Out Of Ideas

[poliphilo]

Our politicians are clean out of ideas. The overarching ideology of the past half-century- freemarket capitalism- is collapsing around us,  its historic opponent- state socialism- collapsed decades ago and there don't seem to be any alternatives. The politicians, bereft of ideology- are reduced to managing the mess. That's why I don't hate them the way I hated their immediate predecessors. You can hate a man with ideas. His ideas make him loom bigger than himself. Tony Blair, as frontman for neo-conservatism- the last and feeblest ideology of the 20th century- had a sort of nasty, glittery grandeur.  His successor, Gordon Brown, is  just a hapless human being, floundering about in the shambles he helped create. There's nothing there to hate- no big idea to oppose or disprove. You can point at the incompetence, the corruption, the dishonesty, but you know in your heart that that's just the human condition- and you can expect exactly the same sort of muddle from the next person to take the job.

Big ideas lead to big crimes. Countless millions of people died in the last century because politicians got big ideas in their heads. Distasteful as they may be, I think we're better off with our current crop of scuttling, empty-headed managers.

Comments

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

I like your thinking here. I also believe that the system itself is going to have to change. Free market capitalism isn't sustainable. And there is more to quality of life than economic growth.

Capitalism promotes the notion of unlimited profits. Companies constantly have to come up with new products (white chocolate peanut butter cups, spicy hot Cheetos) so that they can continue to increase profits. But people don't need those products, and they may in fact be doing more harm than good--to our health, to the environment, to the people we pay slave wages to produce them at low prices, etc.

Remember when the personal computer came into being, and everyone said it would increase productivity so much that we'd only need to work 20 hours a week? But what happened instead? We're simply expected to work 40 hours and produce twice as much.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

The trouble is, it is no longer enough to have a stable share price and give shareholders regular dividends. What people want is constant growth of companies, as inicated by a rising share price, so shareholders can have it both ways. In order to keep doing that, you have to keep doing more and better than last year, and you get to a point where it isn't sustainable.