Glenn Greenwald's Cheerful Thought

[elfs]

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

Comments

[lemur123.livejournal.com]

Collapse, just when it's approaching a libertarian dream? We're getting close to the ideal situation, with privatized toll sidewalks, and privatized police (if you're a victim, hope your HMO covers the investigation by the police department of your choice). Hey, even the Romans had private fire departments, who would cheerfully negotiate with you over the price to put out your burning home.

Michael Z. Williamson, author of what Amazon.com calls "right-wing gun porn" (and who writes quite good S&M porn as "Al Steiner") has several novels set around a planet where 100% of government revenue is spent on the military; everything else (parks, roads, schools, emergency services, the justice system, and even their diplomatic corps and government leadership) consists of self-funded for-profit organizations.

Re:

[lemur123.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's odd that the uber-libertarians whose essays I read are so strongly for a government-funded powerful military. Governments often outsourced the military in the past.

Investors would raise money to build a warship, and then send it out with a civilian crew to attack and capture enemy shipping. The government gave them a Letter of Marque to indicate that this was approved, to differentiate them from pirates.

Although privatized naval forces were banned by the Treaty of Paris, and armed mercenaries (i.e. Blackwater) are specifically exempt from the protections of the Geneva and Hague conventions, the US never agreed to those treaty clauses. Theoretically, the US could disband its entire military and give the job to Halliburton, with payment being all the loot they can grab.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Privateer

[voidrandom.livejournal.com]

I believe that the libertarians that are for a government supported military are referred to as minarchists and are not even close to being the most "uber" in that group. Much better candidates for the title "uber" are the flat out anarcho-capitalists who would probably support privatized security arrangements.

[lemur123.livejournal.com]

*googles*

oh wow ... this is like when I discovered that there really were furries in real life.

I'm going to be stuck reading websites ALL NIGHT now!

[voidrandom.livejournal.com]

If you're looking for something other than entertainment value ("Niven's Law says that there is no cause so noble and pure that it will not attract fuggheads, and his corollary to that law is that the fuggheads will usually attract most of the press attention.") you may want to look at http://mises.org .

[shunra.livejournal.com]

As I see it, the collapse has happened. What Greenwald describes is what it looks like AFTER the collapse.

It could still regroup: collapse does not have to be final or unidirectional.

I hope it does. I love so much of what this country stands for and so very many things about it! But I'm not sure it will.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

I look at my grandparents' generation &mdash the so-called "Greatest Generation."

Y'know why they seem so great? Because the generations following them are all so bloody-awful.

I look at the way that my grandparents live: in communities. During the 1980's, the US was convinced into believing that "community==communism." When my grandparents described a Supreme Court justice as a, "strict constructionist," they meant a judge that stuck to the letter of the law, not personal interpretations. Now, "strict constructionist," is just a codephrase for, "Republican-Party-Aparatchik." Had the SCotUS tried 50 years ago to legislate-from-the-bench that corporations are people and that towns can seize land by eminent domain and give it to a private concern, people would've openly-revolted.

We now have several major TV channels and newspapers that perpetuate the messages, "every-man-for-himself", "shout-down-everyone-else", "grab-what-you-can", "sharing==socialism", "community==communism", "freedom==I-do-what-I-want-&-f@#k-everyone-else" … in short, sociopathic behavior. Is it any wonder we're falling apart?