Tuesday, November 20, 2007

SOS! I'm crushed in the middle class!

It's very hard to be en enlightened, open and generous member of our society. My trouble stems from my education and upbringing, but the leanings I have now were probably already there. Before the adults got to me.

I went to college and studied a whole lot of stuff without intending to use it to derive my living. But I studied a whole lot of stuff before that. I have a passport. I've studied world religion, world history, the various competing world philosophies toward economy, art, justice. And I've studied chemistry, biology, molecular genetics, language, you name it, I've tried to learn at least as much as I think people ought to know about each of these disciplines.

We all know there are more than one side to every story. But we also know those sides are 'colored' by our interest in the outcome, the verdict of history or even the immediate rendition of justice. At some point in the distance, these rays of hope converge on their source, likely a single point-event with a specific set of true characteristics.

In general, it's the testimony of the completely disinterested materially likely to bear the closest resemblance to the truth. And the truth as I see it puts industries on their own path, looking for self-preservation at any cost. Part of the cost is social stability. 'Elections' as we understand them involve the pushback by and against interests competing for their independence and self-preservation. And right now, the acutely felt push is being made on behalf of those larger industrial interests against the wishes and dreams of the humans living among them.

The ignorant undertow of the 'conservative' faction in the west has at its heart something honorable: Protecting the legacy handed us by our parents and theirs. But it elevates the conflict far beyond the reasonable. Change happens. It has happened, and denying it doesn't do anything to bring about its reversal. Just requires more things to be changed to suit that world view.

Consider that work was once sacred. It was considered a man's right to earn a living at his trade. But it interfered with capital. Capital's interest in earning and not paying trumps your right to be considered a professional. It also upends the playing field by taking the rules as they apply to doing business in one place, and simply ignoring them because you're doing that business somewhere else. This completely destroys the value of the individual lying between the priestly and political classes and the absolute bottom. If you can't find a patron, then you'd better find something meaningless and unproductive to do that will please the Capital class.

A small business in a labor town is strangled now by the avaiability of cheap labor. The same factors formerly commanding premium earnings are the ones a small business has to combat to stay open. Wages. Benefits. Environmental and OSHA rules. Payroll taxes. How can you employ Union carpenters and continue to win bids? You can't. Imagine trying to compete globally as a manufacturer, buying steel and fuel on the world market.

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