[MD] Capitalism

[david buchanan]

Platt wondered:
Without the concept of real estate ownership protected by law what's to prevent my gang from coming into your "space" and kicking you out?


dmb says:

Oh Please. Gang rule is the opposite of civilization regardless of the specific concepts of ownership that obtain. I mean, it's more than a little ridiculous to suggest that gang rule and property rights under capitalism are the only options. What keeps your gang from coming into my space is not the concept of real estate ownership. It's the police and the legal system. It's the government. As Jefferson said in our most famous document, people have rights and "governments are instituted among men in order to secure these rights". This is far more noble than merely protecting turf. Every government and every gang boss protects turf. Hell, chickens and monkeys and dogs protect turf. Every two year old's favorite word is "mine, mine, mine" but nobody mistakes it for a political philosophy. 

I'm struck by the vast, vast difference between gav's discussions of the our relationship to the earth in the age of capitalism and Platt's concern for the security of his real estate investments. One sees a divine being and the other sees capital resources. It seems to me that one of the important points of the MOQ is that value is completely ubiquitous and widely varied. Even our conventional reality of static patterns is construed as value from top to bottom. The problem with capitalism is the way it reduces and converts all other values into monetary worth. Seems we measure ourselves and whole the world in terms of cash value. The standard of living is literally measured in dollars, while the toll this takes on the earth is denied and ignored and spun out of existence by public relations agencies. And guess who's paying them to spin? 

And guess who's gonna defend these paid corporate spokesmen? He's just exercising his free speech rights on behalf of those who are protecting their property rights, right? It's funny what happens to "rights" in the hands of the right. Somehow property rights come to mean that people with property are the only ones with rights. I think that's what the old saying means, that one about evil and loving money. It's evil because it subverts other, higher values. 

Isn't it true that money should play a middling kind of role in our lives and in our political thinking? You need to have enough to provide stability but the whole point of such stability is that it allows us to reach for higher pursuits. It is the beginning of freedom not the end purpose of freedom, not unless you're a pirate or something. 







 		 	   		  
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