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Before my libertarian friends get entirely up in arms I’d like to preface this article with a disclaimer. This is not a’ beat up on libertarian inanity’ post, I have plenty of those already, but rather an examination of the role of the state when it comes to managing the affairs of a country. Now as to what the optimal mix is between the public/private is, is quite contentious. In my opinion, the social democratic state a la Sweden or to a lesser extent Canada does the best at preserving choice and liberty while keeping its citizens safe from “free-market” discipline and providing the social services necessary for a smoothly running society. Unfortunately for Mexico, they have been herded far away from anything resembling a social democratic state.
Mexico, the biggest loser in the NAFTA free investors agreement has never recovered from the trauma. Local industry and manufacturing was gutted with the influx of tariff free American goods. Local agriculture was hollowed out as tariff free food-stuffs made farming unprofitable with people leaving the land en mass (Our churlish Canadian federal conservatives are dismembering our single desk wheat board, moving us merrily closer to the Mexico model, yaaaa!) . What was left intact in Mexico was drug cultivation and production, as illegal trade tends not to respect treaties or borders (kinda like a different shade of NAFTA, creepy eh?) While the Mexican economy is going on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the government was forced to adopt many of the notorious structural adjustments that we tend to enforce on even poorer countries to cut the ‘fat’ out of government spending.
What constitutes “fat” are programs that strengthen the social fabric and cohesion of society: Health Care, Education, and Welfare. Obviously the state has no business in areas like these, and the inevitable cuts destroy the social safety net for a countries citizens. Another step toward that lovely Darwinian state of being that is so often bandied about by libertarians. Survival of the fittest, personal liberties and freedom from government interference. Most of the time, your freedom consists of choosing how you and your family can starve or how quickly you can be come destitute if your unlucky enough to get sick. As the structures of the state fall away society morphs closer to the “me first, once I get mine, fuck you” attitude that exemplifies the majority of libertarian thought. Altruism, community, social supports all decay as the struggle to survive quickly marginalizes these now luxurious concerns. “How can I help my community?”, is trumped by, “How can I feed my family?” and necessarily so.
The emergence of the Mexican Narco state is the response to “how can I feed my family?”. The Narcotics industry is profitable, and there are many jobs available, positions that need to be filled and are filled by desperate people who struggle to exist in Mexican state that has been economically and socially hollowed out by ‘market forces’. The violence continues as the Cartels struggle for territory and power while the enfeebled state attempts to maintain order.
“The bound and gagged bodies of 26 young men were found dumped in the heart of Mexico’s second-largest city, in what experts said could mark a new stage in the full-scale war between the country’s two main drug cartels.
The bodies were found early on Thursday in two vans and a pickup truck abandoned on an expressway near the Milennium Arches in Guadalajara, one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city, according to several local media.Most of the men died of asphyxia, according to officials in Jalisco state where Guadalajara is located, though initial reports indicated some had been shot. Mexican drug cartels frequently leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims as a way of sowing fear and taking credit for their actions.”
This is a version of the free market in action. With no rules, no regulation, everything is on the table.
“The victims, apparently between the ages of 25 and 35, all had the words “Milenio Zetas” or “Milenium” written on their chests in oil, said Jalisco state Interior Secretary Fernando Guzman Perez. A law enforcement official who was not authorised to speak on the record said the writing was apparently meant as the killers’ calling card, identifying the assassins as being from the Zetas and a smaller, allied gang, the Milenio Cartel. The official said a banner found in one of the vehicles, whose contents Guzman Perez refused to reveal, was in fact signed by the Zetas. The killings, apparently carried out before dawn, bore an eerie similarity to the September 20 dumping of 35 bodies on an expressway in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz.”
The desperate poor a set on each other killing themselves for their small slice of “the action” so they and their families might survive another day.
“Our correspondent said the federal government was steadfast in its decision to continue using the full force of the state to battle the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel.
“Despite all of those efforts … these kinds of killings continue here and there’s a sense at times that the federal government is really unable to control these kinds of possible revenge killings by trafficking organisations,” he said. Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, has deployed the army to crack down on powerful criminal gangs and some 45,000 people have died in the conflict since he took office.”
The Drug War continues in Mexico. We are at least partially responsible for what has happened there, and what continues to happen there (we provide the market for the narco state’s end products).
Liberal Viewer is taking a fine tooth comb to the action of the police during the OWS protests. More importantly he is speaking directly to what the character of the US is about. It the US a constitutional democracy or is it a autocratic oligarchy that will defend the interests of the rich before the rights of the poor (yes, yes I know false dichotomy but we are being dramatic here). The protests and coverage are writing a new chapter in the rights that people are allowed to express in the US. You can sit on the sidelines and critique OWS on any number of areas, and justifiably so, what and how they are doing is far from perfect. However, what also needs to be examined is what by extension they are doing for those of us who are not participating.
The protesters are documenting and recording how the state treats dissident views. What you are seeing is how well your rights as a citizen stand up to the power of the state and its coercive apparatus. The OWS protests are a litmus test as to exactly how much freedom and liberties are accorded in society. So before you cast aspersions and uncritical invective at OWS, perhaps consider what it would be like if you were demonstrating and vocalizing an idea that meant enough to put your freedom and safety on the line.
How many ‘wtf’ moments are republican political candidates allowed before being branded too stupid to breathe? Michelle Bachmann must be getting super close to the limit by now. I’m not really sure what to do with this level of intellectual bankruptcy on her behalf. Coupled with the puerile servitude of fox news, its almost too much to stomach in one sitting. It is chilling to see that this level of incompetence is allowed anywhere near a position of political power.
Making stuff up on during a televised debate and advocating for torture are apparently okay, small bumps in the road on the campaign road I guess.
Protesting the norm, the accepted, what is deemed credible will never be an easy task. Defenders of the status quo will defend their system with rationalizations that make sense to them and others in the system while dismissing outright, criticism and alternate points of view presented. This process of in-group/out-group friction is the being replayed throughout the world and across Canada. The protesters in Vancouver are being evicted after their case was heard by British Columbia’s Supreme Court.
“A man was arrested during an Occupy Vancouver march following a B.C. Supreme Court decision to grant an injunction, ordering an end to the five-week protest camp outside the city’s art gallery. Justice Anne Mackenzie granted the interim injunction sought by the city to have the campers’ tents removed from where they have been set up since Oct. 15.
MacKenzie set a 2 p.m. PT Monday deadline for the removal of the tents.
The ruling followed a three-day hearing in which city lawyers said the campers were trespassing, while lawyers for the Occupy movement invoked Charter rights of freedom of speech and assembly, and also said the camp was providing shelter for the homeless.”
The ruling in Victoria was more nuanced.
“Justice Terence Schultze said because of the protesters’ respect for the law and their recent good behaviour, police would be required to return to court on Monday for an enforcement order if any protesters refused to leave the site. The ruling comes after many protesters at the Victoria camp decided to pack up and leave voluntarily earlier this week, but protestor Anushka Radji still calls the ruling a victory ‘Not granting an injunction order goes to the fact that they recognize the peaceful nature of the assembly and criminalizing dissent, at this point, is not necessary,’ said Radji.”
Our courts are treading a fine line right now because they are making decisions that speak to our rights as citizens in our country. Dissent and protest are key parts of any democratic process and need to be safeguarded.
“The judge also said he was not allowed to consider constitutional arguments in the case and could only rule on local bylaw issues.”
So, so far no definitive constitutional judgment has been reached. The Occupy Canada movement still has life and a legal leg to stand on. Bringing attention to the disparities in our society is a herculean task, credit should be given to those who have found their voice and that have taken action to correct a growing problem in Canadian society.
Tim Wise has many things to say on the topic of racism in America. His analysis is deft and competent, I reprint the introduction to his essay “Getting What We Deserve? Wealth, Race and Entitlement in America” for the benefit of the education of my readership. Educational purposes aside, many of the complaints/justifications that seem to come up in the comments section of DWR are mentioned in this essay, and are given a thorough rebuttal and explanation. I may dedicate a page to the entire essay for sake of easy reference.
Everywhere you turn, conservatives are bemoaning the so-called “mentality of entitlement.”
“To hear such folks tell it, the problem with America is that people think they’re owed something. Of course, income support programs, nutritional assistance, or housing subsidies have long been pilloried by the right for this reason — because they ostensibly encourage people to expect someone else (in this case, the government, via the American taxpayer) to support them. But now, the criticisms that were once reserved for programs aimed at helping the poor are being applied even to programs upon which much of the middle class has come to rely, like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance.
Increasingly one hears conservative politicians and commentators arguing for cuts in these efforts as well, and critiquing those who rely on them for health care, retirement, or income in-between jobs. To the right, the elderly and unemployed apparently refuse to do for self. They aren’t far-sighted enough, one supposes, to invest their money in a high-growth (and high-risk) private retirement plan; they aren’t responsible enough to purchase good health care, and they’d prefer to sit at home collecting a couple hundred dollars a week in unemployment insurance than find a job that might support them and their families. In other words, there’s something wrong with these people: they’re lazy, have the wrong mindset, and need to get out there and show initiative, presumably the way rich people do.
Though this critique is not solely aimed at persons of color, there is little doubt but that the history of growing opposition to social safety net efforts — which were wildly popular among most whites from the 1930s through most of the 1960s — mirrors, almost perfectly, the time period during which black and brown folks began to gain access, for the first time, to such programs. While blacks, for instance, were largely excluded from Social Security for the first twenty years of its existence, and while very few people of color could access cash benefits until the 1960s, by the 1970s, the rolls of such programs had been opened up, and the public perception was increasingly that those people were the ones using (and abusing) the programs. So in large part, the critique of “entitlement” has been bound up with a racialized narrative of the deserving and undeserving, which can be seen, in many ways, as a racist meme.
But if we look and listen closely, what we discover is that the mentality of entitlement and expectation is far more embedded among the affluent and among whites than among the poor or people of color.”
Grabbed from Sociological Images – Again, more evidence that egalitarian policies are good not only for people, but for business.
“George W. Bush did not really say, “The problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.” But that statement does fit with the American tendency to view our country as the land of entrepreneurship (literally “enterprise”). America is, after all, the land of opportunity, where anyone can become rich. And the way to get rich is to be an independent, risk-taking entrepreneur and start your own business. That’s what we do here in the US, and we do it better than most. At least that’s what we think.
But look at this chart showing the rate of start-ups per working-age population:
The US ranks 23rd. That doesn’t quite square with all those photo-ops where the president (Obama, Bush, Clinton – they all do it) goes to some small successful company out in the heartland. What is it about these other countries that makes for more risk-takikng?
James Wimberly has an answer: the safety net. He makes the point with an analogy – his own photos of kids on a rope-walk – a single rope hung between two platforms in what looks like the Brazilian rain forest. (It’s really just a replanted hillside, formerly the site of a favela). The kids have safety devices – hard hats, a safety harness, guide-ropes to hold on to. Without these, only a few of the most f oolhardy would try a Philippe Petit walk. But the safety devices allow lots of kids to take a risk they would otherwise avoid.
The same logic applies to small business.
How many Americans are locked into jobs they hate by the fear of losing health benefits? No Dane ever has to worry about losing her right to medical care by quitting her job to go it alone
Safety devices cost money, but they pay off. On the rope-walk, you can see the reward in the expression on the kids’ faces when they reach the other platform. In the national data, you see it in the those start-ups.
The countries with significantly higher startup rates than the USA are those with stronger, more comprehensive, and more centralised social safety nets, along with correspondingly higher taxation.
See Wimberly’s entire post – with the photos, footnotes, and comments – for a fuller explanation.
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