To say that democracy is dead in this country ignores the fact that it has always been an unfair fight between capital and labor or an entitled majority and a suppressed minority. There was never a golden age for the conduct of politics in this country. Accomplishing anything major politically has always been a bare knuckle fist fight between two or more opponents. Sometimes the fight was figurative, sometimes it was literally a fight and blood was drawn. Corruption is not new either. In the past we had Tammany Hall in New York, Mayor Daly's political machine in Chicago. Recently, Wall Street's actions during the 2008 financial crisis and the Koch Brother's corrupt acts to stifle labor and environmental movements by setting up sham PACs (and I suspect, bankrolling the Teaparty Movement) are recent egregious examples of the rot in our democratic system. But as a famous peasant said in Monty Python's The Holy Grail, "Not dead yet!".
I still have my vote and you still have yours. Those in power don't always win. When they do lose, they start chipping away at the victory but that doesn't mean they will succeed. Conservatives -- and I mean the GOP as well as blue dog democrats -- were against the Social Security act since its inception during the Roosevelt administration. The Bush Jr administration announced that they were going to change the Social Security act. Bush II and his cronies very quickly lost all political capital gained by winning his second term. Social Security and Medicare were good deals for my parents and I expect it will survive going forward. Social security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Bills, and even the clean air act have survived assaults by the right. I think that they are not going away any time soon but people are going to have to fight to protect them. This is all to say that in spite of how bad things look today, we've made progress in the last 50 or 100 years. Heck, recreational use of marijuana is going to be legal in my state soon and I call that progress too.
Shifting gears to the discussion of economic theory or as economists like to call it, the dismal science, I admit that I only took one economics class during college. The name of the course was "Economic History of the United States". The class was a double bagger in that it satisfied the requirements for two economics courses and enabled me to spend more time studying Biochemistry. I was a scientist then and still am. I was a good student but I couldn't accept the dogma that passed for knowledge in the field of economics and still can't. Neoclassical economic theory hinges upon the idea that humans always act in their own self interest. Not true -- people sacrifice themselves for the greater good when necessary. Also, people don't always want more than they need. The Swedes have a term -- Lagom -- that means enough to go around or enough to share. Its a driving concept in their society. I got a good mark in the class but came away from it convinced that Economists and Economics ignore the fact that people are evolved apes. I think that economic theory treats people as if they are a predictable widget. Anybody want to correct me? I can always learn.
We are social animals that protect our own but also protect our place in society and will defend sometimes to the death our tribe or our society in general. Recognizing that "success" is variable depending on the individual, during the first 20 or 30 years of our lives we learn what it takes to "succeed" in our society and we aren't very flexible after that. Some of my fellow apes are super-territoral and accumulate way more -- in terms of money, mates, possessions, land, whatever -- than they ever need. Some, probably most just want to spend time with family and have enough to share -- Lagom.
For myself, I rejected neoliberal/neoclassical economics as too simplistic a long time ago. When discussing a political or social issue, people quoting Freidman or other scholars sound to me like they are babbling. This goes for people that quote the bible in similar situations. If heterodox economists take into account the science of human behavior, biology, physical and social anthropology, as well as the logic behind the current economic system, marxist theory and others, then they might be getting somewhere. That's a pretty tall order.
Alright, I rambled. Maybe I don't even believe everything that I just wrote. I need to think about it and hope for more than stupidhead responses although I expect there will be some of those too. Back to you, ttystykk