Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
I sent the following letter to many members of the Maryland Legislature today, March 13, 2017:
Dear Chairwoman Carter-Conway and Committee Members:
I thought the following quote from the economist Kenneth Arrow, who just passed away, was important to keep in mind as you and the committee consider a permanent ban on fracking for natural gas in Maryland, a ban I strongly support.
" 'A democratic polity is supposed to be based on egalitarian distribution of political power. In a system where virtually all resources are available for a price, economic power can be translated into political power by channels too obvious for mention. In a capitalist society, economic power is very unequally distributed, and hence democratic government is inevitably something of a sham. In a sense, the maintained ideal of democracy makes matters worse, for it adds the tensions of hypocrisy to the inequality of power. '"
Kenneth Arrow
The quote appeared at the blog for World Economics Association, the world's second largest professional organization for economists, and the chief rival to the American Economic Association. I am pleased to have had my work published by this organization and I have a new essay pending there entitled Major Miscalculations: Globalization, Economic Pain, Social Dislocation and the Rise of Trump. Here is the link to the article on Mr. Arrow. https://rwer.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/kenneth-arrow-1921-2017/
I hope my selection of this quote, though pointed and directed against the power of the natural gas industry, is not understood to be a form of economic determinism set for all times and all capitalist societies. The power of corporate America over us ebbs and flows over the decades. The New Deal and its lasting influence being quite different from the current regime of Neoliberalism and its grounding in "austerity," the governing ideas for Senate President Mike Miller, Maryland's permanent governor, who has no problems forming alliances, on economic grounds, with the most reactionary of political forces: the Western Maryland delegation.
You have my permission to quote me as to what I just called them. They are hard-hearted men with no imagination, least of all economic imagination, and perfectly willing to destroy the natural world for the sake of short term, and largely illusionary economic gains, to put at risk some of the best, and last wild natural areas left in the Free State. Of course their highest values are called "Economic Freedom," or even more broadly, "Liberty," but it is the liberty to destroy nature and turn all of American society into an oligarchical pyramid of concentrated wealth and power, to turn the United States into all that is meant by the term from the 19th century, a "company coal town."
And the perfect symbol for those values is Donald Trump.
Sincerely,
billofrights
Frostburg, MD