Ill fares the land

Tony Judt was a bonafide intellectual, an author a university professor from a big time school, a first class international education. So as read another of his books, Ill fares the land I find it interesting that while he identifies the same problems and causes in the world today that I do, he views the solution as almost the opposite of me.

Like many others, the late Mr. Judt was enamoured with Social Democracy in particular with that form practiced in Scandinavia. And it's easy to see why, the Scandinavian countries rank high in all the positive categories when ranking countries. However, on the very first page of this book he states the reason why I do not think this is a realistic option in North America; "For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose." North Americans are a not a society linked by common history, religion or even language like the overwhelming majority of inhabitants in the Scandinavian countries.

With the exception of a few (and largely very poor - coincidence?) groups, North Americans are linked by one common trait - we or our relatively recent ancestors came to this land to get rich or die tryin'. We are not really a “we” in any sense beyond this one sorry excuse for commonality. If all you have to hold your society together is the pursuit of material self-interest how do you reconcile that with high taxes to benefit of strangers?

The “occupy” series of protests even reflects this. The protestors have one common fiscal complaint but that seems to be all there is to it. There seems to be some vague notion that the governments of the world should do something about people accumulating too much wealth. What exactly is too much wealth and what should be done are hardly agreed upon facts? Don’t get me wrong, I do agree that the wealth disparity in the world is atrocious.

Here’s what I’d like to see as a start: I’d like to see the government butt out of big business. The idea that wealthy people need tax breaks to encourage them to become “job creators” is stupid. If someone is so wealthy that a hihgh tax rate makes it not worth it for them to create more personal wealth then that’s just fine. Someone else will provide the services/production that isn’t worth their effort. Even if this other person does it less efficiently it will spread the wealth around and that is good for society. The idea that companies owned by multi-millionaires should get R&D grants from tax dollars is stupid. And companies, all companies should be allowed to fail. Unions should be allowed to negotiate/strike their members out of a job by killing the company. If the role of any company is so important that it cannot be allowed fail then that role should be a function of government and not the private sector.

Yes, I’m aware that there would be a period of economic contraction but I honestly think that would be a good thing for the 99%.

Oh, and for the working class I’d like to see a change in EI benefits to allow an unemployed person to take their benefits in a lump sum as a grant to start a small business. I’d like to see more self employed people making a decent living for themselves from a small business and I’d like to see fewer “wage slaves” making millions for corporate fat cats filling the same roles.

So why won’t I ever see this? It is the nature of government to control, sometimes called govern, and in a country of millions of people it’s easier to deal with a few mega corporations than thousands of small producers. But when the mega corporations become too big to fail in the eyes of the government who is really in charge?