Solutions ? I would interpret the suggestion of ‘mass movement’ as a vehicle of a multitude of solutions. Are more concrete solutions wanted otherwise the critique is that of an absence of solutions ?
The Paradigm Shift to realize Consciousness
As Fundamental would also be a vehicle in that way to a solution. A more informed one, as a matter of fact.
An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
… When the team untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
“It’s disconcerting to see how connected things really are,” agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.
Same tune as you have covered before, just different key. Also a bit different as to having Scripps doing the study.
In the absence of a radical transformation of neo-liberalist western democracy I was looking for specific policy prescriptions to begin to address the litany of dehumanizing processes that unregulated capitalism has wrought upon us since the era of deregulation began say 35 years ago.
The threads Hedges weaves together so masterfully have been advancing in separate paths for a long, long time. His brilliance is in directly sewing the threads together so we see that the emperor wears no clothes.
But for me personally, I’d like to move beyond critique to considering solutions, if any are to be had. Otherwise I believe the best one can achieve is to focus on their immediate surroundings and try to make the most positive impact. It took me two decades to arrive at that point, away from the vision of total transformation (which is impossible to grasp except in fleeting moments), and for many years I felt it was a cop out to say “think global, act local” – but in the absence of a universal movement that rationally connects with a large percentage of the American populace what else is left for the individual?
For instance, just consider Hedges critique of liberalism en masse to see how impossible it may be to actually stand up to the unfettered march of MNC power.
I don’t expect ‘policy solutions’ as per the corporate-bought government to pop up from intended, careful consideration for a few decades.
If policies are created, it will be more by accident, than purposeful legislation.
For example, a local effort will find a niche space in the resultant policy labyrinth that will offer an opportunity. This on one hand is as it always has been in a federal republic which acts as a constraint, by definition. The difference now, is the constraints have become more constraining.
A quite common venue of this is the ‘food direct to customer’ type of efforts. The constraint that ‘created’ this opportunity is easy to see if one watches ‘King Corn’, by the way, given the fact that a grower can starve from growing his product.
As usual, RBM’s answer is exponentially better than mine. However, those of us who recognize Hedges at the head of the vanguard of causation journalism, we eagerly, and perhaps mistakenly, await some sort of synthesis. I share RBM’s contention that the solutions will be the result of accident. I also agree that the laboratory for social and political change remains local.
That synthesis may find fertile ground in a mass movement, it seems to me. It may occur, but I think due to the different levels of the global society, it is still a long ways from the level of pain that will cause radical analysis of ‘the way we do things’.
What I’m more concerned with today is a story out of Reuters about how Brazilian federal authorities have decided to sacrifice the Earth’s largest and most precious tropical rainforest for short-term economic growth.
As a part of an ongoing and comprehensive deregulation scheme, President Dilma Rousseff has ceded much of Brazil’s authority over rainforest protection to local officials, who are often severely conflicted. The federal protection agency Ibama has shuttered more than 50% of its field offices and has taken any threat of sanctions for environmental violators with them. Here is the story of one local official who now finds himself trying to protect the rainforest by morning and mine for gold in it by afternoon and night.
In summary, Brazil and many other ‘developing countries’ are just now clambering onto the economic wagon that the US has been on for half a century.
The access to the economic wagon is energy and one can gain insight in understanding the differences the rest of the world have to deal with in getting the economic wagon to the destination of BAU (business as usual, as defined by the US).
Conventional wisdom might suggest that as oil prices rise, developing countries would be less able to afford oil, leaving wealthier countries to bid against each other for increasingly higher-priced supplies. But that is not at all what happened over the past decade, and the trend may give developed countries a reason for concern.
He’s on target for sure. Have you come across any place where he recommends solutions?
Hedges has been short on solutions.
He really hit’s the nail on the head.
Solutions ? I would interpret the suggestion of ‘mass movement’ as a vehicle of a multitude of solutions. Are more concrete solutions wanted otherwise the critique is that of an absence of solutions ?
The Paradigm Shift to realize Consciousness
As Fundamental would also be a vehicle in that way to a solution. A more informed one, as a matter of fact.
Related: Oligarch, H/T to ‘Seraph’ at The Oil Drum >
Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world
An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
… When the team untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
“It’s disconcerting to see how connected things really are,” agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.
Same tune as you have covered before, just different key. Also a bit different as to having Scripps doing the study.
In the absence of a radical transformation of neo-liberalist western democracy I was looking for specific policy prescriptions to begin to address the litany of dehumanizing processes that unregulated capitalism has wrought upon us since the era of deregulation began say 35 years ago.
The threads Hedges weaves together so masterfully have been advancing in separate paths for a long, long time. His brilliance is in directly sewing the threads together so we see that the emperor wears no clothes.
But for me personally, I’d like to move beyond critique to considering solutions, if any are to be had. Otherwise I believe the best one can achieve is to focus on their immediate surroundings and try to make the most positive impact. It took me two decades to arrive at that point, away from the vision of total transformation (which is impossible to grasp except in fleeting moments), and for many years I felt it was a cop out to say “think global, act local” – but in the absence of a universal movement that rationally connects with a large percentage of the American populace what else is left for the individual?
For instance, just consider Hedges critique of liberalism en masse to see how impossible it may be to actually stand up to the unfettered march of MNC power.
I don’t expect ‘policy solutions’ as per the corporate-bought government to pop up from intended, careful consideration for a few decades.
If policies are created, it will be more by accident, than purposeful legislation.
For example, a local effort will find a niche space in the resultant policy labyrinth that will offer an opportunity. This on one hand is as it always has been in a federal republic which acts as a constraint, by definition. The difference now, is the constraints have become more constraining.
A quite common venue of this is the ‘food direct to customer’ type of efforts. The constraint that ‘created’ this opportunity is easy to see if one watches ‘King Corn’, by the way, given the fact that a grower can starve from growing his product.
As usual, RBM’s answer is exponentially better than mine. However, those of us who recognize Hedges at the head of the vanguard of causation journalism, we eagerly, and perhaps mistakenly, await some sort of synthesis. I share RBM’s contention that the solutions will be the result of accident. I also agree that the laboratory for social and political change remains local.
That synthesis may find fertile ground in a mass movement, it seems to me. It may occur, but I think due to the different levels of the global society, it is still a long ways from the level of pain that will cause radical analysis of ‘the way we do things’.
For example, at The Automatic Earth is President Rousseff’s Monster:
In summary, Brazil and many other ‘developing countries’ are just now clambering onto the economic wagon that the US has been on for half a century.
The access to the economic wagon is energy and one can gain insight in understanding the differences the rest of the world have to deal with in getting the economic wagon to the destination of BAU (business as usual, as defined by the US).
As Robert Rapier points out: