When Boeing was run by engineers it built great aircraft and took large financial risks.
When Boeing was run by a string of alumni from GE trained by chainsaw Al to maximize profits in the short term, the quality of its aircraft deteriorated, its reputation was tarnished, and people got killed.
In a capitalist economy dominated by finance sovereign wealth funds dedicated to the advancement of the common good are a necessity because Wall Street will never fund it.
You’re letting Reagan off the hook too easily. This guys precious job was going around and telling workers that what was best for GE was best for them. He did that same thing to our Country. The changes he implemented were not temporary and the damage done by them persist to this day. Reagan named our Government the villain and destroyed the thing that our founders built for us, to protect the covenant between us. The Government of the founders isn’t some intellectual elite far away controlling the lives of Americans, the Government is us. It’s time to restore that covenant.
In that Mass Constitutional document, “government is instituted for the common good” wasnt just a statement regarding benevolent purposes. They system they built had an organizational design where power, declared to originate withiin the people, was accessible, manipulable, and correctable by the population via an institutional topology of numerous offices, frequent elections, various representative bodies, municipalities, courts, civic associations, locally anchored economic institutions, and local governments holding serious policy authorities.
But over the course of a few decades after WW2 most of that topology was reorganized and so we ended up with fiscal resources, credit allocation decision making, corporate ownership, communications, scientific authority, education/training, regulation, infrastructurals planning, and political organization increasingly concentrated within state and national and then Global institutions and interlocking public-private professional networks.
One interesting perspective on capitalism. Meta/Facebook has no trouble coming up with $18 Billion to pay for damaging our youth meanwhile we cannot the capitalist system has never allowed the investment to have rare earth technology that we (together with Japan) invented 40 years ago. (Note that Facebook will restrict the usage for kids under 16....only in the US; no concerns about the rest of the world's youth)
Something new is coming. Hard to say exactly what but it will change assumptions about political and economic arrangements. I think the country is too divided to make it easy.
we could just re-decentralize, re-pluralize, and return to deliberate redundancy and policy variability while reconstructing lower case “d” democratic governance structures (which in a huge system require decentralization, institutional plurality, redundancy, and variability to exist in a string way)
Reynolds v Sims turned governance in many states over to big cities. Decentralization won't work if the state is the unit of analysis. Unless we get serious about redrawing state borders to make them more homogenous.
Great essay and a fantastic photo of Sherman Ave in Coeur d'Alene.
When Boeing was run by engineers it built great aircraft and took large financial risks.
When Boeing was run by a string of alumni from GE trained by chainsaw Al to maximize profits in the short term, the quality of its aircraft deteriorated, its reputation was tarnished, and people got killed.
In a capitalist economy dominated by finance sovereign wealth funds dedicated to the advancement of the common good are a necessity because Wall Street will never fund it.
You’re letting Reagan off the hook too easily. This guys precious job was going around and telling workers that what was best for GE was best for them. He did that same thing to our Country. The changes he implemented were not temporary and the damage done by them persist to this day. Reagan named our Government the villain and destroyed the thing that our founders built for us, to protect the covenant between us. The Government of the founders isn’t some intellectual elite far away controlling the lives of Americans, the Government is us. It’s time to restore that covenant.
https://pulpitfortruth.substack.com/p/money-never-rots
In that Mass Constitutional document, “government is instituted for the common good” wasnt just a statement regarding benevolent purposes. They system they built had an organizational design where power, declared to originate withiin the people, was accessible, manipulable, and correctable by the population via an institutional topology of numerous offices, frequent elections, various representative bodies, municipalities, courts, civic associations, locally anchored economic institutions, and local governments holding serious policy authorities.
But over the course of a few decades after WW2 most of that topology was reorganized and so we ended up with fiscal resources, credit allocation decision making, corporate ownership, communications, scientific authority, education/training, regulation, infrastructurals planning, and political organization increasingly concentrated within state and national and then Global institutions and interlocking public-private professional networks.
One interesting perspective on capitalism. Meta/Facebook has no trouble coming up with $18 Billion to pay for damaging our youth meanwhile we cannot the capitalist system has never allowed the investment to have rare earth technology that we (together with Japan) invented 40 years ago. (Note that Facebook will restrict the usage for kids under 16....only in the US; no concerns about the rest of the world's youth)
Something new is coming. Hard to say exactly what but it will change assumptions about political and economic arrangements. I think the country is too divided to make it easy.
we could just re-decentralize, re-pluralize, and return to deliberate redundancy and policy variability while reconstructing lower case “d” democratic governance structures (which in a huge system require decentralization, institutional plurality, redundancy, and variability to exist in a string way)
Reynolds v Sims turned governance in many states over to big cities. Decentralization won't work if the state is the unit of analysis. Unless we get serious about redrawing state borders to make them more homogenous.
Wait, Trump wasn’t that new “something”?? That means he wasted everyone’s time for the last 10 years!!
We need to get back to the Covenant that our founders build our Government on.
https://pulpitfortruth.substack.com/p/a-nation-not-a-merchant-ship?r=2kc5k&utm_medium=ios