Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are

[SoNotHer]

The movement toward deregulation is long in coming and started before Glass-Steagal. The contention is that the regulation limits market growth and stifles personal and corporate wealth. Canada and any other country like it that has greater regulations bad has also had greater social and economic stability and in fact growth. Charting the American-Canadian dollar exchange over the past ten years is an interesting if sad (for citizens of the US) revelation.

I appreciate designers and theorist like Rawls very much, AJ. I like visionaries, and I find the design elements and principles of permaculture, for example, to be a source of hope. I would like to believe there will be a myriad of acts that will tilt the United States toward something more like the simulacrum of democracy. Some of these will involve quiet conversations that reaffirm the best ideas of a democracy. Others will involve legislative and corporate changes. And still others will involve more dramatic and salient acts of civil disobedience.

Every generation has its time and its cause. And while I am sure my parents and older siblings did not understand the fervor with which I protested for Queer rights in the 80s and 90s and protested for a greater awareness of and compassion for AIDS that transcended homophobia and stereotyping, I hoped that they appreciate that my passion and involvement was for good reason. This generation may well be the first generation in some time to not only not have a financially secure future, but there is a good chance they will not live as long as their parents, reversing a standing trend. Do they have a right to be angry? Are they justified in having an emotional response to a parlous future of financial and environmental debt

Beyond the concerns of a generation and its cause, I wonder how quickly can a vision be morphed into reality? And as thousands gather in Oakland tonight and shut down the port, and thousands more gather across the country and world, and while a controlling faction becomes more entrenched in its position, is there time for visions? Is there yet time and momentum to put in play a peaceful shift?

King may be right that the "arc of the moral universe...bends toward justice.' But what of the intersecting arc of human compassion and patience? Do we have it in us to pursue and unflinchingly make manifest visions of harmony, equality and justice? Are we more paradise or purgatory? Can we design ourselves out of our nature? Is the gift of design and vision the nexus and the portal to a greater evolutionary event? Can we be or become our visions?

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Yes. We did. The repeal of Glass-Steagal is going to go down in American history as one of the most singularly stupid things EVER done by Congress. We actually had regulatory firewalls in place so pretty much *precisely* the kind of thing that happened couldn't happen. If you were a commercial bank, you couldn’t be an insurance company. If you were an insurance company, you couldn't be an investment bank. Then we tore down that firewall and banks snatched up insurance companies and then investment firms turned around and snatched those up and on and on. The meme that is out there is that these poor banks were just trying to make an honest buck and then along came the government and forced them to give loans to undeserving (read brown skinned) people. The fact that they bundled these arcane financial instruments called credit default swaps (which were a bet on people *failing* to pay their mortgages) is conveniently swept under the rug and into the memory hole because it doesn't fit the dominant meme that poor people are losers who deserve their hardships while rich people are winners who are being put upon by all of those loser poor people who, for instance, may have not had sufficient foresight to pick rich parents at birth.

Cheers
Aj