It is really interesting how American commoners can support a political party that obviously serves interests of the top money earners and wealthy elites in this country. Perhaps they are waiting for some scraps to fall off the table? Or some of that lucre to dribble down their way in the form of a fabulous $9.00/hr retail job? But, “commoners”? What does that mean?
I figure that since the country seems bent on heading in the direction of a 19th Century-style society of stratified income classes, we may as well dust off the Victorian terminology and talk about how life is going to be.
Power is the ability to allocate resources. As more and more resources come under the control of a wealthy minority, government seems to align itself increasingly to a small pool of influential and wealthy elite. With the election of the upcoming congressional class, it is very clear that wealthy corporations and individuals are getting what they paid for- statutory favors and influence in the deconstruction of the federal system of government. It is no coincidence that politicians from southern states, where an upswing in antebellum sentiment is afoot, are especially keen on the topic of states rights and other confederate sympathies. Old antipathy is being dusted off and tried on for size.
Since SCOTUS has affirmed that money equals speech in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, and that corporate funding of broadcasts cannot be limited under the First Amendment, anonymous streams of cash from conservative donors have flooded the 2010 election. Such is the power of persuasion made by big money that a class of deconstructionists has been elected to the next session of congress.
Americans commoners have a fetish about the ways of the megawealthy. Dial up CNBC sometime when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are interviewed at one of the Ivy League B-Schools. Watch all of the gaga-eyed MBA students as they hang on every utterance proffered by these two American Plutocrats. It is a form of rapture. The students and faculty are under a kind of enchantment. But this is no different from the country at large. Watch how commoners behave around Donald Trump, or Oprah for that matter.
One of the things that will have to change in the near future is a rewrite of the local zoning codes pertaining to shanty towns and squatting. As the population grows, as raw material scarcity increases, and as wealth continues to shift toward the wealthy side of the bell curve, more and more people will find themselves unable to house themselves. Increasingly we see a housing system heavily relying on credit and background checks, high rents, and the need to commute in America’s now balky system of suburbs. The suburb system places a great distance between work centers and living centers, making transportation problematic for our up-and-coming dirt poor class.
As the population of dirt poor and destitute rises due to deindustrialization and dissolution of social safety nets (say, by 2030), all flexibility in the system will begin to play out and people will find themselves living in shanties and refrigerator boxes. They’ll become squatters. The local constables will have to deal with them because municipalities will refuse to compromise property values and will shun the homeless.
Let’s see. What will the growing class of homeless do with their time? Write poems about the joys of laissez faire orthodoxy? I think that somebody will put together an appealing manifesto on insurrection.
Maybe our own village idiot, Glenn Beck, is right. Maybe there is a revolution underway. But I don’t think it is the one he is expecting.
Lamentations on Chemistry 