Re: Plumbing, consciousness & soc.dem.

[6155GUASTELL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Gary, I'm glad to hear/read you say what you said. In fact, I find it
a great uplift that this conversation is even taking place. The points
of disagreement are less important -- we'll get the points right
eventually -- than building up the momentum to approach the issues.

I think it's probably true that a socio-economic overhaul is going
to take both a rigorous theory -- one that we like so much that we
can treat it as an ideology -- and competent plumbing to get it in
motion fast enough before the threatened parties can sandbag the
operation.

I'm not sure, however, if the "sides" or polarities are exactly social
democracy versus gonzo-right-wing capitalism. If it is, then the
parameters of the contentions are complex. I'm thinking not only about
the distribution of wealth, but also of individual freedom and
political rights. The issue of sovreignty is a major part of the GATT
treaty debate. ECOL-ECON has been discussing it this past week under
the rubric of Free-trade versus alternatives to same, and the
occasional mention of sovreignty issues, but with no direct mention
of GATT. I've been on the verge of a GATT-bash over there for a
month. Re individual freedom, the 1980s in the US has been a
decade of deregulation of industries (freedom for them) and greater
restrictions on individual freedom, esp at the hands of an employer.

Reference of the day:
Decker, K.H. (1994). Workplace privacy for the 1990s. JOURNAL OF
INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS, 3(1) 17-34.

Maybe Abbie Hoffman said it in the most straightforward manner. At
the individual, society and global levels we are experiencing "an
international facist conspiracy based on money." (from STEAL THIS
URINE TEST.) The other issues raised here weeks ago about bubbles
in the bond market, pseudo-inflation, Fed irrationality are examples
of it. All thriving on self-serving tautologies. The best thing the
perpetrators can do for themselves right now is to unite across
the world, make up rules that contradict laws of specific nations,
enforce them with a committee that no one in the freakin' world
voted for, and disconnect the individual from any redress of
grievance provisions. No one will be able to figure out who or
what to rebel against! Gee, I wonder if anyone thought of that
already...

Raise consciousness? Let's do it. But given the weight of the
counterforces, we'd need to raise it to the boiling point. Perhaps
a place to start is to make a list -- a long list -- of all the
specific problems and manifestations of social and economic ills,
and from there itemize the proximal causes of those problems,
reduce the number of underlying causation themes to the minimum
necessary to explain them all, then do some major plumbing on the
result.

Well,.. just a thought...

--Stephen Guastello