Paul Krugman's defense of Democratics

The following post was prompted by the Salon article linked below.

It pains me deeply when intelligent people like Mr. Krugman try to go to such lengths to proclaim that the difference between the Republicans and the Dems is still significant enough to keep this two party farce going.

The fact of the matter is that, on most of the economic issues supposedly in contention, the Dems give a great deal of lip service to social justice, but come through on very little of it.

Obviously a large part of that has to do with the insane opposition the Republicans muster from the willful ignorance factory they call ultra conservatives. But it is also because the Democrats are just as dependent on Big Money as any body else in politics today. If this weren't so there would have been consequences for the bankers after the big recession, not to mention resolute support for labor organization efforts across the country. Even the Affordable Care Act, laudable in the fact that it does do more than nothing to provide affordable care, did not hold the feet of much of any of the health industry fat cats to the fire of meaningful limits on profiteering.

Capitalism, and its inherent need to limit the free flow of information (because money is information), is anathema to a well informed public. You simply cannot have unfettered profits if the general public always knows what's really going on.

Let us also not forget, however, that it is the electrification of Capitalism that has really changed the calculus of how capital can be accumulated, and the degree to which it can be applied to affect whatever a singular interest might desire.

Instantaneous transfer, as well as an equally quick ability to be translated into whatever type of effect, goal, or material manifestation, provides an orders of magnitude more leverage than what was possible a hundred or more years ago. As such Capitalism has become a completely new ballgame. One that the mechanisms that still try to manage it are no longer anywhere near capable of continuing that management task.

You are an intelligent man Mr. Krugman. Someone for whom I have a great deal of respect for. I can only hope that you can start looking at the bigger technological picture here and see that this operating system is no more viable now than Windows for Dos would be for today's networked, processing, environment. It's time to start over sir and the sooner we all realize that the better off we will all be.


Paul Krugman: Whether Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren, the difference between Democrats and GOP is stark