System failure

The system of thought that presently dominates the American poltical economy has failed, and needs to be replaced. This must happen before a catastrophic event of some kind triggers full system failure, such as occurred during the Great Depression.

I say this for several reasons. The first is the op-ed published in the New York Times this Sunday, titled "Death of an American City". The second is my ongoing exchange with a blogger whose main economic concern is his assertion that god and the constitution, along with more obscure authorities, deem his wallet sacrosanct and sovereign.

The problem with him and with the entire current right-wing view of the political economy is that their laissez faire, spend-and-borrow, big government, crony capitalist approach is an ideological, not an economic or results-oriented approach, which dooms it to failure. Here's why: the rebuilding of New Orleans makes no sense from a laissez faire perspective. Nor does it make sense, closer to home, to build a gargantuan memorial on choice real estate for the dead Democrats of 9/11 - sorry, wingers, those are our dead, not yours - because that land could be used to greater profit. This is perhaps why we're already further down the road in New York that New Orleans is travelling on - other than the symbolic cornerstone for the new Freedom Tower, nothing is up at the World Trade Center. That lonely piece of granite, along with the devastated Big Easy, is the true monument of the Bush regency.

The systemic problem at the root of right-wing theoretical failure - if you want to dignify a system that essentially says "taxes bad, Wal-Mart good" with the term theory - is this: the only metric it recognizes is the almighty dollar.

Ultimately, however, the economy is only one part of a more complex society, and elevating the profit motive to the position of supreme arbiter costs that society. We want to rebuild New Orleans, for reasons of history and self-respect alone - in 2005, we can't tolerate the destruction of a major city. The days of Pompeii, we believe, are over - we are masters of our environment.

The inevitable death of New Orleans - and it is inevitable, because the people in charge do not have the intellectual or moral fiber to jettison their ideology - will occur despite the full armory of right-wing prescriptions being deployed. The levees will not be rebuilt to the standard required to ward off another category 5 hurricane - too expensive, big-government solution, ain't gonna happen. But without that effective public work, all the tax cuts in the world are not going to be sufficient to entice people back to rebuild. This, in fact, is precisely what is happening. What is called for, rather, is massive and well-directed government spending.

That is not going to happen, and New Orleans is going to die.