" A Social Security fund that invested in capitalism instead of buying Treasuries that must be paid back by future taxpayers."

taxpayers
as opposed to extracted from workers and shoppers
oh that's right taxes are manadatory shopping and job work are not

we're free to choose

my take knock off the above a billion prtivate wealth and create a social fund out of it
might make sense but i doubt it would of necessity alter anything "basic" about corporate capitalism

i'd rather socializ out of existence the raft of petty portfolio holdings and create a national security fund able to stabilize employment optimize social investment absorb portfolio loses etc etc

all too complex to render here in any way other then tedious..

in short

the rentier class could be surgically removed from our system without noticeable loss

great fortunes are a residual we could trim off of course
but not the heart of our privatized social capital

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | Jun 10, 2009 at 07:47 AM

paine says...
"There are some things that money should not buy and one of them is Democracy."
do u really think corporations can only play a decisive roll in the "direction" of society
by being the major donor and lobby class ???

show me a state system somewhere today n
that has all these nader esque reforms you suggest
and i'll show you a homeland still safe for predatory corporations
in today's world
an open liberal pluralistic righteous
multi party
electoral representative democratic society
will always lead to corporate hegemony
so long as "public" corporations
similar to the ones
our present systems harbor and husband
continue to exist
that goes for u too sweden

"cynicism is self-fulfulling"
i agree

and then i submit this

the social restructuring we're groping for
is far more radical then certain offerings
found in comments here

its not cynical to say that won't work as hoped ...is it ???

reforms that step towards a sustainably better society fine
but steps that lead in circles
circles of better => less better => worse
not so fine

i support naderism because
i figure we need to discover
what are progressive illusions
and what are not
often we'll discover a pot of lead at the end
of any particular pwog rainbow
but the less of these lead pot hunts
we go on the better right ??
so if the lead pot is a known lead pot
it's not cynicism to point it out

my guideline if it exists in sweden its corporation compatible and prolly subject
to very discouraging scale effects

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | Jun 10, 2009 at 08:57 AM

paine says...
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE 60s???

excellent question
my generation of middle class amerikan youths
was as anti commerce anti corporate
anti material gain
as any in our brief history
look where we are now ???

its like diet and exercise
lots of back sliding
my guide

hey the reform must be even resistent to back slides
cause we are class by class toally depraved

call it class calvinism

our oversouls are depraved we can not justify our class
by its momentary spate of good works good thoughts good vibrations

Posted by: paine | Link to comment | Jun 10, 2009 at 09:02 AM

paine says...
"the marginal utility of money is very different for different people. "

reason is now a fabian

"A society with no private ownership (like the American Indians) focused on stewardship and the common good"

tribals war on each other ferociously

...
"I claim that it is capitalism that is going to have to be replaced. "
it will my friend ....some day

"It is a mistake to associate capitalism with the use of markets.A market-based system tells you nothing about who owns the means of production, or whether there are profits... All it tells you is that a specific kind of interchange process is used to distribute goods."

exactly

using these words so imprecisely
adds to both
plausibility and incoherence of the discourse
and even if these two attributes
are not often acknowleged
they remain very much a comfort
and therefore endemic no... prevelant
among
the thundering herd of independent civic thinkers
Profit motives and high ceo comp
Are only a problem
If they are dynamically ineffective total social cost reducers when compared to some secular monastic system like a university or mutualist association etc

In the health sector itself the questiom remains open ...perhaps

However
In the area of financial provision and payment there is no controversy
Monopoly monopsony
Will be more dynamically effective reducing and controling
total transaction and admin cost

A legal regulated private monopoly
Paying its stockholders dividends out of surplus
Better then a gub authority like medicare ?

That is an open question too

As is maybe the possibly even better system
two or three legal outfits sharing a oligopsony oligopoly
Like the gse fanny and fred