One of the first steps in changing our current dysfunctional political and economic system is to stop electing people who hate government to run government. The rhetoric and propaganda about how government is bad and unnecessary are constructed to reach a long-run end goal of having a government of the minority. The minority, however, realizes that it must convince the majority to believe that this is in their best interest to play along. It is NOT!
The government is bad theory has gone back to the creation of this country. The propertied minority wanted constraints on the majority in order to ensure they did not lose power to control said majority. This seeking of control continues today albeit in the form of the corporate billionaire class. Sometimes referred as the Donor Class because of their donations to secure political clout. There has been very deliberate actions taken over the last 80 years to influence the academy of economics and law as well as elections and the courts.
The tactics are pretty obvious if you look. Divide to conquer by pitting different groups against each other; gas-lighting which is amplified through the echo chamber rhetoric and propaganda; use fear and the boogeyman idea of those that don’t “look” like you are after what you have; and sell discredited ideas such as trickle-down economics to continued the implementation of policy that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
Government serves a necessary and vital role in the economy. It is provides services that are not provided in sufficient quantities or at all by the private sector. It allows people to pool resources to achieve things like infrastructure that are too expensive individually. It allows us to determine what we want our society to look like through policy priorities such as public education, healthcare, environmental protections, etc. Government is an expression of a civilized society, organized to advance a humane society (hopefully).
But government is a nuisance to the minority billionaire class that would much prefer an oligarchy to a democracy and the rule of the majority. The majority needs to STOP serving the minority by claiming that the “other” is the problem. “Other” being people of color, poor people, immigrants, single mothers, and basically the rest of us that are not in their class. We need to STOP accepting their distortion of our democracy. We need to STOP enabling their destruction of our economy. We need to STOP electing people that hate government to run government.
mad political economist 