08 December 2013

David Simon: A Festival of Dangerous Ideas


"Another cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking, and the corporation.

These are free of political controls and social responsibility and have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.

The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital."

Carroll Quigley, Oscar Iden Lecture Series 3, 1976

In winning, the one percent strips capitalism of what made it work in practice during the 20th century.

And in ruthlessly pressing their advantage, and corrupting the system that has served them, they may bring about their eventual self-destruction. We have any number of examples of this in history and literature.