Let me state from the get go here that I do not support Mr. Sanders for president. I don't for much of the same reasons I don't support any of the others from either party. Mr. Sanders might be the least offensive of all of them, but the essential problem remains. He remains committed to the notion that the current economic operating system can not only be reformed, but done so in a way to permanently remove the influence of "Big Money." If the wonderful books by William Greider taught us anything, they surely taught that this is a fallacy of the first order. If that weren't enough, however, it is also a fallacy from another, perhaps even more important perspective.
The bottom line in what you have in the current economic operating system is a rather large set of complexity in terms of both the human institutions involved in running it, the command and control networks they use to manage it, as well as the rules it is ostensibly required to function under. It has become tremendously more complex not only because of the new technologies of information processing, but also because of what we have tried to do to the rules in order that these new technologies not run away completely from our ability to control them, while still being able to provide the benefits of efficiency and cost reduction that they promised to provide.
In this it is much like a computer operating system. Not only is the underlying hardware always changing, but the requirements for how to best marshal that hardware, within the changing needs of the human element that must interact with the operating system, are also under constant flux. A given approach to solving those changing conditions will usually only work well for so long; even as the best minds in software development try their best in prolonging that time period. And so the updates, addons, and even a major overhaul or two might buy you a bit more time, but the inevitable point of starting over must come eventually. And pity those who don't recognize this sooner rather than latter because a point does come where all efforts to try to keep the old system going only serve to make matters worse. And this naturally follows because no one can't accurately predict what all of the unintended side affects will be; collateral damage, if you will, whose cleanup takes more effort than any promised benefit would justify in the first place, even if you could eventually make all the fixes, and the fixes to fix them, work.
Capitalism is that, well past its use by date, operating system. You truly cannot fix it any more. Too many of its fundamental assumptions no longer apply, or whose, now that electrified experience retrieval has taken so large a hold on it all, day to day operation work in direct defiance of basic principles of even a Democratic Republic (information as a commodity, and as money, cannot flow freely so as to provide a truly well informed vox populi).
Let me also make clear, however, that when I hear people like former president Clinton attack Mr. Sanders for not knowing anything about what a proposal will cost, I really get an urge to hurl big time. This from the man whose advocacy of the supposed "Third Way," cost Americans billions we'll be counting for decades to come.
After all, he was the one who gutted the banking legislation that used to protect us from speculative savings institutions. He was the one who opened the floodgates of trade legislation that allowed globalized corporations to search for the lowest common denominator in production costs; pitting states against states in the insane drive to outdo each other in gutting their ability to pay for any kind of socially desirable infrastructure. And no matter what you might say about any temporary job gains that came as a result, the huge gains in productivity this nation enjoyed over the past 2 or 3 decades went anywhere but into the pockets of average working people. No, those obscene sums went into not only the insane commercialization of paper debt instruments, but into the profits of big corporations who have been awash in capital for at least the last 5 to 10 years; with which, of course, they have indulged in an orgy of concentration, market expansion, and shameful stock buybacks to the benefit of even more shameful senior managements.
In my view its a wonder the words that come out of that man's mouth don't turn to ash before he even utters them. But then, if one can believe it, what comes out of the mouths of the Republicans are even worse. A situation that, as bad as it is, really shouldn't surprise us at all. This is so because it merely indicates the depths to which unbridled power can corrupt even the most well intentioned.
What we need here, and what none of the candidates has the balls to even consider talking about, is a brand new approach to social economic organization; an approach that ditches the whole notion of "cost based thinking," and comes to terms with how we can set up an "effort based" approach instead. An approach that recognizes that livelihoods tied directly to mass production and consumption is not only not viable for the planet, it is inhuman if we want humanity to grow as a species.
