It’s over for global corporate capitalism

This is the end of the line for the crooks and the system that produced and enriched them:

This is a virus, with a 100% kill rate. This is a pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen. This is only something that can be fixed after we kill all the players that carry the virus, because the virus only dies when the host is dead. The hosts are the sick financial institutions being run by crooked executives, regulated by incompetent regulators, appointed by blissfully ignorant politicians and at the end of the line is a judicial system that is without power to do anything.

The “bailout” (read: handout) will not solve anything. The problem, when you add in credit default swaps, is way too big for any kind of government bailout, without of course bankrupting the government itself or cratering the dollar. This is the end of the line.

What sunk Global Corporate Capitalism is the same thing that sunk the Soviet Union: it got too big, too inflexible, too out-of-touch with the average citizen and worker, too arrogant, and created too far a disparity between rich and poor. It is now collapsing.

Although it’s very likely that some kind of market-based economy will be retained after our current one craters, the successor will be a lot more local and decentralized, a lot more “social” and community-based, a lot less competitive and a lot more cooperative. A gift economy will emerge and thrive, and act as a counterbalance to market-based competition. And, most importantly, I predict that things like honor and integrity will become currencies in and of themselves, and become once again things of real value.

The time is now

The time has come for a new system for humanity to organize itself economically.

We’ve reached the end of global corporate capitalism as we know it. Like Soviet-style central-planning communism did only a few decades ago, it has grown too big and collapsed under its own weight.

I think what is coming to replace globalized corporate capitalism will be a cells of localized (or virtualized, on the internet) gift economies, modeled on the pioneering work of Richard Stallman and the Free Software movement, and on the blogosphere. “Tribes” of people helping each other, trading favors, and, some kind of “scrip” for easier exchange.

Trading with other tribes, and, unfortunately, battling with rival tribes at times– we’re still mammals and mammals compete for territory. But the overall flavor of the system will change and become much more cooperative than competitive. It will, in many ways, resemble a lot of anarchist theory and experiments.

Seems to me as though the Free Software movement is so far the most successful application of socio-anarchist principles to any real-world task.

The next step, as the fiat-currency financial system collapses, is “free money” based on a Free Software kind of model. Specifically: mutual-credit currencies. I’m a big fan of these, such as the LETS system, TimeDollars, and such.

I will write more about this over the next few weeks, months, and years.

I have seen the collapse of the financial system coming for almost 10 years now, and I’ve been hoping for an alternative to capitalism for over 20 years. The time for that transition is right now. As what we’ve known comes crashing down, now is the moment to suggest something better to replace it.

Speculation Nation

Bubble bubble bubble.

Finally someone talks sense on this whole thing:

Restore the dividends for FNM and FRE preferred stock. This will immediately improve the balance sheets of small, “innocent” community banks $ 10 to $ 15 billion.

You have illustrated the core of the current crisis in one sentence! This is the lack of yield in all investments, particularly debt. ‘Simple’ return is insufficient, requiring excess leverage and complex intermediation. Instead of returns to savings/investments compounded over time with manageable risk, the markets have turned to ‘growth’ and speculation … and complexity and intermediation to ‘hedge’ the unpredictable risk. Unfortunately, the decline of yield has taken decades to manifest itself and will not be solved overnight with a bailout.

So, the financial system has become addicted to “growth”– meaning wild speculation hedged by “complex intermediation”, instead of investing in things of real economic value that yeild dividends or other predictable, low-risk returns.

1929 all over again.

People are finally getting it

… and saying it better than I could, too:

Myself, I’d call our current situation “Socialized Corporatism”: the government exists primarily in order to provide an environment suited to maximal corporate profits, whether it be through tax breaks, tax havens, consumer sentiment-boosters, resource giveaways or bailouts of “free market” companies that made the wrong bets in the marketplace. I would not, however, consider it a centrist approach or even an ideological one — merely the result of lobbying that places the needs of business squarely above the needs of the public or even the national economy. That is what the system of “establishment” figures, “time-tested advisors”, and “safe heads from the investment banks” has brought us.

A trailing indicator

I take public transportation as often as I can.

Over the last 6 months, I’ve noticed the paid ads on busses and trains gradually get replaced by United Way, Ad Council, BART/MUNI/SamTrans PSA’s, and other free “filler” advertising.

Yesterday I counted, and my unofficial survey on a fairly long, “multi-modal” trip, turned up 75% of the ad space as filler.

But the fundamentals of the economy are sound, of course. Unless you’re in the business of selling stuff, of course.

Fallows nails it

The truly toxic combination of traits GW Bush brought to decision making was:

1) Ignorance
2) Lack of curiosity
3) “Decisiveness”

That is, he was not broadly informed to begin with (point 1). He did not seek out new information (#2); but he nonetheless prided himself (#3) on making broad, bold decisions quickly, and then sticking to them to show resoluteness.

That’s it, and better said than I did.

The reason why I (and probably so many others) find Palin so dangerous and infuriating is the same reason I find Bush so dangerous and infuriating. Her running mate seems similarly inclined, and hot-tempered as well. McCain-Palin would be 4 more years of Bush-Cheney’s personality flaws, as well as their policies.

Pre-emptive nuclear war on Russia?

Kaboom

I put two and two together from Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson and got…. holy shit! A first nuclear strike against Russia.

Here’s how:

1. Palin supports bringing Georgia into NATO, which, among other things, is a mutual-defense agreement. It’s scary enough how much this smells like the minefield of mutual-defense treaties that littered Europe in the early 20th Century and started WWI, but it gets worse…
2. Palin supports the Bush Doctrine (once Gibson finally explains it to her) of preemptive war
3. Russia might invade Georgia again (it has just done so), therefore, because she supports the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war… once Georgia is in NATO, here comes a pre-emptive strike against Russia. Kaboom!

Did Gibson set that up, or Palin decide to start WWIII on her own? Did she not look a few moves ahead to see where this was going?

I mean, a Star Trek cadet wouldn’t have botched that so badly. Nor anyone who’d ever played chess (um… it’s different from hockey. Or basketball.). This ain’t even Kobiyashi Maru, it’s foreign policy 101. She failed it, badly.

And I can hear you now, oh wingnuts, so stop whining about the media “being mean” to her. If she can march obliviously into a trap set by Charlie Gibson, of all people, what kind of catastrophic strategic blunder on a global scale would she stumble into as preznit?

Epic fail.

It gets even more ridiculous

Train Wreck

Governor Palin says Alaska is next-door to Russia, therefore she’s qualified to mediate between Russia and Georgia.

Great.

I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends, therefore I’m qualified to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians.

Who makes this shit up? No, wait… who actually believes it?

Palin-McCain is another Bush-Cheney

It’s their policies that do the damage, and which must be ended and avoided, but their characters are also remarkably similar too.

Sarah Palin is like George W. Bush in drag: fundamentalist, provincial, uncurious, fake, hypocritical, vain, vindictive, anti-science, willfully-ignorant, thin-skinned, and mean-spirited.

John McCain is like Dick Cheney with war wounds: angry, paranoid, foul-mouthed, grumpy, and short-tempered.

There are some swaps too: Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth– just like McCain (the son and grandson of Admirals). McCain also seems to be just as frighteningly impulsive as Bush, as evidenced by his last-minute Palin pick. In 2000 and 2004, the Republicans put the lightweight talking head at the top of the ticket and the heavyweight behind the scenes; McCain is clearly the heavyweight and has picked the lightweight as his running mate instead, and sent her out to campaign since she’s a lot more telegenic than he is. But either way, it doesn’t help.

America can’t afford another 4 or 8 years of those kinds of characters in the White House.

Obama has denounced the kind of partisan ad-hominem snipes I’m making here, and he hasn’t engaged in them. Good for him. Obama also shows excellent judgement in his VP pick, how he’s running his campaign, and in how he deals with people in general. But I’m not running a campaign, or designing ads, nor am I running for preznit or anything else, nor do I have any leadership position in anything, so I’ve got to call it like I see it.

McCain always looked like Bush’s third term from a policy standpoint– reason enough to oppose him. But now in picking basically a younger George W. Bush as his running mate– and likely president within a few years– he’s running for Bush’s third term from a character (or lack of it) standpoint too.

Loyalty over competence

Choosing based on loyalty to the capo, not competence, is how the Bush Mafia ended up with a cast of morons in so many positions (heckuva job, Brownie!).

It’s also how McCain ended up with Palin.

Biden has his own powerbase: it’s the mainstream of the Democratic Party apparatus in D.C. He was clearly picked for competence, and possibly out of deference to that powerbase, not out of loyalty to Obama.

Another telling thing about the VP picks is how they show where the real establishment power base is in each of the parties… because in both cases they’re the party’s inner circle seem to have been the biggest influence upon VP choices.

I’m guessing that the Democratic powers-that-be (i.e. Clintons, DLC, etc.) insisted on a DLC Washington lifer who has deep experience, and that’s how Obama ended up with Biden. Bill Clinton made this very clear in his speech (“Ah LOVE Joe Biden, and Ah think you will too”).

The Republican powers-that-be (i.e. fundamentalist mega-churches, Karl Rove, FAUX “News”), insisted on a telegenic right-wing nutcase. They could have picked Huckabee or Romney, both of which actually have some amount of experience and were each campaigning nationally for the nomination, but the idea of picking a woman to attempt to siphon off Clinton voters is pure Rove all the way. The nutosphere has made it very clear that they love Palin: fundamentalist Christian, pro-Oil, creationish, anti-abortion, anti-birth-control, anti-sex-education…. and with a pregnant teenage daughter. Yay fundamentalism! Just say no.

But to me the most notable feature of Palin is that she has absolutely no powerbase of her own, so she has no choice (pun intended) but to be 100% loyal to McCain and Rove.

Finally, I have to note that, however they got there, Obama ended up with a strong running mate, and McCain with a frighteningly weak one.