President Obama appeared on Jay Leno’s Show last week, a first for a sitting president, and spoke about some of his policies and provided the viewers with some insight into this AIG fiasco as well as his general approach to changing America. He spoke candidly about a different sense of entitlement, one that doesn’t get nearly as much air-time as, oh say, the other entitlement issues.
Regardless of your opinions of him, isn’t it nice to see our President illustrating a deep understanding of the issues?
Doesn’t “too big to fail” sound a little monopolistic to you? Or, Oligopoligistic if we’re talking about a few companies/banks that can bring the whole system down if they make a few fatal "flaws"? I thought that capitalism, or at least a nice by-product of it, was that competition would prevent these sort of events – that, or these companies should fail (in principal) and let the little fish in the pond eat up all the scraps and grow larger and prosper? Perhaps the Federal Government needs to be the facilitator of such power re-alignment – taking temporary control of these entities in order to get their books cleaned up in order to set them straight.
To speak to a bigger point, we (by that I mean people in society/America) place many regulations after the fact, once we see the necessity. And sure with tremendous growth and a burgeoning of prosperity for a lot of the world, there is bound to be a point when it goes over-board. What I’m getting at is – what is to prevent something like this from happening in another 5, 10, 30 or 70 years? Some new bubble or type of explosive growth will arise and we will have long since shed the feeling of need for regulation and caution and then we will, once again, succumb to the wrath of contraction. I am all for what Obama mentioned about building stable economies that provide for the "everyone" at all times. But would it be better for the human species? In considering only the long-term trajectory of the development of human civilization, is the short-term pain and suffering necessary to herald in the advancement of our species? Is capitalism as we have it - a managed economy - the best system for the long run? How about a new hybrid economy, one with the principles of both human advancement and responsibility combined with that of societal empathy for those we, as a species, deem deserving of help? Socialized Capitalism, whereby people are helped when completely down on their luck and the system overall focuses more on prevention of catastrophe by implementing Healthcare and educational guarantees so that individuals may prosper – thereby uplifting society in its entirety. We pretty much have this system, although many are unwilling to admit it. We have Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Veterans Administration, unemployment benefits, emergency rooms, and if you want to get into other services the government provides and runs sufficiently well, we can do so in the comments. Nonetheless, the government, at all levels, has the power and responsibilities we bestow upon them. If you want the system to work for you, make sure the people who represent you work for you.
Also, if you’d like to discuss the “Special Olympics” gaffe, we can, and he should be a little more careful when speaking unscripted but I’d prefer to discuss the comments of substance previously mentioned in the interview.
Doesn’t “too big to fail” sound a little monopolistic to you? Or, Oligopoligistic if we’re talking about a few companies/banks that can bring the whole system down if they make a few fatal "flaws"? I thought that capitalism, or at least a nice by-product of it, was that competition would prevent these sort of events – that, or these companies should fail (in principal) and let the little fish in the pond eat up all the scraps and grow larger and prosper? Perhaps the Federal Government needs to be the facilitator of such power re-alignment – taking temporary control of these entities in order to get their books cleaned up in order to set them straight.
To speak to a bigger point, we (by that I mean people in society/America) place many regulations after the fact, once we see the necessity. And sure with tremendous growth and a burgeoning of prosperity for a lot of the world, there is bound to be a point when it goes over-board. What I’m getting at is – what is to prevent something like this from happening in another 5, 10, 30 or 70 years? Some new bubble or type of explosive growth will arise and we will have long since shed the feeling of need for regulation and caution and then we will, once again, succumb to the wrath of contraction. I am all for what Obama mentioned about building stable economies that provide for the "everyone" at all times. But would it be better for the human species? In considering only the long-term trajectory of the development of human civilization, is the short-term pain and suffering necessary to herald in the advancement of our species? Is capitalism as we have it - a managed economy - the best system for the long run? How about a new hybrid economy, one with the principles of both human advancement and responsibility combined with that of societal empathy for those we, as a species, deem deserving of help? Socialized Capitalism, whereby people are helped when completely down on their luck and the system overall focuses more on prevention of catastrophe by implementing Healthcare and educational guarantees so that individuals may prosper – thereby uplifting society in its entirety. We pretty much have this system, although many are unwilling to admit it. We have Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Veterans Administration, unemployment benefits, emergency rooms, and if you want to get into other services the government provides and runs sufficiently well, we can do so in the comments. Nonetheless, the government, at all levels, has the power and responsibilities we bestow upon them. If you want the system to work for you, make sure the people who represent you work for you.
Also, if you’d like to discuss the “Special Olympics” gaffe, we can, and he should be a little more careful when speaking unscripted but I’d prefer to discuss the comments of substance previously mentioned in the interview.
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2 comments:
why do I foresee some idiot sitting in his garage, revving his engine in an attempt to sell energy back to the grid.
He'll probably get carbon monoxide poison in the process, not considering his car is a hybrid!
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