Open and Closed Societies

by Marc Batko (marc1seed@yahoo.com, http://www.freetranslations.foundation)

Videos of the food cultures of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia can embarrass Americans or Westerners.

Happiness and wholeness develop when people are not flooded with commercials and material anxieties.

Soren Kierkegaard said in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1840: "Ours is not a culture of courage but rather of

advertising and publicity" (SK, The Present Age).

Elites obsessed with preserving their power and privileges block social housing year after year in city after

city.  Housing is a human right but can be obstructed by the dubious human right of speculation in a

government serving capital.  Housing is a human challenge since we are not clams with built-in housing!

The dominance of finance capital (e.g Blackrock with its trillions of property assets) shows how neoliberalism

redefines the state and the lives of individuals.  Did corporations and the state accept responsibility for the

2008 financial meltdown and the millions of foreclosures? 

Public investment often seems like the elephant in the room.  Private or special interest regularly hijacks the

common interest.  Public-private partnerships commonly increase prices and corporate welfare is gigantic

and cannot be compared with social welfare.  Human rights face a constant battle with neoliberalism.

Education regularly becomes an appendage to the work society reduced to career optimization.

Once the human sciences (philosophy, history, literature, play, economics, political science, and sociology)

balanced the natural or exact sciences; the method of experience and listening was very different than

experiment and test tubes.  Once universities defended dissent and critical thinking.  Now universities have

become "the tentacles of the police state" (economist Michael Hudson) repressing instead of supporting

students protesting Israel's eight-month of genocidal war against Gaza.  Putting students first is urgently

necessary but seemingly impractically today.  Demonstrations at over 200 US colleges and universities and

all over Europe and Asia have not led to an immediate ceasefire.

Capitalism must be radically changed to survive.  Congressional representatives zealously defend the interests

of Blackrock and Wall Street banks while the interests of the poor, homeless and middle class fall by the 

wayside.

Why do you spend your money for that which does not satisfy?, one of the prophets in the Old Testament asks.

How can you scapegoat the weakest, the unemployed, refugees, and the homeless and refuse a fair taxation 

system where corporations and the super-rich pay their fair share?  Problems that are ignored don't disappear

but worsen!  We clean the outside of the cup and leave the inside filthy!  We distract our people with endless

war and political mud-throwing and allow hedge-fund tricksters to sometimes earn $6 billion a year or $4

million an hour (cf. John Page cited in Franz Segbers' essay "Poverty Returns with Misguided Policy")/

Liberal democracy is a fragile reality.  Democracy and neoliberalism are in a never-ending tangle.  Neoliberalism

confuses market-dependence with freedom.  The people are too big to fail but seem ignored more than 

represented!   For years, Wall Street banks gained hundreds of billions every month from the Federal Reserve,

saying there is no alternative to prevent a financial crash.  Over one trillion in interest is now paid annually to

service our $33 trillion national debt.  How can we pretend our economy of indebtedness and enrichment kept

alive by foreign loans and foreign capital is a viable model for the future?

The market is not its own ethic or universe, only a tool with limited efficacy or a destructive idol.  Profit-

maximizing is very different from profit-making (cf. economist Ulrich Thielemann).  Profit-maximizing becomes

an idol when made the sole criterion of decision-making.  Stakeholders, nature and coming generations are then

silenced, sacrificed or excluded.  Future necessities are drowned out by profit fixation!

The gross domestic product should have been replaced by the gross happiness index.  Senator and martyr Robert

Kennedy warned: "The GDP measures everything except what makes life worthwhile and memorable: selfless acts,

charity, love, voluntary work and first-responders."  The GDP counts car accidents and cancer treatments, not free

childcare or community rescuers.

Labor, land and money are fictitious commodities, said Karl Polanyi, author of "The Great Transformation," 

because they cannot be reproduced at will.  The market and competition are human creations or fetishes, not

natural laws or without alternatives.  What are our priorities?  What kind of society do we want, one with

exploding inequality or one with public services?  

In 1999, President Clinton abrogated the Glass-Steagal Act that in 1933 separated commercial from speculative

banks.  The 2010 Supreme Court decision "Citizens United" declared money was speech and corporations were

persons.  Elections were made auctions when states could no longer control the speculative money donations.

Even before this terrible decision, incumbents won in more than 90% of US elections.  We are great judges of

the elections in other countries but have a very low bar here at home!

Neoliberalism  began its assault in 1980 with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.  The latter said, "there is no

community or nation, only individuals and families.  Michael Parenti, an intrepid writer, social critic and

truth-teller, sought to enlighten and change consciousness in saying: "We are really living out everyday socialism

by sitting on a chair or relying on the post office or fire department."  Our institutions are changeable and can

become more human.  "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath," said the misunderstood Jesus 

of Nazareth, the incarnation of the invisible universal God whose hand is always open.