Friday, December 3, 2010

Solutions will create their own demand

Cross-posted from http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ in response to

link to http://www.thomaspalley.com/?p=179

From Deaf to History’s Rhyme: Why President Obama is Failing Thomas Palley
“President Obama’s fateful decision to go with Clintonomics meant the recession was interpreted as an extremely deep downturn rather than a crisis signaling the bankruptcy of the neoliberal paradigm that has ruled both Republicans and Democrats for thirty years.”

Then what do we replace it with? I am sure we can come up with something, but I believe that right now, it is a competition between available neoliberal solutions that don’t work and solutions that will work but that do not exist yet – at least not as widely understood coherent positions. So there is a lot of acting like the drunk who looks under the street light for his keys even though he dropped them on the other side of the street because “that is where the light is”.

To put it another way, the lack of clear, credible solutions makes it psychologically more difficult to face the depth of the problem.

I think that many people will not let themselves see how deep the problems run until they see believable solutions. And that those of us working on those solutions will have to start putting together solutions before enough people are willing acknowledge the problem to create the possible backing to implement them or even consider them seriously.
I would love to see nakedcapitalism.com start examining what we should do. For example, what would a real solution to the mortgage securitization problems look like? What solutions would we like at least the blog reading public to be aware of in preparation for the day when the bankruptcy of current DemRep policies (”let them eat whole wheat sugar-free cake” vs. “eat sh*t”) becomes so obvious that there is an opening even for solutions that right now the elite is still able to keep out of polite discussion.

No comments:

Post a Comment