Brueghel

Pieter Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow. 1565


George Scialabba’s excel­lent col­lec­tion of essays con­tin­ues to pro­voke thought. One arena with a great deal of com­plex­ity and con­tra­dic­tion is local con­trol ver­sus cen­tral­ized con­trol. That dilemma can be extended to all sorts of things, like edu­ca­tion, health care, the envi­ron­ment, the arts, the econ­omy and so on. Where should we cede con­trol to local­i­ties, and where should we insist on uni­ver­sals of one kind or another?

There are argu­ments to be made on many sides of many issues along those lines, and it’s one place that makes “con­sis­tency” a vice, not a virtue. As in, whereas I think cap­i­tal­ism, glob­al­iza­tion and the “free mar­ket” have had highly neg­a­tive effects, over­all, on local cul­tures, espe­cially in the arts (and should be ame­lio­rated), I think it’s essen­tial that we estab­lish uni­ver­sal health care, uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion, uni­ver­sal envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions, and so on, regard­less of local dif­fer­ences. I also believe strongly that we should teach a solid core of sub­jects from the point of view of accepted, peer-​​reviewed, estab­lished schol­ar­ship, and not let local prej­u­dices chase away sci­ence, broadly accepted his­tor­i­cal facts, gen­eral civics and so on.

In short, I think we need a uni­ver­sal appli­ca­tion of human rights to all cor­ners, a national cur­ricu­lum that is filled with what Mathew Arnold called “the best that is known and thought in the world,” and an econ­omy that respects local dif­fer­ences. That same econ­omy should also respect indi­vid­ual auton­omy over robot­ics, qual­ity over quan­tity, inher­ent good­ness over pub­lic rela­tions, and integrity in all things. We have got to stop think­ing of prof­its as the cen­ter of all mean­ing. We have got to begin to think again in terms of the pos­si­bil­ity of an econ­omy that works like pho­to­syn­the­sis, cycling back into the com­mu­nity what the com­mu­nity puts into its com­pa­nies, rather than let­ting huge multi­na­tion­als cart away resources, leav­ing those com­mu­ni­ties high and dry.

To me, there should be a new form and a new way. By writ. By law. By statute. If some­one in America wants to get rich, that’s fine and dandy. But if they impact local resources, have employ­ees, and their com­pany is above a cer­tain size, then they must read­just their ideas of just how much profit they can take. They must build into that equa­tion at least two things:

1. Higher taxes than they cur­rently pay, which accord­ing to the GAO, are min­i­mal (2/​3rds paid zero in the last decade; 90% paid just 5% or less), so that we can lift the foun­da­tion of basic human rights for every­one in America. And …

2. Factor in a cer­tain amount of return to the com­mu­nity for its share of local resources. Land, energy, peo­ple, etc.

Work, cul­ture, wealth and cycles. Part of that pho­to­syn­the­sis must also go back into the national cof­fers. It must then be dis­trib­uted to build that national foun­da­tion for every­one, so that every­one has the basic tools and neces­si­ties needed to pur­sue their finest selves. They won’t be given that self, they won’t be cod­dled into pur­su­ing it, but the soci­ety will pro­vide the basic launch­ing pad for that pur­suit, and make sure that no one is with­out such tools and such ground­ing. Diversity of wealth accu­mu­la­tion will hap­pen, but it will hap­pen under new rules. Some will get richer than oth­ers, but as a price of admis­sion to the club of great wealth, they will give back to the soci­ety that makes that wealth pos­si­ble. The vast inequal­i­ties that mar the American land­scape at the moment will slowly but surely dis­ap­pear, and we will become more like the nation the founders envi­sioned, where democ­racy meant equal access to the fruits of this soci­ety, equal access to its cul­tural riches, to the pro­tec­tion of its laws, and to the poten­tial for health and happiness.

Common access to cul­tural wealth, not indi­vid­ual hoard­ing of that wealth.

Another key point of change: Building alter­na­tive economies on a human scale. Local, vibrant, direct. Rather than assume that cor­po­ra­tions are the norm, I would take some of the extra cap­i­tal gen­er­ated through taxes and teach local crafts and arts. I would launch hun­dreds of thou­sands of Master/​Apprentice pro­grams, where peo­ple would learn how to build craft-​​businesses on a very small scale and sell direct. To me, that’s the purest and health­i­est form of com­merce, whereas cor­po­ratism is the most remote, dis­tant, and unhealthy of all forms.

Again, George Scialabba on Christopher Lasch:

Lasch argued that the evo­lu­tion of cap­i­tal­ism has affected fam­ily struc­ture and the social­iza­tion of chil­dren in a num­ber of ways. In reor­ga­niz­ing the pro­duc­tion process, it has removed the father from the child’s every­day expe­ri­ence and deprived him of the skills that for­merly evoked the child’s emu­la­tion and grat­i­tude. . . . In encour­ag­ing geo­graphic mobil­ity, it has uprooted fam­i­lies from kin com­mu­ni­ties and replaced inter­gen­er­a­tionally trans­mit­ted folk wis­dom about child-​​rearing with social-​​scientific exper­tise dis­pensed by pro­fes­sion­als. . . . In pro­mot­ing mass con­sump­tion, adver­tis­ers . . . have con­vinced par­ents that their chil­dren are enti­tled to the best of every­thing but that, with­out expert assis­tance, par­ents are help­less to deter­mine what that might be.

I don’t think the onslaught of cor­po­rate con­trol and the Walmartization of America (and the world) should be a given. It shouldn’t be some­thing we just roll over and accept. There are alter­na­tives and we should demand them. Demand the choice. Yeah, I’m a dreamer, but noth­ing good ever hap­pened in this world with­out dreams …





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