Materialism = Sadism

In response to a recent topic post for a local philosophy group that I've participated in before:

Source Link

My response (as I was not able to attend in person):

The Original Position question is a tough one as it seems almost impossible to think about who I am without knowing what my social structure (or what Marx called the "superstructure") is or will be. And to then posit what would be your ideal superstructure without knowing who you are as a person becomes impossible using this logic. Do you see the paradox?

Leaving that objection aside, my ideal superstructure would be one where there is less value on materialism or material wealth. Of course, such an ideal is really a reaction to the current, real superstructure we live in today, but I think such an ideal goes deeper than simple anti-materialism, in that materialism is on a certain level, a form of sadism, and sadism is bad for the soul." 


I'll post later what I mean by the posit: materialism=sadism.

Why Americans Elect Won't Amount to Much

A recent Time magazine commentary (Indie Block) discusses why the third-party presidential nominating organization Americans Elect (AE) has not made the splash that was hoped when it announced its intention last July to nominate a centrist candidate in all 50 states using a web-based, non-partisan nominating process. The commentary claims that AE's lackluster performance is due to a lack of differentiation, as there are already 2 centrists in Romney and Obama, and that the 2 parties are actually talking about the issues that polls indicate matter to voters, so there's not enough frustration to give AE some wind. Beyond the nauseating apologist deference toward the duopoly, the article also has the wrong diagnosis. 

The reasons that AE is not successful are two-fold:

1. Lack of transparency. AE will not reveal its donor list, claiming its to protect donors from retribution by duopoly agents. No doubt there's a possibility of retribution, but it still leaves one wondering if this not another front group like MoveOn.org. That fact that both MoveOn and AE are organized with top-down structures further paints AE as more a co-opter rather than a co-revolter.

2. Playing by the rules instead of changing them. AE has the mula to overcome the inherent barriers to ballot access instituted by the duopoly, and that is the main reason it has gotten as far as it has. Instead of questioning these laws (it could use its funds to challenge ballot access laws in court instead of spending its way past them), AE just wants to expand the duopoly to a triopoly. No wonder folks are not biting.

The fact that even insiders are disgusted enough with the duopoly to attempt something like AE is a symptom of system ripe for change, but its strategy only reifies a dying structure.

Convincing Conservatives To Support MTA

As relayed in previous posts, I have become more involved with the group Move To Amend (MTA), and plan to attend a regional organizing conference later this month. The group's proposed amendment to the US Constitution would firmly clarify that corporations do not carry the same self-evident rights as natural persons. 

MTA has been successful so far generating interest and support for the movement, but this enthusiasm has been largely confined to the political left of the country. If the movement does not reach out to more conservative crowds, passage of this amendment will be extremely more difficult and perhaps doomed to someone's footnote.

Here are 2 major arguments for conservatives why they should support this amendment as written:

1. The "money is not speech" clause will not only affect corporations, but also labor unions. They too would no longer have a constitutional right to spend freely to influence political elections. It means any flushing of money from the system engendered by this amendment will be equally painful for both major parties, and more likely to enable greater party competition that would better represent the diverse views of conservatives (and liberals) alike.
2. Restricting the ability of corporations to influence government policy will make government smaller. The expansion of government has been caused as much by corporate mercantilism as it is by bureaucratic inertia and legislative best intentions.

No doubt other arguments could be made, and the 2 above seem like a good place to start. Now I must convince others in MTA on these points.

Dump the Duopoly: Soft Ball Solution Update

There appears to be movement on changing how electoral college votes are allocated as I had suggested in my list of softball solutions to the duopoly. A number of states (9 in all, representing 49% of all electoral votes) have already committed to allocating their electoral college delegates to the candidate that wins the national popular vote in 2012. Though this change will not necessarily enable more competition, it will make every person's vote actually count and not be simply discarded due to the "winner-take-all" method created and enforced by the duopoly. In the long-run, this is also an important change because it will raise expectations for electoral reforms, opening the way to implement other, logical reforms to destabilize the duopoly, such as choice voting.

Dump the Duopoly: Hard Ball Solution Update

It seems what I first saw as an improbable hard ball solution to the Duopoly is now starting to become more realistic. It seemed farfetched to believe we could overturn (through a constitutional amendment) the recent string of US Supreme Court decisions regarding the definition of speech and ultimately, of person hood. Recent victories with municipal-level resolutions have given some life to the idea that we can not only take money out of the equation for elections (as an ultimate goal), we could also redefine the relationship between our government and the private sector. It's time to re-balance that relationship and MovetoAmend has this drive to amend the constitution in this manner as one of its primary goals. An aggressive goal now would be to go for resolutions (through ballot initiative) on an even bigger level, such as state. Would it be possible to get it on the ballot in Colorado for the next presidential election? For it to even get on the ballot would be a victory in my mind, then we'll just get the media shined on it, and that will hopefully start a national conversation on the subject. 

Anyone in?@!

Dump the Duopoly: Good to Be in Like-Minded Company

Now that the move to Colorado is over, I've had time to do something more constructive: hunt the web for blogs and content related to Dumping the Duopoly. The Poli-Tea blog is a great resource, as well as the Third Party and Independent Daily.

What I found most heartening was a recent op-ed column by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman titled, "Third Party Rising". Friedman is correct to identify the US as not inexorably on the road to decline (but not to deny the obvious signs around of said decline), as well as pointing to the techno-anarchists of Silicon Valley as a source of the grass-roots energy out there that is beginning to focus in on what is the real problem with our country; a political system that disallows competition and reifies the corporatist duopoly. The Tea Party Movement is an obvious example in this regard as well.

Is there any way we can harness this energy to overturn the duopoly applecart? Though Tea-Poli cites others on the possibility for a Libertarian-Green Alliance, I personally don't think this will go very far. The diversity of political opinion in this country is one of our strengths, and to attempt to make a melting pot of that will only muddle the message and piss off core supporters. Though it is too late for the 2010 election cycle, it would be better for independent parties to form loose coalitions around ballot initiatives or other means to modify ballot access laws and otherwise chip away at the Duopoly's tools to maintain political supremacy. Any student of US history will appreciate that change has more often come from incremental, soft-ball solutions. Nonetheless, as Thomas Jefferson once said, "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing," in which case, I would argue for the hard-ball solutions.

Dump the Duopoly #3: Silencing the Apologists, Part 1

There are plenty of folks out there, who out of ignorance, prejudice, or whatnot, believe the duopoly still serves our interests. Below are a few excuses I have heard for the duopoly and/or dismissing the idea of dumping the duopoly, along with my response. Feel to lift this info as needed as we fight to spread the truth.

Apology #1: "There have always been just 2 parties."
Not true. Though a duopolistic political system has been the primary mode for a good portion of US history, particularly recently, it has not always been just 2 parties. The US has a relatively rich history of nonmajor parties since the beginning of the republic (Gillespie, 2004). Though I disagree with Gillespie’s, “natural dualism” argument (it’s equally plausible that the duopoly led to the development of the cultural dualism that Gillespie described), his summary of the role of third parties in the US political system is fair and accurate.


Beyond the point that the apologist statement above is not factually accurate, so what if it’s always been just 2 parties? Does that mean it’s not possible to have otherwise? That seems a bit defeatist and cynical. It takes no courage to be cynical. If our founding generation had shared such sentiments, the American Revolution would have never succeeded.

Apology #2:“Two parties is the way it was designed” or “The system was designed to have only 2 major parties.”
Related to statement #1, there’s a false assumption in the polity that “the system” was designed or meant to only have 2 parties. If we clarify what is meant by “the system,” it will be apparent that the above 2 statements are not entirely correct. The system – as in the set of institutions, documents, and social/political behaviors that define the US political system – has 3 main levels: constitutional, federal, and party.

Constitutional
The constitutional system defines how power is divided between the different divisions or “branches” of the government. The 3 main branches of the US government and their ability to serve as “checks and balances” on each other are easily identifiable to anyone who grew up in the US or studied its system: executive, legislative, and judicial.

Federal
The federal system defines how power is shared between government jurisdictions. The US is not the only country with a federal system, and any federal system involves a sharing of duties and responsibilities between regional versus national governments within the same nation (or between nations, as with the European Union). The history of the US federal system has always been contentious, but ultimately a stabilizing factor towards the endurance of the union. Indeed, the greatest threat to the union (the US Civil War, 1860-1865) was over the question of national versus state powers.

Party
The party system is the collection of laws and customs that define the nominating process for citizens to be elected and represent their portion of the polity. The Constitution does not define how this will be done beyond setting qualifications for holding office and establishing the electoral college as the means to elect the President and Vice-President. The nomination process we have today is the product of historical forces, some intentional, some not, that has led to a party system highly protective of the duopoly.

Up to the time of the US Civil War, elections were held by voice or hand votes. As the population grew, color-coded ballots were adopted as a means to simplify the process, as well as enable a “voter’s market” where political parties would openly bribe for votes (Heckelman, 2004). As argued by Heckelman, the secret ballot did stop this open bribery, but it also gave incumbent parties an advantage. The government was now responsible for printing and distributing the secret ballots, and thereby empowered to decide who would be listed on the ballot; whomever controlled the government could control ballot access. Concurrent with adoption of the secret ballot was a specific act by Congress, the Apportionment Act of 1842, which required that members of the House be elected from single-member districts, and not at-large districts as had been the custom beforehand (and still is today in most democratic nations). Single-member districts means only 1 person can be named representative of that district, thus giving incentive for the development of only a few major parties.

Of the 3 levels of the US political system, the party system is the most malleable and open to change. If when we say the “system,” and we are talking about the party system, then yes, it has almost always been that way, but that does not mean it can’t be changed. Furthermore, we don't have to change the fundamental pillars of the US political system to make it better serve the polity.

In short, to use a computer analogy, the basic hardware of our republic (the constitution and federalism) is fine; it’s the software (the party process) that needs re-writing.

More silencing the apologists in the next post.