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A broader view on the economy

Submitted September 17, 2008 - 3:01 pm by Benjamin Melançon
It's never been regulation or no regulation; Republicans are just more likely to regulate in favor of the filthy rich. But the crisis of crony capitalism – which is in no way new for most of us on this planet – is bigger than regulation in any case. This, for me, is where we must be approaching the political discussion:
the money is itself crap. It’s based on a centralized lending scheme and has no intrinsic value. The Fed no longer even releases the metric telling us how much money is out there. All this means is that you can’t count on capitalism anymore. Your wealth is not how many paper assets you have. It’s not even how much land you have (or think you have). It’s what you can do. It’s your value to other people. The real economy need not suffer in the downfall of the speculative economy. If anything, the real economy has been repressed by the speculative economy. Real farmers have been crushed by Big Agra, real druggists have been crushed by Wal-Mart and real transportation alternatives have been crushed by Big Oil and Big Auto. The opportunity here, while the big boys are down, is to rebuild the genuine, local commercial infrastructure. To make shoes, clothes, food, education, healthcare and everything else we can in a bottom-up fashion.
Read all of Douglas Rushkoff's post.

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