"Brazil" the 1984'ish movie by Terry Gilliam, I mean, where they have endless advanced technology, but none of it works correctly most of the time. Named after Brazil because of the fascist Brazilian government of the day (and perhaps, once again, today?).
Modern life IS beginning to seem more and more like Brazil in the sense of advancement only causing fragile systems that rarely work well. (I'm not trying to make a point about the fascist angle of "Brazil" in this article.)
Starting pretty much from the top, how the commanding heights of our government shapes our society.
Foremost, that is of a militaristic imperialistic society that spends over $1T a year on endless wars that produce only more chaos and blowback. While it can't provide healthcare or ensure full education and employment and decent living for all. All sectors except the rich have been in a kind of social free fall, being unable to afford the basics of a decent life.
We have a need to reshape our entire energy and transportation sectors to renewable energy, or face total devastation or perhaps annihilation--which has already started for increasingly large number of species. By turning our national largesse from militarism to renewable national energy and transportation development (I believe it should be owned and operated by the people and free for the people) we could solve both problems: creating the jobs to build a new middle class, and having the money to take care of everyone. That would be investment, even as done by the public. Instead, we "invest" in craters, enemies, chaos, blowback, and disasters.
But we can't make these changes, in fact we must pile on the fossil annihilation ever faster, because we must make rich people even richer, and because job #1 (empire).
The Madisonian vision was that the wealthy would take a long term view of the health of society as they had much to gain or loose directly from that health.
That has turned out to be such a crock. It seems in many cases the richer they are, the more they want to take for themselves at the expense of society, thinking they can survive the deluge. And giving them an upper hand in the functioning of society leads to the ultimate catastrophe for all, exactly as we are headed.
You see this kind of misdirection being played out all over. We are "investing" in unsustainable models and often ones that don't work from the start, like private roads, and furiously disinvesting in the health of people and society in the future.
One part of the solution is to negate the Madisonian empowerment of the wealthy, and let the people more democratically decide what is going to be paid for, and by whom, rather than have a government that serves as stenographer to the plutocracy and oligarchy.
Modern life IS beginning to seem more and more like Brazil in the sense of advancement only causing fragile systems that rarely work well. (I'm not trying to make a point about the fascist angle of "Brazil" in this article.)
Starting pretty much from the top, how the commanding heights of our government shapes our society.
Foremost, that is of a militaristic imperialistic society that spends over $1T a year on endless wars that produce only more chaos and blowback. While it can't provide healthcare or ensure full education and employment and decent living for all. All sectors except the rich have been in a kind of social free fall, being unable to afford the basics of a decent life.
We have a need to reshape our entire energy and transportation sectors to renewable energy, or face total devastation or perhaps annihilation--which has already started for increasingly large number of species. By turning our national largesse from militarism to renewable national energy and transportation development (I believe it should be owned and operated by the people and free for the people) we could solve both problems: creating the jobs to build a new middle class, and having the money to take care of everyone. That would be investment, even as done by the public. Instead, we "invest" in craters, enemies, chaos, blowback, and disasters.
But we can't make these changes, in fact we must pile on the fossil annihilation ever faster, because we must make rich people even richer, and because job #1 (empire).
The Madisonian vision was that the wealthy would take a long term view of the health of society as they had much to gain or loose directly from that health.
That has turned out to be such a crock. It seems in many cases the richer they are, the more they want to take for themselves at the expense of society, thinking they can survive the deluge. And giving them an upper hand in the functioning of society leads to the ultimate catastrophe for all, exactly as we are headed.
You see this kind of misdirection being played out all over. We are "investing" in unsustainable models and often ones that don't work from the start, like private roads, and furiously disinvesting in the health of people and society in the future.
One part of the solution is to negate the Madisonian empowerment of the wealthy, and let the people more democratically decide what is going to be paid for, and by whom, rather than have a government that serves as stenographer to the plutocracy and oligarchy.
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