Sorry, Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman has an op-ed piece in the New York Times called “Privilege, Pathology and Power”.
It’s an exposé of the big, bad rich people and the big, bad things they do.
He says super-rich people tend to be narcissistic. Seems plausible. Next question: did any of them become super rich without the help of The State … that power monopoly under which we all labor? Would Trump have built his towers without eminent domain? Could Boeing and Halliburton and Raytheon et alia have flourished without Defense Department money being funneled into their pockets? Could the Vegas casinos have kept their edge without the help of a midnight amendment to an unrelated Federal bill that made on-line gambling illegal?
Well, maybe tech giants like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Sergei Brin could have made their fortunes without State help or contracts, but they don’t seem to be who Krugman is alluding to either. Not saying they aren’t pathological egomaniacs, just that if they are they’re not so egregious about it. They also seem to be coming down on the side of the people in the current battle against State snooping. Maybe they haven’t been in the game long enough is all.
When you have a system that concentrates power into a monopoly, it’s hardly a surprise when people with the ability to use it to their advantage do so. It’s a hopeless illusion to think ordinary people, even large numbers of them acting together, can turn the State power monopoly against those who already control it. Even if, against all odds, the masses currently enthralled by Trump and his emotional plays on their fears could be enlightened about who he really is, even if through some miracle people could be disengaged from the mass media propaganda machine that feeds them their daily ration of fear, even if Bernie Sanders, the current knight in shining armor, were elected President, the monopoly power apparatus would still be intact.
So, what then? The casino owners and the armament industrialists and the pharmaceutical companies and the agribusiness owners will fold their tents, put their tails between their legs and skulk away into the night?
Bernie says he wants to use the extorted tax money to further his socialist agenda of feeding and housing the poor and all that. Put against the current system of sending it to bomb the Middle East and create more enemies, which will require bombs and guns ad infinitum, it sounds preferable, but do you suppose with a system of extorting money still intact, it won’t continue to attract the usual suspects of vultures and opportunists who will work the niches to get things back to their way again?
I hate to rain on anybody’s parade, but I don’t see Bernie happening. And to be even more pessimistic, even if he did happen, who’s to say the power wouldn’t corrupt him too? Remember Idi Amin, the butcher of Uganda? People forget that he came to power as a populist; people were dancing in the streets. Same with Hitler and Lenin. The list of populist-heroes-turned-despots is long and depressing.
Until we face up to the structural problem … the power monopoly called “The State” … and replace it with a government in which people are free to choose not just between one slave-master and another, but how to organize the very system by which they get along with their neighbors, until that happens, the pathology of narcissism and greed will continue to flourish.
Because people behave (sigh) like people, and when you give them tools to oppress others and enrich themselves they’ll (gasp) use them.
