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Liberal Politics and An Open Letter by Punkerslut to
Greetings, There's an interesting plan for the economy presented by Canada's Liberal Party, mostly because it's not very different than anything else that has gone before. There is one line that fully explains the solution to the recession, poverty, unemployment, and the other painful ills that have haunted humanity since ownership of land was established: "A pan-Canadian learning and innovation strategy, as Canadian jobs and prosperity depend on having the most educated, most skilled, most innovative workforce in the world." Learn your way to an economy where every can produce what they need with only an hour or two a day. Educate yourself to the point where there is no human being lacks what they need to fully develop themselves. Engage in scholarly debate, the publication of meaningless research papers, and the dreary lectures of typically ignorant professors until no one is hungry, no one is dependent, and no one is enslaved. As you can see, expressed in these terms plainly and directly, the plan for the economy doesn't seem to be economic at all. It's a plan of education that is applied to society and culture, but with the expected hope of some alteration in the economic situation -- without directly touching the economy. In may ways, it resembles the Conservative plan of economy. While you plan to create jobs by making a longer school day, they plan to create jobs by giving more money to the rich, so that they invest more. There is very little direct handling in economic matters, in either party. No one is willing to threaten or challenge the reign of private property. Conservatives don't dare approach private property with any chains, leashes, or regulatory control. And if they do, it's only to put their own people in charge of the regulatory agencies, as has been repeated with the agencies overseeing sanitary food to those overseeing a safe and efficient railroad system. Liberals are no better, though. They, similarly, back off from the property question immediately. Economic policies in such a way that increases the general prosperity of the people? No, but when you can't make enough to feed your children, you'll still have to send them to school! That may not be a reality for the majority of Canadians, but it is a reality for the people of underdeveloped nations that have been exploited in forced labor -- such as the products imported from Mexico, China, Chile, Burma, or Haiti. "Educate yourself out of hunger!" is as absurd as "Lower taxes on the rich until you have a job!" Those with a clear eye of history will have no problem seeing this: these slogans, and those parties who have rallied behind them in the past, have not been able to produce a society with full employment, the two-hour day, and a citizenry that has full control of their lives. Are you going to prohibit the import of products made from sweatshop labor and slavery? Are you going to enforce a ban against union-busting and discrimination in the workplace? Are you going to create a court system that enforces the law equally before the rich and the poor? To all of these, I am assured that you will either promise it to me, or refuse to answer. It is the same reply as the past few thousand years of these promises. Tell the people what they want to hear. Do you think that education is enough to make jobs? Why, then, is it that unemployment is at a record high, also at a point where technological innovation is unmatched compared to any other period in human history? This is not a "slight difficulty" to the theory of Liberalism. It is a massive contradiction, between the ideals you hold in your mind and the reality that pervades around you physically. How is it that factories produce more than any other time, but we must work longer days than ever, and there are so many who must beg for a living? How is it that there are farms that make enough to feed one hundred with the labor of one person, but starvation still persists in our own streets? How is it that the microchip and the transistor have made humanity far more productive, yet people are living on less and less compared with years past? These are not problems specific to the Liberal Party of Canada, but to those Liberal Parties of the entire world. Until you try to take an economic approach to economic problems, you won't find any economic solutions. To respond to the question of "jobs" by answering "schools" is no answer. It's a puppet response, something you expect from a machine that imitates a politician, but doesn't quite think. Should you ever decide to think about economic problems in economic terms, I suspect you'll need bigger lies or stupider voters. Sincerely,
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