So, to start out with, I think there’s a systemic failure. I’m actually not sure where to start here, because ANY ONE of the first set of points may break the cycle, and a lot of it is interrelated.
This is a REALLY long post, so I’ll put it after the break.
Education
The educational system in this country was set up for the purpose of creating a mass of workers smart enough to do factory work, but dumb enough to not know how to work for themselves or see the inherent injustice in the corporate system (unless, of course, you’re one of the elites, or can somehow escape the educational system – and then, odds are good that you’re running the corporate system).
This pervades all levels of education – all the way from elementary school (which is excellent at making students lose their desire to learn) through high school (which teaches to the test), and even into college (because the more degrees issued, the more money the colleges get).
Worse, the college system is pushed as a guaranteed way to get a job, and also a requirement to get a job – regardless of degree – yet this just isn’t true. Incorrect expectations are being set, students are being burdened with absurdly expensive college loans that they may never repay, and they’re finding that their degrees (many of which, yes, are fucking pointless underwater basket weaving degrees) aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
(FWIW, I also wrote a couple posts on this subject.)
Ponzi Economics
The economic system in the US is a ponzi scheme, created by abuses of fractional reserve banking. When a bank can make money out of almost thin air by making a loan, with only having to have 10% of that money in the bank… all it takes is two banks loaning each other money to make infinite money. Worse, because there’s interest on this infinite money, and it’s not directly through the banks… you end up having to pay off loans with more loaned money, and go in a cycle of eating your own tail.
Now, a system like this can be sustainable. The trick is, it can only be sustained by infinite growth – which means buying more things, and buying them more often. So, now, you have rampant consumerism, unrealistic expectations on the part of the populace, massive environmental damage, resource shortages. “But wait”, you say, “didn’t you say that a system like this can be sustainable? That doesn’t sound sustainable at all!” What I didn’t mention was, infinite growth can only be sustained when you have infinite resources – and we don’t.
There’s a good documentary to watch on this, Money as Debt. I have it embedded below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sKwwAaCU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sKwwAaCU
Something that that documentary points out is, in a system that doesn’t have inflation, the bankers get to collect interest, and wealth migrates to them. Major religions even historically treated the collection of ANY interest as usury. I’m not sure how to make that workable, though.
The modern corporation
The first thing I need to say here is that I’m not anti-corporation. Corporations have the potential to do quite a lot of good for society. However, I do have an issue with the modern corporation, which exists solely to make money for its shareholders (and screw the people or any other companies), rather than the older definition that required corporations to serve the public interest.
Where do I begin here?
Right now, corporations and government are mutually masturbating each other. Corporations buy politicians, politicians pass laws that benefit the corporations, corporations get more money and power, and buy more politicians.
Intellectual property law has been bastardized, so that it no longer promotes creating new inventions and sharing them, but rather promotes massive rent-seeking – and is now being used for a proposed law that claims to “protect intellectual property”, but it actually nearly automates censorship without any due process.
Also, the corporation leaders have extreme short-term, selfish thought, and ship jobs to other countries at the drop of a hat.
Worse, the corporations also own the mainstream media and quite a bit of the alternative media, which gives them a powerful tool for brainwashing the country. The upshot is that the rampant consumerism required to prop up our ponzi scheme is shoved down our throats, and the politicians that appear on our ballots are the ones sponsored by the corporatocracy. Want to vote for a third party? You’re just throwing your vote away!
Plus, for various reasons, many, many corporations are now requiring college degrees to do jobs that don’t pay enough to justify it, and don’t actually require the skills to justify it. Yet, they turn around and export jobs overseas en masse.
The modern political parties
Of course, with a full set of bought politicians, you get an interesting conundrum – even with the efforts of the school system and the media, quite a lot of people will still get through the cracks with critical thinking skills, and even a desire to effect change.
How do you stop them from getting so uppity and risk collapsing your system? Take advantage of the flaws in the antiquated first-past-the-post voting system, and get the two parties to “violently disagree” on various hot-button issues. Even use the control of the media to polarize the populace on those issues. So, now, you have two politicians that are likely to win, and one of them is “worse” than the other. (Protip: they’re both equally bad.) Voting for a third party is treated as equivalent to voting for the “worse” of the two politicians (and, there are cases of multi-party systems with FPTP voting, in which the winning party didn’t have the majority, but there were two parties on the other side and the vote was split between them).
The US’s current top-down power structure
With the federal government having taken so much power since the Civil War, now it’s becoming a dictatorship, and now you have a police state that isn’t at all accountable to the people – complete with proposed laws that remove all due process and allow the military to detain US citizens indefinitely, without trial.
The US government is becoming accountable to nobody – not the states, not the citizens.
The American people
I’m gonna get so much flak for this one, but the people aren’t entirely innocent here.
It’s true that the financial industry shouldn’t have made the loans that they made, and bet against the American people. This is a heinous crime (if not in a legal sense (due to their lobbying of government), at least in the moral sense). And, the collective brainwashing of society into a consumerist state didn’t help, either. However, the American people actually are complicit in this one – the ones that entered into bad loans had just as much of a responsibility to not take them as the financial industry did to not make the loans.
The epidemic of useless underwater basket weaving degrees… those students would’ve been far better off not going to college at all. True, there are a lot of jobs that require college degrees… but many of those students aren’t working those jobs anyway – if they’re working at all, they’re working entry level jobs that may not even require a high school diploma.
So, what needs to actually be done?
This is gonna be a bit controversial, but…
In my opinion, there needs to be calculation of what point at which someone is so rich that they have undue influence over the people. Above that point, taxes need to siphon that money away. Otherwise, you risk getting into crony capitalism (and any other ways of keeping that person from actually having undue influence become restrictions of freedom of speech). I think success should be rewarded, but I also think that it shouldn’t be rewarded to the point where people are effectively handed dictatorships.
Single-payer healthcare may benefit small businesses, reducing the concentration of wealth – and, it’ll reduce the apparent cost of US workers. Figures get fudged both ways, though, and there’s a crapton of propaganda out there about it.
Education needs to be completely revamped, such that schools aren’t prisons, but rather places of learning, and high school students are well-prepared to face the world. In addition, education needs to be free for all, with an emphasis on teaching students to self-learn, rather than hammering rote learning. Standardized testing needs to be completely revamped, rather than removed – students need to demonstrate the ability to learn, and do things in the modern world, rather than to complete a test from memory.
A politician, who has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, voting for an unconstitutional law, should be treated as if he or she committed an act of treason.
Corporations should be required to verify that their existence is for the public good. Oh, and if a business is too big to fail, it’s too big. Anti-competitive behavior should be strictly prohibited.
For foreign-produced goods, taxation should be extremely high if those goods are produced with labor that would be illegal to use in the US. (Why not ban them? Keep reading.) Those taxes should go into a fund used to provide rebates to countries that buy US goods. This way, for the US market, Chinese goods are more expensive, promoting domestic goods, and for foreign markets, US goods are cheaper, promoting exports of our goods.
Intellectual property law should be completely re-evaluated based on its goals of promoting the creation of works for the public good. Copyright terms should be shortened significantly – 10 years maximum. Patents should actually be able to make the invention that’s described, and should also be shortened to 5-10 years. For software patents, a patent should be longer than copyright, but the patent description is the source code – basically, if you copyright your software, you get limited protection for the binary but don’t have to release the source to the public domain, whereas if you patent it, you get protection for the source and binary, but you have to release the source to the public domain.
To remove power from the federal government, more power should revert to the states. (This does NOT mean increasing slavery, damnit.) The 17th Amendment should be repealed – the idea behind the Senate was that it would be elected by the member state governments, and would represent the states (instead of the people) in the US government, while providing a moderating force (so stupid kneejerk reactions by the people wouldn’t get through, and the people couldn’t get swayed by mass media too far, but a legitimate movement could still get through).
In addition, the House of Representatives should add seats that aren’t voted by region, but are rather awarded to parties. (The regional system should stay, though, in my opinion.) This way, smaller parties can get representation.
While we’re at it, voting systems should reflect voter preferences for multiple candidates – either approval voting or instant runoff voting would be great.
How can I make any positive change myself, though?
The big caveat with answering this question is, you have to actually get through the corporatocracy to fix it, and that’s nearly impossible. OWS is an attempt to raise awareness, but with the message muddled (both by the nature of the movement and by the corporatocracy) and often discredited, its odds for success are grim.
The first thing to do is the obvious action – both the Republicans and Democrats are bought and paid for. In any election, DO NOT VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. And it’s not throwing your vote away – voting for a Republican or Democrat is throwing your vote away.
Being politically active, and getting the message out there, in any way is a good thing.
Supporting local businesses is better than supporting national or multinational businesses, when possible, even if it costs a little (or sometimes, a lot) more. Similarly, supporting businesses that have high labor standards is a good thing. (Even if businesses are outside of the US, if they have healthy labor standards, it helps – and fair competition against the US companies helps our industry, too. Unfair competition, like China’s, does not.)
If you have a choice, don’t blow your money on a college degree – it’s surprising how much you can teach yourself, really – especially if your degree isn’t one that’s directly employable.
Work towards being successful for yourself, rather than being successful for someone else. (That doesn’t mean quit your job right now, but work towards it.)
Beyond that, well, it’s hard to say.