridges. During his presidency, these were hailed by adherents to Progressivism as "saviors" from the unapologetic and rampant corruption of state and local bureaucracies that openly took bribes and sided with special interests tied to the politicians who appointed them, including but not limited to corporate tycoons.
However, Roosevelt's VP and successor to the Presidency, W.H. Taft, did not share his passion for Progressive policies. A key disagreement between Roosevelt and Taft was monetary policy; irresponsible and erratic banking practices backed by the antics of the corrupt bureaucracies described above and a general slowness of information distribution had brought about multiple economic "panics" in the preceding decades; and in those days, the banks involved typically went down with the economic ship that they sank, but some tycoons managed to escape with the money. Roosevelt unsuccessfully challenged Taft for the Presidential nomination of the Republican Party in 1912, and a key campaign promise of Roosevelt's was a nationalised central bank modeled after those of Western Europe that would monopolize key banking practices and regulate private banks, a policy Taft opposed. When Roosevelt narrowly missed the Republican nomination, he organized a splinter party called The Progressive Party (AKA the Bull Moose Party). The 3 candidate race split the Republican base and handed the election to dark horse Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who had at best a moderate position on Progressive policies.
Upon being elected, however, Wilson saw the potential of Progressivism as a movement and the significant minority of sympathizers toward it within his own party that would likely cost him the 1916 election if he did not appease them. To appease both sides of the spectrum, one of Wilson's first moves was the endorsement and establishment of the monstrosity of the Federal Reserve, a cartel of private banks with the monopolistic and regulatory functions of Roosevelt's vision. Toward the end of his Presidency, Wilson also endorsed the 20th and 21st Amendments (Women's Suffrage and Prohibition), and a variety of labor laws such as mandatory worker's compensation, minimum wages, child labor prohibition, regulation of hours and overtime pay, and so forth. Interestingly, many trade and skilled unions opposed this wave of labor laws as the deals they could negotiate with their employers would be better than those guaranteed by these laws, but with them in place laborers would be harder to organize toward activism; but by 1920 Progressivism was finally beginning to take on a role of representing minorities and unskilled labor.
In sum, these 2 decades established a precedent of the government regulating labor, banking, public works, and vice - 4 domains it had never been extensively involved in prior - all with the defense that these domains were too important to everyday American life to be left to the whim and uncertainty of the free market.
The Great Depression:
Often blamed for bringing about the Great Depression, 1920s Presidents Coolige and Hoover are in fact at most responsible for sitting on their thumbs and allowing the rotten seeds planted by their predecessors to grow into enormous trees of decay. No longer bound by the pressures of competition with each other but lacking a regulatory agency outside of their control, megabanks engaged in fraudulent practices such as insider trading and misrepresentation of assets that would make both their Gilded Age predecessor and their modern counterparts like EnRon and Goldman Sachs blush. The regulatory agencies established by Roosevelt quickly came under the control of large industrial tycoons such as the logging and mining industries and their pet politicians; replacing the 19th century practice of open bribery with the 20th century hypocrisy of exchanging favorable regulation for extended funding and job security rationalized by the "need" and "importance" of these industries for progress. Prohibition is not often cited as a causal element of the 1929 economic collapse, but its laughable unenforcibility gave rise to an unprecedented black market economy and an organized crime network that did not exist on a national level before it. When 1.5 decades of these combined practices brought about the stock market meltdown and farm-destroying ecological erosion that combined into the Great Depression, labor regulations played a colossal role in preserving the economic state of meltdown. Unlike previous recessions, employers could no longer renegotiate employee contracts or reduce pay and compensation below floors set by Federal regulations which were no longer compatible with plummeting prices. Employees who could keep their jobs retained their rate of pay, but the country experienced instead colossal rates of unemployment as small and medium businesses were forced into bankruptcy, preserving only the megaindustries responsible for the mess and the government on their leash.
The 1910s were still largely fresh in the minds of Americans and contrary to the modern world, many understood the link between excessive regulation and the economic situation. Progressives, on the other hand, apologized for the results, claiming that their dreams had been ruined by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who did not do what their patron saint Teddy Roosevelt had intended. 1920s politicians certainly knew what was going on and turned a blind eye to the corruption and irresponsibility while claiming an age of "indefinite prosperity". However, it is important to remember that corrupt banks and megaindustries had existed for nearly a century by 1929 and caused much turmoil and misery, but NEVER managed to achieve an economic collapse of such epic and nationwide proportions until they were empowered by Federal policy favoritism. Having Federal regulators to buy eliminated virtually all capacity for competition whether it came from smaller industries, unions, or other large players with rival pet governments at the state and local levels. If Progressives' primary issues in the Gilded Age were with the corruption and hypocrisy of the state and local authorities and their favoritism toward large tycoons, they should reasonably have predicted that the establishment of an over-arching authority would create not a solution, but a new powerhouse to be bought by the highest bidder and then released to eradicate his competition.
If Teddy Roosevelt is the god of Progressives, then FDR is their clear and unquestioned messiah, but the reality is that unlike Teddy's, his cousin's policies cannot even be reasonably argued as well-intentioned but naive. The New Deal more closely resembled the hybrid compromises of Woodrow Wilson which made true Progressive balk. Like 1912, the 1932 election saw a sharp division between proponents of a return to pre-1912 policies and a dramatic increase in regulations and government involvement, including respective calls for the abolition (often by violent means) of the Federal Reserve and its nationalisation. Unlike 1912, the advent of mass media kept these two movements in the fringes of both parties, and the electoral panels of both Hoover and FDR in fact agreed on more than they disagreed on; a middle ground of keeping things as they were. Upon his victory FDR realized, like Wilson, the threat posed by the emerging fringes and moved to appease them without hurting his patron special interests. Rather than abolish or seize the Federal Reserve, FDR settled for a series of regulations that would prevent it from engaging in many of the practices that had caused the meltdown. Rather than collapse inefficient labor regulations to allow people to return to self-sufficiency, FDR introduced the first social welfare programs - among them social security and various housing and health regulations and assistance programs - to alleviate the plight of the millions of people impoverished by the collapse. Rather than eliminate corrupt regulatory agencies, FDR opted for sets of new ones; the expansion of government-run public works to alleviate the ecological damage and offer employment alternatives, and public subsidies to discourage farmers from practices incompatible with the failing economy. Although alcohol Prohibition did not endure the Great Depression, the advent of Hemp Prohibition and a variety of other vice regulations introduced in the 1930s gave the organized crime cartels new cash crops to sell on the black market, and the various law enforcement agencies charged with fighting them job security. The New Deal is often credited with alleviating the Great Depression, but this is simply historically inaccurate. Despite these policies being in full swing for 6 years, economic measures such as unemployment, the stock market, and agricultural and industrial growth remained abysmal through 1938 and largely unchanged after a slight initial improvement in 1934. In the 1938 election, FDR's New Deal Coalition was unceremoniously fired as the majority in both houses of Congress, and the derailing of the continuation of many New Deal policies improved every economic marker by at least 50% by 1940. However, the US had emerged from an era brought on by the unintended consequences of excessive government with a government quintupled in size and with mandates to regulate agriculture, retirement, social services, charity, housing, health, and significantly expanded mandates toward its already infused domains.
Later Cycles:
Since WWII, especially in economic terms, the US has seen an unending and abysmal tug-of-war between various players seeking to domesticate Progressivism for their benefit and a virtually uninterrupted cycle of attempts to repair failures directly attributable to excessive government intervention in one domain by interventions in another.
JFK and LBJ are considered Progressive heroes for their Federal policies aimed at eliminating institutional segregation and discrimination, but let's not forget that Progressivism set those wheels in motion 80 years prior. A look at the rampant - although closeted - attitudes in this country toward minorities, the 1960s policies achieved limited success, but significantly swept the problems under the table.
LBJ's alphabet soup of social welfare agencies, MediCare, and Nixon's social security and monetary policy reforms are often hailed as the last great acts of Progressivism. However, these policies were merely band-aid fixes for the colossal economic wounds created by the continued dependence of an ever-larger population on government hand-outs as a result of labor over-regulation and the tyranny of the Federal Reserve. Let's not forget that Nixon also initiated the disastrous War on Drugs as an attempt to alleviate the plight of the poor and minorities likely to be victimized by the criminal elements involved in the black market, but only succeeded to enrich and empower them by driving up their prices and creating new bureaucracies for them to bribe.
Then there is every Progressive's antichrist, Ronald Reagan. I'm not a fan of Reagan at all, but precisely because he absolutely did NOT do what Progressives credit him with. In the eyes of many fans and detractors alike, Reagan fulfilled his 1980 campaign promises by chopping up and defunding social welfare and regulatory agencies, disempowering unions, cutting corporate taxes and ushering in a new era of free market economics that was either excellent or awful depending on who is describing it. Some even claim Reagan did this intentionally to destroy a perfectly operational Progressive system. In reality, however, Reagan was a corporatist swine hell-bent on supply-side economics to the extent the US had not seen in almost 100 years; his belief in "free markets" literally expired the moment he stepped down from the podium where he delivered his 1980 inaugural address. Defunding social welfare agencies and cutting taxes may be practices that are compatible with each other, but they absolutely do not account for the unprecedented and extravagant defense expenditures and other miscellaneous corporate subsidies done simultaneously. Reagan also gave unprecedented funding to the bureaucracies charged with fighting the War on Drugs which nevertheless remained an abysmal failure. Reducing revenue while spending excessively on things that equate to flushing money down the toilet doesn't ONLY have the impact of exploding the national debt; corporate subsidies embolden inefficient and abusive megaplayers and shield them from natural competition - just as they did in the previous eras discussed above - which leads to the elimination of smaller competition, soaring prices, and the inevitable holistic collapse which we witnessed in the end of the 1980s. Under Ronald Reagan, the US essentially re-lived the Gilded Age propagated from a Federal level, the power of the Federal government being used to do everything state and local governments had done 100 years earlier that Progressives had a problem with. But it was Progressives that had insisted for 100 years that the Federal government should regulate vice, banking, agriculture, education, immigration, industry, social services, labor, retirement and health, and it had regulated them with such "success" that by the 1980s millions of Americans had lost all capacity for self-sufficiency and became wholly dependent on the welfare state. Ronald Reagan was not an enemy or opponent of Progressivism, he was the epitome of what the proposed Progressive Paradise REALLY looks like when regulated with favoritism and incompetence, qualities every government inherently posesses. Even if he intentionally performed all these functions on behalf of the richest and most powerful players to impoverish and destroy a system of rosey Progressive prosperity (that never existed), maybe Progressives should have considered the possibility of such a politician coming along before handing the government all those functions. Government is a real entity understood by scientific inquiry, not some wishy-washy expression of moralistic ideology that doesn't exist in practice, there is a necessity to predict how it will REALLY behave as opposed to just trusting it to behave the way you intend it to.
Before I conclude that thought, let's examine the last 2 decades:
- In the late 1980s, the disgusting oligopoly of corporate agribusiness, empowered by subsidies and the so-called "Free Trade Agreement," began to dump tons and tons of cheap, processed, genetically altered crap erm... crop on the markets of northern Mexico, destroying the small and medium domestic farms there and quadrupling illegal immigration to the United States in the form of skilled farm workers intent on working for a slave wage for the same agricultural corporations.
- Threatened by competition from these undocumented workers who sidestep labor regulations, Progressive elements such as unions in the US joined up with fearmongering social conservatives to persuade yet ANOTHER Progressive administration in the 1990s to expand and modernize expensive, corrupt, and abysmally unsuccessful bureaucratic agencies to patrol and "secure" the borders. Megabusiness jumped on this bandwagon as a compromise because alternatively, the liberal interests may have demanded Bill Clinton return to pre-Reagan taxation levels and labor regulations, but this way they could band together to victimize a new class of unrepresented minorities like it was trendy to do 100 years before.
- When this ridiculous policy failed to bring economic recovery - surprising only to those unfamiliar with the "success stories" of the Wall of China against the Mongols - Clinton decided to repeal the bulk of the regulations passed against the banking cartel in the 1930s, blowing another bubble of "indefinite prosperity" a la the 1920s. Bush Jr. was among the most incompetent politicians in our history, but one thing he was NOT responsible for was the banking meltdown of 2008. All he did was twiddle his thumbs while the banks spent imaginary money knowing they would bankrupt everyone but themselves, the same way Coolige and Hoover did in the 1920s. Even the time elapsed between these events is roughly the same - 1913-1929, 1993-2008.
My, they weren't kidding when they said not understanding history causes it to repeat itself!
The Pence Amendment and the Stubborness of Progressivism
That, finally, brings us to the year 2011. Every Progressive enraged by the Pence Amendment equated it to outlawing abortion and denying women the right to choice; especially poor, underpriviledged, and minority women. But in reality, Congress doesn't have that authority. Roe v. Wade is still in effect and any legislation outlawing abortion would be immediately struck down as unconstitutional, whether it was Federal or State. All the Pence Amendment does is take away government funding from abortions and a variety of other reproductive healthcare services through changes to legal definitions and the defunding of specific provider organizations (such as Planned Parenthood). I don't agree with this at all; if the government is going to pay for medical services it cannot exclude these because it deems them inappropriate - nature is indifferent to what's "appropriate". But I AM saying this is exactly what we should have expected to happen.
The seeds were sewn by regulations in the 1930s, fertilized by Medicare and Medicaid, and finally sprouted in the laughable Progressive dream of Obama's health care reform of over-regulating medicine in ways that protect the largest economic players and slowly making Americans dependent on government to pay for their skyrocketingly costly services. Look at the historical record above: How could you honestly have EXPECTED the government not to start adding objectionable exclusionary provisions once it's control of health care grew enough to make these effective? It has done so with EVERY OTHER DOMAIN we've trusted it with! Even if politicians like Mike Pence are indeed the Reaganite, mysogynous, theocratic antichrists that Progressives paint them to be; maybe Progressives should have thought about the possibility of such people gaining control of government when they handed the management of health care over to it.
Progressivism is the epitome of government-managed Collectivism, even if it rarely endorses the complete government takeover of anything. It cites the self-interested, competitive nature of human beings as dangerous, unpredictable, and uncaring about others, and seeks to correct for the inequities that result from this nature through government intervention which is, theoretically, driven by the public good. In practice, however, people and organizations within the government are just as self-interested as anyone else, and this makes them forego the public good in favor of pursuing their own personal gain, making the government buyable and easily manipulable by the richest and most powerful players in the unavoidably competitive system. The only real difference between the two is that no matter how big and predatory private interests get, they are still answerable to the unforgiving tides of competition - from other industries and their own pet local governments, from boycotts, from unions, from riots and famine-driven violence if all else fails. Government and its economic affiliates are answerable to no one: unaffiliated private industry cannot compete with the inexhaustible resource of tax-subsidized bailouts or stand up to favoring regulations - shileding them from going bankrupt by virtue of their colossal inefficiency, and the variety of roles and domains the government is involved in makes it far less answerable to voters than a corporation is to customers who can simply go to the nearest competitor for its relatively limited repertoire of services. Government CAN be fired using the Tahrir Square method, but this requires non-compliance precipitated by levels of misery that have not been seen in this country since the 1890s. In light of this, The IRONY is that the 1890s situation that gave birth to Progressivism was one closely resembling Mubarak's Egypt, only with competing corporate oligarchies and pet State and local governments that could not establish hegemony for lack of a central authority. In creating such a central authority, Progressivism GAVE its sworn enemies a hegemonic power to domesticate, and the latter were crafty enough to create avenues of appeasement that keep enough people satisfied to avoid violent rebellion.
I am not advocating any sort of violent revolution, our system has never required this to achieve change. What I am calling upon is all the well-intentioned Progressives to wake up and realize how badly you have all been duped for over a century now, building the very mechanism by which your opponents impoverish you. If you are indeed committed to equality, freedom, and progress, you must accept the reality that competition is an intrinsic fact of human existence that must be embraced to accomplish them; attempts to limit it in favor of a collective organization only make competition easier for the biggest and most powerful players that have the power to buy this organization.
I have many friends who openly and proudly identify themselves as "Progressives", among them to some extent my good friend and the co-host of our new Webcast "Edge of Chaos", Joe Ryan. In recent weeks, with the onslaught of policy proposals that threaten and limit abortions from the far right both in the Federal and various State legislatures, I have seen many of these people respond with outrage and ridicule, calling this "theocracy," "mysogyny," and an "attack on women's rights" or "reproductive rights". While I agree with Progressives that abortion should be legal and accessible (for reasons I may address in a later post that are completely unrelated to this ideological banter), my response to their outrage is usually "I told you so". These policies, specifically the Pence Amendment, are the direct and inevitable result of the well-intentioned naivete of decades of Progressive policies that have given the government the power to meddle in such affairs, and what's worse, they are only the latest of multiple manifestations of this effect. Yet Progressives continue to place their faith in government and blame its opponents for all of society's problems. In order to understand what I'm saying rather than dismissing it as crazy or extreme, the reader will need significant background before the discussion of modern events.
In This Post:
What is Progressivism?
Progressivism's History and Scorecard
The Pence Amendment and Progressive Stubborness
What is Progressivism?
For those entirely politically uninclined or simply unclear on this topic, let me briefly explain the meaning of this word. Progressivism is broadly defined as the political belief - whether theoretical or ideological - that government involvement in the economy and social policy is necessary to ensure the greatest possible progress of society. Progressivism does not necessarily entail belief in a state-run or socialist economy. In the modern US, the political affiliation is typically associated with the far but not militant left; it endorses a nationalised rather than independent central bank, greater regulations and higher taxation of the rich and environmentally costly industry, government investments in education, health care, and clean energy - although these can remain privately run, "positive discrimination" policies such as affirmative action and laws that protect or even mandate union membership, and social policies that restrict expression deemed dangerous and offensive such as television violence and hate speech. This list is by far non-exhaustive, but should make the profile of a typical modern-day Progressive clear. However, Progressivism can span party lines and economic inclinations. The first openly Progressive US President - Teddy Roosevelt - was a Republican, and many of Richard Nixon's policies can also be labeled Progressive with relatve ease. Similarly, supply-side economic policy - government subsidies and protection of the largest and most powerful private industries - can be defined broadly as Progressive, seeing as nearly every politician that engages in such policies claims to do so because the failure of these industries would bring excessive costs to average citizens, whereas their success creates a common good for everyone to share. Even some socially conservative policies - such as vice prohibition - can fit the Progressive label, as the government imposes a restriction on personal choice that is claimed to bring greater benefit to society as a whole.
I find that I agree with modern Progressives on the grand majority of what they hope to accomplish. But then, I would say their goals are shared by most political ideologies with the exception of stalwart social conservatives. Who would argue with a quality education for every child, adequate food/shelter/necessities for every American, a clean environment, secure and humane working conditions, equality for minorities of all types, and (with the exception of some social conservatives) freedoms of expression, reproductive choice, and various forms of affiliation including religion? My problem with Progressives - even limited to the modern definition - is their methodology for accomplishing any of these goals, a methodology that despite its predominantly humane intentions has a long and profound history of blatant disregard for the nature of both the individual human mind and human society as a whole. What's worse, each time this disregard brings about the opposite of what Progressivism intended to achieve, Progressives have an extremely difficult time taking responsibility, instead blaming "meddlers" and "saboteurs" that destroyed their rosey vision. Do I sound extreme and outrageous?
Well, let's examine Progressivism's History and its "Scorecard" of "successful policies".
Origins:
Progressivism originated in the late 1800s as a movement of proponents of greater government involvement in the regulation of society. Its adherents had little else in common, but their primary membership classes were, contrary to popular belief, relatively socially conservative and fairly open about the goals of achieving personal economic gains. Labor unions were a primary force in the early Progressive movement, but the unions of the Gilded Age were composed primarily of the descendents of white minority immigrant groups from the early 19th century such as Italians and Irish. These groups spoke fluent English as they were second or third generation Americans, were well-organized and empowered by their religious and social communities, and held relatively privileged positions in industrial labor as skilled tradesmen of various sorts. They sought empowerment through government involvement that would level the playing field against their corporate bosses of WASP descent, but simultaneously these organizations tended to be radically hostile to newer immigrants such as Eastern Europeans in the East and Asians in the West, as well as African-Americans. The reason for this hostility is easily understood - skilled laborers sought organized rebellion to break the plutocracy of the corporate aristocrats, but the waves of migrating cheaper labor (including freed African-Americans from the South) provided the latter with an alternative; and the unfamiliar customs, languages, and religions of these groups made them difficult to incorporate into union structure.
Women's rights groups - originating in various women's organizations during the Civil War - were another force within the progressive movement; and following women's suffrage, their policy agendas sought from government were vice restrictions, regulations on labor safety and child labor, and in some cases public education. The wives and mothers of industrial workers, women were the primary victims of the vice abuse engaged in by their overworked and stressed male loved ones. Their labor agenda was not based solely in a concern for the well-being of their children, but a push to eliminate another form of alternative labor for unionized workers to force corporations to provide better pay and benefits for grown men. These organizations were primarily composed of white women who stood by the unions in their hostility toward minorities, and a colossal driving force behind the move to segregate the emerging public education machine and other public services. Advocates for the urban poor were perhaps the most humane and tolerant of the original Progressives, but even their almshouses and poorhouses often relied on strict religious foundations intended to instill morals that would "cure" poverty, and some of these were very welcoming of ethnic and religious minorities while others blatantly rejected them as morally hopeless or undeserving of help in light of needy white Americans that they perceived as first in line. Riding on the shoulders of these organizations were many remnants of Confederacy apologist groups such as the Know Nothing Movement that mobilized the formers hostility toward minorities toward ideological agendas of outright racism and white supremacy, which I have addressed in greater detail in my earlier post on collective responsibility.
Before Progressivism was any sort of mainstream idea, the influence of these combined groups brought about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and a variety of Jim Crow laws including the judicial upholding of Separate but Equal. The precedent was set to give the government a DUTY of deciding who gets to benefit from the American Dream long before many of the minorities decided against had any viable representation in said government.
1900-1920 "The Progressive Era":
Teddy Roosevelt's administration pioneered the establishment of a patchwork of regulatory agencies comprised of hired, qualified, professional bureaucrats intended to enforce employer-employee agreements and establish basic government-funded public works such as roads and bridges. During his presidency, these were hailed by adherents to Progressivism as "saviors" from the unapologetic and rampant corruption of state and local bureaucracies that openly took bribes and sided with special interests tied to the politicians who appointed them, including but not limited to corporate tycoons.
However, Roosevelt's VP and successor to the Presidency, W.H. Taft, did not share his passion for Progressive policies. A key disagreement between Roosevelt and Taft was monetary policy; irresponsible and erratic banking practices backed by the antics of the corrupt bureaucracies described above and a general slowness of information distribution had brought about multiple economic "panics" in the preceding decades; and in those days, the banks involved typically went down with the economic ship that they sank, but some tycoons managed to escape with the money. Roosevelt unsuccessfully challenged Taft for the Presidential nomination of the Republican Party in 1912, and a key campaign promise of Roosevelt's was a nationalised central bank modeled after those of Western Europe that would monopolize key banking practices and regulate private banks, a policy Taft opposed. When Roosevelt narrowly missed the Republican nomination, he organized a splinter party called The Progressive Party (AKA the Bull Moose Party). The 3 candidate race split the Republican base and handed the election to dark horse Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who had at best a moderate position on Progressive policies.
Upon being elected, however, Wilson saw the potential of Progressivism as a movement and the significant minority of sympathizers toward it within his own party that would likely cost him the 1916 election if he did not appease them. To appease both sides of the spectrum, one of Wilson's first moves was the endorsement and establishment of the monstrosity of the Federal Reserve, a cartel of private banks with the monopolistic and regulatory functions of Roosevelt's vision. Toward the end of his Presidency, Wilson also endorsed the 20th and 21st Amendments (Women's Suffrage and Prohibition), and a variety of labor laws such as mandatory worker's compensation, minimum wages, child labor prohibition, regulation of hours and overtime pay, and so forth. Interestingly, many trade and skilled unions opposed this wave of labor laws as the deals they could negotiate with their employers would be better than those guaranteed by these laws, but with them in place laborers would be harder to organize toward activism; but by 1920 Progressivism was finally beginning to take on a role of representing minorities and unskilled labor.
In sum, these 2 decades established a precedent of the government regulating labor, banking, public works, and vice - 4 domains it had never been extensively involved in prior - all with the defense that these domains were too important to everyday American life to be left to the whim and uncertainty of the free market.
The Great Depression:
Often blamed for bringing about the Great Depression, 1920s Presidents Coolige and Hoover are in fact at most responsible for sitting on their thumbs and allowing the rotten seeds planted by their predecessors to grow into enormous trees of decay. No longer bound by the pressures of competition with each other but lacking a regulatory agency outside of their control, megabanks engaged in fraudulent practices such as insider trading and misrepresentation of assets that would make both their Gilded Age predecessor and their modern counterparts like EnRon and Goldman Sachs blush. The regulatory agencies established by Roosevelt quickly came under the control of large industrial tycoons such as the logging and mining industries and their pet politicians; replacing the 19th century practice of open bribery with the 20th century hypocrisy of exchanging favorable regulation for extended funding and job security rationalized by the "need" and "importance" of these industries for progress. Prohibition is not often cited as a causal element of the 1929 economic collapse, but its laughable unenforcibility gave rise to an unprecedented black market economy and an organized crime network that did not exist on a national level before it. When 1.5 decades of these combined practices brought about the stock market meltdown and farm-destroying ecological erosion that combined into the Great Depression, labor regulations played a colossal role in preserving the economic state of meltdown. Unlike previous recessions, employers could no longer renegotiate employee contracts or reduce pay and compensation below floors set by Federal regulations which were no longer compatible with plummeting prices. Employees who could keep their jobs retained their rate of pay, but the country experienced instead colossal rates of unemployment as small and medium businesses were forced into bankruptcy, preserving only the megaindustries responsible for the mess and the government on their leash.
The 1910s were still largely fresh in the minds of Americans and contrary to the modern world, many understood the link between excessive regulation and the economic situation. Progressives, on the other hand, apologized for the results, claiming that their dreams had been ruined by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who did not do what their patron saint Teddy Roosevelt had intended. 1920s politicians certainly knew what was going on and turned a blind eye to the corruption and irresponsibility while claiming an age of "indefinite prosperity". However, it is important to remember that corrupt banks and megaindustries had existed for nearly a century by 1929 and caused much turmoil and misery, but NEVER managed to achieve an economic collapse of such epic and nationwide proportions until they were empowered by Federal policy favoritism. Having Federal regulators to buy eliminated virtually all capacity for competition whether it came from smaller industries, unions, or other large players with rival pet governments at the state and local levels. If Progressives' primary issues in the Gilded Age were with the corruption and hypocrisy of the state and local authorities and their favoritism toward large tycoons, they should reasonably have predicted that the establishment of an over-arching authority would create not a solution, but a new powerhouse to be bought by the highest bidder and then released to eradicate his competition.
If Teddy Roosevelt is the god of Progressives, then FDR is their clear and unquestioned messiah, but the reality is that unlike Teddy's, his cousin's policies cannot even be reasonably argued as well-intentioned but naive. The New Deal more closely resembled the hybrid compromises of Woodrow Wilson which made true Progressive balk. Like 1912, the 1932 election saw a sharp division between proponents of a return to pre-1912 policies and a dramatic increase in regulations and government involvement, including respective calls for the abolition (often by violent means) of the Federal Reserve and its nationalisation. Unlike 1912, the advent of mass media kept these two movements in the fringes of both parties, and the electoral panels of both Hoover and FDR in fact agreed on more than they disagreed on; a middle ground of keeping things as they were. Upon his victory FDR realized, like Wilson, the threat posed by the emerging fringes and moved to appease them without hurting his patron special interests. Rather than abolish or seize the Federal Reserve, FDR settled for a series of regulations that would prevent it from engaging in many of the practices that had caused the meltdown. Rather than collapse inefficient labor regulations to allow people to return to self-sufficiency, FDR introduced the first social welfare programs - among them social security and various housing and health regulations and assistance programs - to alleviate the plight of the millions of people impoverished by the collapse. Rather than eliminate corrupt regulatory agencies, FDR opted for sets of new ones; the expansion of government-run public works to alleviate the ecological damage and offer employment alternatives, and public subsidies to discourage farmers from practices incompatible with the failing economy. Although alcohol Prohibition did not endure the Great Depression, the advent of Hemp Prohibition and a variety of other vice regulations introduced in the 1930s gave the organized crime cartels new cash crops to sell on the black market, and the various law enforcement agencies charged with fighting them job security. The New Deal is often credited with alleviating the Great Depression, but this is simply historically inaccurate. Despite these policies being in full swing for 6 years, economic measures such as unemployment, the stock market, and agricultural and industrial growth remained abysmal through 1938 and largely unchanged after a slight initial improvement in 1934. In the 1938 election, FDR's New Deal Coalition was unceremoniously fired as the majority in both houses of Congress, and the derailing of the continuation of many New Deal policies improved every economic marker by at least 50% by 1940. However, the US had emerged from an era brought on by the unintended consequences of excessive government with a government quintupled in size and with mandates to regulate agriculture, retirement, social services, charity, housing, health, and significantly expanded mandates toward its already infused domains.
Later Cycles:
Since WWII, especially in economic terms, the US has seen an unending and abysmal tug-of-war between various players seeking to domesticate Progressivism for their benefit and a virtually uninterrupted cycle of attempts to repair failures directly attributable to excessive government intervention in one domain by interventions in another.
JFK and LBJ are considered Progressive heroes for their Federal policies aimed at eliminating institutional segregation and discrimination, but let's not forget that Progressivism set those wheels in motion 80 years prior. A look at the rampant - although closeted - attitudes in this country toward minorities, the 1960s policies achieved limited success, but significantly swept the problems under the table.
LBJ's alphabet soup of social welfare agencies, MediCare, and Nixon's social security and monetary policy reforms are often hailed as the last great acts of Progressivism. However, these policies were merely band-aid fixes for the colossal economic wounds created by the continued dependence of an ever-larger population on government hand-outs as a result of labor over-regulation and the tyranny of the Federal Reserve. Let's not forget that Nixon also initiated the disastrous War on Drugs as an attempt to alleviate the plight of the poor and minorities likely to be victimized by the criminal elements involved in the black market, but only succeeded to enrich and empower them by driving up their prices and creating new bureaucracies for them to bribe.
Then there is every Progressive's antichrist, Ronald Reagan. I'm not a fan of Reagan at all, but precisely because he absolutely did NOT do what Progressives credit him with. In the eyes of many fans and detractors alike, Reagan fulfilled his 1980 campaign promises by chopping up and defunding social welfare and regulatory agencies, disempowering unions, cutting corporate taxes and ushering in a new era of free market economics that was either excellent or awful depending on who is describing it. Some even claim Reagan did this intentionally to destroy a perfectly operational Progressive system. In reality, however, Reagan was a corporatist swine hell-bent on supply-side economics to the extent the US had not seen in almost 100 years; his belief in "free markets" literally expired the moment he stepped down from the podium where he delivered his 1980 inaugural address. Defunding social welfare agencies and cutting taxes may be practices that are compatible with each other, but they absolutely do not account for the unprecedented and extravagant defense expenditures and other miscellaneous corporate subsidies done simultaneously. Reagan also gave unprecedented funding to the bureaucracies charged with fighting the War on Drugs which nevertheless remained an abysmal failure. Reducing revenue while spending excessively on things that equate to flushing money down the toilet doesn't ONLY have the impact of exploding the national debt; corporate subsidies embolden inefficient and abusive megaplayers and shield them from natural competition - just as they did in the previous eras discussed above - which leads to the elimination of smaller competition, soaring prices, and the inevitable holistic collapse which we witnessed in the end of the 1980s. Under Ronald Reagan, the US essentially re-lived the Gilded Age propagated from a Federal level, the power of the Federal government being used to do everything state and local governments had done 100 years earlier that Progressives had a problem with. But it was Progressives that had insisted for 100 years that the Federal government should regulate vice, banking, agriculture, education, immigration, industry, social services, labor, retirement and health, and it had regulated them with such "success" that by the 1980s millions of Americans had lost all capacity for self-sufficiency and became wholly dependent on the welfare state. Ronald Reagan was not an enemy or opponent of Progressivism, he was the epitome of what the proposed Progressive Paradise REALLY looks like when regulated with favoritism and incompetence, qualities every government inherently posesses. Even if he intentionally performed all these functions on behalf of the richest and most powerful players to impoverish and destroy a system of rosey Progressive prosperity (that never existed), maybe Progressives should have considered the possibility of such a politician coming along before handing the government all those functions. Government is a real entity understood by scientific inquiry, not some wishy-washy expression of moralistic ideology that doesn't exist in practice, there is a necessity to predict how it will REALLY behave as opposed to just trusting it to behave the way you intend it to.
Before I conclude that thought, let's examine the last 2 decades:
- In the late 1980s, the disgusting oligopoly of corporate agribusiness, empowered by subsidies and the so-called "Free Trade Agreement," began to dump tons and tons of cheap, processed, genetically altered crap erm... crop on the markets of northern Mexico, destroying the small and medium domestic farms there and quadrupling illegal immigration to the United States in the form of skilled farm workers intent on working for a slave wage for the same agricultural corporations.
- Threatened by competition from these undocumented workers who sidestep labor regulations, Progressive elements such as unions in the US joined up with fearmongering social conservatives to persuade yet ANOTHER Progressive administration in the 1990s to expand and modernize expensive, corrupt, and abysmally unsuccessful bureaucratic agencies to patrol and "secure" the borders. Megabusiness jumped on this bandwagon as a compromise because alternatively, the liberal interests may have demanded Bill Clinton return to pre-Reagan taxation levels and labor regulations, but this way they could band together to victimize a new class of unrepresented minorities like it was trendy to do 100 years before.
- When this ridiculous policy failed to bring economic recovery - surprising only to those unfamiliar with the "success stories" of the Wall of China against the Mongols - Clinton decided to repeal the bulk of the regulations passed against the banking cartel in the 1930s, blowing another bubble of "indefinite prosperity" a la the 1920s. Bush Jr. was among the most incompetent politicians in our history, but one thing he was NOT responsible for was the banking meltdown of 2008. All he did was twiddle his thumbs while the banks spent imaginary money knowing they would bankrupt everyone but themselves, the same way Coolige and Hoover did in the 1920s. Even the time elapsed between these events is roughly the same - 1913-1929, 1993-2008.
My, they weren't kidding when they said not understanding history causes it to repeat itself!
The Pence Amendment and the Stubborness of Progressivism
That, finally, brings us to the year 2011. Every Progressive enraged by the Pence Amendment equated it to outlawing abortion and denying women the right to choice; especially poor, underpriviledged, and minority women. But in reality, Congress doesn't have that authority. Roe v. Wade is still in effect and any legislation outlawing abortion would be immediately struck down as unconstitutional, whether it was Federal or State. All the Pence Amendment does is take away government funding from abortions and a variety of other reproductive healthcare services through changes to legal definitions and the defunding of specific provider organizations (such as Planned Parenthood). I don't agree with this at all; if the government is going to pay for medical services it cannot exclude these because it deems them inappropriate - nature is indifferent to what's "appropriate". But I AM saying this is exactly what we should have expected to happen.
The seeds were sewn by regulations in the 1930s, fertilized by Medicare and Medicaid, and finally sprouted in the laughable Progressive dream of Obama's health care reform of over-regulating medicine in ways that protect the largest economic players and slowly making Americans dependent on government to pay for their skyrocketingly costly services. Look at the historical record above: How could you honestly have EXPECTED the government not to start adding objectionable exclusionary provisions once it's control of health care grew enough to make these effective? It has done so with EVERY OTHER DOMAIN we've trusted it with! Even if politicians like Mike Pence are indeed the Reaganite, mysogynous, theocratic antichrists that Progressives paint them to be; maybe Progressives should have thought about the possibility of such people gaining control of government when they handed the management of health care over to it.
Progressivism is the epitome of government-managed Collectivism, even if it rarely endorses the complete government takeover of anything. It cites the self-interested, competitive nature of human beings as dangerous, unpredictable, and uncaring about others, and seeks to correct for the inequities that result from this nature through government intervention which is, theoretically, driven by the public good. In practice, however, people and organizations within the government are just as self-interested as anyone else, and this makes them forego the public good in favor of pursuing their own personal gain, making the government buyable and easily manipulable by the richest and most powerful players in the unavoidably competitive system. The only real difference between the two is that no matter how big and predatory private interests get, they are still answerable to the unforgiving tides of competition - from other industries and their own pet local governments, from boycotts, from unions, from riots and famine-driven violence if all else fails. Government and its economic affiliates are answerable to no one: unaffiliated private industry cannot compete with the inexhaustible resource of tax-subsidized bailouts or stand up to favoring regulations - shileding them from going bankrupt by virtue of their colossal inefficiency, and the variety of roles and domains the government is involved in makes it far less answerable to voters than a corporation is to customers who can simply go to the nearest competitor for its relatively limited repertoire of services. Government CAN be fired using the Tahrir Square method, but this requires non-compliance precipitated by levels of misery that have not been seen in this country since the 1890s. In light of this, The IRONY is that the 1890s situation that gave birth to Progressivism was one closely resembling Mubarak's Egypt, only with competing corporate oligarchies and pet State and local governments that could not establish hegemony for lack of a central authority. In creating such a central authority, Progressivism GAVE its sworn enemies a hegemonic power to domesticate, and the latter were crafty enough to create avenues of appeasement that keep enough people satisfied to avoid violent rebellion.
I am not advocating any sort of violent revolution, our system has never required this to achieve change. What I am calling upon is all the well-intentioned Progressives to wake up and realize how badly you have all been duped for over a century now, building the very mechanism by which your opponents impoverish you. If you are indeed committed to equality, freedom, and progress, you must accept the reality that competition is an intrinsic fact of human existence that must be embraced to accomplish them; attempts to limit it in favor of a collective organization only make competition easier for the biggest and most powerful players that have the power to buy this organization.
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