September 2007 archive

Class analysis is most commonly practiced by the political left.  In fact, many consider class analysis a Marxist practice to this day.  I personally never found Marxist class analysis very satisfying because I could think of so many examples that did not fit into his scheme.  That did not, however, stop my interest in the subject.

So when I discovered in my early 30s that my favorite political economist, Thorstein Veblen, had postulated a VERY non-Marxist class analysis that described social reality much better than Marx ever did, I was quite excited.  Veblen’s class analysis was several orders of magnitude more complex and nuanced and came buried in an even more complicated intellectual strategy called Institutional Analysis, so it is sometimes difficult to separate out.

What follows is my best estimate of Veblen’s ideas–described with modern examples.  For example, the Business / Industry dichotomy is Veblen’s.  Calling it an example of a rivalry between Predators and Producers is mine–with a hat tip to Ignatius Donnelley.

Don’t.

Period.

If you have to ask “is this outting?”

It is.

Don’t do it.

Period.

.

There are a lot of people who think so.  Whenever I hear Masons mentioned, it is always as a put-down; brought up as an example of nutty people, or conspiracy people believing Freemasons run the world.  As everyone knows a lot of influential people in the past of America, and the world, were Masons.  And a few bad ones, too.  George Washington was a Mason: Benedict Arnold was a Mason.  In any group of this size there are bound to be a few bad apples.

So, are Freemasons evil?

I don’t believe they are.  You see–I am a Freemason.

Follow below for my story and a discussion.

In the summer of 1970 an English singer/songwriter by the name of Steven Demetre Georgiou wrote a song about peace. 

The world needed to hear one.  Two million men, women, and children had been killed in Vietnam.  50,000 young American soldiers were also dead.  Despite Pentagon reports of progress; years of bombing villages, shelling villages, and burning villages from the Mekong Delta to the DMZ had somehow failed to win the hearts and minds of the traumatized survivors.  Concerned that America’s honor and resolve had not been sufficiently displayed yet, Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia, and the consequences were horrific as two million more human beings died in the killing fields of the Khymer Rouge. 

In Naomi Klein’s new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism she lays bare the truth behind George Bush’s Modus operandi in pushing through radical free-market reforms. The entire Bush Presidency has been about economics and the playbook was written by Milton Friedman.

Friedman believed in a radical vision of society in which profit and the market drive every aspect of life, from schools to healthcare, even the army. He called for abolishing all trade protections, deregulating all prices and eviscerating government services.

These ideas have always been tremendously unpopular, and understandably so. They cause waves of unemployment, send prices soaring, and make life more precarious for millions. Unable to advance their agenda democratically, Friedman and his disciples were drawn to the power of shock.

Shock and Awe was not just a clever turn of phrase. It was a peak inside their playbook!

Welcome sports fans!

It is my fondest wish and the deepest desire of my heart to see the Flyers win a Stanley Cup have a weekly sports discussion essay.  While I’m not well-versed in every sport at every level, I would love for us to have a forum to discuss professional, college, amateur, and even our own involvement in local sports, as well as the personalities that people them.  And while I’m clearly posting such an essay right at this very minute (or, have posted, if you’ve come later), I’m not particular on who posts it, or when…only that we know where to look for it so we can all participate.

You could liken it to the current training-camp sitch the Philadelphia Flyers find themselves in, as described in the Yahoo!News story: Flyers have several candidates to fill vacant captaincy.  Here it’s a lot like in that locker room.  The person wearing the “C”, or posting the essay, won’t be doing all of the work.  Sami Kapanen sums it up well, I think (from the above-linked article).

“If you have a C on the jersey, it’s not just up to him,” he said. “It’s a team game and everybody needs to bring something in. You can’t ask for too much from one player.”

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