The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Responsibility for Capital

    By Oxy Mora on Tue, 10/12/2010 - 3:48pm |

    Edward Bellamy in his book "Looking Backward", 1887, projected a utopia in America in the year 2000. I came across this quaint and too laborious book because my edition has an E. MCKNIGHT KAUFFER dust jacket, an illustrator I collect.

    Bellamy predicted that the "responsibility for capital" in America in 2000 would be centralized--in the government. Capital has been centralized, but in the hands of a few. It strikes me that owning the "responsibility" is something different from owning the capital.

    It always perplexes me that when a Democrat speaks of wealth distribution the yahoos in Arkansas shout "class warfare" from the trailer steps. But maybe they speak a truth--"ain't no way we're gett'in that money back, stop talkin about it." So what the election is about is not about wealth distribution, but how much through government we can intrude on the responsiblity of the rich to manage capital, the capital having already been unalterably concentrated in the hands of a few.

    Comments

    I like this distinction between responsibility for responsibility and responsibility for capital. It's the fact that you can't divorce the two things in reality that causes the problems, because you can't fulfill your responsibility to responsibility unless you have access to the capital.


    by Orlando on Wed, 10/13/2010 - 12:08am

    Thanks. Ever the PollyAnna, I just wonder if the argument can be framed less on wealth distribution and more on the public responsibility of owners of capital to employ capital for the common good in this country. Seems it might be an easier sell than tax increases. It's too bad we did away with stockades, a great tool for public shaming, and we could have put some bankers in them. But there is always the bully pulpit, if President Obama would use it.


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 10/13/2010 - 3:09pm

    The rich will never take responsibility for anything, ever. It is not in their make-up because they feel that they have earned their money.

    Noveaux riche will never take accountability because throughout their miserable lives they have been at war. They won so they could never surrender.

    The poor in Arkansas are just idiots. They will always be idiots. You can change the educational experience of every single one of them and yet, they will bow to monied interests.

    I have given up, really. Education has so little to do with the social issues of the day.

    The corporate oligarchy in this country counts upon this strange cultural value system.

    There is no freedom in working for an international corporation. The rules are so strict that in most cases an individual could never win in court. Every worker ends up signing waivers contained in contracts without benefit of counsel that take away any chance of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

    I have met people who have been imprisoned by laws enacted by repubs who vote republican. They vote against their own economic and individual interests every frickin time.

    It is just amazing to me.


    by Richard Day on Wed, 10/13/2010 - 2:19am