But if one’s experience has been under the boot of the oligarchy, has been as cheap, purposefully uneducated throwaway bodies, then there can be no dignity at all in one’s labor. And a man knows that inside. And the frustration grows like an ulcer upon the man’s soul, a little each day for a lifetime. And a man drinks and busts up a few things now and them. Or just says fuck it some mornings and doesn’t show up. Or tries some oxy. Or maybe joins a Holy Roller church to gain the cold comfort of the preacher’s message that “Jesus loves even an utterly impotent piece shit like you.”

Yes, you poor dumb sonnuva bitch, Jesus loves you. But the elites need you. The need you to pay for their lawn parties, trips to Europe and to ensure the financial perpetuity of their pampered spawn for generations to come. And as for the so-called “American corporations,” they don’t even need you anymore. They’ve got the laboring throngs of China’s Mandarin capitalism (where civil rights are not an issue), they’ve got Vietnamese and Indonesian factories, and Hatian factories, and those places in Bangaladesh where caged workers can be had for $11 to $42 a month, and the floor boss takes home a different teenaged girl every night.

Freedom is owning your labor. Period. Negotiating for its cost, not accepting whatever portion is left after the wolves have fully feasted.

Read the post in its entirety here:

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/06/oligarchy-corporations-and-unions.html

And it was not my intention to attack or make ad hominem or insinuation centered arguments, although I can see that is what I may have done.

So let’s try and get back to the point of the post and videos, which I felt was to address what we can do about, “the idea of a post-industrial economy that has very little use and value for a large portion of its laboring population is alarming.”

We find ourselves in a time where if a member of society is not able to generate wealth or profit for a corporation they become expendable. (These are the people who Simon portrays so well in The Wire)

In the hey day of the industrial era, workers in factories, however much exploited were of use to the capitalists (sorry to use Marxist language, but really how else can we express these thoughts.) in that they, through their labor, generated wealth for the very few, but we see now in the post industrial/globalized age that a surplus of labor has made large populations of people unnecessary. See: inner cities, third world, etc…

The question than becomes how do these marginalized populations find meaning and value in their lives, and if they do not find meaning, what affect will it have on society as a whole? Crime, class war, Mad Max?

These are the types of questions I feel that Simon is asking with the body of his work and these interviews in particular.

So I will leave with a question:

“How do we restore freedom, achievement, individualism and reason to groups of people who have been rendered unnecessary because they do not contribute to wealth creation and the new globalized world order? “

I’d be happy to discuss all of this on your blog or mine.

you will never be talked down from your view/talking point(s). neither will i, for that matter.

that said:

…i guess the fatal flaw with ayn rand’s social/economic darwinism (and i’m hardly the first to mention this) is it rests on a false premise: namely, that we all start from a equal place, and we all have an equal chance to succeed. in a word: meritocracy. in another word: hardly.

99.9 percent of ayn rand ideologues are straight white middle-class men from a judeo-christian background. (and by the image attached to your posts, i’ll hazard a guess that you’re no outlier.)

respectfully, i would ask you to consider why ayn rand appeals (.1 percent exception granted) to such a monolithic demographic).

i think the answer is fairly (insultingly?) obvious but, just the same, i’d still like to see you work out the answer on your own.

look, capitalism generates wealth like no other economic system. but, as marshal mcluhan is wont to say: “anything pushed to its extreme will produce its opposite.”

…and that’s why, peter, we have a mixed economy. (and since you mentioned locke) that’s why we have a bill or rights…to safeguard against the (hobbe’s) Leviathan.

btw, weird you felt i was drawing a binary between “good” and “profit”…when i wrote “good” ABOVE “profit.”
seems a bit disingenuous (straw man?) on your behalf.

also,
…i am curious how you came to believe that the military protects individual rights? (isnt it really corporations rights?) reality certainly doesnt square well with your theory. i can point you to 20 different history books or 30 different documentaries–or just open up a major newspaper–if you’d like to see your theory refuted.

peter, i dont doubt that you mean well. or even that you have something important to contribute. but, respectfully, at some point you are going to have to learn two crucial things:

(1) the military is one the least effective ways of protecting the individual. dollar for dollar, i’d even say libraries perform the service far better. what ensures a healthy democracy more than an educated populace?

(2) ecological intelligence: do you know the expression “True North”? it means when we are TRULY making progress, not just making self-defeating, short-term progress. all this is to say: if you really want to make a difference in the world, you are going to have see that you are part of a vibrant yet tenuous ecosystem. and the way you manage the world’s natural resources matter more than any of us can currently grasp.

last point: if you feel i have trafficked in “insinuation centered arguments,” please hyphenate “insinuation” and “centered”…since (a) that seems to be a pet rejoinder of yours, and (b) you are attempting to use the words as a compound modifier.

Now, is this completely original and insightful political, economic, or even social analysis? No. What’s original and insightful about The Wire is how it personifies that analysis through the most dynamic and real range of characters ever assembled in a text, locates it in a specific time and place (Baltimore, Peter; not NYC), and creates compelling drama on the scale of Greek tragedy. Does Simon place most of the blame for the declining value of the individual’s labor on American capitalism ? Yes he does, and I’d tend to agree with him. But reducing The Wire to a simple minded anti-capitalist screed would be to miss much.

I also find it intriguing that you feel “good” and “profitable” are opposed concepts, as if all profit is inherently evil. To coin a phrase, if profit is the root of all evil, that what is the root of all profit [here's a clue, Francisco d'Anconia]. Profit by itself does not create a code of values, as wise woman once said.

W/R/T a “hands-off-government”, why would that require little to no military? If the role of government is to protect individual rights, it would be necessary to have a military in one form or another, and yes, it would be a big portion of government because there would be little else, other than the restrictions of the powers of that military.

Unfortunately, your argument then turns to ad hominem and insinuation centered arguments.

…