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

[Kevin Carson]

On 9/26/09, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

>  Also Fussel suggests a way out in the book -- to live as "Class X" which is
> perhaps what my immediate family is, not "super rich", or even plain "rich",
> but living in such a way as it does not matter (much. :-) Really, how many
> sunrises can you enjoy each day? How many beautiful dandelions can you look
> at at once? How many organic eggs you raise yourself can you really eat at
> one sitting? How big does your office really have to be to fit a treadmill
> and a computer with a few LCD screens? And so on. As long as you don't want
> to boss millions of people around, there is not much difference between
> "Class X" and being "Super Rich". And you might expect even bossing gets
> wearing and boring after a while.

I also enjoyed Fussell's book.  His comparison between the super-rich
and the proles was a good one:  both were largely free of the Middles'
obsession with status and respectability, and much more likely to do
what they felt like doing and tell anyone who didn't like it to "get
out of my goddamned house."

But I found Fussell's lionization of Class X a bit surprising, since
he seems to be such a typical managerial liberal in so many regards.
In B.A.D., he displays a real animus for the DIY movement, and
dismisses anything not done by "professionals" as shoddy.  Aside from
the Class X anomaly, he reminds me of one of the liberals who're
always writing irate columns at the NYT about how awful those
irresponsible bloggers are.

-- 
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