Dailykos is a leftist blog. Our opponents call us Liberals, we describe ourselves as Progressive. But there are those who use stronger terms. Calling us Communists is simply the same as our calling Republicans Fascists. It is the epithet that is so emotionally charged that it is not really an opening for discussion. They have become "fighting words" devoid of actual political implications.
In this country, in most academic settings, Communism and Fascism are discarded relics of an era long gone. You don't get an academic assignment or a book deal, if you are even tainted with this extreme positions.
I just wrote this comment on why people buy large cars:
A larger car is safer and more comfortable. Just as those who can afford it buy a bigger house, that costs more to heat and cool, they buy a larger, more luxurious car.
The issue is more complex than this. While we like to believe in free enterprise, and the freedom to purchase what we want, we are more interconnected. While the wealthy can afford his 15 mpg car; as his cohort use these vehicles it affects the price for the worker who can barely afford gas for his old Honda Accord.
He is affected by the actions of the wealthy, and even though he uses less gas, the effect on him, based on his available income, is much more dire.
Conditions like we are seeing now, shortages leading to unaffordible prices of gas, and even worse, food are game changing events. It should elicit a rethinking of many economic and social verities that worked fine in the absence of these shortages.
It is a discussion that should begin pretty soon, if someone wants to really deal with what is happening now, and what will only be accelerating. For those in this country, price increases is largely a cause of deprivation; for the third of the world living on a dollar a day, it will mean starvation, and the social chaos it will engender.
The increase in the cost of oil, which leads directly to the sharp rise in the cost of everything else, including the most vital commodity, food; is more than an economic problem. The verities of free enterprise, articulated by Adam Smith to Milton Freedman....happen to be based on sound logic. The invisible hand does, in fact, provide the most goods to the most people. But there is an important caveat, that we have not previously had to deal with. This only works in an environment of abundance, when the failure of the individual enterprise, what has been referred to by Joseph Schumpeter as "creative destruction" is self limiting, and not destructive to the society.
It turns out that venture capitalists are bidding up the infrastructure of food production--farmland, nitrate mines, etc. This article describes how this will add to the already accelerating cost of food. A good investment? Perhaps. As long as no one thinks about the social consequences. This is food, not gold mines. As food prices increase, even incrementally, more people die. Right now they are only in the slums of Africa---and we can, and have, been ignoring this.
As it spreads, which it will- if not this time, then next year, next decade, next generation-what exactly is to be done. Do we continue to tacitly trust in the free enterprise system that has been the all but universal intellectual underpinning western civilization.
The owners of the now more expensive farmland will only make a profit if the price covers their investment. As long as no one cares who, or how many are starving they will do just fine.
And if a Communist-Central planning mentality starts to grow, just who is to be blamed- an individual, a party, a feckless president--or history itself.