Martin Woollacott on some of the problematic limitations of free-market liberalism.

Searching for my own blogspot, I found only one blog from www.daypop.com - it was a guy in the US of the libertarian persuasion - that is a born again free market conservative. It was an interesting read, well written. It's hard to keep in mind that other people's worldview or meaning construct is different to one's own and read their views without feeling attacked. I always would like to have a trusted relationship with someone of a right-wing persuasion, where differences could be expressed without defensiveness or agressiveness. I hate a group of left people getting together and putting the world to rights, as this just means agreeing and reinforcing one anothers' opinions. Unfortuately most of my trusted friends are of the same centre-left ground as myself. Pity.

Why doesn't this work in Opera 6.0? I get a tinsy, tiny window to write in. Grrr!

Reading about the Enron collapse and the culture in the company before the fall reminds me of a burnt out ex-Adobe American guy I met on holiday a few years ago. The 'Sunday is for catching up on emails' culture. The 'rank and yank' culture, where the bottom 10% performing (by whatever criteria) are fired each year. The naked greed. Can't anyone see that totally unrestricted capitalism means slavery. Of course it is more efficient to pay people nothing for working as many hours as possible. Nazi concentration camp factories were free market capitalism in action. People are a resource, and if they are incarcerated then they are expendible. Extract as much energy as possible from the being. Optimum conversion of food to work. Under free market capitalism, no-one has an identity except for being a spending resource. I read also about how in the states almost the only way of expressing oneself is through what one buys. Last weekend in the Galleries St Hubert I saw American businessmen on a day off, near-identically dressed in beige mackintoshes, stone-washed denim jeans and Nike sneakers.

And the story of Charles Bishop (inadequate and miss-the-point rebuttals here) that affected me so much, if for no other reason that the smiling boy in his photograph. What people seem to miss is that to be invisible is worse than being hated. Being bullied is better than being shunned. I remember at school I used to encourage bullying as I was so scared of being ignored, as my family moved from place to place and I from school to school. A class system where working people are looked down on creates pride in being working class. Being classless means having no identity - identity forged by knowing that one is different to someone else, reinforced sometimes by being despised. And so identity comes from Nike or Reebok, Ford or Dodge truck. Advertising creates the identity choice.

I recall the picture in the National Geographic of identical houses for as far as the Nevada horizon near Las Vegas. Wise people say that the Euro is doomed through lack of a mobile workforce - the US workforce that produces the ghost steel-towns and hugely overpopulated cities, both burdening people with intolerable social costs. These wise people doubtless the same sages that applauded Enron.

And yet life in Belgium, is far from perfect not to mention the driving and the shit on the streets.

Perhaps it's the weather this monday morning affecting my mood.