PDF Ebook The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
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The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
PDF Ebook The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too
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Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 9 hours and 7 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Audible.com Release Date: May 18, 2009
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Language: English, English
ASIN: B002AHYJX0
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
When I retired I began to read economics trying to understand the issues of the "market". I read Fredrick Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and John Meynard Keynes. The definition of a "free market" used by Hayek did not seem to comport with reality. He defines a market as when huge numbers of buyers and huge numbers of sellers are buying and selling a fungible product. The buyers must be "free" to consume or not consume the product. Sellers presumably compete on price and quality. This is not reality. In the US, a handful of large corporations control the exchange of most products. Moreover, some products, like healthcare, are not subject to a "free market" since consumers are not able to refuse to consume the product. After all if you don't buy healthcare you might die or get sick. James Galbraith's book shows how as big manufacturing industries failed or were diminished after the Reagan Revolution and accompanying high interest rates, power devolved on to wealthy individuals who didn't acknowlege any idea of the "common good" and instead used the economic system to predate on society as a whole. Very well written and his thesis explains how we arrived where we are now.
Published a few months before Obama's election, this book by a well-known economist is remarkable in how well it foresaw events of the following 7 years. Distressingly little has changed. Conservative experimentation with "free markets" and "supply-side economics" under Reagan and the Bushes failed miserably, and conservatives have clearly abandoned it in favor of cynicism as a governing philosophy. But Democrats haven't yet learned."Free markets" are a myth. Corporations, seeking to maximize profit as they always do, will always seek to grow to a point where they can manipulate markets to their liking and capture monopoly rents. We should not expect anything different. We can't and shouldn't try to prevent globalization and lowering of trade barriers, but we need to regulate corporations more strongly to ensure that they satisfy our public interest requirements including environmental, labor, fair competition, and human rights concerns. This includes resisting consolidation.(We saw a presentation a few weeks ago at Seattle U by David Korten, who said the same thing, and that the weakening of national regulation is what he sees as the biggest flaw in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that Obama is pushing. Korten is concerned that TPP will make corporations even larger and more powerful than government, making it impossible to address any of earth's long-term problems. I've been waiting for the president to address this, but so far he has not.)Supply and demand are over-rated. They work great for micro-economic decision making, but beware using these concepts on a larger scale where resource constraints come into play. For example, we now know that increasing the minimum wage does not cause unemployment. In fact, it brings more skilled people into the workforce (particularly women), who previously might have chosen not to work or might have been forced to work outside of the fields where they can make their highest contribution. A more skilled workforce facilitates business expansion and economic growth, which absorbs the available labor. Salary is a very inaccurate measure of productivity or value.As another example, we shouldn't apply supply-and-demand concepts unthinkingly to the Federal deficit. One source of US economic power in the world is the role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. It is in our interest for every nation to own and use dollars. In order for this to happen, it is essential that the US have a trade deficit (more dollars going out to buy goods, fewer dollars coming in when we sell goods) and a federal budget deficit. These deficits cannot and must not go away. This is why interest rates did not go up when the US borrowed heavily to recover from the 2008 financial crisis.The book analyzes what it calls the "predator class," the CEOs and financial industry people who control corporations but have little or no interest in what the company actually makes or does. They are interested only in the money. This culture got started when tech entrepreneurs (like our neighbor Bill Gates) found how easy it was to use technical knowledge and patents to build giant monopolies and get filthy rich. This raised the standard for CEO salaries even in industries where innovation was absent. Investors who control the stock of many of these companies and hire the CEOs then felt that they deserved a piece of the action. The predator class has now become a species unto itself, actively seeking to find and confiscate any money they can find laying around anywhere in the economy, much as a whale must spend its whole life vacuuming up plankton in order to stay alive.Similarly, the role of corporations in government has led us to the "predator state," where all three branches of government, including regulatory agencies, are captured by corporate interests. The objective of these corporations is to continue to grow and consolidate. The predator class is focused on short-term profit, so they and their corporations have huge reserves of money to apply to the problem, and very little interest in long-term issues such as global warming. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats alike work to starve government of the resources and expertise it needs in order to resist.Obamacare is a great example of how the health insurance industry, with money to burn, managed to take a real solution (public insurance) off the table, and instead expanded their revenue and profit base, with benefits going mainly to the moneyed owners of these companies and their privileged CEOs. Democratic goals, of insuring more people and distributing insurance costs more fairly, were partially accomplished, and the goal of the rich to get richer was fully accomplished. A win-win for those with power, but all of us are still paying far too much for health care because of the health insurance industry, a huge parasite on our backs.Not all corporations are predatory all of the time. More innovative companies, particularly those whose senior management are technical leaders in their industry and identify with their customers, and many closely-held companies, are not as addicted to money and growth, having more complex motivations. Companies that cannot compete on innovation are the ones most likely to try to compete via their control over government or via monopoly power.Important interests require powerful institutions to protect them. The wealthy have always had corporations. The middle class was built with the help of labor unions. The poor were protected by government. Nowadays labor unions are destroyed and government is badly weakened, partially controlled by corporations. Who will stand up for the middle class and shore up the capability of government to deal with long-term problems?Galbraith calls for the new class of educated professionals to organize and fill this role. This class of people is much larger and more capable than ever in history, and may be the only group with the intellectual heft to challenge the complex strategies of the predators. Galbraith would like this to be seen as a professional responsibility, to act for the benefit of those who no longer have any institutional support, and to plan for the long-term. He sounds almost Marxist in his plea, but he is not calling for overthrow or dominance. Rather, he feels that professionals should work within the system to overcome the predator class, and take a stronger role in government and corporations to force them to work more in the public interest and with a longer-term perspective. He sees a lack of long-term/short-term balance (as well as a lack of innovation) in how corporations are governed, and wants to see this balance restored.It may seem weird or ugly to think of a professional class in the way Marx thought about the proletariat. Why do we need to divide the world into classes? Because if we don't, the predators will continue to eat our lunch. Because if we don't, we will have no self-determination in the predator-dominated world. Because "every man for himself" is a losing strategy.There won't be an overt class warfare like the Russian Revolution was. Corporations are already too powerful for that. But watch Fox News for a short while if you can stomach it, and it's obvious that the war is already on, and has been for years. It will have to be a guerrilla war of minds. Think of it as a community project if you want, with the emphasis on community.Make no mistake that the predator class already sees the educated professional class as a potential threat. Hence we see school "reform" efforts which try to reshape education so students in public schools are better servants of corporations, with highly standardized "job skills" and less likelihood to try to lead or resist. In the world view of the predator class, leadership is to be learned in expensive private schools so the wealthy class can be perpetuated. Parents who wish their children to be leaders in a social recovery need to actively resist this "reform" movement and ensure that their own kids receive a complete education, especially in areas that are "not on the test," such as leadership, creativity, philosophy, and empathy.This is a relatively short book. Even though it is a few years old, it has proven to have staying power, and I highly recommend it.
This is a good history of why our country has gotten into this state where the ultra wealthy control the government. We are not a democratic society (just look at the US Senate where two senators each represent both California and Wyoming- this body of "representatives" needs to be reconfigured so there is some kind of proportionality. Our government needs major overhaul or only the wealthy, whose interests are not aligned with the public's, will have a say in anything. Meanwhile we are headed for disaster caused by climate change. The environment is the number one casualty of our procrastination and refusal to modernize our transportation (railway like in Europe and China), alternative energy (CARBON TAX), and universal healthcare (single payer). We waste huge amounts of money and much of the profits go into the pots of the big corporations. The wealthiest country in the world has one of the greatest income disparities. Those making millions are exploiting the lack of regulation and tax evasion. Such a disgrace that one in four children live in poverty. Galbraith's book (and many others who write on this topic) will only make a difference if the general public is aware of the grim reality. They could start by refusing to elect some of the a**h**** who now now only serve the ultra wealthy.
Read everything James and Kenneth have written. Econ for people not into the Rand groupies. See the world as it is not thru Greenspan glasses.
The core issue discussed in this book is whether the role of government is to increase the standard of living and quality of life for the citizens, or to set up a system to enable corporate power and allow a relatively few individuals to accumulate extreme wealth. JG presents convincing arguments for the former, often in withering condescension that is amusing to those not in the line of fire. He writes from an academic perspective that overlooks the unpleasant fact that the leader of our government is the winner of a quadrennial popularity contest; implying instead that Reagan gained office as a result of the power of the conservative minded economists in his entourage rather than as a result of photogenia and Hollywood-polished charisma, and that Carter lost as a result of an untimely act by economist Greenspan rather than unpopularity caused by kissing Brezhnev, humiliation in Iran, and the "crisis of confidence" speech.JG effectively explains why the goal of government should be to raise the living standard and improve the quality of life for all Americans, often referred to as the public welfare although the use of that term evokes the wrong concept. The book is remarkably concise and interesting, an accomplishment for any economist and more so for a Galbraith.
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