Lively topics and key points left out of national discussion by organization-dominated news and analysis, but important to individuals - on economics, social conditions and politics. Karl Roebling, who remembers the Depression, has sounded off on national and international topics since youth. He reads 50 periodicals a month, and imbibes world and international news and analysis. He's knapsacked the world seeing the slums and vast populations. In a world "gone organizational," he wants to revive a place for independent citizen expression on major topics, lest the present trend completely crowds out the independent individual.
Read these free downloadable chapters below!
How Inflation Has Been Held Down - - Until Now
The Reroyalization Of America
How To Teach Faster - - New Method
Is Our Next Gov't Corpocracy? Technocracy? Both?
Do We Again Want An Inheritance Aristocracy?
The Plush New "Company Sto' "
The Customer Is No Longer King Or Queen - - The Store Is
"Trade" Implies Balance, Not Our Ruinous Imbalance
The Big, Bad Pyramid
The Vanishing Citizen Voice
••••
AND WHY IT WILL NOW EXPLODE
We've bought our low inflation rate with trillions in "trade deficit" outflow of our money since 1980. The annual amount recently hit some $750 billion PER YEAR, or about $2 billion PER DAY, Sundays included.
This river of money buys cheap goods that flood our markets. If we had to produce for our own demand, prices here would rise.
Banks hate inflation because it erodes the principal on their loans. They love borrowing and lending, where they can charge interest.
Consequently, the Fed, which is a private bank or consortium, partly ignored and ignores the COLOSSAL BORROWING involved in our trade imbalances - - borrowings which now total many, many trillions since the early 1980s where we first heard the new dictum, "Debt doesn't matter."
Moderate debt may not matter (it's just a little "hamburger helper"). But extreme borrowing like today's annual approximately $1 trillion of trade losses and our budget deficits, is insane, and about to hit the wall.
The Fed has to manufacture money to keep up the "money supply," and even though this is "electronic money" not printed greenbacks, this overproduction has a built-in inflation factor. We're depreciating the value of our money by issuing more, more and more of it. And this is what's driving down our dollar.
Then why hasn't INFLATION reared its ugly head? Well, it has certainly started (and will get much worse). For decades, though, it has been held in check by borrowing to buy more and more cheap goods.
We have blanketed the world with "funny money" produced from thin air, while on a strange program of being in the inflationary business of producingmore and more "funny money" in order to hold down inflation!
Anyone can see that such a program will work only temporarily and in moderation. But now it's long-term, wildly extreme, and accelerating drastically. The inflation artificially held back is still built into the system of overproduction of money, and will ABSOLUTELY SURFACE with pent-up super-force at some time.
Some say a catastrophe lies ahead, some say a great sorting-out period, some say a soft landing, some say foreign nations and the global economy won't let the US economic system collapse lest theirs go down with it. But in any event, the US rule of the world by debt-money is running out of road. Almost all say we will take a lower position.
Vendors outside our borders wising up
The oil nations were the first vendors outside our borders to finally wise up to the watered dollar. By international agreement, oil settlements are made in DOLLARS. One day the Mideast said, "Hey, pal, your buck is hollowed out by your borrowing and your production of zillions of bucks, which are piling up worldwide and have no real value - - except maybe to buy your common stocks, which may be on the verge of collapse, who knows? We've used some of our piled-up dollars to buy gold and run it up from $200 to $900, but we remember the last time we did this and got burned. So - - tell you what - - instead of paying us $11 per barrel of our oil, pay us … hmm … let's see … how about somewhere over $100? Sound about right? The buck ain't worth what it used to be, so give us more bucks. And in the future, even more bucks - - and consider that we MAY STOP TAKING BUCKS ENTIRELY. So there."
In fact, as of this writing, some settlements are being made in a mixture of bucks and yen, or bucks and euros, or other arrangements. That's only the beginning.
Heavy inflation has set in - - may get "hyper"- - and Gov't lies to us
Everywhere, we can see inflation - - food, medical goods and services, fuel, gold, silver, houses. But the Gov't says, "core inflation is less than 2%." Core inflation is a joke (which keeps the Gov't from having to pay inflation adjustments on, for example, social security). Many statisticians say inflation is more than 6% now, with much more "in the pipeline." It is built into our "economic system" - - a system I call "debt prosperity." But we've overused debt, the well is dry, the assets never were there for collateral for such high borrowing. Too, the public to whom it is charged has neither the intention nor the ability to repay the loans (which are just rolled over bigger and bigger each year), and - - worst of all - - the CONFIDENCE that lenders once had in the US economic system is tottering. Lenders from outside our borders could start demanding 12% not 5% on bonds - - and making those bond terms very short.
Full faith and credit - - mostly faith, no creditworthiness
We borrow on the "full faith and credit" of the US population. But it's been only on "faith" for a long time. When the borrower - - the US public - - has no intention of paying, and couldn't pay if it wanted to, and has no collateral, it has no creditworthiness, right? Try making a loan at a bank with no intention to repay, no ability to repay, and no collateral.
A little mild inflation benefits consumers
Mild inflation (2-3%) raises homeowner equity, erodes the principal sum owed on mortgages. Banks naturally hate the idea.
Hard assets rise when inflation erodes paper and electronic money
Gold. Silver. Real estate. These things rise. Hang onto your house.
Oil is the Mideast's "hard asset," and they're going to exact a price for it in a world monetary market that may be tanking (and was held up from tanking in 2008 only by the ever-familiar "printing" or in this case "creating from thin air electronic credits" of ever-more and more and more "money"). We see the odd event of the US Gov't propping up the supposedly free-enterprise stock market.
The influence of transnational corporations
The trade deficit dollars encourage transnational corporations to set up factories in foreign lands, hire cheap labor, and pour goods into the US in exchange for the bottomless well of imaginary money - - a sort of "Gov't scrip" - - we pump out. They are manufacturing the goods, we are "manufacturing" the money.
Inflation has been kept low by funny money created from thin air to buy cheap goods. Now the inflation built into that system is finally beginning to surface. Personally, I think that not only the long-suppressed and hidden merely fearsome inflation will surface, but more - - a terrorizing hyper-inflation.
Still, in the past, we've ducked, rearranged, squirmed, avoided and postponed severe blows. But I think we're cornered. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong.
••••
THE REROYALIZATION OF AMERICA
We got rid of King George, and Washington refused to be made a king. But between 1880 and 1930, in the immense industrial boom based on the new inventions and our national growth, we developed an "economically royal" class which owned or controlled most of the nation's wealth.
However, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt and ending in the mid-Thirties, we broke up the corporate amalgamations, and forbade "getting together" over lunch to set prices.
Two other elements of economic royalty fell: interlocking directorates, and competitors owning stock in each other. (Today, one company just buys or merges with the other.)
In the Twenties and Thirties, there was much antagonism against inheritance aristocrats who lounged around on the fruits of granddaddy's efforts, contributing too little while controlling or influencing too much. These were called "the idle rich."
Our lawmakers knew European royalty perpetuated itself by inheritance. The "inheritance tax" was instituted to "break up family fortunes" of the "economic royalty." It affected almost exclusively the superrich whose clout overshadowed the democracy which had given them the right to operate and prosper (but not to take over).
Interestingly, the tax had a positive effect despite loud objections. It forced private companies to "go public," thus broadening the stock market and participation. It established prices, after which public purchasing over the long pull drove prices upward. But in the meantime, it created in addition to liquidity for tax purposes, an accepted price for remaining shares, preventing insider family members from buying up shares for nothing, as often had happened, cutting out other heirs.
Every super-wealthy family with public or private holdings, whose members were "devastated" by the new laws wound up richer than ever in time, in a broader market where demand pushed up stock prices. The breakup of monopolies also created greater wealth. Where opportunity and competition thrived, and innovation and new growth was fostered, all owners and the whole nation benefited.
We can't escape two fundamentals: one, that our nation is a democracy; and two, that contrariwise, human nature wants personal power which often pushes aside the people when asserting its "right."
Today, the American majority agrees that inventors and business geniuses should be deregulated enough to have their head and run - - as long as this benefits democracy and doesn't impede it. The wealthy have supposedly agreed that they don't have absolute rights to money and to run things. (Well, but trends in the last decade or so have been heading back in the old direction.)
The nation gives business a prosperous population, a constitution and laws protecting property and person, an infrastructure of rails, roads, airways, waterways, great universities, safe banking, and a democracy born in blood and defended in blood. The businessperson isn't "self-made." The democracy is a full partner from start to finish.
But thoughts are changing. Today, we're "reroyalizing."
This is partly from our psychic need to have "royals" - - a wave that started again with the Kennedys and "Camelot." These things made money popular again - - and we began to admire great fortunes and their heads. Our love of British royalty rose to new heights with Diana. Today, our sports and entertainment heroes with $50 million salaries are a type of royalty too.
Do we psychologically need royalty? We should think seriously about this because immense family fortunes made in the last fifty years are coming up for inheritance taxation. If not reasonably taxed, we will again have an "inheritance aristocracy" owning us. (See below, the article about the Inheritance Aristocracy.)
The taxation "floor" (after deductible charity gifts) should be raised to five million with no taxation. Then taxation on amounts over that, beginning light but certainly 33% on amounts over $50 million.
The taxes come back into the democracy-partner's coffers as a dividend on the nation's share in the success, over and above the fact that the business paid ordinary taxes all along - - and also as a big thank-you, and a shield for democracy against inheritance aristocracy/royalty ever again.
Junior and Sissy won't start in the scullery, but halfway up the ladder with the open road that the nation freely gives them.
Will our media now owned by big corporations argue for the new royalty, or instead for the balance and wider spreading that have brought us this far from Europe?
Let's concentrate on developing our democracy, and not slip back into Europeanized locked-in class systems and concepts of royalty and inherited nobility, and so on.
Let's concentrate on developing our democracy, keeping access to all levels open for all.
We want people to succeed, and we admire them, but we don't want them to control us, or to put a control structure in place.
Websites www.responsiblewealth. org and www.faireconomy. org coming along in the last decade or so, show a broad base of support among America's wealthiest for inheritance taxation in a substantial, but not destructive, way sharing the fruits with - - so to speak - - the "nation that brung 'em to the dance."
••••
CAN WE RADICALLY SPEED UP EDUCATION - -
AND TEACH MORE IN THE PROCESS?
(On the Home Page, please see the left-hand column for www. Education Quik. com.)
••••
IS OUR NEXT GOVERNMENT CORPOCRACY?
OR TECHNOCRACY? OR A COMBINATION?
Corpocracy is already the world's shadow government, but it hasn't yet said, "Hey, I'm takin' over - - I'm '666'."
But it has a very serious partner - - technocracy. And what's that? Well, it's government by technology and the techies who know how to make it, install it, use it, keep it running. This is already another shadow world government.
Technocracy "lite" is when take your car to the repair shop today. The old days when you and your neighbor could change the points and plugs are over. Now the "black boxes" are in a high-tech realm. And you are charged "book hour" rates. I had a water pump changed, gave the mechanics the new pump which I had bought, watched two men install it in 15 minutes, then was handed a bill for "four hours" at $45 an hour! That's technocracy.
Although auto mechanics won't take over the universe any time soon, high tech, and super-high-tech as in the military for example, has already taken it over. Nothing moves in Government or the military in any sizable nation without things even the workers or troops don't know how to make, install, operate without training by technical people, or repair. Think about it.
Now consider the potentials worldwide for technocratic power. Even now company personnel somewhere in the world may be saying, "I know this new weapons technology we've just developed should be sold, and sold only to the good guys, but listen - - with this, we can control the world. We ourselves can be the world power!"
Thus far, the inventors in the US have been loyal to the nation. But a group of crazy guys from around the world, connected on the internet, could arise in the future with a plan of their own, and set up a nation in some easily knocked-over place. And….
In just the past ten years alone, our lives have been changed radically due to incredible new technologies. Thus far, we've been fortunate, but have we forgotten Hitler, who believed evil forms of science would give him the edge to conquer the world?
Today, given the global thrust of thinking - - crossing new frontiers, leaving traditions behind in the last century - - will even inventors who are good guys be tempted to say, "Look, the world's out there for the taking, and we can take it!"?
China recently knocked a satellite out the sky with a laser beam or a laser-guided missile. Certainly that means we also have the capability. And Russia as well. Techies could easily "rule."
Transnational corporations are the first to say that nations - - as we know them - - are things of the past, and governments "inefficient."
I have a couple of manuscripts about corporations setting up their own nations - - running things as they damn well please, and having technological power over the entire globe through ability to disable all electronic systems in countries which won't bow down. These things are not far-fetched.
The US Government is even now so closely woven-in with corporations and the world financial and commercial network as to be a semi-Corpocracy already. And the corporate form of government - - rule from the top - - is the opposite of democracy's rule from the mass.
In the world's industrialized nations, Corpocracy is already the government behind the scenes. Furthermore, the "supra" governmental financial and commercial global layer that exists above all nations, including the US, is certainly a type of Corpocracy. It is ruled by no nation, yet affects all nations, and is growing in power.
Is the combination of Corpocracy and Technocracy the coming - - and already well under way - - global government, cooking the legendary frog by stages in a way that the frog doesn't realize what's going on, and fails to jump out?
••••
THE INHERITANCE ARISTOCRACY
Dad - - God bless 'im - - was an "inheritance aristocrat." A royalist. The sons of his great-grandfather had built a big business, which Dad's father was running when he died in 1921, leaving Dad an estate equal in clout to a couple of hundred million of today's watered-down electronic bucks.
He was purely an "inheritance aristocrat" - - and thought like one. He didn't work for others, had no one over him. Money, absolute rights of ownership, a separate kingdom from the rest of the country, superiority, rants against the common man, and not voting, were all part of it.
In the Twenties, America's "economic royalty" flourished despite the income tax which had started. Inheritance taxes and the Depression later put a crimp in the royalty (which is once again in a boom state, this time controlling legislation, instead of legislation controlling it).
After 1900, Teddy Roosevelt's antitrust laws broke up gigantic "trusts" or monopolies. (Today we've forgotten that control by monopolies or today's "group monopoly" seen in oil, can stifle, heavily influence markets, raise prices or selectively lower them to destroy or retard competition - - and can even produce legislation for its benefit.)
Such things aren't democratic. The American Dream is equal opportunity, not the achievement of getting almost everything into a few remarkable hands.
American democracy has never demanded equal distribution (despite fears of this expressed as far back as our founding, resulting in safeguards required by some of the founders).
The people of the US are willing that business geniuses and inventors, among all others, be given their head to see what they can do. If they stay in this nation, then they should recognize that the people gave them the "franchise" so to speak, to operate here.
They should see that from the start they were partners with the prosperous consumers, with the people's infrastructure of roads, rails, waterways, and airports, with safe banking, with the constitution and democracy that so many died or bled for, with a legal system stretching back into Western Civilization's roots, with legislation, with domestic and international trade laws, with our military dedicated to defending our way of life, and with other corporations in other fields.
There is no "self-made" person or company.
The "pyramid" claims absolute rights, but in America the democracy has the absolute rights. It modifies the "pyramid" lest that get too powerful - - become "666" so to speak - - and shut out the democracy. Such modification is sometimes demonized as "socialism," but socialism is government ownership, and no one is suggesting anything other than broad-based democratic ownership. People who want another form of government for their business can move it to Europe, Russia, China - - if they think they'll have more rights to own and run everything there.
In the Thirties, it was necessary to "break up family fortunes." Why such cruelty? Because a few families owned or controlled most of the nation, and passed this ownership intact in the manner of European royalty - - by inheritance. This perpetuated rigid class systems, something we theoretically abhor, opting instead for the potential ability for even the lowest to rise.
But amazing things happened over time. The companies that were forced to go public broadened the market for their stock, and the owners once screaming about their wounds (which weren't grievous) soon were wealthier than ever before.
The policy of taxation that keeps the system open and broad, has to be continued, or we'll have a massive inheritance aristocracy owning or controlling the nation.
What's fair today? No tax up to $5 million, graduated taxation on amounts over that until a maximum rate of 33% on amounts over $50 million. And let estates first deduct those libraries and other charitable donations, which they say the "taxes" prevent them from giving (which has never been the case).
Roust the big-wealth tax screamers out from behind the skirts of the small who aren’t taxed anyhow, or else we'll have a class system tougher to get rid of than in 1776.
(See also "The Reroyalization of America" above. And websites www.responsiblewealth. org and www.faireconomy. org www.)
The taxed inheritance coming through to Junior and Sissy says, "You belong to America, not vice versa, don't forget that. Now be American."
••••
THE PLUSH NEW "COMPANY STO' "
You remember the bad old company sto', don't you? - - that sold beans and salt, and charged us more than our paychecks could bring in, so we were always on the hook?
The new company sto' is plush, deluxe! It sells everything, including cruises - - and keeps us in debt forever.
(Please see Home Page, Article title there, and click for full text)
••••
THE CUSTOMER IS KING OR QUEEN?
NAH - - NOW IT'S THE STORE
In the days of Macy's and Gimbel's, the customer was "always right." Signs in stores all over the country said, "The customer is king" - - or queen!
But in those days, there were alternate places to shop.
Suddenly we've got giants who've driven out lesser competition.
More importantly, these big companies have the advertising budgets to put fat color weekend sales inserts in newspapers into every home, plus run powerful TV ads.
With their purchasing power, they offer lower prices - - and thus control the customers' nerve centers! (But will this continue? Where I once found a cheap 89-cent item I frequently bought at a home center and threw away after completing jobs, I now find only deluxe $5.89 models - - all competition in the area having vanished!)
The pattern of the ages has changed
Since cave-person times, the customer has had the clout. Today, the vendor has the clout.
Company A is going to get your business because you ain't got many other places to go.
Logically, service declines in the big stores. Once, small shopkeeper Mr. Gottlieb himself pushed over the counter a loaf of his fine rye bread, and said pleasant things and did we want anything else and here are his fresh-baked cream puffs - - and we all felt good. All that is gone. To the great side doors of the "big box" retailer come supply vans of bakery products from some far-off city, which don't taste as good, and are loaded with preservatives. And where goods are baked on the premises, they just don't have the ingredients.
Little old shopkeeper-owned stores gave personal service and worked to keep your business, and thanked you. They knew their customers.
Today, when we get to a checkout, we are merely processed - - often without looking at us or even breaking off conversation with the adjacent clerk.
Hey, I drove four miles, parked in your "south forty" parking lot, walked in, walked a mile inside, and finally got to the checkout with my money in hand. I want hello, and afterwards I want the magic words, Thank you - - not "H'yarr" as change is handed out.
"Have a nice day," is OK, but with it we wind up saying "Thank you" to the store!
However, take heart. Now we have self-checkouts (I refuse to use them) where a computer-generated voice says, "Have a nice day," and you can say, "Thank you" to it.
As for "Thank you for shopping here," which once was a staple of owner-shopkeepers, you won't hear it or that other staple, "Hurry back" - - but there might be a painted message up on the wall over the exit. The customer is totally anonymous, and moreover, the stores know they have the customers by that ring in their nose called lower prices.
Sam built his stores on greeting customers and all that down-home-ness of his. It took other big retailers years to catch on.
Mr. Gottlieb, where are you? I'll pay a little more for the bread.
A strange counter to "anonymity" is the card with all your information in the magnetic strip. In this end-of-privacy new system, they "know who you are." They "know where you live." And so do the vast data banks.
Have we missed the "180" in roles, where the vendor is now king and the customer vassal? It's probably too late to wake up and holler.
••••
TRADE IMPLIES BALANCE - -
NOT OUR RUINOUS IMBALANCE
Our trade imbalance is now around $2 billion a day of US capital leaving our shores. Some of it comes back to buy our stocks and bonds, even real estate, but most of it sits in the foreign nations that sell us more than they buy from us.
We once complained about "foreign aid" of less than $15 billion a year, yet sit silent as now more than $700 billion passes to foreign nations each year under the aegis of "free trade."
How do we possess such enormous sums to squander? We don't. For a long time, we have been creating our "money" out of thin air. Money is no longer "hard stuff" like gold or silver, or paper backed by hard stuff. Today's money has no backing whatsoever. It's created by fiat, "increasing the money supply," permitting banks to lend more, and other magic-wand waving. Were it "hard stuff," we would have been broke long ago.
If the people of the nation realized that about $1 trillion a year in the trade deficit and budget deficit were being borrowed and charged to them annually under the "full faith and credit of the United States" (translation: the intent and ability of we the people to PAY THAT BACK), there'd be a revolution.
Let's talk about the term, "free trade." It's idealistically preached in the same vein as freedom of speech or US freedoms - - as a right, as a high moral thing, etc. Which of course, it isn't. We're talking commercial trade.
And nowhere does commercial "free trade" exist.
World trade is governed in part by GATT - - General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which is said to be some 22,000 pages thick. And there are other trade and tariff agreements.
Tariffs, did you say? I thought the whole thing was "free trade," the great global ideal.
No, you see, other nations of this world have complex tariffs and protections, INCLUDING that they will not run trade imbalances for long, or for any substantial sums of money.
Only the US is nuts.
Others want trade to produce a surplus at their end, or else, no trade, no deal. "You're not going to bleed me," they say. The US says, "Oh, you want another $100 billion? - - Well, we're bleeding $700 billion a year right now, so, GET IN LINE. The window's open!"
If others don't get a surplus every year, they balance out over time. And if they "keep the game close," there are collateral advantages to the nations that show up in taxations, stimulation of exports, and other things if trade is in an acceptable range.
Only the US is nuts. Incomprehensibly nuts.
People think the "trade deficit" is tomatoes or something like that. They don't know it's MONEY, and they damn sure don't realize that the outflowing ridiculous sums are borrowed, and that the borrowing is CHARGED TO THEM - - THE PUBLIC.
To keep the whole activity quiet, the borrowing is HIDDEN. The public hears the term, "trade deficit," but the evening news doesn't explain it any further. The evening news gives the BUDGET DEFICIT, and all realize that is MONEY - - and money charged to them (although the public has long ago repudiated any intent to repay the sums, and besides, couldn't if it wanted to - - not one year of the budget deficits, or the accumulated 50 years of them).
We hear the argument that since the foreigners "lend the money back to us" we see it again, and thus are helped to have enough money on hand to make new purchases.
Who actually believes this kind of economics? The money is supposed to return for our goods and services! That's what "trade" is - - an approximate swap, give-or-take, more-or-less.
Money loaned to us, we have to pay back at some point - - and in the meantime we pay interest.
A website - - www. economyincrisis.org - - brings out the alarming number of US corporations being sold to foreigners. Thousands of companies. What's going on? The trade deficit dollars which we throw away outside our borders with no strings attached - - no requirement to return for our goods and services - - have to find something to buy. Just sitting there, with the dollar depreciating so rapidly, the holders of those bucks lose money. There's nothing behind our dollar - - our Government scrip, so to speak - - nothing. So holders got the idea to spend these dollars by buying up US corporations, most of them available on the stock exchanges.
The number of these sales is astonishing.
In "Around the World in Eighty Days," David Niven broke up the ship for firewood for its boilers in order to keep proceeding in the race. We've been doing the same thing - - in our case, selling off the nation for enough money to keep the ruinous trade imbalance economy moving forward.
All businesses like the fact that the outflow for cheaper goods keeps US wages low. This fits with an astounding Government policy of "hold down wages," let profits run.
Some years back, labor - - which was protesting - - was told the key to increases without inflation was productivity. Since then US worker-productivity has about doubled - - the gains in different businesses and different years hailed in the press. Did these gains mean substantial increases in wages? No. It was all "talk."
The only sensible trade policy is the one embraced by all the world except us: balanced trade or nearly so.
"We'll buy $100 billion from you, you buy $100 billion from us." But we're told the world will end if we move in this direction. It won't, but the gravy train for some will.
Historically, nations spending more than they take in, go broke. In the process, they first debase their money. We've done more - - removed all basis from ours.
Even little Junior knows that if he trades away his frogs, baseball cards, and other valuables and doesn't get equal or better value in return, he'll go broke.
To get on a balanced footing, we just have to shut off the unlimited borrowing. Second, we won't need tariffs (and won't have to listen to scare talk about "what caused the Depression," which is all economics-babble preached by those benefiting from the trillions charged to the public). We will only need simple quid pro quo reciprocal trade agreements often used elsewhere and of course used in the past. We buy so much, you buy so much. Under nation to nation or bloc to bloc agreements, bring the thing under control.
••••
BIG, BAD PYRAMID
The pyramidal organizational system is inequality itself; featuring a superior-inferior basic ethos with often murderous competition for ever-narrowing upper areas. It's the home, basic structure and generator of one-left-standing elimination and gladiatorial tournaments one after another permeating every activity and arrangement large and small. It's a scapegoat temple for dumping onto others. It's the house of chance. It's totally anti-democratic, the rule-from-the-top corporate concept, the opposite of democracy's basic idea of rule-from-the-mass. It pulls money and power to the top, excludes, pushes downward, creates and maintains a vast anonymous bottom. It relentlessly amalgamates (as now) - - apparently on the way to becoming the Bible's "666," the single world pyramid ruled by one man.
(Please see Home Page, Articles, and click on the title there.)
••••
THE VANISHING CITIZEN VOICE ABOVE THE LOCAL LEVEL
Is individual thinking heard much today? No, almost all opinion is from an organization or organizational background.
Organizations are certainly useful. We can't build 747s in a bicycle shop. We like our organizations, but the root unit in a democracy is the thinking citizen.
True, it's been a long time since Tom Paine printed pamphlets and passed them out in the street, or town meetings had significance such as in the early days. With the wide readership of today's newspapers, with TV's Jim Lehrer reaching several million viewers, Sunday analysis shows reaching many more millions, and network evening news programs reaching tens of millions, no one can risk having Johnny Carson's opinionated clown individual, "Floyd R. Turbo," telling us how he thinks things should be!
So the voices become those of large groups.
Ideas were the credentials of the independent citizen thinkers who founded the US.
There's plenty of lively individual debate in newspaper letters and on radio call-in shows concerning localized topics, but at the national and international levels, the organizational speaker has the floor. Those speakers can be bright, honest, and informative, but we're getting what the Administration, corporations, think tanks, trade associations, and so on, think - - and often what will hold the audience - - not necessarily what the particular speaker might think.
It's plain that one cannot say what one really thinks from inside giant organizations, defense contractors, the military, drug companies, and on and on. Whistle-blowers have been attacked so much that Congress had to pass a law protecting them.
Now and again, we see someone resign from an important inside position to "write that book" revealing his or her real thoughts.
Retired figures such as ambassadors are great TV-panel guests, but do we get what they really think? One has to know them personally to get genuine individual opinions, and then it's often "off the record." Histories written 50 years after events still dig for and compile insights from remarks and letters, cousins and aides, that help us learn what this or that president or secretary of state or other figure really thought - - and truly wished they were doing - - or how they actually felt about some key figures in their time.
Syndicated columnists sound independent but they must consider the editors at their outlets and prospective outlets - - and their overall number of outlets - - their bread and butter. Andy Rooney teases CBS advertisers, but stops short of real criticisms, and says ameliorative things at the end.
Anywhere in the opinion field, people aren’t "fired" if they offend their employers (that could produce books or angry TV appearances on talk shows and the like), but the growing "corpocracy" (my term) mindset gradually squeezes them out, limits them, doesn't replace them when natural attrition or contracts or the like offer the opportunity to offload them. Or the person could "get the message" and tone down opinions, put on corporate blinders, keep that salary and pension, direct any really incisive fire at enemies, and hit "not too close to home."
Once upon a time in the dim past, at least one newspaper reporter from each city paper had a track ticket in the hatband of his beaten-up fedora, earned a pittance, had a well-known byline, and wrote about the down-and-outers, the seamy side of the city, the human interest stories, the necessary social commentary - - and these were often stories somewhere on the front page. But there's no general interest there any more. Garry Trudeau comments on that through his news characters who no longer do that work.
Today, even local TV anchors are in six figures, and network anchors/editors earn in the millions. The big dollars change one's viewpoint, one's sense of the perch from which one looks out onto life. The big bucks influence what's covered, what's said, and whether things are ignored, muted or played up. Too, those with big media incomes are beholden to their employing structure, their contract renewals, and so on.
That's one reason I love some of the political cartoonists whether I agree with them or not, who express really sharp personal opinions on occasion. Cartoonists are still about halfway under the protection of the tradition where newspapers can disavow any connection with their opinions! - - saying that the cartoonist expresses his own views only (and many papers defend themselves this way). However, now that most papers are part of huge conglomerates, sometimes owned by other huge conglomerates, will this always be the case? Yet some cartoonists have powerful followings, and are syndicated. Pulitzer prizes go to editorial cartoonists, so I hope they maintain their status as a breed apart.
Polls furnish some citizen opinion, but within the limits of the questions, and of "yes or no" answers. (Often I don't answer TV or newspaper polls because my replies just don't fit in the restrictions of the questions.)
The "individual" I'd like to see have more expression is a democracy-type who believes in a nation of individuals, not the sometimes-criticized "individualism" person isolated and alone (and sometimes armed and hostile). (Of course some "alone" types like Thoreau have been positive.) Not admired by me are autocratic type individuals who don't have a democratic nation in mind, and who run roughshod over the pipple. (However, even some autocrats in US industry have left benefits, and in wartime we admire some autocratic military leaders who are often anachronistic in society after the conflicts.)
We need more independent citizen thinkers, and most of all, a place at the table of expression. Today we have only "short" democracy. That is, voters today can but barely touch the national level (and certainly not touch at all the global supra-governmental financial and commercial stratum over all nations today, because nothing appears on ballots).
Once we had "Mr. Smith goes to Washington." The idea was our traditional one: that the level-headed guy or gal with the right ideas could take those to the seat of government and get them heard and enacted. But in reality, even long before campaigns are over today, the candidate is beholden to the party for support, money, and arrangements to speak and be heard.
He or she has to express the party line, while hoping to squeeze in the new ideas. At Congress, newcomers are initiated by the party, told what to back, and how to vote in committees and on the floor - - if they want anything of their own (should such things ever come up) to be voted for.
These systems won't change much, except to further block the independent-citizen voice.
Where the independent citizen thinker was once THE contributor, expresser, spokesperson - - the seminal mind - - today he and she have been squeezed out of the center, even off the boards.
Often asked of me is, "What organization are you from?" To help make my point, I deliberately represent none.
One remedy is to begin making a place at the table again.
Newspapers can open space for one column a week by using a variety of independent citizen thinkers on multistate, national, and international issues only, from anywhere in the country. TV panels can do the same by making a chair available.
Political candidates wouldn't qualify for the slots once they announced, or if they represented a party and thus were organizational. If syndicated with regular columns they wouldn't be accepted. But if merely listed with a syndicate and selling only on a spot basis, probably yes. Some political cartoonists sell on a spot basis through listing by a syndicate, but are not contracted on a regular basis.
I could write a column every couple of weeks, but I wouldn't want a regular spot. Have you noticed? Some columnists have spectacular columns that can be clipped and saved - - but then the next week, they just have to fill up space. I'd like to have only my best shots offered, and forget the regular column idea.
In summary: Consciously restore a place for independent citizen thinkers on major topics.
••••
CODA
Ideas were the credentials of our citizen-founders to speak.
And the citizens were independent, not organizational.
The individual is as important to the necessary new birth and progress of America today as to its founding.
The citizen-thinkers who founded this country would likely not be heard today because one must represent giant organizations, and speak through huge media and publishing groups, or represent the Administration or a great university, and so on.
Organizations are of course useful and vital, but the nation never intended them to crowd out the root unit in the democracy - - the thinking individual.
There's plenty of lively input at local levels on local subjects, but no forum for independent thinkers on national and international topics. The old-time independent newspaper editors (along with their locally-owned newspapers) are largely gone. Syndicated columnists have to consider their hundreds of outlets - - it's their bread and butter.
At the very least, there should be more seats at the table for citizen thinkers.
Serious thought can be interesting and engaging; and is essential in a world with so many problems and rapid changes.
Karl Roebling deliberately remains unaffiliated, in order to make his point about being independent, and not from an organization. He tries to say what he believes needs to be said - - not just what fills a market slot. But it's within an overall kinship relationship, not as an isolated type of independent.
A Thinking Citizen book is out of print until new edition, but the chapters above are all updated to 2009. (For a copy of the original 2000 book, send $10.00 which includes S&H, to Dynapress, PO Box 150217, Altamonte Spg. FL 32715-0217. Include your address, book title, and quantity.) Thank You.
© 2008 Karl Roebling. All rights reserved.
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