Tapsearch Com EditorHuman nature sacrificed at altar of greed
November 23rd 2008 02:00
By Ray Tapajna, Editor and Artist at Tapart News and Art that Talks
The money crisis opens more doors in exploring the common good. Many things that were accepted as good are now bad. Prior to the crisis, many thought there was nothing bad about the stock market and the investment community. Alan Greenspan told Congress he was surprised that the investment community failed at policing its own activities. He seem to say that human nature would kick in and some how take out all the bad things.
In my series of reviews of Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence, I noted his seemingly fixation of a communitary workers community - New Harmony. See - Greenspan from the trenches Alan Greenspan put aside the moral fog that surround ethics in the business world and spent an unusual amount of time, downgrading the New Harmony workers community experiment in the 1800s. He tells about the community strife that caused the failure of New Harmony but community strife is normal in any small community attempt to live out the Bible. The world continues to be haunted by the early Christians living in close community sharing all with each other. It seems, Greenspan uses his synopsis of a small communitarian economic failure as his way of defending greed. Apparently, he plugs in greed as a part of human nature with his version of the free market being able to control greed from getting out of hand.
During the last twenty years, greed did get out of hand with an economy based on making money on money instead of making things. Money products took over at the expense of production, labor and workers. Workers value was deflated. We did have DEFLATION when it came to the workday. The stock market called the firing of milions of workers and the creation of a new working poor class as an increase in productiviyt. It should have been called the deflation of the value of work. In the first phase of free trade and globalization, we traded away our farms. Many farmers lost their farms and their entire life savings. Clearly, free trade failed the farmers and vast valuable asset was lost in the USA. All the money products related to this degradation, hid the problem for awhile. Now we see what happens when we hide from real values that support the common good for the whole of society.
Next came the factories. Production was discounted. More than 400,000 workers related to the auto industry lost their jobs during the 1980s and early 1990s due to unfair trade and the moving of factories outside the USA. Next came the steel mills with more than 700,000 workers related to the steel industry, losing their jobs. This was about 20 years ago too.
These losses were ignored in the economy converting to money products. In the late 1980s and in the 1990s, more than a million workers lost their jobs in the computer industry. Who would think the the USA would spend decades developing high technology only to give it away to those who did not invest anything in Research and Development. It is nonsensical to have taxpayer pay for Research and Dev. and then move the production phase outside the USA. In the end we have taxpayers not only shopping their way out of their jobs but also being taxed out of their production jobs too.
A friend always tells me that it is human nature to shop for the cheapest price without being concerned about the conditions behind the cheaper prices. Is it human nature? Greenspan seemed to think it was but somehow, things in the end work out because competition includes evolving towards what is better rather than what is worst. Now we see, what a false understanding of human nature can bring us. It has ended in a financial meltdown. With the financial markets now being subsidized by government. No longer can anyone who has alot of money say they are not living off the poor. No longer can a stock market talking head expert discuss stock market values without knowing who is ultimately paying the toll.
Only labor and workers have real tangible value and are the real asset in any economy. Everthing else flows from that. The money products ultimately are based on that value and for some reason, powerful forces in government, the media, the academic world and vast transnational corporation chose to radically discount the value of work. They took tariffs off products and put them on workers.
Workers are the main commodities being traded in the global econmic arena. They are put on a global block to compete for the same jobs down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor. Now it has backfired. The financial community has now moved up to the front line in this radical assault on the dignity of workers and the common good.
Now we have a new kind of Socialist Capitalist system where the bill collectors getting bailed out my the debtors. The debtors paid and paid with many gong bankrupt paying usury rates of interest charged by even main stream banks.
The money crisis opens more doors in exploring the common good. Many things that were accepted as good are now bad. Prior to the crisis, many thought there was nothing bad about the stock market and the investment community. Alan Greenspan told Congress he was surprised that the investment community failed at policing its own activities. He seem to say that human nature would kick in and some how take out all the bad things.
In my series of reviews of Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence, I noted his seemingly fixation of a communitary workers community - New Harmony. See - Greenspan from the trenches Alan Greenspan put aside the moral fog that surround ethics in the business world and spent an unusual amount of time, downgrading the New Harmony workers community experiment in the 1800s. He tells about the community strife that caused the failure of New Harmony but community strife is normal in any small community attempt to live out the Bible. The world continues to be haunted by the early Christians living in close community sharing all with each other. It seems, Greenspan uses his synopsis of a small communitarian economic failure as his way of defending greed. Apparently, he plugs in greed as a part of human nature with his version of the free market being able to control greed from getting out of hand.
During the last twenty years, greed did get out of hand with an economy based on making money on money instead of making things. Money products took over at the expense of production, labor and workers. Workers value was deflated. We did have DEFLATION when it came to the workday. The stock market called the firing of milions of workers and the creation of a new working poor class as an increase in productiviyt. It should have been called the deflation of the value of work. In the first phase of free trade and globalization, we traded away our farms. Many farmers lost their farms and their entire life savings. Clearly, free trade failed the farmers and vast valuable asset was lost in the USA. All the money products related to this degradation, hid the problem for awhile. Now we see what happens when we hide from real values that support the common good for the whole of society.
Next came the factories. Production was discounted. More than 400,000 workers related to the auto industry lost their jobs during the 1980s and early 1990s due to unfair trade and the moving of factories outside the USA. Next came the steel mills with more than 700,000 workers related to the steel industry, losing their jobs. This was about 20 years ago too.
These losses were ignored in the economy converting to money products. In the late 1980s and in the 1990s, more than a million workers lost their jobs in the computer industry. Who would think the the USA would spend decades developing high technology only to give it away to those who did not invest anything in Research and Development. It is nonsensical to have taxpayer pay for Research and Dev. and then move the production phase outside the USA. In the end we have taxpayers not only shopping their way out of their jobs but also being taxed out of their production jobs too.
A friend always tells me that it is human nature to shop for the cheapest price without being concerned about the conditions behind the cheaper prices. Is it human nature? Greenspan seemed to think it was but somehow, things in the end work out because competition includes evolving towards what is better rather than what is worst. Now we see, what a false understanding of human nature can bring us. It has ended in a financial meltdown. With the financial markets now being subsidized by government. No longer can anyone who has alot of money say they are not living off the poor. No longer can a stock market talking head expert discuss stock market values without knowing who is ultimately paying the toll.
Only labor and workers have real tangible value and are the real asset in any economy. Everthing else flows from that. The money products ultimately are based on that value and for some reason, powerful forces in government, the media, the academic world and vast transnational corporation chose to radically discount the value of work. They took tariffs off products and put them on workers.
Workers are the main commodities being traded in the global econmic arena. They are put on a global block to compete for the same jobs down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor. Now it has backfired. The financial community has now moved up to the front line in this radical assault on the dignity of workers and the common good.
Now we have a new kind of Socialist Capitalist system where the bill collectors getting bailed out my the debtors. The debtors paid and paid with many gong bankrupt paying usury rates of interest charged by even main stream banks.
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