Natural fact: what Franklin, founders knew in 1779.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - As early as Revolutionary days, canny Ben Franklin put it potently, as well as succinctly: "Private property is a creature of society and is subject to the calls of that society, whenever its needs may require it." --Ben Franklin - 1789.
The Founders, prescient men-all, knew a natural fact when it was completely obvious from their long-continued study of famed philosophers over centuries.
What Founder Ben was telling us-all even then is now, more than ever after 150 years of the American Experience, is natural fact, long recognized. It is the most-essential fact on which much, if not most, of our "Revolutionary concept of shared complicit and essentially cooperative governance" has come to be based.
That’s the concept on which the American Dream is --very naturally-- founded; buttressed and beholden to true freedom and our Founder-conceived and contrived Constitution and Bill of Rights guaranteeing its blessings; essentially a world-class experiment, unique in nature and surrounding circumstance then --and widely envied results ever since.
Economically-speaking, several erosive patterns --each set up provisionally for good reason each time -- all heavily favor corporate/business interests in what come to be known as “the laissez-faire approach.
Each one has done much damage to what should be carefully-considered and Congressionally-determined action towards market fundamentalism. OR "managed capitalism", when desperately-selfish market fundamentalism is kept under control by truly centrist governmental supervision by Congress.
By far the most damaging of those continuing insidious machinations has proven to be "deregulation": Total reversal of safeguards and authoritative rule(s) set after due (and usually lengthy and painful) consideration by Congress OR an agency designated by them.
Second-only by the nature of corporate/business formats is privatization: The sale, re-sale or simple award of governmental function and process to private interests motivated solely by profit.
Third-only because it is the driving force behind the other two is "free trade": The laissez-faire theory that the less-restricted any commercial transaction is, the better for all concerned.
That theory is always supported by carefully-stated reference to the “invisible hand” first conceived by Adam Smith; but also always overlooking Smith’s "careful and complete definition of an honest, open, balanced, two-sides-gaining transaction."
That’s NOT how corporate/business interests choose to operate, as we have painfully learned over the past half-century.
Market fundamentalism, based on “free trade” theory as overwhelming driving/force, was "born in the U.S.A." On its worldwide record NOW, as the 21st Century grinds unmercifully on, it deserves to die here, too.
No longer can it continue domination by aggressive non-union activities; by manipulation and massive machinations to assure longer hours; less share of gains from growing productivity; and more stock-holder 'profits' via dividends, and management-gains by stock and cash-paid lush bonuses.
It is natural fact, too, that those must always come at the cost of cooperative principle and practical satisfactions-sharing for all; as in living wages and benefits for the worker-side of this natural equation.
"From whence-else?", we must ask --and insist on a straightforward sensible, checkable answer, always.
We need --indeed, we MUST have !-- a new model based on what we now know, having learned it "the hard way" ever since the first Great Depression --if we are to offset and prevent the Second GD, already in sight.
Need one again run down, point for point, the long and distressing list we’ve learned to look into ever since Ben’s frank-and-open declaration of founding principle?
But if we must, then we can do worse than begin with Henry Ford --yes, he of the essential "assembly-line" concept. Ford knew instinctively that building the motor car meant not a thing unless the workers so occupied could also enjoy-and-satisfy their needs-and-lives --from truly equitable wage-based income.
(His determination to so-provide was challenged in one of the very early stock-holder/interest lawsuits!) Then we can follow along as the Monroe Doctrine motivates and manages the inevitable spreading influence worldwide of what the Founders created --with its own long list of unforeseen consequences, too.
The lesson-learned, over/and/over again, is that life --and all its potential rewards-- demands that essential excess-beyond-physical needs; wisely and equitably invested-and-shared with all STAKE-holders.
In whatever format it may currently occupy -- literally, dollars to doughnuts, depending on investment variety and reality-- that capital is then applied universally under tight continuing supervision:
Management by those to whom capital-involved must always be honored as private propert”, even if essentially changed in format.
Nowadays it is most often other people’s money, always subject to rapid departure for any higher return on investment, whenever opportunity so offers, elsewhere in this globalized world.
Corporate design, devolving from these essentials, has degenerated into open devastating attack on the very concept of cooperative labor-force --unionization to provide representation for workers otherwise far out-funded by corporate resources always overwhelming to individual needs and resulting actions.
Thus the work-force is unfairly disadvantaged vs corporate wealth drawing on “leverage”, “risk-sharing”, and “bundling of assets” to appeal to investors; precisely as also-experienced in the sub-prime financial mess from which we will bleed for many years.
Each one of these separate onslaughts on natural-fact common/sense management-attitudes depended on "deregulation" --negating necessary supervision; or "privatization --selling state-run essential process for private profit; or "globalization"- shorthand for “free trade” jiggered to corporate needs.
Need one, again, list all the Enrons, LongTerm Investment, et al, et al, et al -- embodying fully and precisely this peculiar determination to deny and defy the original, carefully-chartered format for corporate entity? For thinking Americans that should NOT be required --if they have paid attention in the past 50 years!
That long, sordid, distressing and damaging corporate history has now generated the most rapidly-growing “development” of all: Actual change in format providing equitable and cooperative emphasis on STAKE-holder --as well as STOCKholder-- interests; multiplying in presentation worldwide throughout business and financial schools and the major universities.
So, for practical purposes inherent in these early years of the 21st Century, perhaps the view of economics based on easy deduction of practical natural fact can assist us all in understanding the prevailing, nearly overwhelming, damages we have allowed to occur.
As demonstrated so obviously throughout the painful and exquisitely-damaging Reagan/Bush i and Bush II-Cheney regimes, when market fundamentalism came to prevail as cheery substitute for dreary reality: Remember "It’s Morning in America!" --now set aside as forerunner to Bush II’s product-marketing false-statement approach to Iraq?
It may even be that those lessons, so painfully learned not only in our American democracy, but across the modern world, can guide us in the first steps we must NOW take for remediation --and return to the Constitutional principles provided for us so presciently by our Founding Fathers.
That old truism (slightly altered): "Father(s) know best!" can surely can be seen as the reality and the most effective guide we could ever ask for, as we begin this new century for our nation.
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Reader’s Note: Quotes are combined, condensed, or excerpted for space reasons; complete verbatim record on request to Editor Tim with ID. Many diverse sources, including writer’s files, some 15 books, and contemporary major reports and articles were consulted for this Op Ed. A major report by Robert Kuttner, founding Editor of The American Prospect, was most helpful for background and current world-status: "See with your own eyes" at "Continental Drift"; July-August 2008 issue; pp. 23/27.
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