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| Elliot Ness, famous G-Man who stopped mobsters in the 20s, including challenging Al Capone. |
I hate the government! I want it out of my life and as limited as possible!
I hate big business and the wealthy! I want them as limited as possible, and to demolish the income gap!
There is much discussion about the real gap between urban and rural that is dividing this country. San Francisco and Chicago, and even Atlanta and Birmingham, vote for Hillary in large numbers, whereas even rural countries in liberal California may go for Trump.
But there is another brutal, albeit possibly related, impulse that is destroying our ability to solve problems. And that is that we have a large group of people who think government is the enemy, that it's bureaucratic dictates always makes things worse, that it's major goal is take from people who work hard and give to people who don't do squat on a tuna bunwich. And then we have another large group of people who think that private solutions are rot, that the greed of those on top consolidate power and wealth, and then leave the rest of us exploited and impoverished,struggling just to survive while the privileged few sit at the country club, clinking glasses in celebration of their manipulation at keeping the rest of us so much at each other's throats that we pay no attention to who is really ruining our lives.
Both of these viewpoints have elements of truth. But they also are wrong, in and of themselves. You have to remember two very, very important things -
1) The best economy is a mixed economy.
The greatest economies are not purely capitalist, or communist, or socialist, or any other pure economic system. Any society you've seen that tries to only adopt one or the other has fallen short and collapsed over time. Russia and China have only survived because they modified or adopted communism to coordinate with private market forces (granted, they have tilted way too far to cronyism, particularly Russia). Virtually all capitalist societies are modifications of that idea, including our own. No one wants to return to the days of Scrooge and Dickensian era capitalism. No significant numbers wants to truly advocate Ayn Rand and a bloodless Libertarianism. Most Libertarians are not pure - they have exceptions and modifications, ranging from abortion to defense spending.
We need to recognize this and stop advocating for purist solutions. Public and private solutions need to work in coordination with each other.
And the second thing is -
2) We need Elliot Ness!
Yes, the great Elliot Ness, the G-man civil servant who helped take down the mob! Without someone to call out and battle corruption and crime, we can achieve nothing! We must have the cop on the beat!
Of course, that is not always literally a cop. But that is enforcement. That is checks and balances (thank you, founding fathers, for this greatest of all your gifts to us). That is transparency and civic attention.
Private interests need to be checked. Their major goal is the profit motive, not the public interest. That means legal enforcement. Cops, IRS agents, food inspectors, Wall Street regulators - all this and more are needed in order to make the private sector work in the public interest. This means laws, This means regulations. This means Congressional oversight.
Public interests need to be checked. If you're not careful, they can become corrupted, and start serving their own interests and cronies. They need to be watched. They need a free, unfettered, skeptical press to call them out. They need the voters to be paying attention, and throw the bums out when they don't act in the public interest.
And both sides needs an alert and impartial justice system, with judges able to act in the interests of the Constitution, legal principle, and the American people.
All of this can become corrupted. Money and undue influence can horribly warp results. When counterbalancing forces, like the press, are reviled and muzzled, it can only cause dis-balance and harm.
The most dangerous and insidious parts of the Trump administration is that it is trying to get us to vilify and demonize our free press, and they are calling into question the legitimacy of our judicial system. They are trying to unmoor our fundamental checks and balances so they can create a corrupt public sector whose major function will be to enrich their private cronies.
Are we going to let that happen? I hope not. Because we need both Thing 1 and Thing 2.
We need a strong, mixed economy that uses the best of both public and private solutions
AND
We need Elliot Ness!!!
Please try not to forget this.
The future kinda depends on it.
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