Friday, February 10, 2017

China is not responsible for U.S. decline

It seems that Truthout.org maybe censoring their comments section. This is a comment I am attempting to post here. We will see if it passes muster.
China is not to blame for the declining working class. Nor, for that matter, is capitalism at fault. The problem is the concentration of power. Concentration of economic power => concentration of political power => continuous feedback to increase power concentration => greater feeding on labor of workers => increasing the numbers of workers to feed the power hungry => globalization. The shift of manufacturing jobs overseas is the step wise consequence of the elite doing everything they can to increase their power. In capitalistic economies, the elite are the capitalists (in modern parlance, corporatists); in China, the elite are generally members of the Central Committee; in Russia, Putin confers 'elite' status. 
The solutions offered by progressives, more equitable wealth redistribution, primarily through government programs/policy, are short term fixes. They want to shift power to a (slightly) different set of elites while keeping structures of power (government & corporations) intact. This sets up a situation where the 'losing' elites will use the system to regain their lost advantages. That's the entire story of the republican effort to reverse the New Deal.  
The real solution is to fully disseminate power to every citizen and individual. And the key to that is to maximize transparency so information is freely available. The elites have power because they control information. If their hold on information is taken away, neither they nor anyone else will be able to concentrate power in the future.

Note: Truthout does seem to be censoring content/concepts and not  language/tone. It has been more than 1 hour and my comment has yet to be posted. Within that time, another comment has been written and posted. This is a sign of highly questionable journalistic integrity. The comment above is not rude nor combative in tone; it challenges the status quo and that is scary.

Note: It's been over 21 hours and at this point, this is censorship. Few readers will read articles days after posting, much less follow comments.

Note: After three days, Truthout posted my comment. They responded to my email query and said the delay had to do with a a updated word filter that picked up 'feedback' as possible expletive. I rarely use expletives. The English language is rich enough that there are plenty of ways to express expletive worthy emotions.

Update: As it turns out, Truthout.org has not changed its comment policy. They had a filter in place that disliked the word 'feedback' because it starts with 'f' and ends with 'ck'. My comment was posted days after it was submitted.

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