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"Organized Greed always defeats Disorganized Democracy" How is it possible that such an institution as Goldman Sachs is able to make a quarterly profit of $2.7 billion in a recession ? Why is it that we have had such a blinding plethora of takeovers -- Countrywide, Bear Sterns, Lehman, Wachovia, on and on -- by banking monoliths such as JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo etc., while all true and honest free-market economists are sensibly screaming at the top of their lungs that America must avoid creating even bigger too-big-to-fall institutions, then what exactly has the US government been promoting here ? On the one hand, Obama hotly blows fervently that he will regulate the financial markets and institutions properly (which is what everyone wants to hear), but on the other, his very actions betray grand, contradictory and anomalous lies. And with those free-market Debt Stooge Infixers -- Summers, Geithner and Bernanke -- those very people so insidiously involved in past de-regulation policies that have helped to cause this crisis -- what do you think ?

In a recent televised defense of his new Health Care Bill, a package that will probably cost trillions, year in year out when implemented, President Obama astonishingly stated that the creation of a new health care system would radically help to reduce the current horrific US debt deficit !! And people actually believe this classic drivel ?!! What new-born Keynesian tripe is this? Plainly, spending trillions and trillions to implement a new system of health care  right now, within a dangerous US economic period and with a squeaky weak dollar is completely insane. Why aren't the US government completely focused on just the economic problems now -- by far the biggest problem, instead kicking the can even further down the road with expensive distractions? I'm not against a new health care bill, but now is surely the wrong time to implement such a costly plan.

In my search to find exacting answers as to why, according to history, democracies always, always, eventually seem to fail their people, I've stumbled across an article that seems to cover much rocky ground regarding democracy's persistent and dirty inadequacies. It certainly hits the button and explains many of these self-destructive democratic aspects fairly candidly. This article, like it or not, is also completely apolitical, not favouring the Democrats or Republicans, neither favouring the Liberals, Socialists, Progressives, Libertarians, Independents, Communists or Nazis. So let's be very clear here, the article below is simply about the US democratic process within government and nothing else. For a more extensive article and more proof, try reading the original background article -- "The Great American Bubble Machine" -- by Matt Taibbi.
From The Market Oracle Author: Darryl R. Schoon

"…organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy" - Matt Taibbi

"…If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain -- an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. "- Matt Taibbi, Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine, Rolling Stone Magazine, July 2, 2009, issue 1082-83 

Special interest groups far predate the modern democratic state. According to American economist, Mancur Olsen (1932-1988), author of The Rise And Decline Of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, And Social Rigidities, 1982, Yale University Press, special interest groups arise in all nations and it is their presence and power that ultimately destroys the nations they dominate.

Mancur Olsen’s theory, the Logic Of Collective Action, posits the longer a nation is stable, the more likely special interest groups will rise and dominate that nation’s affairs and economy, making that nation less efficient and less productive and by so doing contribute to its ultimate downfall.

In a paper at Cornell University, Chia-chen Chou sheds light on Olsen’s Logic of Collective Action as follows:

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Vote FOR or AGAINST comments below. Dan Born on the 4th of J 

Organized greed simply has to ripple to include us all where opportunity is concerned. The rounding out of structuture will wean out the greed factor. Impossible you say ?  Not when you step back and realize that greed is a relative concept which is structural in its nature. The problem is not the greed. The problem is the structural imbalance, something we can actually influence and correct. 

therooster...I think we are talking about human behaviour here, from which all greed arises. I fail to see how a 'rounding of the structure' will fix this. And what structure are you referring to?

Greed belongs solely to the human race where money and power are concerned and has nothing whatsoever to do with the ethereal structural imbalances to which you refer. Greed is simply the cause. And greed for money and power has been with us since the dawn of crime. Because greed is a human trait, a behavioural trait if you like. Opportunity in the markets, or within economic policy may be driven by greed as the democratic process so aptly illustrates, again and again.

Since greed and power both so widely permeate big business and democratic politics in the form of cronyism, how would you get rid of it? What structure would you put in place to prevent or dissolve it? And how is this possible anyway, when  the very political institutions we are talking about are riddled with the intention and attainment of money and power through greed? How can greed within the democratic process be fixed by the very democratic process that has allowed it to breed and multiply within in the first place? Jason Rines 

I believe Rooster may be talking about an evolved banking system and interconnectedness meaning more representation and far less government meaning less opportunity for greed. Such a world will be better but here is my take: No utopia on earth until mankind has perfected genetic engineering. At the rate we are going because of greed, that will take hundreds more years.

2:03PM 02/22/2012 View Jason Rines Debate Points
Jason Rines has 4284 debate points and is ranked Finalist 

therooster...Greed is driven by opportunity as much as by anything else and there is a very fine line between greed, opportunity and ambition. You say that the cure is structural and further imply that the change is happening now. If we take the Health Care bill as an example, that bill is a complete failure -- to the extent that the Health sector has even been a keen supporter of Obama's bill. They support the bill because it has already been bought by the Health Care sector -- see my article "President Obama Cares" -- for the reasons. There will be no public option, no affordable or competitive health care. Why? Because the greed and support of the health sector shareholders must be fed at all costs. The same democratic farce will happen to the Financial Regulations Bill -- that will also be bought by Wall Street, ending with no significant changes or regulation. And Ron Paul's Bill to audit the FED will be either diluted to nothing or fail for some convenient reason. But the truth is that greed always wins within the democratic process, plain for all to see even now.

I'm saying here that the very political process -- the democratic process -- is bent and infested with cronyist greed and avarice, so how can you change this situation if the political people who are actually capable of creating this change(structural or otherwise) are also deeply involved in the rot of the democratic process? You have to first start with honest politicians. Therefore this fault isn't about structure, this is about people.

Your view would have to depend on whether you actually trust the democratic process to do the tight thing for the will of the people. Quite plainly, this democratic process has been taken over and now functions for the benefit those of who can pay the most. So the democratic process has simply been bought and subjugated by Big Business so that their power has grown incredibly strong. And this is not what the forefathers of the Constitution ever intended. 


Why do you assume that I make reference to the health care bill ?  I don't support it and it's another perfect example of intervention that has been perverted on top of other interventions.  A tangled web.

The processes that you define and align with the association of greed are all coincidental with the very hierarchical structure that you questioned me about in a recent and previous post. The power structure simply focuses power to an apex of consolidation. The structure is out of balance with the supply side of the equation "enjoying" the imbalance. Our objective is to achieve a power balance. It's part of our "restoration".

There is no democracy in the current structure. They can call it what they want. I call it representative democracy. True democracy would be participatory, directly, on at least the legislative level. That would require a structural change but before any structural changes can be made in the political model, they must be manifested in the model of primacy, the economic model. The economic model is the "model of models" where other secular models follow the example. If there is no proper distribution of power in the economic model, forget about acquiring more equally distributed power in the political model.

If you want political change, forget about finding the solutions within the political model. It's a follower of the economic model. That's the way the script is written. True power is found in economics which is why the money issue is so central. Forget honest politicians. Honest people are rarely attracted to politics and if they are, they are easily corrupted. Furthermore, if you put perfect people into a corrupt system, you still have a corrupt system. Again, this goes back to structure. I would suggest that you stop attempting to pour new wine (new applications) into an old wineskin (infrastructure). It will not work. The structure needs to morph in order to contain the new applications. An example of this would be P.C. networks in order to use the application of real-time gold backed digital currency. Why do you suppose that gold was "back burnered" (as money) back in the 1970's when gold's dollar price was set free ? The answer is logistical in nature and was only solved with digitization. There was no efficient way to split the gold weight and transfer the wealth easily. That was always gold's problem. It was the distribution issues, not the gold, itself. Most gold bugs don't even get this point. They have classical ideas on gold that include the fixed peg such as what we saw in Bretton Woods. I once had this blind spot myself. They don't take economic law to the point of real-time valuations and distribution capabilities.

You can fully expect to see competitive digital gold business models evolve to integrate members and provide opportunity while also reducing risk by placing marketing costs into the area of costs of sale or costs of transactions. The ability to attract consumers in the 21st century is no longer about product, quality, service & price. It also incorporates providing opportunity in the fight over winning over the consumer. Corporate marketing wants the consumer. Consumers now want a piece of the action and are willing to be productive to earn it. This is what I mean by consumer capitalism via integration into supply chains, something that is fairly new because of the information age. We restructure in the market because that's the easiest place to attain power. The power morphs to other secular models.

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