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Is Egomania Really How to Run a Country?

Howell Hurst Economy & Finance, People, People Politics

FROM MY CORNER

A friend emailed me last week that, instead of writing critical commentaries about the current political situation, I should write a solution. That’s a good idea. As a matter of fact, I have been designing for over a year the outline of a Video book. It’s an actual Video Plan of how America can turn itself around – financially and politically.

The Plan is designed to show how all Americans can share in the wealth of our country – without destroying our much beloved Capitalism. I know that Americans, both conservative and liberal, prize the Capitalist concept that anyone in America may start their own business.

I’m all for that. I have in my life started several businesses. Some I formed with private corporations. Some, just as one-man consultancies. I’m no die-hard Socialist, although I see the obvious opportunity of what can happen if we create a Socialized Capitalism that specifically includes everyone.

We have Socialized Capitalism already. The problem is that it only operates effectively for immense corporations: all those bankrolling both Democratic and Republican political candidates, so that no matter who wins, their corporate agendas always win – at the expense of the rest of us.

I mean such corporations as Goldman Sachs and their AIG subsidiary, which created so many of the subprime mortgages that caused the recently infamous worldwide Great Recession. Then there was Enron, of course, and Wells-Fargo still dubiously functioning today, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

My Plan shows how real Capitalism, maintaining a large annual U.S. Capital Investment Fund for many small business startups, can return real competition to our current oligarchical monopoly Capitalism. And how it can project the plan internationally with a profound digital tool just waiting to be put to such use.

Another fellow has been thinking along similar lines. Have you ever heard of Charles Hugh Smith? Neither had I. But another friend also recently sent me a piece of writing about him called, “We Need A Social Economy, Not A Hyper-Financialized Economy.”

His basic idea is that we place official dollar value on projects that, by design, promote and safeguard human beings instead of just making profits.

That makes sense, doesn’t it? Keeping the human race alive for a long time instead of making a tiny handful of people filthy wealthy in the short run, simply because they already control all available capital, sounds like it just might do the trick.

The title of my Video Book, now in its initial writing stage, is: “VISION, A Political Guidebook for America’s Youth.” [Copyright © 2017 by Howell Hurst].

I figure only America’s youth can save America. Most everyone else has given up, it seems. America’s youth are definitely my market. If a few older folks, basking in their accumulated wealth read it, that’s OK, of course. But our youth are the ones I know can pull off a real turnaround of America.

America’s Youth are the only ones who have not been brainwashed into accepting the state of things as just being the way things are. They are the only ones with the potential to embrace a new Vision of how things can actually be. And can turn Vision into Reality.

I’ve designed my book as an Internet Video. I’ll present it personally, chapter-by-chapter, in high definition Videos uploaded to YouTube. Each Video chapter will be emailed with a Link to all following my writing. There’ll be a print version too.

So, if you now check in on my writing now and then, I have a suggestion. Make sure your computer, smart phone, or whatever has the technical capability to view YouTube Videos. I can’t advise you on that. I have a tech guy who helps me. You’ll have to find your own local tech guy.

The point is that, in about a month, maybe slightly longer, I should be set up in a new small studio on the Monterey Peninsula. I’ll produce my Videos from there. If you want to view them, you’ll need to be up to speed technically on how to do so.

By the way: what’s the title of this writing (“Is Egomania How to Run a Country?”) have to do with all this? Simple. My incentive for writing my Video book is that any time we elect leadership like those theoretically now running our country, we are in big trouble and need a “paradigmatic” plan.

“Paradigmatic” in my case means that my plan must serve as a valid example, a valid concept, a valid design, a valid prototype of a reality that a people really believing in democracy as their political system can actually create.

Our present leadership possesses the intellectual capacity of retarded gnats. It misguides our country from the deepest, most insecure recesses of its egomaniacal personality. Only 35% of our population supports it philosophically. 60% oppose it. 5% don’t have a clue. Something must happen to alter our course for the better.

That something obviously must originate from the bottom, not the top. And in line with that, many people in America are indeed working on the problem and searching for solutions from widely diverse perspectives.

Since I am operating from as near the bottom as most in social and financialAmerica, perhaps my plan to our American Youth stands a chance of contributing to the thinking of the nation, and to a positive change for its future.

My Video Plan is conceived by me to be serious food for thought. Who knows? It may eventually catch someone’s attention actually able to do something with it.

Stay tuned.

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2 thoughts on “Is Egomania Really How to Run a Country?

  1. I applaud your plan to promote positive change ideas for America. I offer here some specific critiques of your plan, so that you can tweak it to be more effective, as it unfolds. Please consider my comments as improvement suggestions.

    First, as you know, the marketing of any product, service or idea must be focused and clear, not generalized and vague or misleading. Your title has several drawbacks. The word “Vision” is excellent, because that is what you are providing. You then use the word “Political”, but your topic is economics. Political means taking sides for an agenda or constituency, and you might be doing that, but your vision is not about that; your vision is about economics, not politics. You are not going to talk about party politics and voting strategies, etc.; you are talking about reforming the corporate domination of our society. That’s economics. You then use the word “Guidebook”, but it is not a book, it is a series of videos. Fewer and fewer people, these days, read books, but more and more people watch videos. Don’t call this a book. You then limit your audience with the target population “America’s Youth.” First of all, big corporate capitalism is multinational, and America is totally enmeshed in the global economy. Any reform of big corporate capitalism will affect the entire planet. Thus your ideas apply globally. Besides, YouTube viewers are world wide. Finally, you pin your hopes on “Youth,” but what age group do you mean by this? The fact is that in order for any person, group or organized movement to affect change, there must be extensive resources, powerful connections and sophisticated expertise and coordination. What makes you think “Youth” have any of these attributes? They don’t. It’s people over 40, and only a small selection of them, who have the necessary resources, connections, experience and coordination to accomplish anything fundamental, like changing the world’s economic systems. Personally, I think you should change your target audience to “New Leaders” or something like that.

    Finally, I want to present two issues that I recently became educated about through masters degree classroom seminars at Sonoma State University, where I was invited to sit in, as an observer. What they teach is that big corporations behave unethically because their mission is totally tied to their bottom line – making a profit. If they fail to make a profit, they go out of business. There is a global movement to expand corporation bylaws to define their missions in terms of a “triple bottom line”, which means 1) people, 2) planet, and 3) profit. This way, a corporation could only advance a policy or initiative if it would result in benefits for people, for the planet and for their profit. That would stop oppressive working conditions and stop pollution. However, few corporations have changed their bylaws to include these values. My point here is that the leadership of multinational corporations is entrenched in their hard core ethics of their own wealth and power, and refuse to listen to reason.

    The second thing I learned from these business classes at SSU was that the standard for an entrepreneur to get funding and build a successful new business is an entry level investment of 50 million dollars. Now you might say, “Oh, give me a break…” here, thinking about typical “Mom & Pop” grocery stores, or people who literally start a business in their garage or on their computers. But those kinds of “micro” businesses almost never become successful on the international market to get any significant market share that would have any impact on a global, national, or even regional economy. The problem with the 50 million dollar entry fee, is that it has to be paid back, and even successful businesses usually can’t make the payments, and have to sell out. That is what happened with Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, and so many more, I can’t even begin to list them all. In the end, big corporate conglomerates swallow up every successful entrepreneur. Indeed, they swallow up every competing multinational corporation that they can, and then they literally take over governments.

    Well, that was discouraging. Sorry ’bout that. Never mind. Let’s see your Vision.

    1. Permit me, please, to accept your comments, some which may ring true, but ask you to wait until you finally see what I am writing and video taping. It is a more broadly presented concept than a specific technical plan, it is more a philosophical proposal, a fundamental style of perceiving the world, one that directly counters the present capitalistic model, without demanding its replacement. I believe you’ll approve of it and see how it requires all of us to make a basic change in our we view the world and our lives, without such rigorous demands as believing or not believing in god or gods. Hal

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