Blackmail

I've had this thought for some time now. The Bush Administration is warning that if Congress tries to add or subtract from their $700 billion bailout plan it's likely to damage efforts to rescue the economy (a question no one asks is: why do that?). The kinds of things they might like to add are oversight of the massive fund and possibly some supports for families who might be on the verge of losing their homes. The message is clear: do what we say and things won't go bad. By meddling you ensure they will go bad.

Given that the wealthy dominate North America, they have the power to ensure that people suffer. They can move their money around the world as easily as striking a few keys on their laptops. Because we have given them all the power through concepts like trickle-down economics they can bring down the temple. It's therefore a simple matter to punish a government that doesn't agree with them or won't give them what they want.

So even if a progressive government was elected somewhere, they won't last very long. The people will lose their jobs and their (small) comfort and turf them out and all will return to normal. So what happens is that you have parties who realize that being progressive will never work (partly because the wealthy control the media and the chumps don't think critically) so they sell out (see New Labour in the UK or even the 1993 Liberal Party in Canada and Bill Clinton and now likely Barack Obama).

It's hard to address this imbalance of power. I assume that the Democrats are going to cave and make even more handouts to the wealthy. Then again, if you're foolish enough to believe that the state has your small interests in mind then you probably don't fret about such matters.

But how do you address this blackmail? You ultimately have to get people to realize that they are going to suffer to make the world a better place, whether that's within the state system or ideally without. Overturning the old order will entail suffering as new systems are built and it kind of has to happen everywhere because other states will likely not want this poison to spread and will fight back. We've been told that we can have anything we want at any time (thank you WalMart) without working for it. So I don't have much faith in people to accept this degree of inconvenience even if it's in their interest.

But it would be better than the stressed earth doing it for us. That's really going to hurt.