These are interesting times. It is quite simple to capture the state of things in a few paragraphs. The difficulty arises when these few paragraphs are read and evaluated by the news-media influenced public mind. Encouraging people to think of the issues themselves untainted by the propaganda machine is the most difficult thing to do for reform-minded activists. Common thinking is swayed significantly by the media, which directs its focus toward issues at the whim of the power elite. Financial institutions and multinational corporations, as Noam Chomsky highlights, are clearly at the forefront of government influence toward policy making. Chomsky points out in a recent article "American Decline: Causes and Consequences," that the public is seriously divided, not only within its own ranks, but also separated significantly from policy makers. The problem then is clearly one of misinformation, or propaganda. If the electorate is to ever have an effect on the outcome of policy, the system must be unhinged from the throes of the financial industry "masters of humankind" as Chomsky puts it.
Why is it acceptable that Obama hired on his economic team the very same individuals who manufactured the current crisis? Goldman Sachs and its economic policy is no policy at all... it encourages high risk high reward transactions at the cost of the "rabble's" livelihood. The recent bailouts of the "too big to fail" banks benefited those banks, who have further incentive to do as they please. Their security blanket is the government itself. Why should they yield? And why should a legislature that is largely bought and sold by those institutions pass reforms that would hurt the masters' bottom lines? Despite the evil of the state of the economy and government, it is entirely rational from their point of view to sustain business as usual.
Analogous is the global warming crisis. The economic crisis is a long term issue--reforms made today will not be overwhelmingly noticed today, but ought to protect future generations from having to pay their forefathers' debt. Similarly, the climate crisis is something that must be dealt with today, not because we will necessarily feel the effects today (even though the fluctuating weather patterns across the globe seem to be a surprise to everyone), but because our children will have grandchildren of their own who very likely will pay with their lives in a century or less.
These are crises of ideas. Policy follows ideas. And the ideas being generated from the current popular media and legislature are overwhelmingly "business-as-usual" in tone. Business as usual is not sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.
Far from conspiracy theory, all it takes is a day of research to connect the dots for oneself uninfluenced by the pundits on the major broadcasting networks. They do not live by journalistic principles. How could they? They are told by those in power what to report. And it isn't their fault. They trust those in power, even if one particular network is more cynical than another. The internal constraints built into the system prevent free thinking from breaking out into the public mindset. Even the tea-party grassroots movement was co-opted by the Republican Party. Accordingly, it will not be a shock to discover the occupy movements to be co-opted by the moderate-conservative Democratic Party.
Societies are complex, dynamic systems, driven and confused by what I have called the "Agency/Morality Circularity." Simply put, to be outlined in more detail, self-interested agency influences, manifests and deterministically generates moral structures (governments, social norms), which subsequently influences self-interest. Eventually, the paradigm is caught in a stagnant loop, where one side of the polarity is controlled by the other side of the polarity. The dichotomous nature of such a circularity gives rise to the very complexity apparent in the system at large. There are now layers upon layers representative of such static circular paradigms. Corporations are also driven by self-interest, despite being heavily motivated by their "lesser" working constituents. However, the upper echelon's self interest is what influences policy making on the government level. Moral agency is thus co-opted by self-interest in the guise of moral agency. Consider the recent legislation granting Corporations the ability to, as private citizens can, fund campaigns. One not need to ponder that fact for more than a moment to realize the connection.
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