Slow
Saturday June 7, 2008
Categories: Culture
This crazy person actually thinks Americans would be happier if we'd slow down. Can you imagine? Heh....
Filed Under: slow movement
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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He ain't driving around here!
I agree with him about the fact that we are going too fast.
However, you notice that one of the first things he wants to do is to pass new laws about compulsory overtime, mandatory vacation, and such, just like the Europeans. Maybe then, our economy can be as productive as theirs.
Maybe then, our economy can be as productive as theirs.
Because, really, what's the point of living if you're not making the economy as strong as possible? I wake up each day and ask myself, 'How can I make this country stronger economically?'. We are all in this together, comrade. For the Motherland!
It always strikes me as rather surreal that socialists are compared to communists, when but then 'free marketers' will talk about 'the economy' like it's something we must make as strong as possible, even at the expense of workers. The actual Soviet Union (Not the propaganda as a 'worker's paradise') was exactly the same way, except they called the economy 'the state'. It honestly is very surreal that you've taken the propaganda of communism and assigned it to what we want to do, and meanwhile you've taken how communism actually worked and decided that's what you want to do.
So anyway, you say we need to make the economy as strong as possible...unless it's making economy stronger by passing laws protecting domestic production of goods, and then, of course, it's a bad thing.
Because by 'our economy', free-marketers actually mean 'the profits of companies that can afford to bribe Congress', not 'the profits of companies that manufacture and purchase goods in America and pay wages to Americans' or even 'Americans', which are also part of the economy, in fact the biggest part.(1)
1) Some day, as a thought experiment, ask yourself how much better 'our economy' would be if we'd actually built mass transit to get workers to their companies. But we didn't do that, because the people paying for transport (workers), and the people living with the effects of all that transportation (human beings who breath) are not the same people that bribe Congress and exhort how we should make 'our economy' stronger (multinational companies). Despite the fact that rising gas prices have already taken a toll on our actual economy, and despite the fact that infrastructure unarguably helps our economy by requiring less duplication of work and a platform to build services on and ship goods on.
Interestingly Kathleen Hall Jamieson on Bill Moyers show on Friday evening was encouraging the two candidates to adopt the "Town Hall" format for the summer: "slow" campaigning? Her argument in favor (contra the politico associated with Jesse Jackson's career who's name I didn't catch) was that even if one candidate has a temperamental advantage to the debate-format, that in this "change" election the country needs the time to hear and carefully weigh the options on offer, to be able to interrogate the candidates themselves and develop deeper points of inquiry on serious topics (social security, health care, monetary policy in a global economy) that have been neglected for decades, that the next President will have to tackle if he is to be truely the leader of all Americans.
But lets not fool ourselves what kind of "slow" it is that is good for us: this business article recounts the "glacial speed of change" in industry (think Microsoft, that behemoth that can still charge over $200 per copy of the 20-yr-old code that runs its GUI word processor)
International Herald Tribune
"Nature gave inventor a blueprint, but not overnight success"
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/08/technology/08stream.php
Sorry-
Don't have time to slow down-
gotta go....
Slowing down may have its benefits, but a more thoughtful, better informed, more involved electorate will NOT be one of them.
Living in Texas, I can't recall the last time I cast my ballot on Election Day. That's because it's been made ridiculously easy to voie for weeks before Election Day. NOBODY is Austin has to stand in long lines on Election Day. You can vote at almost any supermarket or mall for almost a month before any election.
It's NEVER been easier to vote. So, naturally voter turnout has soared, right? WRONG! Voter turnout here is pitiful. It's a rare election that gets even 20% turnout.
There may be all kinds of reasons that people don't vote, but lack of time is not one of them. Hey look, early voting makes MY life easier, so it suits me fine. But don't dlude yourself that more people would vote if they only had a day off!
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