Wrong end
After writing the 'recipe' for populist flambee, I wanted to make a picture of Danbo cooking up a platter of populist symbols while Polistra lights them up.

There's no universal populist symbol. Hungary's Jobbik party has a simple circular icon that implies Christians and Muslims working together. Just right for a cake, just right for Polistra's kitchen. So I went ahead and used it...



But Jobbik is obscure outside of Hungary, so I tried looking at Jennings Bryan campaign posters. Bryan sometimes used the chicken and the plow. Those aren't suitable. Baked chicken is just food, and a plow-shaped cookie doesn't work.

Along the way, I bumped into this article on Bryan that makes one important point and misses another. The 1880-1920 prairie populists were focused tightly on monetary systems, favoring silver over gold. This author says.....

The marginal Midwestern farmer was ultimately subsidized by decreasing the value of money and by other programs. Was this a victory for the little guy? That’s hard to say. Direct chains of cause and effect are hard to prove in economics. Still, you may recall that shortly after the Scopes trial, shortly after the death of Bryan, a lot of those banks went out of business and so did the marginal farms that depended on them. The back roads of the Midwest became crowded with destitute families who might have been better off if they had gone into other lines of work instead of being maintained in losing propositions.

Technically true, IF WE ASSUME that the only job of political systems is to respond to The Market. This is the standard assumption of modern Repooflicans and especially Libertarians. The Market is the only immutable force of nature.

Bryan's silver focus didn't question The Market strongly enough. Modern Libertarians, and most of the populist-style leftists, are still focusing on monetary systems. Ron Paul wants gold, the tech-libs want Bitcoin.

WRONG QUESTION. Money systems don't matter much. We need to ask the BIG QUESTION:

Who is an economy for?

Or more precisely, who should benefit from the economic policies of THIS COUNTRY?

A proper Populist answers: The ordinary working people of THIS COUNTRY should benefit. Not The Market, not bankers, not defense contractors, not some other fucking country, not the super-rich. And the ordinary people should benefit in a way that maximizes their sense of usefulness and enables their ordinary activities. The Economy should make it easy for them to run normal families and raise normal children.

A true Populist starts with the right question AND the right basic assumption. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT. In this case we have to distinguish between two types of farmers. The 1932 problem WASN'T the obsolescence of small farms. We needed family-owned farms, and we still need family-owned farms. [With modern machinery a family can run more than 40 acres, but the optimum size is still in the hundreds, not thousands.]

FDR asked the proper question with the proper assumption. Real farmers are a special breed. The Wilson war had moved too many non-farmers into unsuitable land. The banking policies of the 20s, followed by the drought of the 30s, made life difficult for all farmers. Those traveling Okies included many people who shouldn't have been farming along with many real farmers.

FDR understood the difference. He didn't piddle around with ratios of gold to silver. He improved the KNOWLEDGE available to real farmers, and built the INFRASTRUCTURE that real farmers needed. Part of that infrastructure was dams and roads, the expected responsibility of government. Part was on the farms themselves. Contour plowing and windbreaks. Farmers needed guidance and some financial help, but mostly they needed LAWS that would make their work WORTH DOING. If you conserve your land while your neighbor is wasting his land, your effort is POINTLESS. Water erosion and wind erosion are 'avalanche' processes, requiring all farms in the area to work together.

Manufacturing is the same. The usual Repoofs and Dems agree that offshoring is Natural And Inevitable Because Free Trade Lifts All Boats. Absolute ratshit. Murderously false.

Like soil erosion, manufacturing erosion is an avalanche. When Pittsburgh stopped making steel, thousands of suppliers and buyers also failed. Real steelworkers, real carbuilders, real mechanics, are a special breed just like real farmers. You can't tell real mechanics to retrain for "digital gigs". Won't happen. Idiot economoid thinking, based on the murderous assumption that people are identical and substitutable.

Just as FDR rebuilt the infrastructure and the cooperative structure for farming, a new FDR needs to rebuild the infrastructure for industry. Delete offshoring and shoot anyone who tries to bring it back. Delete the EPA and all the genocidal "laws" that make it possible. Force investors at gunpoint to build FACTORIES instead of DERIVATIVES.

The first FDR was perfectly willing to use the government's THUGPOWER against the THUGS of finance. The new FDR will have to do the same. Due Process doesn't work. Judicial Restraint is total surrender. "Democracy", whatever the fuck that means, doesn't exist. When dealing with thugs, only massive lethal force works.

Labels: defensible spaces, Make or break, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 2:16 AM