Life started with men living in caves and gathering food from trees and hunting. This is when world’s oldest profession started. Women offered sex to powerful hunters in return for food and security. Soon men and women started to claim exclusive rights on their sexual partners, particularly men started to dislike sharing their women. Hence, the institution of family started with men started to share the responsibility of raising kids by being the bread-winner for the family. Then men invented tools. Started growing food, raising animals and cover bodies with leaves and animal skin, first to protect from weather and then for morality reasons. Started building huts. At this point the question of mine and thine evolved. My land and your land, My house and your house. My women and your women. I cannot use the food grown by you and you cannot use the food grown by me. Families evolved into extended families, extended families into clans, clans into tribes, tribes gave rise to villages and villages grew up into cities. With invention of tools, men started to make and manufacture different things to make life easier and better, like clothes, shoes, haircut, farming tools and hunting tools. Gradually, necessities and needs grew so much that it became impossible for one person or family to meet all its needs. Plus, some of the work required special skills which everyone didn’t had. So, evolved the professions and people exchanged their goods in accordance with their needs, now termed as barter. Some people could do more and better and others could do less or worse. Some people sold more and some less. So, some accumulated lot of stuff (wealth) and others had less. Wealthier people also accumulated more of more wanted and favored stuff like gold. They started selling their valuable products for gold and other precious metals like silver and started to use them for buying stuff for themselves. So, evolved currencies with gold silver and other precious metals being used as currencies.
Concepts of mine and thine, ownership and wealth gave rise to conflicts. In the beginning might was always right. The more powerful always got what he wanted. This was another reason, beside economy, manpower and more hands to work, due to which people wanted to have lots of kids. It gave power to families, clans and tribes. Powerful, rich and wealthy people would also enslave the weak and poor to get strength and achieve economic and financial goals. Concepts of hiring and employing for money / food /sex also evolved.
As social systems evolved and people started to live in larger groups, the conflicts started to be refered to the most powerful and rich guy, who by virtue of his wealth and power was also considered the smartest and the wisest person. These leaders of community were seldom neutral and they always decided these conflicts in accordance with their own interests and preferences. Obviously many people were not happy with that situation. So, came the councils of elders and wise people. These people were usually hand-picked by the richest man or landlord. Sometimes common people may also elect or nominate them. These councils were critical in keeping harmony and peace in the society. But, if I am so powerful then why do I have to work. Why not I just get paid by money collected from people (Taxes) and provide services like, resolving conflicts, security and protection in return. So, evolved governments. First there were self-proclaimed chiefs, kings and emperors, who would just rise to the occasion, based on their power, wealth and influence. They were brutal dictators in most cases and their word was law which they may change, at any time, any place and anywhere. Since the power and wealth of the nations and their rulers was in number of people subdued, many of them would attack their neighbors and war became common. This culture grew so much that work became an insult for royalty and elite, and only commoners were supposed to work for themselves, and the royalties and elite. As the sizes of these nations grew, it became relatively easier for common people to protest against the way the rulers were chosen and the way they ruled. Bloody revolutions became a huge threat in which the common people would throw away the government and elite class and kill everyone they can find and then this revolution would create another elite class which would usually rule in a slightly better way. Marx called this continuous struggle throughout the course of history as class struggle between have-ones and have-nots. He called the existing systems as thesis, the revolutionary ideas as anti thesis and the result that would evolve from this conflict as synthesis. Then synthesis would become the new thesis against which a new anti-thesis would evolve. hence, giving rise to a new synthesis. We see this continuous struggle in the history of every geographic region of the world. This ongoing process of class struggle in human history required more stability and warranties for elite, rather than just their power and wealth. So, came religion. For the first time in history these oppressive kings and emperors were not kings and emperors just because they successfully claimed it based on their power and wealth, but now they had a divine right. They were the Gods chosen and had full support from theocracy or God’s people. They became lot more powerful and wealthy and hence more oppressive. Revolutions became much harder to organized and executed, because the conservative segment of population could not imagine throwing away God’s chosen people from power. Theocrats would call it unforgivable sin and the supporters of anti-thesis were supposed to be cursed by God and destined to be burned in hell. This triangle of power shared by theocrats, aristocrats and beaurocrats, brought the powers of government and state to an unprecedented level. They created huge, extremely oppressive empires. In most cases intellectuals and revolutionaries were in great trouble, because the conservative segment of masses would never dare to envy God by revolting against its chosen people. They also caused great wars and blood shed. The difference now was that the war and blood shed was not bad and selfish, anymore. It was Holy and done for God. So, all the bloodshed, killing and suffering was fully justified. Not just justified but the only right thing to do. Staying away from this mess was like a sin and these people were labeled as coward and people of weak faith. Supported by divine right, rulers could tax anyone in any amount and any land or property could any time be declared as royal or state property, leaving existing owner /owners with no rights and / or compensation. Women had virtually no rights under these divine rules and serious religious, racial and class discrimination was routine.
Finally, people had enough of it. Masses, intellectuals and secular philosophers realized that the only way out is the breakage of this extremely oppressive and powerful triangle. They said that the religion is a personal matter and when religion organizes and joins with state, it creates a very oppressive and dictatorial government. Hence, state and church should be separated with states having no involvement in church and church having no involvement in matters of government. So, ensues another class struggle. Status quo as usual resisted the change with full power and put all the religious, money and power resources to fail the secular revolution. After a hard and long fought battle and lots of blood shed, secular forces with extreme support from these oppressed masses, won and divine right to the government gradually, one by one gave way to secular forms of government.
During the whole course of history and particularly after the victory of secular philosophies in most western countries, certain questions are frequently asked and remain clearly and fully unanswered. These are, Is government necessary? If yes how much? What should be the powers of government? How much control should government have on our lives? Why can’t we be totally free?
French revolution gave rise to industrialization and Capitalism, coupled with democratic form of government in most cases.
Industrialization gave rise to huge industries and mass production. These industries were labor intensive and generated huge industrial complexes and large metropolitan cities. Large influx of people from villages and small towns to big cities and industrial complexes, from open fields to closed and congested flats and apartments, created a totally new culture, which for some was not even culture at all. While this industrialization generated unprecedented amount of wealth and standards of living were quickly raised to levels that were totally unimaginable just a little while ago, this great wealth generation for the first time allowed secure retirements for elderly, and employers and governments (getting rich due to taxes on this massive wealth generation) taking care of elderly, kids, poor and sick and welfare grew both horizontally and vertically in most cases.
Industrialization was not free of hazards though. A fairly popular movement known as romantic movement grew up against this revolution, lead by famous intellectuals and writers and poets like, William Wordsworth. The romantic movement viewed industrialization and urbanization as the death of values and character and murderer of mother Earth and nature. These writers frequently predicted that the big cities would become the graveyard of commonly valued morals and this artificial lifestyle will ultimately destroy the Earth and mother nature.
The momentum was so much in the favor of industrialization, resulted wealth generation was so enormous, and standards of living raised so fast that romantic movement could not survive. Beside the industrialists had everything needed to win this war. Money, power, government and mass support. The romanticists were mostly rendered as a bunch of stupid idealists, until recently when a large number of studies have shown, how urban lifestyle is raising the stress to killer levels? How the so-called standards of living are high but quality of life is so low? And how it is seriously threatening the environment and future of our planet, Earth.
The reason industrialization was able to achieve what it achieved was that it was coupled with Capitalism and Democracy. Allowing individuals to do what they wanted to do, and had to do to realize their dreams, created virtual wonders. This revolution was also very lucky to be coupled with discovery of America. Entrepreneurs and highly motivated individuals, who couldn’t find a space to breath in old world and were very likely to be labeled as crazy for their extremely ambitious nature, poured into this land of freedom in large numbers, from all over the world, particularly from Europe. America became the land of opportunity and heaven for young entrepreneurs. For the first time in history they had wide and open fields with little or no restrictions to play. Where else in the world two bicycle shop owner brothers would try to fly again and again, and fail again and again and would still not be arrested for craziness? Where in the world someone would work on building a global network of roads for vehicles that would run by their own and not pulled by an animal or a man, and would still be not declared as an idiot? Where else in the world a person will work on lighting the houses and neighborhoods with energy that would be generated far away from lamps and would still be not rendered as stupid? For us now these are common everyday things. And they are because of their extreme utility and effectiveness in everyone’s life, but in those days these were crazy dreams only thought possible in the land of free.
But at the same time Capitalism was not free of hazards, as well. Capitalists by virtue of their ownership were above all laws and regulations. With Adan Smith’s Lasse Faire, it was believed that the hidden hand of competitions takes care of everything. Business must be above and beyond the all kind of government interference. Beside, Capitalists paid taxes and funded the campaigns of politicians. So, these huge industrial complexes were totally unregulated. Workers in these compounds were living miserable life. They would live in tiny apartments with little or no maintenance and lake of basic amenities. They would have to work long hours with no concept of overtime or anything like that. If they were sick or had an emergency, there was nothing like sick time or paid time off. And since there was no health insurance, would lose their wages and had to pay medical bills off their own pockets. There was no vacation time, so they worked round the year. There was no retirement, so if they were disabled or got a chronic disease or grew old they were simply thrown out like a piece of trash. There were no concrete set hours. Their employers or your bosses could always make them stay longer, call them early in the morning or in the middle of night, for example, and there was no way they could avoid it. Women and minorities were frequently paid far less than men and their counter part majority people. This caused a serious unrest among workers and they started to organize under worker unions. These unions and their activities were quickly declared extremely non productive, dangerous for economy and jobs, and were mostly outlawed. Strike and protests were banned, but nothing worked. The unions kept getting stronger and stronger and strikes and protests were becoming common. People participating in strikes and protests would be fired from their jobs and even arrested. Police and law enforcement often used force on these workers, just asking for their rights and better work conditions. In some instances they even led to serious violence and shootings, most famous of them was in Chicago, IL.
On the other hand a anti-thesis started to build. Alternative ideologies started yo appear, claiming to be a better replacement for Capitalism. Most famous of them was Karl Marx from Germany. Supported by his rich friend Angel, his book Das Capital, became outrageously popular, under those circumstances, particularly in reactionaries and revolutionaries. In his works Marx forwarded the thesis and anti-thesis theory and said that Capitalism is building same triangle of oppression and a new elite class is being born. This will as usual cause a widening gap between rich and poor causing unrest in have-nots. These have-nots, labor (proletariat) in this case will organize, struggle and overthrow this new elite (borsva) and create a worker’s paradise, in which the need for government will dissipate and disappear, and people will live in harmony without the existence of government. There will be no mine and thine, and ownership anymore, and everyone will share equal responsibility, work and wealth. He predicted that this workers paradise will be the end of class struggle that has been going on throughout the course of history.
Marx theories became insanely popular between brutally suppressed workers and labor groups. As usual some opportunists like Lenin and Mao, among others, took advantage of his theories and their extreme popularity, exploited suppressed people and staged bloody revolutions in agrarian economies like China and Russia, among others, as opposed to highly advanced and Capitalistic societies, as proposed by Marx. These pre-mature revolutions in agrarian societies created huge mess and created new elite with unlimited power and authority, known as communist and socialist parties. Governments and corruption, grew in size and power to a unprecedected level, as opposed to Marx’s theory of no government. Under these wrongdoings, bad implementations, and corruption and greed socialist and communist societies were widely and seriously, a failure. They either collapsed like Soviet Union or had to adopt, serious and stark changes, like China, in accordance with the demands of modern and more globalized economies.
Though, under the pressure of these socialist economies, workers unions and widespread, intense global protests and strikes, and the rise of social democrats all over the world, most countries were forced to adopt some serious workplace reforms like five days work week, work hours and overtime, sick time, paid time off, vacations and health insurance. Contrary to the propaganda from most corporate lobbies, these reforms raised the efficiency of workers, particularly in U.S. to record, unprecedented levels.
The reforms in non-socialist countries, effected almost every sector of economy and social life. But, most common were education, health care and start-up and venture financing.
Education, specially higher education provides fuel for economic growth. Nationalized higher education in countries like China, India, Japan, most european countries and Malaysia, guarantee a continuous supply of highly skilled, talented and qualified individuals and led China and India to the record growth levels, while rest fo the world is in recession or while other economies are shrinking. Chinese and Indian highly qualified professional individuals, coming out of these nationalized educational systems, are not only fueling their own economies to highest possible level but they are also providing skilled work force to other economies, a great source of revenue for these countries, as well. At the same time, the U.S. education system that used to be rated as number one in the world is now being ranked around twenty-seventh in most aspects, including Math and Science. Rate of college and university graduates is one of the lowest in developed world and even those who are graduating, are mostly foreigners studying in U.S. on their government scholarship or aliens and immigrants. Cost of college education keeps uncontrollably rising and more and more students are dropping out of higher educations programs, merely due to lake of affordability.
Health care is another story. While all the other developed nations are more healthy under universal health care and for the most part beat United States in all major criteria like life expectancy, controlling obesity, loss of work hours, and morbidity and mortality due to major diseases and health threats, corporate owned U.S. media and corporate lobbies owned politicians are still telling people that we have the best health care system in the world. Myths, denying the scientific evidence and statistics are very common in masses. For example, Canadians and Europeans can’t get access to healthcare in their own countries due to long lines and they come to United States for treatment. Nationalized healthcare in all developed countries, except United States, greatly reduces the cost of production in those countries, since employers don’t have to pay the heathcare insurance for their employees, making them more efficient in global competition. Public healthxare systems also provide more fexibility to employees, because they don’t have to wory about heathcare while switching jobs, while in U.S. big corporations use Healthcare as a trap for acquiring and holding employees.
United States started it’s journey as the nation of entrepreneurs. For everyone sky was the limit. Country was full of highly ambitious and bright entrepreneurs, getting full support from very high risk taker, startup and venture financing individuals and companies. With the passage of time, as society got more and more structured, the start -up and venture financing companies were hijacked by more savvy MBA’s rather than the people who invested in ideas and people. This has totally thwarted the new start-up businesses and most start-ups in United States are failed even before taking-off, merely due to lake of start-up and venture capital. At the same time, start-up and venture financing in countries like China and India is nationalized and the new and start-up businesses are growing and spreading like a wild fire. Creativity and innovation is the hallmark of growth and economic leadership. United States became the world richest country ever for a reason not other than that it was the most creative and innovative economy in the world and the favotite place to build any new business from scratch. That is why U.S. did the most cutting edge inventions and innovations which kept it at the top and changed the world for ever. Inventions that became unavoidable necessity for the world like Airplane, light bulbs, commercial manufacturing of automobiles, computers and public and commercial availability of Internet. These inventions and innovations have rescued U.S. in several serious economic crises like the one in 1990s was rescued by Internet and turned a budgetary deficit of billions of dollars into surplus. U.S. desperately needs another inventions like these as mountains of debt and deficits are piling up and have reached the mark of multi-trillion dollars. Hopefuls are looking at the green economy for this rescue. But. we need to understand that unless start-ups are refueled and provided with appropriate access to capital, this kind of miracle is impossible. Big corporations only work within the framework of their own interests and we cannot rely on them for this. This revolution as usual will arise from the basements and one bedroom apartments.
Biggest argument against change is the usual, historical and universal conservative argument. This is not us. This is not who we are. This is not American or is even anti-American. This is not our tradition or culture. Our country is being taken over by foreigners and their ideas and ideologies. Well, this is the same argument that former British rulers used, against whom we fought the great war of independence and brought the biggest and deepest changes around the world that changed people’s lives for ever. Nothing is more American than change, progress, entrepreneurship, invention and innovation. As a matter of fact the hallmarks of our society entrepreneurship, creativity, innovation and invention have huge meanings of change embedded in them, because these are the revolutionary things that bring the greatest and most peaceful changes in people’s life, usually around the world.
Tha biggest hurdle in change are corporate owned media and lobbies. They get aligned against every movement of change, in the favor of status quo. Unfortunately, a large proportion of our population is so much under the influence of corporate media and sold out politicians, and a large proportion of us is so cut-off from real sources of authentic information, that corporate media and lobbies have been able to mess-up every reform movement. As a matter of fact they have replaced the good old theocracy. There is a large blind following of media and these crooked politicians. Recent example is the new health care reform bill. Instead of building what was called as public option, like all the other civilized world, this bill, which finally passed through congress, became a health insurance companies bill. They got everything they wanted without losing anything significant. They got over 30 million more potential subscribers abided by law now to buy health insurance. Only significant achievement is the ban on rejection based on preexisting conditions, but even on this the details are lacking and nobody even knows what will be the penalties on violations. These regulations and penalties can become virtually a joke under defective laws, like federal reserves repeated failures in regulating banking and financial industry and recent regulation failure in West Virginia, where the mining Company was issued 500 citations in one year but these penalties were so little and minor, compared to profits they were making that they decided to keep going on with paying penalties and not making any changes and improvement. Result, was a serious disaster in which so many innocent hard-working people lost their lives and many families lost their bread winners.
Question remains what should be the extent and limitations of public and private sectors. My simple answer is, what ever is necessary from national security, stability, general well-being and economic and financial growth. After all we allow government to run defense, law enforcement, roads and highways, high school education and medicare, Medicaid, social security and VA for the same reason and because we know that these cannot be run successfully and left safely left in the hands of profit hungry corporations. Then what is wrong with letting public sector run higher education, healthcare and start-up financing. Only reason the current legal, social, educational, economic and financial structure was designed as it is, and as it exists, is because it was considered best in the interest of people and country, as a whole, and this must be the only reason for continuation and / or change in any of these. Arguments like this is not American and that is not American are ridiculous and based on the maintenance of status quo. Remember, only thing that is American, is the one that is good for all Americans and country, as a whole.
Change is hard and even harder for status quo to swallow it. But, we need to understand that a time comes in nation’s history when change does not remain an option. It becomes the only choice and the nations that do not intelligently adapt to these requirements of time are vanished over time and become a history like Romans, Greece, Ottomans and all the great ones throughout the course of history. Whoever we are; capitalists, politicians, intellectuals, journalists and masses, we all are on the same, greatest boat ever, known as America. Our survival depends on the survival of this greatest country and nation and our growth, wealth and well-being depends on the growth, wealth and well-being of this greatest nation, ever. Decision is in our hands. We can keep putting holes in it and do not repair and do not let anyone repair the existing holes, and make everyone drown, including ourselves or we can strengthen it by promoting and supporting our really basic values namely freedom, equality of opportunities and basic rights for all human beings, entrepreneurship, freedom to compete and grow with equal access to education and appropriately regulated free markets for unlimited and open job opportunities for everyone.
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