[p2p-research] Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us by Ralph Nader

[Kevin Carson]

On 9/23/09, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> That's the name of a new novel by Ralph Nader, not my position. :-)
His latest book,
> Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a 700-page populist fantasy in which a
> small group of billionaires and media moguls — led by Warren Buffett and
> including Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue —
> pool their massive resources to reform the U.S. With the help of a $15
> billion war chest and a p.r. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group
> successfully unionizes Walmart, ends corporate influence on Congress, makes
> Warren Beatty the governor of California and legalizes industrial hemp. TIME
> talked to Nader about the origins of his book, its celebrity characters and
> the U.S.'s real-life political battles. "

In reality, I suspect any such reform carried out by the super-rich
would be reminiscent of Tolstoy's "Parable."  In that story, a humane
farmer built larger and more comfortable stalls for his cattle, piped
in music, provided plenty of the best food, and built an enlarged yard
for them to exercise in.  When someone asked why he didn't just tear
the fence down and set them free, if he was so concerned for their
welfare, he said  "But then I couldn't milk them."

I don't doubt that a reform carried out by the "progressive"
super-rich would make the system more humane;  the last such reform
the super-rich carried out in the New Deal certainly did so.  But the
super-rich are probably also thinking, at least on some level, that
treating us more humanely gets them more milk in the long run.


-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html