The Revolution: Part 2

[Phantomgrift]

Sorry, would you rather I comment on your knife-wielding photo from your facebook page?

[Despanan]

Hey, does anyone know when the new season of Phantomgrift comes out? All I'm getting are reruns...

[Phantomgrift]

According to the Nielsen Ratings, you're the only one watching.

Besides, when was the last time you provided anything new?
Here, lets paraphrase you from the last month:

"Capitalism is bad! This video/article proves it!"
"OWS is legit! This video/article proves it!"
"The people will overcome!"
"See, HDS agrees with me!"

So you dance, I dance, we dance together softly in the glow of the moon, like two tired cynical lovers/rivals with no one left but each other.
Here's to you, you abhorrent schmuck. I love you.

[Despanan]

God, and this one's a clip show.

Fuck it, I'll just pirate another episode of Game of Thrones. :/

[Phantomgrift]

See, we're perfect for each other!

[dexeron]

The two of you. Sheesh.


Anyway, Despernoodle, I was listening to an interview with Gar Alperovitz on some NPR show and he was talking about his book "What Then Must We Do?" and he was talking all about co-ops, and community owned stuff, and employee owned businesses, and I thought of you.

They got to talking about banks and he brought up some movements to impliment more locally owned/based banks (like the state-run deal in North Dakota) and his thought is that we're not going to see a "revolution" in this anytime soon (he is not using that word in a "violent overthrow" kind of way) but in a few decades we may see a democratization of that industry after the next crisis or two (since the "fix" after the last crisis did anything BUT fix the underlying problems.)

He thinks that it's POSSIBLE that such a local thing might get around the jury-rigged mess that is the Affordable Care Act, as seen in some states that are setting up Single Payer as a local system. Again, these are changes that are more long-term in nature, and won't bear fruit anytime soon. But he also talked about a lot of local initiatives that are dealing with current problems, including local employee owned corporations getting set up in areas with 40% unemployment - and not leaving once they've had their fill, because the owners still live there - and that a lot of these new co-ops and such are being founded with profits from previous similar ventures who are pooling together to try to expand on the pretty amazing successes they've had previously.

Anyway, link if you want: http://whatthenmustwedo.org/

Also: http://community-wealth.org/

[Phantomgrift]

Alas, Desperent won't be happy with a simple change of business plans and regulations. He'll only be happy when the people rise up and cart fat-cats off to the guillotine wholesale.

[dexeron]

OK

[Despanan]

[Despanan]

Well shit. CB ate the rest of my response.

Anyway, Dex, what seems to be being described here is pretty much economic anarchism, without expropriation - which makes sense. As bad as things are in the US, you've really got to push people to get ordinary folks to take that kind of risk.

What will be interesting is to see if the business model that Gar is advocating will be allowed to grow and thrive in the US - OR will it be attacked and suppressed as soon as it starts to change things in a real way. The problems that Gar brings up about the distribution of wealth in this country can only be solved by the top 400 or so assholes losing a huge amount of their fortunes, and whether this is done fairly or unfairly, I doubt they'll take that lying down.

So we've got this new worker-owned business meme growing in the country. Will it thrive? Will it be crushed? Will it be subverted? I can't say. But what I will say is the line between this:

http://vimeo.com/60275490

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcostesK0Ik

Is not very wide, and it would really only take some State repression to move communities who are already through with asking for permission into a more militant direction.

But yeah, in both cases, we're seeing a resurgence of Anarchistic thought globally, and that's fucking cool.