FDR was the absolute master of using state-owned and state-controlled enterprise for locally distinctive purposes. His methods were presaged in several plains states. North Dakota still has its state-owned bank, a sovereign wealth fund or Gosbank that stores revenues and uses them to get good things done. Oklahoma and Texas have similar wealth funds for oil. Oklahoma also invented the FDIC to protect people against failed banks, and the feds copied it.
A wonderful little book (if you can find it) is David Lilienthal's "Democracy on the March". Lilienthal directed TVA and describes the New Deal's purposes and achievements in the book.
Like many things with Trump, he’s a master at identifying the pain and has the right instincts on how to amass power but of course, uses it for all the wrong reasons.
It’s been eye opening for me to see how many things can get done quickly when our leaders aren’t afraid to exercise their power.
Let’s take this learning and do some good with it!
Lots to mull over here. Good stuff. A thought experiment which occurred to me is what would happen if these independent agencies weren't installed in the executive branch. What if Congress created them and installed them in the legislative branch, like the GAO?
The problem there is agencies are designed to carry out the law not make the law. The devil is in the details of whether a president is carrying out the law or whether he is making law. Everything I see Trump doing looks more like making law than carrying out the law. If independent agencies were installed under the legislative branch they would be carrying out the law instead of making the law.
So, how to solve for addressing the needs of a complicated, complex, technical and dynamic regulatory purpose? An independent agency with oversight by the courts which parse whether a particular regulation is making law or carrying out law? That's what we are supposed to be doing right now.
Corbin is right, these independent agencies have been captured and they were ripe for a guy like Trump to raid. I don't know what the answer is, but good kings only exist in Lord of the Rings. They don't really exist in historical fact. The answer the framers came up with is to put more trust in the people and to expect the people's will to be tested, tempered and deployed through the legislature. Congress has failed us for a very long time because representatives no longer fear the people.
So you like the "strong man" models of governance, Corbin? Think those models have worked out well in China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and other places? Want to live in those countries?
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The answer is not to move closer to absolute power models. Rather, it is to perfect the models (like ours) that have been designed to protect us from absolute power.
The mission of those executive agencies you decry should be to maximize the public good. "Cause" for firing should be significant obstacles to that mission.
The revolving door between industry and government service should be banned. Period. No loopholes or exceptions.
Elections shoulod be publicly financed. No more rich folks dominating the process. No more "Corporations are people, too!"
I think you've been right on many counts over the past months, Corbin. But in my opinion, you're way off the mark on this one!
It’s becoming clear that Trump will pass and we will be left with a dysfunctional government and need someone who exercises power for the people to put it together correctly. Congress is unlikely to do the job. Which, even though it has been said too many times, this next presidential election may actually be the most important in our lifetimes. I still disagree with so much power in the hands of the executive and wish congress was a functioning body, but maybe we’re to the point the right leader is the only way to get there.
Thank you for your piece. Although thought provoking and a bit abundance pilled, there is danger in giving anu one person, office or agency too much unregulated power. But I don't entirely disagree with your premise either. Humans cannot be trusted without some form of regulation. What a humane democracy would do is to insure that the power truly derives from we the people. This will take for that will of to confront out troubling past, an American reckoning, and create a true restructuring to safeguard against the influence of the rich and powerful to influence any part ot the government.
Sure, power is great when the right people control it. But what about when dangerous or misguided people control it? And who decides who the right people are to control the power? And what about the fact that power corrupts? This is why we don't have or want kings or dictators or authoritarians. Once you give them all the power there is no way to control what they do with it.
What you have not addressed is how to vest power in governance organizations in such a way that they do the peoples' will in a way that will improve society, not destroy it. After all, crowds can also do stupid, impulsive things and are susceptible to being whipped up by propaganda or false flag attacks. So even 'the people' need checks and balances to avoid rash responses or being deluded by hucksters.
What governance structure will prevent capture by industry or bad actors? What governance structure will discern the will of the people, decide if it is good for society, and, if so, carry it out? What governance structure will monitor programs to see if they are working and correct them if they are not working? What governance structure will decide what is good for society? These are the problems we need to solve.
The Peoples' Republic of China appears to be doing a much better job than we are with transitioning to a green economy and investing in future-proofing research and industrial development while the US doubles down on whatever industries are making the most money for billionaires, regardless of existential threats to society and humanity.
But folks in China don't have free speech or freedom of religion or any say in their governance, and so on. And just because a country vests all the power in a dictator or a party does not mean the leaders will make good decisions. Putin is a great example, squandering his country's lives and wealth on a pointless resource/ego war to take Ukraine.
I'm really sick of hearing about how the opposition party can get back into power because then everything will be fixed because almost nothing is getting fixed, regardless of who is in power, because everything is controlled by the wealthy who seem to be largely driven by insatiable greed and who have wrested control of both political parties and all the regulatory agencies.
Older societies (hunter gatherer times and possibly a few of the earliest civilizations) seemed to put a lot more thought and effort into creating cultural and governance customs that made for a stable, healthy society. This is what we need to do, without delay. We need a well-governed, sustainable, egalitarian society where greed is compassionately treated as a medical problem, like any other addiction, rather than worshiped. We need to figure out how to live on this planet in such a way that everyone's basic needs are met and the ecosystem that supports our survival can thrive. Anything else is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.
I would love to hear more on this topic from people who have taken the trouble to study societies that had this and from those with both imagination and a solid connection to reality. This last one would seem to exclude most economists and politicians.
Your analysis of government keeps missing the foundation from which all government grows. This is like analyzing a person with horrible values and never looking into his parents.
Everything and everyone has a foundation and our government’s foundation is its schools. That’s where we manufacture citizens including the people who turn out selfish as you describe.
Having gone into education because I know this to be true, and having discovered how corrupt our schools are in 1995, I made exposing this my mission. I knew then we’d lose our democracy since democracy either starts in schools or it doesn’t start.
Teacher whistleblowers have been trying to be heard at WhiteChalkCrime.com and EndTeacherAbuse.org since 2002. They’re behind the Epstein victims waiting to be heard. And we’re surprised we ended up trumped?
Our country is a mess because too many of our schools are run by fascists-like administrators and we haven’t had a wise education leader since Horace Mann died in 1859. Until people start looking into our schools, we’ll continue to be a country raised by wolves. And how we’re raised matters.
Too little power or too much power doesn’t explain our problem. Our foundation, our soul, our only spiritual institution—our schools—have been infiltrated by the worst people and we’ve let that happen.
That’s why this country is a mess and until someone takes the lead and does something about it, we’ll keep kicking our soul down the road.
Really strong argument here on Fed independence. The comparison between how the Fed's monetary tools just crush workers while asset holders get richer really drives home the critique. When I was working in finance during the 2010s, rate hikes always translated to layoffs first before touching anything else. The piece about Wall Street middlemen profiting off every government borrowing transacton is wild when u lay it out like this.
excellent analysis and i like the tool analogy, big scary hammer, lock it away! please can we quit making trump THE issue because as terrible as he is, he's NOT the problem, he was never THE problem and if we dont widen our lens, our vehemence will be used against us, again. cut the head off the snake for sure love that idea but there is another head just below it ready to sprout and it might be more intelligent than the last. garden variety democrats have nothing to gain by dismantling the system so they just take advantage of the rhetoric of change, what elites have done for maybe forever. espoused values aren't the same as enacted ones and first order change isnt going to fix what broken, its going to take that hammer, that scary scary hammer to do the job. today please.
Another social fiction article (not sort of) – "a noble king among robber barons" story. It never has and never will happen in real life. China might be some distant model of it, but how many Americans (even poor ones) would prefer to live there? During the period of the New Deal the "noble" king (FDR) was saving the robber barons (the same as Obama did), who had devastated the country and brought it to the brink of a popular uprising. Eugene Debs in Statement to the Court was saying about "upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex". This was the power (the militant pressure of millions) that forced concessions from the capitalist class, not some liberal king. Obviously, except of illegal immigrants, this force cannot be currently relied upon. A more benign option that still could engender meaningful social changes on behalf of the majority would be popular democratic control from below. In other words, real democracy, not our faux electoral version of it. Of course, it's impossible under our existing economic and political system, but, at least, some meaningful version of it could be gradually worked towards by an organized political force of the united Left, which we don't currently have in this country. And the author's enthusiasm, political talent, and excellent organizational skills could greatly contribute to the formation of such a force.
Lies, grift, avarice, parasitism. All carried out with the glee of perverse sadism. This human petulance for endless, addictive repetition of sadistic violence is so monotonous and ubiquitous that the S and M is unconscious. Yes, when you whip a beast enough it soon believes it deserves it, and expects, even begs for more.
The human psyche has been sick for many centuries. Yes, there are exceptions, and we have heard much from them across millennia. We do practice the contras, but we are almost always overwhelmed and under-staffed. Old adage of 'holding a bake sale to build a bomber' comes to mind. Our 'representative public Servants' just sent us a bill for 900.1 Billion bucks to ensure that violence goes forth unimpeded by sanity.
We are addled by carnage. We dish it out by the minute across our land and the homelands of so many others. Bombs, bullets, bank notes. Toxins, pollutants, sewage, sanitation that promises and cannot deliver. Why? Overwhelm. Consumption is demanded of the plebiscites.
We did not need this 'new' king. We already have thousands. They all are parasites and hoarders and ogres, slothful and so overindulgent that it staggers even the beleaguered and numbed down mind. The TFG brand just has so little couth that it belches and burbs and defecates openly and habitually. NO need to hide any longer.
Face facts. We live in gangster land. We are a mafia country. Our checks and balances are unchecked and imbalanced. There is no magic bullet, no overwhelming meme, no pot at the end of the rainbow. We are rudderless, a massive gaggle of prurient, self-indulgent rapists, running amok over the portion of our citizenry who still have some dignity and sense of empathy.
The pathos is obsequious. We are virtually forced to be sick. Parasites thrive on sickness, and they ingratiate it within their victims. Why die quickly when you can suffer endlessly? Someone has to pay for this pathology in constant motion.
A king? No, we need a honey badger with unchecked fury but overwhelming intelligence. The existing infrastructure is so pathetic it takes a naval and aerial armada to murder 90-some fishermen and small boat operators. It takes a squad of ICE thugs to knock down and drag a pregnant woman through the snow and slush and put her into a dungeon.
This is the Brave New World. Lord of the Flies on steroids. Ralph and Rodger meet a Clockwork Orange.
This is kingship. Are you/we so certain this is what we need to survive headed into the oven of climate catastrophe? And no, it is not a hoax. Cowards lie to themselves and others, part of their own special addiction to the suicide death wish.
I disagree somewhat: 2024-25 shows that the American electorate can't be trusted to select such an all-powerful President. We need to strengthen Congress' hand to legislate the behavior of and hold accountable the "independent" agencies. (They need to do it themselves, as the courts aren't helping.)
Another thing that this brings to mind is how much we’ve all been convinced the government and politicians are corrupt and should be kept away from important things and all we can do now is “vote with our wallets”. Convincing so many people to give up on the only leverage they have over concentrated wealth and power was a hell of a trick.
FDR was the absolute master of using state-owned and state-controlled enterprise for locally distinctive purposes. His methods were presaged in several plains states. North Dakota still has its state-owned bank, a sovereign wealth fund or Gosbank that stores revenues and uses them to get good things done. Oklahoma and Texas have similar wealth funds for oil. Oklahoma also invented the FDIC to protect people against failed banks, and the feds copied it.
A wonderful little book (if you can find it) is David Lilienthal's "Democracy on the March". Lilienthal directed TVA and describes the New Deal's purposes and achievements in the book.
Great perspective.
Like many things with Trump, he’s a master at identifying the pain and has the right instincts on how to amass power but of course, uses it for all the wrong reasons.
It’s been eye opening for me to see how many things can get done quickly when our leaders aren’t afraid to exercise their power.
Let’s take this learning and do some good with it!
Lots to mull over here. Good stuff. A thought experiment which occurred to me is what would happen if these independent agencies weren't installed in the executive branch. What if Congress created them and installed them in the legislative branch, like the GAO?
The problem there is agencies are designed to carry out the law not make the law. The devil is in the details of whether a president is carrying out the law or whether he is making law. Everything I see Trump doing looks more like making law than carrying out the law. If independent agencies were installed under the legislative branch they would be carrying out the law instead of making the law.
So, how to solve for addressing the needs of a complicated, complex, technical and dynamic regulatory purpose? An independent agency with oversight by the courts which parse whether a particular regulation is making law or carrying out law? That's what we are supposed to be doing right now.
Corbin is right, these independent agencies have been captured and they were ripe for a guy like Trump to raid. I don't know what the answer is, but good kings only exist in Lord of the Rings. They don't really exist in historical fact. The answer the framers came up with is to put more trust in the people and to expect the people's will to be tested, tempered and deployed through the legislature. Congress has failed us for a very long time because representatives no longer fear the people.
So you like the "strong man" models of governance, Corbin? Think those models have worked out well in China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and other places? Want to live in those countries?
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The answer is not to move closer to absolute power models. Rather, it is to perfect the models (like ours) that have been designed to protect us from absolute power.
The mission of those executive agencies you decry should be to maximize the public good. "Cause" for firing should be significant obstacles to that mission.
The revolving door between industry and government service should be banned. Period. No loopholes or exceptions.
Elections shoulod be publicly financed. No more rich folks dominating the process. No more "Corporations are people, too!"
I think you've been right on many counts over the past months, Corbin. But in my opinion, you're way off the mark on this one!
I am skeptical, but you made this case well.
It’s becoming clear that Trump will pass and we will be left with a dysfunctional government and need someone who exercises power for the people to put it together correctly. Congress is unlikely to do the job. Which, even though it has been said too many times, this next presidential election may actually be the most important in our lifetimes. I still disagree with so much power in the hands of the executive and wish congress was a functioning body, but maybe we’re to the point the right leader is the only way to get there.
Thank you for your piece. Although thought provoking and a bit abundance pilled, there is danger in giving anu one person, office or agency too much unregulated power. But I don't entirely disagree with your premise either. Humans cannot be trusted without some form of regulation. What a humane democracy would do is to insure that the power truly derives from we the people. This will take for that will of to confront out troubling past, an American reckoning, and create a true restructuring to safeguard against the influence of the rich and powerful to influence any part ot the government.
Sure, power is great when the right people control it. But what about when dangerous or misguided people control it? And who decides who the right people are to control the power? And what about the fact that power corrupts? This is why we don't have or want kings or dictators or authoritarians. Once you give them all the power there is no way to control what they do with it.
What you have not addressed is how to vest power in governance organizations in such a way that they do the peoples' will in a way that will improve society, not destroy it. After all, crowds can also do stupid, impulsive things and are susceptible to being whipped up by propaganda or false flag attacks. So even 'the people' need checks and balances to avoid rash responses or being deluded by hucksters.
What governance structure will prevent capture by industry or bad actors? What governance structure will discern the will of the people, decide if it is good for society, and, if so, carry it out? What governance structure will monitor programs to see if they are working and correct them if they are not working? What governance structure will decide what is good for society? These are the problems we need to solve.
The Peoples' Republic of China appears to be doing a much better job than we are with transitioning to a green economy and investing in future-proofing research and industrial development while the US doubles down on whatever industries are making the most money for billionaires, regardless of existential threats to society and humanity.
But folks in China don't have free speech or freedom of religion or any say in their governance, and so on. And just because a country vests all the power in a dictator or a party does not mean the leaders will make good decisions. Putin is a great example, squandering his country's lives and wealth on a pointless resource/ego war to take Ukraine.
I'm really sick of hearing about how the opposition party can get back into power because then everything will be fixed because almost nothing is getting fixed, regardless of who is in power, because everything is controlled by the wealthy who seem to be largely driven by insatiable greed and who have wrested control of both political parties and all the regulatory agencies.
Older societies (hunter gatherer times and possibly a few of the earliest civilizations) seemed to put a lot more thought and effort into creating cultural and governance customs that made for a stable, healthy society. This is what we need to do, without delay. We need a well-governed, sustainable, egalitarian society where greed is compassionately treated as a medical problem, like any other addiction, rather than worshiped. We need to figure out how to live on this planet in such a way that everyone's basic needs are met and the ecosystem that supports our survival can thrive. Anything else is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.
I would love to hear more on this topic from people who have taken the trouble to study societies that had this and from those with both imagination and a solid connection to reality. This last one would seem to exclude most economists and politicians.
Your analysis of government keeps missing the foundation from which all government grows. This is like analyzing a person with horrible values and never looking into his parents.
Everything and everyone has a foundation and our government’s foundation is its schools. That’s where we manufacture citizens including the people who turn out selfish as you describe.
Having gone into education because I know this to be true, and having discovered how corrupt our schools are in 1995, I made exposing this my mission. I knew then we’d lose our democracy since democracy either starts in schools or it doesn’t start.
Teacher whistleblowers have been trying to be heard at WhiteChalkCrime.com and EndTeacherAbuse.org since 2002. They’re behind the Epstein victims waiting to be heard. And we’re surprised we ended up trumped?
Our country is a mess because too many of our schools are run by fascists-like administrators and we haven’t had a wise education leader since Horace Mann died in 1859. Until people start looking into our schools, we’ll continue to be a country raised by wolves. And how we’re raised matters.
Too little power or too much power doesn’t explain our problem. Our foundation, our soul, our only spiritual institution—our schools—have been infiltrated by the worst people and we’ve let that happen.
That’s why this country is a mess and until someone takes the lead and does something about it, we’ll keep kicking our soul down the road.
Really strong argument here on Fed independence. The comparison between how the Fed's monetary tools just crush workers while asset holders get richer really drives home the critique. When I was working in finance during the 2010s, rate hikes always translated to layoffs first before touching anything else. The piece about Wall Street middlemen profiting off every government borrowing transacton is wild when u lay it out like this.
That's interesting. But you're right, we're all learning the lesson that central consolidation is bad.
excellent analysis and i like the tool analogy, big scary hammer, lock it away! please can we quit making trump THE issue because as terrible as he is, he's NOT the problem, he was never THE problem and if we dont widen our lens, our vehemence will be used against us, again. cut the head off the snake for sure love that idea but there is another head just below it ready to sprout and it might be more intelligent than the last. garden variety democrats have nothing to gain by dismantling the system so they just take advantage of the rhetoric of change, what elites have done for maybe forever. espoused values aren't the same as enacted ones and first order change isnt going to fix what broken, its going to take that hammer, that scary scary hammer to do the job. today please.
Another social fiction article (not sort of) – "a noble king among robber barons" story. It never has and never will happen in real life. China might be some distant model of it, but how many Americans (even poor ones) would prefer to live there? During the period of the New Deal the "noble" king (FDR) was saving the robber barons (the same as Obama did), who had devastated the country and brought it to the brink of a popular uprising. Eugene Debs in Statement to the Court was saying about "upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex". This was the power (the militant pressure of millions) that forced concessions from the capitalist class, not some liberal king. Obviously, except of illegal immigrants, this force cannot be currently relied upon. A more benign option that still could engender meaningful social changes on behalf of the majority would be popular democratic control from below. In other words, real democracy, not our faux electoral version of it. Of course, it's impossible under our existing economic and political system, but, at least, some meaningful version of it could be gradually worked towards by an organized political force of the united Left, which we don't currently have in this country. And the author's enthusiasm, political talent, and excellent organizational skills could greatly contribute to the formation of such a force.
Lies, grift, avarice, parasitism. All carried out with the glee of perverse sadism. This human petulance for endless, addictive repetition of sadistic violence is so monotonous and ubiquitous that the S and M is unconscious. Yes, when you whip a beast enough it soon believes it deserves it, and expects, even begs for more.
The human psyche has been sick for many centuries. Yes, there are exceptions, and we have heard much from them across millennia. We do practice the contras, but we are almost always overwhelmed and under-staffed. Old adage of 'holding a bake sale to build a bomber' comes to mind. Our 'representative public Servants' just sent us a bill for 900.1 Billion bucks to ensure that violence goes forth unimpeded by sanity.
We are addled by carnage. We dish it out by the minute across our land and the homelands of so many others. Bombs, bullets, bank notes. Toxins, pollutants, sewage, sanitation that promises and cannot deliver. Why? Overwhelm. Consumption is demanded of the plebiscites.
We did not need this 'new' king. We already have thousands. They all are parasites and hoarders and ogres, slothful and so overindulgent that it staggers even the beleaguered and numbed down mind. The TFG brand just has so little couth that it belches and burbs and defecates openly and habitually. NO need to hide any longer.
Face facts. We live in gangster land. We are a mafia country. Our checks and balances are unchecked and imbalanced. There is no magic bullet, no overwhelming meme, no pot at the end of the rainbow. We are rudderless, a massive gaggle of prurient, self-indulgent rapists, running amok over the portion of our citizenry who still have some dignity and sense of empathy.
The pathos is obsequious. We are virtually forced to be sick. Parasites thrive on sickness, and they ingratiate it within their victims. Why die quickly when you can suffer endlessly? Someone has to pay for this pathology in constant motion.
A king? No, we need a honey badger with unchecked fury but overwhelming intelligence. The existing infrastructure is so pathetic it takes a naval and aerial armada to murder 90-some fishermen and small boat operators. It takes a squad of ICE thugs to knock down and drag a pregnant woman through the snow and slush and put her into a dungeon.
This is the Brave New World. Lord of the Flies on steroids. Ralph and Rodger meet a Clockwork Orange.
This is kingship. Are you/we so certain this is what we need to survive headed into the oven of climate catastrophe? And no, it is not a hoax. Cowards lie to themselves and others, part of their own special addiction to the suicide death wish.
I disagree somewhat: 2024-25 shows that the American electorate can't be trusted to select such an all-powerful President. We need to strengthen Congress' hand to legislate the behavior of and hold accountable the "independent" agencies. (They need to do it themselves, as the courts aren't helping.)
Another thing that this brings to mind is how much we’ve all been convinced the government and politicians are corrupt and should be kept away from important things and all we can do now is “vote with our wallets”. Convincing so many people to give up on the only leverage they have over concentrated wealth and power was a hell of a trick.