RE: Wanna Buy A Port?
Nice try, Harold, but American corporate behavior has about as much in common with capitalism as Strother and Ann Coulter do with each other.
Harold exposes himself as a national socialist and a fascist in the following stanzas:
In the decades following World War II, you could speak, without undue smirking, about corporate responsibility. A sense of national solidarity, high rates of unionization, and a labor force that did not extend much beyond our borders anchored American business in America.
By the logic of the market, there's no reason why our East Coast ports shouldn't be operated by a company owned by the United Arab Emirates.
That one is patently false, but I'll get to that in a minute.
After all, when American business goes to China to have a machine built or a shirt stitched or some research undertaken, it is in no small reason because the labor is dirt-cheap. This is partly the result of the nation's history of poverty and partly the result of repressive state policy that views all efforts at worker organization -- as it views all efforts at establishing autonomous centers of power -- as criminal.
And Harold finds fault with the Bush Administration rightly, but neglects to follow up with the reasoning:
Indeed, at the heart of the Bush administration's theory of democratic transformation, we find two non sequiturs: that integration into the global marketplace leads to democratic pluralism, and that elections lead to democratic pluralism.
And the reasoning Harold neglects to establish is that it is doubtful that a democratic plurality is necessarily even something that is desirable. Neither Meyerson nor Bush have the vaguest clue what it means to operate in a constitutional republic. Both are stopped dead in their tracks at the thought of considering anything beyond the simplistic equation of democracy equals good.
Meyerson's drive-by logic on the capitalistic merits of selling the ports is faulty as well. Any true capitalist endeavor is just as concerned with its long-term survival as it is with its profit margin. This, above all else is one of the prime pieces of evidence to support the assertion that Americanism and capitalism are not the same thing. American busness has been experiencing a decline in its ability to take the long view for quite some time. There is no indication that the trend will reverse any time soon.
And this gives me the segue to take issue on only one point in Strother's response to the Ann Coulter post: Bush is not "all about business." Bush is "all about his buddies' business." The difference is tremendous.
Harold exposes himself as a national socialist and a fascist in the following stanzas:
In the decades following World War II, you could speak, without undue smirking, about corporate responsibility. A sense of national solidarity, high rates of unionization, and a labor force that did not extend much beyond our borders anchored American business in America.
By the logic of the market, there's no reason why our East Coast ports shouldn't be operated by a company owned by the United Arab Emirates.
That one is patently false, but I'll get to that in a minute.
After all, when American business goes to China to have a machine built or a shirt stitched or some research undertaken, it is in no small reason because the labor is dirt-cheap. This is partly the result of the nation's history of poverty and partly the result of repressive state policy that views all efforts at worker organization -- as it views all efforts at establishing autonomous centers of power -- as criminal.
And Harold finds fault with the Bush Administration rightly, but neglects to follow up with the reasoning:
Indeed, at the heart of the Bush administration's theory of democratic transformation, we find two non sequiturs: that integration into the global marketplace leads to democratic pluralism, and that elections lead to democratic pluralism.
And the reasoning Harold neglects to establish is that it is doubtful that a democratic plurality is necessarily even something that is desirable. Neither Meyerson nor Bush have the vaguest clue what it means to operate in a constitutional republic. Both are stopped dead in their tracks at the thought of considering anything beyond the simplistic equation of democracy equals good.
Meyerson's drive-by logic on the capitalistic merits of selling the ports is faulty as well. Any true capitalist endeavor is just as concerned with its long-term survival as it is with its profit margin. This, above all else is one of the prime pieces of evidence to support the assertion that Americanism and capitalism are not the same thing. American busness has been experiencing a decline in its ability to take the long view for quite some time. There is no indication that the trend will reverse any time soon.
And this gives me the segue to take issue on only one point in Strother's response to the Ann Coulter post: Bush is not "all about business." Bush is "all about his buddies' business." The difference is tremendous.
posted by Anonymous | 2:22 PM
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