Look deeper Mr. Prinz

[Da Prinz]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Niets dieper te kijken. Het een sluit het ander niet
uit. Idealogen/Fanatici worden gevonden aan beide
kanten van het politieke spectrum. Omdat het over
Amerika gaat is kapitalisme niet specifiek vernoemd.
Wat dat betreft doen socialistische, of
kapitalistische sociaal-democratien het grosso modo
niet beter. Bijvoorbeeld het al of niet tekenen van
een verdrag is geen garantie, behalve dat de overheid
een stok heeft die ze te pas en te onpas opvoert om
het "beleid" te verkopen Dat is echter een heel andere
discussie.
Een oud, en in sommige opzichten verouderd, boekje is
"The True Believer" van Eric Hoffer. Te vinden onder
Sociology ISBN 0-06-080071-2

DaPrinz


--- Antid Oto <antidoto at home.nl> wrote:

> REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
> http://www.counterpunch.org/cox03142005.html
>
> Bush, Cheney and End-Time Crackpots Are Scary,
> But...
> Look Deeper, Mr. Moyers
>
> By STAN COX
>
> It's enough to make your hair stand on end and your
> eyes bug
> out. Not only is the Earth in peril, but some people
> who
> hold sway over the fate of the planet believe that
> soon the
> whole place is going to go up in a blaze of
> brimstone anyway
> -- and they can't wait to watch it happen!
>
> Bill Moyers, in the March 24 issue of the New York
> Review of
> Books, paints a scary picture indeed. With a
> greeting of
> "Welcome to the Rapture!", Moyers writes about the
> vast
> numbers of Americans who believe that an imminent
> end of the
> world is predicted in the Book of Revelation and
> about their
> energetic support for the Bush administration. He
> draws this
> conclusion:
>
> A powerful current connects the administration's
> multinational corporate cronies who regard the
> environment
> as ripe for the picking and a hard-core constituency
> of
> fundamentalists who regard the environment as fuel
> for the
> fire that is coming. Once again, populist religion
> winds up
> serving the interests of economic elites.
>
> Moyers is right: It "sends a shiver down the spine."
> But the
> Earth was headed down a highway to hell long before
> Bush was
> elected or the Armageddon Clock started up.
> Triumphant
> capitalism, performing precisely to specifications,
> is
> showing itself fully capable of pulling off an
> ecological
> apocalypse, with or without the help of
> superstitious
> scripture-twisters.
>
> When it comes to shining a light on some of the most
> alarming outgrowths of capitalism, Moyers is a
> master. But
> in going after the Bush administration's
> scorched-Earth
> environmental policies, its "multinational corporate
> cronies", and those hallucinatory crackpots
> brandishing
> their biblical licenses to plunder, he missed the
> root cause
> of the problem: capitalism's addiction to perpetual
> growth.
>
> Growth: the sacred bull in the china shop
>
> While there are not enough members of Congress
> willing to
> oppose the building of roads in wilderness areas or
> the
> gutting of the Clean Air Act, many do take those
> positions.
> Such issues are OK to discuss in polite society. On
> the
> other hand, when did you last hear a national
> politician
> say, "This economy's growing too fast, and if
> elected, I'll
> work to cut growth!"?
>
>  >>They never say that, because they would be
> admitting that
> capitalism is unsustainable. There is no such thing
> as
> capitalism without growth. Capitalists -- a class of
> folks
> whose income is "unearned" (a term devised and used,
> with
> uncharacteristic clarity, by the IRS) -- have a
> well-understood role in society: to take a pile of
> money and
> turn it into a bigger pile of money.
>
> But a bigger pile of money, once achieved, is not an
> end but
> another beginning. To the capitalist, that pile is
> useless
> unless it can be turned into an even bigger pile. As
> a
> result, more resources are used and wastes expelled
> this
> year than last, and even more next year.
>
>  >>Now, if you're a politician or, say, a liberal
> pundit, you
> can't very well tell working people, "I'm afraid
> that our
> capitalist class is going to be needing an
> increasingly
> bigger share of our national income for a while --
> well, um,
> actually forever -- and it's all going to have to
> come out
> of your paychecks."
>
> Instead, you talk about economic growth and its
> seemingly
> miraculous ability to keep boosting the capitalist's
> return
> on investment while not completely wiping out the
> workers
> who generated it. No problem: Money's imaginary, so
> bigger
> piles of it are always possible, and there is no
> biggest pile.
>
> But, of course, we do have a problem. We have no
> infinite
> piles of the stuff (even the renewable stuff) that's
> needed
> to turn money into more money. There's a rule that
> no
> species can increase its resource exploitation
> infinitely,
> and Homo sapiens has not been granted a waiver .
> Fossil
> fuels, soil, salmon, and healthy ecosystems are
> real, and
> the rules that apply to money -- which is no more
> real than
> 'Monopoly' money -- don't apply on planet Earth.
>
>
> Where good capitalists go bad
>
> Whatever the issue, nasty villains in plush corner
> offices
> make an easy target. But they are no more to blame
> for the
> state of the planet than are the prophets of
> Armageddon. All
> capitalists, big and small, have individual views
> but a
> common role in society.
>
> The chief concern of one Captain of Industry might
> be global
> warming; of another, the tax deduction on his
> corporate jet;
> of another, the Beast with seven heads and ten
> horns. It
> doesn't matter because they are all playing by the
> same
> rules. The one who doesn't accumulate capital at the
> requisite pace might well end up punching a clock
> for one of
> the others, or worse.
>
> Those who want to square the circle, to have
> infinite
> economic growth on a finite planet, generally invoke
> greater
> efficiency. Technology is supposed to let businesses
> generate more monetary wealth while using and
> abusing less
> of the material world.
>
> Now, nobody -- no CEO, no environmentalist, not even
> the
> Antichrist -- is going to argue against efficiency.
> But
> capitalism has a way of turning good things inside
> out.
>
> If you're a business owner, and you find you can
> produce the
> same number of lawn chairs or helicopters while
> spending
> less on energy, materials, labor, or waste disposal,
> that's
> efficiency, and that means money in the bank for
> you. But
> it's your job as a good capitalist to get that money
> out
=== message truncated ===


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