Book Review: Broken Capitalism - This is How We Fix It

This book inspired many of my own thoughts and ideas, so the following review is basically a mixture of my own thoughts and some observations that I gleaned from this book. I think each person will be inspired in different ways by this book because it covers so many interesting and important topics. Of course, no single review can do justice to an entire book, but here are some of the thoughts I felt after reading it. Please note: Mr. Eanfar did not necessarily say all these things in the book, so you must read the book to understand why it was so thought-inspiring for me.

This book is divided into two sections: pointing out the flaws of capitalism in our present economy, and how to fix them.  Our economy, and democracy go hand in hand, and are on the road to perdition if we do not change our ways.

The basic definition of Broken Capitalism  is unnecessarily preventing billion of achieving a higher quality, and in this society, it shows, big time.  Note that the richest one percent of Earth’s population has more wealth than 99% of the population combined, and this one percent still wants more.  Greed is the number one problem in our Global Economy.  (This is a form of Globalism, and it’s destroying our society.  80% of the Earth’s population live in poverty because of this fact.)

Because of the Great Depression, the Glass-Stengal Act of the 1930s was passed to protect banking systems from destructive banking practices.  This act was repealed in 1999, with banks become “Wal-Marts,” leading up to the Crash of 2008.  This really started in the early 1980s, where the Reagan Administration deregulated bank and other financial institutions, and from that point, our economic problems, and the world’s, increased exponentially.

The middle class is vanishing, with families going deep into debt to maintain their standards of living.  Corporations are buying politicians to make or prevent laws in order for them to keep making huge profits, and the expense of the public, and the environment.  Corporate welfare is contributing to the destruction of small and medium sized companies, simply by destroying competition by prejudicial protection, no matter how bad they perform.  This is also an expense to the taxpayer. 

A trade deficit is increasing, again, threatening the economy.  Jobs are being exported for cheap labor or tax aviodance, increasing unemployment here at home, and destroying entire communities.

Politicians, of course, do nothing, because this act keeps them in office.

All this will lead to a collapse in our economy, and then our political system.  What might follow is anyone’s guess, but it will be horrible.  

In their true form, there is, in reality nothing wrong with capitalism or democracy.  It is human nature, greed, that is corrupting these systems.  It is human nature to be corrupt.  It is human nature to yield to the temptations of easy money and pleasures.  Corporations may be predatory, but that is what they do.

The question is, what can be done about it?  This book provides some good, common sense answers, where our economy can stabilize and people can be put back to work, living in a decent democratic government.

A lot of changes do need to be made, with new laws have to be passed both for the government and the corporations.  Government WILL pay a large part in fixing the economy - it has to be that way.  A stable economy needs a stable democracy and both need to be in check to prevent any entity from going to extremes.  This problem has been going on for decades.

Capital and labor, the industries and the people who do the physical work, need to be in balance.  There needs to be enough money for the industries to produce, and the labors the industries need must have a decent quality of life to continually support these industries.  Neither must go to extremes, because corruption will result for both.

Corporations must be loyal to the communities where they are located and not outsource to other countries.  If any corporation doesn’t want to contribute to its home society, they will not be entitles to the benefits from that society.  This means the entire country as well as the community in which it is located.  Corporations must also abide by the laws and protect the environment.

Politicians must be honest and ethical in all matters, thereby pressuring the corporate boardroom to follow in their stead.  All politicians must be accountable for their actions, and any breach in the law will be subject to impeachment and removal from office.

Wages and taxes must be fair.  A welfare state must be avoided, for that is detrimental to society.

If everything was taxed on an equitable basis, along with equitable wages for workers based on what they produce and how much, more income would be produced.

Basically, what this book is trying to do is to restore sanity in our democratic and economy system, and restore capitalism to what it was originally meant to be - private businesses selling their own goods at a fair profit so that the owners and their workers can earn a decent living.  

There are really no radical changes in making profits or getting wealthy, just do it on a more honorable basis, without being so greedy that the middle class would be destroyed and the society being polarized into the very few being rich and the rest of the population being poor, for we are headed in that direction.

Greed is the number one culprit, and it is destroying our economy by destroying businesses, putting workers out on the street, literally, and eventually destroying not only our middle class, but our entire society.

If you are wondering what will happen then, take a look at any South American dictatorship.

To paraphrase a quote in the movie “Wall Street,” greed is not good.  It’s bad!

Our economy is in shambles, but it is not too late to turn back and restore our prosperity, our freedom, and our sense of dignity.

This book shows you how.

Alastair Browne

Book Review: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World is one of the main classics of Dystopian literature.  Set six hundred years in the future, 2532 A.D., or in the book, 632 A.F.  The initials stand for After Ford, after Henry Ford, being the promoter of mass production, and the concept now being applied to everything, even humans.  (I’ve often wondered if Henry Ford himself ever read this book, and how he would have reacted to it if he did.)  

The book is set in a future London, in a World State, with all humans produced in “hatcheries,” or birth machines.  These embryos are conceived to be in one of five different castes, from Alpha, the most intelligent, some becoming world controllers, to Beta, almost as intelligent, and then the Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, from average to almost no intelligence, doing remedial work be it manual labor down to washing dishes in a kitchen.  Exact copies of one another can be produced.  In one instance, 96 clones, all resembling each other are produced to do one job, such as working at one machine.

All of these people are happy in their conditions, and their jobs, and in their spare time, they take a drug called “soma.”  (I would like to point out that there is such a drug, and it is used as a muscle relaxer to people in severe pain.  Aldous Huxley, I believe, based this drug on mescaline, a drug he himself took, and wrote about it in another book, “The Door of Perception.”  Huxley was very much a drug doer.)

With all the comforts, everybody living in a sterilized, ultra-modern environment, where everything is done for you, it is hard to believe that this is a totalitarian regeime, but it is.  People are programmed before birth, and don’t ever know that they are prisoners of their caste, and brainwashed by sleep teaching.  Sexual promiscuity is also the norm, with “everybody belongs to everybody else.”  The concept of freedom and individuality doesn’t even enter into the picture.  

There are individuals, however, who rebel against the “system” and are sent to an island of misfits;  in this book, Iceland.

The characters have the names of famous socialist philosophers:  Lenina Crowne, a beautiful girl, named for Vladimir Lenin.  Bernard Marx, one who questions authority, named for Karl Marx, Henry Foster named for Henry Ford, and Benito Hoover, after Benito Mussolini and Herbert Hoover.  Mustapha Mond, a local “world controller” based in London, has the title of an Islamic cleric, but don’t be fooled, there is no religion or “God” here. 

The plot in this novel is where Lenina and Bernard Marx visit a savage (Indian) reservation in Arizona.  Fifteen years before, a Beta named Linda went with her then lover, a D.H.C. director, to the same place where they had sex.  (Marriage no longer existed.)  Linda was lost and abandoned on the reservation, where she had her son, name John.  John grew up in the Native/Savage lifestyle, participating in ceremonies, doing all work by hand, by is rejected by his peers.

When Lenina and Marx arrive, they are appalled by the primitiveness of it all.  Nonetheless, they take Linda and John back to London.  Linda is an old hag now, fat, beauty gone, and takes soma continuously until she dies.  John Savage, his new last name because he is seen as one, is appalled at the way everyone is spoiled, having everything given to them, living in luxury, with no real challenges, and they cannot imagine any other life, and here, I will leave the story.  A lot does happen, and “Mr. Savage” is at the center of the trouble he later encounters.

This book is a reflection of our society, and its technology today, and more people should read this book.  

Look at all of us today, who visit Indian reservations, and laugh at them and their ways of life.  Look at the way people travel, some to countries with primitive cultures, and checking into a luxurious hotel, with all its catered services.  Look at these 24 hours cable news channels, and see how they compare to “The Hourly Radio,” where one can also get instant news, 24 hours a day.  Observe people around you always looking down on their hand held computers, never looking around them.  Observe the way people talk all of their devices for granted, and if one of them breaks, they go into a panic.  Look at our present day drug culture.  Look at sexual promiscuity, and the high divorce rate.

All of this was foreseen by Huxley back in 1932, the year this book was released.

Huxley could see, even then, how the (then) modern world encouraged people to take things for granted.  This book was written at the rise of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Franco, and television was still in the laboratory, but the public knew it was coming.  World War II had not yet broken out, but the Depression was in full swing and massive political cults were rising up in the U.S.

Huxley knew of the terrors of Hitler and Stalin, et. al., and knew that their methods would not last.  Instead, the author imagined a future regime, with the modern inventions and luxuries coming into being, along with the use of pleasure, not terror, in which a future dictator could retain power, possibly forever.

Could this happen?  Look around you.  See what gives people pleasure. See what they take for granted, and you’ll have your answer.

Alastair Browne