Paul Craig Roberts: How Deregulation Has Resurrected American Economic Insecurity

[Peter Lemkin]

From Paul Craig Robert's article, here's something to think about:

The neoconservative belief that America possesses the only true way"democratic capitalism"is a delusion. Gray shows that "democracy and the free market are rivals, not allies." Free markets are not sustainable in a democracy, because free markets erode stability, security, and social cohesion. Free markets existed for a short time in Victorian England, because "the franchise was small and the overwhelming majority of the population was excluded from political participation." Gray concludes that the American project of constructing a worldwide free market in an age of democratic government requires the instabilities and insecurities that free markets create to be protected from democratic politics and insulated from correction and reform.

We see everywhere in the West the effort to insulate the political process from the people it governs. In the US, the two political parties represent the few powerful private interests that supply their campaign funds. In the EU, Brussels is using the sovereign debt crisis to compromise the sovereignty of the member countries and remove their accountability to the people. In the US, Homeland Security has purchased a billion rounds of ammunition and 3,000 tanks. These purchases are not directed at the rare or nonexistent terrorist, but at the US population. They are Washington's response to the social and political instability for which deregulation has set the stage.

The people could now become 'the enemy'.

Adele

Adele, I'd only quibble about the use of ' could become'....we ARE clearly now the enemy - and have always been seen as such, if not acted upon in such a draconian way [since before WW2]. IMO