Noted in passing - Yeah, it's an oligarchy

Well, someone finally posed THE question, squarely on Big Orange, and it made the rec list, even.

But if our nation, has now become a true Oligarchy, and I think it has...then what happens to the rest of us, as we, the working people of this nation all go down the drain, as we pull the lever for President Obama in 2012?

The interesting thing about the discussion - and there are over 1,400 comments - is the amount of energy and talent wasted discussing whether President Obama is a blue dog Dem or not, and how bad that is. What I note here is that there is very little discussion of what oligarchy is; whether the U.S. has become one; and if it has, what the hell do we do about it.

btw - I have one road trip left for the year, this coming weekend, then I want to get down to some serious writing, such as the reading list I promised last week. My major source of writer's block right now is the narcissism created by the inadequate response of the Obama administration to the various crises our society faces.

In the meantime, here is one book I highly recommend you find and read: When the Machine Stopped: A Cautionary Tale from Industrial America by Max Holland (1989), also released a few years later as From Industry to Alchemy: Burgmaster, a Machine Tool Company. Holland’s father was a production machinist for Burgmaster, which used to be the largest machine tool maker west of the Mississippi, before it was bought up by one of the first industrial conglomerates, Houdaille, in the 1970s.

But the real asset stripping of Burgmaster began when Houdaille was bought in a leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts – an “investment firm” that is still around, practicing the black arts of “financial engineering” and wrecking the country as a consequence. Yes, KKR is the base of wealth for Henry Kravis, one of the top contributors to the Bush family’s political operations.

There are a number of things you should glean from this book. First, is an appreciation of the importance of the machine tool industry. Machine tools are the machinery that make all other production machinery. Without machine tools, our modern industrialized civilization would simply be impossible. You wouldn’t be able to mass produce little plastic or glass bottles to package medicine in, for example. The consequences for public health of just this one advantage of industrialization are huge, but seldom thought of or appreciated. You really don’t want to return to an economic system in which one third of children die before the age of five, do you?

And of course, gaining an understanding and appreciation of the machine tool industry is one indispensable step to that bridge back from the anti-producer ethos identified by Veblen.

Second, Holland ably recounts the massive fight against Japanese imports of machine tools in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which should help you realize that the disastrous economic policies that have ruined us go back all the way to that period. You will hopefully begin to understand some of the complexities of trade policy, and the infuriating simple mindedness of the “free trade” ideology that ended up driving U.S. policy making.

Finally, Holland also does an excellent job of explaining the otherwise mysterious world of high finance, and how the financial system has been perverted to become a tool that creates massive paper profits that in reality literally destroy the industrial base of the country.

If you want to find your own copy rather than relying on interlibrary loan, there are a few copies of Holland's book listed on www.abebooks.com, an excellent source for used books.