"The writer, like most anti-capitalists, fails to understand that it isn't about "that greed is good", but about letting people do what they want with what they earn, rather than letting a government bureaucrat decide for them"
I don’t know how much more we can peruse this as my line of reasoning clearly does not fit in your mental frame as much as your line or reasoning does not fit in mine....
BUT with the above quote you’re proposing a false alternative. The world is not communism or capitalism anymore. I despise government bureaucrats as much as I despise corporate power structures they are essentially the same thing, (unaccountable). The point is external power structures take unjust authority to dictate localized democratic processes. When a companies as part of a condition of an IMF loan take privatized control over water distribution its not about not letting people “do what they want with what they earn” its about taking control of resources away from local municipalities that are accountable. The corporation in the free market context will be “free” to raise the price of water 5 fold to “earn” money. When people protest there is no way for them to object, they can’t walk over to their local municipalities and complain or work to change that problem as private enterprise in a neo-liberal economic context is often structured as an externalized power structure that is unaccountable to the people. The same would be true for some centralized government bureaucracy, and I would oppose it with equal vigor.
There are alternatives, look at the democratically run factories in Argentina. Here workers reclaim factories that were abandoned after the implementation of every neo-liberal guideline promoted by the likes of the IMF and World Bank. To recuperate lost wages workers reclaim factory without bosses and democratically elect the course of action for the collective. They network with other such factories and traditionally organized capitalist structures. This is localized democratic control over the things that matter. Your life should not be dictated by some external non-democratic system. The factories become cultural centers building tiles by day and running cultural events for families and the community by the evening. I visited some of these organizations while in Argentina, you can see how different their sprits are in comparison to the sweetshop labor interviews, the worker run factories are much more productive (ie produce more) then when they had external system of control dictating their wages to be so low they could barely survive. A good film on these reclaimed factories is
the take torrent here:
To that end it was un-just for the Invading external power structure to re-write the rules of the government without the people coming to that consensus. If you look at how bounded the new Iraqi construction was by these rules you will be impressed at the cleverness of the occupying forces but not at its uniqueness in historic position.
No Germanys, Japan, Brittan, Frances infrastructure was not rebuilt in 3 years but they also did not face a guerrilla-terrorist war with thousands of attacks every year. That is because among other reasons we did not impose the type of violent neo-liberal capitalism that we are imposing on Iraq. These choices fan the flames of ideological war. The external contracts the lack of preface for Iraqi companies the no-bid contracts, the privatization (lack of localized control) over all natural resources, the shock-and-aw bombing campaign, the watching of foreign private contractors go to work in your town while your out of work etc. These things do not rebuild a country they destroy it to rebuild it, they harvest its resources for external system. Taking that approach to nation building is not without consequence. But all the death and destruction is a fair price to pay for the neo-cons to remake a nation with their rules. Ultimately the Iraqis may have democratic control over things that matter and that will be good I support that goal. But that goal has not respected. Thousand and thousands of people did not have to die by our hands it would have been different if it was an internal revolution. It does not have to continue to be like this. Bush is right that people like democracy and freedom, Bush is wrong in essentially saying “give
them liberty or give
them death”. That is simply because that quote only works in its original phrasing: “give
me liberty or give
me death”.
